of the Common. What is now but a single street once constituted the
whole of the town.
The tourist, unless he is of a satirical mind, will have no interest
in the many new residential streets of Essex. For on these streets the
houses are not white but tan or yellow or green. They are not beautiful
in their proportions but likely to be hunched and high-shouldered. Their
flower-beds are often outlined in brick or in large clam shells and their
lawns are sometimes decorated with whimsical jigsaw representations of
cockatoos, scotties and mickey-mice.
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the unfinished novel
But somewhere between the charmed perfection of Wentworth Street
and this sad negation of it, there is an intermediate architecture which
is beginning to win an interest for itself. This is the part of town that
was built in the forty years after the Civil War. It includes the flamboyant
houses constructed of the brick that is part of Essex’s industry and most
of the public buildings, which are structures heavy with native stone and
foreign porticoes. After having seemed ridiculous for some two decades,
these buildings are now beginning to be thought of as having a certain
interest and dignity. Sensitive people who once would have felt a kind of
indignation with the conscious imposingness of their style, now regard
them with wry respect. Even the W.P.A. guide-book of the state, which is
written with so severe a feeling for the chastely simple that it is inclined
to speak slightingly of the elaborate detail of the Federal period, admits
that a certain moderate pleasure is to be derived from the confident af-
fluence that these buildings show. There are few forms contrived by the
human mind which, once they have been emptied of their immediate
intention, do not have a measure of peace and nobility. The bedeviled
tourist who, twenty-five years before, would have hated these post-Civil
War buildings as the visible signs of the corruption of life that was at the
root of his own uncertainties, can now think of them as the monuments
of a more successful attempt at security than that of his own time. It
is therefore not impossible to suppose that the ugly houses with their
mickey-mice may one day come to seem, to a yet later tourist, the signs
of a vanished peace.
As for the chief business street of the town, it has the rather huddled
ugliness of so many American main streets, an ugliness that is pleasant
and comfortable because of its large typicality. This same chain grocery
store, this pair of competing hardware stores, this rather sad delicatessen
kept by a rather sad Jew whose brother-in-law, more learned and political
than he, is the proprietor of one of the three stationery and cigar stores,
the several drugstores, the small dark easy bars, all of them are repeated
by the reassuring thousands.
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chapter 21
Philip Dyas’s study was a large room in one of the finest of the Wentworth
Street houses. It was lined with books and it was fitted for work and
comfort. It was a room that Vincent Hammell would have understood
although he had not yet seen it. Indeed, it offered itself to the compre-
hension of almost any man, with its great trestle table, its leather chairs,
its appearance of disarray which would have misled only a woman, for
it was only a working disarray and actually everything was in the most
shipshape order. It was filled with light. This afternoon the light was
gray. The Outram children on the lawn wore their sweaters and rubbers
against the damp chill of the August day. Paul who was ten and Elizabeth
who was five [six in chapter 11] industriously filled a bushel basket with
the little green scrub apples that had fallen from the old almost sterile
trees. Their young dachshund walked from one to the other, puzzled by
their activity. They treated him with an enlightened impatience as if he
were a child who was interfering with their serious business.
Within the house, Philip Dyas and Marion Cathcart watched the chil-
dren at their work. They stood at either side of the window, watching
silently for some minutes. Perhaps they were feeling the intimacy that
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comes to two people who look out of a window together. Dyas turned
away suddenly. “Let me make you a drink,” he said, “it’s chilly. Or per-
haps we should have a small fire.”
The girl, left alone at the window, turned from it slowly and almost
reluctantly. “Thank you, no,” she said. “I can’t stay. I promised the chil-
dren they could feed the Hinson pigs with the apples. Do you think it’s
all right for the pigs to eat the apples?”
“I don’t know,” Dyas said. “I suppose it is. I’m sorry you can’t stay.
Vincent Hammell is dropping in. Do you find you like him?”
She shrugged and said “Oh—,” letting her voice trail into the wide
tolerance of indifference.
“I do. I like him, that young hero.”
Her face became severe. Her head went up and her chin went for-
ward. “What have you got against him?” she said sharply.
Dyas was genuinely surprised. “Why, nothing against him. I just
said I liked him.”
“Then why were you so ironical about him?”
His surprise was still real. “Ironical?” he said. Then understanding
broke on him. “Because I called him a hero? But I meant it.” And now
he was indeed ironical in the look he turned on her. “You can’t see what
I mean, can you?”
Her impatience was great. “No, I can’t,” she said. “I suppose he’s a
perfectly nice boy, but when you use such language—”
He condescended from his years. “You look at it with the eyes of
twenty-two, Marry. They see a lot but they don’t see everything. The boy’s
a hero because—because every minute of his life he’s looking for his des-
tiny. Have you ever read that essay of his, the one I gave Harold?”
She said with dry disapproval, “Yes, I did read it and I didn’t like it a
bit. So damned self-conscious.”
“Yes, of course it’s self-conscious. I suppose its tone is very foolish,
very young. But you know, Marry, it’s a great deal harder to be a hero grace-
fully than to be a heroine.” And he made a little bow in her direction.
“I’m no heroine!” she said very passionately.
“Oh, but you are!” He was teasing her a little, but his voice was also
serious and tender, full of admiration and speculation.
“Oh, that’s just— language.” Her impatience was real and vehement
and it was so strong that it made her flounce up out of the depths of the
armchair. Her eyes flashed. She was really angry, as if she had been in-
sulted or maliciously scared. Her attitude of resistance and defiance had
great charm. Dyas looked at her with amusement and admiration. But
10
the unfinished novel
suddenly she seemed to become unhappy and defenseless, quite miser-
able, not at all like a heroine but like a girl who might break into tears.
Dyas lowered his gaze. “I meant,” he said in a quiet, reasonable
voice from which all the banter has gone, “I meant only that Hammell
is waiting for things to happen to him, the right things, the things that
will match him. That’s really all I meant by heroism. Perhaps it’s too
big a word. And I meant that you were waiting for the things that will
match you.”
“That won’t be hard!” she said, loftily disdainful of herself.
“Why Marry—very hard.”
Her anger and miserableness had gone. She said, “Don’t talk to me
like an uncle.”
His smile was boyish and flattered. “I’m about old enough to be,” he
said. She waved this aside peremptorily, with the lost embarrassment the
very young feel when their elders speak of their middle age and test the
unreality of the fact by speaking openly of it.
Dyas said quietly, not to be denied. “Very hard, Marry—as you well
know. You’ll need to be matched, among other things, by a hero.”
She gave a little pouf of laughter. “You are an uncle! You’re uncle-ing
me—”
“Avuncularizing, you mean.”
She accepted it. “Avuncularizing me toward your young Hammell.
Do you like him that much?”
She was flirting and had fallen into the unconsciousness of flirtation
and so she was shocked by the simplicity of his anger as he said, “Don’t
be a fool, Marion!”
She recoiled under the fierceness of the anger. His face was flushed
and hostile. But at the sight of her stricken eyes and trembling mouth
he said reasonably, “No, that’s a hero only potentially, Marry. He’s too
young, his events are too far off. Besides …”
“Well, could we change the subject?”
“Yes. But if Hammell’s a hero at all, he’s—I’m afraid—a tragic hero.”
For two people who were fond and respectful of each other, they got
angry easily. Marion’s voice was charged with the deepest annoyance as
she said, “Philip Dyas, you can talk such nonsense. If you like someone,
why don’t you leave him alone? I don’t know him yet, but he seems nice
enough, but so terribly on the make, so anxious to be a success.” She
threw out the word with boundless contempt. It seemed to check Dyas.
He did not answer, and she pressed her advantage. “Yes, really, I think, a
little vulgar. And letting himself be so thoroughly used.”
11
the unfinished novel
Dyas rose and paced meditatively up and down, his hands in his pock-
ets. “As to his being used,” he announced, as if he were going to take up one
point at a time. “As to his being used, as you put it—well, that’s only as you
put it. I know about your quarrel with Harold of course. And I really don’t
know which of the two of you was the more foolish. I’m sure that in every
way you made the nicer picture, if I can judge from the way you look when
you get angry with me—you clench your fists and your wrists curl up and
you take your stand with your feet apart and your shoulders back—”
Under this love-making, for it was that, and under the quite relentless
irony that cloaked and expressed it, she looked confused and childish, not
at all capable now of the posture of anger that Dyas was describing.
Dyas went on. “And morally too, you were bound to make a nicer pic-
ture than Harold. That wasn’t hard. You had the advantage the young al-
ways have, and especially when they are defending the young. But I don’t
quite know just what you are defending. You heard Harold and Garda
decide that what was wanted for Buxton’s biography was a young man.
First let me remind you that this was openly talked about, in front of you.
If there were anything to be ashamed of or hide, if there was an element
of conspiracy, as I gather you think, we would scarcely have spoken of our
intentions in front of you. You weren’t present at any of the conversations
in which I took a part, but you knew there were such conversations, you
knew perfectly well that I was in agreement with the others. And yet that
seems to have made no difference to you. No one is being used, I assure
you. It’s seldom that a young man gets the chance that Vincent Hammell
is getting. If we wanted someone young and able to take suggestion, it’s
because we know as you don’t, if you’ll forgive my saying so, what the
necessities of the whole situation are.”
He was hard on her, but she could not miss the compliment that lay
in his speaking out to her so straight, throwing his moral weight against
hers without any worry that she would be unable to bear it. He went on
to take up the next point. “Now about his being ‘on the make.’ Of course
he’s on the make. But if I said it another way, if I said he was ‘seeking his
fortune,’ would that make it different? I know the signs of the foundling
son of the king—the young man who has the giants to deal with, who
is going to do deeds. The young man whose innocence is his talisman. I
know—I used to be one myself.”
She said with stout loyalty, “You still are. You still are, a good deal
more than your Vincent.”
His smile was enchanting. “No, Marry, I’m not. But since you insist
on it for me, I must take it that you like the role.”
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the unfinished novel
“Yes, of course I like it. I like it very much.” Then she said, “You still
are. You and Dr. Buxton, too.”
“Marry, you’re a literal girl—”
“Yes I am.”
“—and you don’t have the vaguest notion of what I’m talking about.
In the sense that I mean, Buxton is obviously not a hero at all. And nev-
er was. He’s not the foundling son of a king and never was. He’s the
king himself and always was. Having discovered his kingdom, he simply
walked into it. As for me—”
“There’s the school,” she said primly. “That’s an achievement.”
“Oh, of course it is,” he said with gentle impatience. “But achieve-
ment has nothing to do with it. You refuse to understand what I’m talk-
ing about. I’m not in the least sure that Hammell will achieve anything
at all. You’re the one who’s being vulgar now—you with your notions of
achievement. It’s only one’s sense that he is demanding that something
happen to him. And that something may turn out to be tragic.”
She was in the armchair again and at this she sat up straight. “You
use that word a great deal,” she said.
“What word?”
“Tragic. You use it as if it were the best thing you could say about
anything.”
He looked confused for a moment, for a deep belief had been brought
to light in a very casual way. Brought to light casually—and questioned
rather firmly by a person whose years and sex made the questioning dif-
ficult. He said, “Yes, I think it is the best thing you could say about any-
thing. And perhaps when you’re my age you will think the same. You’ll
know as I do that the belief in
[two blank lines in original]
She listened to him attentively, not looking at him, looking down
into her lap where her hands were folded softly together. When h
e had
finished, she looked at him, full but not searchingly, as if the whole per-
sonal explanation of this opinion of his would come of itself to the sur-
face and be apparent without any probing of hers.
But nothing did appear. She shook her head gently but stubbornly.
“I don’t see it,” she said. “It sounds very noble but I don’t see it.” This
ended the matter. But she was only just leaving when Vincent Hammell
arrived and she disconcerted him as he entered by the intense curiosity
of her glance.
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chapter 22
As for Vincent, he met Marion’s look with a look of equal curiosity. He
too had ground for wondering if the person who now confronted him
was quite the person he had at first supposed.
He has awakened early that morning at the sound of splashing in the
pool and when he went to the window he saw Marion Cathcart. The first
thing that surprised him was that she did not swim well. She did, indeed,
seem concerned to swim better, for she had thrown a rubber float into
the water and clung to it, face down, while she practiced the leg-flutter of
the crawl. She found it impossible to keep her leg to the prescribed stiff-
ness—despite all her concentration, it bent at the knee. Now and then
she looked back at the heels which the bending of the knees was throw-
ing so much too high out of the water. Two or three times she reached
back with one hand to try to touch one knee or the other to remind it to
keep the line of the leg unbroken. After a short while, in fatigue or dis-
couragement, she climbed out of the pool and sat on the coping to rest.
And Vincent observed that when she entered the water again, she used
the steps and did not plunge or dive in.
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He did not leave the window all the time she was in the pool or at
it. He felt that he was spying. But he felt that the espionage was jus-
tified because it was disclosing a fraud. It was one thing to be judged
by a girl whose competence he was bound to admit on the evidence of
every aspect of her manner and appearance. It was quite another thing
to be judged by this girl who handled herself so awkwardly in the water.
Marion Cathcart, the quiet girl with the clear forehead, was not an easy
housemate. It was not entirely comfortable to have to meet her level eyes
The Journey Abandoned_The Unfinished Novel Page 26
