Let Love Come Last

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  “Dear Julie,” said Eugene, in a very gentle voice, “all that you say may be true, and it is true that Mr. Prescott has been very kind to me lately, kinder than usual. Yet I am still doubtful, and more than doubtful, how he will receive the news that you—that we—want to be married. Now, wait a minute, Julie. Let me talk a little. Let’s be sensible. I’ve told you over and over that I’m not going to jeopardize my position by antagonizing your father—not even for you, and—” Here he paused. He must have been looking at Julia intently, for there was a sharp silence. “Julie,” he continued, in a different and rougher voice, “I want to be honest with you. I’ve always liked you, been fond of you. For a long time I’ve thought of marrying you. It’s only lately that I’ve come to know that I love you. I don’t know how it happened, but I do, and I’m not friendly to the idea. However, I want what I want even more; what I want is more important to me than you are.”

  “How can you be so horrible!” cried Julia, and it was evident from the break in her voice that she had been crying. “It seems to me that if you love someone that’s the only important thing.”

  “You talk like a woman,” said Eugene, impatiently. “What do you know about anything, Julie? What do you know about my life, before you were born, all the things I thought about, and wanted? They are there, and they always will be there. I’m not going to break the pattern, just because of you.”

  “What pattern?” demanded Julia. It was not her usual petulant tone, rebellious of anything denied, but an imploring one, heartbroken and desperate.

  Again, there was a silence. After a long time, Eugene said: “I can’t tell you, Julie.” He must have turned away from her, for his voice was muffled.

  Julia had apparently followed him, made him face her. “I know!” she exclaimed. “It’s because of your father! Papa took away your father’s business. You can’t forgive him that! Oh, how silly you are, Eugene! It happened so long ago.”

  “You’re wrong,” he said. “My father deserved to lose his business. He wasn’t the man your father is. I admire your father; I always did.” He said, in a very peculiar voice: “You won’t understand this, but to me it is the most important thing in life. Weak men deserve to lose what they have. Better men should have it.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Julia was sobbing now. “You admit you don’t resent Papa. Eugene, you are confused. You feel one thing, and say another.”

  “No.” He was very quiet now. “It’s impossible to tell you, Julie, to make you understand. You see, Julie, I must have what I’ve always wanted.”

  Julia was very still. She said, quietly: “You want what Papa has. Yes, that’s it, Eugene. And you can have it, by marrying me. That was your original idea. And Papa will be agreeable; if not just yet, very soon, I know. So why do you torment me?”

  “That’s just it, Julie. I don’t know. And until I’m sure, I’m not going to speak, or allow you to speak. If you say anything to your father, and he becomes enraged, that’ll be the end of me, even if I say nothing. And you’ll never see me again, Julie.”

  Again, there was no sound but the soft mournful wind in the pines, the rustle of bird-wings and of the grass. Barbara stood there, petrified.

  Then Julia’s voice, changed and torn and anguished, broke the silence: “Oh, if he’d only die! If only he’d die!”

  Oh! thought Barbara, sickened.

  She heard Eugene laugh. “That, I admit, would solve a number of problems. You don’t know how many problems that would solve, Julie. In the meantime, there’s no getting around our problem.”

  Hatred filled Barbara. She wanted to go and confront these two, and denounce them. She had heard too much.

  Cautiously, she approached the pine-curtain. She looked through the furry and tangled boughs. Julia, agitated and weeping, was standing a little distance from Eugene, in her crimson wool suit and broad crimson velvet hat with the cream-colored plumes. Her auburn pompadour sparkled with golden threads in the vivid sun. Her delicate skin was flushed with emotion and tears, and her trembling mouth, scarlet and moist, was quivering. The sunlight had turned her wet eyes to pure bright yellow. She was wringing her gloved hands.

  Barbara saw Eugene clearly. He did not have his usual courtly and sardonic air. He was resisting something, and it took all his strength. He was resisting Julia.

  “It means nothing to you that I love you!” sobbed Julia, and even Barbara, involved in her own disgusted hatred, knew that Julia was suffering unbearably.

  “It means more than you’ll ever know, you little fool,” replied Eugene. He was not going to touch Julia if he could help it.

  “Oh, you are so clever!” said Julia, with tortured bitterness. “You always have ideas. Have one now—for me. Gene, I can’t stand this.”

  “There is nothing I can do, Julie. You’ve done what you can. You’ve told me that your father admits he was wrong in distrusting me.” Only Barbara heard the faintly vicious undertone in his voice, the ridicule. His voice, when he spoke again, was level, but he was watching Julia. “You’ve asked me to help you, Julie. Do you mean that?”

  “Oh, Gene,” she said, with utter weariness and misery.

  “Well, then, Julie, just suppose something—incredible. Suppose it were possible for me to ruin your father—Of course, it is all absurd, but perhaps I am testing you. Suppose I could take away from your father everything he has gained. Reduce him to nothing. Suppose, in so doing, it should be possible to tell him we were going to be married. Would you be willing for all this to happen, just so that you could marry me without losing anything, without my losing anything?”

  Julia’s hands parted; she dropped them to her side. Her eyes fixed themselves almost fiercely upon Eugene.

  “You couldn’t—do it—Gene,” she stammered.

  “And, if I could, Julie?” he said, softly.

  She turned very white. She stood and stared at Eugene, her whole slender body as rigid as wood.

  All at once, Eugene laughed. Even if it was indulgent, it was a very unpleasant sound. “Julie,” he said, “if you had said ‘yes’, I’d have thought you a fool. And you’d have gone down in my estimation. You must have substance behind you; you must have money. I must have money, too, and something else.”

  Julia said nothing. She had not recovered her color. But she, in turn, was watching Eugene.

  “It would not be so bad for you, naturally, if I were able, by fair means or foul, to take from your father what he has, provided it was not done before we were married,” said Eugene, very lightly. “You wouldn’t, then, be ‘humiliated’. To do it before—well, you don’t trust me, do you, Julie?”

  Barbara never expected to hear Julia speak the truth, but she heard her sister speak truly when the older girl said: “No, Gene, I don’t trust you. I don’t suppose I ever did. I don’t suppose I ever shall.”

  He was not offended. He came still closer to her. “I can return the compliment, Julie: I don’t trust you, either.” It was not possible to say that that dry face softened, but it became less unrelenting. “We can trust each other in the small things, say, like ‘love’, but not in the larger things, like money.”

  Julia pressed her gloved palms together, and looked down at them. Her lovely face was pale and somber. “I trust that you really love me, Gene.”

  “Yes, Julie, you can believe that.”

  “But it isn’t enough?”

  “No, Julie.”

  Julia began to cry again, hopelessly. Gene did not move. He only looked at her. “Don’t try to understand,” he said at last. “You can’t.” He waited until she had wiped her eyes. She stared at him intently. A sort of flash passed over her face, and her mouth, usually so soft and full, became hard in spite of her sudden smile.

  “I have an idea!” she cried. “I shan’t tell you what it is, Gene. And it won’t hurt you. I promise you that. I know if anything ever hurt you you’d never forgive me.”

  Eugene was silent. He took a cigarette from
his pocket, struck a match and lit it. The smoke coiled slowly in the brilliant sunshine. He continued to smoke, while Julia’s smile became fixed, brighter.

  She said, at last: “How would it be if Papa suggested to you that he wouldn’t mind your marrying me?”

  “I can’t conceive of anything more impossible,” he replied, flatly.

  She laughed, and the sound was sweet and amused. “I can, Gene. Please leave it to me.”

  She ran to him then and threw her arms about his neck. His arms remained at his side, even though she pressed herself against him. Barbara could see her face, moved, electrified, full of passion and love. Then Eugene, again as if against his will, lifted his arms and put them about the girl. She pressed her face into his shoulder and incoherent sounds came from her.

  Barbara was very young. She realized how young she really was when she thought, marvelling: It is possible for such as these to love each other! Slowly, she dropped the branches of the pine tree, and retreated. She was filled with pity for Julia, and even for Eugene, while she despised and rejected them both.

  She heard Eugene’s voice, rough and tired: “Dear Julie. Darling Julie.”

  Barbara sat down on the warm flat rocks. She bent her head so that it touched her knees. Oliver, she thought. Dear Oliver.

  The warm wind ran over her. The sun was hot on her bowed back. When she finally lifted her head, she knew that Eugene and Julia had gone.

  CHAPTER XLI

  There was something about Matthew which hugely and acutely annoyed his twin, Thomas. Never, even in their earliest childhood, had there been the slightest intimacy or friendship between them; there had not been that “closeness” which William had sentimentally believed ought to be active between twins, and which, even now, he sometimes tried to believe existed, and spoke of to Ursula.

  William firmly believed that children, if only “adults would let them alone,” had a natural affinity for one another. Ursula had often suggested to him that brothers might hate each other. This, even when it flourished openly before him, William had furiously refused to believe.

  Thomas despised Matthew, not only because his twin was an enigma, but because of Matthew’s negation of life. Thomas, cunning and exuberant, and very realistic, found Matthew’s passivity and silences repulsive. Moreover, he hated what he could not fully understand.

  Thomas enjoyed the Christmas holidays. He enjoyed the excitement; he particularly enjoyed the gifts, lavish from his father, prudent but adequate from his mother. He liked people about him, and parties, and gaiety and excitement; he was popular with his contemporaries, which emphasized the truth that it is not necessary to have love for one’s fellows to be admired and sought after by them. If one thought well of oneself, one’s gifts, however inexpensive, were treasured and had an aura of charm.

  This year Matthew had actually brought himself to buy something for everyone in the family, even for Oliver. He had a most extraordinary imagination; the colorlessness of his gifts could be attributed only to his indifference. Thomas was not forgotten by his twin; Matthew gave him a rather good leather wallet, thriftily stuffed with tissue, much to Thomas’ annoyance.

  But Matthew, to the amazement of the family, gave Oliver a really astonishing gift. It was a miniature of Voltaire, exquisitely executed, old and authentic. No one was more astounded than was Oliver. He could not recall a single instance when Matthew had spoken to him voluntarily, or given him a present, or shown the slightest interest in him.

  The empty wallet, however, had greatly irritated Thomas. He knew that Matthew received an allowance as large as his own, and he suspected that additional money often found its way to him from the pathetic William, who tried to use money as a path to his silent son. There was no excuse, thought Thomas, for the tissue paper. A yellow note, at least, ought to have been included. It was with this in mind that he rudely, and without knocking, entered Matthew’s austere room. Matthew was sitting by the window, looking out at the landscape, his elbow on the window sill. Snow was falling heavily; in the dusk the distant lamps on Schiller Road were blurs of indistinct gold. As it was the day after Christmas, an apathy lay over the great dark house, a surfeit. Even the crackling fires on every hearth did not lift the gloom.

  “Look,” said Thomas, without any preliminaries, “I’m grateful for the wallet, but you might have included a little money. I’m broke. You aren’t. You never are. You’re a miser, but you might have remembered that I’m not.”

  Matthew slowly turned his head. His face, because the lamps had not been lit, was in darkness, but Thomas felt the queer aloofness of his brother’s eyes, the rejection.

  “What did you give me?” he asked, with indifference.

  Thomas’ large red face became even redder. “What can anyone give you?” he blustered. “You never seem to want anything. And you’re so damn precious it would take too much time to think what you’d want. So I sent you a card.”

  Matthew was silent.

  Thomas withdrew the wallet, regarded it with angry bitterness. He tossed it upon the table. “Keep it,” he said, all his strong aversion for his brother in his loud rough voice. “You have money for it. You need it more than I do.”

  Still, Matthew did not speak. About the room, against the wall, canvases stood in ghostly array. Not one had been completed. The canvas on the easel bore a few slashes of color; they were dry and formless. Thomas glared at the wallet, then, with an ugly word, he picked it up again and put it back in his pocket. He stood there, big and hulking, his large round head thrust out like a bull’s. “I’ll keep it,” he said ungraciously. “One of these days I might have a little money to put in it.”

  Matthew turned back to his contemplation of the white and lonely landscape. The spruces and pines bent under the snow. Thomas felt that he had been dismissed. He became enraged.

  “Don’t you think anyone ever becomes tired of your imitating a monk?” he demanded. “What a poseur you are!” Matthew did not answer. Thomas brought out some matches. He made considerable noise lighting the lamps, and he enjoyed seeing Matthew wince as, one by one, the lamps gushed into light.

  Matthew blinked and shrank. His voice was always faint and distant; now there was a tremble in it. “I never bothered you,” he said. “Why do you bother me? I never asked anything of anyone but to be let alone.”

  “Another of your poses! If Pa really did let you alone, and forgot your existence, which you pretend you want him to do, you’d soon be stirred up. What! No checks? No presents? No extra cash for your damned etchings and such? What a howl you’d raise!”

  Thomas was really aroused. “I know all about you!” he railed. “You flunked this semester, didn’t you? You and your ‘genius’. Wait till Pa gets the happy news. But what do you care? You’ll go back, and repeat your subjects, and fail again. You’ll always fail. D’you know that?”

  Matthew’s dull face did not change. He merely looked down at the long white hands spread on the arms of the chair. “Yes,” he said, almost inaudibly. “I know that. Yes, I know that.”

  Thomas was taken aback at this lifeless admission. “You don’t care?” he taunted.

  “Not particularly,” replied Matthew. It came to Thomas then that this was the first real conversation he had ever had with his brother, and it excited him.

  “Why don’t you care?”

  Matthew lifted his right hand, studied the back of it, then the palm. “Because I can’t,” he said. “It doesn’t matter to me whatever happens. It never did.”

  “You’d care all right if you had to get out and earn your living,” said Thomas. He thrust aside some books, sat on the table, swinging one of his big stout legs. He pulled out a box of cigarettes, struck a match loudly, and began to smoke. Matthew appeared to have forgotten his presence. Thomas let one large boot kick the leg of the table. “I have what they call intuition,” he said, in a jeering voice. “I don’t think Pa’s doing so well. They call it ‘hanging on the ropes’. Maybe I’m wrong; I hope, for my sake,
that I am. But maybe I’m right. What’ll you do then? Go on sitting in the twilight somewhere, in a garret, staring at the landscape? Even you, with your fancy ways, have to eat. What then?”

  Matthew did not answer. Thomas said: “Ma’s got a nice nest-egg tucked away. I found that out, too. But will she shell it out to us? You can bet not! Not Ma! She’s known all about us for a long time. Ma’s no fool. You can lally-dally around, and Ma’ll say: ‘Roll up your sleeves, Matt, and get to work.’ Will you roll ’em up?”

  “Will you?” Matthew’s voice, for the first time, had quickened. He regarded his brother, not with his usual bemused expression, but with one faintly sharpened.

  “Me?” said Thomas. He puffed out a huge cloud of smoke, stared at the ceiling. “Sure. I can roll up my sleeves. I’m not afraid of living. And there’s always a way.” He looked at his brother. “Ever think of Gene Arnold, feathering his nest? Julie’s soft on him. I hate his guts, but if Julia gets him she’s got somebody. And she’s not going to forget Tom Prescott. Because nobody’s ever going to forget me. I’m not going to let ’em. But she’ll forget you. And good for her.”

  Matthew’s eyes moved about the canvases stacked against the wall. Thomas watched him. “You and your paintings!” he exclaimed. “Think you can make a living at it? You never completed anything in your life, except maybe one or two daubs you’ve hidden away.”

  Matthew did not answer.

  Thomas pointed the cigarette at him. “Know what I’m going to do? I’m not going back to Yale. I’m going into the lumber business. Pa will hear about it, in a day or two. He’s going to shout, but that doesn’t matter to me. I want the lumber business. And I’m going into the business so that I can get part of it from Gene Arnold, who’s after it.” Matthew moved very slightly. “You talk like a fool, Tom. Arnold’s only Father’s general manager. What makes you think he can do anything?”