Psyche, when she was alone, wondered where he had gone and why. Beyond that she did not think. A Grecian goddess tending a modern electric stove, she moved in a trance, doing her share toward setting the stage for a one-act play in which she did not consciously want to take a part.
He came back when a purple dusk had isolated the old barn from hills and woods and sky, setting it adrift on the quiet, dark tides of the approaching night.
Hearing his step on the stairs, she had an instant of lucidity in which panic, cold and sharp, set her free from the spell he had cast upon her. Then he was beside her, his timing, his actions, perfect.
“For you, Venus.”
Psyche, looking at the great armful of golden roses he held out to her, felt the coldness recede before a warmth such as she had never known. Her cheeks flushed with pleasure, she gathered them to her, heedless of thorns, and buried her face in these, the first flowers any man had ever given her.
When, at last, she looked up, it was to find that he had turned out the lamps and that the studio was now lit only by two tall candles.
“Nick—I—”
“Don’t thank me, Venus,” he said gently. “It wouldn’t be right.”
He had found both caviar and champagne, and with them, it seemed, a reckless gaiety that carried them throughout dinner on the crest of a wave of laughter.
The candles were guttering low in the candlesticks when Nick rose from the table, circled it, and lifted her to her feet.
“Nick—don’t. Please.”
His face against her soft hair, he murmured, “Don’t run away from me, Venus. Not yet. Not to-night.”
“Please—no, Nick.”
“Look at me, Venus. Look at me and tell me—if you can with truth—that you don’t need me now as much as I need you. Tell me this, Venus, then leave me—if you must.”
If his hand at her waist had increased its pressure then, if the firm fingers that slowly turned her face up to his had used anything other than the gentlest coercion, she would have broken free from him while she still could, would have shaken off the warm languor induced by that deep, persuasive voice.
When her eyes met his, it was too late to run from him or from herself.
His first kisses were as tender, as undemanding as his embrace, his lips lightly tracing the contours of her face, while his arms drew her gradually closer. Unresisting now, Psyche allowed him to make love to her, becoming as passionate in her submissiveness as he was in the steadily increasing passion and variety of his lovemaking. And when he carried her to the couch where all summer long he had slept alone, she clung to him, the heavy pulse of her blood telling her what her mind no longer tried to deny, that this was everything she had ever sought, that this was love. For he was an expert in his way, an expert at creating illusions. not only on canvas, but also on the more delicate fabric of the emotions.
And he talked all the time, his usually staccato diction softened to a whisper as gentle as his sensitive, caressing hands.
Psyche, caught beyond hope of recall, lulled to a false sense of security by the hypnotic rhythm of that voice that promised so much with such effortless beauty of word and phrase, gave herself to him and—as she thought then—to a love which would enfold and keep her not just for that night, but for all the days and nights to come.
How long she slept, before waking to find the candles dead and the studio invaded by the first grey light of dawn, she did not know. For an instant, seeing the beamed roof high above her, feeling the unexpected texture of the couch, she thought she must be dreaming still, and then memory returned—Nick. But where was he? Why was he no longer beside her? Raising herself on one elbow, pulling the rug he must have laid over her more closely around her shoulders, her eyes searched the studio with an unformulated apprehension that turned to immediate relief when she saw him, his sleeping face toward her, stretched out on another couch that stood against the opposite wall.
For several minutes she stayed where she was, revelling in a sense of complete well-being, at first refusing to think in any really concrete manner of anything at all.
Where her doubts came from, she could not have said, but suddenly her sensuous pleasure was gone, and she was alone with a desperate need for reassurance, for Nick’s arms again holding her, his voice again telling her—ice closed slowly around a heart that seemed to stand still—what he had not told her, what he had not said even once, that he loved her.
Her mind, that beautifully precise instrument that was as much a part of her as her warm blood, reviewed with cold clarity every word he had said to her at a time when she was scarcely aware that she heard him at all, and she could find nothing that could be interpreted as other than endearments without lasting value of any kind. If he had been naturally inarticulate, she might still have hoped. Her mouth curling in a smile as bitter and unamused as her unsmiling eyes, she did not delude herself. If there were ever occasions when Nick did not say exactly what he intended to say, no more and no less, she had yet to encounter one.
Pain and humiliation made her feel literally ill, and the knowledge that she had been a very stupid, very young fool, left an acrid taste in her mouth.
Briefly she had glimpsed a paradise in which she walked side by side with someone who cared only for her, who would be with her both in joy and sorrow. She had offered heart and mind and body to a man who had wanted only the least part of the gift. The giving of herself physically was, because she had done this in good faith, of little importance beside the searing hurt of not being wanted as a person. That she should be desired as a woman was to her, because she was entirely without vanity, no compliment; rather it constituted an insult to her real person—to Psyche, the individual.
It was an insult, she vowed silently, that she would not endure again from Nick, or from any other man. Somewhere, some time, she would meet and love a man who did not want to leave her when the sun rose, who would want to be with her always, who would need her as she needed him. And until she met that man, she would walk alone, sleep alone, and, in any way that really counted, live alone.
But Nick—what was she to say to him when he woke? Nick— whom she had thought she knew so well, how could he have done this thing to her, how been so wilfully cruel, unless he had thought it would mean as little to her as she was now sure it had meant to him. Had he, in his own way, been as mistaken as she in hers?
Noiselessly she gathered the rug around her, and rising, tiptoed across the room until she was standing within less than three feet of him. Scarcely breathing, she studied his face, stripped in sleep of his usual half-humorous cynicism, defenseless as that of a young boy. Could this be Nick, this stranger who must, she knew without question, at times be in need of outside support, of close companionship of some kind? Had this man, in part really understood for the first time, lived by and for himself alone for thirty years or more? Her gaze never leaving his face, she thought not; and a hundred details, noticed from time to time but not fitted together, presented her with a staggering truth. This man whom she now realized she had never known at all, was not in any real sense at home when he lived at the studio. The artist might be at home there, but the man was not. And when he was at home, did he live alone? It seemed highly unlikely.
Suppressing a wild, hysterical desire to laugh, she saw that she had been more than half in love with a myth as unreal as the Venus who had stood silent watch over their lovemaking.
For a moment longer she lingered, and then fled silently to her room where, the door locked behind her, she fell to her knees beside the bed and wept for something she had lost without ever really having it, for a dream that had been no more than that. And when at last she dried her eyes, she remembered the fierce pleasure of a man’s mouth against her own, the aching delight of a man’s arms holding her close, and wept again.
It was after eight o’clock, and a blanket of heat had already banished the dew from the long grass of the valley, when she returned from a walk that had taken her far from the
barn, along hedged lanes she had never seen before and would not recognize if she were to see them again.
When she had slipped out through the green door at sunrise, it had been with the confused idea that she would not return to it. The fact that she had taken nothing with her was proof that she had seen the complete impracticality of such an idea even while pretending to entertain it. If she had had any money at all, she would have packed her few possessions and left for good. Because Nick had said he would pay her for posing, she had refused the small savings Butch and Mag had been only too eager to give her. As yet Nick had paid for nothing, and she wondered now whether this was because she had no present opportunity to spend money, or because he had wished to make quite sure that she would not leave until he was ready to let her go. With a new-found cynicism she thought that the latter supposition was in all probability the correct one. There was no longer any need for her to remain in hiding, of that she was certain. Yet, as she followed the winding path across the field to the barn, she knew that, even now, she did not really want to leave this place that she had grown to love so much, this quiet refuge where until to-day she had been so completely content.
It required courage to mount the narrow staircase, but, since it was something she had to do, she did it with decision and outward assurance. Before she reached the top she could hear Nick whistling quietly. When she emerged into the studio it was to find him busy with brushes and turpentine, another canvas already set up on the easel.
When he saw her, his words were as casual as though this morning were no different from any other. “Morning, Venus. Breakfast be ready soon?”
“Ten minutes,” Psyche told him evenly, while she experienced an overpowering relief. He had not, apparently, guessed her secret. That he should even surmise she had imagined herself in love with, and loved by him, would have been more than she could have endured.
Nick, whistling again, interrupted himself long enough to say, “If you have time while the coffee water is heating, see if you can dig up that extraordinary outfit you were wearing the first time I saw you. I want to finish off one of those early sketches.”
All day Psyche posed, her hair once more an uncombed mop of gold, in the old dungarees and shapeless black sweater in which she had once been so comfortably unselfconscious. Nick, talking as usual while he painted, calmly avoided even a glancing reference to what had passed between them.
It was not until nightfall that he put his hand on her arm as she turned toward her room. “Stay with me, Venus.”
Psyche had thought herself fully prepared for an invitation that she had been morally certain would be forthcoming, if not that night, then the next—or the one after that. To find herself wavering for even an instant was something that she had not expected. Unable to trust her voice, she shook off his hand with an abruptness that in itself betrayed her weakness.
“Do I have to plead a cause in which we are both equally interested, Venus?”
Psyche backed across the room until she stood in the bedroom doorway. “Have you any intention of marrying me, Nick?”
“Good God! What has that got to do with anything?”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“You know the answer well enough, Venus.”
“Then you know mine,” Psyche said levelly, and closed the door between them, the subsequent click of the lock a sharp period to her sentence.
She hoped that her refusal of him would be accepted in the same way her surrender had been, without comment. The following morning, however, she discovered that it was to be a primary topic of conversation.
He waited until she was already posing, the clear north light showing small lines of strain around her eyes, before embarking on a discourse that he obviously expected to be less one-sided than usual. Psyche, recognizing his attempt to provoke her into talking, at first refused to do so.
“The lady known as Mag must have said a good deal to you on the subject of holy matrimony, Venus. Did she, I wonder, amongst other misconceptions, implant in you the conviction that love can be found only in a legalized union? Love is a dream, evanescent, fleeting, to be caught and then released, unpolluted by mundane considerations. You seek, Venus, in your untutored simplicity, to chain down something that cannot be chained. Love has many guises, and——”
“I am not in love with you!” Psyche interrupted violently.
“Nor I with you, in the sense in which you seem to be interpreting the word. Nevertheless, what I offer you is a rare enough gift in itself, call it what you will. In spurning it, you rob yourself to no advantage, for I mean you no harm. More than that, I have done you no harm.”
“No?” The monosyllable, as she employed it, borrowed his own brand of cool irony.
He continued to work without pausing. “Venus, it had to happen to you sometime, as surely as the sun rises each morning. It might have been bad, very bad. With me it was good. We both know that. Take it where you find it, Venus, and thank whatever Gods there be, for you will not find it often. In marriage, that bourgeois custom that seems to have such an unnatural appeal for you, it can be—and too often is—a complete failure. A ring on your third finger will be no guarantee of happiness, physical or otherwise. What I offer you, on the other hand, is guaranteed. We have proved that once already. Next time you will find it equally true.”
“There isn’t going to be a next time, Nick.”
“You don’t dislike me, do you?”
It was difficult for Psyche to be anything other than honest. “No, I don’t dislike you,” she replied slowly. “I should—but I don’t.”
“Then stop talking and behaving like a little fool.”
He was no longer painting, but Psyche, her hands thrust deep into the pockets of her faded dungarees, held her pose. This was how she had once stood, and in these same clothes, in a world which, though arid and harsh, was one in which she had never needed to compromise. Unconsciously she reverted to the language which had been hers until so very recently. “There ain’t goin’ to be no next time.”
He knew then that she meant what she said, and knew also that it was not, and never had been, in his nature to force compliance on any woman. His face expressionless, he began to paint again. “Have it your own way,” he told her curtly, “though what tortuous and ill-informed logic produces this decision of yours, I cannot guess. Perhaps you will at least satisfy my curiosity, if nothing else, by telling me why there was nobody else before me?”
He has no heart, he has no conscience, Psyche thought bleakly. I was clever enough to know these things about him in the beginning. How could I have forgotten so easily? And now he, who has talked so often of sensitivity, asks me a question like this. I ought not to answer it, but I will, because it is time he learned— as I have—that one can’t judge people by how often they wash, by whether they say “isn’t” or “ain’t”.
“There wasn’t anyone clean enough,” she replied slowly.
“What in hell do you mean by that?”
“Just what I say.”
“I presume that I am, for example, clean enough?”
Psyche hesitated for a fraction of a second, and then said distinctly, “I thought you were.”
Nick stepped away from his easel, and his voice was as cutting as a winter wind. “Will you have the goodness to explain that remark?”
This was a side of him that Psyche had never seen, but she stood her ground with a question which was in itself an oblique reply. “You’re married, aren’t you, Nick?”
“How did you know that?”
“I didn’t, really.”
“But now you do?”
“Yes,” Psyche said without emphasis, “now I do.”
His eyes as cold as his icy voice, he said, “My private life is none of your business, Venus, and never will be.” With which, he turned and strode toward the stairs.
Psyche heard the slamming of the door below, and, soon after that, the coughing roar of the car engine. Depression held he
r to the model’s stand. A tired, and temporarily shabby Venus, burdened with doubts she could not resolve, as apathetic as the noonday silence that closed in around her, she asked herself where she was going and why. Travelling a road with few decipherable signposts, her own untried judgement her only rod and staff, she wondered dully how she would ever find her way. She had deliberately angered the one person who had any interest in her, had perhaps forfeited his good-will entirely—and for what?
Sitting down, she covered her face with her hands, and rocking slowly to and fro, whispered, “I don’t know—I don’t know. Oh, God, I just don’t know.”
7
NICK had left the studio without a considered destination, and it was habit rather than anything else that took him to the village post office.
Drawing in to the curb, he heard the dry crackle of fallen leaves beneath the tires, and was aware as he had not been before that summer had given way to autumn.
Inside the small post office, he received his mail with an indifference that evaporated instantly when he saw the conspicuous colour of a telegraph envelope. Putting aside a bundle of newspapers, he ripped it open and took in its contents in a single comprehensive glance. ‘Boat reservation canceled stop flying home stop arrive sixteenth flight 407 stop love Alice.’
His first reaction was one of unqualified pleasure, for he was, within his own limitations, genuinely fond of his wife. Then, computing dates, his dismay more than equalled his pleasure. He had exactly twenty-four hours in which to get rid of a girl who was at the moment his entire responsibility. By the following afternoon no trace of her presence must remain to be discovered by Alice who would, he was sure, insist on seeing his summer’s work as soon as she stepped off the plane. Alice was a very sophisticated young woman, but she would not, he knew, accept any such greeting as “I have been faithful in my fashion”. Once he had disposed of the actual Venus, it would not be too difficult to imply that The American Venus had been painted in the north country where he had found the model for it—an untruth well substantiated by the paintings he had done of her against the background of the slag.
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