Unclothed : a novel

Front matter

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

Chapter I

She was leaning over the accordion-pleated lid of her closed desk. " I thought that I had seen all the writers in the world — but go ahead, anyway," she said.

" That makes it hard," I replied quietly. " But I suppose you do get tired of them."

iWhat was I to do? It was my fifth magazine for the day; it was already late evening — "Do you want to see the most remarkable story ever written? " I said; half whimsically, but with some conviction.

She folded a pair of glorious, soft, white hands, looked at the clock, and then at me.

" Go ahead," she said. " It's my job."

" Well, that's all — most remarkable story ever written, story about the real life, the destiny of - — "

" You know," she broke in, " everyone here is gone but me, and I can't do shorthand, so your well chosen explanations — "

I interrupted her. " Oh, I am sorry. I know I haven't any business to keep you here at this late hour. I'll come in the meming."

" You are very kind."

For a moment we sat in silence. I suppose it meant dismissal for me, but I failed to recognise the fact.

Through the narrow window back of her desk I could look down upon the street below and see the end of the day pour its little people, like ants, upon the crowded streets.

An oiEce boy darted in, coat half on, his cap stuck on his head slantwise.

" Good-night, Miss," he cried.

" Good-night, Tommy."

I had never listened to so kind a voice.

Then we heard his little fist pound against the wire caging of the elevator, and an " Aw, cut it. Kid I " gruffly from the automaton inside that ran the thing.

I found my eyes on her again. She looked tired, very tired, and she was so pretty; her mouth was soft; the lips seemed to caress her in themselves; and she had blue eyes.

I looked at her, fascinated. I was walking into tragedy that day and didn't know it.

" I'll bring the story in to-morrow," said I. " If you would read it personally, I would be so appreciative."

" You know I'm not the editor," said she. " I'm only his assistant- But to-morrow will be all right."

I was at the door nearly when she stopped me. " You can stay a moment, if you will. Won't you sit down?" She has told me since that she thought she had treated me like a book agent, and felt sorry.

" Why, now you're kind. I — " I really was surprised.

" I am only asking you to stay on a bit, because — I think that if you talk some you would amuse me, and I am bored to death these days." I thought I saw a mischievous smile on her face.

However I smiled with her. Beneath her words I seemed to hear the plea of sincerity. At least I know that I wanted to stay. She told me afterwards that my seriousness really amused her, but that I didn't attract her in the least. Women are queer in their impulses at times.

" I guess that you do get sick of your work, don't you?" I ventured.

My question seemed to make her restless.

" Oh, I like it all right. I have to — but tell me—"

She looked at my card, repeating my name, " Laurence Grewdon — Laurence Crewdon. I can't quite place you," she said finally.

I had sold one story, a few months before, to one of the big magazines, and got a hundred dollars for it. It was all the encouragement I had ever received, and sometimes I had thought to myself that I would rather have had none than so little. But now that I was asked the question direct, I was glad of my one miserable little success.

" That may be," I answered. " I haven't published a great deal of my work."

She seemed to he running over my name in her mind. " Why, yes," she said, apparently to herself, and then, " I know who you are. You wrote that little story about the shop girl, didn't you?"

" Yes, I wrote that."

"lYou know — I liked that. What else have you published? "

I started an evasive reply, and then suddenly I found I could not lie to her. " Nothing," said I.

She got up and went to the window. " I think it's rather of an accomplishment to be truthful about one's own work. I don't suppose I'd be."

" Well," I went on, " I have written a great deal even if I haven't published much. I've been writing day and night for years."

" Why, you're only a boy," she said back banteringly. " But I guess you have worked hard." It seemed that she was noticing me now, for the first time. She had an odd way of answering me with her eyes on her desk or glancing out of the window.

As we talked on, I noticed again how tired and worn she looked. Her voice was wistful, sad, even. And then I became more Impertinent.

" A young woman with your looks, as intelligent as you must be, with the understanding that you must have — I'll bet you get sick of everything, and blue, and disconsolate." I did not lack effrontery that day. " But I suppose you are happier than I am."

" It doesn't take you long to talk personalities, does it," she said by way of reply.

" Not when I'm interested," I answered.

" I thank you," she laughed. At last there was cheeriness in her voice. To myself I said that I was in luck to find such a glorious creature on my literary tramp.

I went on. " But you haven't answered me. You ought to be fairly happy, doing what you love to do."

" Well, I am not — happy," she said. " Can't you see that? "

" Life is too short to be unhappy."

" It is only too short, if you are happy."

She spoke unconsciously, I thought, for as she realised her words and looked up to find me listening intently, I saw her catch the edge of her under lip between her teeth until they left a narrow reddened imprint.

"Please pardon me, won't you?" I begged.

Then she recovered from her momentary bewilderment and smiled gently. " It's hard, isn't It, to be artificial and brave all the time, when one wants just to lie down and die? But you'd best go!"

Apparently she had not wanted to be so easily confiding, I noticed a flush spread to her cheeks, and her hand touched restlessly one or another of the papers on her desk. It's difficult to be clever with a clever woman. And I did the wrong thing. I have often wondered since what possessed me. I leaned over and grasped her hand. I suppose that I meant it to be an expression of sympathy.

She drew back quickly. " Why — how strange you — " she started to say several things. I pretended not to notice when I saw her shrink back. At last I' perceived that she had passed over the situation with leniency.

" If you will let me, I believe I can tell what is the trouble with you," I said, before I realised how ridiculous was my statement. " It's probably because you are trying to live a real living life. That's just it. I discovered a long time ago that most of us are living dead lives, where there is no feeling, remorse or regret, even. Only irksome monotony, where the morrow casts its shadow on the day before."

She hesitated for a moment as if to decide whether to answer or be angry. "Your sentiment is not so bad," she then remarked. " But you'll give up some day. Perhaps I will too. And then we'll both be happy."

" But I am not going to give up," I declared.

With some satisfaction I saw that I had pulled myself out of my foolish blunder. " May I stop in to-morrow with the manuscript? " I asked as I took my cane and hat.

" Yes, please do," she answered.

I found myself back on the street a few minutes later. I hardly knew how I got there. It seemed that I only vaguely remembered that she had promised to read one of my stories. The big thing was that I had met her. As I walked on I realised that I had been talking to someone who really understood.

It was hard to keep from thinking of her that night. Was she tall, and good looking — was she dark or fair? I couldn't remember, though I recalled her words, nearly all of them. It was her physical self that had escaped me. All but her eyes — and these I could never forget. They flashed so intensely full of life, in startling contrast to the pallid, worn face under them.

As I fell asleep that night I was less conscious than usual of my impoverished surroundings. It had rained the day before, and a big wet spot marked a leak in the roof, over my head. The night previous I had spent mostly in wondering what should happen if the plaster fell during my slumbers.

Now I saw a pretty, dark face, so soft and strange in its lines, and a wonderful pair of sad blue eyes.

And I kept wondering what she thought of me.

Chapter II

I WENT home happy the day that Laurence Crewdon called on me. It was for the first time in months.

Things were changed indeed since the time when my father used to tell me I was the happiest creature he had ever known.

" It's unearthly, little 'un," I remember his saying anxiously one day. " I am afraid for you."

I wondered what he meant by that.

" I mean that you are not one who is happy as an animal is. You're not a cow. You have a mind, but now you're happy from vitality and from lack of understanding. When your vitality slacks — it's bound to — when your understanding grows — Ah, I am afraid you'll be very unhappy one day, Cleodore ! "

I do not suppose I gave much thought to what he said. And, if I did, it was to picture myself miserable in a dramatic way which would be nearly as much fun as had been my previous happiness. If some tragic thing happened to me, I used to think, I would stand it as long as I could and then if life grew too terrible, I would finish it. One could always do that.

I did not understand.

I did not realise that the thing that's hard to bear is not the big tragedy, but the dull, grey, hopeless monotony of boredom. No affliction is so great as this — to have no single thing in life that is interesting, to have no single thing to look forward to, and each day to feel that one is growing older.

For the first time in my life, I felt " grown-up." My father would have called it by another name, I suppose, would have said it was as he had prophesied.

I rallied from his death very quickly, which surprised me. One reason was that I had many preoccupations. I found myself compelled to earn my own living. The novelty of It stunned me.

By the time I had worked into the new routine, my father was six months dead.

My courage- was gone ; I felt old. I was quite sincere about it too, although I was at that time barely twenty-three. After all I suppose youth is not an affair of numbers.

The strangeness of being a useful person instead of a decorative person tortured me. One day I nearly sobbed in the open street, as the conviction came upon me that before long I might really grow to tolerate the hideous bareness of my life; that I might even become resigned to the ugliness about me.

I suppose I was silly and affected, but anyway I did feel myself in those days a Vere-de-Vere amongst Mugginses, and I used to think I would rather remain a miserable, lonely Vere-de-Vere all my days than gradually to turn into a cheerful Muggins. And I was so afraid that I should.

I used to go to my office, hoping there might be a huge pile of manuscript waiting for me and much work to anaesthetise my mind.

I was not sure why I was so intensely, so grotesquely depressed. It may have been the fatigue of a pampered woman unaccustomed to work. It may have been grief and loneliness.

Or perhaps it was the strangeness and foreignness of my surroundings that robbed my life of its colour.

I was absurdly un-American and had sufficient sense of humour to realise how ridiculous it was that I, born in New Jersey and brought up there through most of my childhood, should talk with a foreign accent, should dress in a foreign fashion, and should feel myself a stranger in my own country.

The few people I met regarded all this as an affectation. Perhaps it was, more or less. Poses are the only protection that unhappy people and lonely people can find for themselves. And if I assumed the manner of the first civilised visitor to the Hottentots, it was not altogether from arrogance.

It was Crewdon's quick understanding of all this that caught my fancy that day when we first talked together. It was that sympathy that made him stand out so clearly from the first moment. It was sjrmpathy that caught my fancy far more than any thing like love-at-first-sight -^ that psychological phenomenon that Larry has described with care but little conviction in one of his stories.

The knowledge that I had found someone who understood, who neither laughed, nor looked down his nose when I told him that my native land, as I saw it revisited, seemed to me less homelike than the conventional idea of hell, thrilled me.

I walked down Broadway afterwards briskly. I wouldn't wonder if I hummed the " Habenera."

It was late afternoon when the boy brought in his card. The name " Laurence Crewdon " suggested nothing.

" He asked for me personally? "

The boy said no, that he had asked for the editor, who had gone home.

" He is not a life insurance agent, or a man to sell something? "

The boy thought not. " I guess he's an author," he said.

When the man came in, I noticed something ostentatiously normal about him. He was posing too, I felt sure.

His personality was a striking one. There was an expressiveness about him, he used his hands in an odd way, picking up one thing after another — looking at it earnestly as he talked, even losing the thread of his sentences in the apparent interest of examining a penholder or a paper-weight.

I liked to watch him, and, perceiving that his business was of no great importance, I did not pay much heed to what he said, but amused myself by looking at him while he talked.

Gradually I began to listen. He was telling about his literary experiences. He mentioned the titles of several short stories, and the number of words each contained. He even brought in the names of several distinguished editors, together with some quotations from their critical remarks- He said very little, however, about stories accepted.

As his talk went on I, used to the gentle fashion with which authors are wont to slither over the lack of editorial appreciation, realised how things were with him, pitied the pathos of it, and wondered what the reason was. For the creature seemed of the stuff from which a writer

I might be made. There was a wit about him, a certain feeling for words; and a Heaven-sent shrinking from the obvious.

After a time he stopped talking about himself and eyed me curiously.

" Pardon me," he blurted out, " you don't look happy. Are you ? "

I was appalled at his familiarity and looked at him severely, but he was caressing the paperweight and didn't notice. Then I realised from his pose, his voice, the expression of his face that he meant no harm. I saw there was a shrinking awkwardness about him, and felt he was saying in pure kindness what from someone else would only have been impertinent.

" Are you? " he repeated.

I told him quite simply that I was not. I expect I talked to him with much greater freedom than I could have allowed myself had he been a person of more social subtlety.

As soon as he got started talking, his gaucherie dropped away and he showed himself a man of extraordinary understanding.

After ht had finally left I discovered that it was past my usual closing time and that the rest of the office folk had gone.

At home that night I felt gay for the first time in months. Clementine noticed.

" Why, Mademoiselle," said she, " how well you look to-night. You have almost the air of being your old self again."

We had a very good dinner that night ; Clementine had really picked up cooking extremely easily, considering she had never done any but maid's work. I remember how good was the bottle of California wine I drank. California wine varies so, but in those days it was all I could run to, and a dinner with even the harshest bottle of them all is better than one bedewed with only water.

I suppose I shall never get over thinking these small things important. After all it is something if one still drinks from a glass with a stem, wears silk stockings in the house, and breakfasts in one's bed like a denizen of civilisation.

I had a return that night of light-heartedness for a few minutes and it brought me nearer to my former life in sunny beautiful Rome, than I had been for months. To think that it took no more than the visit of a wild-eyed, strange, bashful man who sympathised, to alter the face of the universe for mel

Chapter III

She read my stories. She was kind about them, but I do not suppose she greatly cared for them, and indeed, since I came across them among some old papers the other day and reread them, I don't wonder.

At any rate, however, she recognised their eccentricities. The psychological experience of my life has been such as to make my writing peculiar.

Starting out to the career of a doctor, I soon gave it up for writing. I had put my soul into doctoring at the beginning, and, for a time, the medicine attracted me. The unfolding of the many things involved around the function of living was interesting, provocative of further study. During the preliminary years In- the university when I began to gain something of man in me, it almost seemed that this was really the goal of my desires; my days became filled with an eagerness to delve further, to know why I breathed, slept, felt. I became a being sentient with expectancy.

And then, one day came the severance of my understanding of medicine from my love of it. It all came from my odd appreciation of life. I found I was expected to turn this art of mine into a profession and make a living from it.

A quarrel with my father brought the end more quickly.

" Look here, boy," he said, " don't you realise that you are dabbling away precious time? Surely you can't expect me to go on supporting a man of twenty-four 1 "

" Yes, father," I answered, " I know that. And I too hate to think of it."

" Then why don't you change? "

" How can I change? " I answered. " I don't see why I should. I didn't ask to come here."

After this I woke to practical things — I had to.

I found that others were doing the same thing that had seemed such an or^e of impossibility to me. Others were being friendly and kind and hypocritical that they might gather a livelihood.

I took an office on upper Broadway, a few blocks from my home. There I shared a reception room with a doctor whom I knew, so that the expenses were not so large at the beginning.

One day — I remember it very clearly, because my success as a physician dated from it — I was called in to attend a new patient.

I found her a woman who at first glance showed very little physical charm, being undersized and thinly skinned. She talked well, however, and I fancied that she must have appealed more to the mental sense of her husband than to the physical. One way and another I gathered that immediately after she was married she forgot the mental influence which had attracted her husband, and plunged into the abandon of a simple passionate love. The husband then, finding that the only attraction was gone from his wife, grew to comparing her with the other women of his acquaintance, upon whose plane she had so ignorantly placed herself. He found she had no further charm for him after this. He saw her wrinkles, the drooping, care-trodden face, eyes that went begging for love and devotion, and he grew tired and uninterested. Presently he plunged into a life of morose dissipation, with the almost inevitable result to himself and to his wife.

As I viewed the poor woman and listened to as much of this as she herself understood, I couldn't help deploring the bestial rottenness of the husband's makeup.

The story was not an unusual one, at any rate to a physician, though the condition that confronted me was perplexing. Could I tell the husband that it was only through his excesses that his wife was suffering? Or should I keep both of them in ignorance? The problem troubled me. I found that I dared not tell the truth; it would disrupt his family, kill the poor wife's love and belief in her husband, and do no good whatever.

It was obvious that I had to lie.

I really traced my entire practice to the manner in which I handled this case, for I both cured her and kept my mouth shut. The wife sent me patients because she was cured. And the husband sent me patients too. I built up a good little practice in a very short time.

And then I began to think, and think hard. Instinctively, I plied myself with questions, and the paramount one never lost its haunting interrogation. It was this: What would have happened had I not lied? I began to upbraid myself for my insincerity, and because I understood neither life nor myself, I was indeed a very foolish youngster. One day I caught sight of myself in a mirror, and it appeared to me that already my insincerity was reflected upon my face. I seemed to see odd weak lines that frightened me. "What am I developing into?" I asked myself. I found that I was at war with my own life. I hated the absurdity of everything about me; and then, gradually and slowly I fell lower and lower down the scale of human resistance. Just before I gave up my career as a doctor, I felt that my moral self was quite as low as any mucker on the streets.

I took to drinking. If I had enough stimulant down me, I found that I became soothed, and so, quite philosophically, I kept up a fair pace. When I went to my room at night, the few ounces of whisky gave me peace and rest.

My intoxication each night became rather glorious ; like a soft anaesthesia, but with the added advantage of certain awakening.

In this state of morbid unrest, a fixed purpose became impregnated within me, and the purpose grew until it became a part of me.

I had thought of writing as a vocation long before, and had worked in a desultory way at a book which, though practically a work of fiction, contented me most because it gave me opportunity to express my ideas. These thoughts of writing came back to me very forcibly at this time, and, after many weeks of hesitation, I one day stored away the office furniture and turned over what practice was still remaining to my associate.

I moved my few personal belongings and my typewriter to a boarding house I knew on Lexington Ave. It would have been much better if, at this moment, I could have had a home to go to, and I thought, as I settled myself in this new place, of how different it would have been, had my mother lived.

My father was furious at my sudden decision and literally turned me out of his home, telling me that he was entirely disgusted with me, and never wanted to see me again. I left the house like a banished black sheep. And all the time I was nearly effeminately good. That was my weakness, and he thought it simple badness.

Not much of those first weeks remain in my memory. I stayed in my room and wrote along at the book, but it was slow work. I knew nothing of how to write, and destroyed many pages. It was only by chance that I was able to write what I wanted to say. I had sometimes to write out half a dozen times what I was trying to express before I came anywhere near my meaning.

I had no conception of what the practical side of writing was, and I was actually foolish enough to imagine that before the two hundred dollars which I had saved up from my practice was spent, I should be making a living out of my new profession. I really thought this, when the only piece of writing I had ever done (barring Indeed several hundred scraps and sketches which I had turned out since my boyhood) was only half completed and that, In the roughest form.

Here was I, a man of nearly thirty, unpractical enough to fancy that Inside of a few weeks I should have finished this book, should have got It accepted by a publisher, and should be In a position to live off the proceeds.

It was laughable that a man who had been taking upon himself to control human suffering, and had not done it so badly after all, should have been so childish. But I knew nothing about writing and writers. I do not believe I had ever even met an author in my life except once when I was In Baden-Baden with my parents and was Introduced to a very popular author from England, who used to speak frequently in an offhand way of the large sums she recovered from the work of her pen.

I suppose I may have said to myself, when this Idea of giving up medicine for the profession of writing came seriously into my mind, "Why! if this silly woman, who does not even know enough to paint her face properly, can make big sums by writing, a man like me is safe enough to go Into It with a few hundred to keep him going while he gets a start."

My book was about three-quarters completed when I realised It would take me a good deal longer than I had bargained for, to finish it. This upset me particularly because I discovered that my money would be gone before the work was done.

So I decided I would make a litde ready money by writing a few short stories. I had studied the stories that were in the magazines, and I thought that I could write more intelligently than the majority of them.

The part that struck me most was the constant introduction of love. At this time that appeared to me artificial and almost ridiculous. I seemed always to have an aversion to women and love-making, and thought that the petty love episodes, on which so much emphasis was laid, were unnecessary. It may have been because I, although I had vaguely expected a great love affair some day, had never had one, or hardly any companionship with a woman, for whom I cared.

I was a weird young person, and had no understanding of the natural order of things. When in the presence of women I drew away from them. Some I even hated with an intense, unexplainable aversion, probably for no more reason than that they were of the opposite sex. At times, it had been a hard fight to keep a knowledge of this from my father. ,

I wrote some short stories trying to show life and the relationship between men and women as I saw them. I tried to show that so-called love was often subterfuge or self-deception.

When I had finished a few I posted them to the magazines, and had them rejected without comments. This hurt me, aside from the disappointment, for things were really getting serious and I had depended on these stories to bring me in some money. When I came to count my funds, I found I had only eighteen dollars left.

For a time I was bewildered, then I recalled that there remained to me still a slight resource in the stored furniture. I sold It and realised something over a hundred dollars.