Gargoyles. Ben Hecht

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СКАЧАТЬ remember it so plainly was an old woman. It had seemed natural before he died but now it seemed unnatural. She would die soon, too. Her youth—something she thought of as youth, arose and stretched out far-away arms to her. It came to her in the night and stood smiling at her like a ghost of herself. Yes, she was already dead and she could lie in bed weeping for her husband and staring with tired eyes at memories. Thoughts did not disturb her. Her emotions, grown too involved for the shallows of her mind, gave her the consciousness merely of a panic.

      But the panic left. It receded slowly and the death of her husband stirred in her during the first weeks of mourning a gentle affection for the man. She closeted herself with the memories that had terrified her—sensual memories of an impetuous lover, an idealization of a long-forgotten Howard. And her sorrow became like a vague honeymoon shared with slowly dissolving erotic shadows.

      This too went. As it went away the widow became curiously younger in her features, her black clothes, her mannerisms. She grew to find the loneliness of her bed desirable. She would snuggle kittenishly between the empty sheets, an unintelligible sense of immorality—as if it were immoral to sleep alone—lending a luxury to her weariness.

      Yes, it was somehow nicer to sleep alone, to have the bedroom all to herself. In her mind things that were different from the routine of her life and that belonged to the secret imaginings that had once filled her days were immoral. And this was different—being alone. So her living on without her husband became an odd sort of infidelity, pleasant, diverting.

      The year and a half passed bringing a rejuvenation to her body. Her youth and its decline were buried in a coffin. Now at fifty-two she was living again and creating out of the remains of her figure, coiffure and complexion a new youth—at least a new exterior.

      The dreams of her earlier days returned to her and she no longer found it necessary to deny them all reality. It had been necessary before in order to keep herself fitted into the shell. And as a result her dreams, denied any possibility of realization, had become like his, more and more fantastic, more and more warmly improbable. Now there was no need for a shell. There was no need to preserve an easily recognizable and never failing characterization. She had done that before so as to avoid confusing her husband and herself and she had been rewarded by a similar ruse employed by him.

      Now that he was gone she found herself changing. She found herself approaching the romantic conception of herself. And since she was able to carry into reality her rejuvenated fancies, to devote herself to looking stunning, to making a somewhat exotic impression upon people, to arousing interest—her imaginings did not expand as before into distorted and improbable pictures. She began to busy herself, to actively give them outlet, to have time or surplus energies for the evolution of fancies beyond her.

      She had no plans for the future and she was not interested in any. An amazing fact had come into her life—the present. She abandoned herself to it. She had harnessed what was left of the energies allowed so long to evaporate and the process of evaporation was at an end. She would become, if there was time, a keenly alive, egoistic woman gorging herself upon the desserts remaining at the banquet board before which she had sat for twenty-six years with closed eyes and listless hands.

      She felt these things only dimly. There was a freedom to life, like a new taste in her senses. Of this she was confusedly aware. And her sorrow for her dead husband became a pleasant thing, a thing inseparable from the gratitude she unknowingly felt for the new existence his death had given her.

      She referred to him with a pensively magnanimous air, inventing perfections in his character and endowing his departed intelligence with a wisdom far beyond her own. This enabled her to utilize his memory in an odd way. When she argued with her friends or children, when she was doubtful concerning the extravagance or selfishness of her actions, or the newly born radicalism of her views, she would quote mercilessly from her dead husband. The fact that he was dead lent a sanctity to whatever views he may have held. Not in her own eyes but, as she shrewdly sensed, in the eyes of others. And she grew to play unscrupulously upon this thing she perceived in her children and friends—that they respected the words and opinions of a dead man infinitely more than those of one alive.

      Thus she was able to indulge herself in ways which would have astounded and perhaps horrified the departed Basine and to bring her immediate circle to accept these ways as conventionally desirable by making her dead husband their spiritual sponsor. Her friends chafed under this ruse, but felt themselves powerless to combat it. They were men and women who lived on the opinions of the dead, who subscribed fanatically to all ideas sanctified by the length of their interment. Themselves, they practised the ruse of editing the wisdoms of the past as well as prophecies of the future into vindications of the present. They felt indignant but powerless before the treachery of Mrs. Basine, who raided the mausoleum for private articles of faith.

      Mrs. Basine was aware at first of lying but this feeling gave way to a conviction that if her husband had not thought and said the things she attributed to him while he was alive he would have done so had he continued to live.

      "Because," she said to herself, "we were always alike and thought and said the same things always."

      Her son George was proud of his mother but inclined to be dubious about the change that had come over her. He was irritated particularly one evening to hear his mother advocate equal suffrage rights for women to a group of surprised friends gathered at their home.

      "I think such ideas foolish and dangerous," George explained politely.

      "Why?" his mother inquired.

      Basine shook his head. He had given the subject no thought. But a militant defense of the status quo inspired him always with a comfortable feeling of rectitude.

      "I see no reason," pursued Mrs. Basine, "why women shouldn't vote as well as men. I remember your father was very much interested in the issue of women's suffrage. He said the day would come when women voted shoulder to shoulder with men and that the country would be improved by it."

      Basine stared at his mother. He had grown to realize that she had discovered the trick of lending weight and irrefutable wisdoms to her own notions by surrounding them with the sanctity of death. For it was almost impossible to fly in the face of a quotation from his father. The fact that the man was dead seemed to make contradiction of any ideas or prophecies attributed to him a sacrilege. There was also the fact becoming daily more obvious that his mother was turning into an unscrupulous administrator of the dead man's opinions.

      "I never heard father say anything of the kind," he exclaimed suddenly. And then feeling that a loss of temper was the only way in which he could cover the affront he had offered his mother, he added with indignation, "You keep backing up your arguments by dragging dad's corpse into them all the time."

      Mrs. Basine looked at him in amazement, and he reddened. He apologized quickly. Mrs. Basine, shocked by her son's unexpected penetration, bit her lip and became silent. She let the argument pass, not without observing that her friends present appeared for a moment to rally around her son's exposè—as if he had given words to their own attitude. She decided when she was alone again to be more careful. She loved her son and felt a dread of sacrificing his respect. There was a dread also of sacrificing the respect of these others who had looked at her for a moment with an accusing understanding.

      There had been present a Mrs. Gilchrist, an old creature of oracular senilities whom she had grown secretly to detest. But the detestation she felt was accompanied by a vivid desire to keep in with the woman. Mrs. Gilchrist was a person of position, decided position. Her son Aubrey was a novelist. This alone endowed the Gilchrist tribe with an aura of culture. They lived in Evanston and were active, mother and son, in the social life of the town.

      Mrs. СКАЧАТЬ