The Loved One Read online

  “It isn’t how we’re used to living nor where we’re used to living,” she said. “We come from the East, and if anyone had listened to me that’s where we’d be today. We had a colored girl in Vermont came in regular—fifteen bucks a week and glad of it. You can’t find that here. You can’t find anything here. Look at that lettuce. There’s more things and cheaper things and better things where we come from. Not that we ever had much of anything seeing all I get to keep house on.”

  “Mom loves a joke,” said Mr. Joyboy.

  “Joke? Call it a joke to keep house on what I get and visitors coming in?” Then fixing Aimée she added, “And the girls work in Vermont.”

  “Aimée works very hard, Mom; I told you.”

  “Nice work, too. I wouldn’t let a daughter of mine do it. Where’s your mother?”

  “She went East. I think she died.”

  “Better dead there than alive here. Think? That’s all children care nowadays.”

  “Now, Mom, you’ve no call to say things like that. You know I care…”

  Later, at last, the time came when Aimée could decently depart; Mr. Joyboy saw her to the gate.

  “I’d drive you home,” he said, “only I don’t like to leave Mom. The street car passes the corner. You’ll be all right.”

  “Oh, I’ll be all right,” said Aimée.

  “Mom just loved you.”

  “Did she?”

  “Why, yes. I always know. When Mom takes a fancy to people she treats them natural same as she treats me.”

  “She certainly treated me natural.”

  “I’ll say she did. Yes, she treated you natural and no mistake. You certainly made a great impression on Mom.”

  That evening before she went to bed Aimée wrote yet another letter to the Guru Brahmin.

  Seven

  The Guru Brahmin was two gloomy men and a bright young secretary. One gloomy man wrote the column, the other, a Mr. Slump, dealt with the letters which required private answers. By the time they came to work the secretary had sorted the letters on their respective desks. Mr. Slump, who was a survival from the days of Aunt Lydia and retained her style, usually had the smaller pile, for most of the Guru Brahmin’s correspondents liked to have their difficulties exposed to the public. It gave them a sense of greater importance and also on occasions led to correspondence with other readers.

  The scent of “Jungle Venom” still clung to Aimée’s writing paper.

  “Dear Aimée,” Mr. Slump dictated, adding a link to his endless chain of cigarettes, “I am the tiniest bit worried by the tone of your last letter.”

  The cigarettes Mr. Slump smoked were prepared by doctors, so the advertisements declared, with the sole purpose of protecting his respiratory system. Yet Mr. Slump suffered and the young secretary suffered with him, hideously. For the first hours of every day he was possessed by a cough which arose from tartarean depths and was relieved only by whisky. On bad mornings it seemed to the suffering secretary that Mr. Slump would vomit. This was one of the bad mornings. He retched, shivered, and wiped his face with his handkerchief.

  “A home-loving, home-making American girl should find nothing to complain of in the treatment you describe. Your friend was doing you the highest honor in his power by inviting you to meet his mother and she would not be a mother in the true sense if she had not wished to see you. A time will come, Aimée, when your son will bring a stranger home. Nor do I think it a reflection on him that he helps his mother in the house. You say he looked undignified in his apron. Surely it is the height of true dignity to help others regardless of convention. The only explanation of your changed attitude is that you do not love him as he has the right to expect, in which case you should tell him so frankly at the first opportunity.

  “You are well aware of the defects of the other friend you mention and I am sure I can leave it to your good sense to distinguish between glamour and worth. Poems are very nice things but—in my opinion—a man who will cheerfully take his part in the humble chores of the home is worth ten glib poets.”

  “Is that too strong?”

  “It is strong, Mr. Slump.”

  “Hell, I feel awful this morning. The girl sounds like a prize bitch anyway.”

  “We’re used to that.”

  “Yes. Well, tone it down a bit. Here’s another one from the woman who bites her nails. What did we advise last time?”

  “Meditation on the Beautiful.”

  “Tell her to go on meditating.”

  *

  Five miles away in the cosmetic room Aimée paused in her work to re-read the poem she had received that morning from Dennis.

  God set her brave eyes wide apart (she read),

  And painted them with fire;

  They stir the ashes of my heart

  To embers of desire…

  Her body is a flower, her hair

  About her neck doth play;

  I find her colors everywhere,

  They are the pride of day.

  Her little hands are soft and when

  I see her fingers move,

  I know in very truth that men

  Have died for less than love.

  Ah, dear, live, lovely thing! My eyes

  Have sought her like a prayer…

  A single tear ran down Aimée’s cheek and fell on the smiling waxy mask below her. She put the manuscript into the pocket of her linen smock and her little soft hands began to move over the dead face.

  *

  At the Happier Hunting Ground Dennis said: “Mr. Schultz, I want to improve my position.”

  “It can’t be done not at present. The money just isn’t here in the business. You know that as well as I do. You’re getting five bucks more than the man before you. I don’t say you aren’t worth it, Dennis. If business looks up you’re the first for a raise.”

  “I’m thinking of getting married. My girl doesn’t know I work here. She’s romantic. I don’t know she’d think well of this business.”

  “Have you anything better to go to?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you tell her to lay off being romantic. Forty bucks a week regular is forty bucks.”

  “Through no wish of my own I have become the protagonist of a Jamesian problem. Do you ever read any Henry James, Mr. Schultz?”

  “You know I don’t have the time for reading.”

  “You don’t have to read much of him. All his stories are about the same thing—American innocence and European experience.”

  “Thinks he can outsmart us, does he?”

  “James was the innocent American.”

  “Well, I’ve no time for guys running down their own folks.”

  “Oh, he doesn’t run them down. The stories are all tragedies one way or another.”

  “Well, I ain’t got the time for tragedies neither. Take an end of this casket. We’ve only half an hour before the pastor arrives.”

  There was a funeral with full honors that morning, the first for a month. In the presence of a dozen mourners the coffin of an Alsatian was lowered into the flower-lined tomb. The Reverend Errol Bartholomew read the service.

  “Dog that is born of bitch hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay…”

  Later in the office as he gave Mr. Bartholomew his check, Dennis said: “Tell me, how does one become a non-sectarian clergyman?”

  “One has the Call.”

  “Yes, of course; but after the Call, what is the process? I mean is there a non-sectarian bishop who ordains you?”

  “Certainly not. Anyone who has received the Call has no need for human intervention.”

  “You just say one day ‘I am a non-sectarian clergyman’ and set up shop?”

  “There is considerable outlay. You need buildings. But the banks are usually ready to help. Then of course what one aims at is a radio congregation.”

  “A friend of mine has the
Call, Mr. Bartholomew.”

  “Well, I should advise him to think twice about answering it. The competition gets hotter every year, especially in Los Angeles. Some of the recent non-sectarians stop at nothing—not even at psychiatry and table-turning.”

  “That’s bad.”

  “It is entirely without scriptural authority.”

  “My friend was thinking of making a speciality of funeral work. He has connections.”

  “Chicken feed, Mr. Barlow. There is more to be made in weddings and christenings.”

  “My friend doesn’t feel quite the same about weddings and christenings. What he needs is Class. You would say, would you not, that a non-sectarian clergyman was the social equal of an embalmer?”

  “I certainly would, Mr. Barlow. There is a very deep respect in the American heart for ministers of religion.”

  *

  The Wee Kirk o’ Auld Lang Syne lies on an extremity of the park out of sight from the University Church and the Mausoleum. It is a lowly building without belfry or ornament, designed to charm rather than to impress, dedicated to Robert Burns and Harry Lauder, souvenirs of whom are exhibited in an annex. The tartan carpet alone gives color to the interior. The heather which was originally planted round the walls flourished too grossly in the Californian sun, outgrew Dr. Kenworthy’s dream so that at length he uprooted it and had the immediate area walled, leveled and paved, giving it the air of a schoolyard well in keeping with the high educational traditions of the race it served. But unadorned simplicity and blind fidelity to tradition were alike foreign to the Dreamer’s taste. He innovated; two years before Aimée came to Whispering Glades, he introduced into this austere spot a Lovers’ Nook; not a lush place comparable to the Lake Isle which invited to poetic dalliance, but something, as it seemed to him, perfectly Scottish; a place where a bargain could be driven and a contract sealed. It consisted of a dais and a double throne of rough-hewn granite. Between the two seats thus formed stood a slab pierced by a heart-shaped aperture. Behind was the inscription:

  THE LOVERS’ SEAT

  This seat is made of authentic old Scotch stone from the highlands of Aberdeen. In it is incorporated the ancient symbol of the Heart of the Bruce.

  According to the tradition of the glens lovers who plight their troth on this seat and join their lips through the Heart of the Bruce shall have many a canty day with ane anither and mawn totter down hand in hand like the immortal Anderson couple.

  The words of the prescribed oath were cut on the step so that a seated couple could conveniently recite them:

  Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear

  And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;

  I will luve thee still, my dear,

  While the sands o’ life shall run.

  The fancy caught the popular taste and the spot is much frequented. Little there tempts the lounger. The ceremony is over in less than a minute and on most evenings couples may be seen waiting their turn while strange accents struggle with a text which acquires something of the sanctity of mumbo-jumbo on the unpracticed lips of Balts and Jews and Slavs. They kiss through the hole and yield place to the next couple, struck silent as often as not with awe at the mystery they have enacted. There is no bird-song here. Instead the skirl of the pipes haunts the pines and the surviving forest-growth of heather.

  Here, a few days after her supper with Mr. Joyboy, a newly resolute Aimée led Dennis and, as he surveyed the incised quotations which, in the manner of Whispering Glades, abounded in the spot, he was thankful that a natural abhorrence of dialect had prevented him from borrowing any of the texts of his courtship from Robert Burns.

  They waited their turn and presently sat side by side on the double throne. “Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,” whispered Aimée. Her face appeared deliciously at the little window. They kissed, then gravely descended and passed through waiting couples without a glance.

  “What is a ‘canty day,’ Dennis?”

  “I’ve never troubled to ask. Something like Hogmanay, I expect.”

  “What is that?”

  “People being sick on the pavement in Glasgow.”

  “Oh.”

  “Do you know how the poem ends? ‘Now we maun totter down, John, But hand in hand we’ll go, And sleep together at the foot, John Anderson, my jo.’ ”

  “Dennis, why is all the poetry you know so coarse? And you talking of being a pastor.”

  “Non-sectarian; but I incline to the Anabaptists in these matters. Anyway, everything is ethical to engaged couples.”

  After a pause Aimée said: “I shall have to write and tell Mr. Joyboy and the—and someone else.”

  She wrote that night. Her letters were delivered by the morning post.

  Mr. Slump said: “Send her our usual letter of congratulation and advice.”

  “But, Mr. Slump, she’s marrying the wrong one.”

  “Don’t mention that side of it.”

  Five miles away Aimée uncovered the first corpse of the morning. It came from Mr. Joyboy bearing an expression of such bottomless woe that her heart was wrung.

  Eight

  Mr. Slump was late and crapulous.

  “Another letter from la belle Thanatogendos,” said Mr. Slump. “I thought we’d had the last of that dame.”

  Dear Guru Brahmin,

  Three weeks ago I wrote you that everything was all right and I had made up my mind and felt happy but I am still unhappy, unhappier in a way than I was before. Sometimes my British friend is sweet to me and writes poetry but often he wants unethical things and is so cynical when I say no we must wait. I begin to doubt we shall ever make a real American home. He says he is going to be a pastor. Well as I told you I am progressive and therefore have no religion but I do not think religion is a thing to be cynical about because it makes some people very happy and all cannot be progressive at this stage of Evolution. He has not become a pastor yet he says he has something to do first which he has promised a man but he doesn’t say what it is and sometimes I wonder is it something wrong he is so secretive.

  Then there is my own career. I was offered a Big Chance to improve my position and now no more is said of that. The head of the department is the gentleman I told you of who helps his mother in the housework, and since I plighted my troth with my British friend and wrote to tell him he never speaks to me even as much as he speaks professionally to the other girls of the department. And the place where we work is meant to be Happy that is one of the first rules and everyone looks to this gentleman for an Example and he is very unhappy, unlike what the place stands for. Sometimes he even looks mean and that was the last thing he ever looked before. All my fiancé does is to make unkind jokes about his name. I am worried too about the interest he shows in my work. I mean I think it quite right a man should show interest in a girl’s work but he shows too much. I mean there are certain technical matters in every business I suppose which people do not like to have talked about outside the office and it is just those matters he is always asking about…

  “That’s how women always are,” said Mr. Slump. “It just breaks their hearts to let any man go.”

  There was often a missive waiting for Aimée on her work-table. When they had parted sourly the night before Dennis transcribed a poem before going to bed and delivered it at the mortuary on his way to work. These missives in his fine script had to fill the place of the missing smiles; the Loved Ones on their trolleys were now as woebegone and reproachful as the master.

  That morning Aimée arrived still sore from the bickering of the preceding evening and found a copy of verses waiting for her. She read them and once more her heart opened to her lover.

  Aimée, thy beauty is to me

  Like those Nicean barks of yore…

  Mr. Joyboy passed the cosmetic rooms on his way out, dressed for the street. His face was cast in pitiful gloom. Aimée smiled shyly, deprecating; he nodded heavily and passed by, and then on an impulse she wrote on the top of the lyric: Try and understand, Aimée, slippe
d into the embalming-room and reverently laid the sheet of paper on the heart of a corpse who was there waiting Mr. Joyboy’s attention.

  After an hour Mr. Joyboy returned. She heard him enter his room; she heard the taps turned on. It was not until lunch-time that they met.

  “That poem,” he said, “was a very beautiful thought.”

  “My fiancé wrote it.”

  “The Britisher you were with Tuesday?”

  “Yes, he’s a very prominent poet in England.”

  “Is that so? I don’t ever recall meeting a British poet before. Is that all he does?”

  “He’s studying to be a pastor.”

  “Is that so? See here, Aimée, if you have any more of his poems I should greatly appreciate to see them.”

  “Why, Mr. Joyboy, I didn’t know you were one for poems.”

  “Sorrow and disappointment kinda makes a man poetic I guess.”

  “I’ve lots of them. I keep them here.”

  “I would certainly like to study them. I was at the Knife and Fork Club Dinner last night and I became acquainted with a literary gentleman from Pasadena. I’d like to show them to him. Maybe he’d be able to help your friend some way.”

  “Why, Mr. Joyboy, that’s real chivalrous of you.” She paused. They had not spoken so many words to one another since the day of her engagement. The nobility of the man again overwhelmed her. “I hope,” she said shyly, “that Mrs. Joyboy is well?”

  “Mom isn’t so good today. She’s had a tragedy. You remember Sambo, her parrot?”

  “Of course.”

  “He passed on. He was kinda old, of course, something over a hundred, but the end was sudden. Mrs. Joyboy certainly feels it.”