Complete Works of Gertrude Stein Read online

  “I can quite believe that,” said Adele rather grimly, “isn’t there anything else that you would like to tell me just because I am I. If so don’t let me get in your way.”

  “I have never told you about our early relations,” Mabel continued. “You know Helen cared for me long before I knew anything about it. We used to be together a great deal at College and every now and then she would disappear for a long time into the country and it wasn’t until long afterwards that I found out the reason of it. You know Helen never gives way. You have no idea how wonderful she is. I have been so worried lately” she went on “lest she should think it necessary to leave home for my sake because it is so uncomfortable for me in the summer when I spend a month with her.”

  “Well then why don’t you make a noble sacrifice and stay away? Apparently Helen’s heroism is great enough to carry her through the ordeal.” Adele felt herself to be quite satisfactorily vulgar. Mabel accepted it literally. “Do you really advise it?” she asked. “Oh yes” said Adele “there is nothing so good for the soul as self-imposed periods of total abstinence.”

  “Well, I will think about it” Mabel answered “it is such a comfort that you understand everything and one can speak to you openly about it all.”

  “That’s where you are entirely mistaken” Adele said decisively, “I understand nothing. But after all” she added, “it isn’t any of my business anyway. Adios,” and she left.

  When she got home she saw a letter of Helen’s on the table. She felt no impulse to read it. She put it well away. “Not that it is any of my business whether she is bound and if so how,” she said to herself. “That is entirely for her to work out with her own conscience. For me it is only a question of what exists between us two. I owe Mabel nothing”; and she resolutely relegated it all quite to the background of her mind.

  Mabel however did not allow the subject to rest. At the very next opportunity she again asked Adele for advice. “Oh hang it all” Adele broke out “what do I know about it? I understand nothing of the nature of the bond between you.”

  “Don’t you really?” Mabel was seriously incredulous. “No I don’t.” Adele answered with decision, and the subject dropped.

  Adele communed with herself dismally. “I was strong-minded to put it out of my head once, but this time apparently it has come to stay. I can’t deny that I do badly want to know and I know well enough that if I continue to want to know the only decent thing for me to do is to ask the information of Helen. But I do so hate to do that. Why? well I suppose because it would hurt so to hear her admit that she was bound. It would be infinitely pleasanter to have Mabel explain it but it certainly would be very contemptible of me to get it from her. Helen is right, it’s not easy this business of really caring about people. I seem to be pretty deeply in it” and she smiled to herself “because now I don’t regret the bother and the pain. I wonder if I am really beginning to care” and she lost herself in a revery.

  Mabel’s room was now for Adele always filled with the atmosphere of the unasked question. She could dismiss it when alone but Mabel was clothed with it as with a garment although nothing concerning it passed between them.

  Adele now received a letter from Helen asking why she had not written, whether it was that faith had again failed her. Adele at first found it impossible to answer; finally she wrote a note at once ambiguous and bitter.

  At last the tension snapped. “Tell me then” Adele said to Mabel abruptly one evening. Mabel made no attempt to misunderstand but she did attempt to delay. “Oh well if you want to go through the farce of a refusal and an insistence, why help yourself,” Adele broke out harshly, “but supposing all that done, I say again tell me.” Mabel was dismayed by Adele’s hot directness and she vaguely fluttered about as if to escape. “Drop your intricate delicacy” Adele said sternly “you wanted to tell, now tell.” Mabel was cowed. She sat down and explained.

  The room grew large and portentous and to Mabel’s eyes Adele’s figure grew almost dreadful in its concentrated repulsion. There was a long silence that seemed to roar and menace and Mabel grew afraid. “Good-night” said Adele and left her.

  Adele had now at last learned to stop thinking. She went home and lay motionless a long time. At last she got up and sat at her desk. “I guess I must really care a good deal about Helen” she said at last, “but oh Lord,” she groaned and it was very bitter pain. Finally she roused herself. “Poor Mabel” she said “I could almost find it in my heart to be sorry for her. I must have looked very dreadful.”

  On the next few occasions nothing was said. Finally Mabel began again. “I really supposed Adele that you knew, or else I wouldn’t have said anything about it at all and after I once mentioned it, you know you made me tell.”

  “Oh yes I made you tell.” Adele could admit it quite cheerfully; Mabel seemed so trivial. “And then you know,” Mabel continued “I never would have mentioned it if I had not been so fond of you.” Adele laughed, “Yes it’s wonderful what an amount of devotion to me there is lying around the universe; but what will Helen think of the results of this devotion of yours?”

  “That is what worries me” Mabel admitted “I must tell her that I have told you and I am afraid she won’t like it.”

  “I rather suspect she won’t” and Adele laughed again “but there is nothing like seizing an opportunity before your courage has a chance to ooze. Helen will be down next week, you know, and that will give you your chance but I guess now there has been enough said,” and she definitely dismissed the matter.

  Adele found it impossible to write to Helen, she felt too sore and bitter but even in spite of her intense revulsion of feeling, she realised that she did still believe in that other Helen that she had attempted once to describe to her. In spite of all evidence she was convinced that something real existed there, something that she was bound to reverence.

  She spent a painful week struggling between revulsion and respect. Finally two days before Helen’s visit, she heard from her. “I am afraid I can bear it no longer” Helen wrote.

  “As long as I believed there was a chance of your learning to be something more than your petty complacent self, I could willingly endure everything, but now you remind me of an ignorant mob. You trample everything ruthlessly under your feet without considering whether or not you kill something precious and without being changed or influenced by what you so brutally destroy. I am like Diogenes in quest of an honest man; I want so badly to find some one I can respect and I find them all worthy of nothing but contempt. You have done your best. I am sorry.”

  For some time Adele was wholly possessed by hot anger, but that changed to intense sympathy for Helen’s pain. She realised the torment she might be enduring and so sat down at once to answer. “Perhaps though she really no longer cares” she thought to herself and hesitated. “Well whether she does or not makes no difference I will at least do my part.”

  “I can make no defence” she wrote “except only that in spite of all my variations there has grown within me steadily an increasing respect and devotion to you. I am not surprised at your bitterness but your conclusions from it are not justified. It is hardly to be expected that such a changed estimate of values, such a complete departure from established convictions as I have lately undergone could take place without many revulsions. That you have been very patient I fully realise but on the other hand you should recognise that I too have done my best and your word to the contrary notwithstanding that best has not been contemptible. So don’t talk any more nonsense about mobs. If your endurance is not equal to this task, why admit it and have done with it; if it is I will try to be adequate.”

  Adele knew that Helen would receive her letter but there would not be time to answer it as she was to arrive in Baltimore the following evening. They were all three to meet at the opera that night so for a whole day Adele would be uncertain of Helen’s feeling toward her. She spent all her strength throughout the day in endeavoring to prepare herself to find that Helen still held her in contempt. It had always been her habit to force herself to realise the worst that was likely to befall her and to submit herself before the event. She was never content with simply thinking that the worst might happen and having said it to still expect the best, but she had always accustomed herself to bring her mind again and again to this worst possibility until she had really mastered herself to bear it. She did this because she always doubted her own courage and distrusted her capacity to meet a difficulty if she had not inured herself to it beforehand.

  All through this day she struggled for her accustomed definite resignation and the tremendous difficulty of accomplishment made her keenly realise how much she valued Helen’s regard.

  She did not arrive at the opera until after it had commenced. She knew how little command she had of her expression when deeply moved and she preferred that the first greeting should take place in the dark. She came in quietly to her place. Helen leaned across Mabel and greeted her. There was nothing in her manner to indicate anything and Adele realised by her sensation of sick disappointment that she had really not prepared herself at all. Now that the necessity was more imperative she struggled again for resignation and by the time the act was over she had pretty well gained it. She had at least mastered herself enough to entertain Mabel with elaborate discussion of music and knife fights. She avoided noticing Helen but that was comparatively simple as Mabel sat between them.

  Carmen that night was to her at once the longest and the shortest performance that she had ever sat through. It was short because the end brought her nearer to hopeless certainty. It was long because she could only fill it with suspense.

  The opera was at last or already over, Adele was uncertain which phrase expressed her feeling most accurately, and then they went f
or a little while to Mabel’s room. Adele was by this time convinced that all her relation with Helen was at an end.

  “You look very tired to-night, what’s the matter?” Mabel asked her. “Oh!” she explained “there’s been a lot of packing and arranging and good-bys to say and farewell lunches and dinners to eat. How I hate baked shad, it’s a particular delicacy now and I have lunched and dined on it for three days running so I think it’s quite reasonable for me to be worn out. Good-by no don’t come downstairs with me. Hullo Helen has started down already to do the honors. Good-by I will see you again to-morrow.” Mabel went back to her room and Helen was already lost in the darkness of the lower hall. Adele slowly descended the stairs impressing herself with the necessity of self-restraint.

  “Can you forgive me?” and Helen held her close. “I haven’t anything to forgive if you still care,” Adele answered. They were silent together a long time. “We will certainly have earned our friendship when it is finally accomplished,” Adele said at last.

  “Well good-by,” Mabel began as the next day Adele was leaving for good. “Oh! before you go I want to tell you that it’s alright. Helen was angry but it’s alright now. You will be in New York for a few days before you sail” she continued. “I know you won’t be gone for a whole year, you will be certain to come back to us before long. I will think of your advice” she concluded. “You know it carries so much weight coming from you.”

  “Oh of course” answered Adele and thought to herself, “What sort of a fool does Mabel take me for anyway.”

  Adele was in Helen’s room the eve of her departure. They had been together a long time. Adele was sitting on the floor her head resting against Helen’s knee. She looked up at Helen and then broke the silence with some effort. “Before I go” she said “I want to tell you myself what I suppose you know already, that Mabel has told me of the relations existing between you.” Helen’s arms dropped away. “No I didn’t know.” She was very still. “Mabel didn’t tell you then?” Adele asked. “No” replied Helen. There was a sombre silence. “If you were not wholly selfish, you would have exercised self-restraint enough to spare me this,” Helen said. Adele hardly heard the words, but the power of the mood that possessed Helen awed her. She broke through it at last and began with slow resolution.

  “I do not admit” she said, “that I was wrong in wanting to know. I suppose one might in a spirit of quixotic generosity deny oneself such a right but as a reasonable being, I feel that I had a right to know. I realise perfectly that it was hopelessly wrong to learn it from Mabel instead of from you. I admit I was a coward, I was simply afraid to ask you.” Helen laughed harshly. “You need not have been,” she said “I would have told you nothing.”

  “I think you are wrong, I am quite sure that you would have told me and I wanted to spare myself that pain, perhaps spare you it too, I don’t know. I repeat I cannot believe that I was wrong in wanting to know.”

  They remained there together in an unyielding silence. When an irresistible force meets an immovable body what happens? Nothing. The shadow of a long struggle inevitable as their different natures lay drearily upon them. This incident however decided was only the beginning. All that had gone before was only a preliminary. They had just gotten into position.

  The silence was not oppressive but it lasted a long time. “I am very fond of you Adele” Helen said at last with a deep embrace.

  It was an hour later when Adele drew a deep breath of resolution, “What foolish people those poets are who say that parting is such sweet sorrow. Although it isn’t for ever I can’t find a bit of sweetness in it not one tiny little speck. Helen I don’t like at all this business of leaving you.”

  “And!” Helen exclaimed “when in you I seem to be taking farewell of parents, brothers sisters my own child, everything at once. No dear you are quite right there is nothing pleasant in it.”

  “Then why do they put it into the books?” Adele asked with dismal petulance. “Oh dear! but at least it’s some comfort to have found out that they are wrong. It’s one fact discovered anyway. Dear we are neither of us sorry that we know enough to find it out, are we?”

  “No,” Helen answered “we are neither of us sorry.”

  On the steamer Adele received a note of farewell from Mabel in which she again explained that nothing but her great regard for Adele would have made it possible for her to speak as she had done. Adele lost her temper. “I am willing to fight in any way that Mabel likes” she said to herself “underhand or overhand, in the dark, or in the light, in a room or out of doors but at this I protest. She unquestionably did that for a purpose even if the game was not successful. I don’t blame her for the game, a weak man must fight with such weapons as he can hold but I don’t owe it to her to endure the hypocrisy of a special affection. I can’t under the circumstances be very straight but I’ll not be unnecessarily crooked. I’ll make it clear to her but I’ll complicate it in the fashion that she loves.”

  “My dear Mabel” she wrote, “either you are duller than I would like to think you or you give me credit for more good-natured stupidity than I possess. If the first supposition is correct then you have nothing to say and I need say nothing; if the second then nothing that you would say would carry weight so it is equally unnecessary for you to say anything. If you don’t understand what I am talking about then I am talking about nothing and it makes no difference, if you do then there’s enough said.” Mabel did not answer for several months and then began again to write friendly letters.

  It seemed incredible to Adele this summer that it was only one year ago that she had seemed to herself so simple and all morality so easily reducible to formula. In these long lazy Italian days she did not discuss these matters with herself. She realised that at present morally and mentally she was too complex, and that complexity too much astir. It would take much time and strength to make it all settle again. It might, she thought, be eventually understood, it might even in a great deal of time again become simple but at present it gave little promise.

  She poured herself out fully and freely to Helen in their ardent correspondence. At first she had had some hesitation about this. She knew that Helen and Mabel were to be together the greater part of the summer and she thought it possible that both the quantity and the matter of the correspondence, if it should come to Mabel’s notice would give Helen a great deal of bother. She hesitated a long time whether to suggest this to Helen and to let her decide as to the expediency of being more guarded.

  There were many reasons for not mentioning the matter. She realised that not alone Helen but that she herself was still uncertain as to the fidelity of her own feeling. She could not as yet trust herself and hesitated to leave herself alone with a possible relapse.

  “After all,” she said to herself, “it is Helen’s affair and not mine. I have undertaken to follow her lead even into very devious and underground ways but I don’t know that it is necessary for me to warn her. She knows Mabel as well as I do. Perhaps she really won’t be sorry if the thing is brought to a head.”

  She remembered the reluctance that Helen always showed to taking precautions or to making any explicit statement of conditions. She seemed to satisfy her conscience and keep herself from all sense of wrong-doing by never allowing herself to expect a difficulty. When it actually arrived the active necessity of using whatever deception was necessary to cover it, drowned her conscience in the violence of action. Adele did not as yet realise this quality definitely but she was vaguely aware that Helen would shut her mind to any explicit statement of probabilities, that she would take no precautions and would thus avoid all sense of guilt. In this fashion she could safeguard herself from her own conscience.

  Adele recognised all this dimly. She did not formulate it but it aided to keep her from making any statement to Helen.

  She herself could not so avoid her conscience, she simply had to admit a change in moral basis. She knew what she was doing, she realised what was likely to happen and the way in which the new developments would have to be met.

  She acknowledged to herself that her own defence lay simply in the fact that she thought the game was worth the candle. “After all” she concluded, “there is still the most important reason for saying nothing. The stopping of the correspondence would make me very sad and lonely. In other words I simply don’t want to stop it and so I guess I won’t.”