Complete Works of Gertrude Stein Read online

  For several months the correspondence continued with vigor and ardour on both sides. Then there came a three weeks’ interval and no word from Helen then a simple friendly letter and then another long silence.

  Adele lying on the green earth on a sunny English hillside communed with herself on these matters day after day. She had no real misgiving but she was deeply unhappy. Her unhappiness was the unhappiness of loneliness not of doubt. She saved herself from intense misery only by realising that the sky was still so blue and the country-side so green and beautiful. The pain of passionate longing was very hard to bear. Again and again she would bury her face in the cool grass to recover the sense of life in the midst of her sick despondency.

  “There are many possibilities but to me only one probability,” she said to herself. “I am not a trustful person in spite of an optimistic temperament but I am absolutely certain in the face of all the facts that Helen is unchanged. Unquestionably there has been some complication. Mabel has gotten hold of some letters and there has been trouble. I can’t blame Mabel much. The point of honor would be a difficult one to decide between the three of us.”

  As time passed she did not doubt Helen but she began to be much troubled about her responsibility in the matter. She felt uncertain as to the attitude she should take.

  “As for Mabel” she said to herself “I admit quite completely that I simply don’t care. I owe her nothing. She wanted me when it was pleasant to have me and so we are quits. She entered the fight and must be ready to bear the results. We were never bound to each other, we never trusted each other and so there has been no breach of faith. She would show me no mercy and I need grant her none, particularly as she would wholly misunderstand it. It is very strange how very different one’s morality and one’s temper are when one wants something really badly. Here I, who have always been hopelessly soft-hearted and good-natured and who have always really preferred letting the other man win, find myself quite cold-blooded and relentless. It’s a lovely morality that in which we believe even in serious matters when we are not deeply stirred, it’s so delightfully noble and gentle.” She sighed and then laughed. “Well, I hope some day to find a morality that can stand the wear and tear of real desire to take the place of the nice one that I have lost, but morality or no morality the fact remains that I have no compunctions on the score of Mabel.

  “About Helen that’s a very different matter. I unquestionably do owe her a great deal but just how to pay it is the difficult point to discover. I can’t forget that to me she can never be the first consideration as she is to Mabel for I have other claims that I would always recognise as more important. I have neither the inclination or the power to take Mabel’s place and I feel therefore that I have no right to step in between them. On the other hand morally and mentally she is in urgent need of a strong comrade and such in spite of all evidence I believe myself to be. Some day if we continue she will in spite of herself be compelled to choose between us and what have I to offer? Nothing but an elevating influence.

  “Bah! what is the use of an elevating influence if one hasn’t bread and butter. Her possible want of butter if not of bread, considering her dubious relations with her family must be kept in mind. Mabel could and would always supply them and I neither can nor will. Alas for an unbuttered influence say I. What a grovelling human I am anyway. But I do have occasional sparkling glimpses of faith and those when they come I truly believe to be worth much bread and butter. Perhaps Helen also finds them more delectable. Well I will state the case to her and abide by her decision.”

  She timed her letter to arrive when Helen would be once more at home alone. “I can say to you now” she wrote “what I found impossible in the early summer. I am now convinced and I think you are too that my feeling for you is genuine and loyal and whatever may be our future difficulties we are now at least on a basis of understanding and trust. I know therefore that you will not misunderstand when I beg you to consider carefully whether on the whole you had not better give me up. I can really amount to so little for you and yet will inevitably cause you so much trouble. That I dread your giving me up I do not deny but I dread more being the cause of serious annoyance to you. Please believe that this statement is sincere and is to be taken quite literally.”

  “Hush little one” Helen answered “oh you stupid child, don’t you realise that you are the only thing in the world that makes anything seem real or worth while to me. I have had a dreadful time this summer. Mabel read a letter of mine to you and it upset her completely. She said that she found it but I can hardly believe that. She asked me if you cared for me and I told her that I didn’t know and I really don’t dearest. She did not ask me if I cared for you. The thing upset her completely and she was jealous of my every thought and I could not find a moment even to feel alone with you. But don’t please don’t say any more about giving you up. You are not any trouble to me if you will only not leave me. It’s alright now with Mabel, she says that she will never be jealous again.”

  “Oh Lord!” groaned Adele “well if she isn’t she would be a hopeless fool. Anyhow I said I would abide by Helen’s decision and I certainly will but how so proud a woman can permit such control is more than I can understand.”

  BOOK 3. HELEN

  I

  THERE IS NO PASSION more dominant and instinctive in the human spirit than the need of the country to which one belongs. One often speaks of homesickness as if in its intense form it were the peculiar property of Swiss mountaineers, Scandinavians, Frenchmen and those other nations that too have a poetic background, but poetry is no element in the case. It is simply a vital need for the particular air that is native, whether it is the used up atmosphere of London, the clean-cut cold of America or the rarefied air of Swiss mountains. The time comes when nothing in the world is so important as a breath of one’s own particular climate. If it were one’s last penny it would be used for that return passage.

  An American in the winter fogs of London can realise this passionate need, this desperate longing in all its completeness. The dead weight of that fog and smoke laden air, the sky that never suggests for a moment the clean blue distance that has been the accustomed daily comrade, the dreary sun, moon and stars that look like painted imitations on the ceiling of a smoke-filled room, the soggy, damp, miserable streets, and the women with bedraggled, frayed-out skirts, their faces swollen and pimply with sordid dirt ground into them until it has become a natural part of their ugly surface all become day after day a more dreary weight of hopeless oppression.

  A hopeful spirit resists. It feels that it must be better soon, it cannot last so forever; this afternoon, to-morrow this dead weight must lift, one must soon again realise a breath of clean air, but day after day the whole weight of fog, smoke and low brutal humanity rests a weary load on the head and back and one loses the power of straightening the body to actively bear the burden, it becomes simply a despairing endurance.

  Just escaped from this oppresion, Adele stood in the saloon of an ocean steamer looking at the white snow line of New York harbor. A little girl one of a family who had also fled from England after a six months trial, stood next to her. They stayed side by side their faces close to the glass. A government ship passed flying the flag. The little girl looked deeply at it and then with slow intensity said quite to herself, “There is the American flag, it looks good.” Adele echoed it, there was all America and it looked good; the clean sky and the white snow and the straight plain ungainly buildings all in a cold and brilliant air without spot or stain.

  Adele’s return had been unexpected and she landed quite alone. “No it wasn’t to see you much as I wanted you,” she explained to Helen long afterwards, “it was just plain America. I landed quite alone as I had not had time to let any of my friends know of my arrival but I really wasn’t in a hurry to go to them much as I had longed for them all. I simply rejoiced in the New York streets, in the long spindling legs of the elevated, in the straight high undecorated houses, in the empty upper air and in the white surface of the snow. It was such a joy to realise that the whole thing was without mystery and without complexity, that it was clean and straight and meagre and hard and white and high. Much as I wanted you I was not eager for after all you meant to me a turgid and complex world, difficult yet necessary to understand and for the moment I wanted to escape all that, I longed only for obvious, superficial, clean simplicity.”

  Obeying this need Adele after a week of New York went to Boston. She steeped herself in the very essence of clear eyed Americanism. For days she wandered about the Boston streets rejoicing in the passionless intelligence of the faces. She revelled in the American street-car crowd with its ready intercourse, free comments and airy persiflage all without double meanings which created an atmosphere that never suggested for a moment the need to be on guard.

  It was a cleanliness that began far inside of these people and was kept persistently washed by a constant current of clean cold water. Perhaps the weight of stains necessary to the deepest understanding might be washed away, it might well be that it was not earthy enough to be completely satisfying, but it was a delicious draught to a throat choked with soot and fog.

  For a month Adele bathed herself in this cleanliness and then she returned to New York eager again for a world of greater complexity.

  For some time after her return a certain estrangement existed between Helen and herself. Helen had been much hurt at her long voluntary absence and Adele as yet did not sufficiently understand her own motives to be able to explain. It had seemed to her only that she rather dreaded losing herself again with Helen.

  This feeling between them gradually disappeared. In their long sessions in Helen’s room, Adele now too cultivated the habit of silent intimacy. As time went on her fear of Helen and of herself gradually died away and she yielded herself to the complete joy of simply being together.

  One day they agreed between them that they were very near the state of perfect happiness. “Yes I guess it’s alright” Adele said with a fond laugh “and when it’s alright it certainly is very good. Am I not a promising pupil?” she asked. “Not nearly so good a pupil as so excellent a teacher as I am deserves” Helen replied. “Oh! Oh!” cried Adele, “I never realised it before but compared with you I am a model of humility. There is nothing like meeting with real arrogance. It makes one recognise a hitherto hidden virtue,” and then they once more lost themselves in happiness.

  It was a very real oblivion. Adele was aroused from it by a kiss that seemed to scale the very walls of chastity. She flung away on the instant filled with battle and revulsion. Utterly regardless of Helen she lay her face buried in her hands. “I never dreamed that after all that has come I was still such a virgin soul” she said to herself, “and that like Parsifal a kiss could make me frantic with realisation” and then she lost herself in the full tide of her fierce disgust.

  She lay long in this new oblivion. At last she turned. Helen lay very still but on her face were bitter tears. Adele with her usual reaction of repentance tried to comfort. “Forgive me!” she said “I don’t know what possessed me. No you didn’t do anything it was all my fault.”

  “And we were so happy” Helen said. After a long silence she asked “Was it that you felt your old distrust of me again?”

  “Yes,” replied Adele briefly. “I am afraid I can’t forgive this,” Helen said. “I didn’t suppose that you could,” Adele replied.

  They continued to meet but each one was filled with her own struggle. Adele finally reopened the subject. “You see” she explained “my whole trouble lies in the fact that I don’t know on what ground I am objecting, whether it is morality or a meaningless instinct. You know I have always had a conviction that no amount of reasoning will help in deciding what is right and possible for one to do. If you don’t begin with some theory of obligation, anything is possible and no rule of right and wrong holds. One must either accept some theory or else believe one’s instinct or follow the world’s opinion.

  “Now I have no theory and much as I would like to, I can’t really regard the world’s opinion. As for my instincts they have always been opposed to the indulgence of any feeling of passion. I suppose that is due to the Calvinistic influence that dominates American training and has interfered with my natural temperament. Somehow you have made me realise that my attitude in the matter was degrading and material, instead of moral and spiritual but in spite of you my puritan instincts again and again say no and I get into a horrible mess. I am beginning to distrust my instincts and I am about convinced that my objection was not a deeply moral one. I suppose after all it was a good deal cowardice. Anyhow” she concluded, “I guess I haven’t any moral objection any more and now if I have lost my instincts it will be alright and we can begin a new deal.”

  “I am afraid I can’t help you much” Helen answered “I can only hold by the fact that whatever you do and however much you hurt me I seem to have faith in you, in spite of yourself.” Adele groaned. “How hopelessly inadequate I am,” she said.

  This completeness of revulsion never occurred again, but a new opposition gradually arose between them. Adele realised that Helen demanded of her a response and always before that response was ready. Their pulses were differently timed. She could not go so fast and Helen’s exhausted nerves could no longer wait. Adele found herself constantly forced on by Helen’s pain. She went farther than she could in honesty because she was unable to refuse anything to one who had given all. It was a false position. All reactions had now to be concealed as it was evident that Helen could no longer support that struggle. Their old openness was no longer possible and Adele ceased to express herself freely.

  She realised that her attitude was misunderstood and that Helen interpreted her slowness as essential deficiency. This was the inevitable result of a situation in which she was forced constantly ahead of herself. She was sore and uneasy and the greater her affection for Helen became the more irritable became her discontent.

  One evening they had agreed to meet at a restaurant and dine before going to Helen’s room. Adele arriving a half hour late found Helen in a state of great excitement. “Why what’s the matter?” Adele asked. “Matter” Helen repeated “you kept me waiting for you and a man came in and spoke to me and it’s the first time that I have ever been so insulted.” Adele gazed at her in astonishment. “Great guns!” she exclaimed “what do you expect if you go out alone at night. You must be willing to accept the consequences. The men are quite within their rights.”

  “Their rights! They have no right to insult me.” Adele shook her head in slow wonderment. “Will we ever understand each other’s point of view,” she said. “A thing that seems to unworldly, unheroic me so simple and inevitable and which I face quietly a score of times seems to utterly unnerve you while on the other hand, — but then we won’t go into that, have something to eat and you will feel more cheerful.”

  “If you had been much later,” Helen said as they were walking home, “I would have left and never have had anything farther to do with you until you apologised.”

  “Bah!” exclaimed Adele. “I haven’t any objection to apologising, the only thing I object to is being in the wrong. You are quite like a storybook” she continued, “you still believe in the divine right of heroics and of ladies. You think there is some higher power that makes the lower world tremble, when you say, ‘Man how dare you!’ That’s all very well when the other man wants to be scared but when he doesn’t it’s the strongest man that wins.”

  They had been together for some time in the room, when Helen broke the silence. “I wonder,” she said, “why I am doomed always to care for people who are so hopelessly inadequate.” Adele looked at her a few moments and then wandered about the room. She returned to her seat, her face very still and set. “Oh! I didn’t mean anything” said Helen, “I was only thinking about it all.” Adele made no reply. “I think you might be patient with me when I am nervous and tired” Helen continued petulantly “and not be angry at everything I say.”

  “I could be patient enough if I didn’t think that you really meant what you have said,” Adele answered. “I don’t care what you say, the trouble is that you do believe it.”

  “But you have said it yourself again and again” Helen complained. “That is perfectly true” returned Adele “but it is right for me to say it and to believe it too, but not for you. If you believe it, it puts a different face on the whole matter. It makes the situation intolerable.” They were silent, Helen nervous and uneasy, and Adele rigid and quiet. “Oh why can’t you forget it?” Helen cried at last. Adele roused herself. “It’s alright” she said “don’t bother. You are all tired out, come lie down and go to sleep.” She remained with her a little while and then went into another room to read. She was roused from an unpleasant revery by Helen’s sudden entrance. “I had such a horrible dream” she said “I thought that you were angry and had left me never to come back. Don’t go away, please stay with me.”

  “You haven’t forgiven me yet?” Helen asked the next morning as Adele was about to leave her. “It isn’t a question of forgiveness, it’s a question of your feeling,” Adele replied steadily. “You have given no indication as yet that you did not believe what you said last night.”

  “I don’t know what I said,” Helen evaded “I am worried and pestered and bothered and you just make everything harder for me and then accuse me of saying things that I shouldn’t. Well perhaps I shouldn’t have said it.”

  “But nevertheless you believe it,” Adele returned stubbornly. “Oh! don’t know what I believe. I am so torn and bothered, can’t you leave me alone?”