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                               The Fusing


                             Helen R. Hull

            The Touchstone, vol. 5, July 1919, pp. 316-327.




“Game!” Cynthia’s plunging stroke had carried her to the edge of the
court. She dropped to the grass. “My set, too!” she called.

The man rounded the net posts and looked down at her, flicking his
racket against his neat gray trousers.

“You must have known how to play and let me think I was teaching you.”

“No. But you see, I had you as a teacher.” Cynthia smiled at the quick
preening of his ruffled vanity.

“I’ll beat you yet!”

The threat was open, in the quick flicker of his lips, in the nervous
hand he thrust through his heavy, grayish hair. Cynthia stared at him;
the game had left no trace of dishevelment or warmth on his lean face
and body.

“Help me up.” She held out her hand. “They want the court.”

He drew her to her feet, releasing her fingers with a quick pressure.

“We’re through,” she called, to two boys in flannels. “Pretty work,
isn’t it!” She watched the swift volleying for a moment before she
turned to cross the campus.

The late afternoon sun stretched blue shadows of the Gothic buildings
across the grass; except for the white, sunken courts and the darting
figures on them, a massive quiet lay in the gray walls and their
shadows. Cynthia flung up her head into the breeze from the lake.

“It’s almost over, isn’t it? The summer.” Mr. Preston jerked his words
at her with a motion of his head. “You’ll be going back to work.”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do. It seems as though this must last
forever.” She smiled under his doubtful glance. He wanted to take that
personally! “Don’t bother to come to the house with me.”

“Where are you going to have dinner?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come back to the Commons.”

That persuasive male note! He thought she was being coy. His face had a
little grimace of cajolery.

“We haven’t many more nights, Miss Bates. The lake will be very nice
to-night—and I’d like to see you.”

“I have work to do.”

“What? Another of your little stories?” Strife between them again, the
flare in his eyes heightening the glow in Cynthia’s body. He touched her
arm. “Come back. I’ll wait for you there.”

“Don’t wait.” She was off, swiftly.

As she ran up the stairs of the apartment where she roomed, the frown
between her fine brows disappeared, and she laughed. She stripped off
her clothes, and flinging on a kimona, ran down the hall to the
bathroom. Under the shower she stretched herself radiantly to the
stinging water. How good her body felt, firm, slender!

Back in her room she dressed slowly. Her cool skin, the enclosing touch
of fresh garments, the strong, slow rhythm of her heart, the little
breeze seeking her through the curtains—those things ensphered her; and
all about her, thoughts of the evening, of the man, of her work, tugged
at their leashes.

At a knock on her door she emerged reluctantly from her mood.

“Oh, Mona! Hello.”

Mona closed the door and came close to Cynthia, just touching her bare
shoulder with soft fingers.

“Cyn—I’m grateful to you.” Her white eyelids quivered.

“You may well be! But your young man isn’t.” She gave Mona a push toward
the couch. “Sit down while I dress.” She drew her dress over her head,
adding as she shook its white folds into place, “if he hadn’t been a
gentleman, he would have dragged me out by the scruff of my neck.”

“Oh, he’s too good.”

Cynthia found her mood of excitement flowing back, with Mona part of it.

“Why do you do it?” she demanded.

“What?”

“Play with him. Let him think you’ll marry him.” Cynthia’s cheeks warmed
to her own ruthlessness. “If you hadn’t looked so terrified last night,
I never should have stayed.”

“I had to have a buffer, Cyn.”

“Throw him over!”

Mona shook her head.

“I’ll marry him next month.”

“When you won’t even let him kiss you after he comes a hundred miles——”

“I’m not married—yet.”

Cynthia bent over her, pursuingly.

“Why do you go on?”

“Oh, you with your why’s! Don’t you see, I’m not clever like you. I’m
just—pretty. So I get married as well as I can.”

“Why to that man? What about Rush?” In Mona’s eyes, before she lowered
her lids, Cynthia saw the leap of something like the strife in her own
blood.

“I hate Rush.” Mona’s voice was sleepy. “Hate him. Andrew—will make a
splendid husband, Cyn dear. I can manage him.”

“He’s too decent to be played with.”

“Well, I’m going to marry him.” Mona leaned forward. “Known him since
childhood. Always meant to end up with him. Now you’ve scolded enough.”
She made a plunge at Cynthia and clung to her, so that Cynthia felt the
tremble of her body. “What are you doing yourself with that gray
gentleman?” She cupped Cynthia’s cheek in a warm palm, with a “better
hurry. You’ll be too late to meet him.”

“Then I shouldn’t have to decide what I want to do.” Cynthia released
herself and turned to the small mirror.

“Yes, white is good on you.” Mona backed toward the door. “Subtly
alluring. What else could you want, Cyn?”

“I want to stay here and work. Can you imagine that?”

“No, you don’t! You want what we all want—a man fooling along——” Mona
blew her a kiss as she closed the door.

Cynthia stood by her table, laying her hand on the scattered sheets of
paper. They troubled her; they almost reached her, pulling—then they
were dead and white, and she ran out of the room.

Mona’s words played across the pattern of her thoughts as she walked the
few blocks to the Commons. Were they true? She hadn’t meant to go back.
Scorn rippled through her, but she went on into the dusky, vaulted hall,
and became one of the line winding, trayladen, under the great Gothic
arches, past the refectory tables, past the small windows where food was
thrust at you. She liked dining there, with the sombre hall subduing the
little noises of rattling china, the small odors of food, the movement
of men and women.

She carried her tray to the end of the hall, where she could watch the
other tables as she ate. There was no one near her whom she knew,
although the faces were half familiar, like the unnoticed design of old
wallpaper. Then she saw Mr. Preston, sidling toward the door, laughing
at a jest of the stocky man beside him. She bent over her plate,
smiling. Was he afraid he might compromise himself by eating with her,
or only afraid he might have to pay for her dinner? She wasn’t hungry,
but for a long time she sat there, dallying.

What was he really like, that man? She had met him the first week at the
University, had accepted him as a scholar, a man to admire. All the
glamour of the University had clothed him. She remembered the strange
ecstasy that had held her that first night; she had sat alone at dinner,
under these arches, and from the lift of the dark timbers, the movement
of strange bodies beneath them had entered into her the assurance of the
miracle at last. She had struggled so long, so incredibly to make the
coming possible. Surely here she could find the miracle of fulfilment.
She had flung herself out of her old life into this, expecting it to
pick her up with wise hands, to give her, somehow, satisfying direction
for the troubled strivings within her. Then, bit by bit, she had lost
the ecstasy. The University, which had been a vague and beautiful idea,
splintered into a thousand particles—classes in hot and dusty rooms,
people picking busily at facts—all remote, leaving her quite unchanged.
There remained this man, always at her shoulder, now. She still hoped
she might find reason for his presence there, some mark which
distinguished him from other men.

Finally she loitered to the door, out into the bright twilight. At the
end of the street a strip of lake clung to the sky.

Abruptly he was beside her, his heavy eyebrows lifted drolly.

“Tennis must have made you hungry.”

“I supposed you would have gone.”

“Oh, you did!” He laughed and they walked on together. “I thought you
couldn’t really stay in such a night, working on your little——”

“If you call them little stories again, I’ll go and work!”

“Just a joke. I’m sure they’re very nice.”

“You aren’t sure of anything about them.” Cynthia met his smile with
sharp hostility.

“I know you take them seriously.”

“No one else does—yet.” Cynthia’s eyes held the widening blue of the
lake. “Some day you’ll have to take them as I do.” The words rose within
her, like slow bubble breaking at the surface of a deep pool, from some
living thing, hidden in the depths.

They went in silence through the clattering gloom under the elevated
tracks. As they came out, Cynthia turned wistfully. Perhaps he might
listen, if she should try to tell him. He tucked a hand under her elbow
and swung her off the road into a path across the green of the park.

“Too many folks down that way.” His slow smile tingled through Cynthia,
and swiftly as a sea-thing contracts, her mood closed into a derisive
shell.

“I feel like celebrating.” He moved closer to her. “Cleared a pile
to-day off a real estate deal. Didn’t know I was a good hand at
business, did you!”

There was significance in his words; Cynthia caught that in the flare of
his nostrils, in the busy glancing of his eyes.

“I don’t know anything about you!” she cried. “Why are you here,
studying? You don’t care about it——”

“Well——” He stared at her cautiously. “I do care, in a way.” His face
twisted into rapaciousness. “I mean to be somebody! I might have done it
in business. There’s a sort of prestige, though—I want that.” He
laughed, uneasily. “I wouldn’t tell that to many.”

Cynthia pressed her lips against a laugh. That was his secret desire!
But fear streaked her derision, as though in his confession lay a claim
upon her.

They stood beside the shore drive, while a string of automobiles passed.
Once across they were at the lake, their feet slipping in the sand. The
breeze had gone and with it the bright color, but the smooth, darkening
water gave off an odor, cool, wet. The silence in which they walked had
a disturbing pulse. They came to the long wooden pier.

“Let’s go out there. It’s cooler——” His fingers shut about her arm.

Beneath them came the muffled tones of water against the piles. Cynthia
felt that they followed the twilight as it slipped from the land out
over the surface of the water. When they reached the end of the pier,
she looked back. Only a curve of raying lights marked the dark shore,
although a glow still moved on the water. That, too, would go presently.

She sat down, leaning against a huge pile. Behind her Mr. Preston stood,
tapping his fingers on the log. The sound and the slap of water below
her made a tiny syncopated rhythm of suspense. The tapping ceased; the
fingers touched her throat. Cynthia lifted her face, and suddenly the
man slipped down beside her, his arm about her shoulders, his lips eager
on her mouth. Through her something great, soft, dark, like the night,
rose to her lips, held her there a long, unresisting moment. She put up
her hand and pushed away the strange face. But the man kissed her
fingers and brushed them away. Cynthia, eyes closed, felt his lips move
from her throat, up, up to her lips, and again that great, dark presence
crowded out herself. When he let her go, struggling for breath, she
drooped back against the pile and opened her eyes, to find that the
night had dropped about them, blurring his face.

This was what she had wished! As she swung back into herself, scornfully
she felt the old antagonism leap within her.

“Why do you kiss me?”

“Why?” he leaned toward her, uneasily. But she pulled herself to her
feet.

“You don’t love me—you just want——”

“I want you to come back here.” His hand reached along the pier to her
foot.

“Come back to be kissed?” That hard bright voice came from the scornful
self within her in a struggle against the sweet tide that rushed up.

With a twist of his body the man was near her, on his feet.

“Want me to come after you, eh?”

Anger flared at his words. But he laid his hands on her shoulders, and
the next instant she had become again part of the summer night with its
rhythmic sound of water.

Finally she pushed herself away from him, feeling the great beating of
his heart under her fingers.

“Don’t go—not yet!” He caught at her arm. “Stay—longer——”

His whisper, vibrating with secrecy, tore through Cynthia like the
rending of fabric. Far to the south of them a broad tongue of flame from
a furnace leapt into the dark sky, hung a moment, and fell. The whisper,
close to the girl’s ear—“Come”—drove her suddenly back along the pier.

Not until they reached the glow under the lamp on the shore did Cynthia
look at the man. He blinked at her with a smile under which she winced.
They went slowly along a gravel path.

“You know, we get on famously, I think.” He hugged her arm. “Lots better
than I thought we would——”

“Get on!” His complacency shivered down through Cynthia’s murkiness.

“Well, we seem to hit it off, eh? And I’ve been thinking——” He spoke
jerkily, like one who tries a road into a swamp, balancing backward as
he advances—“I’m most through the grind here. A man gets tired of
furnished rooms, being alone—you know. I pick up enough money on the
side. Next year I can land a good job, with my degree. You—you’re all
right. A little offish, but I like it. Why not try it out?”

“Marry you?” Cynthia thrust her question straight into his maze.

“Why, yes. Two healthy, normal people——”

“But I don’t love you——”

They had come to a bridge across the lagoon. Cynthia rested her arms on
the rail and watched the water quiver through the band of light spilled
from a lamp on the bank. The shadow of the bank, the light, held a
poignant warning which scattered at the touch of the man’s fingers on
her arm, hot, insinuating, through the thin silk of her sleeve.

“Love?” He brought his fist down on the rail. “I swore I’d never let a
woman make a fool of me again. One did, once.” His voice thickened. “But
you’re straight enough.” His fingers moved in the hollow of her elbow.
“We could go away for September, honeymooning.”

His touch and his words whirled together through her; his touch drawing
her to the deep, soft gulf where she lost herself; his words stirring a
bright hard core to ridicule, disdain.

His arm slipped around her waist; his words ceased. But at footsteps
behind them on the bridge he released her so quickly that her passivity
dropped away in a laugh. Oh, but he was wary!

She walked on. He followed, peering at her face.

“Think it over. I don’t mind saying I hadn’t expected to take to you——”

The angle of his head had caution tinged with curiosity. Until this
moment Cynthia had never thought of him as permanent in her life. Into
her mind drifted impersonal phrases: a good offer, marry and settle
down. She didn’t know where they came from; bits of cobweb that clung to
her. Was this what she wanted? He stripped himself of all glamour, and
still——She laughed.

“Why, I don’t even know your first name!”

“You don’t?” He objected, sulkily, to her frivolousness. “Charles.
Charles F. Preston.”

They came in silence to the apartment entrance. In the hall, Cynthia
faced him. He pulled off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair.
Earlier she had thought that gesture intellectual!

“Well!” He was irritable because he was uncertain of her.

“Well?” she mocked him.

“Is there any other man?”

“Not now.”

He seized her hand, but she wrenched away.

“Oh——” He humored her whim. “I’ll come back tomorrow, then. About four?
I can’t come earlier.”

Cynthia, climbing the stairs, heard the door close. She stopped.

The door of the apartment was ajar. She pushed it open. Just inside the
sitting room stood Mona and Rush. Mona swayed away from him, drooping
against his arm, her eyes closed, her face a luminous mask.

Cynthia shut the door of her own room softly and in the darkness pressed
her fingers on her eyes, against the image of Mona’s face. It wasn’t
Mona’s face; it was the face of a possessing emotion. At the thought,
quick red shame dropped over her.

She sat down by her desk. Perhaps this was love. People—poets—wound it
with beauty so that you expected more. When you really came to it, you
found it just a whirl of your senses. Suppose she put this away from her
and never found anything better? Charles Preston, with his thin smile.
Was he the answer to her driving search?

What was he, after all? The secret strife between them had made the days
interesting. A heady sauce poured over meagre fare? She laid her fingers
on her lips and, with a long tremble, dropped her head into the curve of
her arm.

His face—so close she could discern it even in the dusk, staring,
deliberate—she had closed her eyes to escape it. But she had wanted him
to kiss her! Mona had said: “Well, you have to let them kiss you to see
which of them you could stand marrying!”

Stand marrying! Funny, to think of it that way. Cynthia straightened her
body impatiently. She must think it out, not moon about it.

Her family would be relieved to have her settle down. Settle down! Her
fingers shut into her palms. That terrible eagerness which had
catapulted her through objections and difficulties had left her
sprawling here! She snapped on her table light and stared into the glare
until black spots moved across her eyes. Perhaps Mona had been right,
and she only pretended to herself. She looked down at the sheet of paper
under her hands. Across them moved black specks, climbing to the edge of
her circle of vision. She had worked! What did it amount to? The black
specks dimmed and her eyes focused on the words she had left there.

Her little stories! Suppose she never wrote another word. Did it matter?
Hundreds like her, everywhere, scribbling. Why should she take herself
so seriously? Kissing—she sighed—was easier than writing. It gave you
what you wanted sooner, more surely. Why not take that—and let all this
striving go?

The thought was a gust bursting open the doors of her inner life, so
that all the lights there twisted, swirled, like candle flames in wind.
Could she live with those lights dead? Strange lights—a burrowing
curiosity, rebellious, desire for the pain of giving form to things
felt, seen, thought; and one leaping, erratic flame, tormenting, an urge
toward power. What had these fires to do with the other self, the strong
vibrant body which had gone down to the lake in quest of love?

Was it love, that dark possession? A thing which made that cleavage of
desires? If there were only someone, wise, serene, who could draw this
tangle through her hands and straighten it!

Cynthia pulled herself up sharply. She needn’t be a silly child, at all
events.

It was late. How sleep, with foment in her blood? Carelessly she
gathered the scattered sheets and leaned forward, chin propped in one
hand, to read what she had written. As she read, her muscles tautened;
from the pages rose a sort of ghost of the living presence she had tried
to set down there, a pale, dim image. On one page the ghost deepened to
reality. The phrases there were almost strange to her. Had she thought
them, herself? When she laid aside the last sheet, unfinished, a fierce
trembling seized her, and she reached for fresh paper. She knew now what
she wished to make there. It marched through her, like northern lights
in a clear cold night, climbing, mounting steadily, growing in
brilliance. The difficult slow period of growth was past. The story had
matured in triumph.

She worked steadily, not rapidly, stopping at times to ease the cramped
fingers of her hand. A white austerity hardened the lines of her brow
and mouth.

She reached the end, folded the sheets. It was done, it was good; it had
drained her so that she crept across to the couch and slept almost as
she stretched her stiff body there.

She woke at the sound of a door slamming. For an instant she lay inert,
suspended above actual consciousness. She saw the golden loop of wire in
the globe of the lamp; it had burned all night. As she snapped it off,
she laid her hand on the sheets of paper. Was it, after all, good? She
didn’t dare look at it yet. She wasn’t even tired! A bath, fresh
clothes, breakfast. She was starved. She pulled aside her curtains. The
stretch of midway rippled under the sun in waves of golden green. The
day itself was like that, stretched ahead in waves of excitement.

Later, on the stairs she met Mona, dragging heavy feet, gazing at her
out of sombre eyes.

“Had breakfast? Come with me.” She drew Mona’s hand into the crook of
her arm, and led her back to the glow of the street.

The tea room was an empty checkerboard, its tables white in the
sunlight. A tall boy, his hair black and stiff above his white waiter’s
coat, came toward them. Cynthia, detached, watched Mona’s little smile,
saw her glance and rich, low voice make an intimate thing out of muffins
and coffee.

“You shoot it out like a—squid, don’t you?” she said, as Mona, with the
disappearance of the boy, settled back again into sombreness. “Only it’s
an aura—an aura of your femininess, whenever a man’s in sight.”

“He’s a nice boy. Freshman. He’ll bring us the best muffins he’s got.”

“You don’t do it for muffins!”

“It’s our game,” interrupted Mona, sharply.

Cynthia smiled. Mona didn’t want names given the game. The waiter came
in with the breakfast tray.

“Is there anything else?” He glanced at Mona, deference rushing crimson
into his thin face. “I have a class now——”

“Nothing, thank you.”

Cynthia breathed the swirling fragrance of the coffee.

“You aren’t eating a thing, Mona,” she said, presently.

“I said goodbye to Rush last night.” Mona stopped pushing the yellow
crumbs around her plate and looked up, her eyes black in her small,
white face.

“Oh—was that goodbye!”

“And I wrote Andrew that if he wanted to marry me, he had to do it now.
I’m going home to-day.”

Cynthia set down her cup.

“I’ve gone too far with Rush.” Around Mona’s lips came a white circle.
“I’ve got to run.”

“Mona!” Cynthia flung her arm across the table, touching Mona’s fingers.
“Why run, if you love him?”

“Love!” Mona’s laugh clinked. “I can’t marry him. He’s a devil. A month
from now I’ll hate him.”

“But Andrew—don’t go back to him——”

“I’ve got to be rid of this madness. I’m marrying—safety.”

Cynthia drew back in her chair.

“Well—shall I marry Preston?”

The tragedy in Mona’s face shivered into a shrewd glance.

“Caught him?”

“He asked me, last night.” An unexpected tide of color washed Cynthia’s
face.

“Did you like it?”

Cynthia’s color deepened indignantly, but as her glance met Mona’s mock
solemn stare, it struck off a flare of laughter from the two girls,
shattering the dull moment.

“Aren’t we the sillies!” She leaned toward Mona again. “As if we
couldn’t do what we want to!”

“It isn’t so simple as that.” Mona’s laugh died. “What one wants is—a
sensation, perhaps. But we marry—for a life job. I want to be rid of
myself, I tell you.”

The proprietress thrust an inquiring head through the door, and Mona
pushed back her chair.

“My treat! Call it a wedding breakfast.”

On the steps Cynthia turned to her.

“Walk over to the library with me?” In the bright light she saw fine
lines puckering the corners of Mona’s eyes. She was suffering!

“Just to the corner. I’m going this noon.”

“Have you packed? Can I help you?”

“I did it all last night.” Mona’s lips curled into an impish smile. “I
was afraid I’d change my mind.” After a moment, “What were you doing
last night? I saw your light.”

“Working. Finished a story.”

“After a love scene!” Mona slipped her arm through Cynthia’s. “Aren’t
you the queer duck! I don’t believe old Preston is good enough. Don’t
hurry. You may find someone better.”

“I’m not worried about that.” They reached the corner and stopped under
a great elm. Cynthia rubbed a finger against the rough bark. “What do
you do,” she said, slowly, “if you don’t like a man—what do you do with
the part of you that wants—love making?”

She could see tiny reflections of herself in Mona’s dilated pupils; she
held her breath. Another moment, and she would be at the centre of the
person behind the eyes, would know her, would disclose herself. Then,
like a breeze on water, something clouded them, and Mona turned away
with a shrug.

“You never admit you have it!” After an instant of closing silence, Mona
pulled Cynthia’s face down to hers, kissed her and backed away.

“Write to me some time, will you? Goodbye.” Her heels tapped lightly
along the walk as she went.

Cynthia felt hot tears under her eyelids. They were gone when she
reached the campus. She looked at the square towers lifting against the
brilliant sky. They still held for her at times all the stirring
possibility she had sought that summer and failed to find in the routine
of work.

She walked slowly across the campus, the warm sunlight enclosing her,
vibrant, expectant. She came to a pool of shade in the angle of one of
the buildings, and with a sigh let herself down, a relaxed heap, on the
grass. She sat quite motionless, her body curving, her hands clasped
about one knee. Slowly, as though her fingers moved in dark water among
strange shapes, she hunted, hunted. There was something she must find.
If she waited, still, she might touch it. Then, stealthily, she had it.
Fear. She had been afraid to stand out, alone, herself. Afraid to throw
herself into future days. The thing was out now, in the light. Her
fingers twisted about her knees. She had wished for obliteration, for a
slipping down into warm darkness, with all need for struggle, for work,
taken from her. The arch of her body lifted, grew proud, defiant; the
thrill of the night, of the work she had done, lay upon her again, beat
upon her with great wings. She pushed herself up from the ground, the
sun warm on her shoulders. People were coming out of the buildings,
moving across the quadrangles. She knew that there, too, she had wanted
something, her vague dream of the University—something outside to hold
her, cradle her. Now that she had pulled her fear, her weakness, out
into the light, she could fight it.

She had no surprise when she saw Charles Preston, with his sidling, busy
gait, coming toward her. He crossed the grass, stood near her.

“Good morning,” he said, appraisingly. “I didn’t expect to see you——”

“It’s just as well.” Her voice was quiet. “I wanted to tell you—last
night was all a mistake.”

“Oh, I say!” The sun was cruel to his anger; it made him blink a little,
pointed out old, hard lines in his face.

Cynthia looked at him steadily. Between them lay the tremendous distance
of her discovered self, and with that a sharp, wondering consciousness
of him.

“I’m sorry, if it matters to you—very much. But it won’t.”

Abruptly she left him, and went swiftly across the grass, out to the
street. She had at last made a beginning of freedom—to find real love—to
struggle, to work.




                          Transcriber’s Notes


Transcribed from the first publication in: The Touchstone, vol. 5, July
1919, pp. 316-327.

The original spelling and punctuation were mostly preserved. Minor
typesetting mistakes were silently corrected.




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