When they had gone, Eugene went to Ann’s door and knocked. She showed no surprise at seeing him, but stood aside sullenly until he had come in, and then closed the door behind him. Then she went back, sat down in a chair before the fire, and leaned forward upon her knees, and for some time stared dumbly and sullenly into the crackling flames.
“Where are the others?” she said presently. “Have they gone out?”
“Yes,” he said. “They went for a walk. They said they’d be gone about an hour.”
“Yes,” she said cynically, “and they thought it would be good for me if you and I were left alone for a while. I’m such a grand person that something just HAS to be done for me. God!” she concluded bitterly, “I’m getting tired of having people do me good! I’m fed up with it!”
He made no reply to this and she said nothing more. Her big body supported by her elbows, she continued to lean forward and stare sullenly into the flames.
He had taken a seat in another chair, and at length the silence, and his position in the chair, and the girl’s sullen expression became painfully awkward, unhappy and embarrassing. He got up abruptly, took a pillow from the bed, threw it upon the floor, and lay down flat beside her chair, stretched out comfortably with his head to the dancing flames. The feel of the fire, its snap and crackle, the soft flare and fall of burned wood ash, and the resinous piny smell, together with the broad old wooden planking of the floor, the silence of the house and the feel of numb silent night outside, something homelike in the look of the room — these things, together with Ann’s big New England body leaned forward towards the fire, the sullen speechless integrity of her grand and lovely face, and the smell of her, which was the smell of a big healthy woman warmed by fire — all of these things filled his senses with something immensely strong, pleasant, and familiar, something latent in man’s blood, which he had not felt in many years, and that now was quiet but powerfully reawakened. It filled his heart, his blood, his senses with peace and certitude, with drowsy sensual joy, and with the powerful awakening of an old perception, like the rediscovery of an ancient faith, that the sensuous integument of life was everywhere the same, that the lives of people in this little town in France were the same as the lives of people in the town he came from, the same as the lives of people everywhere on earth. And after all the dark and alien world of night, of Paris, and another continent, which he had known now for several months, this rediscovery of the buried life, the fundamental structure of the great family of earth to which all men belong, filled him with a quiet certitude and joy.
Ann did not move; bent forward, leaning on her knees, she continued to stare into the fire, and looking up at her warm, dark, sullen face, he fell asleep — into a sleep which, after all the frenzy and exhaustion of the last weeks, was as deep and soundless as if he were drugged.
How long he lay asleep there on the floor he did not know. But he was wakened by the sound of her voice — a sullen monotone that spoke his name — that spoke his name quietly with a toneless, brooding insistence and that at first he thought he must have dreamed. It was repeated, again and again, quietly, insistently, without change or variation until he knew there was no doubt of it, that he no longer was asleep. And with something slow and strange and numb beating through him like a mighty pulse, he opened his eyes and looked up into her face. She had bent forward still more and was looking down at him with a kind of slow, brooding intensity, her face smouldering and drowsy as a flower. And even as he looked at her, she returned his look with that drowsy, brooding stare, and again, without inflection, spoke his name.
He sat up like a flash and put his arms around her. He was beside her on his knees and he hugged her to him in a grip of speechless, impossible desire: he kissed her on the face and neck, again and again; her face was warm with the fire, her skin as soft and smooth as velvet; he kissed her again and again on the face, clumsily, thickly, with that wild, impossible desire, and with a horrible feeling of guilt and shame. He wanted to kiss her on the mouth, and he did not dare to do it: all the time that he kept kissing her and hugging her to him with a clumsy, crushing grip, he wanted her more than he had ever wanted any woman in his life, and at the same time he felt a horrible profanity in his touch, as if he were violating a Vestal virgin, trying to rape a nun.
And he did not know why he felt this way, the reason for these senseless feelings of guilt and shame and profanation. He had been with so many prostitutes and casual loose promiscuous women that he would have thought it easy to make love to this big, clumsy, sullen-looking girl, but now all he could do was to hug her to him in an awkward grip, to mutter foolishly at her, and to kiss her warm sullen face again and again.
He tried to put his clumsy hand upon her breast, but the feeling of shame and profanation swept over him and he could not keep it there. He put his hand upon her knee, and thrust it under the skirt: the warm flesh of her leg stung him like an electric shock and he jerked his hand away. And all the time the girl did nothing, made no attempt to resist or push him away, just yielded with a dumb sullen passiveness to his embraces, her face smouldering with a slow sullen passion that he could not fathom or define. He did not know why she had wakened him, why she had called his name, what meaning, what emotion lay behind her brooding look, her dumb and sullen passiveness, whether she yielded herself willingly to him or not.
He did not know why he should have this sense of shame and guilt and profanation when he touched her. It may have come from an intrinsic nobility and grandeur in her person and in her character that made physical familiarity almost unthinkable; it may even have come in part from a feeling of social and class inferiority — a feeling which may be base and shameful, but to which young men are fiercely sensitive — the feeling which all Americans know and have felt cruelly, even those who scornfully deny that it exists and yet have themselves done most to foster it. Certainly he had at times been bitterly conscious of the girl’s “exclusiveness”— the fact that she was a member of “an old Boston family”— a wealthy, guarded, and powerfully entrenched group; he knew that a beautiful and desirable woman like Ann would have had many opportunities to pick and choose among wealthy men of her own class, and that he himself was just the son of a working-man.
But, most of all, he knew that, more than anything else, the thing that checked him now, that overpowered him with its loveliness, that filled his heart with longing and impossible desire, and at the same moment kept him from possession — was the passionate and bitter enigma of that strange and lovely thing which had shaped itself into his life and could never be lost, could never be forgotten, and was never to be known: the thing he knew by these two words —“New England.”
And as the knowledge came to him he felt the greatest love and hatred for this thing that he had ever known. A kind of wild cursing anger, a choking expletive of frustration and despair possessed him. He took her by the arms and jerked her to her feet, and cursed her bitterly. And she came dumbly, passively, sullenly as before, neither yielding nor resisting, as he shook her, hugged her, cursed her incoherently in that frenzy of desire and frustrate shame.
“Look here,” he panted thickly, shaking her. “Say something! . . . Do something! . . . Don’t stand there like a God-damned wooden Indian! . . . Who the hell do you think you are, anyway? . . . Why are you any better than anyone else? . . . Ann! Ann! Look at me! . . . Speak! What is it? . . . Oh, God-damn you!” he said with a savagely unconscious humour that neither of them noticed, “— but I love you! . . . Oh, you big, dumb, beautiful Boston bitch,” he panted amorously, “— just turn your face to me — and look at me — and by God! I will! I will!” he muttered savagely, and for the first time, and with a kind of desperation, kissed her on the mouth, and glared around him like a madman and, without knowing what he was doing, began to haul and drag her along toward the bed, muttering —“By God, I’ll do it! — Oh, you sweet, dumb, lovely trollop of a Back Bay — Ann!” he cried exultantly. “Oh, by God, I’ll thaw you out, I’ll melt your ice, my girl — by God, I’ll open you! — Is it her arm, now?” he began gloatingly, and lifted her long arm with a kind of slow, rending ecstasy and bit into her shoulder haunch, “or her neck, or her warm face and sullen mouth, or the good smell of her, or that lovely belly, darling — that white, lovely, fruitful Boston belly,” he gloated, “good for about a dozen babies, isn’t it? — or the big hips and swelling thighs, the long haunch from waist to knee — oh, you fertile, dumb, unploughed plantation of a woman — but I’LL plant you!” he yelled exultantly — “and the big, dumb eyes of her, and her long hands and slender fingers — how did you ever get such slender, graceful hands, you delicate, big — here! give me the hands now — and all the fine, long lady-fingers”— he said with gentle, murderous desire, and suddenly felt the girl’s long fingers trembling on his arm, took them in his hands and felt them there, and all her big, slow body trembling in his grasp, and was suddenly pierced with a wild and nameless feeling of pity and regret.
“Oh, Ann, don’t,” he said, and seized her hand and held it prayerfully. “Don’t look like that — don’t be afraid — oh, look here!” he said desperately again, and put his arms round her trembling shoulders and began to pat her soothingly. “— Please don’t act like that — don’t tremble so — don’t be afraid of me! — Oh, Ann, please don’t look at me that way — I didn’t mean it — I’m so God-damned sorry, Ann — Ah-h! it’s going to be all right! It’s going to be all right! I swear it’s going to be all right!” he stammered foolishly, and took her hand and pleaded with her, not knowing what he was saying, and sick with guilt and shame and horror at the profanation of his act.
Her breath was fluttering, coming uncertainly, panting short and quick and breathless like a frightened child; this and her slender hands, her long trembling fingers, the sight of her hands so strangely, beautifully delicate for such a big woman, filled him with an unspeakable anguish of remorse. She began to speak, a breathless, panting, desperate kind of speech, and he found himself desperately agreeing with everything she said, even though he did not hear or understand half of it!
“ . . . Mustn’t stay here,” she panted. “Let’s get out of here . . . go somewhere . . . anywhere . . . I’ve got to talk to you. . . . Something I’ve got to tell you!” she panted ............