Montana Oil And Mining Journal

MONTANA
OIL
AND
MINING
JOURNAL

Farewell
to
Thee

(Copyright 1934 Chicago Tribune-N. Y. News Syndicate. Inc.)

Published by Special Arrangement With The Chicago-Tribune-New York News Syndicate, Inc.

IN TWO PARTS—PART TWO

She was reduced to the defensive terror of talking about the children in a loud tone of voice, while knowing all along it was a mistake to remind Tom so obviously of his responsibilities.

She'd been late coming to the ship, she said, because at the last minute she'd discovered the children doing a William Tell on the front lawn, with little Tom in the act of aiming an arrow at an apple on the head of baby Kitty, who was trustfully standing not two feet away from him.

Sylvia, who was an intense soul, and Kit had counted on that after hearing the cello story, listened breathlessly and turned with some surprise to Tom, who hadn't even bothered to ask how it had all turned out.

"Did you hear?" she cried. "One of your children nearly shot the other!"

Tom got up, began to stack the plates.

"Oh," he said. Kit makes a good story; there's probably not a word of truth in it. Who wants coffee?"

Sylvia's jaw dropped. It was obviously the first even faintly uncivil remark that she had heard Tom utter. But Tom didn't see Sylvia's expression, and tramped out cheerfully into the galley.

A ray of light began to penetrate Kit's despair. It would seem that her plan had started to work in spite of herself. Tom's little way of letting her down in public, long a source of nobly suppressed dismay to her, was now dismaying someone else.

But when Tom came back again from the galley with the coffee, full of energy while Lem and Ape refused to move, Kit saw the spell return to Sylvia's eyes. This was the hardest of all, to watch the bemused girl and understand only too well the charm that held her.

For she loved the same thing in Tom his animal grace, the mere sight of which gave her a feeling of freedom and release as he moved about the table like a black panther, beautiful in the perfect physical co-ordination of muscles rippling under that filthy black shirt. When he went out into the galley because Lem demanded milk instead of coffee, she leaned forward and intercepted Sylvia's becalmed gaze.

"Yes," she said quietly, "he is beautiful, isn't he?"

"You mean—Tom?" said Sylvia, her nostrils reddening. That was, it seemed, the way she blushed, and it was effective, making her face look like a wax figure's in the Eden Musee. But she was looking at Kit warily for the first time, over her pretty waxen nose.

"I'd hardly call a man beautiful—would you?" she said.

"Like the poem in Elinor Wylie's 'To Beauty.' I would," said Kit. "The last verse, if you shift pronouns:

'Oh, he is neither good nor bad But innocent and wild! Confine him and he dies, who had The hard heart of a child.'

Sylvia stiffened and looked at her with eyes that were suddenly defensive. She knows now that I'm fighting, Kit thought. False move. Withdraw to reconnoiter before striking again...

She got up and stacked the plates that were left on the table, singing, "I was so young, you were so beautiful," under her breath, and Tom came back with Lem's milk.

Ape had by now drunk enough to swing into the crowded moment that was generally his before he passed out. It was all that was needed to give Tom the illusion of a gay, successful party, which he proceeded to ride rough shod over the ungay, unsuccessful members of it by sitting at the table with the coffee for half an hour while he and Ape sang 34 verses of "The Hermit of Shark-Tooth Shoal," the one song Tom liked, which he had evidently taught to Sylvia, who sang too while Lem and Kit fidgeted.

In spite of her rarefied cello sonatas Sylvia obviously thought Kit's refusal to join was just another proof of what an unsympathetic wife Tom had. When they finally finished she looked at Kit coldly and said:

"You do sing, don't you, Mrs. Hallowell? I thought I heard you awhile back, when you were stacking the dishes."

"Oh, just humming," said Kit. "I can't sing things like the Hermit. That's the worst of ever having taken one's voice seriously, it's spoiled afterwards for popular songs."

"Oh," said Sylvia, still coldly. "Won't you sing us something that your voice wouldn't be spoiled for?"

This was intended to be more than a remark in a deadly tone of voice, but Kit's heart gave a jerk. Sudden opening. Take enemy by surprise... Innocently she smiled at Sylvia's purring mask. Sylvia, who cared so much for music that she had once carried her cello into another room... "I can try," she said.

In a muted voice, but steadily and with a relentless musical line that made Sylvia sit up at once, Kit began to sing Tschaikowsky's "None But the Lonely Heart Can Know My Sorrow."

The Russian melody was solitary and poignant, needing no accompaniment to its lament as her voice climbed surely to its climax, in the midst of which Tom turned and pulled a chart, with a great crackling of paper, on the table and began to study it.

Sylvia jumped as if she had been hit, and looked at him incredulously before going back to her attitude of rigid, startled attention. There was a pause when Kit's song died away into its last lovely echo.

Sylvia looked at Tom who had gotten up from his chart and was noisily collecting the coffee cups. "Why didn't you ever tell me," she said, "that your wife could sing like that?"

"Oh," said Tom, "I knew she would, as soon as she got the chance."

I should be pleased, shouldn't I, Kit thought numbly over that stunned look in Sylvia's face, which remained there while they washed the dishes together and Tom tramped in and out of the galley in breezy obliviousness. She should be pleased, but she wasn't. It was somehow even worse than being let down one's self, to see Sylvia let down by the same thing.

Sylvia was asking questions, in a strained voice, about Kit's musical career. She'd had no idea... How had Kit been able to give it all up?

Too far out to go back now. "As you saw," Kit said. "Any real music to Tom is just a noise."

"Don't you think he might—well, grow to appreciate it?" said Sylvia.

"I thought so," said Kit, "for the first three years. That's what I meant, Sylvia, by saying how sad it is people don't change but we go on hoping!"

Tom entered the galley in a vast silence. "It's 11 o'clock," he said. "I'll sleep till midnight. Wake me then, Kit, and I'll wake Lem and Ape."

Cheerfully he went fore and swung himself into one of the two hammocks that hung on opposite sides of the galley. His habit was to fall asleep the minute his head hit the pillow, which he was not now prevented from doing by the glaresome presence of the two women in his life.

Nor would he have been in the slightest degree embarrassed if he could have been treated to the fore-shortened view of himself that was theirs, consisting of two enormous black soles looming up over the hammock; his bare feet, size 12, on which he had been walking around the ship for several hours.

As miserable as she was, Kit couldn't help laughing at the aghast expression on Sylvia's face. This was more the simple, obvious sort of thing she had anticipated. Here she could follow her cues without heartburn. "Men are but children of a larger growth," I always say, she cooed. "It's all I can do to make Tom wash occasionally!"

Sylvia's nostrils were red again, her eyes cast down over the coffee pot she was putting away. As Kit paused to take breath for further revelations a long snore came from the hammock.

Sylvia jumped and turned incredulously. Another snore shook the soles that loomed like two black clouds upon the horizon. He couldn't, Kit thought, have timed it better.

"Why, Sylvia," she cried, "don't look so shattered! Tom's really very good about snoring, he only does it on his back!"

Capably she approached the hammock and spoke in Tom's ear. "Turn over, darling," she said.

With a sigh, without waking, Tom turned and the snores ceased. "See?" said Kit proudly. But Sylvia had fled.

Kit followed her into the main cabin, which had been left to the two girls by Lem and Ape, who had bunked in the engine room. Sylvia was undressing in a silence that Kit imitated. When they were in their opposite bunks and the cabin was finally dark with no sound but the gentle lapping of waters in the harbor outside, Sylvia spoke.

"Look here," her voice traveled over to Kit, "what are you trying to do? Unsell me on Tom? Because you can't, you know. It's gone beyond all that."

"Oh," said Kit after a pause. "Do you mind telling me how far?"

"Not far the way you mean," said Sylvia. "There's been no love-making. Tom's not the sort to cheat, or break up a home nor am I. So do you mind just leaving us our dreams as long as we're taking nothing else?"

It was impossible for Kit to believe this could be an actual conversation.

"Is it my fault," she began in a trembling voice, "that Tom has ship's dirt on his feet and wears size 12? Is it my fault that he snores? Really, Sylvia—"

"That's not the point and you know it," said Sylvia. "I could love Tom's snoring if—if I'd lived with it as you have. But since all he and I get out of this is illusion, will you leave us that? You have all the rest!"

"I thought you said I couldn't unsell you," cried Kit, "and here you are asking me not to go on doing it! What do you think 'all the rest' would be worth to me—as long as Tom loved someone else? I want my illusions too, strange as it may seem after six years of marriage, and I had them, until you came along!"

"Oh no, you couldn't have had them," said Sylvia. "You couldn't have shown up Tom the way you've done tonight if you had. You're just like every other wife who's bored with her husband. That's why I knew I wasn't doing you any harm. I'm not taking anything that belongs to you, but you're being a dog in the manger about something that you lost years ago and can never find again!"

Strange numbing revelation, the sudden sense of peace that enveloped Kit on hearing those words. Kit found that her head had been raised tensely from her bunk and she lowered it thinking, with a calm that was almost happiness. Why—I have been struggling with phantoms for such a long while.

For six years she had been building on the things she wished for in Tom rather than on those that were there. For six years she had been nobly burying her disappointments in him when he failed to live up to her ideas rather than change those ideas, so there need be no more noble burying.

There were stifled sounds from the other bunk which were not enough like the lapping of the waters outside to hide the fact that Sylvia was crying. Poor Sylvia, who wasn't important any more, and somehow knew it. Poor Sylvia who must certainly be allowed to keep whatever illusion she had left, for there was so much work to be done on herself, Kit knew now, before she could ever get to little things like Sylvia.

At twelve she got up and went in to the forecastle to wake Tom as he had asked her to do, and hoping that Sylvia was asleep, tried to remonstrate with him in lowered tones for the considerable argument that he always required before he could be aroused.

In this state Tom could carry on a conversation which sounded perfectly intelligent, which he could not remember when he was finally aroused. Hence when he turned away from her and sighed, "Changed my mind—we'll all sleep till three," she pulled him back and started once more to nag, to be interrupted by the slatty spectacle of Sylvia in pajamas with her hair standing out around her shoulders in Maenad-like spirals.

"Why don't you leave him alone?" she hissed. "Why don't you leave us all alone? He's captain of the ship, isn't he? If he wants to sail at three why don't you let him have his sleep?"

Kit dropped Tom's arm, which fell like the trunk of a tree. "All right," she said meekly, and went back to her bunk. Not for her to explain that Tom wasn't responsible for what he said in these moments. No, no more of his little foibles were to be exposed by her, now that Sylvia had asked for the dream and left her the substance.

Some time in the small hours she was conscious that the engine had started so Tom must finally have awakened. Turning later she felt the heave of the ship and heard the groaning of the ropes. She knew the engine was off and they were under way, and she didn't like it any more than usual.

She felt as if she hadn't slept at all when she finally awakened to the revolting smell of frying bacon and voices raised in acute disharmony somewhere out of sight.

"We won't reach Cuttyhunk till ten with the best hours of the swordfishing over. Why didn't Kit wake me?"

"I told her not to. You said you'd changed your mind."

"You told her? Since when were you skipper of this ship?"

"I was taking your orders. You changed them. You said—"

"It doesn't matter what I say when I'm coming out of my sleep. Kit knows that. Where is she anyway? Why didn't you wake her?"

"I wasn't aware that the captain had ordered me to wake her. If you are sure you mean it and are not still coming out of your sleep I'll do it now."

Vaguely Kit wondered why she was not more interested in this conversation. She tried to lift her head off the pillow and then she knew.

"Mrs. Hallowell," said Sylvia haughtily from the door. "Do you want some break—Oh!"

"Tom says it's all mental," Kit panted. "But this time I never thought of it, what with thinking about other things and here it is just the same."

"Tom," said Sylvia, "is not always right."

"Look out!" said Kit, staggering up, and making a mad dash for the wash room. When she came out Sylvia helped her back to the bunk.

"I'd better call Tom," she said.

"Oh, no don't!" Kit cried. "Tom can't stand people being sick. Last fall when I had the flu he couldn't come in the room!"

"Too bad about him," said Sylvia. "Well, he's going to come in this room."

Only dimly through her agony did Kit realize that she had perhaps said something wrong. But Sylvia had gone and hours later, for every moment now was an hour, she returned with Tom who was looking big and shiningly healthy and very much put out.

"Are you really sick, Katherine?" he said. "It isn't a bit rough outside, you know. Just a nice little breeze."

Kit couldn't answer. "Don't you think," he said, "that if you got dressed and went up on deck and tried to steer it would distract your mind?"

"No," she gasped. "Go away. No. No."

"Yes," said Sylvia, "you'd better go away."

A long time after that she heard Sylvia somewhere saying, "We're near enough Menemsha to put in there, you know. Or do you think a little swordfishing is going to distract her mind?"

"If you knew as much as you think you do about sailing, Sylvia," said Tom's voice aloofly, "you'd realize I'm perfectly right about sea-sickness."

"All you care is we're too late for the swordfishing, isn't it?" shouted Sylvia. "I let you sleep till three and now your wife's sick and it's only just a great big nuisance, isn't it, for anybody who has 'the hard heart of a child'!"

"Sylvia," said Tom, and his voice was as shattered as Sylvia's face had been last night when he snored. "I never knew before that you were emotional, like Kit and all other women. If you'll look at this thing from a reasonable basis—"

"But I am a woman, too, like Kit and all others odd as it may appear to you!" cried Sylvia. "And I can get just as tired of certain things as Kit has done!"

Kit did not know that she had that much voice left until she heard it shouting. "I'm not tired of anything but this ship! How soon can we get to Menemsha?"

Sylvia packed her things for her and carried her suitcase up on the heaving deck. Ape was waiting alongside, with Tom to hand them down into the dinghy.

"Oh," said Tom. "You're going too, Sylvia, I see."

Slightly reviving with her first breath of fresh air, Kit was able to notice that Sylvia was carrying two suitcases instead of one, with an important, tragic stance. "Do you think I'd let her go alone?" she said.

"Oh! Sylvia," said Kit, with a hiccough, "I don't need you—really I don't."

"Neither does Tom," said Sylvia. "Neither does Tom!"

Although the deck still heaved a bit beneath her, Kit could appreciate every jointure of Tom's appalled expression. Tom, who hated personal remarks in public; who had just discovered that Sylvia was "emotional like Kit and all other women," and was as shattered as Sylvia had been to learn that Tom had "the hard heart of a child."

But it's my child, Kit thought with sudden fierceness, and her heart leaped valiantly above her queasy stomach as he turned to her at last, even though it was with a helpless look that begged her to save him from the scene that Sylvia in all her angry disillusionment was threatening.

Her heart leaped even though she did hiccough again as she turned to Sylvia and said, "Let's hurry, if we don't make shore soon I'll die!"

When they were on solid ground at last and Tom went in to the Menemsha general store to inquire about buses he was so excited about the new square-sail rig that he and Ape had been discussing all through the row ashore, that he left Kit's suitcase rather far out in the country road in front of the store.

Sylvia had persisted in haughtily carrying hers, which wisdom she preened herself about when they came out of the store and found that the bus had arrived and run over Kit's suitcase. In the wait before the bus left Tom produced some string from nowhere and handily put the wreck together. Kit watching with fatuous pride.

"Isn't Tom wonderful," she said to Sylvia. "He can fix absolutely anything."

"It would have been more wonderful," said Sylvia, "if he hadn't left it so far out on the road to begin with."

Tom looked rather happy when he got them into the bus. "We'll be home tomorrow night, Kit," he said. "Good-bye, Sylvia."

Kit was feeling so much better that she thought her face couldn't be yellow any more and leaned out of the bus to wave, but Tom was already hurrying away with Ape. Wonderful not even to be disappointed about that: to be able to laugh at his masculine relief to get all this feminine difficulty out of the way, and to anticipate the new excitement that their days would hold when he would discover that his wife was no longer going to be a female difficulty.

So she began to build her new illusions over the graves of the old, while still rapt in her exalted belief that she was at last intelligently meeting reality.

And she pitied poor Sylvia sitting beside her with such a sour expression, poor Sylvia who had so unintelligently met reality.

By the time their bus reached Ocean Bluffs and they got on the big excursion boat to Woods Hole she had leaped days ahead to the romantic character that Tom was going to be when he realized once and for all that she was content to be unromantic.

And, secure in this new vision, she sat on the deck and stared blissfully at the waves, which she didn't mind any more because she was bad only on small boats.

Sylvia, sitting morosely beside her, finally said: "If you must sing to yourself I wish you'd choose another song than 'My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean.' It gets monotonous."

"Not to me," said Kit.

(THE END)