78

I must be going." He began backing out, smiling nervously at John, casting furtive glances at silent stony Marian. "I'm sorry about not showing you the photos, but you know how it is."

"Yes," said John bitingly, "I understand. It is your game, your business. You and your wife must not eat and have shelter and business today is such that each one preys on others and in turn is himself preyed upon. We are all caught in it. Tomorrow, conditions may be different. Goodnight."

He closed the door.

Marian sped towards the paper and stood hunched over it. Suddenly she recoiled. "Oh, John," she exclaimed, "what does it mean? How can that be news? Why is that so important? Aren't other people in love? It makes me feel queer."

John himself felt profoundly queer, but he managed to answer rationally. "In an age of hate it is news to be in love. In an age of doubt it is breaking a mass-law, a taboo, to have faith. Perhaps - God knows - perhaps this is an age of hate and doubt. I hadn't really realized it. Dunney evaded. As you have said, we have been out of touch with things. The world is changing swiftly. The newspapers must know."

Marian walked around, around and around in the night-gloomed bare redwood room, in the room of Gull House, repeating and repeating, "I feel so queer. I feel so queer."

All at once she stopped by the table and hunched over the page. "Do I look like that? It is horrid. You look like a convict and I like a woman of the streets. It is awful."

Her tone was indignant, outraged, horrified; but John saw her face.

79

It looked crushed. It looked as if she felt that not her love only but
all love had been violated and destroyed. For an instant he wondered
if she were thinking of the child, feeling ashamed to have conceived
a child in love, fearing to be bearing life in a world of hate.

"It is pretty bad," he said with forced calmness, "but there is one
consolation. No one will ever recognize us."

"But our names," she said. "Our names are attached to them and
people will think John Andrews looks like a convict and that Marian
Andrews looks like a woman of the streets. People are impressed by
what they see."

"For a short while," he said. "But there is the blessing of it -
they soon forget."

"No they don't," she retorted. "I know people who remember every-
thing they read. Mother does. She reads everything and remembers every-
thing. You minimize things. You are too trusting and optimistic."

"No I don't," he said. "I simply do not invest with feeling what
should not have feeling. I do not exaggerate what should not be
exaggerated. Mother is an exception. The majority of KMPK people,
once they put a paper down, or even a book, can't for the life of
them tell what they've read. Even you and I, who are trained to retain,
how much do we remember? Comparatively nothing."

"The pictures are horrid all the same," she said. "I know what they
did. They deliberately made them look that way to show that whoever
believes is a criminal and whoever loves is a prostitute. Oh, dear.
That innocent baby-faced man. I knew, I told you he would trick us.
Oh, what will come of it? We are alone, so exposed. We can't do any-
thing. They have us at their mercy."

80

The phone rang again. It was another Mala paper. John spoke with them. He had hardly hung up when there was another ring.

Marian, verging on hysteria, was trying desperately to keep hold of herself.

John went through the same procedure of checking the story.

"Well," he said as he entered the bedroom, "I hope that's all for tonight. One good thing at least should come of it. These other papers, whatever their headlines, ought to run the story itself more accurately. Perhaps I am a fool to take the pains, but there must be some reason for them calling, and it is all about the same story. They want nothing new - that is, not yet. But I suppose we ought to be prepared. Doubtless this engine of the Lord is about to descend upon us full force."

Marian said nothing. Her face, strained, pale, had again taken on that mask-like numbness he knew so well. He sat beside her on the bed, trying to comfort and reassure her. He could not touch or reach her. She would not be comforted. She was in torment. She stayed there.

All at once, however, she brought out, "I never before felt what the world can do to a person. It can do something so horrible to the growing part of one."

"It can," he said realistically, "if one lets it, if one is vulnerable. Otherwise, it cannot."

"Oh, it can," she said. "It can kill you."

"It can kill one's body, you mean."

But he could not go on. Suddenly he felt drained, bled, near exhaustion. He could not try to change her attitude, to lift her - no more that night. His head was spinning. His body ached. They were

81

in a vortex, all right. This, that, doubling over, crossing back,
twisting, whirling, twisting, plunging through darkness to darkness
ahead.

And the storm was upon them.

And on the beach, to the pounding of the drum, the figures, all
falsed-hoofed, gathered in a bunch and huddled, swayed and chanted:

John, Marian, two in love,
Are swirling sinking in Caromb,
In Gull House near our drum,
We will have fun, we will have fun,
Oh, John, oh, Marian, drum, drum, drum,
To our drum, come, to our beach, come,
Ye-i-o-u-um, ye-i-o-u-um!

And faintly from the moun<sup>a</sup>th in south of the valley a chorus
drifted:

As you love, John, Marian,
To the stars of Caromb, come,
Sink as you must, ah, sorrow,
But swim and rise up,
John, Marian, as you love.

82

VIII

insert

The phone rang. But this time it was abrupt. generous Miss Roberts.
She was calling about a practical matter. The man who did the house-
work for her would, she said, be glad to do odd work for them. John
thanked her. She mentioned having had her attention called to the
publicity. John told how it had come about. She understood. "Yes,"
she concluded, "the Mala papers keep an eye on Caromb. They think
we are a strange lot and they are always on the look-out for news.
Caromb is one of their feeding-grounds."

"But why such headlines?" asked John. "What do you make of them?"
She had no answer.

"Did you hear that?" John asked Marian. "Could you hear what Miss Roberts said? I wish I had known it. I wish we had known it in advance. We wouldn't have come here in the first place. Maybe that was what I felt. We did not need to. There were a thousand other places we could have gone - that is, theoretically, speaking as though we were people of choice and not beings of fate."

He was zestful all at once, as if, suddenly released, he were
enjoying the thing; as though, now that what he had feared had come
upon them, the fear of the unknown had passed, freeing him to battle
in the open with a tangible menace - if it were a menace. Now, some-
how, he did not feel it was. It was unpleasant but not more, and
soon it would of itself pass

"I'm feeling fine today!" he said.

She did not reply. Marian was sombre. Now she was the sombre one.

They drove into town and he bought a paper. It was, presumably,

( insert page 82 )

The phone rang. Bell-bats jangled inside John. Nervously he went
towards the stand, feeling sure it was another Mala paper. With
aversion he picked up the receiver. But this time it was abrupt
generous Miss Roberts.

John glanced at her. "You would think a lover were a lover," he
said. "Why, he'd have to get me? And if he did, what would it do for
the action?"

Mala looked up. "That's very kind of you," she said. "But you
won't let me take your money, will you?"

"What?" asked John, "since you won't let me take your money,
why should I let you take mine?" There was a gleam in his eye that
seemed to say, "I won't, if I can help it." And he added, "But you
won't, will you?"

At last of all, John said, "I won't, if I can help it." And he added,
"Good-bye."

83

the paper whose story had been the first to receive his careful check-
ing. He returned to the car, playfully jumped in, and there, parked
on the town's small main street, they opened the sheet. From it
there popped out at them - LOVER SPOUSE STIRS CAROMB.

John winced, as if a fist had struck him. He repeated, "Lover
spouse." He glanced at Marian. "Well, damn. So I am a lover spouse
and I have stirred Caromb."

"Oh, John -"

They read the story telling how Andrews appearance in the quiet
village of Caromb had given its citizens cause for concern. Should
they accept him? Should they not? And, if they accepted him, a lover,
what treatment should be accorded him? It was still an open but a
disquieting question.

John glanced at her. "You would think a lover were a leper," he
xxix brought out. "Why are they trying to get me? What have they made up this
fiction for?"

Marian looked horrified. Then her expression changed. "Do you
think - do you suppose we have stirred the people here? Is that
why -"

"What!" exclaimed John, "Are you, who know the facts, going to be
persuaded like a goose against your knowing that just because a
paper prints it it must be so? Marian, Marian," and he shook his
head. "It seems to me that it should be put just the other way around,
namely, that Caromb has stirred John Andrews. That would be the larger
truth - and there would be some truth in it. Come, child, don't
swallow this."

"I wonder if we have," she repeated, suddenly struck with an
altogether new, alarming sense of herself as a branded person, a

( insert page 84 )

He ran over to the post office, not expecting much if any. It was
just the hour when many people gathered for the morning delivery. As
he made his way through the crowd he could not help but tense and
tingle at the thought that all these eyes were on him, peering
at him, seeing him through the publicity as the lover's spouse
who had stirred Caromb. He felt aggressive. He felt antagonized. He
shouldered through.

At his box he was surprised and jolted. A batch of letters greeted
him, letters to himself and Marian, all or most with unknown handwrit-
ing. All at once it dawned upon him that they were getting mail stimul-
ated by the publicity. Most of the postmarks were of Mala or surround-
ing places. He had, of course, no idea as to what their contents might
be, but the anonymous pile of them gave him a queer exposed deeply
disturbing sensation. Wasn't it strange - this too was in the pattern -
that the publicity should break upon them in a small village where
they were accessible to the world's letters, good and bad, the simple
address, Caromb, being sufficient?

He was intensely curious. He was strongly repelled.

He shouldered out of the building and crossed the narrow main street
to his green roadster. He could not see the mountains because the
stores blocked his view, but he sensed the giant dark green slopes
pressing down upon him, upon them and the little car parked in Caromb's
now teeming thoroughfare.

Marian, shrunk back in the seat, glanced furtively at him. She saw
the pile of letters. Her eyes opened wide to a new source of fright.
And then John got in; and there, with the car giving them a scant
privacy, with the people and the cars of Caromb swirling around them,

["(continuation of page 84 insert)", "they began opening and reading the mail. It was as though, suddenly, they were caught in an avalanche which charged at them roaring and tumbling down the sides of the mountains.", "There was an odd assortment of all possible descriptions,", "assailing, assaulting the cold supporting, the bad trying to clear them and pull them down. It was as though, suddenly, they were struggling in a maelstrom. It cost with fury against them for a short while and then abated.", "Continually they glanced at each other and at the paceress, they were strangers to each other, with strange faces marked by unrelaxed expressions. The external world was uncomfortably close, charged with hitherto unexpected violence and dynamic, imminent.", "\"The farm, instead of being over, is just breaking,\" he said, \"and the cow is calving. We ought to have a牛 colic.\" This is what I got for milking the cow twice a day.", "All at once he laughed. But instantly they clamped their hands about his neck and John, most affect and more serious than the people of the farm, drove home, putting the wayman the milking plate before the door. In the next moment the other plate passed the door. The house was clean and bright. The fire was旺, and the children - all children, all boys - sitting, standing, talking, eating. Crying from the hall of the barnyard, \"Who could have done this?\" the old man called out.", "They went back to the barn and found the plate, and the children, and the fire, and the old man. \"Who could have done this?\" they said. \"Who could have done this?\" The old man said, \"The children.\" \"Yes,\" the children said, \"and the plate.\" \"Who could have done this?\" the old man said, \"The children.\" \"Yes,\" the children said, \"and the plate.\" \"Who could

85

would judge them.

"Good God!" said John.

As they read they felt force coming through the ether, forms, shapes, all unseen, good and bad, sweeping towards them, impinging, assailing, assaulting; the good supporting, the bad trying to claw them and pull them down. It was as though, suddenly, they were struggling in a maelstrom. It beat with fury against them for a short while and then abated.

Cautiously they glanced at each other and at the passersby. They were strangers to each other, with strange faces marked by unfamiliar expressions. The external world was uncomfortably close, charged with hitherto unsuspected malice and dynamite, imminent.

"The storm, instead of being over, is just breaking," he said, feeling he wanted to duck his head. "We ought to have a tornado cellar. This is what I get for feeling too fine this morning."

All at once they laughed. But instantly they clapped their mouths shut and John, more silent and more serious than the people of Caromb, drove home, taking the way down the sloping pine bordered street to the sea front and along the outer drive pass the grey stone houses, Jordon's house and Eagle Tower, the beach and the breakers - all formidable, all alin - flying, plunging bumping flying from the hail of the invisible world - but straight towards Gull House.

They had hardly closed the door when Arthur dropped in. He was jaunty and engaging. His face was aglow, eager, adventurous. He seemed not to have a care or a problem. Evidently he had been in the sun a good deal - and to many parties. There was an aura about him, an aura of having been around. Life was treating him well. The

(insert page 85)

"The storm, instead of being over, is just breaking," was his astringent comment. "We ought to have a tornado cellar." He smiled ironically. "This is what I get for feeling too fine this morning. Why, for a minute there, I felt as if the whole world had banded together to take a crack at us."

It was, however, clearly about pointfully difficult to see him at first. He seemed not to have heard of the publicity, so he went on to tell a story which, by the time he was through, had raised quite a few points with the public. Particulars of the case wereут. But it would have been hard for him to say that he was being told of them for the first time. It was hardly possible that he had not already heard of them, and preferred to ignore the matter. However, it was best that it should be made clear that he had not been brought up, as the circumstances would have made it almost impossible for him to say. There was no reason to suppose that he had not already known of them, and the statement, which was made in the course of a conversation with friends, did not seem to cause him any difficulty.

Again they sat on the grass in the sun, talking about the day that had just been closed and the reason why. Somewhat later, one of them began talking about the case again, and this time it was not quite so silent as before.

Some time later, the three of them were alone, and, as is often the case when people are alone, they began talking about the case. It was about this time that the three of them began talking about the case again, and this time it was not quite so silent as before. It was about this time that the three of them began talking about the case again, and this time it was not quite so silent as before. It was about this time that the three of them began talking about the case again, and this time it was not quite so silent as before.

86

contrast was great, the difference between his lot and theirs.

"Hello," he greeted them. "How are you?"

They were very glad he had called, this Arthur, this warm friend who had known them for years in their own sphere, who liked, respected, admired them, whom they liked and admired. Arthur was a pleasant person to have around, especially in times like these. He had contact with the same substance of life. He had qualities and values similar to their own.

It was, however, curiously almost painfully difficult to adjust to him at first. He seemed not to have heard of the publicity. He seemed not to be amazed or shocked by the headlines, by the implications of the thing. He seemed not to sense that they were in hot water. Yet something of it all must have reached him. He must have known what was being said of them about town. He preferred to ignore the whole affair. Perhaps this was best. But it would have released them had it been brought up, aired, circulated. It would have put them in touch with him. Their distance from him - this startled and Shocked them. It gave them a new means of measuring the extent to which the alien world had collided with, invaded, and displaced their world.

Again they sat on the stone porch in the sun viewing the giant dark green slopes and the valley, misted, tenuously hazed, and the hills folding down, far far away.

Soon they felt more like themselves, more at ease, more normal, more open, more in contact with him. The assailing forms and forces of the invisible world retreated somewhat. After all, John was John, Marian was Marian, Arthur was Arthur. A bit of strange publicity could not change the face and the content of things.

Arthur placed a cigarette in a holder and glanced up smiling.

97

3

"Well," he asked, "how are you liking Caromb? I hope you have decid-
ed to stay."

"It is still sombre and beautiful," said John, "to my mind, a
perfect site for purgatory."

"Have you been up the valley?" Arthur asked.

"We have," said John, "and you can have it."

Marian said, "I thought it was lovely, very strange and lovely,
until we came to those trees - you know them? - they look dead, grey
like hanging ghosts."

Arthur nodded. "I know them, very well. The first time I saw them
I actually shuddered. I thought they might have been used as gibbets
by some prehistoric race. But it is beautiful, isn't it? Weird and
fascinating. Has it ever given you the impression that once upon a
time it was submerged?"

"Very much," said John, "the entire region. I felt it the very
first night as we were driving in. As for staying on - if I wanted
to there's only one place I'd like to have. See," he pointed, "see
that ranch way up there with the things to each side which look like
rods. At night I've seen them lighted and the lights twinkle like
stars. I would like to live there. You couldn't give me the rest. I
know, you've told us about the wealthy people, the various celebrkit-
ies, who are buying up the valley. They can have it. Our location
here is paradisiacal in comparison. Arthur, have you really looked
at it? No men, no cattle, no dogs, no single\living thing in sight.
Ah, yes, it is fertile - but who cultivates it?"

Arthur smiled queerly. "The unpleasant thought to me," he said,
"is that all of this country is owned. Everything you see is owned.
Somebody owns it. Why, when I first came to Caromb... Most of what

98

you now see has happened in the last few years. There was nothing much here. You could hardly pay people to come. It was remote. You had to take a stage, and it really was a stage, one of the few surviving stage-coaches. Now, as I say, all this land is owned, even the mountains, and the price is high. If I had had money enough to buy when I first came I would have made a fortune."

"Owned?" asked John. "Yes, on paper. Various men have made compacts with each other that so and so 'owns' this spot, so and so that spot. But it is all in men's fancy. The hills do not sell themselves, nor do the plains and valleys. No man, not a vast army of men, could really possess them. There is only one thing a man can truly possess - himself and the food he eats. If we could but realize this, the world would be transformed over night. We have machines now, and machines to get the fuel for machines. There could be enough food. Competition is not necessary. The predatory urge has absolutely no justification. If we could but destroy the illusions of reward -"

Arthur spoke up. "I met an interesting man the other day. One of those men who can make as many fortunes as they like. He was predatory all right, but so candid about it that one admired him. He is the lawyer for some big gangster. He is looking for a place around here, wants a huge estate where he can give parties and raise polo ponies. He is quite a boy. People are coming to him. They know he has money. They feel his power. They feel he can do things, that something will happen if he settles here. They give him all the local news. Already he knows the inside history of everybody, and he's only been here ten days. He got in an argument on prohibition with a bishop of the church. It was most interesting."

John left them to answer the phone. It was a Mala paper again;

(insert page 88)

John was contrasting his position with that of the lawyer of the
gangster. "People are going to him," Arthur had said. Yes, without
doubt. They would seek and put themselves to trouble to cultivate
this man because he had wealth and money-power, because he had what
they desired and valued, because, therefore, they could be related to
him. People would not seek or put themselves out of their way to
cultivate John Andrews, because he did not have wealth, money-power,
what they desired and valued, because they could not be related to
him, he and they not having things in common. What, then? Was
Caromb's interest in art and thought all or mainly pretense? It
would seem so, if what Arthur was saying were true. Even Arthur him-
self was evidently drawn to and fascinated by the man.

The phone rang. John left them to answer it.

It was a Mala paper again;

99

and as he stood there talking to the voice the strangest kind of sensation crept over him. What his voice spoke this other voice would write down. What was written would be fixationized and printed. What was printed would wing out to thousands of eyes and be read. What was read would cause the writing of letters, letters to him whom either the papers nor their readers had ever seen. And he, who had never seen WHXX them, would read some of his own words coming back to him, changed - vulgarized, idealized - by their passage through invisible human beings. Effects would be produced, yes, effects, undoubtedly. But without actual contact, without visible interchange of substances. All of it, this that was affecting himself and Marian and thousands of others, all of it was taking place in the unseen world. A vast shadow-situation made up of intricate shadow-relationships.

When he returned to them he suddenly asked Arthur, Arthur who was palpably present, who knew them, whom they knew, but who seemed to have nothing to do with it, "Arthur, what is going to come of it, this world of ours? I mean the world over there in the town of Caromb, in Mala, in the great country which lies over there beyond the hills. Not our little group, you, Marian, myself, our friends, but the world in general. Will it smash? Will it put an end to itself? Will there be a resurrection? And, strangely enough, may I ask a main question? Does it exist? Does that world really exist? Or is it merely an assumption, an unwarranted belief which we, having formed a compact between ourselves, seriously WXXX credit?"

"Oh, it exists, all," said Arthur, "but I am out of it and I don't expect to go back. What is the use? I'm far from the debacle and I'm going to stay far. I think it will smash."

90

"Why?" asked John.

Arthur was silent a while. "Because it hates itself, because it
hates living. It is looking for the easiest and the least painful
means of suicide. When it finds it...," and he made a gesture of
shooting himself. "I may sound unduly pessimistic, but look here,
John, see what's happening. Old age hates youth."

"No," said John, "you had better say that some old people hate some young people. I know some old people who love some young people."

"Let us grant that," said Arthur. He spoke rapidly. He was full of his ideas. "It is always in terms of 'some'. Let me continue. Women hate men. Men hate women. Both are against bringing new life into the world. Hitherto, life has always been able to side-step man's attacks, our attempts to destroy her. But now we have chemicals. You know what that means. What we could not do with our bare hands and our bare emotions and our bare minds the chemicals will do for us. Soon, then, we will deliver ourselves from the burden of life; and meanwhile, anyone who even mentions life as though it were good and desirable - well, he will have the devil's own care to preserve his own."

Suddenly Marian, her face mask-like, abruptly arose and without
a word left them.

Arthur arose. He laughed with nervous embarrassment. "Sorry," he
said, "I suppose I'm staying too long. You have work. Tell Marian
goodby for me, please. Or perhaps I can say it quickly. I'm awfully
sorry. You two must come and have tea with me soon."

"Yes," said John, holding out his hand, "and you must come and
have dinner with us."

91

John sought Marian. She had passed through the house and out a side door into the garden on the opposite side. "Aren't these colors gorgeous?" she asked without looking up. "I must gather some."

"What is the matter?" he asked.

"Nothing," she answered.

"Yes it is," he pressed. "Look at me. Do you still feel queer?"

"Very," she said. Quickly she glanced up, her eyes wide with fear. She clutched him. "John," she said, "will they attack us?"

"Will who attack us?"

"Men," she said, "mobs of men. I feel them coming. They will stone and beat and kill us."

He placed his arms about her and held her tightly, tenderly. "Ah, dear," he said, his voice low and sorrowful. "Ah, my dear. My precious darling. My darling Marian. Sweetheart, no. No. Don't credit such notions. Don't let them bore into you."

"But they will," she said, her head pressed against him. "They will. Arthur said so. They know we believe in life. They know we are in love."

"No, darling, no. They have nothing against us. Yes, I know that men sometimes in some places do such things. But not these men here. We have friends here, and the others aren't even thinking of us."

"Oh, they will," she said.

"I know what it is," said John. "I didn't tell you about it, but when we first came here I had those feelings too. That's why, that's the real reason why I was so urgent to leave. One night in particular I was terrified - at nothing. In my mind I saw evil headless shapes charging down upon us. Caromb seems to provoke such things, but it is all in us. There is nothing out there. Absolutely nothing. I got

93

IX

John was the first up. It was morning but grey as twilight and cold. He wanted to have a fire for Marian and breakfast. He opened the curtains, glancing out at the overcast dripping sky and the pounding sea grey save where the waves made foam against the rocks. It was bleak, this world, relentlessly oppressive in whatever mood. He shivered and speedily started a blaze in the hearth, putting on a large pitch-pine log which instantly began roaring. He made coffee and toast and prepared the fruit and called her. She ran to the fire in her purple dressing robe, not wishing to dress until the room had heated. She was bright and puckish. She did a dance before the fire, exaggerting how cold she felt. She called after him and soon had him in a more cheerful temper.

"What would we do if the night did not restore her?" he thought.

At breakfast they happy and intimate. No onlooker would have known what they were going through. In truth, just now, they were not going through much of anything disturbing. Only their bodies were awake, and their healthy animal energies. Not yet had their emotions, or forms or forces from the outside, assailed them.

John spoke of an idea which had been running in his mind. It would be a fine thing, he thought, to have company in the house, friends, people with whom they had been long acquainted. It would be a thing in itself, and serviceable for her to have friends surrounding her, acting as a buffer against the external world. The two of them alone, this was not enough to form an atmosphere - not now, not here in Caromb, not under these circumstances.

Several of their old friends were not more than a day's drive

94

away. Perhaps, if asked, they would like to come. They might enjoy it. Gull House might not be Gull House to them. There was plenty of room, three rooms on the second floor - ah, how he would like to see that balcony, that second floor, inhabited! - and, adjoining the garage, a sort of guest house. Every time they went in there, however, they saw lizards.

Marian pondered the suggestion. To John it seemed she was resisting it. She was in a queer state about people. She seemed to be withdrawing from them. Yes, she still liked people very much; yet, now, for some strange reason, it was as though she wanted to be off by herself, away from even him. His feeling still persisted, sometimes stronger than ever, that she was moving off, off into a queer impregnable fortress of her own.

All at once she surprised him. She said yes. She acted on it. As soon as the breakfast things were cleared she wrote the letters.

He went to his work-table. Through the windows he could see the garden, a squat creeping pine tree, the two roads meeting, a darkened telegraph pole with the wires ending. Gull House was the last house. Beyond was the rise of land through an opening of which he could be seen the grey sea waters and, over the way, dimly emerging from the rain-mist, the jutting arm of Point Goros with the high gaunt rocks at the end. Always the end.

This, he thought, is a view of what men are pleased to call the factual world, the world of reality, of things tangible, graspable - trees, telephone poles, rocks. This, his body sitting at its work-table, this body of his was also of that world. Yes, it was all very clear and all very simple. All existing things were said to belong to it - and all the rest was dismissed as mere fancy, of no real concern. It was clear and simple and reassuring, quite.

P5

And there was Marian's body too, her body writing letters. What more was there to it? Nothing more, absolutely nothing more - from a factual physical point of view - to those who did not sense and did not care. Teftwo bodies seated in a room with a sea and a mountain view. They had just had breakfast and they would soon have lunch. Their fears, sufferings, struggles, loves, faiths - these were nothing.

It was nothing that men unknown to them had exposed her, his wife, to fears and aches and terrors which they would give their lives to protect their own wives from. No, this was nothing. It was nothing that he and all men were caught in a vicious invisible machine which made each do to the other what he would not have done to him. This was nothing. The machine was invisible. Most of the men, to any one man, were unseen. The complications of life, the absentee system of control and contact, removing any given man miles away from the men he dealt with, had reduced human beings to mere abstracts, like figures, without content, feelingless: one could mutilate or kill men with no more thought or feeling than when one erased figures or scribbled tore up a sheet of paper. It was nothing that each man by his own willful or unwitting acts perpetuated the unholy engine whose wheel, at the next turn, might catch and mangle him, his wife and children, and all he loved and all he devoted his life to achieve. No, nothing. Nothing, that is, to rocks and trees and sand and sea and rock-like bodies with dead souls.

a

The end of the detour.

There was a knock on the back door. John went. It was the grocery boy. "Good morning," said John, "a bit of bad weather."

96

"Yeah," said the boy, taking the stuff out of the box and plumping it on the kitchen table.

"Such fogs we have in Caromb!" said John. He arched his brows. He rocked back and forth.

The boy shot a look at him. "This ain't fog," he said. "This is rain."

"Oh, really," said John. "Sorry."

They drove uptown. John's feeling was to keep the papers away from Marian; but, still, having unwittingly let her see the one of the previous day it might be best to show her at least one more. It would hardly be worse. It might be better. He bought it, a different sheet, one reputed to be the most sensational. Glancing at the headlines he was surprised and relieved to read, CAROMB GREETS ANDREWS. Not bad, was his comment.

Before returning to the car he went for the mail. Again there was a boxful. He opened the letters hurriedly and then pocketed them. He would not let Marian know. There was a similar assortment, good and bad. But now too there were several asking for his help. He smiled sadly. He who might well need help was being asked for it.

"Not bad today," he told her. "I am greeted." Marian took the paper. "Caromb greets Andrews!" she exclaimed. Her face was aghast. "Why," she said indignantly, "why shouldn't Caromb greet us?"

"Truly," John replied, "why not? But you are missing the point. You must remember that this is a sequel, a fiction following the fiction of yesterday. In the first chapter I stirred Caromb. In this second chapter I am greeted. Do you see?"

Their eyes were reading further. They read of how Caromb, suddenly realizing that two distinguished people were in its midst, had

97

arisen to salute them, a select body of Caromb citizens going out
to pay respects to the lovers in their honeymoon cottage. "A first
rate story," was John's smiling comment. "Yesterday a paper conjured
the question. Today the paper conjures the solution. Well, good. They
might have had it the other way - and we would have been just as
helpless. What next?"

A number of statements in quotations, presumably having been
given to the paper by leading Caromb citizens including the mayor of
the town, Burrows, Williams, and Mrs Caston, all to the general
effect that John and Marian Andrews, two in love, were worthy of
high regard and therefore it was quite all right that they be in and
be accepted by Caromb. "There," said John, "that settles it. And we
must thank this paper which, as I have noticed before, is often far
more decent than most reputed to be *decent* journals."

"Thank - decent -" Marian exclaimed. She was even more overwrought
and indignant. Then her expression changed. "John," she asked, "do
you think Mr Burrows and Mrs Caston and Frank Williams really made those
statements and if they did not what will they think of us? Maybe
they will think we made them up."

"You can trust them to know newspapers."

"But I can't," she said. "I didn't know before. I believed everything I saw printed."

John shrugged.

Frank Williams had invited them to tea that afternoon. Since their
meeting with him at Miss Robert's the first day of their arrival in
Caromb they had seen him ever so often, each time with greater liking
and sense of mutual understanding. He lived on the other side of
town at a place, he had said, marked by a unicorn. They found it; and

33

they found him, his wife Hilda, and Alice Train with chairs drawn
before the fire in a room, smaller than theirs at Gull House, but
also built of redwood, clean, odorous, dull-gleaming redwood, the
wood of the houses of Caromb.

Williams was restless. He seemed to feel that the room, that the
way he hitherto had lived, confined him. He behaved like a person
all but ready to break loose and throw himself completely into some
new work. Soon he asked, "What is all of the row about?" He shot a
friendly fiery glance at them.

They assumed he meant the publicity. They were glad. He was the
only person in town, save Miss Roberts that once, who had broached
the matter. They were glad for an opportunity to talk of it, to hear
what others thought, what had been passing in the minds of people
who knew them.

John shrugged. "Apparently it is a public matter, and apparently
there is no love, no faith, in the lives of the people. Love and
belief seem to have gone out of life. I had not realized it."

"It is a damn shame," said Williams emphatically. He was stirred.
"Why can't two people be in love? Whose business is it? I have been
in love. I still am. I have believed. I still do. Those damn papers
invading one's private life. They are exhibitionists and vulgarizers
of the worst sort. And so are most of us. We read the papers and it
is only because we buy them that they can exist. I don't know who is
to blame most, the press or the public. Both. How did it happen,
Andrews?"

John explained.

"You should have been warned against Dunney," said Williams. "He
is in love himself, but he has a game to play."

99

Marian suddenly asked, "Mr Williams, did you make that statement in the paper today?"

He was surprised. "Of course not," he said. "You didn't believe I did, did you? Hell, no. I don't think any of the others did. Those fellows up there in Mala are fiction writers. They have more imagination than poets, imagination of a kind. Maybe Dunney supplies them."

"Do you think anyone, Mrs Caston, Mr Burrows, will believe we did it?" she asked.

"Of course not," said Williams. Marian was relieved. Williams added, "We've all had experience with the press. Are they still after you?" he addressed John.

"They are," he said, "but this is the queer feature of it. Dunney is the only one we've actually seen. He is the only one who has seen us. All the rest has happened through the wires through the air. My voice speaks to someone - I assume it is someone - up there. The words are fictionized and run through invisible machines. Out they come and wing away on thousands of sheets to millions of eyes. I daresay there have been broadcastings - unseen voices speeding through the air to unseen ears, unseen ears hearing unseen voices. It is uncanny. Something is happening without doubt; and it is happening, presumably, in what some are pleased to call our modern factual machine-made world. Is it? To me it is uncanny."

Williams said, "I had never thought of it in that light."

"Neither had I," said John, "until we came to sombre beautiful Caromb and this engine of the Lord descended upon us to take us for a ride - ghosts, in a ghost-chariot, taking a ghost and presenting him to a million other dwellers in limbo. I have a growing suspicion, Williams, that we all are dead or dreaming - but we do not know it.

190

And why we emphasize so-called tangible things so much is because, like a person in a dark room, we, dreaming, slightly waking up, can only see and cling to and guide ourselves by the most obvious, but not therefore the most real or valuable, objects. And why we cling to mass, to quantity, is because we cannot see to value quality. And why we cling to hate is because we cannot see to value love. It is not a matter of evil; it is a matter of consciousness. The world is not evil. It simply is not awake, not conscious. One has strange sensations when one begins to wake up."

And John, for one, suddenly felt as queer in Williams' room as he had felt in Gull House. The lowered intent faces with their strange expressions, the flames in the hearth, the gleaming wood, even the tinkle and china of the tea things seemed cast in a fantastic mould.

For a while no one spoke. It was still, curiously still. They were back in the woods. The pounding of the sea could not be heard.

Later, in a group, they went to a party at the Stephens. This was the first large gathering of people John and Marian had entered since the invisible machine had caught them up. They were alert with sensers out to learn what if any new feelings about them were circulating. Not a thing could they sense. Everyone was cordial to them and in other ways just the same as when they had first met them during the first days of Caromb.

They were shown into a large sitting-room also made of redwood but more richly furnished than any place they had seen. Thick rugs, large comfortable chairs and sofas, soft lights - everything substantial and inhabited. John said to himself that here at last was a Caromb-house which would give him no strange sensations. He said this until he glanced up and saw swung from a balcony the stuffed

101

heads of wild animals. Mr Stephens was a big game hunter. This explained their presence there. But it did not explain the way in which John saw them. All at once he had a queer sense that the creatures were alive, as alive as any of the fifteen or more people in the room. And then, glancing at the people, something reversed in him and he felt that all of them, himself included, were but animal heads, stuffed, swung about the room, swung about the balcony of the world. He shook himself.

He heard the company talking. The talk seemed fantastic, remote, having no bearing on and nothing to do with anything which seemed real to him. These were the active good citizens of Caromb and they were talking, naturally enough to them, of civic matters - the coming town elections, school issues, taxes, the repair of the roads, the problems of an art-theatre, the musical society and visiting artists, charity and welfare work. Stephens, a retired lawyer and a concisely spoken intelligent man, made his points. Miss Roberts talked. Mrs Damon. Others put in their words - and John felt so completely out of it, so disembodied - that was it: if these good folk were in their right minds in their right bodies then he was out of his - or the reverse might be true. Which?

He looked at Marian. She was beautiful and stately but far away in the wing-chair near the fire. She told him nothing. Arthur, his face spirited and gleaming, was on a low stool beside her. He told him nothing. Williams was buried in himself, unmindful of the others, restless, turning something over in his mind. Nothing from him.

Then, at the request of the women, Mrs Atwood took the x centre of the stage. She was tall with dark eyes and black hair, haughty and tragic. With a flourish she placed herself at a long table. Rolls

192

of laundry paper were put ready to hand. Pencils were sharpened -
and she was
ready to begin a series of automatic writings.

John was requested to sit near. Arthur, smiling skeptically, came
over. Others. Mrs Atwood had to have a group about her at the table.
Their role, they were informed, was to ask questions. Someone spoke
up.

"No," said Mrs Atwood, "it must not be personal. The Voice does
not like to answer personal questions. Please ask it something
general, philosophic." She smiled graciously as if to ease over the
dictatorial manner of the agent of the Voice.

A general question was asked; and Mrs Atwood's hand, as though
seized by a whirlwind, began scrolling indecipherable signs along
the sheet and her voice, deep and vibrantly prophetic, began speaking
what the pencil wrote. It told why man was on earth and what his
destiny was. It stopped. There was an uncomfortable pause.

Arthur, forgetting instructions, became personal. It called him
a silly boy. It called him an insufferable individualist.

To another query it replied emphatically, "There are no gentlemen."
This came out with a sly smile from Mrs Atwood.
"Let's ask it about the moon," Mrs Atwood blithely suggested. "The
other night it said some amazing things. It may repeat itself. Let
us hope. So someone ask it about the people of the moon."

The question was duly asked and it described shapes, colors,
forms, movements...

John was greatly surprised to note the suddenly changed feelings
which had come over most of the gathering. These good people, these
solid citizens of Caromb who only a short while before had been
speaking of taxes and elections were now completely absorbed with
the indecipherable writings, with the Voice was it came through

103

tragic Mrs Atwood, of an assumed-to-be disembodied spirit-dweller
of a brighter world. Ah, Caromb, Caromb.

Afterwards, Mrs Atwood lead a discussion as to whether or not the
Voice were a real voice or simply the workings of her subconsciousness.
She wanted to be objective about it. She inclined towards the latter
view. John's opinion was asked by the way, as a matter of social
courtesy.

John called Arthur to one side. "Arthur," he said, "I've changed
my mind. You remember my idea that it was the women of Caromb who
built the quaint little cottages to hide away in? It is not so. It is
the men. The men double over."

Arthur laughed.

"It is the men," John repeated. "The women - look at them - they
are upright, forthright, and forceful here - Miss Roberts, Mrs
Atwood, Mrs Damon. They dominate. "Look," he continued, "four men,
twelve women. All night, save when Stephens spoke of politics, they
have run the show. We men - we have been shadows. We have thought our
thoughts but clapped our hands. There is a matriarchy in Caromb."

Arthur laughed guardedly, as though feeling that the subject of
woman rule, like the subject of the giant looming mounains or the
tragedy which long ago had fallen upon the region, was not a thing
to be mentioned openly.

As they were leaving Williams spoke to John. "Something has started
working. My mind is full of things. My muscles too. I want action.
I'm fed-up with talk. In a day or so I'd like to drop in to see you."

John said all right and said goodnight.

They had offered to drive Alice Train to Portello. Through black
country roads, black-bright ecause of the moonlight, through the

194

streets of Caromb without street lights, up the hill, down another
they whizzed her home. She made a date with them to come and meet
her husband Howard and see his paintings. They set back.

Suddenly John said, "Marian, do you remember this? This is the
same road we travelled that first fateful night ages ago from Por-
tello to Caromb." His voice was cheerful; his spirit was unaccount-
ably heavy.

Marian said nothing until they came to the place where the forest
of pine trees, gatherers of gloom, closed over the road. "I remember
this," she said, shrinking.

All at once he seemed to fall away from himself, from her, from
the Stephens' party, from Arthur, from Williams, from everyone and
everything thing well-disposed until he felt himself, naked and
defenseless, with the woman he loved, exposed in a dark merciless
universe - and died came upon him, a dead great and vast, too vast
to bear, and which soon was narrowed to fear of night-Caromb.

In him a voice cried, "Fly! Turn back! Fly from Caromb! You are
entering it again. You are out of it. Now, at this moment, you are
out and free of it. Don't return. Don't go back. For your life,
don't return to Gull House. Leave your things. Lose them. Of what
account are they? Leave them to the hands which tend the valley. Fly,
you and Marian! Turn back! Escape the fate of sombre Caromb!"

"I will," he shouted within himself. "We will. We will fly from
here. The shadow has descended upon us already, but we can leave
and cut it in two. We don't have to go through with it. Let us be
branded with the half all the rest of our days. We can escape the
burden of the entire stamp. Yes, I can turn about and fly through
Portello and away and away to the road leading to our own bright

105

world".

The car swooped down the hill.

Suddenly Gull House, a picture of it, flashed before him - Gull House, dark, dready, cold, dismal, huddling like a spectre at the end of the road where the sea pounded. At least they need not return to it. They could put up at a hotel. He would tell Marian. No, he would not. He could not. He could bear to risk hearing her say again, "Why, John, of course not. I like it out there. I love the garden. I love the view of the sea and the mountains." To hear from her now what to him was still an inexplicable persistence would do something to him, to their relationship.

Besides, he could not put his dred into her. It would not be right. She was bearing enough. He could sense her concealed but almost constant suffering over the shocking notion that love was taboo, that life was taboo, that they were violating a league of hate to love each other, that she was violating a league of death to have a child.

The car sped down the pine shrouded main street pass the hotel.

Soon they were on the black-bright road leading to... There it stood, huddled as he had pictured it. At the far end of the way he could discern the form, and a shudder of revulsion shot through him.

"Well," he said ironically, "here we are. Gull House, our Caromb home."

He put the car in the garage. Marian was holding the flashlight. He took it from her and cautiously went towards the door as if he were a burglar. Marian walked close behind him.

They went in, John flashing the livid light. To their sight it was dismal and empty. But a pleasant odor of redwood, faintly aromatic,

106

also greeted them. He switched on the lights and drew the curtains.
She went to the hearth, as though there were a fire in it, and hugged
herself. She glanced at the balcony and grew more nervous. "John,"
she said, "would you just as soon go up - no, don't bother."

"I will go," he said. The steps creaked. The balcony creaked. He looked in all the rooms. "No one there," he said grimly. He came down.

The phone jangled, sending bell-bats skying through the room up
to the gabled roof and the queer high angles over the balcony.

"Don't answer it," she cried. "It is a Mala newspaper again. I
know it is." The sudden sounds had frightened her - what they meant,
even more.

"Guess it is," he said. He was tingling. "No one else would be calling at this time of night. I suppose they've been trying all evening to reach us."

It rang again. "John, don't you?"

He said, "But if I don't they'll ring and ring and we'll have no
peace if we stay here, and if they want me again and if we leave
and run away we'll have bat-telephones and bat-wires and bat-bells
hanging us all over the universe."

He strode over and picked up the receiver. The action did some-
thing for him. He felt energized, poised, in command of himself. He
talked. He hung up. Marian did not ask for any more than she had
heard. She went into her room.

The bell rang again - another paper. They were faster him for
fresh items. The first batch had worn out; and, apparently, they
were going to continue playing him up. And again it rang. This time
it was a news service which supplied papers all over the country

197

and throughout the world. Now, then, if before there had been any
doubt, he knew the thing was going to or had already swept abroad.
But he would not tell Marian of this, not this night, not until
morning when she would have to know. In the morning she would be
prepared to face any number of possibly distressing developments.
have

As he walked into her room he was curiously brisk and business-like. His talk with the ghost-voices over the wires had braced him, given him the feeling, "Well, I've done that. Let's hope this is the end. What more can they want? I have played the game. I have given them enough to last a life-time."

He tucked Marian in bed and kissed her. "And so, darling. I feel
this is the end. I don't think they'll bother us again. Or, if they
do, I will tell them I have nothing more to say."

She leaned forward and asked, hopefully, "You won't answer them
again?"

"No," he promised. He was deeply glad to see that his words seemed to clear away everything. She smiled, wistfully, tenderly, still a little fearfully as she kissed him, but she smiled nonetheless.

"Goodnight," he said, "and very sweet dreams, dear."

He went to his bed; but, instead of preparing for it, he merely
seated himself as though waiting for something. He waited in stillness. Soon he heard her regular deep breathing. He arose and stepped outside onto the stone porch.

The moon was brilliant. Over the way, high up, he saw twinkling
his two stars over the ranch house. Even the house itself this night
he could discern, but it looked ghostly. He heard the pounding of
the waves on the beach. He had an impulse to stroll down. He stopped.
Someone, perhaps Arthur, had warned him about the undertow. "Don't

109

X

Their chairs were near each other on the porch and they were rest-
ing there, sunning themselves, gazing at the valley and the dark
green hills, lazing through the morning with a quiet sense that they
merited a day of peaceful drifting; drifting, John felt, in bond,
prisoners of fate, held captive in beauty on the far side of the
sombre magnificent boundary of the edge of the world.

"Dear," he said, taking her hand. He had to tell her, but he would
try to break the news so as not to disturb her mood. He hoped he
could drop it gently like a small stone in a pool. "Last night seem-
ed to be an end. I have a feeling that something ended last night.
You have it too?"

She nodded. The sun gleamed on her hair, making it appear unusually
luxurious, bronzed, golden. Her eyes were blue and very bright and
clear. No marks of any kind were visible on her countenance. Her
skin was soft and smooth. The color of her cheeks was a delicate
decoration of rose. Had it not been that her entire presence gave
an impression of strength and maturity one would have taken her, this
morning, for an inexperienced young girl with all life fresh and un-
touched in her. Her glance rested on the flowers, the bright flowers
of the garden.

"Yes," he continued, "I have a sense that the storm, if such it
was, passed from our area last night. There will be reverberations
of it about here necessarily; but not much more, no more, will
start up."

Her lips twitched slightly and across her brushed a fleeting
wistfulness. She turned her eyes to meet his. She was thankful. She

110
100m

was still tranquil.

"And so," he said, "don't let what I am now going to say upset you. But I think we would be wise to be, in ourselves, prepared. I did not want to tell you last night. It may be nothing, nothing at all - still, you should know of it in advance so if anything should happen it will not catch you unawares. We have been so closed in here that we have not thought much of the wide world, the world beyond the hills, the world of this great country and of our mother and our friends in all those different places. Over there has seemed a bit unreal. But it is probable, you know, that something of all this has reached out there. It is not merely a local event. In fact, now I am certain that if nothing went out before it will certainly go out now - and it just may happen that the storm will transfer itself and set up in those other regions. One of the calls last night was from a news service which supplies papers everywhere."

Marian had contained herself until he had finished. Now she leaned forward, confusion coming over her, calamity working in her features. "Our mother," he said. "Oh, John, think of her. But she certainly believes in love. And there must be people in Paula who are in love, but perhaps they do not want others to know it. We were told and taught to believe in love. Do you suppose people really don't, and that is why they are publishing all of this about us as if nobody was ever in love before?"

"There, there, dear," he said, "don't work yourself up. Nothing may happen, but I felt I had to remind you of the possibility. It is merely possible, nothing more."

X (over)

"But, John," she said, "we haven't heard from her. Oh, dear. If she has seen those horrid photographs. Why, she couldn't believe her

101

eyes - and then I don't know what would happen to her. Can't we do something? Why hasn't she written us? Perhaps she is ill. Maybe already she has seen it and it has made her ill. Oh, she is ill. I know it. I feel it."

"It will be a shock," he said gravely, "a terrible shock, as it was to us. For one who has lived a private life it is no simple thing suddenly to be confronted with pictures and stories about those one loves spread over the front pages of yellow sheets. But she will withstand it. You know how mother is - gentle, almost fragile in some respects, but even this fragility stems down into a strength which has made me wonder at it many many times. She is strong and courageous, our mother is. She not only believes - she loves. And besides, I do not think for a moment that anything will happen in Paula. How could it?"

"How could it?" she echoed strangely.

"Truly," he said. "It was there we have lived. It was there we loved. It was there we were married. Paula knows us. No storm can break there. I was only thinking that it might strike Paula from some other nearby place. Goodness alone knows what those outside papers might make of it. But now, save to prepared for whatever may occur, let's not cross the brige until we come to it and certainly don't imagine all the worst possible happenings."

Marian said nothing. She leaned back in her chair. John leaned back in his. He closed his eyes. He saw their mother, white-haired, with her fine sensitive face and deep luminous eyes and her body and her spirit, that body of spirit of hers, delicate yet stalwart, the conquerors of years, and oh so rich with love and faith for them. He saw her moving about her home, their home, leaving her

112
142

room and going downstairs and passing through the cozy living-room and the dining-room and the kitchen and out on the porch and through the grape field to her beloved flower garden with all the flowers there and the stand of water for the birds to bathe in.

He saw the house itself, white frame, surrounded by its lovely lawn and the tall elm trees, the great friendly elms bending to flicker the house with shade yet letting the sun pass. And the other houses on the street, and the other streets of Paula with their great friendly elms, and the houses of their friends, open and welcoming, and all the fine things that had happened there, and the old brown court-house, the town square with the benches, main street on a Saturday afternoon with all the farm people in, the drug store where he had bought Marian ice cream cones, and the lovely little church where they were married and the whole church and all of Paula rising with joy and the strange joy of deep sorrow and beauty to join and bless them. Oh, beauty. Oh, sorrow. Oh, beauty and something very very sacredly scared.

Paula. Their Paula, where two could be in love and others could love them and they could love others and everyone could be in love. No, nothing could happen in Paula to harm them or to harm their mother or to harm their friends or to harm Paula where there was no sombre dread.

Why had they ever left it? Why had they taken this detour, this torturous detour into remote lands? Who moved them? Who drew the maps and routed them? What moved them, for what purpose? Their own? Another's? Were their lives, like the growths of Caromb Valley, things which sprang up from earth-fertile soil under the cultivation of unseen hands to grow and blossom, yes, blossom - and bear fruit

113
143

and food for unseen mouths?

On the road beyond the hedge a car stopped. John opened his eyes.
A man got out. It was Mr Stephens. "Good morning," called John, "
come in." Marian quickly gathered her hair.

Stephens made his way through the path between the flowers. His
face was jovial and open. His body was substantial, of daylight-earth.
His manner was companionable and somewhat fatherly. He had the
reputation, they had been told, of being the one man in Caromb to
whom everyone turned with the feeling that they could absolutely
trust him.

"I was just passing," he said, with a broad easy smile and a wave
of his hand. "I saw you sitting out and you didn't seem busy so I
thought I'd drop in." He brought with him a solid reassuring air of
leisurely security and good-will.

"Good," said John, "we are glad you did. Here, take this chair."

"How are you liking it here?" asked Stephens; and when they had
answered he said, "I rather like it myself. I have found things to
do. I busy myself with local projects and the bank and the schools
and sometimes I have legal work but I have given up practicing. I
have my workshop. You must come and see it. Wood carving is my hobby.
And do you know what?" he asked, leaning forward, a bright smile in
his eyes, "I am really enjoying it. And do you know why? Because I
charge
don't have to shrink anything. We have enough to live on - unless
the depression breaks us and sends me back to work again. Meanwhile,
I am free to do everything for fun, for the simple satisfaction of
doing it as well as I can."

John nodded. "We would have a different economic system and

114
104

different people with a different life, wouldn't we, if everyone
felt that way."

"Yes," said Stephens, "we would, we certainly would. But I don't know - I liked the fight when I was a young man making my mark in it. It wasn't as bad as the communists would have us believe. Oh, conditions are bad enough, I grant. They are bad now. But that doesn't mean that the system itself is necessarily bad. It simply means that some unwise people who didn't see what they were doing gave it an unfortunate twist. Give us a new system. Let soviets be established - and all these social idealists will find that there will be unwise people who give socialism or communism an unfortunate twist. People are people - and there will be both good and bad in whatever system you will. Agree?"

"Yes," said John, "in part."

Stephens continued, "I am not saying there ought not be changes. We need some radical ones. No one knows that better than the men who are in power. I simply mean that in the end and now and in the past and in the future is it human nature and not economic systems that we have to take into account. Man was first and man will be last. Let's change him and we won't have to bother about systems. What do you think? We've been hearing about your ideas and my wife has suggested that you might like to come over some evening and give an informal talk."

"Surely I would," said John. "I agree with you about man. Then, however, comes the question: how can he be changed if a system, economic, political, educational, religious, what you will, has him as though in a straightjacket? It seems to me there is reason, though not all reason, on the side of those who claim that first the jacket

115
105

must be removed. Take us today. Money is our symbol of security. If we possess money we feel secure. If we don't we feel lost. If it is threatened we become wobbly and clutch at it in terror. We are obsessed by it - and the dollar-complex is one of our worst pathological forms. Agree?" He smiled.

Stephens smiled too. "The dollar-complex, that's a new one, a new phrase, I mean. Yes, I agree - and, as you would say, in part."

"So then," said John. "It's existence is an almost inescapable outgrowth of a competitive society. For in this kind of society I will constantly have the fear lest what I have you or some circumstance will take from me - and if it goes I am lost. So we are like sheep who must, all the days of lives, labor and suffer to grow wool with the constant dread in their hearts that at any minute we will be shorn or slaughtered. Now it seems to me that society should be of such a form that it aims, in so far as is humanly possible, to guarantee to each human being the necessities of life - and only then will we be released from dollar-fear, and only then, speaking now in terms of the great masses, will men be free, like yourself, to work for the kind of satisfactions and experiences which distinguish men from animals."

John paused for Stephens' comments. Marian started to speak but did not. Stephens was evidently pondering the strange matter of the dollar-complex. John suddenly smiled and said, "For example. Here I am. Here you are." They were looking directly at each other. "You like me. I like you. We are friends. We have reasons to trust each other. We have no cause for distrust. Now suppose I ask you to loan me a ladder.

backsladder. You would, wouldn't you, quite readily, with no draws-

116

-106-

"Surely," said Stephens promptly.

"And suppose I ask you to loan me a tool or a book."

"You can have it."

"But," said John, "suppose I ask you to loan me five hundred dollars."

Stephens blinked, twitched, looked away, but quickly caught hold of himself. He glanced at John. John laughed. He laughed.

"Do you see what I mean?" asked John.

"I see," Stephens laughed.

"Yes," said John, "just the mere mention of a money transaction makes queer things happen in us. Automatically we are changed and our entire relationship is altered for the worse. Something clutches us. We clutch it. We draw into our shells and become calculating and distrustful. A tool, anything not directly connected with the money-complex - I can have it and you can have it from me. A dollar - ah, that is different!"

Again they laughed. Other matters were taken up.

Soon Stephens asked, "Have you met Jordan and Burrows?"

"Yes," said John.

"What do you think of them?"

"Interesting."

"Have you read their books?" Stephens went on. "I suppose you have. Now, for myself, I too think they have interesting things to say, but there is one point where we do not agree. I don't follow them when they begin writing all of that stuff about Nature. What is to be gained by digging up those old superstitions? We are better off, far better off, without them. It took the human mind centuries to outgrow them. What's the sense of bringing them back? I don't

117
107

see anything in those mountains or on Point Goros or in the Great Dadam to fear, do you?"

John shrugged.

"But I'll tell you what I do fear, and it is the only fear I have - men," said Stephens emphatically, "men with black masks on their faces, men full of malice."

John quickly glanced at Marian and saw the words strike her; but Stephens continued before he could do anything.

"Malice, malice-bent men. There is no malice in Nature. There is no malice in wild animals or in so-called savage men. I've lived amongst them. We don't how their ways and they do things which seem cruel to us. Maybe they are cruel. But there is only one place where you will find malice, a deliberate desire to give pain and to destory - in so-called civilized men."

Marian was trying to appear merely interested, but John could sense how she really felt. He could almost see her picturing the world's black-maked men marching with menace to crucify her and him, dramatizing Stephens' words, fearing some immediate actual event, feeling calamity strike them unmercifully. Their tranquil morning, what had become of it? For her there was not a shred left. There was only this, this menace of malice-bent men.

× (over)

At length Stephens arose, saying it was far past time for him to attend to business. They shook hands with him.

Marian said nothing. She was holding in.

John heard someone at the door. He went. He returned. "Who was it?" she asked.

"Another man asking for work." It is strange how they come. Several

118
108

days will pass and no one will appear. Then, all in one morning,
there will be four or five of them. It would seem that they travel
in small bands, making the rounds from place to place. And this too
is something to note - they all wear overalls, clean ones at that;
they all look like a better grade of men; and they tip their hats,
smile, and have cheerful faces. Think of that - similing and having
a cheerful face after they have been refused God only knows how many
times."

"Oh, dear," said Marian, "those poor men. What do they do? I wish
we had work. How do their families live? What happens to the women
and the children? Can't we do something?"
"What could they do for anyone?" Suddenly he wanted to get away. He reasonably thought he had to go uptown before the bank closed. He asked her if she wanted to go. She said yes. Not for anything would she stay in the house alone.

There was a batch of mail, letters from known and unknown people all over the country. "So," said John; and it was clear to him that even the first stories had had a nation wide circulation. Suddenly he felt queer, shaky, quaking all over, as if he were witnessing a raging forest fire, a great sweeping conflagration which he in some strange naive way had unwittingly started and was responsible for. That it was occurring in the invisible world, this aspect of it temporarily completely left him; and he felt, for the time, that it was all taking place before his eyes with a sort of wild reality - and he felt guilty, for the first time guilty of having done something for the sake of love.

The letters from casual friends somewhat reassured him. They seemed normal. They congratulated him and Marian, wished them success and,

119
-109

with unconscious irony, happiness. "Yes, surely, happiness," was
his comment. "Happiness here, now, in sombre Caromb. If they only
knew..." But there was something queer about these messages too. How
was it that now, only now, months after the marriage, all of these
different acquaintances were just coming to know of it? And so
sensationally. Goodness knows enough announcements had been sent out.

Those from unknown persons contained the by now usual assortment
of affirming and condemning notes. But John was struck by one thing.
All the nasty letters were unsigned, as if even in the writers of
them there was still sufficient decency left to make them ashamed of,
and not want to be identified with, their own filth.

And there were letters asking John and Marian for advice. Should
two in love risk the publicity and the public anathema of marrying?
Should two people marry for love?

John handed all the good notes to Marian. She quickly glanced
over the postmarks. "None," he said. "None from Paula. Nothing from
mother."

"Oh, dear," she cried. "Poor mother. What shall we do? We must do
something."

"But," said John, "since no word has come from her or from Paula
it is possible that nothing has happened there."

"It has," she said. "Look at these from everywhere. Of course it
has happened in Paula and they are so shocked they don't know what to
write. It has made mother sick. She never writes when she is sick.
She doesn't want to let anyone know."

"Well, then," he said, "perhaps we had better write, explaining
how it all started and letting her know we are all right. We'll each
send a note."

120
110

This was at least an act.

"Here are two," he said, handing her the two he had held back till the end. "I think one is from Jessie and the other from Katherine."

Jessie and Katherine were two of the friends whom Marian had written to invite to visit them.

"Jessie and Phil can't come," she said, looking up with disappointment.

"Too bad," he said, and to himself he thought, "Worse luck. Fate simply won't let us fill Gull House. We've got to work through this alone and inhabit it ourselves. When? How?"

"But listen to what Katherine says. She says she may be able to run up with young Alice during Easter week."

"Easter week?" asked John, a strange expression on his face. "Is it near Easter? I suppose it is. We have lost track of all time. But how strange it sounds - Easter."

"It sounds strange to me," she said. "I don't know where we are or what day or month it is or even what season or what year. I don't know how old I am. My own name doesn't seem to belong to me. You look strange. Everything seems impossible, as if it simply can't be happening to me, to us. All these," and she ruffled the letters in her lap, "what are they? Perhaps we will wake up when we're awake -"

121

XI

Towards evening as John was building the fire to light and warm them through the night of Gull House Dunney suddenly presented himself. They were quite surprised. They had not seen or heard of him for some time. He was as chubby and bouncing as ever, but hetic, fidgety, apologetic. His wife was with him.

Marian could be nice to her. Now, to some degree, she could be pleasant to him. John had helped her to disassociate the man, who, taken by himself, was likeable enough, from his horrid game. But when he disclosed the purpose of his visit she recoiled.

He had just received a telegram from *Ourpas*, the great weekly news magazine, asking that he obtain from Andrews a statement of his ideas. He had come to see if John would be willing to write down a brief account of his views, beliefs, and values.

"You know *Ourpas*, of course," he said to John. They were standing. Dunney smoked and moved about. For some reason it seemed they could not sit down in a leisurely group about the fire. The two women looked on.

John nodded. "It is one of our contemporary phenomena. Its circulation is enormous. It has a spicy way of putting things. I read it sometimes. One or two people I know used to work on it."

"Will you do it?" asked Dunney.

John glanced at Marian. She said nothing but her expression was enough. "Why not?" he asked. "I don't think we can lose anything by it. *Ourpas* is a magazine, not a newspaper, with the dignity of a magazine to maintain. I think we can expect good treatment from it. Besides, since they have asked for a statement they probably want to

112

run it just as I write it. A good article in *Ourpas* would do much to counteract the sensational stories. You have been wondering what we could do, wanting something. Well, here it is."

"Indeed it would. Indeed it is," said Dunney.

Still Marian said nothing. Mrs Dunney was uneasy.

"What do you think, dear?" asked John.

She suddenly declared, "I don't want you to do it."

Dunney winced. He felt guilty. He felt she was condemning him for all that had happened. He smiled. He squirmed.

"But, dear," John pressed, "it simply can't be any worse than it is, and here is a chance to make things better. *Ourpas* doesn't want to run a sensational story. It wants to present news, something of general interest."

Her retort was rapid. "Then how can it want to feature 'Two In Love'?

"That is just the point," Dunney put in, eagerly but hesitantly. "It hasn't asked a word about that angle of it. It is interested in Mr Andrews' views. It wants to feature the reasons for his belief in life."

"I can't see why that would be news," she said.

"You can't?" asked Dunney, wide-eyed. "Why, that is radical!"

"Apparently they see," said John, "and it seems to me we might take them at their word. We can't go through life being suspicious and skeptical of everybody and everything. We've simply got to trust some people. And, as I say, even should they sensationalize it, it will simply be one more wild story. All of the others are galloping about. One more won't make any appreciable difference. I think we ought to take the chance that it may turn out well."

All at once Marian surprised him by saying with her lips, "Oh,

123
113

all right. I suppose it doesn't matter. Do it if you think best."

As John was moving towards his typewriter Dunney said, "By the way," he coughed, "my wife and I would like you and Mrs Andrews to have dinner with us tonight. Can you? We'd like it very much."

They had treated him humanly. He had recognized it. This was a human social gesture in response to their treatment of him. Also, it was partly to atone, in some slight way, for the guilt he felt. And he wanted them simply as people he liked. The Andrews were interesting company.

Marian said she did not think they could. Personally she did not want to. She was no mood for a dinner with Dunney and his wife. His reappearance, his request, had upset her very much, stirring up all her feelings about the publicity. It was a very unpleasant pattern repeating itself - Dunney, John saying yes, she saying no - and there would be, she was sure of it, more disasterous effects. John had promised to give no more. Only that morning he had said no more, last night was an end. Why was he, now? Why had he? He seemed to be caught up by some strange force. The force swept him along. He swept her along. Both were being carried, swept along. But there was a practical reason for not accepting. They were expecting guests that evening. This was the reason she gave.

John pointed out that the guests would not arrive till eight o'clock or later. He urged that they go. His private feeling was that they ought to acknowledge Dunney's attempt.

It was decided that they would. Dunney promised to get them back to Gull House in time.

While John wrote, the others gathered about the hearth.

Shortly he was finished. "There," he exclaimed, "that should do."

124

114

I will read it." He did. It was a clear simply-worded concise formula-
tion of his conclusions about life and its possibilities.

"Excellent," said Dunney. "Splendid."

Even Marian was won. "It is good," she exclaimed. "It is one of
the best things you have ever written. Oh, I do hope they will print
it. If they do, then you will be right, John. It will help us. People
will see what we really stand for. It will help everybody." She was
thinking specially of her mother in far off Paula. She was thinking,
too, of herself and John, of his words, of the power of them to
arouse her, to recreate her values and make everything seem right.
Now she felt friendly again towards Dunney.

Dunney, sensing her changed attitude, felt free to smile openly
and gladly and to feel that he had played a necessary part in the
creation of a little masterpiece. He took the paper from John and
said, "I will telegraph it in right after dinner."

The meal at the Dunneys was jolly but hurried.

Then they rushed back to Gull House, arriving just before the
people began trooping in, into the dark uninhabited space at the
end of the road. Marian quickly arranged chairs about the hearth,
trying to make a cozy circle.

d
Frank and Hila Williams entered. To John and Marian Williams was
cordial. To the others he seemed unrelated. He was indrawn, brood-
ing, restless. His forehead was knitted, and his mind too, as if he
were continually intent on the working out of some idea. John saw
him now and again dart a look at someone, not really seeing the
person but vividly registering the view expressed and relating it to
his own mental process. Several times he jerked up from his chair
as though he felt it were a confining thing holding him in an in-

125
115

creasingly distasteful state of inactivity. He paced the room. He
tended the fire. Not until Marian suddenly suggested to everyone that
she read the paper John had just written did Williams seem present.
"I'd like to hear it," he said at once, reacting swiftly to the bare
proposal.

Several of the others seemed to hold back. They said nothing. Their
expressions were queer, as if they were embarrassed and irritated,
both very decidedly.

Marian, sensing the resistance, felt spurred to overcome it. She
talked. She tried to give an idea of the paper's contents. She
spoke enthusiastically. There was no doubt as to its meaning for her.
But why, just now, all at once, she had an impulse, such a strong
impulse to read it, she herself did not know. Was it to see and test
its effect on these people so that she would have some inkling as to
how the world in general would respond? Was it to insure that at
least some people would know of it in its original form just as John
had written it? She had no thought for her motive. But now she felt
a bit confused.

"Read it," Hilda Williams encouraged her.

Marian read. She finished reading. (see insert)

"That is great," said Williams. He glanced up. He lit a cigarette
and glanced down, waiting for others to speak, for a general discuss-
ion.
They kept their mouth shut.

Marian looked around the circle, her eyes wide as though she were
seeing ghosts.

"That is splendid," someone else said.

But John, like Marian, was sensitive to those curiously silent
others, to the queer currents and cross-currents in the room. There

(insert, page 125)

So Marian read:

Human beings, like animals, need exercise. Animals need exercise according to their nature. Human beings need exercise in correspondence with human nature. Among the experiences needed by human beings are psychological shocks. Among the most needed of these shocks are those caused by self-perceptions of the truth about one's self. Put differently, for the right flowing of human life, we need to know about ourselves. For growth and development we need these kinds of perceptions.

One reason why we stop growing, why we fail to develop and realize our full potentialities, is because, in ordinary circumstances, under ordinary conditions, we cannot bear the truth about ourselves. We cannot perceive it. Or, if we do, it upsets us, it devastates us, producing a destructive rather than a constructive result.

One reason why we cannot see and assimilate self-truth is because the 'blood of our psyche' is not circulating. Our psychological blood, our spiritual circulation, is sluggish, congested, congealed.

When our physical blood is not circulating, when our blood is not 'up', we cannot bear roughing it, we cannot stand rough treatment, we cannot utilize physical shocks. The person in the grandstand at a football game - should he be tackled he would be broken.

But with the player in the game, namely, in the case of the man whose blood is 'up', the matter is different. He can not only stand but profit by the shocks he gets.

In a similar way, when a person is in the human game, when he is in a set of conditions which, in a conscious way, energizes him, makes his psychological blood vigorously circulate, he can perceive, receive, digest and assimilate the shocks caused by self-perceptions of self-truth which are needed for his growth and development.

The above was demonstrated by the experiment at Paula.

The Paula experiment showed that in the case of adults there can be a marked improvement of the psyche's blood and circulation.

Further, it brought out the following results:

That it is possible to change. That supposedly set and rigid adults, if they have the desire and the will, if they

( page 2, continuing the insert for page 125 )

are provided with corresponding tools and instruments, can be changed and they can change themselves in most respects as regards eliminating obstacles to functioning, as regards increasing and perfecting their mental, emotional, and physical functions.

That we have in us, and that it can be called forth and increased, the energy with which thus to change ourselves. We can be consciously energized. We are not committed solely to rely upon accidental circumstances, such as war, and so on.

That it is possible to create conscious situations, a conscious form of life, in which all of the above mentioned experiences can take place.

That it is possible for human beings to have relations with each other continually on an essential basis, in terms of their human nature, in terms of their *humanness*, rather than in terms of petty egotisms, likes and dislikes, and so on.

That there is in the man and women of this country of all walks of life a subconscious power of remarkable force, the kind of force which produces a genuinely religious people capable of faith, hope, and love.

She finished reading.

126

116

was no doubt of it: some of them had been provoked to a sudden resistance as startling and as inexplicable as Marian's urgence. Their silence, their negative states, seemed to absorb and blot out the positive responses. What was it? Let them speak. A discussion, however hostile, would at least start things circulating. Was it Gull House? Was it the paper? Was it them? Had they, he and Marian, unwittingly offended the Garomb matriarchy?

Finally a Miss Thayman spoke. She was spare and angular with a queer head-tilt. Her voice was thin, hard, and precise as though she wished to give the impression that she had carefully weighed and deliberated each word. Her manner was dogmatic and final. "It is too personal to be of value," she said.

"How do you mean?" John asked aggressively. He was suddenly challenged and rasped by what he felt to be Miss Thayman's unwarranted snippy hostility. But why? Under other circumstances he would have let the remark pass, not wanting to waste engery combating it.

"I mean," she said, looking narrowly at him, "that you have merely stated your own likes and dislikes. They do not happen to interest me. It is not objective."

"What is?" he asked.

"Science," she replied intellectually.

"Can you test and verify scientific statements?" he asked.

"No," she replied. She was honest.

"Then how do you know science is objective?"

"I know it," she said.

"No, you do not," he retorted. "You believe it - without much reason. It is merely your belief that science is objective, and it is merely your belief that my paper is subjective."

( insert page 126)

Had they, he and Marian, unwittingly offended the Caromb matriarchy?

In any case, he could not fail to see that it was a painfully vivid
example of how the positive thing in life, instead of being
stimulated and aroused by a negative assault, was over-shadowed
and well-nigh paralyzed by it, rendered inadequate to meet hostile
attacks. It was a sort of epitome of what had been happening to
them all along in Caromb.

Marge Roberts with a knowing look, as if she and Marge Roberts had
thought it common.

John was... and diaried to see the expression on Marge's face - something without friendship for him, a cold, critical finality.

"It is a great thing," Williams repeated, "It is a manifesto. It is a defense of creative faith. It renounces the dignity of human life. Materialism is false, doubt has made us futile. This gives us purpose, something worth living for. It reawaken us, it awakens us from the truer things I've ever heard." He quoted the words of the form, at the hocscite circle.

Marge Roberts said intelligently, her eyes were a glaze, and her
enthusiastically, "Now, in Williams, a manifesto, the value of life,
and not the letter, is all I ask." To hear her said with a sort of
sharpened tone, "We are free!"

Marge repeated, "The fall stung. The fall was too strong for him. He
being changed into a witch, it was insubstantial. The fire he
had been kindling went out. He was alone, but not alone. He had
no power, no understanding, and so he died."

127
117

"Don't you think, then, that anything is or can be objective?"

"Of course I do," he said. "If you will recall the words of the paper you were so quick to judge and dismiss you will remember that I state my belief in the possibilities of human action, of human art and religion, of human knowledge. My point is that I do not think you are in a position to be so high-handed about such matters. You would be better off if you had never even heard the terms."

"Um," she said. She smiled condescendingly at him and turned towards Miss Roberts with a knowing look, as if she and Miss Roberts had thoughts in common.

John was amazed and dismayed to see the expression on Miss Roberts' face - something without friendship for him, a cold, critical hostility.

"It is a great thing," Williams repeated. "It is a manifesto. It is a defense of creative faith. It renews the dignity of human life. Materialism x has reduced us. Doubt has made us futile. This gives us purpose, something worth living for. It restores man. It is one of the truest things I've ever heard." He hurled the words into the room, at the hostile circle.

Miss Roberts smiled indulgently. Her smile was a grimace. She said sarcastically, "Yes, Mr Williams, a manifesto, the voice of God. God has spoken to us tonight." To Marian she said with a curdling slurring laugh, "We are thankful."

Marian gasped. She felt stabbed. She felt she had seen a human being changed into a witch. It was unbelievable. John too was shocked. Neither could he believe it. Was this their friend Miss Roberts who had been so understanding and kind to them?

Silence - save for the creaks and cracks and pops and the feet

118 125

of the wind upon the roof. A tomb-like chill. Miss Robert's grimace multiplied into leering masks. The masks fixed upon each face. Her slurring laugh hung over them, suspended in the space of the gabled roof and the queer high angles over the balcony. Crackling currents zipped.

Suddenly Marian remembered the refreshments. She managed to move her ice-numbed body to the kitchen. She brought in ghost-freshments for a troop of ghosts sitting in a dumb circle before the fire, huddling there as if doomed to huddle trying forever to warm what could not be warmed.

The ghosts ate. They smiled and limbered and became somewhat animatethey talked and laughed hollowly about things which meant nothing to anyone, but there was something about Miss Roberts and Miss Thayman which seemed to say that they felt they had done a good job, a purring, a sly gloating. Soon it was time to leave. All said they had had a pleasant evening. They said goodnight. They trooped out.

Williams and his wife lingered. They told John and Marian not to
mind.

"Oh, why did they do it?" broke from Marian. She breathed rapidly. Her expression was indescribable. "I felt they were freezing me. O, I am cold!"

"Some people are like that," said Williams, realistically. His head was lowered with eyes intent on the floor.

John saw Marian shudder and tensely draw into herself. He too felt cold, a burning cold. But there was nothing he could do about it, not then, save try to get to the bottom of what had happened. He and she were in a situation. It gripped them. If he could explain it he could loosen it. If he could loosen it he could warm them. As though insensitive to her he pressed Williams. "Yes, Frank, but Miss

119 129

Roberts," he said. "She can't be like that. She is one of our best friends here. She was so kind to us in the beginning. What was it? Was it that we did something without her sanction? She likes to general. I know that."

"That's it," said Williams, looking up. "She is a wonderful woman when she is running things. She is just the reverse when she is not."

John shot back, "But, great God, Frank, I was speaking of life, and why should any living person grimace and slur that? I can understand Miss Thayman. She should be called Miss Slayman. She wanted to slay me, a man. That was obvious. But what of the others? Let us grant that we gave offense to the matriarchy. There was something else. Could it be this house, this Gull House at night? Caromb - this vortex at the end of the world?"

Williams laughed hollowly. "Don't take it to heart," he advised.
"In a day or two I want to have that talk with you."

Outside in the moon-black night, over the mound on the livid beach, to the beating of the drum, a host of demi-demon figures scurried and gathered and huddled in a bunch and swayed and chanted:

John, Marian, two in love,
Bold John, brave Marian,
Write, read, and speed the night
When to our beach
And to our drum
You come, you come,
La, me, fa, mo, lamadum,
La, me, fa, mo, lamadum,
John, Marian,

120 / 31

XII

Now John was upset. He was profoundly shaken. In his mind he kept going over what had happened. Sometimes it would strike him like a bitter fang. He would squirm. His body would jerk. His eyes would dart, His muscles would tense as if to smash. "Oh, Christ, oh, damn!" the words would escape from him. It had gotten into him and was boring him with fire. The inexplicable hostility, the condescension, the slurs. And what was it, what was the base of anything if he could not count on people like Miss Roberts, if such a thing as his article of faith envenomed rather than energized towards a fruitful life?

With Marian, however, he covered his hurt and assumed a rational positive attitude. The response, he pointed out, had not been entirely destructive, Williams and several of the others having risen to their support. He repeated and emphasized this. She saw that he needed to do this. To her he was not as covered as he thought he was. He insisted, too, that he was more and more convinced that the negative behavior of Miss Roberts and Miss Thayman had been due to some extraneous factor and not to the paper itself. She agreed with him. He needed her to. Thus he argued and thus she responded, again and again - but he remained deeply shaken.

What if his sense of reality were false, after all? What if his calculations of the proportions of good and evil in human beings were all wrong? What if his inner sensings, and all the results of his experiences, were suddenly to be shown mistaken and he turn out to be, not the super-realist he sometimes felt himself, but merely one more sadly illusioned optimistic dreaming creature? For the first time in years he felt self-doubt, and the fumes of it began

["( insert page 132 )", "And their friends in Paula - that world of theirs beyond the\nvalley, beyond the sombre magnificent boundary of the edge of the\nearth - it seemed to have been blotted out. They were hearing, often\nwhat they did not want to hear, from people and places all over the\ncountry, from people about whom they cared comparatively little. From\nPaula, from the one place from which they wished to hear, not a word.\nPerhaps, like themselves the evening of the paper reading, Paula was\nparalyzed by the world's hostile assaults. It also must have ex-\nperienced some unaccountable reversal. To John it was as if it were\ndead and its dead shadow were peering at them over the mountains,\nstruck mute, trying to speak, only able to oppress him with a haunting\nimminence, a sense of something loved and valued gone - that had been.", "The morning his sense of being looked at and thought of was尤\n\"Let's go,\" he said. His tone was deceptively soft, and there\nwere for the day, out of all logic, a sort of logic. You can at least say,\nhe haven't gone down the coast to the Great Ocean. There you will\nbe, and his fan and I'll not that when Pan comes on his hair will\nbe on his feet, he had to talk at himself.", "They dug down the hill past the car-park entrance. It seemed\nancient and rathergy. There was a stone table, and on it was written\nand yellow and protective as a church should be. They picked the\nflat stone and began speeding southwards. It appeared, with the\nblurred general telephone number. The door of the salesroom opened\nof the front door in the morning. At either side of the door was\nwide open and written on it: \"Please come in.\" They entered and\nfound the store manager, and the salescler, and the stocker. But\nthere were no customers in the store. One of them said that the\nman who had been in there all the time was not there. He said he\nhad been in there the whole time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store. He\nsaid that he had been in there the whole time, and that the store\nmanager had made him believe that there were no customers in the\nstore. He said that he had been in there the whole time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe that\nthere were no customers in the store. He said that he had been in\nthere the entire time, and that the store manager had made him\nbelieve that there were no customers in the store. He said that\nhe had been in there the entire time, and that the store manager\nhad made him believe that there were no customers in the\nstore. He said that he had been in there the entire time, and\nthat the store manager had made him believe that there were\nno customers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\nbeen in there the entire time, and that the store manager had\nmade him believe that there were no customers in the store.\nHe said that he had been in there the entire time, and that\nthe store manager had made him believe that there were no\ncustomers in the store. He said that he had been in there the\nentire time, and that the store manager had made him believe\nthat there were no customers in the store. He said that he had\n

122 '33

could move, not yet, not until fate was done with them and then they
could pod from Caromb, not until they were done with themselves all
they had to do and then they could pod, like a shell Caromb would
open.

Just now he could not even use telegrams or telephone. He simply
couldn't. Several wires to Paula would bring quick news - if Paula
were still among the living. He could not send them. The external
invisible world could reach him by phone and wire; he, by these
means, could not touch it. It was as though he were inhabiting some
remote dark-age world long before the invention of modern devices -
or in any case a world in which their use was forbidden, taboo.

"So, hell and damn," he said.

He saw himself as a fighting fish with a hook in his mouth.

One morning his sense of being locked and blocked was unbearable.
"Let's go," he said. His tone was desperate. "Let's drive. Out of
here for the day, out of Gull House. We can at least do that. We
haven't gone down the coast to the Great Dadam. Perhaps we'll see
Burrows and his Pan and I'll bet that when Pan sees me his hair will
stand on end." He had to laugh at himself.

They curvéd down the hill pass the earth-red mission. It seemed
ancient and fatherly. Marian exclaimed how beautiful it was, warm
and mellow and protective as a church should be. They reached the
flat road and began speeding south racing, it appeared, with the
bleached gaunt telephone poles. The color of the poles reminded them
of the bearded trees up the valley. On either side of the road were
wide acreages of artichokes. Their leaves spread like stunted palms
but they were prickled like thistles - strange unfriendly untouchable
things. They crossed a living white bridge, the long wodden span

123 134

over the Caromb River and adjacent sand-flats. The river seemed
shrunken, as if in all the great mountains...rock...rock...there was
insufficient water to feed it, and the rain was absorbed by the
rocks. The sky was clouding over. John felt chill and oppressed. They
passed the entrance to Point Goros.

Up hill, down, and the road began running between the base of
the looming dark green mountains and the rocky coast with the sea
beyond. There were the white buildings of the nunnery, clean and
dazzling against the sombre slopes. The road narrowed. With sharp
curves and steep ascents it wound up the hills high above the grey-
ing bleak ocean.

At one point John stopped the car. A stone wall edged the road,
protecting one from hurtling down upon the rocks below. The sea,
vacant and slatey, spread out and out. O, bleak. A projecting point
of rocks, the home of gulls, was livid-colored with dung. One glance
at it made Marian shudder and turn away.

Suddenly she discovered a stone house built on the rock cliff.
Like an animal with protective coloring it crouched. It had seen
her. Now she saw it peering at her. She almost jumped. Yes, there
it crouched, like a rock itself, a scaly reptile-rock, with a narr-
ow yard and lawn of rocks. Rocks...on the rocks...

Marian said, "Now I can believe there is no love in the world,
that love is dead. That whoever wants love is taboo. Look at those
scales, like a dead snake's. Those windows, like baracades. Ugh,"
she shuddered, "whoever built that did not love and whoever lives
in does not love and I feel that all the houses in the world are
like that."

"A happy thought," said John. "Ah, yes, we are going to like

124-135

Caromb - which shows that to base one's life on likes and dislikes is intense stupidity - which shows why we must have values, aims, creative purposes..."

They drove on. The hairpin curves, the steep grades, the abrupt drops frightened Marian. At length they came to a halt. The road was being repaired. Boards partially closed it. A sign warned against going further. "Well," said John dourly, "this too seems a blind alley. Why don't they call it the road to the Great Dadoom? But perhaps we've seen enough?"

She had. She suggested that they turn back and go up the valley where they would at least have sunshine.

Again on the valley road they passed the cultivated lands, all perfectly ordered, all done apparently by invisible agencies for unseen mouths. Again they saw not a single living being. Who, what was the devourer?

Some miles along Johnn suddenly spied a dirt road to the north. "It may lead out of the valley over the mountains," he said. "We'll try it."

Soon they were mounting and winding among hills, mountains they were, but so warm in the sun and so soft and rolling, green but with a rich brown undertone, that, in comparison with the sombre gigantic coast-line slopes they seemed intimate and friendly and pastoral. "How lovely!" Marian exclaimed; and she exclaimed again as her eyes caught sight of a solid field of bright wild flowers. "Oh, I love this!"

"Bo do I," said John. "I wished we had discovered it before. This really is different from Caromb. It is more like the country around Paula. Why, my goodness, it actually is lyrical."

125 136

Mounting, mounting, they wound up. Once they glanced back and saw, lower than themselves, a long misty cloud hanging over the valley, and beneath it far far down the tiny cultivated plots of the valley's floor. The air was rarefying. The altitude affected their ears.

John grew zestful. He urged the car. He praised it as it made an especially steep grade. They talked. He said, "I do believe we are regaining our capacity to have fun. What a pall has been upon us! We've been like besombered humans. That is just the word, besombered, dadoomed - two besombered humans caroomed in Dadoom. How's that?" He laughed. They laughed. The energy that had gone into his curses now went into his jollity.

They went through a pass and all at once were startled to see a vast scene, a huge creation of sweeping valleys and canyons, plateaus, and majestic mountain ranges. It was like the other side of the world, totally unlike the region of Caromb. There was nothing sombre. All was bright. The dominant color seemed to be a rose-purple, and the wash of the sun.

"Will you see that!" John exclaimed. Marian was seeing it with all her eyes. "It is unbelievable," he said. "It is like the earth just after creation, prehuman, preanimal, preorganic. Only the vast bare skeleton, but what grandeur!"

As they rolled on they saw but one sign of human habitation. A ranch house, appearing on larger than a bird, perched on a high grass-covered knoll - there it rested, diminutive and remote, sealed in silence, motionless, engulfed by space, lost in magnitude.

"And look, Marian," he said, "it has a white fence about it!"

At one place they stopped the car and got out. It was bright, warm,

126-137

immensely open, and all was silent, a vast impalpable silent world of
pure still force. From far off, perhaps from far down, there came to
them the tinkle of a cowbell. Before them was a large curved mound
richly grassed and with wild flowers. Beyond and below it they could
discern the green floor of a valley. Perhaps this was the pasture-
land from which the sound of the bell had come. As they looked up
and off the plateaus stood and the vast ranges, stark and grand.

John smiled and sighed. Truly they were out of Caromb, but...
"No man or men could ever inhabit this," he said. He spoke in hardly
more than a whisper. "They could not conquer it. They could not ex-
ploit it. They could not pollute it. Not the slighest mark could they
make. A large city would be as easily engulfed as that ranch house.
Their own voices would terrorize them. The acoustics are extraordinary.
If I raised my voice and shouted I do believe it would carry, a
thousand times better than over water, to that most distant peak." He
made as if to do it. He checked himself, he was checked by the silent
imminence. "No, this is a home for gods. I've often heard the phrase
but never before have I seen the actual place. For gods, for winged
beings who could take food from the air, who could dwell in the air
as well as on earth - and I can see a great populace of them, dazzling
and magnificent, flying from stark peak to stark peak, gliding down
to the green valleys, lingering on the plateaus, rising from the
valleys to the stark peaks, arriving and departing for stars, for the
great bodies of the inhabited universe. Truly this is the port of the
gods. Or perhaps it is their theatre where they gather to see plays
depicting the history of the cosmos."

Marian said, "Now I don't have those feelings that love is dead,
that one shouldn't love."

127 138

"No, of course not," he said. "And yet - it is so absolute that I don't think anything of any nature could ever happen here. It just is. It will never be less. It will never be more. Even the gods might despair of inhabiting it."

Soon they had absorbed all they could; and they, diminutive and yet feeling great, got into their tiny familiar crude earth-locked moving box of metal and gasoline and moved on and winding down not turning back but going on to see where the road would lead them down and down.

After half an hour's coasting they abruptly emerged on the road which ran from the main highway to Portello. They recognized it. "How queer," said Marian, "how strange and sort of depressing to leave all that and suddenly find ourselves now, after all that has happened to us in Caromb, on the very road we travelled that very first evening."

"That fateful evening," he said. "Yes, it is queer. Who would ever guess there was such a sight up there? As for us - either we or the world or both are utterly different, and as the saying has it, we'll never be the same again."

But she did draw close to him, and she did take his arm and press it against her much as she had done before the black wing brushed them and the mountain-rim of the far side of the earth closed them off and closed them in.

They passed through Portello. The Portello sky was overcast and low. They entered Caromb..., ah, they could enter it...shadowed huddling Caromb. John stopped for the mail. He placed it in his pocket without looking at it. They drove through the pine-shrouded streets pass the unnumbered close-together cottages and out the road to its

123-139

end Gull House and the pounding of the sea pounding.

As he unlocked the door John said, "Well, here we are back again
on the far side of the cyclop's barcade. And by what strategem using
what sheep will we ever contrive to liberate ourselves? Let's see
what mail. But first a fire. Would you, could you believe that the
sun was and doubtless still is shining on the port of the gods? This
place, this Caromb, we...besombered humans..." and he shook his
head sorrowfully, submitting to the risen hand weighted and falling.

Marian was glancing at the mail. Suddenly she exclaimed, "Here
is one from Paula. It is for you, from Anna." He sprang up, took
the letter, ripped it open and read:

Dear John,

What have you done to us? Do you want to destroy all
your friends? It is all right for you and Marian to be
in love. Bob and I love each other. But you can't let
others know. Something dreadful has happened to the
world. Where have you been? You seem not to know. Jim
Forbes was killed himself last week. They say it was
because he lost all his money. People are failing. Busi-
ness is ruined. In times like these you risk your life
to speak of love and belief in life.

The whole town is upset. Several of your friends may
lose their jobs. They have been called into court to
explain their connection with John Andrews who holds
such revolutionary ideas. Some people think you have
done it for the publicity. Please, please don't give the
papers any more. I believe you are doing what you sincerely
believe best, but it will only make things worse. For-
give me for writing to you this way, but I feel you ought
to know.

Sincerely,
Anna

Speechless they stared at each other. Each felt a burning shock-
ball sink down into them, searing sinking them, till it dropped and
spread sickeningly all over them.

"What have I done? For publicity!" John uttered. Then strongly -
"I don't believe it. It is not so. It can't be so, not possibly.
Paula turned against us? Not so. No, never. Not Paula. Why, Marian,

129-140

it isn't possible."

She stared at him, her face pained, her eyes shocked, her lips quivering. In a strangely quiet voice she said, "Anna is there."

"What if she is?" he asked. "Just the fact that she is there doesn't guarantee that she sees things accurately. Just the fact that she says so doesn't make it so. It seems to me we've had enough experience with misstatements not to credit anything anyone says."

"But why would she write like this?" asked Marian, still strangely quiet.

"I don't know," said John. "Something has happened. That's certain. But what? Anna give us no information. Apparently the papers there have started a rumpus. Perhaps things are a bit upset. Maybe Bob was one of the ones called into court. Maybe Anna fears he'll lose his job - and she has become hysterical. You know what happens when one's security is or seems challenged. It doesn't have to be actually challenged. Just the seeming is enough to cause panics. Her letter is hysterical. Good God."

"Oh, our poor mother," Marian broke out. "I don't care about myself. I don't care about us. We have each other. But poor mother there all alone. And when father comes home it will be enough to kill him."

"Now, dear," he said, putting his arms about her, "don't get so worked up. We know nothing yet, save that Anna is or was upset at the time she wrote. It takes four days for letters to reach here. It may all be over now, and though it was just reached us we may well be concerning ourselves with a ghost."

"But we do know," she insisted, drawing away. "I was right about Dunney. I am right about this." She moved towards the couch, leaving

130-141

him standing there.

Her tone shocked him. It was hurt, but this was not all. It was resentful, resentful of him. For the first time during the entire ordeal he felt her withdrawing from and blaming him. He followed her.

"No, we do not," he said. "If something has happened to mother she would have written us at once."

"No, she wouldn't," she said, stepping further away from him. "You don't know her. The more she suffers the less she shows and the less she says. She keeps it all to herself and won't let anyone know. Oh, dear, All my life I've wanted to make them happy. I've tried to make them happy. And now see what I've brought upon them. They can't even live in their own home."

Her glance was reproachful. Her face was pained, tortured, terribly hurt. He could see her icing with separate pain. He could sense her state, in a flash he saw it and it shook him profoundly - shock, blame, distrust of him, the thing invading her, capturing her, locking her away from him - her conflict, love and affirmation of him and their marriage, fear of what she had and would bring upon her parents, social ostracism, her blaming him for having gotten ~~xakax~~ her into all of this, her wish to return to her old life. Would he lose her?

The question thudded him. It was the first time it had ever even entered his mind. All along they had shared the experience with common sufferings and struggles. It had never occurred to him that it might be otherwise, that something might happen to change this. They, together, had been struggling against the world. Now...and the great difficulty was that he could not touch her. She was locked away. Mentally he could meet her partially. Emotionally, not at all.

131 142

He could give her no feeding supporting feelings. It was these she needed most.

"Can't we do something?" she was saying. "Can't we write and ask them to come out here?"

"Of course we can," he said, "but I tell you, dear, we have no cause as yet to be so disturbed. Let's wait until we learn more. The wall between ourselves and Paula has been broken and we'll surely hear from everyone. Even if the papers there did run absurd stories, surely they were not worse than the ones out here, and soon now, you must remember, the *Ourpas* article will appear and whatever storm was started will be stopped."

But Marian was already at her table writing the letter. When finished she turned to John and suddenly said, "In every book I've ever read the people who broke taboos have come to tragic ends."

"Yes," he said questioningly. But he knew very well what she meant. He knew she was identifying herself with those characters and picturing her own tragic end. She looked broken. She looked lost. "Oh, darling," he said to himself.

"Well, don't you see?" she asked.

"No, I do not," he answered steadily.

"We have broken a taboo. You said it yourself."

"Perhaps I did, but I did not say we will come to a tragic end."

"But we will," she brought out.

"No, we will not," he said strongly. "As I've said before, reading matter is responsible for most of the fears in the world. We are not characters in books." He moved nearer her. With his own force and fire he would burn her ice. He would make her remember him. He would make her feel they were together. "We are human beings in life. Yes,

132 143

many human beings in life have come to tragic ends, ends worse than any book of fiction describes. But we are ourselves, not those others. We are ourselves with our own destiny to work out." He would make her remember herself. He would arouse her strong feelings. He would restore her values - and their present and future. "It depends upon the individual. It depends not only upon what he does but how he does it. It depends upon the era and the milieu. Some men have been killed for breaking some taboos. Some men have been blessed for breaking some taboos. It depends. The general law works both ways, creating no less than destroying. We, you, Marian, I, John - we are ourselves and we are forces on this earth and don't let anyone or anything persuade you otherwise."

For a flash something changed, lifted and expanded in her, flooding her eyes with bright light; but her voice said, "They wanted to destroy us the other night."

"No, they didn't," he flashed back. "Some did. Others did not. We must not forget Williams and those who were positive. There lies the trouble. We so easily lose sight of the good and so easily remember the bad. The positive is minimized and forgotten, the negative is retained and magnified. This is the trouble with the world, with the human world. It is not that there actually is more evil, it is simply that our psychic processes, our pitiable deranged processes, make it appear so - and then, because of our sense of inner security, we fear to align ourselves with constructive forces because to us they seem weaker and we fear we will be defeated. This is Anna's condition. This is the condition of most of the world's good people. Do you see? It is a diabolical hallucination. It is a

133 144

terrible state of hypnotism. It is not real."

"Christ was crucified," said Marian.

"Yes," said John, "so they say. Whether he was or not is the question. But in any case we are not Christs and we not live in Christ's time and place. Buddha was not crucified."

"But we are not Buddhas," she countered, "and we do not live in
Buddha's time and place."

"All right, then," he said. "Why do you persist in arguing to defeat yourself? We are, as I have said, just simply ourselves, with patterns of life individual to us. Nothing has happened to us thus far, nothing really destructive, that is. Why should we feel our future is doomed? In any event, don't let's bring it on ourselves by it/ fearing."

Quickly she asked, "Do you think that happens? Do you think we
do bring on ourselves what we fear? I've always feared I was going
to give pain and suffering to my parents. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Poor
mother, all alone in Paula with all those horrid pictures and stories
coming out."

Just suddenly, however, she arose and rushed to him and threw
her arms about him.

But late that night, in the night, Caren, on the beach, to the sound
of the drum, the figures fathered, huddled in a bunch and swayed
ed and chanted

John, Marianna

Pam, for your protection

Leslie, for my protection

John, Marianna

134-145

"John," she spoke, "I want only this, only this with you. I want nothing else. I would not have it. It is this or death. If I could not have this with you I would die. Suffering has made me realize it. Those uncomplicated lives, the people who pass the windows on their way to the beach, I could never be like them. I could never put my life where it would stop growing. No other man. No other life. When I am most pained, it is then, right then that I realize most how much I value this. Don't listen to anything else I say. This is what I feel and I always will. I'll never be like those others, but sometimes I fear I will. The thing invades me. It overwhelms me that I may not be strong enough to struggle and struggle always, forever. But I will. John, I will."

"Yes, dear," he said, holding her. "Yes, yes, my deeply courageous Marian. Your emotions sometimes go otherwise. How could they not? Your actions - never. All through this you have been right here, with me, struggling and suffering. This says everything."

But late that night, in night Caromb, on the beach to the pounding of the drum, the figures gathered, huddled in a bunch and swayed and chanted:

John...Marian...
La, me, fa, mo, lamadum,
La, me, fa, mo, lamadum,
John...Marian...
La, me, fa, mo, lamadum,
La, me, fa, mo, lamadum,
John...Marian...

135 146

XIII

"Well, a bright morning," said John to the boy.

"Yeah," he grunted, slinging the groceries on the kitchen table.
He squinted at John. "Say," he asked, "do you know what it is doing
today?"

"Yes indeed," said John, "the sun is shining."

The boy glanced up incredulously. A broad grin came on his face.
"Say!" he exclaimed, "you got it right this time."

"Oh, yes," said John, "I am learning. Before we leave here I
will also know when it is fogging and when it is raining. You will
see."

At last they received word from their mother. Apparently the
letters had crossed. She was worrying because she had not heard from
them. Otherwise, the tone of her letter was calm and loving like all
letters from her. It told of her quiet interests and activities in
the house and garden and gave some news of several of their friends.
Save to mention casually that certain papers in other towns had run
stories about them, her words concreted not an allusion to the
publicity, to all the stir which Anna's letter had implied. She
did, however, inclose a long clipping from the Paula paper which
stated that the paper would have nothing to do with all the rumpus
elsewhere over the actions and beliefs of John and Marian Andrews,
two of Paula's respected citizens. It spoke, too, in the highest
terms of their mother and father.

Marian showed great relief.

"There," said John triumphantly. "What did I tell you? Mother is

136-147

all right, and the Paula paper has stood with us! I knew it could not
be as Anna had it."

"Mother is like that," she reminded him. "She wouldn't let us know."

"Even so," he said, "here is the paper."

"Yes, but the people read the other papers too."

"Surely," he granted. "I don't say that all is well. I simply
say that it is not as bad as you felt."

"I'm glad about mother," she suddenly smiled. "At least she isn't
sick. I feel better now. She stills loves us and she's not afraid
to say so whatever people may think."

"Then all is well," said John, "if you are glad."

He kissed her. He put his arm through hers and lead her, with a
trace of bonyvant gallantry, through the glass door out onto the
porch. They stood there a while, gazing at the lovely morning
valley, at the giant sombre guardsmen of their exile.

"I wonder where Arthur is," he mused. "We haven't seen him for a
some time. Not yet have we had that tea with him or has he had that
dinner with us. He was going to take me fishing."

"I wonder too," she said.

"And Burrows," he went on, "he seems to have completely disappear-
ed. Perhaps he has gone back to his cabin. I thought we were going
to have some interesting times with him."

"You don't think?" she asked, looking at him with a troubled ex-
pression.

"Think what? No, I'll think nothing that will disturb you."

"Do you suppose some of the people around here believe we have
done all this simply for the publicity? and they are shunning us?"

"No," he said, laughing, "don't be a goose. Of course not. Will-

137 148

iams knows. Even should some of the others question it he would put
them straight."

They were strolling along the garden path bordered by flowering
rock moss, stopping now and again for her to examine some especially
beautiful flower. She picked one for his button-hole. She looked
fresh and lovely. He smiled. To her he looked particularly strong,
elegant, handsome. She put her arm through his.

A sea small was in the air. The sounds of the waves pounding came
to them. A more than usual number of motor-cars went by, several
of them stopping and parking on the open plot beyond the road-ending.
The occupants got out and, with boxes and baskets, made their ways
towards the beach, their heads bobbing and quickly disappearing on
the other side of the mound.

"This must be Sunday," said John, laughing and shaking his head.
"Left to ourselves we'd never know."

Marian glanced up just as two cars rolled by. The people in them
turned and stared. She felt uneasy. "Let's go in," she said, "I
don't like those people looking."

"Let them look," he said, slipping an arm around her.

"Don't," she cautioned, "they will see us and think something
queer."

"Let them."

A group of people walking, and another car, all turned to stare.
Marian quickly drew away. "They make me feel queer. I'm going
inside."

John followed her. He himself now felt queer, as if the two of
them, two in love, were curiosities, museum pieces, exhibits of an
incomprehensible emotion to the emotion-dead, the feeling-starved

138 149

beings of an age he did not belong in.

Midway in the large day-bright living-room he stood looking out
at the parked cars. More cars came around the point. He was surprised
to see their occupants gazing in his house. He had a sense they could
see him. Of course. He was standing between the wide front windows
and the French windows. Light streamed through. He was as plainly
visible as he would have been outside. He stepped away, threating,
feeling exposed and invaded. Gull House was a glass house. All in
it was on exhibition to the passing gaping world.

The phone rang. "Don't answer it," said Marian. But John had the
receiver at his ear. "Well, goodness," he exclaimed, laughing, turn-
ing towards her worried face. He repeated the message - "Understand-
ing love this Easter morning. Signed - Ruth."

"Oh, how fine," said Marian. "This is Easter. Ruth remembered us.
How good of her."

"Very fine," said John. "Well, our friends are beginning to be
heard from. That world of ours over there is not dead after all. But
it was the queerest silence I've ever experienced. And this message
shows one other thing - at least the telegraph company will accept
and transmit the word love. One can still, so to speak, send love
over the wires. Or perhaps this is only because the day is Easter.
On this day, in memory of Christ, they lift the ban, suspend the
taboo. Easter..." and he smiled sadly, ironically.

A knock on the door. "Things are coming thick and fast," he
said. It was a special delivery boy with a large thick envelope
bearing the Paula postmark. They recognized the handwriting. "From
Mildred," they both said. A number of clipping were enclosed.

It was a long detailed letter describing how, all of a sudden,

130 150

the storm had broken on Paula - people, friends of theirs, casually opening the morning paper and suddenly seeing the bold headlines, the pictures, reading the wild stories of the organization headed by John Andrews which had been unearthed in Paula, a secret order whose aim was to restore love as the ruling passion. The shock - in some, the panic and the denial of any knowledge or connection with either Andrews or his order - in others, the triumph of sanity, the rejection of the stories, the affirming, stronger than ever, of John and Marian, their character, their soundness, their intelligence, the value of what they were really working for.

Paula had been stirred, wrote Mildred, the more so since no one knew what to expect next. It was like a whirlwind. No one knew what headlines, what wild stories, would appear in the next day's paper. No one knew how he or she might be involved, or where the thing would lead to. Papers in other towns had sent their most sensational reporters to Paula. They had canvassed the town, calling on people and interviewing most anyone they met on the streets.

It was complicated by the rumor, somehow started, that it was a publicity stunt, that John, in far off Caromb where none of it could touch him, was deliberately doing it to promote the sale of his books. This was hardly to be credited, and yet - "Writers will do anything for the sake of publicity." If John, then, was willing to risk sacrificing them, they had best cut loose from him and to defend or support him was of course out of the picture.

"I told them," she went on, "that they ought to be ashamed of themselves to credit such notions, to doubt John, to believe for a second that he had any such motive, but you know how people are when everybody is in the air. There was danger, so they said, of

140 151

some of them losing their jobs."

For three or four days the storm raged. Then the newspapers
dropped it. When people saw that nothing more would happen, even some of
those who had turned away began turning back.

"The whole wild business has shown one thing," she wrote. "It has
shown who your true friends are, and who are not your true friends.
You have many who love you in Paula. The stories themselves were
nonsense. Everyone knows that now. But it was a very real thing
the way your friends arose to your defense. Anna went up in the
air, but she has come around splendidly."

"Now," she concluded, "everything has passed over and the atmosphere
is clear and those who mention it at all mention it as a joke.
But it is no joke to me. I am more serious about it than I was when
it was happening. Then I was too active doing things to think much
about it. Now I'm beginning to think. More and more I am wondering
why the newspapers made such a thing of you two being in love and
believing in life. This is a strange disquieting aspect of it, as I
see it. I don't know what it means. Nor why it was so upsetting to
the people here, that is, to some of them. I wish you'd write me
soon. It seems years since I've heard from you. I can't feel that you
are sick, or that all this has touched you much. So write soon, please."

"Which is the crux of the matter, this last part of her letter,"
was John's comment. "But here we have it," he said to her. "This is
something like it. Here we have something like a complete balanced
picture of what happened. Our dear and splendid Mildred! Our valiant
Mildred, fighting for us as always."

"She is our friend," said Marian with warmth. She paused and then
laughed strangely. "Think of armies of reporters besieging the
town! Think of you heading a secret order to restore a reign of love!"

141 152

"Let's glance at the clippings," he said.

Certain of the accounts were so flambouyant and ludicrous that they looked at each other and burst out laughing. They had to laugh. "What a time those fellows must have had!" he exclaimed. "The sky was the limit, they had plenty of ink, and their pens were free. This really is amazing stuff."

They heard someone at the door. The laughs vanished from their faces. A door rap, a phone ring - these had become sobering, sober, portentious things. John went. It was Frank Williams. At last he had come for that talk. "Come in, Frank," said John cordially. Mar-ian's apprehensions vanished and she came forward to greet Williams.

John said, with a smile, "We were just amusing ourselves reading a bit of publicity."

"Were you?" asked Williams. "What publicity?"

"About ourselves."

"Is that still going on?" he asked, angrily, incredulously.

"No," said John, "thank goodness it has stopped. But just today we received our first records of what happened in Paula. Paula, you know, is our home town. The storm raged there as it raged nowhere else. Take a look at those clippings if you'd like. They read like melodrama in the grand style."

Williams glanced at the headlines. He ran his eye down several columns. His face darkened. His eyes snapped. "It is an outrage," he pronounced, "this violation of your private life. The free press -" and he laughed bitterly, "here we have an example of it. A fine thing, I must say. Splendid, a splendid product of our free country. License, that is what it is, a wholesale license to print anything they want and you have no come back. This sort of thing

142 153

should be stopped. I've never believed in the idea of censorship but I do believe in muzzles. We muzzle dogs. We ought to muzzle the press. It is a damn shame. Nothing is sacred to those fellows. And this brings me to the point I've been wanting to talk with you about. What are we going to do? Can you answer that? What are we going to do?

"We can work towards an answer," said John. "That is the first thing we can do."

"We've got to," said Williams. "Before, we merely wished to. Now we've got to. I mean, first, what's the solution for people like us? I mean, second, what's the solution for the mass of people? I ought to say for everyone, for all of us. Ten years ago, even three years ago I was a poet. I could be a poet. Since then, I've been smoked from my tower - and I'm damn glad of it. I was getting tired of it anyway. I'm sick and tired of talk and discussions and intelligence and sick individualists. They get nowhere. I want action. I want action with purpose. I want to get down to business and do something about it. I have far more in common with workingmen than I have with all the literati and the dilettants. I'm sick of them."

John suggested, "Have a cigarette? Let's sit down."

Marian, suddenly warmed and encouraged by Williams's championship, went over to the couch by the window. Now she dared face the stares of passersby. In relation to herself and John, Frank was society, a representative of it, and if he supported them then it was not entirely against them. She need not shrink. She need not feel strange or outcast. It was his presence, his vibrant present flesh and blood being, that was doing for her what no letter could do. Yes, he had come at just the right time. He had said just the

145 154

rights things. He stood for something, a symbol of mm something much
larger than himself.

John and Frank drew up chairs near her and smoked while they
talked; and outside the window the world of Easter Sunday, bent on
a holiday away from the big city, in motor-cars, with lunch baskets,
passed by, going to and coming from the beach. Yes, the country was
financially depressed, and psychologically depressed, but people
still had motor-cars, they still bought gasoline, they still somehow
managed to obtain brief respites from congested metropolitan districts
and find the beach and the sea.

Oh sand, be kind to them. Earth, hold their aching feet. Sea cool
them. Winds blow and help them breathe. Sun, touch their damp bodies
and let them be tanned and clean. Sky widen their gimlet eyes. And
thou, great world, see their plight, see them shrunken and embitter-
ed, unknown to sweet full joy, and pity them and include them in
abundance.

John was thinking of how ironic it was. Doubtless all those
people out there envied the residents, himself and Marian, of the
cute shingled cottage at the end of the road. How they would like to
live in it! To them, he and Marian had the leisure and the place -
near the sea - in desirable Caromb - they wanted. A cottage in
Caromb, the means to dwell in it whenever and for as long as they
pleased - this was their dream, the desire and the goal of millions
of his countrymen. He had an impulse to rush to the doors and open
them and call them in and let them see what it was, how it would
actually work out, this dream of theirs. A cottage in Caromb -
indeed.

Williams was talking. "Before we go into general matters I'd like

144-155

your opinion as to the meaning of this publicity. To my mind it is
an astounding sign."

"Of what?" asked Marian.

He said, "Of but one thing so far as I can see. Love is dead. Faith is dead. For the average person, I mean. For the readers of newspapers. Whoever loves is as rare and as print-worthy as the latest discovered Egyptian tomb. Whoever believes is on a par with a prehistoric monstrosity. What would you say, John?"

John glanced at Marian. She was not flinching. Williams' words were not affecting her as they would have several days ago. She was poised, calm, faintly smiling as if she had a quiet but strong sense of some new power which had come to her. But he, for some unknown cause, suddenly felt bitter, satirical, pessimistic. "I would not say differently," he answered. He paused. He had an impulse to wound something, to kill something.

He went on, "For many years now there have been signs of and warnings against our inner poverty. There is no doubt but what the disease has been spreading, galloping like a consuming plague. The implication of our notoriety is that the disease has done its work. Our insides are gone. The only matter now is - what disposal is to be made of the empty hulks? Well, each day some prominent person answers that question. Jumping out of a high window seems the easiest way. That is why they built the skyscrapers. They foresaw the need. They knew we were coming to this. It is too bad there are no high buildings in Caromb. Caromb is deficient in this respect. It is behind the times." He smiled sardonically.

"Seriously, John," said Williams, "you don't believe that. You don't believe it is hopeless."

["146 156", "John shrugged. "Why not? One gets weary of being a hopeful idiot. Given time enough, even the fool in one wears out. Stupidity is the toughest thing I know, but even it is perishable, even it can be corroded and worn through.", "Given time enough, even the fool in one wears out. Stupidity is the toughest thing I know, but even it is perishable, even it can be corroded and worn through. \" Then he saw Marian's wounded countenance. With a pang he felt he had struck her just at the time when she xx was rising to new life. Oh, perverse. How damnably preverse a human being could be. He changed in a flash. He opened. He remembered the young life growing to life in her. He remembered her, all he loved of her. He remembered himself, their struggles, the world they had devoted their lives to build.", "\"No,\" he said strongly, \"I do not. I have thought it. I have felt it. I have never been able to bring myself to believe it. The very atoms of my life affirm and affirm and affirm - even when my mind and feelings would have it that all is hopeless. Where there is life there is hope. People think this is a moral platitude. It is not. I can tell you that it is a chemcial, a bio-chemcial truth. And where there is life there is faith. And where there is life there is love. Hope, faith, and love - they are indestructable properties of the very atoms of life.\"", "Williams smiled. He did not try to conceal how xxx stirred he felt. Marian's eyes were misty, brightly misty. \"Oh, John,\" she cried, \"this is like you. I haven't heard that tone for a long while.\"", "John made a little ironic depreciating gesture; but he straightened in his chair. He was charged, energized.", "\"So then,\" said Williams leaning forward, \"let's get down to business. What's to be done?\"", "\"All that the present world-condition means,\" said John, \"is that"]

145

157

the direction life has taken up to this point is at an end. It is the end of a direction, the end of a system, if you like. It is not the end of life. It is just this distinction which those who jump out of windows and those who are trying to re-vitalize the corpse fail to make. We can sum up the old direction in a few words - in the desire to get something for nothing, to obtain more power and more things than one needs or deserves, to make other men, slaves, machines, dollars, schemes, do the work. We can sum up the old system in a few words - a competitive system swept heedlessly along by an over-grown acquisitive urge over-stimulated at each turn."

"So far," said Williams, "we agree perfectly. You believe in communism, then? You think there will be a revolution?"

"A revolution?" said John. "Yes, possibly. But not for some time. The ideology and the desires put into us by the old system still have too strong a hold on the majority of people. People are losing their jobs but not their ideas. They are losing their "securities", their paper wealth, but not their desires for money-security and paper wealth. If anything, the depression instead of destroying these desires has increased them - in middle class people, that is. It has made them clutch their pocket-books. It has made everyone more money-conscious. Other values are more eclipsed than ever. "Prosperity" is more desirable than ever."

Williams grunted and squirmed. He started to speak but let John continue.

"If you want an indication of how far off a revolution is, take these jobless men who come to your door asking for work. They tip their hats and smile. Well, answer the question - how long will it take for their smiles to turn to disillusion? - and you will have

146-158

some idea of when we may expect revolt."

"I don't think it will take long," said Williams. "Another bad winter... What about communism?"

"I do not know," said John. "I wish I did. If it is the solution, then the entire economic problem is answered. But is it? You see, Frank, from my point of view there are three distinct aspects of it. There is communism as a proposed way of organizing and running our economic life. In this sense, one must think of it as no more and no less than a technique. Then, secondly, there are all the various ideas, beliefs, and attitudes, moral, philosophic, which have accumulated about and adhered to the technical framework. These هيكلismus constitute the philosophy of communism. This is communism as a philosophy. One might accept the technique but reject the philosophy, or vice versa."

"Yes, I suppose so," said Williams, "but in practice it wouldn't be so easy to do. It is all so much of one piece. Besides, the philosophy is needed to show the value of and to arouse the desire for the technique. We've got to have new ideas to dislodge and replace those ideas you mentioned as still having such a hold on us."

"Truly," said John, "and yet the distinctions do exist and I, for one, have to consider them. Then, in the third place, there are the men who would put the technique or the philosophy or both into practice. What kind of men will these be? Will they be substantially different from the men who run things now? Will they be better? Will they be worse? Will they be the same? If they are better then naturally their system and the world controlled by it will be better. If they are worse, the world will be in a worse condition than it is. If they are the same, the outer forms of life will be changed but the

147 159

basic modes of life will remain much as they are. We will not be transformed - and this, to me, is the great need. One might accept the technique, reject the philosophy, and question the men."

"Yes," said Williams, "but if you did that you would not do anything. You would simply sit and think. It seems to me that your view of it is too intellectual and too static. Communism is not a cut and dried thing. It is evolving. It is a growing thing. It is dynamic."

"I agree," said John. "But I think you are wrong when you say I would do nothing. Of course I would. Thinking, to my mind, is a very necessary form of action. As I said in the beginning, we've got to work towards an answer. That is the first thing we can do. I am convinced that human beings must stop, and, if necessary, be made to stop competing with and fighting against each other fruitlessly. I am convinced that all of us must engage in productive work. I am convinced that we must cooperate. The question is, is communism the way to bring these things about? I do not know. I want to find out. There may be other and better ways. If so, they must be found soon, and understand and applied. Do you mind if I go on? I'd like to place my view of the situation on the table and then we can see to work better."

Williams nodded and lit another cigarette. His brow was knitted. He smiled at Marian. He smiled at John. "Go on. What I have to say can wait."

John said, "I made the statement that the old direction is dead - and so it is, from the point of view of constructive values. It came to an end several years before the World War, and at that time if not before it should have been superseeded by a new direction. It was let run on. It plunged us into the war; and since the war there

148 160

has been an accelerated outcropping of bad features which are not
balanced by any corresponding good features. During this post-war
period the laissez faire system has undone all the good which its
adherents have claimed for it. Competition hasedd about and kill-
ed itself. This has been the time of the rise of the gangsters and
the racketeers - symbols of the dead-end of the exploitative organiz-
ed-for-war system. The rise of huge centralizations leading, doubt-
less, to the reign of a dictator. This has been the time of the
death of everything save autocratic power, fear - and hope. But fear
has such a strangle hold on us that the hope is hardly registered.

"Fear, Frank, moral, spiritual fear as well as so-called economic
fear - it is all over the country, palpable in the atmosphere, seep-
ing into people who have never experienced it before, shrinking us,
paralyzing us, chloroforming that in us which otherwise might set
about the building of a new world. Caromb is remote, out of the main
current of things, but fear is here in Caromb.

"And what is Caromb? It too is a symbol. It too represents the
dead-end of a direction. On the economic plane it represents the
goal of those who have been brought up under the old system - a so-
called independent income, enough money to retire from business and
from the congestion of big cities - a cottage by the sea - a place
where people who have had their plucked leisure from the crowd come
to pass their days till they die. But so-called independent incomes
are ending. So, then, is the economic base of Caromb ending, as it
is ending all over the country. The goal is dead. Caromb is dying.
There will have to be a new goal, a new Caromb.

"On the psychological plane it represents the working out of a
certain kind of individualism, the kind acquired by those brought up

149 161

under the old system - people who have rebelled against standardization, against competitive collectivism, who do not want to be caught up in mass-psychology, in institutions, who wish to withdraw from most of the prevalent relationships and here, at last, do only that which they personally want to do. Of these, Jordon, Jordon and his stone tower, is a symbol.

"But along this direction nothing further is possible. Literally, this is the end of the continent. Figurtively, it is the end of the road. It is the end of a detour. The next step takes one back to the highway. And even here, in my own case at least, the long arm of mass-activities reach one. It is both strange and ironic that here, way out here, for the first time in my life I, an erstwhile individualist, have been so to speak snatched up and involved in a nation-wide mass press publicity. Well, I thank it. It may well be the final smoke to drive me from cover completely. One needs stiff jolts. In the face of such a thing one simply has to come out and do something. But what to do? And we are back again to our original question."

"And so we are," said Williams, smiling. They paused. Then Williams said, "You were saying a little while ago that there may be other and better ways than communism. Do you know of any?"

"Yes," said John, "I have heard of several. I have heard of two or more proposed ways of reorganizing the financial system, but whether they would work or not I do not know. About financial matters I'm not in a position even to hold an opinion. I know no more than that I can deposit money, if I have it, in a bank; and that, if the bank has not failed meanwhile, I can draw it out. Then there is a psychological approach, and about this I have some understanding."

150 162

"Suppose," said Williams. He leaned forward with quickened interest. "Suppose that the condition is as we have assumed it to be, that love is dead, that faith is dead, that the world is given over to hate and doubt and fear. You want to restore the positive feelings, don't you?"

"Yes," said John.

"But haven't they come to an end because capitalism has either killed or ignored all values save money-power values?"

"In part," said John.

"Then wouldn't you say that under socialism or communism, with money-power values gone, the other values would have a chance to be restored? There would be no competition and none of the hatreds and the prejudices and the antagonisms fostered by the exploitative system. The free press would be done away with. There would be no gangsters. No depression. No fear. There would be no Malas and no Carombs. Tell me," he suddenly asked, "suppose you were faced with these alternatives. There is going to be another war. There is going to be a proletarian revolution. Everything has finally come down to these two. Nothing else is possible. Which one would you side with?"

John laughed. "There," he said, "and so you have me. A very real question." He was thoughtful. After a while he replied, "Perhaps I would side with neither - unless I was physically compelled to. I am not entirely convinced that the thinker and the artist, the man of science, the man of letters, should necessarily move out of his sphere in times of crisis and try to become a man of action. There are strong good reasons for him not doing so. I doubt that Italy would have been better off and I am sure Leonardo would have been worse off if he had meddled with the social upheavals of his time."

151

163

"On the other hand, I am rather strongly persuaded that both the exceptional individual and society stand to lose unless an active interchange on all planes is carried on between them. I'm not in favored of retired talents. Your question was a neat one. It brings people like myself right up against it. And we had best think fast and clearly. Frankly, I don't know.

"But I do know this. There is still a little time before we will be actually faced with the alternatives you suggest. For this time I have a proposal. It has to do with the mobilization of the now scattered intelligences of the country. Stupidity is organized. It always is. Greed is organized. It always is. Intelligence coupled with conscience, intelligence and conscience, these two, they need to be aroused, vivified, and motored and formed into a body, an organism of action. If they were thus energized and formed they might work out and actualize a direction different and more constructive than any direction we now see.

"The nation is full of intelligent people, and decent people, human beings. But certain things are the matter with them. Though they are intelligent they are not critically so. Their critical capacities are not sufficiently active. Hence, they were suggestible, too easily swayed by this and that. Their minds are not tough enough, not sufficiently braced and tempered to stand their ground and win new ground. Emotions, including fear, can too readily sweep up and either deluge or paralyze them. They are not organized - and thus they lack power, and thus, too, they frequently fight amongst themselves whereas they ought to be banded against a common enemy. They do not sense themselves and each other as functioning units of a functioning body. They do not feel mutual support. On the contrary, they

152

164

feel isolated, singular, exiled, and not only powerless but help-
less, irrevocably so. They have allowed themselves to be orphaned.
They have allowed themselves to be placed in cold storage. They,
who potentially are able to do the most, are hypnotized with the
belief that they can do the least - and the legions of stupidity
march over them. The picture is this. A strong sane man, having
strapped himself in a chair, having turned the running of things over
to a few cunning men and a host of idiots, permits these idiots to
bully him."

"Not bad," laughed Williams. "The picture, I mean. The condition
is as bad as it possibly could be."

"It just happens," said John, "that I recently finished a book
dealing, in part, with these matters. It describes the difficulties
and the rewards experienced by a group of people who tried to form
and did form a functioning body for the purpose of cooperatively
achieving a common aim. It has just occurred to me that it might
interest you. I have a copy of the manuscript here. You might care
to take it along."

"I would," said Williams.

153-165

XIV

They were driving home from marketing. Marian had had a taste for pineapple. John had had a taste for roast-beef. A pineapple and a fine cut of beef were, then, main among the packages stowed away in the rumble seat.

He stopped the car at the Point just around the bend from Gull House. The rocks and the sea were below them. Far across the bay were the blown pine trees wooding the arm of Point Goros. The curved sandy beach was in full view. From their location they could see its steep shelving and the waters sweeping rushing back to form the dangerous undertow.

"Look at that!" said John. "I had never noticed how really precipitous it is. I don't think I'd like to get caught in it."

"No indeed," she said.

He turned to her. "Do you know, you have changed."

"Have I?" she smiled.

"I should say you have. I see it in the way you handle yourself, in everything you do. You have a new tone, a new quality. You must have gone through a great deal I knew nothing of. The whole thing here, it really hit you terrifically, didn't it?"

She nodded.

"Yes," he said, "far more than it hit me - and you have won far more from it. It was a struggle wasn't it? Not a mere conflict of wish against wish but a basic contest between values and emptiness, between being and nothingness, between essential affirmations and denials - as you put it, between life and death, desperate, and as fruitful as it was desperate." He gazed at her admiringly.

154 166

"It was not that much," she said.

"Ah, yes it was. I can see it now. What shall I wish you? Shall I wish you more struggle? Shall I wish you a quiet time so that all you have gained can be crystallized?"

"I don't know," she said.

But she too knew she had changed. She had a deep glowing feeling that something desirable had come about because of her efforts. She tasted a new satisfaction, a new sense of well-being, a different sense of and faith in her own powers.

Also, she had certain specific new self-understandings. Increasingly she realized how much of herself hitherto had been concealed from him. Some strange mechanism in her had made her hide her positive experiences and feelings and show, or tend to show, only her negative experiences. It was curious. She had seen the good that was happening in her; and because she could see it she had assumed that he could see it too, no matter what she said or did. Perhaps all her life she had been this way. Perhaps this was why so many people had not understood her, why she had not understood their seeming lack of insight. Well, now she saw how it was; and with the seeing she felt she could somewhat control it, that she was controlling it, that the process and her entire way of living was being reversed. What John had said to her was proof of this.

She knew, too, that her demands of herself had, in one particular respect, altered radically. Before, she had demanded that she be emotional and dramatic. Well, what she had been through with John and the publicity in Caromb had so gratified, over-gratified, this wish that now she was released to desire something else, and this something else was already coming to her - a sense of dignity, a

155

167

feeling of nobility as regards herself - and life, not a tragic but
a noble adventure, or, if tragic, then noble too.

John had repeatedly told her she was far too much concerned with
defeat. She had believed him. She had not been deeply convinced, not
until now. The experiences of the past month had accomplished what
no words, not even John's, could. Now she realized it. She realized
how much the idea and the fear had ruled her; how, in a sense, she
had wanted defeat, even going out of her way to pull it down upon
her. Yes, but when she had seen herself really threatened with it
she had struggled as she had never known she could. Not defeat. Truly
she did not want it. Truly, and far more strongly, she did want
triumph, not egotistical but noble triumph. Let the two of them hence-
forth devote their lives to this. Let more tests come. She might not
prove equal to them but it would not be because she had not tried.

It worked out that, for the next several days, they experienced
no unexpected turns. The current of the relentless stream flowed, it
seemed, smoothly upward. AX It was as if something were ended, as if
some new thing might begin.

To all appearances the publicity was a thing of the past. Having
cleared in Paula it was, for them, clear everywhere. True, the
implications of it were matters for thought. John was pondering what
the whole thing really meant. But in any case he did not have to
brace himself to meet fresh developments.

Even as regards the *Ourpas* article, which had not yet appeared,
he had lost interest. Not altogether. He still felt that if *Ourpas*
printed the statement by him it would constitute a desirable period
to the entire episode. But now, with the storm over, with himself
and Marian in such fine shape, with their mother unfouled, with

150

168

Paula rallying, with contacts reestablished stronger than ever with all their old friends, it did not seem important, not nearly as much as he had felt it when they were in the grips of the invisible machine.

His fear, too, had diminished - fear of that impalpable thing he had felt looming upon them in Caromb. It had practically disappeared. He believed he would never, under any circumstances, experience it again. As a comic yet serious sign of this - for over a week now he had felt no need to draw the curtains over the French windows to keep the outside night from peering in. In it came, dynamic black, and he smiled at it.

Yes, something in himself had changed. Something had been overcome, perhaps eliminated. He was seriously curious as to what this something was. Clearly it had to do, as he had glimpsed from the beginning, with a feeling of insecurity, of exposure and defenselessness, a fear he would be paralyzed, unable to function in an emergency, a dread he would be rendered helpless. But why had Caromb and Gull House, rather than and far more than any other place or any other house he had inhabited, so powerfully aroused these terrors? And why had the events in Caromb and in Gull House enabled him to overcome them?

But had he finally overcome them? Wasn't he crediting himself with too much? It was true that fear had left him, but there was, and he could not help but ХИЖИЕ sense it, a strange deep quivering, a shakiness, as if the very base of himself were experiencing recurrent tremors like those which shake the earth. And the tremors, in turn, increased his feeling of being stripped and exposed, vulnerable to whatever might assail him. He was more sensitive than ever, hypersensitive, particularly to sounds, especially to the sounds of the waves pounding on the beach. They thudded into him, seeming to beat

157 169

directly upon the thing in him which quivered. They possessed him. They obsessed him. Like the expressman he felt they would drive him crazy. This was at night. During the day the racket of his typewriter drowned them out.

With energetic attack he had started writing a new thing. Having made what to him was a fundamental observation, namely, that human beings desire to function as they desire else and that they fear paralysis of functioning as they fear nothing else, he had set to work to develop this idea and to point out which of the main features of modern life furthered the desire and which, on the other hand, aroused and increased the fear.

In the course of the book he hoped he would be able to solve, at least for himself, the problems which had arisen during his talk with Williams. Williams, apparently, was strongly inclined towards communism. Perhaps communism was the thing for him. For himself, the approach had to deal directly and effectively with the psychological as well as the economic and social aspects. And so he thought and wrote.

Marian started writing. Suddenly she too resumed work. Several months before she had begun a novel, carried it through the first section, and stopped. Something had happened. She had felt listless, uninterested, without force. Now she also was energized; and the large day-bright living-room became a workshop for the two of them, and their typewriters accomplished what human voices had been unable to do: the clicks and clacks, a double battery of them, filled the room, filled even the gabled roof and the queer high angles over the balcony.

Towards evening there would be a reading of the pages written

150 171

heard such fine things of the Andrews, would like very much to meet them, if they were not too busy to bother with seeing people. John proposed that they come to tea the following afternoon.

They came. Their resemblance marked them as sisters. Both were slim with easy striding movements. Both had dark eyes and dark hair. Both had features at once sharp and soft - something refined and sensitive, something southern, warm, langorous. They were from Mala, of an old Mala family. Only a few months before they, with their mother, had moved to live permanently in Caromb. They had always liked Caromb, often having visited it. At one time their father had owned a ranch in the wild mountain country back from the coast. They could remember the stockade and the mountain lions. They drank tea and talked. John liked them. He could see that Marian did too.

Marian, indeed, was opening to them as she had to but few people in Caromb. She fell into one of her old bouvant raconteuring vins. Mrs Carter also liked to tell stories, especially about the escapades of her children. They sort of vied with each other, each responding to and making the other laugh.

John felt glad. This was the kind of companionship he had wanted for Marian - a woman friend, moreover a woman who had experienced pregnancy and childbirth and motherhood.

The sister too was fine. She was a painter. She was more enclosed than Mrs Carter but quite responsive nonetheless. Unmarried, she lived with the mother. Mrs Carter had a separate cottage for herself and family, one of the cottages which clustered in the village. She would have taken Gull House if it had had better heating facilities for the winter months. A fireplace, however large, was not enough.

160 / 172

They said they wanted John and Marian to visit them. They would soon phone and let them know when.

"There," said John after they had left, "that was something like it. Something can grow between them and ourselves. Something quite fine can develop between you and Mrs Carter. I feel you should know some woman like her in Caromb, someone who has gone through and valued what you are going through."

"I think so too," said Marian. "I like them. I feel they like us. But do you suppose it will happen with them as it has with all the others, with Burrows and everybody except the Williamses? Will they go off and we'll never see or hear from them again?"

"Why should it?" asked John.

"I don't know. In a way, I don't care, though I would like to see Mrs Carter again. They didn't say anything about the publicity."

"Why should they?"

"I don't know. We have our own work now. The fewer people we see the better. You don't feel lonely, do you?"

"Why should I? No, of course not." He stepped up playfully and kissed her. "Even should you see my face appearing to look lonely you must remember that, as in the case of the sadness, it is simply a matter of the way it is built. Years ago I learned how to be alone. Now I'm learning how to be with others and especially with you."

"You don't miss your men companions?" she persisted. "You don't miss Hugh? You must want to be with men sometimes."

"Yes, in a way," he admitted. "I'd like to see Hugh. But there has been enough happening to keep me occupied, and I have a hunch that things will continue happening as long as we are in Caromb. Do you know, I still feel captive here. Ah, yes, I agreed that we would

161 173

stay. I am not going back on our decision, on my part of it. I don't regret it. I am satisfied. At the same time I have the queerest sort of shakiness way down inside me. Maybe that is what you sense when you wonder if I'm lonely. No, loneliness would be pleasant in comparison with this. I am telling you of it because I think you can stand such things now. I know you can. But, dear, unless I am wrong -

"What?" she asked quickly.

"Nothing," he said.

And late that night to the pounding of the drum -

John...Marian...

La, me, fa. mo, lamadum,
La, me, fa, mo, lamadum,

John...Marian...

John...Marian...

Ye-i-o-u-um!

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

174

XV

He was in the news-store buying cigarettes. They had driven into town. Marian was waiting for him in the car outside. Glancing over the magazine racks he saw a copy of *Ourpas*. It was the latest issue. He bought it and joined Marian.

"Well," he said, "let's see if it is in this number." They were parked at almost the same place on the narrow main street - the spot at which the Lover Spouse Stirs Caromb headline had popped out at them.

He did not have to turn long.

Suddenly they saw the convict-woman-of-the-streets photo glaring at them.

Marian made strange wounded sound; and, all at once, somehow touch-
ed off by what she saw, there swept upon and over her the entire train
of their torture-torn experiences in Caromb - the very first evening
and the encounter with the ghost-keeper of the rooming house; Gull
House and her night-fears of it; Dunney and the breaking of the
publicity; the reading of the paper and Miss Robert's slurring res-
ponse; her own feeling that she was being frozen from life; Anna's
letter; dread of what she would bring upon her parents - all,
everything destructive and painful, concentrated in one smashing sear-
ing ball, streaming screaming through her. She felt she did not have
to read the article. She felt she knew it was hostile, hostile to
herself and John, hostile to life and love, hostile to her values -
as the entire world was hostile to them - and she felt sure that this
was a sign that the world would destroy her. John was as helpless as