Narcissus

Evelyn Scott

Description

Though born and raised in the Southern U.S., novelist and poet Evelyn Scott spent much of her life abroad in South America and Europe. The captivating novel Narcissus is the second book in a trilogy recounting the nuances and dynamics of several generations of the quintessentially Southern Farley family.

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781776592791
• Langue: English

Extrait

NARCISSUS
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EVELYN SCOTT
 
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Narcissus First published in 1922 Epub ISBN 978-1-77659-279-1 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77659-280-7 © 2013 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Part I Part II Part III
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"Nought loves another as itself, Nor venerates another so, Nor is it possible to thought A greater than itself to know." William Blake.
Part I
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At three o'clock in the afternoon Julia put on her hat. Her dressingtable with its triple mirror stood in an alcove. It was a very finesevere little table. It was Julia's vanity to be very fine and dainty inher toilet. Here was no powder box, but lotions and expensive scents.When she sat before the glass she enjoyed the defiant delicacy which shesaw in the lines of her lifted head, and there was a thrill which shecould not analyze in the sight of her long white hands lying useless inher lap. They made her in love with herself.
Her hat was of bright brown straw and when she slipped on her fur coatshe was pleased with the luxurious incongruity of the effect.
Nellie, the old Negro servant, was away, and Julia's step-children, Mayand Bobby, were at school. As Julia descended the stairway to the lowerhall, her silk dress, brushing the carpet, made a cool hissing sound inthe quiet passageway.
She opened the front door softly and passed into the long street whichappeared sad and deserted in the spring sunshine. Under the cold trees,that were budding here and there, were small blurred shadows. In thetall yellow apartment house across the way windows were open and whitecurtains shook mysteriously against the light. Above a cornice smokefrom a hidden chimney rushed in opaque volumes to dissolve against thecold glow of the remote sky.
Julia walked along, feeling as though she were the one point in whichthe big silent city in the chill wind grew conscious of itself. It wasonly when she reached Dudley Allen's doorstep that her mood changed, andshe felt that when she went in she would be robbed of her new gloriousindifference about her life.
She rang the bell above the small brass plate, and when the white doorhad opened and she was mounting the soft green-carpeted stairs up thelong corridor, it seemed to her that she was going back into herself.
In the passage before Dudley's rooms he came to meet her as he had donebefore. His hard eyes as they looked at her had a sort of bloom oftriumph.
"I was sure you'd come." He grasped both her hands and drew her throughthe tall doorway. "Dear!"
"I suppose you were." She smiled at him with a clear look, knowing thatin his discomfort before her he was condemning himself.
"Won't you kiss me?" They were in his studio. He pouted his lips underhis mustache. His eyes shone with uneasy brilliance.
She kissed him. She understood that the simpler she was in her abandonthe more disconcerted he became.
When she had taken off her hat and laid it upon his drawing-board, heheld her against him and caressed her hair. Because he was afraid of hisown silence, he kept repeating, "Dear! My dear!"
"Aren't we lovers, Julia?" he insisted at last, childishly. He wasembarrassed and wanted to make a joke of his own mood, but she saw thathe was trembling. His mouth smiled. His eyes were clouded and watchfulwith resentment.
"How deeply are we lovers, Dudley?" She leaned her cheek against hisbreast. She did not wish to look at him. Suddenly she was terrified thata lover was able to give her nothing of what other women received.
"You love me. Look at me, Julia. Say you love me."
Her lids fluttered, but she kept her eyes fixed upon his small plumphand, white through its black down. The hand was all at once a pitifultrembling thing which belonged to neither of them. It had a poordetached involuntary life.
Because of the hand she felt sorry for him, and she said, warmly andabruptly, "I love you." Her eyes, when they met his, were filled withtears. Yet she knew the love she gave him was not the thing for which heasked.
He was suspicious. His hands fell away from her. "Was I mistakenyesterday?" His voice sounded bitter and tired.
She was pained and her fear of losing him made her ardent. "No, Dudley!No!" Her face flushed, and her eyes, lifted to his, were dim withemotion.
"Did you understand what I hoped—how much I hoped for when I asked youto come here to-day, Julia?"
"Yes," she said. All the time she felt that she loved him because theywere both suffering and in a kind of danger from each other which he wasunable to see. She loved him because she was the only person who couldprotect him from herself. She was oppressed by her accurate awareness ofhim: of his hot flushed face close to hers, the shape of his nose, thepores of his skin, the beard in his cheeks, the irregular contour of hishead matted with dark curls, his ears that she thought ugly with thetufts of hair that grew above their lobes, his neck which was short andwhite and a little thick, and his hands, hairy and at the same timewomanish. Already she knew him so intimately that it gave her a sense ofguilt toward him. Her recognition of him was so cruel, and he seemedunmindful of it.
When she had reassured him that she loved him, he drew her down besidehim on the couch with the black and gold cover. He wanted to make teafor her and to show her some drawings that had been sent to him for hisjudgment.
She knew that while he talked he was on his guard before her. It seemedugly to her that they were afraid of each other.
The drawings, by an unknown artist, were very delicate, indicated by afew lines on what appeared to her a vast page. It humiliated her torecognize that she did not understand the things he was interested in.To admit, even inwardly, that something fine was beyond her awoke inher an arrogance of self-contempt. I'm only fit for one need, she saidto herself. Then, aloud, "They are very subtle and wonderful, Dudley.Much too fine, I think, for me to appreciate. I really don't want anytea." And she gazed at him hatefully as though he had hurt her.
Feeling herself so much less than he, even in this one thing, made herhard again. She stretched her hands up to him. "Kiss me!" The franknessand kindness were gone out of her eyes.
He was startled by the ugly unexpected look, and his own eyes grewsensual and moist as he sank beside her on his knees.
She drew his head against her breast and between her palms she couldfeel his pulses, heavy and labored. Each found at the moment somethingloathsome in caressing the other; but it was only when they despisedeach other that their emotions were completely released.
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It was growing dusk. The cold pale day outside became suddenly hecticwith color. Through the windows at the back of the room Julia could seethe black roof of the factory across the courtyard and the shell-pinkstain that came into the sky above it. The heavy masses of buildingswere glowing shadows. The room was filled with pearl-coloredreflections.
Dudley watched her as she lifted her hair in a long coil and pinned itagainst her head.
She glanced at his small highly colored face with its little mustacheabove the full smiling lips. Again she was ashamed of seeing him soplainly. She wished that she were exalted out of so definite a physicalperception of him.
"Julia. Julia." He repeated her name ruminatively. "You did come to carefor me. What do you feel, Julia? What has this made you feel?" He couldnot bear the sense of her separateness from him. He was obsessed bycuriosity about her and a lustful desire to outrage her mentalintegrity. He could not bear the feeling that the body which hadpossessed him so completely yet belonged to itself. His eyes, intimatewithout tenderness, smiled with a guilty look into hers.
She gazed at him as if she wanted to escape. For a moment she wishedthat they could have disappeared from each other's lives in the instantwhich culminated their embrace. Their talk made her feel herselfgrotesque. "I don't know," she said. "How can I say? I don't know."
Though he would not admit it to himself, her air of timidity andbewilderment pleased him. "How many lovers have you had, Julia?"
She thought, He only asked that to hurt me. She could not answer him.She smiled. Her lips quivered. She looked at her hands.
She saw him only as something which contributed to her experience ofherself. She had her experience of him before she gave herself to him.What happened between them happened to her alone.
"What do you feel? Tell me? How deeply do you love me, Julia?" He knewthat he was making her resentful toward him, but it was only when womenfelt nothing at all in regard to him that he found it hard to bear. Hegrasped her hands and held them.
"Of course I love you deeply." Her voice trembled. She turned her headaside.
"What do you feel about your husband, Julia?"
In spite of the pressure of his hands she felt Dudley far away,dissolving from her.
When she did not answer him at once he was afraid again and began tokiss her. "You love me. You love me very much."
"Oh, you know I love you," Julia said. She wanted to cry out and to goaway. He hurt her too much. Everything about him hurt her. She had adrunken sense of his disregard of her. She could no longer comprehendwhy she had come there and given herself to him. It was terrible todiscover that one did irrevocable things for no articulate reason. Shewas less interested in Dudley now than in this new and terribleastonishment about herself. She could n