2-48
PARTISAN REVIEW
miserable, at her window, pushing back her short blond hair, or
twisting a curl on her cheek and tapping with it like a paint brush.
Now so remote, and no longer possible, the relation to Craven began
to shimmer almost gloriously with light and interest.
Craven had said to her once that she would write better poetry
after knowing him. That was at the beginning of their acquaintance,
but she remembered it still. Thinking of it, she felt like crying. Lucy
sat near her desk, reading some of her recent poems, and not liking
them at all. But if, before this, she stared blankly at them, now
almost vindictively she threw them away. She ascribed all their
faults and crudities to the absence of Craven's aegis, to Louis, say,
who was not desperate at all. Flicking over the pages of her note–
book, she saw no extreme gestures, no grandeur, no ecstasies. Would
she ever be a bright star in the firmament of the English poets?
Would she make herself remembered?
Lucy could even hear Craven sneer at her: she pictured his
ravaged face, and heard her own stiff shrillness, as if Baudelaire had
approached her and she primly squeaked,
uNonJ monsieurJ j'ai peur
de la maladie
.JJ
During the long week when she waited for Donald Craven's
call, she walked in the Park every afternoon at dusk. The gray soft–
ness, the hurrying crowds, the sound of distant bells-all came over
her sharply and sadly. The poor girl thought of partings, of bleak
wrenching farewells, of ships sailing off to unknown lands. Lucy
felt as her own all the mournful sadness in the world, and felt a
part of all the helpless tragic passion. In the Park, as she watched
the fountains, the plash of gentle water was far away, but she
wondered why she could not have the lightness of soul, the arabesque
of feeling that she felt in the water. She had struggled vainly against
Craven, against herself. In
his
room, she had fled him; now that he
was gone, she saw
him,
heard him everywhere. His image pursued
her in the subway, on the bus,
in
the Park, through all the city
crowds. Everything reminded her of him. Lucy saw all her past life
leading to the present moment, and she was pierced with love.
The week was very long, but he never called. Then Lucy started
on a wild, violent irregularity--something she would never have done
before. She went downtown one afternoon, near Carmine Street,
and stopped in a drugstore to telephone
him.
With an arrogant com-
