Free The New York Stories of Elizbeth Hardwick by Elizabeth Hardwick Page A

meant, anyone .
    “Although I felt a certain physical ennui, I was by nature talkative and enjoyed listening to myself much more than to him and apparently he waited expectantly for what I had to say. And yet our conversation, or more precisely my monologue, led within a half hour to intense frustration and displeasure on my part. Edgar did not respond adequately. His views seemed to me flat and impersonal. He did not suffer if he missed the last word about one of my friends, nor did he make any particularly animated contributions of his own. It wasn’t that he was bored, but that he so often had nothing to add. In the end I would demand, ‘Well, what do you think?’ and he would answer, ‘I haven’t formed an opinion. I don’t know all the facts.’
    “My heart hardened and I felt feverish. We went on to something else. Edgar would sometimes tell what had happened to him during the day, a story about his colleagues perhaps, and invariably I felt he had been in the wrong, or that the most significant clue had escaped him. ‘How can that be,’ he wanted to know, ‘when it turned out perfectly in the end?’ By nine o’clock I had begun to dislike his face, which I denounced in my thoughts as immature, without distinction.”
    Old flame, lost beloved — I have left out of my little “story” my abject dependence upon you! How mad I was about you, how perversely aware of my sinful enjoyment of your affection for me. How much more I liked you than all the persons I admired ! I worshipped your indulgence of me. Nothing so easily unbalances the sense of proportion in a woman of artistic ambitions as the dazed love and respect of an ordinary man. I was nearly deranged with the secret sense of well-being this “impossible affair” gave me. What joy there was in my sullen returns to you!
    “Edgar was kind, considerate, and honest. At school many people thought of him as one of the ‘young men,’ by which they meant to suggest he had advanced opinions. This notion was entirely inaccurate, but still it was easy enough to see why simple people thought of him as a crusader. He was the sort of man who had usual, conventional opinions about large issues and yet could turn a pure and perfect fury upon the inadequacies of the constitution of a certain state, like the state of Ohio for instance. He was a genuine, old-fashioned soul and one had only to glance at his amiable, youthful, ‘fair-play’ face to see there all the moral maxims of one’s youth. If asked what principle he most respected, Edgar would very likely have paused to consider and then have answered: arbitration .”
    In my story I was trying to make the poor fellow look ridiculous and myself “awful but interesting.” In real life Edgar was always putting the most fearful questions to me.
    “Why don’t we get married?” he naturally asked regularly.
    “I’m not so sure it would be the right thing to do. We make each other very, very dull. Anyone can see that.” I was careful to give these insulting answers in a very affectionate tone, for after all the situation between us required a really exhausting amount of quick thinking on my part. I often felt I had done an honest day’s work after an evening with Edgar.
    “But this dullness , as you call it, that is your life. Night after night.”
    “Yes, it is and yet it isn’t really the whole thing.”
    If Edgar’s deepest nature was in truth sturdy, sensual, mercantile, I never in my old notes gave a true idea of his physical charm. His French Gothic face of such an interesting, abstract modeling, private and serene. This face always fascinated me and whenever I looked at it I discovered Edgar’s secret strength. He was a happy young man!
    Another vignette of Edgar from my old notebook:
    “...as I looked through the window I saw that my solid, unaffected Edgar Mason was waiting for me. He was working the crossword puzzle in the evening paper, but I could tell he was not diverted by it. He is