Free I'm Dying Laughing by Christina Stead Page A

be watered every twenty years by the blood of martyrs. Why is it? What is the answer?’
    ‘The answer is, revolution is a necessity if we are not to be ants and bees.’
    ‘Brr! but it’s murder, it’s terrible.’
    About that they talked for days. In the end Emily gave up her plans and returned on the boat with Stephen. They would come back to Europe some other year.

3 MARRIAGE
    A T THE DOCK THEY met Stephen’s mother, Anna Howard, ‘dear Anna’ as Emily at once called her, a sallow, handsome, tall woman, with slender waist, long legs, broad shoulders. With her was a young woman, Adeline the heiress whom Stephen had thought about marrying. She was a dark, casually pretty girl, with large brown eyes and a hesitant manner, covering modest convictions. She was dressed in a dark material. Both greeted them friendly, but Mrs Howard kept Emily talking while Stephen spoke to Adeline and then Anna took Emily to her hotel, where she had a room for her, while Stephen, promising to see them later, went off in her car with Adeline to lunch.
    Emily lunched with Anna Howard in a small cellar restaurant off Washington Square.
    ‘I know you like places like this; Arthur and I come here,’ said she. She did not explain that Arthur Winegarden was to be her husband: but Emily knew.
    ‘You don’t drink wine,’ said Anna with a smile, after Emily, following her lead, had chosen osso buco with rice.
    Emily had meant to order veal cutlets with truffles; but she remembered what Stephen had said about ‘millionaire asceticism.’ Too bad, she thought; well, I must learn—let it be marrowbone and gravy. They had cheese and coffee and then went back to the hotel. Stephen returned, went to his mother and then called on Emily, who had a room across the hall from ‘dear Anna’.
    ‘It is all settled, Mother accepts my change of plans. What can she do? So there you are, you freak—engaged to me and we’ll be married right off. But do you mind going to Chicago? Anna has a summer shack the size of a department store, style cottage-baronial on the lake shore. We’ll be married there and then back to NY. I want to be near the New York party. I’ll work in New York. Mother wants us to live opposite her on East 75th Street; she’ll buy the house and rent it to us, or any arrangement. I don’t know how you feel about that? I’d say no.’
    They went uptown to look at the four-storey building which had a gable, tiles, an attic balcony; ‘a certain air of Montmartre,’ said Emily.
    ‘Yes, but good God, look at the place next door, gilded iron and heavy lace curtains, looks like a fine Paris brothel; and besides, Mother has only to look out of any front window from her house opposite to see our curtains, our car, our shared janitor and me at work in my study. One of her private ambitions is slowly to buy up four or five houses in this street and plant us all opposite, Florence, Olivia: “Howard Village”.’
    ‘No, no.’
    ‘Yes, no-no.’
    They came back, went to the bar downstairs to frame their answer to Anna’s offer.
    ‘Golly, Stephen, I can’t get over the idea that because I went red, I married into the social register. I can’t take it in. I know it’s so, but it is just like a story by a dimwit, that any editor would reject.’
    ‘America the Golden,’ said Stephen, ‘and what about me? The effete scion finally inducing some honest red blood to mingle with the watery anil in his veins?’
    They were married at City Hall, with only brother Arnold and Anna to witness; and then spent a few days on the lake at Oak Park.
    The Chicago country house was entered by a paved courtyard behind stronghold walls; over them, tiled roofs, below dressed stone archways. There was plenty of room inside: guestrooms, halls, flights of stairs, unexpected turns looking through long windows on to parts of the grounds and a weed-grown private pond, on which was a rowboat and in it a man hauling out weed. These glimpses were disheartening.