Read The Dream Life of Balso Snell for Free Online Page B

No-one had ever before forgotten her strange shape long enough to realize how beautiful her soul was. She had never before known the thrill of being subdued by a male from a different land from that of her dreams. Now she had found a wonderful poet; now she knew the thrill she had never known before…had found it in the strength of this young and tall, strangely wise man, caught like herself in the meshes of the greatest net human hearts can know: Love.
    Balso took her home and, in the hallway of her house, tried to seduce her. She allowed him one kiss, then broke away. From her lips—overhung by a moist eye and under-hung by a heaving embonpoint—there came, “Love is a strange thing, is it not, Balso Snell?” He was afraid to laugh; he knew that if he even smiled the jig would be up. “Love,” she said, “is beautiful. You, Balso, do not love. Love is sacred. How can you kiss if you do not love?” When he began to unbutton, she said with a desperately gay smile: “Would you want some one to ask of your sister what you ask of me? So this is why you invited me to dinner? I prefer music.”
    He made another attempt, but she fended him off. “Love,” she began again, “Love, with me, Mr. Snell, is sacred. I shall never debase love, or myself, or the memory of my mother, in a hallway. Act your education, Mr. Snell. Tumbling in hallways at my age! How can you? After all, there are the eternal verities, not to speak of the janitor. And besides, we were never properly introduced.” After half an hour’s sparring, he managed to warm her up a bit. She held him to her tightly for a second, capsized her eyeballs, and said: “If you only loved me, Balso. If you only loved me.” He looked her in the eye, stroked her hump, kissed her brow, protesting desperately: “But I do love you, Janey. I do. I do. I swear it. I must have you. I must! I must!” She shoved him away with a sad yet determined smile. “First you will have to prove your love as did the knights of old.”
    “I’m ready,” Balso cried. “What would you have me do?”
    “Come inside and I’ll tell you.”
    Balso followed her into the apartment and sat down beside her on a couch.
    “I want you to kill a man called Beagle Darwin,” she said with great firmness. “He betrayed me. In this hump on my back I carry his child. After you have killed him, I shall yield up my pink and white body to you, and then commit suicide.”
    “A bargain,” Balso said. “Give me but your stocking to wear around my hat and I’m off to earn the prize.”
    “Not so fast, my gallant; first I must explain a few things to you.
    “After listening to Beagle Darwin recite some of his poetry, I slept with him one night while my folks were visiting friends in Plainfield, New Jersey. Unfamiliar as I was with the wiles of men, I believed him when he told me that he loved me and wanted to take me to Paris to live in an artistic studio. I was very happy until I received the following letter.”
    Here the Lepi went to a bureau and took out two letters, one of which she gave Balso to read.
     
    Darling Janey:
    You persist in misunderstanding me. Please understand this: It is for your own good that I am refusing to take you to Paris, as I am firmly convinced that such a trip can only result in your death.
    Here is the way in which you would die:
    In your pajamas, Janey, you sit near the window and listen to the gay clatter of Paris traffic. The highpitched automobile horns make of every day a holiday. You are miserable.
    You tell yourself: Oh, the carnival crowds are always hurrying past my window. I’m like an old actor mumbling Macbeth as he fumbles in the garbage can outside the theatre of his past triumphs. Only I’m not old; I’m young. Young, and I never had any triumphs to mumble over; my only triumphs were those I dreamed of having. I’m Janey Davenport, pregnant, unmarried, unloved, lonely, watching the laughing crowds hurry past her window.
    I don’t fit into life. I