The Dead Seagull Read Online Free Page A

two? When the veils are lifted from the truly religious man he will be seen kneeling in the masturbatory attitude of prayer. For he has intercepted the fiendish will of god with his hand in an immaculate contraception.
    *  *  *  *
    Yesterday Marsden Forsden stepped down out of a Venetian ceiling into our hospitality. She is, certainly, a great beauty. Theresa was delighted. I left them together as soon as the three of us got home from the station. They cooed and chirruped and sniggered and smiled, quite undisguisedly elated at seeing each other again. Leaning their heads together over the small tea table, I thought, when I returned from a walk, how ravishing a picture they composed: the gold hair falling around the architectural face of the one who at that moment held her hand with seeming unconsciousness beneath her left breast, glittering and pink, winged cherubs in the air about her head; and the dark coiled mass of Theresa’s curls coming down over her shoulders like Monica’s modesty, failing to hide the big belly and the big breasts, shadows and muted instruments about her, the gracious leaning of her head forward and to one side over the tea table bringing the bright and the dark heads together in an intermingling of auras. I could have wished, they seemed so full of symbols, that at that moment there was no one else in the whole world: for it would still have been full.
    “Come and take some tea,” Theresa said. “We were talking about you.”
    “Don’t stop now. It’s plainly the subject he’s most entertained by.” Marsden, smiling, opened her eyes a little wider so that the remark masqueraded as flattery.
    “My conversation can’t possibly compete with so much beauty,” I said shortly.
    “More. And thicker. With a cherry on the top.” Marsden licked the back of a spoon rather like a big brindled cat licking its forepaw. She appeared perfectly at her ease; I had a disquieting feeling that I was the only person in the room not intimately familiar with the other two. Theresa, seeming to sense that I was slightly at a loss, said: “Marsden knows you very much better than you suspect. She’s been a fan of yours for months. She read your book.”
    “It’s my misfortune,” I said. “I just can’t keep my mouth shut about myself. Sometimes it’s very embarrassing. What a tiresome turn the conversation has taken. Let’s talk about Marsden.”
    Theresa looked with solicitude across the table. “What’s the matter?”
    “I don’t know.” Marsden handed me a cigarette.
    “You two milkmaids with your buckets full make me feel angry. I have the sensation that the schoolboys have when they see their superiors not going to school. I resent the fact,” I said with an amusement I could not conceal, “that women grow old quicker than men.”
    “Grow up, you mean,” Marsden said.
    “I do not mean grow up. Women never grow up. They remain children playing with dolls all their life long. Only the dolls become more and more expensive until finally they refuse to play with any but those that have cost them their virtue and their vanity.”
    “Is he always like this?” Marsden asked Theresa.
    “Yes, I am,” I said; “you’ll find me down at the pub. I wish you’d both come. I’ll be more sociable then. I got out of the wrong bed this morning.”
    *  *  *  *
    “You must be nicer to Marsden,” Theresa said one afternoon when her friend was sleeping, “because if you aren’t she’ll fall in love with you.
    “I should think she falls in love without any provocation. Say every Wednesday. I wonder whose mistress she is.”
    “You mustn’t say things like that. You don’t really dislike her. I’m not sure that you’re not simply envious of whoever she’s chosen to fall in love with.” She came and looked up at me with an expression of amusement that did not conceal a degree of real concern. “Are you?”
    “I think she’s a very desirable residence,” I said, taking her hands.