The Bent Twig Part 43

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII

SYLVIA COMES TO THE WICKET-GATE

Three weeks pa.s.sed before his letter came. The slow, thrilling crescendo of May had lifted the heart up to a devout certainty of June. The leaves were fully out, casting a light, new shadow on the sprinkled streets. Every woman was in a bright-colored, thin summer dress, and every young woman looked alluring. The young men wore their hats tilted to one side, swung jaunty canes as they walked, and peered hopefully under the brim of every flowered feminine headdress.

The days were like golden horns of plenty, spilling out suns.h.i.+ne, wandering perfumed airs, and the heart-quickening aroma of the new season. The nights were cool and starry. Every one in Paris spent as much as possible of every hour out of doors. The pale-blue sky flecked with creamy clouds seemed the dome, and the city the many-colored pavement of some vast building, so grandly s.p.a.cious that the sauntering, leisurely crowds thronging the thoroughfares seemed no crowds at all, but only denoted a delightful sociability.

All the spring vegetables were at their crispest, most melting perfection, and the cherries from Anjou were like miniature apples of Hesperus. Up and down the smaller streets went white-capped little old women, with baskets on their arms, covered with snowy linen, and they chanted musically on the first three notes of the scale, so that the sunny vault above them resounded to the cry, "De la creme, fromage a la creme!" The three Americans had enchanted expeditions to Chantilly, to Versailles again, called back from the past and the dead by the miracle of spring; to more distant formidable Coucy, grimly looking out over the smiling country at its foot, to Fontainebleau, even a two days' dash into Touraine, to Blois, Amboise, Loches, jewels set in the green enamels of May ... and all the time Sylvia's attempt to take the present and to let the future bring what it would, was pitched perforce in a higher and higher key,--took a more violent effort to achieve.

She fell deeper than ever under Morrison's spell, and yet the lack of Austin was like an ache to her. She had said to herself, "I will not let myself think of him until his letter comes," and she woke up in the night suddenly, seeing the fire and tenderness and yearning of his eyes, and stretching out her arms to him before she was awake. And yet she had never tried so hard to divine every shade of Morrison's fastidiousness and had never felt so supreme a satisfaction in knowing that she did. There were strange, brief moments in her life now, when out of the warring complexity in her heart there rose the simple longing of a little girl to go to her mother, to feel those strong, unfailing arms about her. She began to guess dimly, without thinking about it at all, that her mother knew some secret of life, of balance, that she did not. And yet if her mother were at hand, she knew she could never explain to her--how could she, when she did not know herself?--what she was living through. How long she had waited the moment when she _would_ know!

One day towards the end of May, Morrison had come in for lunch, a delicately chosen, deceptively simple meal for which Yos.h.i.+da had outdone himself. There had been a savory mixture of sweetbreads and mushrooms in a smooth, rich, creamy sauce; green peas that had been on the vines at three o'clock that morning, and which still had the aroma of life in their delectable little b.a.l.l.s; sparkling Saumur; b.u.t.ter with the fragrance of dew and clover in it; crisp, crusty rolls; artichokes in oil--such a meal as no money can buy anywhere but in Paris in the spring, such a simple, simple meal as takes a great deal of money to buy even in Paris.

"It is an art to eat like this," said Morrison, more than half seriously, after he had taken the first mouthful of the golden souffle which ended the meal. "What a May we have had! I have been thinking so often of Talleyrand's saying that no one who had not lived before the French Revolution, under the old regime, could know how sweet life could be; and I've been thinking that we may live to say that about the end of this regime. Such perfect, golden hours as it has for those who are able to seize them. It is a debt we own the Spirit of Things to be grateful and to appreciate our opportunity."

"As far as the luncheon goes, it's rather a joke, isn't it," said his hostess, "that it should be an Oriental cook who has so caught the true Gallic accent? I'll tell Tojiko to tell Yos.h.i.+do that his efforts weren't lost on you. He adores cooking for you. No, you speak about it yourself. Here comes Tojiko with the mail."

She reached for the _Herald_ with one hand, and with the other gave Sylvia a letter with the American postmark. "Oh, Tojiko," said Morrison with the familiarity of an habitue of the house, "will you tell your brother for me that I never tasted anything like his ..."

Mrs. Marshall-Smith broke in with an exclamation of extreme astonishment. "Oh--what _do_ you think--! Sylvia, did you know anything about this? Of all the crazy--why, what under the sun--?

I always knew there was a vein of the fanatic--any man who won't smoke--you may be sure there's something unbalanced--!" She now turned the paper as she spoke and held it so that the headlines leaped out across the table:

MILLIONAIRE COAL OPERATOR TURNS VAST HOLDINGS OVER TO THE STATE

Son of Old Peter Page Converted to Socialism

"_What_!" cried Morrison. Even in the blankness of her stupefaction, Sylvia was aware of a rising note in his voice that was by no means dismay.

"Yes," continued Mrs. Marshall-Smith, reading rapidly and disconnectedly from the paper, beginning an item and dropping it, as she saw it was not the one she was searching for, "'Mr. Page is said to have contemplated some such step for a long ...'--m-m-m, not that ... 'well-known collector of ceramics--Metropolitan Museum--member of the Racquet, the Yacht, the Century, the Yale--thirty-two--Mother Miss Allida Sommerville of Baltimore, formerly a great beauty'--_here_ it is," she stopped skimming and read consecutively: "'Mr. Page's plan has been worked out in all detail with experts. A highly paid, self-perpetuating commission of labor experts, sociologists, and men of practical experience in coal-operating has been appointed to administer Mr. Page's extremely extensive holdings. The profits form a fund which, under the stipulations of Mr. Page's agreement with the State, is to be used to finance a program of advanced social activities; to furnish money for mothers' pensions, even perhaps for fathers' pensions in the case of families too numerous to be adequately cared for on workingmen's wages; to change the public school system of the locality into open-air schools with s.p.a.cious grounds for manual activities of all kinds; greatly to raise wages; to lengthen the period of schooling before children go into remunerative occupations ...'" Mrs. Marshall-Smith looked up, said, "Oh, _you_ know, the kind of thing such people are always talking about," and began to skip again, "'--extensive plans for garden cities--public libraries--books of the business to be open to employes--educational future--no philanthropy--and so forth and so forth.'" She glanced hurriedly down the page, caught the beginning of another sentence, and read: "'The news has created an immense sensation all over the country. It is prophesied that Mr. Page's unexpected action will throw the coal business into great confusion. Other operators will find it extremely difficult to go on with the old conditions. Already it is rumored that the Chilton Coal and c.o.ke Company ...'"

"Well, I should think so indeed!" cried Morrison emphatically, breaking in. "With modern industrial conditions hung on a hair trigger as they are, it's as though a boy had exploded a fire-cracker in the works of a watch. That means his whole fortune gone. Old Peter put everything into coal. Austin will not have a cent--nothing but those Vermont scrub forests of his. What a mad thing to do! But it's been growing on him for a long time. I've seen--I've felt it!"

Sylvia gave a dazed, mechanical look at the letter she held and recognized the handwriting. She turned very white.

Aunt Victoria said instantly: "I see you have a letter to read, my dear, and I want Felix to play that D'Indy Interlude for me and explain it--Bauer is going to play it tonight for the Princess de Chevrille. We'll bother you with our chatter. Don't you want to take it to your room to read?"

Sylvia stood up, holding the unopened letter in her hand. She looked about her a little wildly and said: "Oh no, no! I think I'd rather be out of doors. I'll go out on the balcony."

"It's raining," said Mrs. Marshall-Smith.

"No, not yet," said Morrison, making a great effort to speak in an ordinary tone. "It's only going to." He sat down at the piano. Sylvia pa.s.sed him and went out to the balcony. She opened the letter and read it through very carefully. It was a long one and this took some time.

She did not hear a note of the music which poured its plaintive, eerie cadences around her. When she had finished the letter she instantly started to read it again, with the sensation that she had not yet begun to understand it. She was now deeply flushed. She continually put back a floating strand of hair, which recurrently fell across her forehead and cheek.

After a time, Mrs. Marshall-Smith said from the open door: "Felix and I are going to Madeleine Perth's. Would you rather stay here?" Sylvia nodded without looking up.

She sat motionless, looking at the letter long after she had finished it. An hour pa.s.sed thus. Then she was aware that it was beginning to rain. The drops falling on the open letter dissolved the ink into blurred smears. She sprang up hastily and went into the salon, where she stood irresolute for a moment, and then, without calling Helene, went to her room and dressed for the street. She moved very quickly as though there were some need for extreme haste, and when she stepped into the street she fell at once automatically into the swinging step of the practised walker who sees long miles before him.

Half an hour later she was looking up at the facade of Notre Dame through the rain, and seeing there these words: "I shall be waiting at Austin Farm to hear if you are at all able to sympathize with me in what I have done. The memory of our last words together may help you to imagine with what anxiety I shall be waiting."

She pushed open the greasy, s.h.i.+ning leather door, pa.s.sed into the interior, and stood for a moment in the incense-laden gloom of the nave. A ma.s.s was being said. The rapidly murmured Latin words came to her in a dim drone, in which she heard quite clearly, quite distinctly: "There is another kind of beauty I faintly glimpse--that isn't just sweet smells and lovely sights and harmonious lines--it's the beauty that can't endure disharmony in conduct, the fine, true ear for the loveliness of life lived at its best--Sylvia, finest, truest Sylvia, it's what you could, if you would--you more than any other woman in the world--if we were together to try--"

Sylvia sank to her knees on a prie-Dieu and hid her face in her hands, trying to shut out the words, and yet listening to them so intently that her breath was suspended.... "What Morrison said is true--for him, since he feels it to be true. No man can judge for another. But other things are true too, things that concern me. It's true that an honest man cannot accept an ease founded, even remotely, on the misery of others. And my life has been just that. I don't know what success I shall have with the life that's beginning, but I know at least it will begin straight. There seems a chance for real shapeliness if the foundations are all honest--doesn't there? Oh, Sylvia--oh, my dearest love, if I could think you would begin it with me, Sylvia! Sylvia!"

The girl sprang up and went hastily out of the church. The nun kneeling at the door, holding out the silent prayer for alms for the poor, looked up in her face as she pa.s.sed and then after her with calm, understanding eyes. Kneeling there, day after day, she had seen many another young, troubled soul fleeing from its own thoughts.

Sylvia crossed the parvis of Notre Dame, glistening wet, and pa.s.sed over the gray Seine, slate under the gray mist of the rain. Under her feet the impalpable dust of a city turned to gray slime which clung to her shoes. She walked on through a narrow, mean street of mediaeval aspect where rag-pickers, drearily oblivious of the rain, quarreled weakly over their filthy piles of trash. She looked at them in astonishment, in dismay, in horror. Since leaving La Chance, save for that one glimpse over the edge back in the Vermont mountains, she had been so consistently surrounded by the padded satin of possessions that she had forgotten how actual poverty looked. In fact, she had never had more than the briefest fleeting glances at it. This was so extravagant, so extreme, that it seemed impossible to her. And yet--and yet--She looked fleetingly into those pale, dingy, underfed, repulsive faces and wondered if coal-miners' families looked like that.

But she said aloud at once, almost as though she had crooked an arm to s.h.i.+eld herself: "But he _said_ he did not want me to answer at once!

He _said_ he wanted me to take time--to take time--to take time ..."

She hastened her steps to this refrain, until she was almost running; and emerged upon the broad, well-kept expanse of the Boulevard St.

Germain with a long-drawn breath of relief.

Ahead of her to the right, the Rue St. Jacques climbed the hill to the Pantheon. She took it because it was broad and clean and differed from the musty darkness from which she had come out; she fled up the steep grade with a swift, light step as though she were on a country walk.

She might indeed have been upon some flat road near La Chance for all she saw of the buildings, the people around her.

How like Austin's fine courage that was, his saying that he did not want her to decide in haste, but to take time to know what she was doing! What other man would not have stayed to urge her, to hurry her, to impose his will on hers, masterfully to use his personality to confuse her, to carry her off? For an instant, through all her wretched bewilderment, she thrilled to a high, impersonal appreciation of his saying: "If I had stayed with you, I should have tried to take you by force--but you are too fine for that, Sylvia! What you could be to the man you loved if you went to him freely--that is too splendid to risk losing. I want all of you--heart, soul, mind--or nothing!"

Sylvia looked up through this clear white light to Austin's yearning eyes, and back through the ages with a wondering pity at the dark figure of Jerry Fiske, emerging from his cave. She had come a long way since then.

And then all this, everything fine, everything generous, ebbed away from her with deadly swiftness, and in a cold disgust with herself she knew that she had been repeating over and over Morrison's "Austin will not have a cent left ... nothing but those Vermont scrub forests." So that was the kind of a woman she was. Well, if that was the kind of woman she was, let her live her life accordingly. She was sick with indecision as she fled onward through the rain.

Few pedestrians were abroad in the rain, and those who were, sheltered themselves slant-wise with their umbrellas against the wind, and scudded with the storm. Sylvia had an umbrella, but she did not open it. She held her face up once, to feel the rain fall on it, and this reminded her of home, and long rainy walks with her father. She winced at this, and put him hastily out of her mind. And she had been unconsciously wis.h.i.+ng to see her mother! At the very recollection of her mother she lengthened her stride. There was another thought to run away from!

She swung around the corner near the Pantheon and rapidly approached the door of the great Library of Ste. Genevieve. A thin, draggled, middle-aged woman-student, entering hastily, slipped on the wet stones and knocked from under his arm the leather portfolio of a thin, draggled, middle-aged man who was just coming out. The woman did not stop to help repair the damage she had done, but hastened desperately on into the shelter of the building. Sylvia's eyes, absent as they were, were caught and held by the strange, blank look of the man, who stood motionless, his shabby hat knocked to one side of his thin, gray hair, his curiously filmed eyes fixed stupidly on the litter of papers scattered at his feet. The rain was beginning to convert them into sodden pulp, but he did not stir. The idea occurred to Sylvia that he might be ill, and she advanced to help him. As he saw her stoop to pick them up, he said in French, in a toneless voice, very indifferently: "Don't give yourself the trouble. They are of no value. I carry them only to make the Library attendants think I am a bona-fide reader. I go there to sleep because I have no other roof."

His French was entirely fluent, but the accent was American. Sylvia looked up at him surprised. He returned her gaze dully, and without another look at the papers, scuffled off through the rain, across the street towards the Pantheon. His boots were lamentable.

Sylvia had an instantly vanis.h.i.+ng memory of a pool of quiet suns.h.i.+ne, of a ripely beautiful woman and a radiant young man. Before she knew she was speaking, an impulsive cry had burst from her: "Why, Professor Saunders! Professor Saunders! Don't you know me? I am Sylvia Marshall!"

CHAPTER x.x.xIX

SYLVIA DRIFTS WITH THE MAJORITY

"No, they don't let you sit down in here if you're as shabby as I am,"

said the man, continuing his slow, feeble, shuffling progress. "They know you're only a vagrant, here to get out of the rain. They won't even let you stand still long."

Sylvia had not been inside the Pantheon before, had never been inside a building with so great a dome. They stood under it now. She sent her glance up to its vast, dim, n.o.ble heights and brought it down to the saturnine, unsavory wreck at her side. She was regretting the impulse which had made her call out to him. What could she say to him now they were together? What word, what breath could be gentle enough, light enough not to be poison to that open sore?

On his part he seemed entirely unconcerned about the impression he made on her. His eyes, his sick, filmed eyes, looked at her with no shrinking, with no bravado, with an entire indifference which gave, through all the desolation of his appearance, the strangest, careless dignity to the man. He did not care what she thought of him. He did not care what any one thought of him. He gave the impression of a man whose accounts are all reckoned and the balance struck, long ago.

"So this is Sylvia," he said, with the slightest appearance of interest, glancing at her casually. "I always said you would make a beautiful woman. But since I knew Victoria, I've seen that you must be quite what she was at your age." It might have been a voice speaking from beyond the grave, so listless, so dragging was its rhythm. "How do you happen to be in Paris?" he asked. "Are your parents still alive?"

"Oh _yes_!" said Sylvia, half startled by the preposterousness of the idea that they might not be. "They're very well too. I had such a good letter from Mother the other day. Do you remember Professor Kennedy?

He has just given up his position to be professor emeritus. I suppose now he'll write that book on the idiocy of the human race he's been planning so long. And old Mr. Reinhardt, he's still the same, they say ... wonderful, isn't it, at his age?" She was running on, not knowing what to say, and chattering rather foolishly in her embarra.s.sment.

"Judith is a trained nurse; isn't that just the right thing for her?