The Bent Twig Part 44

I'm visiting Aunt Victoria here for a while. Lawrence is a Freshman at...."

He broke in, his hollow voice resounding in the immense, vault-like s.p.a.ces around them. "You'd better go home," he said. "I'd leave tonight, if I were you." She looked at him startled, half-scared, thinking that she had been right to fancy him out of his mind. She saw with relief a burly attendant in a blue uniform lounging near a group of statuary. She could call to him, if it became necessary.

"You'd better go away from her at once," went on the man, advancing aimlessly from one bay of the frescoes to another.

Sylvia knew now of whom he was speaking, and as he continued talking with a slow, dreary monotony, her mind raced back over the years, picking up a sc.r.a.p here, a half-forgotten phrase there, an intercepted look between her father and mother, a recollection of her own, a half-finished sentence of Arnold's ...

"She can't be fatal for you in the same way she has been for the others, of course," the man was saying. "What she'll do for you is to turn you into a woman like herself. I remember now, I have thought many times, that you _were_ like her ... of the same clay. But you have something else too, you have something that she'll take away from you if you stay. You can't keep her from doing it. No one can get the better of her. She doesn't fight. But she always takes life. She has taken mine. She must have taken her bogie-husband's, she took young Gilbert's, she took Gilbert's wife's, she took Arnold's in another way.... G.o.d! think of leaving a young, growing, weak soul in the care of a woman like Victoria! She took that poet's, I forget his name; I suppose by this time Felix Morrison is ..."

At this name, a terrible contraction of the heart told Sylvia that she was listening to what he said. "Felix Morrison!" she cried in stern, angry protest. "I don't know what you're talking about--but if you think that Aunt Victoria--if you think Felix Morrison--" She was inarticulate in her indignation. "He was married last autumn to a beautiful girl--and Aunt Victoria--what an idea!--_no_ one was more pleased than she--why--you are _crazy_!" She flung out at him the word, which two moments before she would not have been so cruel as to think.

It gave him no discomfort. "Oh no, I'm not," he said with a spectral laugh, which had in it, to Sylvia's dismay, the very essence of sanity. She did not know why she now shrank away from him, far more frightened than before. "I'm about everything else you might mention, but I'm not crazy. And you take my word for it and get out while you still can ... _if_ you still can?" He faintly indicated an inquiry, looking at her sideways, his dirty hand stroking the dishonoring gray stubble of his unshaven face. "As for Morrison's wife ... let her get out too. Gilbert tried marrying, tried it in all unconsciousness. It's only when they try to get away from her that they know she's in the marrow of their bones. She lets them try. She doesn't even care. She knows they'll come back. Gilbert did. And his wife ... well, I'm sorry for Morrison's wife."

"She's dead," said Sylvia abruptly.

He took this in with a nod of the head. "So much the better for her.

How did it happen that _you_ didn't fall for Morrison's ..." he looked at her sharply at a change in her face she could not control. "Oh, you did," he commented slackly. "Well, you'd better start home for La Chance tonight," he said again.

They were circling around and around the shadowy interior, making no pretense of looking at the frescoed walls, to examine which had been their ostensible purpose in entering. Sylvia was indeed aware of great pictured s.p.a.ces, crowded dimly with thronging figures, men, horses, women--they reached no more than the outer retina of her eye. She remembered fleetingly that they had something to do with the story of Ste. Genevieve. She wanted intensely to escape from this phantom whom she herself had called up from the void to stalk at her side. But she felt she ought not to let pa.s.s, even coming from such a source, such utterly frenzied imaginings against one to whom she owed loyalty. She spoke coldly, with extreme distaste for the subject: "You're entirely wrong about Aunt Victoria. She's not in the least that kind of a woman."

He shook his head slowly. "No, no; you misunderstand me. Your Aunt Victoria is quite irreproachable, she always has been, she always will be. She is always in the right. She always will be. She did nothing to me but hire me to teach her stepson, and when my habits became too bad, discharge me, as any one would have done. She did nothing to Arnold except to leave him to the best schools and the best tutors money could buy. What more could any one have done? She had not the slightest idea that Horace Gilbert would try to poison his wife, had not the slightest connection with their quarrel. The young poet,--Adams was his name, now I remember--did not consult her before he took to cocaine. Morphine is my own specialty. Victoria of course deplored it as much as any one could. No, I'm not for a minute intimating that Victoria is a Messalina. We'd all be better off if she were. It's only our grossness that finds fault with her. Your aunt is one of the most respectable women who ever lived, as 'chaste as unsunned snow--the very ice of chast.i.ty is in her!' Indeed, I've often wondered if the redoubtable Ephraim Smith himself, for all that he succeeded in marrying her, fared any better than the rest of us.

Victoria would be quite capable of cheating him out of his pay. She parches, yes, she dries up the blood--but it's not by her pa.s.sion, not even by ours. Honest pa.s.sion never kills. It's the Sahara sands of her egotism into which we've all emptied our veins."

Sylvia was frozen to the spot by her outraged indignation that any one should dare speak to her thus. She found herself facing a fresco of a tall, austere figure in an enveloping white garment, an elderly woman with a thin, worn, n.o.ble face, who laid one fine old hand on a stone parapet and with divine compa.s.sion and tenderness looked out over a sleeping city. The man followed the direction of her eyes. "It's Puvis de Chavannes' Ste. Genevieve as an old woman, guarding and praying for the city. Very good, isn't it? I especially admire the suggestion of the plain bare cell she has stepped out from. I often come here to look at it when I've nothing to eat." He seemed as flaccidly willing to speak on this as on any other topic; to find it no more interesting than the subject of his former speech.

Sylvia was overcome with horror of him. She walked rapidly away, towards the door, hoping he would not follow her. He did not. When she glanced back fearfully over her shoulder, she saw him still standing there, looking up at the gaunt gray figure of beneficent old age. His dreadful broken felt hat was in his hand, the water dripped from his frayed trousers over the rotting leather of his shoes. As she looked, he began to cough, loudly, terribly, so that the echoing reaches of the great nave resounded to the sound. Sylvia ran back to him and thrust her purse into his hand. At first he could not speak, for coughing, but in a moment he found breath to ask, "Is it Victoria's money?"

She did not answer.

He held it for a moment, and then opening his hand let it drop. As she turned away Sylvia heard it fall clinking on the stone floor. At the door she turned for one last look, and saw him weakly stooping to pick it up again. She fairly burst out of the door.

It was almost dusk when she was on the street again, looking down the steep incline to the Luxembourg Gardens. In the rainy twilight the fierce tension of the Rodin "Thinker" in front of the Pantheon loomed huge and tragic. She gave it a glance of startled sympathy. She had never understood the statue before. Now she was a prey to those same ravaging throes. There was for the moment no escaping them. She felt none of her former wild impulse to run away. What she had been running away from had overtaken her. She faced it now, looked at it squarely, gave it her ear for the first time; the grinding, dissonant note under the rich harmony of the life she had known for all these past months, the obscure vaults underlying the s.h.i.+ning temple in which she had been living.

What beauty could there be which was founded on such an action as Felix' marriage to Molly--Molly, whose pa.s.sionate directness had known the only way out of the impa.s.se into which Felix should never have let her go?... An echo from what she had heard in the ma.s.s at Notre Dame rang in her ears, and now the sound was louder--Austin's voice, Austin's words: "A beauty that can't endure disharmony in conduct, the fine true ear for the deeper values, the foundations--" It was Austin, asking himself what beauty could be in any life founded, even remotely as his was, on any one's misery?

For a long time she stood there, silent, motionless, her hands clenched at her sides, looking straight before her in the rain. Above her on his pedestal, the great, bronze, naked, tortured man ground his teeth as he glared out from under the inexorable limitations of his ape-like forehead, and strove wildly against the barriers of his flesh....

Wildly and vainly, against inexorable limitations! Sylvia was aware that an insolent young man, with moist protuberant eyes, had come up where she stood there, alone, motionless on the public street. He put his arm in hers, clasped her hand in a fat, soft palm, and, "_Allons, ma belle!_" he said with a revolting gayety.

Sylvia pulled away from him, cried out fiercely in English, "Don't you dare to touch me!" and darted away.

He made no attempt at pursuit, acknowledging his mistake with an easy shrug and turning off to roam, a dim, predatory figure, along the dusky street. He had startled and frightened the girl so that she was trembling when she ventured to slow down to a walk under the glaring lights of the Boulevard St. Michel. She was also s.h.i.+vering with wet and cold, and without knowing it, she was extremely hungry. As she fled along the boulevard in the direction of her own quarter of the city, her eye caught the lighted clock at the kiosk near Cluny. She was astonished to see that it was after seven o'clock. How long could she have stood there, under the shadow of that terrific Thinker, consumed quite as much as he by the pain of trying to rise above mere nature? An hour--more than an hour, she must have been there. The Pantheon must have closed during that time, and the dreadful, sick man must have pa.s.sed close by her. Where was he now? What makes.h.i.+ft shelter harbored that cough, those dirty, skeleton hands, those awful eyes which had outlived endurance and come to know peace before death....

She s.h.i.+vered and tried to shrink away from her wet, clinging clothing.

She had never, in all her life before, been wet and cold and hungry and frightened, she had never known from what she had been protected.

And now the absence of money meant that she must walk miles in the rain before she could reach safety and food. For three cents she could ride. But she had not three cents. How idiotic she had been not to keep a few sous from her purse. What a sickening thing it had been to see him stoop to pick it up after he had tried to have the pride not to touch it. That was what morphine had done for him. And he would buy more morphine with that money, that was the reason he had not been able to let it lie ... the man who had been to her little girlhood the radiant embodiment of strength and fineness!

Her teeth were chattering, her feet soaked and cold. She tried to walk faster to warm her blood, and discovered that she was exhausted, tired to the marrow of her bones. Her feet dragged on the pavement, her arms hung heavily by her side, but she dared not stop a moment lest some other man with abhorrent eyes should approach her.

She set her teeth and walked; walked across the Seine without a glance at its misted lights blinking through the rain, walked on past the prison of Marie Antoinette, without a thought of that other harmless woman who had loved bright and lovely things while others suffered: walked on upon the bridge across the Seine again. This bewildered her, making her think that she was so dazed she had doubled on her tracks.

She saw, a long way off, a solitary hooded sergent de ville, and dragged herself across an endless expanse of wet asphalt to ask him her way. But just before she reached him, she remembered suddenly that of course she was on the island and was obliged to cross the Seine again before reaching the right bank. She returned weary and disheartened to her path, crossed the bridge, and then endlessly, endlessly, set one heavy foot before the other under the glare of innumerable electric lights staring down on her and on the dismal, wet, and deserted streets. The clocks she pa.s.sed told her that it was nearly eight o'clock. Then it was past eight. What must they be thinking of her on the Rue de Presbourg? She tried again to hurry, but could force her aching muscles to no more than the plod, plod, plod of her dogged advance over those interminable miles of pavement. There was little of her then that was not cold, weary, wet flesh, suffering all the discomforts that an animal can know. She counted her steps for a long time, and became so stupidly absorbed in this that she made a wrong turning and was blocks out of her way before she noticed her mistake. This mishap reduced her almost to tears, and it was when she was choking them weakly back and setting herself again to the cruel long vista of the Champs-Elysees that an automobile pa.s.sed her at top speed with a man's face pressed palely to the panes. Almost at once the car stopped in answer to a shouted command; it whirled about and bore down on her. Felix Morrison sprang out and ran to her with outstretched arms, his rich voice ringing through the desolation of the rain and the night--"Sylvia! Sylvia! Are you safe?"

He almost carried her back to the car, lifted her in. There were wraps there, great soft, furry, velvet wraps which he cast about her, murmuring broken e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns of emotion, of pity, of relief--"Oh, your hands, how cold! Sylvia, how _could_ you? Here, drink this! I've been insane,--absolutely out of my mind! Let me take off your hat--Oh, your poor feet--I was on my way to--I was afraid you might have--Oh, Sylvia, Sylvia, to have you safe!" She tried to bring to mind something she had intended to remember; she even repeated the phrase over to herself, "It was an ugly, ugly thing to have married Molly,"

but she knew only that he was tenderness and sheltering care and warmth and food and safety. She drew long quivering breaths like a child coming out of a sobbing fit.

Then before there was time for more thought, the car had whirled them back to the door, where Aunt Victoria, outwardly calm, but very pale, stood between the concierge and his wife, looking out into the rainy deserted street.

At the touch of those warm embracing arms, at that radiant presence, at the sound of that relieved, welcoming voice, the nightmare of the Pantheon faded away to blackness....

Half an hour later, she sat, fresh from a hot bath, breathing out delicately a reminiscence of recent violet water and perfumed powder; fresh, fine under-linen next her glowing skin; s.h.i.+ning and refreshed, in a gown of chiffon and satin; eating her first mouthful of Yos.h.i.+do's ambrosial soup.

"Why, I'm so sorry," she was saying. "I went out for a walk, and then went further than I meant to. I've been over on the left bank part of the time, in Notre Dame and the Pantheon. And then when I started to come home it took longer than I thought. It's so apt to, you know."

"Why in the world, my dear, did you _walk_ home?" cried Aunt Victoria, still brooding over her in pitying sympathy.

"I'd--I'd lost my purse. I didn't have any money."

"But you don't pay for a cab till you come to the end of your journey!

You could have stepped into a taxi and borrowed the money of the concierge here."

Sylvia was immensely disconcerted by her rustic navete in not thinking of this obvious device. "Oh, of course! How could I have been so--but I was tired when I came to start home--I was very tired--too tired to think clearly!"

This brought them all back to the recollection of what had set her off on her walk. There was for a time rather a strained silence; but they were all very hungry--dinner was two hours late--and the discussion of Yos.h.i.+do's roast duckling was anything but favorable for the consideration of painful topics. They had champagne to celebrate her safe escape from the adventure. To the sensation of perfect ease induced by the well-chosen dinner this added a little tingling through all Sylvia's nerves, a pleasant, light, bright t.i.tillation.

All might have gone well if, after the dinner, Felix had not stepped, as was his wont, to the piano. Sylvia had been, up to that moment, almost wholly young animal, given over to bodily ecstasy, of which not the least was the agreeable warmth on her silk-clad ankle as she held her slippered foot to the fire.

But at the first chords something else in her, slowly, with extreme pain, awoke to activity. All her life music had spoken a language to which she could not shut her ears, and now--her face clouded, she s.h.i.+fted her position, she held up a little painted screen to s.h.i.+eld her face from the fire, she finally rose and walked restlessly about the room. Every grave and haunting cadence from the piano brought to her mind, flickering and quick, like fire, a darting question, and every one she stamped out midway, with an effort of the will.

The intimacy between Felix and Aunt Victoria, it was strange she had never before thought--of course not--what a hideous idea! That book, back in Lydford, with Horace Gilbert's name on the fly-leaf, and Aunt Victoria's cool, casual voice as she explained, "Oh, just a young architect who used to--" Oh, the man in the Pantheon was simply brutalized by drugs; he did not know what he was saying. His cool, spectral laugh of sanity sounded faintly in her ears again.

And then, out of a mounting foam of arpeggios, there bloomed for her a new idea, solid enough, broad enough, high enough, for a refuge against all these wolfish fangs. She sat down to think it out, hot on the trail of an answer, the longed-for answer.

It had just occurred to her that there was no possible logical connection between any of those skulking phantoms and the golden lovely things they tried to defile. Even if some people of wealth and ease and leisure were not as careful about moral values as about colors, and aesthetic harmonies--that meant nothing. The connection was purely fortuitous. How silly she had been not to see that. Grant, for purposes of argument, that Aunt Victoria was self-centered and had lived her life with too little regard for its effect on other people,--grant even that Felix had, under an almost overpowering temptation, not kept in a matter of conduct the same rigid nicety of fastidiousness which characterized his judgment of marbles--what of it? That did not mean that one could only be fine and true in conduct by giving up all lovely things and wearing hair-s.h.i.+rts. What an outgrown, mediaeval idea! How could she have been for a moment under its domination! It was just that old Puritanism, Spartanism of her childhood, which was continually reaching up its bony hand from the grave where she had interred it.

The only danger came, she saw it now, read it plainly and clear-headedly in the lives of the two people with her, the only danger came from a lack of proportion. It certainly did seem to be possible to allow the amenities and aesthetic pleasures to become so important that moral fineness must stand aside till they were safe.

But anybody who had enough intelligence could keep his head, even if the temptation was alluring. And simply because there was that possible danger, why not enjoy delightful things as long as they did not run counter to moral fineness! How absurd to think there was any reason why they should; quite the contrary, as a thousand philosophers attested. They would not in her case, at least! Of course, if a decision had to be taken between the two, she would never hesitate--never! As she phrased this conviction to herself, she turned a ring on her white slim finger and had a throb of pleasure in the color of the gem. What harmless, impersonal pleasures they were! How little they hurt any one! And as to this business of morbidly probing into healthy flesh, of insisting on going back of everything, farther than any one could possibly go, and scrutinizing the origin of every dollar that came into your hand ... why, that way lay madness! As soon try to investigate all the past occupants of a seat in a railway before using it for a journey. Modern life was not organized that way.

It was too complicated.

Her mind rushed on excitedly, catching up more certainty, more and more reinforcements to her argument as it advanced. There was, therefore, nothing inherent in the manner of life she had known these last months to account for what seemed ugly underneath. There was no reason why some one more keenly on his guard could not live as they did and escape sounding that dissonant note!

The music stopped. Morrison turned on the stool and seeing her bent head and moody stare at the fire, sent an imploring glance for help to Mrs. Marshall-Smith.

Just let her have the wealth and leisure and let her show how worthily she could use it! There would be an achievement! Sylvia came around to another phase of her new idea, there would be something worth doing, to show that one could be as fine and true in a palace as in a hut,--even as in a Vermont farmhouse! At this, suddenly all thought left her. Austin Page stood before her, fixing on her his clear and pa.s.sionate and tender eyes. At that dear and well-remembered gaze, her lip began to quiver like a child's, and her eyes filled.

Mrs. Marshall-Smith stirred herself with the effect of a splendid s.h.i.+p going into action with all flags flying. "Sylvia dear," she said, "this rain tonight makes me think of a new plan. It will very likely rain for a week or more now. Paris is abominable in the rain. What do you say to a change? Madeleine Perth was telling me this afternoon that the White Star people are running a few s.h.i.+ps from Portsmouth by way of Cherbourg around by Gibraltar, through the Mediterranean to Naples. That's one trip your rolling-stone of an aunt has never taken, and I'd rather like to add it to my collection. We could be in Naples in four days from Cherbourg and spend a month in Italy, going north as the heat arrived. Felix--why don't you come along? You've been wanting to see the new low reliefs in the Terme, in Rome?"

Sylvia's heart, like all young hearts, was dazzled almost to blinking by the radiance shed from the magic word Italy. She turned, looking very much taken aback and bewildered, but with light in her eyes, color in her face.

Morrison burst out: "Oh, a dream realized! Something to live on all one's days, the pines of the Borghese--the cypresses of the Villa Medici--roses cascading over the walls in Rome, the view across the Campagna from the terraces at Rocca di Papa--"