She ran out to take it. Neale stood on the corner, cursing the whole race of tram-cars.
When it passed him, close to him in the narrow street, he caught sight of her face. It was bent downward as if to hide it from the other people in the car. He saw that there was a very faint smile on her lips as if she could not keep it back, a little sweet, secret, happy smile. Her whole face was softly shimmering with it.
Good heavens! why hadn't he gone on with her! He leaped forward and sprinted after the rapidly disappearing car.
And stopped short in the midst of the traffic. You can't make love in astreet-car! What an imbecile he was!
Often, after she had left him, he pelted off into the Campagna, walking for miles "like a madman," said the leisurely Italian countrymen, slowly stepping about their work. Neale felt himself rather mad, as though the steady foundations of his life had been rent and shattered, as by a blast of dynamite.
Dynamite? What was it somebody had said to him once, about dynamite? He tried to think, but could not remember. Perhaps it was something he had read in a book.
Once, after such a headlong tramp, he came in and wrote a long letter to his mother, telling her all about Marise; a strange thing for him to do, he thought, as he dropped the letter in the box. But everything he did now seemed strange to him. Strange and yet irresistibly natural.
If only Marise would go away, would goawayand give her a chance, thought Eugenia despairingly, coming slowly into her sitting-room where Mlle. Vallet sat writing in her journal. Joséphine heard the door close and hurried in with her quick silent step to take off her mistress' wraps.
"Mademoiselle looks sotiredafter these long walks!" she said solicitously, scrutinizing with a professional expertness the color of the young face. "I don't think they agree with Mademoiselle at all. This climate is too soft to walk about so. Nobody does. Mademoiselle might—without presuming to advise—Mademoiselle might be wiser to go in cabs."
Eugenia held out her arms as Joséphine slipped off her pretty, fawn-colored silk coat and then let them fall at her sides. She was thinking, "Cabs!What would he say to some one who went everywhere in cabs!"
"Oh!" cried Joséphine. "Those abominable ruins! Mademoiselle's dear little bronze shoes! Cut to pieces! Oh, Mlle. Vallet, just look at our poor Mademoiselle's shoes, the beautiful bronze ones. And there's no replacing them in the shops ofthiscountry!"
Mlle. Vallet tipped her head forward to look seriously over her steel-rimmed spectacles, agreed seriously that there was certainly very little left of the pretty bronze shoes, and went seriously back to writing with her sharp steel pen a detailed description of her expedition to the Catacombs. Mlle. Vallet was a very happy woman in those days. To be in Rome, after years of grinding drudgery in the class-room, to be free to look and wander and observe at her leisure for so much of the day—she often told Eugenia that she had never in her wildest dreams supposed she would have such an opportunity! She studied and sight-saw with conscientious and absorbed exactitude, and wrote down voluminous accounts of every day'ssights and the thoughts they aroused in her. "It will be the treasure-book of my old age!" she said. "I shall take it down from the shelf when I am old, and live myself back into this wonderful experience!"
"Her old age!" Eugenia wondered when she thought old age would begin. She looked a thousand years old already to Eugenia. Heavens! Think of ever being old like that, yourself. What usecouldthere be in living if you were old and reduced for your amusement to writing down dates and things in a journal!
"If Mademoiselle will step into her own room," said Joséphine. Eugenia came to herself with a start. She had been standing in the middle of the room staring at Mlle. Vallet's back. But she had been thinking about Neale Crittenden, about those deep-set eyes of his, and how his face was lighted up when he smiled. When he smiled at her, Eugenia felt like moving from wherever she was and going to stand close beside him. What made her feel so? It was like a black-art. There was that girl at school who had been bewitched by the Breton mission-priest,—bewitched so that she fell into a fever if she could not see him every day.
"There! Sit there!" said Joséphine, pressing her competently into an easy chair, and beginning to undo her hooks and eyes. "I haven't much time. Mademoiselle is so late in coming in. Just a little cold-cream—this horrible southern sun burns so! Oh, I can feel this awful Roman dust thick on every hair! I do wish—without seeming to presume—I dowishthat Mademoiselle would consent to wear a veil—everybody does."
Eugenia moved her head from one side to the other wearily. How Joséphine did chatter! She never had a quiet moment,never, and she was sotired. Feeling the supple, smooth professional fingers beginning to put on the cold cream, she held her head still and thought.
Very bitter thoughts and bewildered ... of a person betrayed. Shewasbetrayed! She had done everything ... everything that she had known how to do. She had spared neither time nor money nor effort. She had worked (and shehated to work) she hadworkedto learn all the things she should know. She had beaten Marise at her own game. She talked better French than she, so her diction teacher said; and ever so much more distinguished English—shenevermade those slips into Americanisms or Gallicisms that Marise did. At least not in conversation, sometimes she still thought in American. She knew ever so much more about dressing than Marise, and about lace, and about manners. She had come to the point at last of being sure of her manners, of being able to sit down, instinctively composing herself so that she would look well from all angles, of not having to think of how to shake hands or leave a room, any more than she thought of the adjustment of a gown that Joséphine had put on her. Whereas Marise still fumbled at the back of her neck at times to make sure of a hook, or had that common trick of feeling her hair to see if it were in order. Marise had stood still in all that, and she had gone forward to the goal. But as she reached it...!
How could she have thought for a moment that she cared a thing about him—he was horrible and rough and as American as—as—a typewriter! Whatmadeher care about such a man? She wouldn't have, if it had not been for Marise. It was Marise's fault. She never would have dreamed of looking at him if she hadn't seen that first evening at Donna Antonia Pierleoni's soirée that Marise had lost her head over him. That made her curious about him of course, and somehow before she knew it something about his eyes or smile—oh, itwasas if she were bewitched that he should make her feel so, make her want and want and want till she ached, to have him look at her—and all the time he never looked away from Marise.
"There," said Joséphine, slipping out the hairpins, and taking up a handful of the bright hair to inspect it, "I believe—Ibelieve," she pondered the matter profoundly, her dark, sharp intelligent face selflessly focussed on the problem, "Iwonderif we ought to wash it a little oftener here than in Paris? There is more dust. But washing it takes the oilout so. Perhaps a little more of the Meylan dressing. That has a little fine oil in it. I know the recipe."
Joséphine knew everything there was to know about toilet-preparations, and about how to use them. She adored her profession and adored Mlle. Mills for being such a beautiful subject. There were times, when she had pinned the last shining curl in place, put the last breath of invisible powder on the rounded young white neck, fastened the last hook in the exquisitely fitting gown, and got down on her knees to straighten the gleaming silk of the fine silk stockings, when she wondered what she had done to deserve such good fortune.
She often watched Eugenia out of the door, as tenderly, impersonally proud of her as a painter of his canvas, as a patissier of his tart; and then feeling somewhat worn with activity and emotion, stepped back, took off her corsets, got into the rumpled untidy wrapper which was her personal favorite, put carpet slippers on her tired feet, and sat down with a novel of high-life to rest.
Eugenia occasionally thought seeing her thus, thatshenever was allowed to relax in unpicturesque ease. It seemed to her that Mlle. Vallet and Joséphine were the ones who werereallyenjoying Rome! She worked so hard, she had paid the full price—and somehow the coin was of no value in this new country to which she was now transported, where she had not wanted to come, from which she would give anything to get away. She did notlikeMr. Crittenden—she never had liked him—oh, why wouldn't he just once look at her and see what was there, instead of talking over her head that queer talk of his? She put on her loveliest toilettes, things that made Joséphine almost weep for pleasure, while Marise wore that same old gray dress day after day—she ruined her bronze shoes for him, stumbling around on foot over those horrible old ruins—how she loathed ruins! Why on earth did any one want topretendto like to look at them!
History! That was what he was always talking about—history that she had always hated. Here it was again to plague her! How could she have guessed that he would care abouthistory? She sat up now till all hours reading it, till Mlle. Vallet was afraid for her eyes, and yet he didn't seem to notice when she said something about it. He just took it for granted, as if she were a man.
What did Marisewantof him anyhow? She couldn't possibly expect tomarryhim ... neither of them had a cent of money. She ought to think of that, to think what was best for him. It was selfish, self-centered of Marise. A man like Neale ought of course to marry money. When she thought whatshecould do for him! Married to her he could have exactly the life he was meant for—travel, leisure, ease—! What was it about Marise that he liked? She could do everything better than Marise now, except play the piano, and it evidently wasn'tthathe cared for in her, because the afternoon they had all gone to the Visconti recital, he had listened just as intently to the men students and the other girls as to Marise. And when Marise asked him afterwards what music he liked best he told her bluntly the Bach that Professor Visconti himself had played, and Marise had said she did too. She hadn't seemed to realize what an affront to her that was.Whydid Marise care so much about him? Why did anybody? Eugenia couldn't understand. She couldn't understand. Her throat had a hard aching lump in it because she couldn't understand.
"A loose soft coiffure for to-night," murmured Joséphine dreamily to herself, happily twisting together the beautiful golden strands, "and the pale-blue mousseline de soie—not the evening-dress!" she was shocked at the idea, though nobody had suggested it, "the high-necked one with the little myosotis embroidered on the ruffles." Joséphine worshipped that dress.
Her strong dark flexible fingers hovered around the golden head as though she were calling down blessings on it. As a matter of fact she was. She slipped off the silk peignoir, washed with almond-scented water the white arms and neck, and the white tired feet. She dried them with a fine linen towel by gentle pattings, not to coarsen the skin. She put on the white silk stockings and white high-heeled slippers, anda white satin underslip. She stood a moment to be sure she had thought of everything. Then carefully, carefully she slipped on the pale blue mousseline-de-soie. "A-ah!" itwasas sweet as she remembered it!
Eugenia had submitted to all this with a forlorn patience. That was all the good it would do. He would look at her as if she were dressed in a meal-sack, never even notice that she had changed her dress. Whatelsecould she do, could any one do? What more did he want? She was betrayed; somehow life had played her false, a callous heartless dishonest trick! Whyshouldshe care so much? She didn't want to care. Why did she long to have him look kindly at her, till her heart ached? Why every day, every day, should the disappointmenthurther so? She hadn't done anything wrong to deserve to be hurt so. If she could only stop caring. If only Marise would go away.
Eugenia sat very still, while Joséphine set a jeweled comb at exactly the right angle in the golden hair. One lovely little hand was at her heart as if by pressing hard on it she could stop the ache, the other held the fresh, scented handkerchief clutched tightly, in case this time she could not keep back the tears. She mustn't cry. She mustn't cry, because Joséphine would have to do her face all over.
One night Marise woke up with a start, staring into the darkness, feeling very cold and sick. She knew what had happened. She had come to her senses in time. She had almost slipped into the trap, the trap set for her by life, which she had so mortally feared. She had been playing a foolish, reckless game of hide-and-seek with herself, pretending that she did not know what was happening. She knew perfectly well what was happening. Neale Crittenden was in love with her. And she was falling in love with him. She wanted him.
Oh, this was the way it must always happen. This was the way all women were caught in the trap ... these dizzying moments of joy, this causeless singing of your heart, this blind, rapturous rushing forward with outstretched arms to clasp all life to your heart ... treacherous deadly life that only sought to debase you.
She had always wondered how women could go on, go on to the fatal moment from which there was no drawing back. Now she knew. You were poisoned, you were made mad till you longed for that moment with all your being.
But she had come to her senses in time to draw back. She would save herself, defend herself, since there was no one to help her, now more than ever. First of all, she knew passionately, she must not think of him for a moment or she would not draw back. She must not remember how he looked or spoke or moved, not even the sound of his voice. She must concentrate her thoughts on the one fact that she had almost been caught in that great dreadful trap, that she, Marise, who knew so much better, had almost fallen in love ... love!
She drew the covers about her, as she sat bolt-upright in the dark, her teeth chattering. Love! She sickened at the sound. The gray cat ... Jeanne ... Isabelle ... the pictures in one of the hidden books at school ... the passages in hermother's novels ... her mother ... Madame Vallery ... Madame de la Cueva ... they were all of them looking at her out of the dark, pointing at her, shaming her, exulting over her.... "You too ... you have come to it."
The gray cat! She was like the gray cat! She began to sob hysterically and thrust the covers into her mouth to smother the sound.
What could she do? What could she do? She had no strength left. She did not know how to defend herself! She did not want to defend herself!
She could run away. Even poor defenseless things could run away. She stopped sobbing, and sprang out of bed, lighting her candle with trembling fingers. Her watch showed three in the morning. There was a railroad time-table down in the dining room. She huddled on her wrapper, thrust her feet into slippers and, shading her candle-flame, crept downstairs.
At five, hatted and cloaked, she was gently shaking Eugenia and saying, "I'm so sorry to bother you, but do you happen to have some money on hand? I've been worrying about Father for some time. It's so long since I've been back to straighten out the household for him. I've just decided to get off on the early morning train. I ought to go to see Jeanne too. It's past my regular time for making her a visit. If you could just loan me enough to buy the ticket to Paris? I've almost enough as it is, but I must leave some for Miss Oldham and mypension."
How kind Eugenia had been! How discreet and uninquisitive! She reached under her pillow, pulled out her gold-meshed purse with the ridiculously large sum in cash she always carried with her, and gave her a five-hundred-lira note together with a kiss on each cheek. "When will you be back, Marise?"
"Oh, I don't know. I don't know. Quite a long time. I may—I shall probably not come back at all. It won't be worth while. Mme. de la Cueva will soon be in Paris again. Good-by, Eugenia dear. You'll be soon coming north, too, won't you?"
"Oh, I dare say," said Eugenia, "if it gets too hot here."
Going down the hall, silent and empty in the dawn, Marise stopped for an instant before his door. For an instant she was forced to think of him, the thought like a weakening potion. She stared hard at his door, her hands pressed tightly together, trembling from head to foot. She was going away. She would never see him again. She turned back towards her own room. She could not go. She ran desperately down the stairs, sick at the idea of what love is. She had almost been caught. She heard the steel jaws snap shut as she fled.
"Yes," said Eugenia at the breakfast table, "Marise was suddenly called back to France by family matters. She is her widowed father's housekeeper, you know; and then too, there is an old servant somewhere who brought her up, whom she feels it her duty to go to see every once in a while."
"What's her address in Paris?" asked Mr. Crittenden urgently.
"I can give that to you, but if you're thinking of writing her a card it wouldn't reach her, for she was to go directly on to the south, and I haven't the least idea whatthataddress is. Some tiny village on the sea-coast, I believe. Or is it in the Pyrenees? But she will be back very soon, almost any day. It's hardly worth while trying to write her. She'll be here before a card could follow her around."
Mr. Crittenden got up, leaving his coffee untouched, and left the breakfast-room in his unceremonious American way, without a sign of decent civility.
Mr. Livingstone looked at Miss Mills eloquently, with a shrug which meant, "What can you expect?"
Eugenia waited till every one, except herself and Mr. Livingstone had left the room, and then said hesitatingly, "Mr. Livingstone, I wonder...." He was on the alert in an instant, surprised at her personal manner. "It's an outrageously big favor to ask of you, but I don't know any one else adroit enough to manage it." She paused, reflected and drew back shaking her head, "Oh, no; no! What am I thinking of?"
By this time Mr. Livingstone was in the chair beside her, assuring her warmly that if there was anything,anything he could do to be of service—"I shall consider it an honor, Miss Mills, I assure you, anhonor!"
Miss Mills let her blue eyes rest on his deeply, as if sounding the depths of his sincerity, and then, with a yielding gesture of abandon, decided to trust him, "I've been foolish, and I'm soafraid I shall have trouble unless you can help me. Promise me you won't tell Mlle. Vallet. Oranyone."
Impassioned protestations from Mr. Livingstone.
She looked over her shoulder to be sure they were alone, "You know the rule of the Italian government about taking out of Italy any valuable antiquities. They are so afraid that tourists of means will carry off some of the fragments of Greek and Roman sculpture. Iknewabout it of course, but I'd no idea it was really enforced—those things so seldom are in Europe. And I bought a lovely little antique bas-relief to go over a mantel-piece in my Paris apartment. I had it sent yesterday, up by the Simplon route; it's too late to get it back and now I'm in mortal terror of what may happen at the Italian frontier. I heard last night the most dreadful tales of what they do to any one who tries to smuggle out such things—not only fines, you know, but lawsuits, lawyers to frighten you—publicity!"
She looked very pale and anxious as she explained all this so that Livingstone was deeply touched. But he wondered what she thought he could do about it.
"I'm really ashamed, now I've come to the point, to ask you what I thought. But Iwill—and if you think it too preposterous—more than I have any right to—it's this. To take a pocket full of money (I don't carewhatit costs) and go up to the frontier station and when it comes along, bribe it through the inspectors. You see, Mr. Livingstone, it's something that not everybody could manage, even with ever so much money. But you understand the European mentality so perfectly. It would need to be done with just the right manner.... Oh, no,no," she broke off abruptly, getting up from her chair. "What a thing to dream of asking any one to do! What claim have I on your...?"
Livingstone, blinking joyfully, sprang up too, protesting that nothing would amuse and interest him more than such a mission. And forher, any mission would be his joy!
"Well, think it over. Let me know to-night. I'm ashamed to have mentioned it," she said in confusion. "I don't know how I dared. But oh Mr. Livingstone, I am so troubledabout it. And I am so alone! No one on whom to...." She had gone, murmuring apologies, touched by his instant response, leaving Livingstone as much moved and agitated as she.
She went through into her own rooms and told Joséphine, "Put those manicure things away for the time being. I must go out to do a bit of shopping. But you can have them ready at ten. I'll be back by that time. It won't take me long."
Neale stood, frowning and looking at his watch, waiting for Eugenia to come down from the ladies' dressing-room and have dinner. As he fidgeted about, looking glumly at the brilliant scene about him, he was wondering with inward oaths of exasperation what in hell could be the matter with anybody's clothes and hair after the slight exertion of sitting perfectly still in a cab from the door of the pension to the door of the restaurant. It was not, God knew, that he was impatient to have her join him. It was because he was in a steady fever of impatience to have everything over, the evening, the day, the night—to put back of him another of those endless, endless days—to be one day nearer to the time when Marise would return.
"What?" he said irritably to the smooth-voiced waiter who now approached him with an intimate manner. "Oh,Idon't care which table!"
"Here, sir, is one right by the edge of the terrace, where the view is finest," said the waiter in excellent English. "Perhaps the lady would like a screen. There is occasionally a draught from below."
He hastened to set a small screen, to rearrange fussily the handsome silver and linen on the daintily-set table, to slant the single fine rose in the vase at another angle.
Another waiter, also impeccably polyglot, with gleaming hair, admirably cut clothes, and an insinuating manner, now murmured in Neale's ear, "What wine, sir?"
Neale answered on a mounting note of irritation, "Oh, I don'tcarewhat wine!"
"We have an excellent Frascati, sir, that is our specialty.Not found everywhere, sir. The ladies usually like it. Or...."
"All right, serve that," said Neale, adding to himself unreasonably, "If you knew so well, why bother me about it?"
The real waiter in charge of his table now arrived in all his majesty, the first one having been but an aide. Neale saw by the earnest expression in his eyes that he intended to make their conference a serious one, and cut him short as he began to call over the possibilities of the menu by a repeated, "All right, that'll do," before he had had time to do more than mention one sort of fish or one entree, or one variety of fowl.
"There,that'sover!" he said to himself with a long breath of relief as the pained waiter turned away to carry into execution that brutally impromptu order.
Eugenia arrived now, followed by a little stir all over the restaurant, as people turned to pay tribute to her beauty and her toilette. "He can't help noticingthat!" she thought happily, her pride and satisfaction showing itself only in an increase of the perfectly unconscious naturalness with which she took her seat.
"Oh, what a beautiful view!" she said in a low tone to Neale, looking down over the cypresses of the Palatine to the city, like a heap of uncut jewels, dully, deeply colored, under the light of the setting sun. "You know how to choose a table, I see!" she added admiringly, in an intimate tone. She wondered if perhaps he had come out in the afternoon to reserve it. She noticed the screen now, and looked at him gratefully, really touched.
The waiter arrived with the soup.
"Yes, it is a fine view," said Neale, rousing himself. "A very fine view indeed. That's the Colosseum over there, isn't it?"
"Yes," said Eugenia, "and that's the Arch of Titus."
"That's the one with the awfully bad bas-reliefs, isn't it?" said Neale.
"Oh,no," corrected Eugenia, "the one with the poor sculptures is the arch of Septimius Severus. The arch of Titusis thegoodone, you know, with the bas-reliefs of the Hebrews."
"Oh, yes, of course. You're right," admitted Neale.
Eugenia thought to herself triumphantly, "Ah, it's not only Marise who can talk history with him!"
She was very happy, happier than she ever remembered feeling. Everything had played into her hands. Everything was going perfectly. She had succeeded in getting him into just the sort of restaurant where she could show to the best advantage.
She was eating her soup with a lively appreciation of its excellence and found herself perfectly able to keep up an artistic and historic conversation with Neale; but she was also acutely aware through the pores of her skin that every woman around her was jealously scrutinizing her costume. She expanded joyously, like a cut flower set in water. Howwelleverything was going! Certainly Neale must be aware how he was being envied.
She made a remark about the style of the gigantic statues on St. John Lateran, visible in the distance, and turned her arm slightly so that her sleeve would hang better.
Neale answered the remark about the statues on St. John Lateran and continued to look in that direction as though he were thinking about them.
He was saying to himself, "Five days since she left! Only five days! God! How am I going to live through any more of them. How many more sleepless nights! Will she ever get back!"
"Yes, isn't it warm to-night?" said Eugenia, seeing that he was wiping his wet forehead with his handkerchief.
"Unseasonable, very," agreed Neale. He had turned sick with his recurrent panic lest shenevercome back. He ought to have taken that next train and gone right after her, as he wanted to.
The waiter brought the fish. It was not what Neale had ordered, but a more expensive variety. He looked somewhat apprehensively at the gentleman as he offered it, but the gentleman did not seem to notice. On this the waiter disappeared and brought back a bottle of wine, not the variety Neale had bargained for.
"Have you any news from Miss Allen?" asked Neale.
"Oh, no," said Eugenia, slightly surprised. "When she's coming back so soon, she probably doesn't see there's any need to write."
She began on the fish. After the first mouthful she said to Neale with enthusiasm, "You know how to order a dinner as well as to choose a table, that's evident."
"It was the first fish he proposed," said Neale.
Eugenia thought, "How much better breeding he has, after all, than Mr. Livingstone, always boasting of his savoir-faire."
Neale's thoughts were jumping incoherently from one thing to another. "Funny place Rome is, to be planning how to run a wood-working plant in Vermont. Funny change of direction, from planning to go out to China and the East, about-face to planning to settle down and take root. You wouldn't think that would appeal to a man who had had the idea of ranging the world a while longer, to tie himself...." This attempt at reasonable consideration of things vanished in an explosion of emotion, as if a spark had fallen into gunpowder. "Oh, if shewill! If shewill! Why didn't I make a chance to see her alone before she went away?"
Eugenia was talking about traveling. She had noticed Neale's interest in travels. "I'm thinking, Mr. Crittenden, of making a leisurely trip around the world—not one of those detestable, herded, conducted tours. And yet how else can I go about it? What wouldyoudo? I'm so ignorant of anything outside of Europe. IwishI had some one intelligent and enlightened to go with me. It's so forlorn to travel alone!"
"Why, you'llliketraveling alone!" said Neale reassuringly, thinking of his own past year. "It's great not to have to bother with some one's else tastes and notions and foolishness and limitations."
"Oh, but," said Eugenia, looking down at her wineglass pensively, "of course it's better to be alone than with some one whose tastes and interests are nothing to you. But to have with you some one you reallycarefor...."
Neale thought suddenly what the past year would have beenif he had had Marise with him, and cried out fervently, "Oh, of course,thatwould be the ideal!"
The waiter brought the roast and the Frascati. And still the gentleman made no objection. Well, he would bring a cordial with the coffee, ordered or not. The gentleman didn't seem to know what he had ordered or what he was eating. And no wonder, with such a beautiful girl across the table. The waiter shot an experienced, appraising eye at Eugenia's clothes. "He ought to be good for a big tip," he reflected hopefully.
Eugenia thought best to leave a thoughtful silence after the remarks on companionship in travel, and sipped her wine with downcast eyes.
Neale was trying again to think things over reasonably, trying to do as he had always done about everything, to get things clear and straight and sure in his head. There must be no possibility of a mistake where Marise was concerned. "Howaboutthis now? I've gone stale on other things. How do I know I won't have a slump some time later? A human being is so full of such damn unexpected things—I must besurefor Marise's sake. How can any man be...." At this he was shaken by so terrible a throe of desire, of longing for Marise that he was frightened. He sat pale, breathless, helpless before it; suffering, tortured, exalted.
When he could breathe he wiped his forehead again. His fingers were shaking. He would go out of his mind if she didn't come back soon. His need for her was like a man's need for air and food and water and sleep. Think reasonably about such essential needs as that! A man cannot live without them. He could not live without Marise. He had not lived before he knew her.
"How moved he is," thought Eugenia, seeing his pale, shaken look. "But he doesn't dare speak. He will to-morrow. Or the day afterwards."
The waiter brought the dessert. Also coffee with the unordered cordial.
Father had grown stouter. He always did. But he looked very well. And his shirts and socks seemed to be all right. Mélanie had seen to them, although the dust was thick all over the furniture, and the windows were semi-opaque with smoke. Father was glad to see her, said she was looking very pretty and asked her kindly if she didn't need some more money; but he was not in the least enthusiastic over her reforms in the housekeeping. "Who cares about dust!" he told her. "And as for smoke on the windows, I'm never here in the daytime anyhow except for lunch—and I don't want to look out of the windows then." And as for getting hold of Biron to keep him up to the mark, Marise found that it was trying to put your finger between the tree and the bark, to get between Biron and her father. Every evening after they had both earnestly finished the serious business of eating dinner, Biron left Mélanie to the mere brute labor of cleaning up and washing dishes while he put on a clean apron and came into the salon to consult with his employer about the two meals of the morrow. Marise was astonished at the learning and acumen displayed by both of them in the matter. However had her father learned so intimately all the resources of Les Halles in all the seasons? He subscribed to a newspaper which gave a complete report of the arrivals at the market from both sea-shore and country-side, over which he and Biron pored intently, putting on round spectacles and bending their portly frames over the page. And there was a wine-sellers' journal too, the news items of which were brought up for consideration once a week.
"When it fails, I go out and run a mile, and then I can eat anything."
Mélanie was no longer allowed to serve the meals thus prayerfully planned and created. It was Biron himself whobrought in theplat, set it down and waited anxiously till it had been tasted and the verdict pronounced. He did not sit down opposite his master and share the meal ... not yet! But Marise had an intuition that it would not be long before he would. Why not? He was the only other person capable of appreciating that meal. He and her father were bound together by a common passion: they completed and rounded out each other's lives. Where else could Mr. Allen find such another cook? Where else could Biron find another such employer? They were blood-brothers, fellow-priests of a common cult. They might be thankful that somehow they had found each other in the world.
When, after a few days of sharing this ménage, she told her father she thought she would go down to see Jeanne, he said, sure, that was all right if she felt like it, and was she sure she didn't need any more money?
Under the thick green shade of pollarded sycamores sat old Jeanne in the wheeled-chair Marise and her father had given her. The young girl, whom Marise and her father paid to take care of Jeanne, came running to unlock the gate and let the visitor in.
There was old Jeanne, her head tied up in the black coif, just as Marise had seen her a thousand times, her face all twisted to one side just as she had seen her that one time she could not forget. And how glad she was to see Marise, pulling her down to kiss her on both cheeks, crying a little for joy and wiping away the tears with her one active hand; for although she had recovered somewhat, so that she could eat and talk a little if she formed the words very slowly and was not excited, she had never been able to use her paralyzed arm or leg again.
Marise must sit beside her, and let old Jeanne look into her face closely with her loving old eyes, and stroke her white young hand with her gnarled fingers that had worked so hard for the child Marise. And when her first agitation was over, and she was calm enough to try to talk, the questions, the loving, anxious questions: Was she well, the darling, darlinggirl? And was she happy? And did that Parisian slut of a maid look out for her decently? And who did the marketing? And who did her hair, her beautiful, beautiful hair? Jeanne's brown hand rested lightly on the shining dark head. No one had hair like her Marise. She must let it down so that Jeanne could see it again as in the old days. And how about her linen? Jeanne was troubled on this point. Linen was not what it had been and the way it was washed in Paris was a crime. A Parisian family were staying near by, and Jeanne's daughter-in-law did their washing. Such grimy, gray linen—it made Jeanne sick to think that perhaps her darling was no better cared for. Marise must needs open her valise there and then, and take out a chemise to show Jeanne, who handled it, held it close to her one good eye, touched the tip of her tongue to it, and gave it back, saying, with an attempt at tolerance, "Oh, well, it's as good as a laundress can do nowadays, I dare say," and possessed herself of Marise's hand again, holding it to her heart fondly.
Marise found the tears were in her eyes. How sweet it was to be loved! She clung to the old hand as she had when she was a child and Jeanne's had been the only hand held out to her.
The old, crafty wrinkles came around Jeanne's eyes. She pulled Marise's head close to her and whispered, "You've never told? Nobody at all?"
"No, no," said Marise hastily. "No one." She felt the old sickness rise to her throat as she said it.
"And you're not ... no man ... you're not engaged or...."
"No, oh, no!" said Marise, still more hastily.
Jeanne's face quieted. She drew a long breath and stroked Marise's hand. "That's right! That's right! They're all alike, my darling. Don't forget that. They're all alike when it comes to women."
Next morning Marise was amazed to have Jeanne greet her all over again, as though she had not seen her, with fresh surprise and joy, the same questions, the same trembling stroking of her hair. Only why was her hair up on her head?That must be just a joke. She must be playing being a lady. And was she sure she knew her catechism? Her white veil was ready, finer than any other little girl's veil. How lovely she would look in it!
"Yes," whispered the young caretaker, in answer to Marise's look of bewilderment, "she doesn't remember you were here yesterday. She often imagines you are with her when she is quite alone. We hear her talking happily to you. And now she does not know the difference between you and her own daughter who died. No, she will never know if you just slip away now. She will never know that you came or that you are not still here."
When Marise went quietly out at the gate she left Jeanne dozing in her chair under the plane-trees, dozing, and waking to talk lovingly to the two little girls who had both died so long ago.
She had learned in the village that Mlle. Hasparren was no longer teaching in Bayonne, had gone back to her own little hill-town in the Pyrenees. Marise knew the way there very well, having spent many a week-end and vacation with Mlle. Hasparren in the old days. The boy from the farm where Jeanne was living chanced to have an errand that took him over the pass and down into that valley. On an impulse Marise asked to go with him. She stowed her valise away under the plank seat and scrambled up beside the bullet-headed boy in the blue béret. How it all took her back to her childhood! The little two-wheeled cart flew off behind the swift small horse, rattling and jolting up hill and down, just as when she and Mlle. Hasparren had gone off together.
At the beginning of the long steep road up to the divide, she and the boy got out and walked, her shoes soon powdered white with dust. How dusty Mlle. Hasparren's shoes had been the day they stood waiting in the station...!
They plunged down the other side into the green, poplar-planted valley with every home, every turn of the road as it had been. They stopped at the tiny, white-washed cabin, with its leafy atrium of sycamores. As the boy drove awayand the sound of his rattling wheels died to silence, Marise heard from within the first notes of the Sonata in G, the one she had first studied with Mlle. Hasparren.
She went in without knocking, sure that the little home contained no servant, and there sat Mlle. Hasparren, her hair several shades whiter, her black dress several degrees shabbier, her quiet worn face and steady eyes bent lovingly over the keys. The music was like the very sound of her voice.
They sat up late that night talking—Marise must tell all about Rome and the old Visconti, as legendary a figure to Mlle. Hasparren as Paganini; and Mlle. Hasparren must tell how she came to leave her city-school and go back to the little mountaineers in the rough, plain village class-room. "I seemed to feel nearer to them," she said, not knowing very well how to tell why she had, "and I felt a great longing for my mountains and my own old home. And they need music here. Do you remember Father Armandariz?"
"Oh, yes," Marise nodded. She had never forgotten the lean young priest who led the open-air singing of his improvised chorus in front of his fortress-like old church. "Oh, yes, don't you remember we used to drive over just to hear his choir sing here and in another parish too?"
"He is doing wonderful work. We work together a great deal."
"You! With a curé!" Marise was astounded.
Mlle. Hasparren laughed. "Oh, yes, yes, those radical ideas of mine. Of course I still have them. But they don't seem so important as they did. Father Armandariz and I are good friends. We both love music. That's enough. He puts cotton in his ears when I let fall a heresy, and I dip my fingers in the holy-water font and cross myself when I go to play the organ in church. Those are little things, and little things mustn't be allowed to interfere with great ones."
That evening Marise watched a choir rehearsal, Mlle. Hasparren at her piano, Father Armandariz, bony, threadbare, hollow-cheeked, his eyes gleaming with ardor, leading now the group of serious-faced Basque girls in black mantillas, now the great-chested, burly Basque men whose resonantbasses shook the little house. One of them (Mlle. Hasparren had said he was the village shoemaker) was given a bass solo and practised it over several times, while the others listened. He held his head high, drew in a great breath and sang as though it were the meaning of his life he were singing out, "Magnificat anima mea Dominum!" And then all the others with him, "My soul magnifies God!" Father Armandariz stopped them. "No, the altos were too slow on coming in. Once more." And then again, "Once more."
They all kept their eyes on him earnestly; they began again unfalteringly as many times as was necessary; before the evening was over they looked tired; but it was a good fatigue, and when they finally finished and turned to smile at each other and fold their music sheets together, their faces wore a quiet, purified serenity which Marise envied them. This was music. Not one of them was thinking of himself nor how the music had made him appear to advantage nor how he could use music as a tool to get ahead of other people, or get himself talked about.
The memory of Donna Antonia's soirées, of Mme. de la Cueva's good advice came into her mind. People called that sort of thing "art-atmosphere," didn't they? It was the cemetery of art, that's what it was, with the egotism of the performer dancing on the grave. One evening here, such an evening as this—there was more music in it than in months of chatter about the clothes and hair and morals and incomes of the people who make it on the platform.
At the piano Mlle. Hasparren and Father Armandariz were talking together of the next evening's rehearsal, Mlle. Hasparren occasionally illustrating with one hand what she was saying. How deeply human was the look of intimate confidence they bent on each other, the ugly young priest and the ugly old school-teacher. They might well be thankful that they had found each other in the world.
Mlle. Hasparren turned around now and asked Marise if she would not play for them. "I would be so proud to show my friends what an old pupil of mine has come to be," she said fondly.
It seemed to Marise that she had never in her life felt so like playing. What should it be? She swerved on her way to the piano to stoop to kiss Mlle. Hasparren's swarthy cheek, and, sitting down, with an affectionate smile at her, began the Toccata in D minor, just as Mlle. Hasparren had taught it to her, with all she had learned since then. She had never played to such an audience; when she turned around Father Armandariz was looking beatific and Mlle. Hasparren exalted with pride. She had never played so well. She had, she felt, just begun to know what music was.
Mlle. Hasparren had set up for her a folding cot in her own room, since there was no other bedroom in the tiny house. They slept side by side, near enough so that they could have reached out and clasped each other's hands as on that night so long ago when Mlle. Hasparren had pulled Marise out of the black pit. Marise could not go to sleep. Long after Mlle. Hasparren lay breathing deep, her dark face relaxed in a selfless quiet that was not more selfless than her waking look, Marise lay looking out at the stars and the mountains, thinking, trembling, sometimes feeling hot bitter tears in her eyes, sometimes feeling her heart swell high with strange, unearthly aspiration.
Mlle. Hasparren was right. She had always been right. To keep clear of all troubling, maddening, personal relations that were sure to end by poisoning you, not to want anything for yourself, to give all for music—howsafeyou would be, to live like that. And how sweet it would be to feel safe! She never had. She was sotiredof feeling afraid. Whynotlive like that? When you knew it was the only safe way! When you knew that if you did not, you would fall headlong into that dreadful mire that splashed up such indelible stains upon your mind at even the few chance contacts with it which life brought to a girl. Yes, that was the only safe way. Never to go back to Rome at all. Somehow to devise a life all devotion to music, with the miserable personal affections burned up in that greater ardor. Yes, that, Marise decided,that was the only tolerable, the only endurable future she could see.
People began to stand up, to put on their wraps and collect their valises. The train was passing the outskirts of Rome. It would be in the station in a few minutes.
Marise tied on her veil over a piteous white face. She had said she would not go back to Rome at all. She had scarcely been ten days away. She had come back. Like any other woman she had come back to the trap.
She had not seen him yet. She had had her breakfast sent to her room when she heard he was still at the pension. She had thought certainly he would be gone away by this time.
She knew he would not have gone away!
She stood now with Eugenia at the entrance to the Pincian, up on the hill, by the fountain, under the ilex trees looking down over the city.
This was where their first walk together had ended.
"I think I see Mr. Crittenden just come up the Trinità steps and turning this way," remarked Eugenia, looking in that direction.
If Marise could have stirred, she would have run away. She turned her head and saw him coming. Although he was still so far away that she could not make out his face, she knew by the sudden tautness of his figure, by the spring forward of his step that he had seen her.
There he came, striding strongly towards her, as he had come to seek her out, across the world, across all time. He looked infinitely familiar to her, and yet infinitely different from all she had been thinking of him. She had forgotten! What had she been imagining him?
When he drew near enough to be sure it was she, he snatched off his hat and swung it around his head with a bright, boyish gesture of joy. The wind ruffled his hair, the sun shone full on his bold, clear face, on his deep eyes, on his tender, full-lipped mouth.
He was smiling at her, all his heart in his smile. He was welcoming her back.
Marise felt a warm gush all over her body, as though her heart had suddenly begun to beat again, as though he had welcomed her back into life. Why, this was Neale! This was nomonster to dread. If she had seen him, only seen his face that morning, only had one look from his eyes that both smiled and were steady ... she would never have run away.
She was not hurt at all, only frightened half to death! She was not just a woman in love, ready to give herself up to a man. She was Marise in love with Neale.
He had come up to them now, his breath coming fast as though he had been running. For an instant he did not speak, taking her hand silently in his. All that life had made of him looked out on her from his clear eyes.
With a beating flutter, her heart sprang up from its numb torpor of fright and spread its wings.
"Well, we certainly have missed you!" was what he finally said.
"I'm very glad to be back in Rome," she answered.
I
He had stood this gregarious flocking around just all he was going to, Neale decided that morning, up under the ilex trees, exchanging commonplaces with the two girls, unable to say or even to look what he felt, because Eugenia was there. And he'd had plenty of Eugenia during the last ten days.
What a nightmare those ten days had been to him! What a hideous block-head he had been to let Marise slip away from him, even for a time, before he had made a chance to see her,reallyto see her, in a quiet place where they could hear themselves think—with none of those third and fourth persons hanging around. What had he been thinking of, drifting along like a man in a dream, with no sense of time?
But that absence of hers had waked him up. Yes, it had waked him up! He had not had one consecutive night's sleep since she had been gone, starting up continually from a doze with his arms empty when he had dreamed she was lying in them. How had he ever lived through that suspense and uncertainty without losing his mind? He was very grateful to Eugenia for having kept him from making an awful fool of himself and getting into a blind mess of confusion. She had kept him in Rome by telling him that Marise would be back any day. If it hadn't been for that—where wouldhehave been? Looking for a needle in a haystack all over Southern France, and Marise back in Rome.
Well, she was back and he had been too frightened not to have learned a little sense. He'd manage a walk with her alone, just the two of them before the day was out or—How could he?
How did you do anything? You just went and did it.
He went boldly to her room and knocked on the door. When Marise came to open it, he said, "To celebrate yourreturn, won't you let me show you a specially lovely spot on the Campagna I've found? I've been taking some long, solitary walks while you were away." He added firmly, "No, not Miss Mills and Mr. Livingstone because they don't like to tramp, and this is 'cross country."
There! It had been no harder than that. Why in the name of heaven hadn't he thought of the simple, obvious way to get the thing done? He went back to his room and sat down, staring at the wall, to wait till afternoon came and to try to plan what he would say when it came. He hoped a great deal that she had read Browning.
But she hadn't. As they passed through the city walls and came out, just the two of them, under the wide sky he asked her about it, timidly; for he was horribly frightened and moved, now that he had her to himself. And she said that she was sorry, she was very ignorant of English and American poetry, having been so little in an English-speaking country. Neale sighed. No luck! She went on to suggest apologetically that she ought some time to go back to America and take a course in English Literature, or at least gather the books about her and read. "My old Cousin Hetty's front porch wouldn't be a bad place," she said thoughtfully.
"I'm going to see that front porch before so very long, you know," said Neale, springing one of his surprises, with a rapidly beating heart and an impassive face.
She darted one of her swallow-swift glances at him.
"Yes, you've persuaded me. I've persuaded myself. I'm not going to sell the Ashley property right away, not without going up to look at it at least. I've been thinking a great deal about what you said that first day. I've been thinking a great deal anyway—can't—can't we sit down somewhere?" He flung away any pretense of having a special place to show her. She too had apparently forgotten it. They sat down on the short grass, their backs against a low heap of stones, part of the ruins of a very ancient aqueduct. Far in the distance a flock of sheep roamed with a solitary shepherd leaning on his staff.
"You know—you know what we've been talking about, trying to find one's way, know what you were meant to do. Well, my guess about myself is that I'm a maker by birth, not a buyer or seller. The more I think of it the better it looks to me, like something I'd like to put my heart into doing as well as I could—taking raw material, you know, that's of no special value in itself and helping other men to make it worth more by adding work and intelligence to it. You know what somebody said about the ounce of iron that's of no use, and the hundred hair-springs the watchmaker makes out of it. I don't see why I didn't think of it at once when I knew Uncle Burton had left me the mill. But I'd never have thought of it if you hadn't helped me. It takes me solongto get around to anything anyhow. And you are so quick! You see, I know a lot about the lumber-business, and quite a bit about saw mills, and I can get on fine with workmen. Ilikethem, and Iloveworking in the woods. And—and—" he brought out the second of his carefully planned points, "it would be a home too. You said it was a home. Everybody wants a home, Marise."
He sat silent, listening to the word as it echoed over their two homeless heads. And then he took his courage in his two hands and turned towards Marise. What he saw in her face so shocked and startled him that every carefully planned word dropped from his mind. He forgot everything except that the dark, set look was on her face and all that tragic sadness he could not forget.
"Marise, Marise—what is it?" he cried, frightened. What could he have said?
With her shoulders and eyebrows she made an ugly, dry little gesture of dismissing the subject, and said ironically, "What makes you so sure everybody wants a home?"
He stared at her stupidly, not able to think of anything to say, till she went on impatiently, irritably, "It's just sentimental to talk like that. I never heard you say a sentimental word before. You know what homes are like,—places where people either lie to each other or quarrel."
Neale was startled by the quivering, low-toned violence ofher accent. Why should she wince and shrink back as if he had struck on an intolerably sensitive bruise—at the word,home?
"Why, let me tell you about my home," he said eagerly to her, in answer to the tragic challenge he felt in her look, her tone. "I don't believe I ever told you about what my home was like; just the usual kind, of course, what any child has, I suppose, but—let metellyou about it."
He began anywhere, the first thing that came into his mind, what the house was like, and where the library was, and how he liked his own room, and the security of it; his free play with little boys on the street that was his great world, and how he felt back of him, as a sure refuge from the uncertainties of that or any other great world, the certainties of what he found when he ran up the steps every afternoon, opened the door, his door, and stepped into his home, where he was sure of being loved and cared for, and yet not fettered or shut in. "Father and Mother always let me alone, let me grow."
He told of the meal-times and his boy's raging appetite, and his mother's delight in it. He told of the evenings when Father and Mother sat reading together; of the free-flowing tide of trust and affection between his parents, changing with their changes, never the same, never different; trust and affection of which he had never been really conscious but which had always been the background of his life. He remembered even to his father's tone as he said, "Oh, Mary," and her instant, "Yes, dear, what is it?"
He had not thought of it for years, he had never before thought consciously of it, had always taken it for granted as he took daylight, or his own good health. But there in that foreign land it all stood up before him, clear in its own quiet colors, visible to him for the first time against the other worlds he had been seeing and divining. He thought of foolish little gay things to tell her—he could not have guessed why they came into his mind—about the house smelling "trunky" when it was time to go to West Adams, and Mother, who could never get the trunk packed, and Father's joking herabout it. And the long trip over to the city; Father always waiting to let him see how the ferry-boat was tied up. And in the train how Father kissed Mother good-by and then Neale, and then Mother again, and put his cheek for an instant against hers. This time Neale looked back through the years straight into his father's face, proudly, and held his head high.
He found himself telling things that he himself had never thought of till then—his parents' tolerant patience with his boy's fits and starts, with his egotism and absurdities, with his periods of causeless and violent energy, his other periods of causeless, violent indolence.
And West Adams, he had always till this moment taken for granted the stability of that second home of his, that had been his father's before him, like a rock to which his tossing little boat was moored whenever he wished. Grandfather and Grandmother, plain old people—like Marise's old Cousin Hetty perhaps—grown as much alike as an old brother and sister, who still went off blue-berrying on the mountain together every summer.
And then, when he had needed his home no longer, the adventuring-forth of his father and mother, and his guessing for the first time how they had tamed their self-centered youth to be parents; the moment when he and Father stood together under the old maple-tree and understood each other so deeply, with no words, all the years of affection and trust rising up and standing there with them; and how Father and Mother had driven away as if for an Indian Summer honeymoon, Mother's face smiling through her tears. He told—yes, even that—how for an instant he had felt hurt and left out, and Mother had known it and come running back to say a last loving good-by to the little boy he had been.
Marise had not said a word as he brought this all up for her to see, nor did she when he had finished and was silent. But he could see that her hands, folded together in her lap, were shaking. He waited for her to speak. He knew there was something ominous in her silence, like gathering thunder. His heart was heavy with it. He was afraid of what mightbe coming. But he longed to have it come, to have it tear down the barrier between them.
"So that's what you have known—what every child has, you suppose!" she said passionately, her voice quivering and breaking. She stopped herself abruptly. She could scarcely breathe, her agitation was so great. She knew what she would do if she opened her lips again. But she would die of suffocation if she did not speak. It rose within her like a devouring flood, all that old, ever-new bitterness; and beat her down.
She heard herself, in a desperate, stammering voice, telling him ...tellinghim!
The words that passed her lips did not seem words but bleeding, living, tortured things. She was mortally sick and faint, but she could not stop. Once as in a flicker of lightning she knew what she was doing, and tried to stop—but she had torn it loose from those fibers that had grown so close and hard around it, she had wrenched it away—bloody and raw—it was too late to stop.
When she finished she leaned her face on her hands and was silent, feeling as though she had died. When she finally looked up at him she saw that the tears stood thick in his eyes. She had never dreamed that for good or ill one human being could feel so close to another. It was as though she could not tell whether those tears were his, or had come healingly into her own dry eyes.
She saw the anguish of his yearning sympathy—and yet what was it he said? Something she had not dreamed any one could say, "Oh, the poor little girl you were! Wasn't thereany oneto help you to get it straight, to understand it?"
"Understand it!" she said harshly. "I understood it only too well."
He looked away from her, across the plain, and kept a thoughtful silence. Then he said, "I don't believe you understood it in the least. Is it likely that any fourteen-year-old little girl could understand anything like that, anything that must have begun, had its real causes back before you were born—and why should you take the point of view of an ignorant old woman who certainly had the ignorant old woman's appetite for scandal? You probably didn't even get straight what really happened then—it sounds fearfully mixed up, you know, as though there must be more than that to it. Let alone itsrealmeaning, its human meaning, that you couldn't possibly have understood at fourteen, if you had known all the facts—and there certainly were lots more facts than what you saw and what that old woman put into your head.
"And, anyhow—oh, Marise, no matterwhatit was, it has nothing to do with your lifenow! Why do you let it mean so much to you? Just think how long ago it happened! It hasn't a thing to do withyou. How can it?"
She flushed a deep, shamed red, and asked in a whisper, "You don't think that I ... that I would be like that?"
He cried out furiously, "No, no,no! What an idea! It's nothing to you—nothing, I tell you. It's been nothing to you for years. You ought to have stopped thinking of it ever so long ago. Everybody starts all over again. You're yourself. You don't have to keep carrying that around with you. It doesn't belong to you. Let it fall. Leave it here!" he commanded abruptly, springing to his feet and holding out his hand to help her rise. "Leave it here! And walk off into your own life."
She stood up beside him now, so giddy with a strange new lightness that she laid her hand on his arm to steady herself.
At her touch he flushed hot with the desire to put his arms about her and hold her passionately close. The desire was so intense that he had for an instant the hallucination that he had done it, that she leaned her head against his breast. But he had been so harrowed by sympathy for her poor bruised heart, had been so touched by the revelation of the delicacy and fineness of fiber which had but served to deepen the dreadful, unhealed hurt with which she had lived helplessly, he was so moved by her white, drawn face, lifted to his own with a childlike faith in what he said, he was so wrung with his thankfulness to see on that pale face a sensitive reflection of his own certainty ... oh, now was no time to burst out on her with the flame of his passion, nowwhen she was so weak, so defenseless. He put aside his passion with a strong hand, resolutely.
Looking at him, she saw his face flush darkly with his desire, and felt herself as safe from a touch as though she looked down on him from a high tower. Had she ever felt safe before?
She leaned on his arm like a convalescent. She walked off beside him quietly, into her own life.
The walk back to the city walls was as full of a comforting, silent sense of each other's presence as though they had lived their lives together.
Once in a while they spoke together as simply and naturally as children, of small, everyday things, of little changes he would need to make in his house, an old cistern to be drained and filled in, the half-rotten maple which darkened the living-room cut down to let the sunlight in.
In one of the quiet silences, full to the brim with their nearness to each other, Neale remembered what he had meant to do with this afternoon, what he had so self-consciously planned to say. The thought made him abashed and humble. How infinitely deeper life was than you could ever know till you began to live. He had thought he loved Marise as much as a man could love a woman. He saw that he had only begun to guess what love could be, that it is a tie between two struggling human beings, as well as between a man and a woman, and that it is not to be had without effort and growth. It was something that would take all there was in him to live up to.
As he walked beside her, he was dedicating all there was in him to loving her.
II
She was tired, heavenly tired, when she reached her room that late afternoon. She had not been tired like that since she was a little girl; relaxed, abandoned before the soft-footedadvance of sleep. She could scarcely think coherently enough to remember to send word that she would not appear at dinner, before she was undressed and in her bed. There was nothing in her mind but this exquisite fatigue, from which presently, even now, as she thought of it, sleep would drift her away. She laid her tired head on the pillow with a long breath. Some weak tears gathered in her eyes and ran slowly down, but they were sweet tears, not bitter. And so she fell asleep.
It was late, when she woke, well on into the next day, and the room was filled with the crystal clarity of daylight. As she opened her eyes, she was thinking as though it were the continuation of a dream, that if she ever had children she would ... she would takecareof them! She would learn how always to be close to them, so that she would be there, ready to help them when.... She wouldn't leave them helplessly to think that the evil was in life itself and not in coarse and evil minds. She wouldn't leave them for years to think that the poor, mean joking of sniggering servants is all there is to life and love. She would stand up for them, look out for them! Marise stood fiercely on her guard for them now, up in arms against what threatened them.
It had never before in her life, not even fleetingly, not once, occurred to her that she might ever have children. She knew now that she wanted them. That was the second step into her own life.