Rough-Hewn/Chapter 45
CHAPTER XLV
During the interminable process of hanging the skirt of that yellow dress for Donna Antonia's soirée Marise kept thinking of the Pantheon. The dressmaker's lodging was near there. If they could only be done with those draperies she would have time to step into the place which she loved best in Rome. She cast a look at herself in the cracked mirror which was all the inexpensive little dressmaker could afford. "I'm afraid it's higher on the right hip," she said, and settled with a sigh to endure more pinnings and unpinnings. "Strange, how important it is for the correct playing of Beethoven," she thought ironically, "that the drapery on one hip shall not be higher than on the other." She caught a glimpse of herself as she thought this, and frowned to see her lip curled in a cold, ugly line of distaste. Her thoughts were showing more and more on her face. She knew well enough what Mme. Vallery would say. She would say, "Don't pretend, dear child, that you don't know perfectly well that the kind of dress you wear has a great deal to do with everything that anybody cares about, and that the kind of people you must depend on to make your music profitable are the kind who care nothing about music and altogether about looks."
That was true, of course, but all the same it did make Marise sick to have people call a "soirée musicale" what really was a "sartorial evening." Of course it was understood that people were hypocritical about everything. She granted that they never called anything by its right name. But she did wish they would leave music alone! She cared about that!
"That's right now," she said aloud, looking intently from one hip to the other. "Perhaps a little more—no, it will do as it is."
She would have time for the Pantheon after all—ten minutes at least. Ten minutes for the Pantheon! She had been three-quarters of an hour with the dressmaker! That was her life! She walked in through the gray old portico, and, still fretting, her mouth still in the cold, ugly line, she stepped through the huge bronze doorway and stood under the vault … "ah!"
She always forgot how it affected her or she would come in every day as other people said their prayers. It was as though it had been made for her and had waited till she came, sore-hearted, to look at it and find a passing peace.
She lifted her face to the huge open circle at the center of the dome high over her head. Quiet strength came into her heart from those great gray stones. Century after century they had enclosed that lovely circle of open sky and sunlit cloud and swallow-flights. Every other ancient roof in Rome had gone down to heaps of rubbish, save only this, steadfast, enduring, letting in the innocent clear light of every day down to the heart of the old temple.
Daylight—that was what made the Pantheon a place apart for her—honest daylight. How cheap beside it was the theatrical yellow of the windows back of the altar in St. Peter's!
She looked about her for a place to sit, and, seeing no chair, took a prie-dieu and sank to her knees on it as though she were praying. She was praying in her way. She continued to look up at the heaped golden clouds, at the infinite depth of the blue, blue sky, at the ineffable clarity of the light, pouring in through the great round opening. It seemed to smile at her, an honest, loving, reassuring smile that flooded her vexed, somber heart as it flooded the somber, ancient building. What strength, what strength in those gray stones, to hold together where everything else had been broken and dispersed! How beautiful primitive things were! How consoling and healing—the hardness and strength of stones, the clarity of light, the transparency of the sky! If you could only somehow make your life up of such things—strength, sunshine, simplicity—and music!
She continued to gaze up, her hands clasped. Yes, she was praying, she was praying for a little share of all that.
What was that absurd Mr. Livingstone saying? Marise glanced up sharply from her book and listened. Why, he was talking about Crittenden's—old Mr. Crittenden dead and had left that lovely old mountain home to some indifferent nephew? To make sure, she put her book down and asked a question or two. How strange that she should be talking about Ashley to people here in a Roman pension! Ashley! Crittenden's! Cousin Hetty!
She seemed to have gone again back to her book, but she was not reading. She was looking at a sunlit green valley, a white road winding through it, a glass-clear little river chanting under willows, low, friendly homes under tall elms, ugly old people with plain speech and honest, quiet eyes, smiling down lovingly on a skipping, frisking little girl.
"… I see them shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And may not go again."
After a time she closed her book and went up on the roof for a quiet moment alone, to go back to Ashley, to look at those blue, remembered hills.
But there was some one else on the terrazza. She made out a man's figure under the grapevine. Being a girl, she thought impatiently, she was obliged to turn back and shut herself up in her stuffy room. It continued to be exactly as it had been in Bayonne. The world was one great Jeanne, with a nose twitching for scandal. Ashley was far away!
She had watched the horrid little tragedy of the swallow with such intensity that when the catastrophe came she almost felt those curved claws sink into her own flesh … bon Dieu! What was that man doing climbing out of the window—a madman! No, he had seen the cat, too! What a leap! And now how he ran—like a prestissimo alla forte passage! Ah! He had caught that wretched cat. But the swallow was dead. He was too late! How gently he picked it up. Did men ever feel compassion for things hurt?
Oh! oh! the swallow had flown out of his hands! How it soared up and up! Who would not soar, saved by a strong, kind hand from such terror!
He had turned to come back. It was a good face—but after she had seen the expression of the deep-set, steady eyes she could see nothing but that. Eyes that looked kind, but not weak. In the world about Marise it had been an understood axiom that only weak people were kind.
And what now—eh bien! To defend the cat! What did he care about a cat!
Yet she saw it at once. What he wanted was justice. Think of any one's wanting justice for anything—let alone a cat!
No—how quaint, how amusing—one unexpected thing after another!—he wasn't a bit conceited about what he'd done—how funny that he was embarrassed and shy! Why, no man with Latin blood could have restrained himself by any effort of self-control from a little flourish of self-satisfaction after such a dashing exploit. He wasn't thinking how she must be admiring him. He wasn't thinking of himself at all. How—how nice—to see him blushing and stammering like a nice, nice boy. She could scarcely keep back the laugh of touched and pleased amusement that came to her lips.
Eh bien, he might blush easily and be shy, but he knew as well as any Latin how to catch at a chance indication from a woman, and how to be at the right place at the right hour. When she and il Maestro came out of Donna Antonia's door, she saw his tall figure at the end of the street. Ridiculous, what a start it gave her! And as soon as Visconti had left her there he was beside her with one long bound. Now she would really look at him enumeratingly and see what sort of face he had.
But when she looked at him she saw that his eyes were smiling down at her, and she went no further than the eyes again.
She began to tell him about Ashley, of which she had dreamed the night before, the first time in so long. It had been a good dream, all about going home to Cousin Hetty and playing dolls up in the attic again. And it was good, how good, to talk to some one about it, the first time—why, since she had left Ashley! He seemed like—like what Americans meant when they spoke of their "own home folks." Marise had never had any such. There was a real reason to give herself the fun of telling about Crittenden's too, since this Crittenden was soon to be there. She would just let herself go for once!
But how she did run on when she let herself go! She hardly knew herself, chattering like this, as fast as her tongue could wag. Chattering and laughing and gesticulating—and not able to stop—the foolish way people do who have drink too much champagne, the foolish way a canary does when you take the dark cloth from his cage and he sees that the sun is shining, the way silly girls do the first time they have a conversation with a young man. Yes, that was the way her voice sounded. Why could she not stop chattering and laughing? What must he be thinking of her? She would stop. She would change the subject. She would look at her watch and say that she was late for an engagement and must take a tram-car and leave him.
Forming this plan, she led him rapidly through the gate into the Borghese Gardens where there are no tram-cars, through which lay the longest possible way home. She thought glancingly of this inconsistency, but it did not seem very important to her, because she began to be aware of something that startled her a little. She was now taking him all over the old house at Crittenden's. Yes, it was as though she had taken his hand and were leading him through those fine old rooms. She was aware of him—like that—as though their hands really did touch, warmly and actually touch—and she liked it! She who detested above everything else the slightest physical contact with another human body—who hated men for only looking at her bare arm as if they would like to touch it.
Oh, well, oh, well, it was nothing—she brushed it aside, it was gone. She told herself hastily in a phrase she had heard Mme. Vallery use, that a very fine physical specimen of a man exercises a sort of unconscious magnetism on every one near him, that has no more real human significance than the way a pebble naturally rolls down hill and not up. And he certainly was what any one would call a fine physical specimen, so tall, so solidly, vigorously built, with such a long, swinging step—she glanced at him as she talked—but it wasn't his strength that gave him his individuality—it was his quiet look.
They had come out from the Pincian now, stopped and were looking at each other, under the ilex trees. From the way he had answered her astonished question about China she had known that he was going to say something to her, really something that he meant, as people never do, something from far underneath the surface. But she had never dreamed that he would so throw open the doors of his heart and let her look in to see something she had never thought was in any one's heart, the honest desire to do something with his life beyond getting out of it all he could for himself. It was like daylight shining down, clear, into dark shadows.
Marise dreaded Donna Antonia's musical entertainments. They were nightmares, at least for a girl with no recognized definite rung on the social ladder as her own, at least for a paid entertainer who was paid not only to play a Beethoven sonata, but to look well, to add to the social brilliancy of the evening, to make up for Donna Antonia's prodigious inertia by rushing about, seeing that everything went smoothly, that the servants did not sequester half the ices, that each guest had some one to talk to. If she could only come in, play her Beethoven and go away again!—That was really all she was paid for. No, of course the pay for the rest of what she did was Donna Antonia's "taking her up," her familiarity in the great house, those occasional condescending "cards for her personal friends," all that Donna Antonia could do for a young pianist's future. Every one told her that her fortunes were made, now that Donna Antonia had taken a fancy to her, every one expected her as a matter of course to make the most of her great opportunity, to flatter Donna Antonia, to run briskly on her errands, to accept with apparent pleasure the amused, patronizing friendliness of a capricious great lady who on some days was caressing and petting, like a person with a pet cat, and on others was cold and distant, like a person who has no use for cats. She was not only to play for Donna Antonia whenever she was asked, but sit on a cushion, let her hair be stroked and talk intimately with Donna Antonia of things Marise would much prefer not to know about; or on another day to be willing to dash out in a cab to get a delayed dress from the dress-maker's because the maid was busy with hair-dressing; or, as on this evening, act the part of helpful daughter of the house, when her real position (which all the guests knew perfectly well how to make her feel) was that of temporary toy and amusement. What really underlay all that advice to make the most of this great opportunity was a doubt whether she was genuinely gifted enough to make her own way by her talent, was the feeling that the best way to make up for deficiencies in her musical equipment was by accumulating personal influences of social importance on her side. The "great opportunity" which Visconti's other pupils so envied her was nothing more or less than making the acquaintance of these wealthy, important, unmusical people, and being more adroit in making use of them than they of her. This was perfectly understood all around—especially by the men watching to find a weak spot, who looked at her admiringly and found graceful things to say about her playing and her arms and her hands and her hair and everything else they dared mention; especially by the old Ambrogi, with his brutal certainty that as long as he was mounting in power, any woman—oh, they made her sick!—Donna Antonia and Ambrogi! Such old people, with bags under their eyes and flabby necks! And they really didn't care a sou about each other—he wanted only to make use of the position that Donna Antonia's birth gave her, and she only wanted to have the prestige of owning a politician; or perhaps the prestige of showing that in spite of bags under her eyes she was still not too old for that sort of thing.
Before she ran up to make sure that no guests were stranded in the library without being served with ices, Marise looked cautiously into the dark corner on the landing to make sure that Ambrogi was not there. Horrid—an old man like that who could not keep his hands off women thirty years younger than he! But as for that, the old Visconti himself could not keep his off women fifty years younger than he! As she sped swiftly along the upper hall, a crocus-colored Atalanta in her pale-yellow dress, she was saying to herself, "Oh, well, that's the way men are, none of them can keep their hands off women"—all except self-conscious posing marionettes like that absurd Livingstone, or men like her father, who took it out in caring about what they ate and drank. How harmless that was—in comparison! How nice it was in comparison! Had she ever been impatient with Father because he cared so much about what he ate and drank? She felt a little wave of affection for him. She really must try to get back to Paris for a few days, and make sure that Biron was keeping up to the mark.
There, the last person was served. And everybody had somebody to talk to. Oh, how tired she was, how sick of all this! This was a soirée musicale! These were the people on whom she was to count for musical success. She was supposed to be here to play Beethoven! She broke into a nervous laugh at the idea.
Of course she had known that Mr. Livingstone would be enchanted at the invitation from Donna Antonia. And of course Mr. Crittenden would be too. Anybody would. To have made such an impression on Ambrogi—it was remarkable!
But he wasn't enchanted. He said he wasn't going. What under the sun did that mean? Did he think he could get an invitation to dinner if he held off from this one to tea? Yes, probably that was it. Well, she wasn't sure, that was the way to work Ambrogi. Still you never could tell. Perhaps the boldness of it might take Ambrogi's fancy.
How funny, funny, funny, the head Ambrogi would show at the tea-table when poor Livingstone turned up alone with that self-conscious, naïvely-sophisticated manner of his, so proud of seeming a man of the world. And Ambrogi despising men of the world for imbeciles! She would tell Mr. Crittenden about it, when she next saw him, and make him laugh too.
But when she told him he did not laugh—not so very heartily. He seemed concerned about Livingstone—of all people! Was it possible that he liked Mr. Livingstone? Could it be he was standing up for him whether he liked him or not, as he had for the cat?
And now what a queer question he was asking her—about why she had said nothing at the breakfast table about having already met him. Why, how naïve that would have been! Why should you? And he kept on talking about it as though he saw something in it she did not. He was looking at her very queerly, not at all admiringly. How. strange it seemed to have any man look at a woman and not pretend at least to be admiring her—strange—and rude—and uncomfortable! She must make him say something. He'd be forced then to smile and turn it off—whatever it was, with a pretty phrase that pretended to be admiring.
Oh—horrible! How could any one be so rude! Why, it was as though he had struck a blow at her! Brutal! And why? Why? What harm had she done him? Why did he want to hurt her? He was cruel! She had not known any one could be so cruel and hard—hard as a stone (where was it she lately had seen great hard stones?).
What could you do when some one was rude to you? What did any one do who was so affronted?
Beyond the dark fury of her amazement, her resentment, her anger, her bewilderment, a light began to break slowly like a distant dawn. As she looked at him, stammering, remorseful, horribly unhappy, aghast at what he had said, but never once dreaming that he might simply unsay it, she became aware of what had really happened:
She had asked him a question and he had told her the truth.