"We shall have tea together, my dear, to celebrate your birthday and my new plans, and to have a last talk together, the last talk before you grow up."
Her tears were forgotten. They had been shed, and that was the end of them. It was thus that one should live, she believed, crying heartily when one felt like it, and having it over with. She detested what she called the "brain-sickening Anglo-Saxon mania of bottling up emotion till it grows so intense you get no enjoyment out of it," and she was much given to cautioning against this mania those few of her pupils whom she took seriously and for whom she labored her valiant best, pouring out for them all her wisdom, musical and otherwise.
She came back now, and sat before the piano, her amplitude overflowing the stool as a mighty inflooding wave overflows a rock.
"While Giuseppina is making our tea, I"ll play to you," she announced.
She put her beautiful hands on the keys like a millionaire plunging his hands into a coffer of jewels and offering a choice between pearls and rubies, "What will you have? What do you feel like?"
Marise felt more like an earthquake in full activity than anything else, and chose accordingly, "If I"m going to Rome for a year, I feel like fireworks," she said with a rather breathless laugh, "something Hungarian ... Liszt, perhaps."
Madame de la Cueva settled herself and was off, Marise"s heart galloping beside her in the wild rush over the plain. The little lean, wiry, ewe-necked horse under her tore along, sure-footed, as carried away by the stampede as his rider. There was a lance in her hand, a lance with a little blood-red, ragged flag, fluttering loudly against the wind of their forward rush like a bird struggling to escape and fly. Marise heard its throbbing struggle above the rhythmic thunder of the hoofs and felt her heart fluttering like a caught bird in sympathy. And now, with a long, rending slide from ba.s.s to treble, it tore itself loose, the wind caught it and whirled it up high over their heads as they plunged along. There it rode among the clouds, like a scarlet storm-bird, sinking and falling and advancing to a longer, n.o.bler, more ample rhythm than that of their many-hoofed clattering. Marise"s heart soared up with it, soared out of the noisy clattering, up to the clouds, to the n.o.ble, long curves of the wind"s soundless advance ... soundless ... the piano was silent. Madame de la Cueva had played the last half-heard, velvet note that was prolonged, prolonged by the sweep of that n.o.ble line. She and Marise floated with it for a moment, and then as it swept on and left them, they slowly eddied down to the ground like dry leaves.
Giuseppina came in with the tea. Madame de la Cueva turned round on the piano-stool, a fat, elderly woman with three chins.
"Not so bad for the old lady, hein?" she said, well-pleased with herself and with Marise"s dazzled look.
Marise attempted no thanks, no comment. Silently, like a person hypnotized she took the proffered cup, nodding her desire for two lumps and lemon; and silently, like a person hypnotized she listened to Madame de la Cueva"s monologue. The music like a rich wine had unloosed the musician"s tongue. In a mood like this she "turned the faucet and it ran."
"My little one," she said fondly to Marise, "my little one, so here you are on the beach ready to take the plunge--twenty-one to-day! And your poor old de la Cueva will not be here to advise you. Oh well, there"s only one mistake that is worse than giving advice, and that is taking it. Never take anybody"s advice, my darling, n.o.body"s at all."
She drank the half of her cup of tea, not by any means noiselessly, wiped her mustache with the tiny, beautifully fine, embroidered tea-napkin, and hanging lovingly over the plate of patisseries, chose the fluffiest with a sigh of satisfaction.
"The only thing not to do, the only mistake possible to make, is to stand shivering on the beach, not to plunge in and breast the waves.
Breast the waves!" she showed by a wide gesture of her powerful arm what she meant.
"And you can"t swim with anything or anybody hanging around your neck.
The moment they begin to weigh on you ... p-f-f-t! off with them!
Nothing you can do will help people who can"t swim themselves. They"ll only drag you down with them.
"My dear child, remember this, that if there is an element in life hateful to the free human soul it is what is called permanence. The only permanent thing any human being should recognize is his tomb. From everything else he must climb out and go on, go on.
"Above all, beware of permanence in love. It is a paradox ever to speak of love and permanence in the same breath. Life and death! They cannot exist together. Women as a rule, all women who are not artists, make their mistakes in that way. You are a woman now, and an artist, it is the duty of an older woman and an artist to warn you against it. The only way not to be a life-long victim of men is to take love as they it ... for the pleasure. Men wish nothing from love but their pleasure.
It is a vain and foolish striving to try and give them more, or to try and get more from them."
She took another eclair and said on a softer note, "I don"t deny that women are more naturally given to the folly of seeking permanence in love than men. I myself have a weakness in that direction." Marise looked down into her cup to hide an involuntary smile at this. "Each time I love, the illusion is that it is now for eternity. Each time the wrench costs me tears.... You saw my tears, my dear!
"No, the only thing to do is to use it, as men do, to feed one"s art.
You heard how superbly I played that Liszt! That is Georges, that is the new flame leaping up from a lamp that was burning out!"
She poured another cup, and seasoned it with care. Marise ventured to say mildly, "I"m afraid I"m rather cold. I don"t ... I haven"t ever cared much for men."
Madame de la Cueva shook her head, "Every unawakened girl thinks that.
And once in a while there is a monster born, sometimes a man, more often a woman, who is born really cold--like a born half-wit or a two-headed cat. But any one of experience can feel them in the room, as you feel a snake. _You_ are not cold, my darling. No one who can play The Tragica as you do, is cold. You are only a child. You Anglo-Saxons take so long to ripen. But all the better for your technique--that quaint prolongation of infancy. But _now_," she put down her cup and looked at Marise deeply and masterfully, "now your infancy has lasted long enough.
In with you! Dive from the nearest rock! Head over heels! I shall hear the splash from across the world and rejoice."
Marise laughed a little nervously, partly because she was amused and partly because she was excited. That great ma.s.s of personality, radiating magnetism, would excite a statue on a tomb, she thought to herself, even though you didn"t at all share her tastes, or like the things she did.
"And when I say, "in with you," I don"t mean any of the sentimental slip-noose business of becoming a house-mother with children--oh, whatever else, my dear, no children. The only artists who can afford to have children are men, because men never really love their children and can abandon them at any time they need to. No woman can do that. Even _I_ could never have done that!
"You see, carissima mea, in love a man always keeps most of himself for himself, as in everything else. You must do the same if you are not to be cheated in every bargain that life offers you. It is a hard lesson to learn. It will cost you many tears. But tears are valuable. You cannot live and be an artist, without tears. Shed them freely and you will see how you will grow."
She looked at her watch, "I expect Georges at five," she explained, and swept on to her peroration, "Remember, think of all I tell you when your wise old friend who knows life is far away. Remember! None of your Anglo-Saxon nonsense about trying to get along without s.e.x-life. Take it, take all you need of it, but keep it separate from your real life as a man does, and it will never poison or embitter you." She laughed a little, triumphantly, "You will _do_ all the embittering instead of enduring it. You have beauty. You can buy anything you want with it, if you learn how to use it. You have what will advance you more than any talent for music! You have a nice talent, but you will go ten times as far as a woman with a big nose and poor hair. Make your brain a little mint, my darling, coin your good looks into legal tender, and buy success."
She kissed the girl and dismissed her, with another look at her watch and then into the mirror.
Marise stumbled down the stairs, a little dizzied by the sudden removal of that pressing, urgent, magnetic personality. To step out suddenly from under it, was like stepping into a vacuum. Her ears rang.
At the street-door she paused, waiting for the mist to clear from before her eyes. She peered out into the quiet street, as if she were looking into life itself, the life that Madame de la Cueva had so magisterially set before her. And she loathed in antic.i.p.ation everything that was waiting for her there.
There lay the world, grown-up life, Rome, her career, before her, and apparently there was nothing in it which she would not detest. Love ...
the love that Madame de la Cueva had shown her how to get ... she shrank away from it with a proud, cold scorn, her nostrils quivering. Music ...
there was no music in that program, only an exploitation of music to buy personal success for her. And she loved music ... fiercely she clung to that, as the one thing that would not betray her, the one thing she dared love with all her heart.
She stood on the threshold of the street-door, dreading to take even one step forward into it all, till the concierge looked at her hard, with a disagreeable smile, suspecting a rendezvous with a lover. Marise saw the look, knew what it meant, felt it push her forward, knew in antic.i.p.ation how that sort of look and what lay back of it would be always pushing her forward into what she hated.
With a long breath she stepped into the street, into the road that stretched before her. She held her head high, with an angry pride. The concierge-soul of the world must never know what was inside her life.
The thing to do, the only thing she saw that was tolerable to do, was to take care that she was not being fooled. Well, she thought with a grave, still bitterness, she certainly ought to know something about that.
_THE END OF ALL ROADS_
CHAPTER XLI
1909
Neale sat idly in front of the black-and-white facade of the Orvieto Cathedral, trying idly to make up his mind on a matter of no importance whatever and not getting on very fast. In his pocket was his ticket back to New York and his ship sailed in a week. But, of course, it did not sail from Orvieto. Should he go south to Naples where most of the pa.s.sengers took ship? If he did, he could stop over four or five days in Rome. It might be interesting to revisit Rome. Or should he go north to Genoa, where the ship was due to stop the day after leaving Naples? He had not seen Genoa at all and he might be missing something worth while.
It ought to stir any American"s imagination to hang about the docks where a certain visionary, middle-aged sailor-man had gone up and down trying to raise the funds for a mad attempt to prove the world absolutely different from what everybody else had thought.
He sat there looking up at the Cathedral, deciding now for Genoa and now for Rome, and in between times forgetting all about the matter, so evenly balanced were the advantages, so unimportant was the whole business. When he finally stood up to go back to his inn, he remembered that he had still not settled which train to take.
He took a coin out of his pocket. He"d toss up. Heads for Naples, tails for Genoa.
The coin flashed up in the sun, and fell on the stone steps. In the intense, somnolent silence of the little provincial square its tinkle sounded loud and clear. All the loungers turned their heads quickly at the sound. Neale stooped over it.
Heads, Naples. All right. He"d inquire when he got to Rome if they didn"t perhaps run a boat-train down, just before sailing time.
As he was unstrapping his suit-case that night in his room in the Roman pension, it did not greatly surprise him to have Livingstone knock at the door and step in. Livingstone had been at that pension before, during Neale"s first leisurely sauntering visit to Rome; Livingstone had turned up at the pension in Florence before Neale left; he had run across Livingstone in a Paris cafe sitting alone at a table, looking as much like an attache of the Emba.s.sy as he could manage. Livingstone was no tourist but one of the professional inhabitants of Europe; an American, that much he admitted, though neither hints nor direct British questioning had ever extracted from him his birthplace in the States. He was the sort of man who had learned how to cross his long thin legs elegantly so that the toe of one slim foot pointed downward. As at the same time he was wont to fold his arms over his hollowed chest, stoop his shoulders and droop his neck, and as he wore gray gaiters and carried a walking stick he had good reason to flatter himself that he had altogether the distinguished, pinched, sickly, aristocratic look of the traditional promising young-old diplomat. Neale was not surprised to see him in Rome. He would not have been surprised to see him anywhere--except perhaps at work. It was Neale"s guess that three or four years from now he would have screwed up his courage to wearing a monocle.
"h.e.l.lo, Crittenden," he said, "it _is_ you, is it? When Michele told me you had turned up again, I was sure he must be mistaken. I understood you were on the high seas, on your way back to the land of the free and the home of bad cooking."
Without being invited, he sank down in a chair to watch Neale unpack and wash, asking, "You were going back to New York, weren"t you?"