Part 12

"How extraordinary," said Fanshaw as he walked away. He looked at his watch. Three o'clock; Nan would have finished practicing. He walked fast for fear the old man would catch up and talk to him again. Nasty old face, he had. And yet Nan and I, and Wenny, whom we loved, dead. Everywhere love springing like hair-fine grass to obliterate the new graves. O, the pitiful cycle of it. But life would be so unsatisfactory without her. Mother's voice, her wrinkled face yellow and limp against the pillow under the pompadour that was always a little crooked and showed the black coarse hair of the rat: And later, Fanshaw, dearest, when you've made yourself a lovely, beautiful career, you'll probably marry some sweet, homey girl and settle down and be a comfort to me. Probably Mother was right. There comes a time when you can't go on living alone any longer. Of course a quiet retreat with books one would always have to have. And with Nan's passionate interest in her music there would not be any difficulty in that. And then to let oneself go. At last someone with whom I can let myself go.

He was waiting outside the pompous wrought iron gates of the cemetery for a streetcar. He climbed on a half empty car and watched the people straggle in as it drew near to the subway entrance. There were old women with spiteful lips and peevish, shifty eyes, flashy young men in checked caps, lanternjawed girls, sallow, seedy fathers of families. Once, after a long argument, he had asked Wenny: But what do you want? and Wenny had looked round the car with eager eyes and said: Not to be myself, I guess, to be anybody, any one of those people but myself. In the subway Fanshaw looked, furtively so that they should not notice him, from face to face, noting the tired skin round their eyes. Comes from drudgery in offices and factories, he was telling himself, always regimented, under orders, and then, in the evening the sudden little spurt of human brilliance, shopgirls and little clerks and ditchdiggers walking merrily through twilight streets. Tremont before theatre time, or at six o'clock with the dome of the State House glowing through dusky trees. Then the night; mystery of doorways, gangs of boys loafing sullenly under arclights at corners, grassing in the cemetery, furtive loves over newlydug graves, always afraid of the policeman striding slowly down his beat; electric signs and burlesque shows, Pretty Girls Upstairs, lumpy women, stuffed in pink tights, twitching lewdly at the end of a smoke-rancid hall ... We can do better than that, Nan and I, escape all this grinding ugliness, make ourselves a garden walled against it all, shutting out all this garish lockstep travesty of civilization. Land where it is always afternoon. Afternoons reading on the balcony of a palace in Venice, vague splendors, relics from the Doges, Aretino, Titian, and Nan with her hair brushed back from her forehead, in a brocaded dress like a Florentine princess on a casone.

Park Street. Fanshaw got to his feet and shuffled in a jostling stream of people out the car.

* * * *

Nan had been playing Pelleas. Fanshaw sat looking out of the window into the glassy twilight in which a few stars already shimmered like bubbles ready to burst. The music and the incredible fresh green of the leaves in the darkening Fenway had brought on a mood of queer sensibility, so that he felt very happy and almost on the verge of tears. He got to his feet and walked over to the piano, where he stood awkwardly watching Nan's long fingers flash across the keys. Then he took her gently by the shoulders and said:

"Come and look at the twilight ... It's unbearably poignant, this violence of spring."

They stood side by side in the window looking out at the darkening trees.

"Nan, it'll be rather fun, won't it, setting up a ménage? And think how delightfully absurd the wedding will be and all that."

"Yes, I think it'll be fun. Will your mother hate me dreadfully?"

"Poor mother, she's like a child. She'll get used to you and be fearfully attached to you in no time."

"We must keep our liberty and our work, Fanshaw, whatever we do."

Fanshaw was startled by the tenseness in her voice. There was a hollow look about her cheeks he had never noticed before.

"Do you know," Nan was saying, "I'm rather frightened about my music tonight. I mean the divine fire, the power to let oneself go, to rule imperiously an instrument and an audience ... But I'm dreadfully determined. You won't go back on me, will you?"

"What a funny question."

"But why are we talking in this stilted way, already under the shadow of the holy institution ... We've known each other long enough to get married without a quiver, I should say."

"Perhaps it is that we've put on so many brakes in our time, that it's a little difficult to take them off now we want to," drawled Fanshaw with a wan smile.

Nan laughed excitedly. Fanshaw had put an arm around her shoulder. He felt her body stiffening against his.

"Fanshaw," she said in a changed voice, "do you see that star?"

"L'étoile du berger."

Above the dark roof of the apartment house across the park a star hovered green and trembling like jelly. They watched it in silence. Nan turned her face up quickly towards Fanshaw's in sudden passionate hunger. He folded her in his arms and kissed her lips lightly. With her head against his chest and her body rigid in his arms he stared out across her tumbled hair as the star sank flickering out of sight. He was trembling. He was full of swift shudders of foreboding. He bent his head to kiss her hair.

She tore herself away from him and threw herself sobbing into the armchair.

"Fanshaw, I can't ... I can't do it. It's all false," she was crying in a thin choked voice.

Fanshaw was standing stiffly in front of her. He felt desperately cold and tired.

"Nan, this is horrible ... Pull yourself together."

She turned to him a twisted face wet with tears.

"No, go away for the present ... Leave me alone."

She slipped to the floor and lay with her head on the blue velvet seat of the chair, her sandy hair undone, her body shaken with sobs.

In a curious maze of pain Fanshaw walked down the apartment house steps. Through spring-reeking streets, full of laughs and flower-scents and flushed cheeks and kidding voices of boys and girls arm in arm, he walked with long, sedate steps home.

VIII

There was a dark scattering of people through the beehive-shaped yellowshot emptiness of the Boston Theatre. On the stage in white dresses against red draperies the ladies' orchestra played the overture to Light Cavalry, violin bows sawing in unison, cheeks puffed out at trumpets, drumsticks dancing. In front stood the conductress in a neat tailored suit waving her arms discreetly. Nan sat in on the aisle with her little black hat topping some packages on the seat beside her, looking at the conductress's white gloves, thinking bitterly of suffragettes setting bombs under Asquith in London while the shiny glib marchtime of the music made her remember Balaklava and her spine going cold as she read: Into the valley of death charged the six hundred. How was it things she read never thrilled her now like that? Rights for Women ought to excite her as much as that silly antiquated poem. The music had stopped; two women in front of her were talking about the cretons at Jordan Marsh's. Let's see, had she bought the lace for the V, the ruching Miss Spence wanted, that blue crepe de chine, the buttons? She'd make sure on her list anyway after she'd picked up Fitzie. Fine it would be, if Miss Spence could finish it in time for Aunt M.'s tomorrow night. All those old people put her on her mettle; they'd think the brightness of it daring, bleared eyes watching her as she stood straight in tight royal blue, a gleam of red caught into her hair out of the violin. She had to affirm her separateness from poor dear Aunt M. and her friends. The orchestra was playing selections from The Tales of Hoffman which set Nan remembering being in Paris with Gertrude Fagan, the smell of tea and pastry through the foggy tang of the air on the rue Cambon, shopping, jumping in and out of cabs with silky things in tissue paper packages, hotel François Choiseuil and the two of them giggling together in the evening beside a pink shade over sole with wine sauce. If it had been Wenny in Gertrude's place; the thought set her blood seething. But I have you, my love: the word fluttered in her throat. She moistened her dry lips with her tongue. The music had stopped.

Nan looked about her restlessly. On the stage she could see Fitzie among the violins, next to a tall redhaired girl. That was where the other girl, Mabel something, used to stand last year, the girl who ran away with the flushfaced boy Fitzie told about, with bright teeth, the Italian who looked like a young Greek god, like Wenny perhaps. And he was dead. In all these months she should have got used to his being dead, but still when she thought of him she had to tell herself quickly he was dead, to escape the horrible pain of thinking of him, wishing him alive. Or did that all mean there was no death, that he was utterly surrendered to her. Fitzie 'ld say that, poor lonely Fitzie. Dull program it was this afternoon; a dismal ending for all that work and hysterical eagerness up at the conservatory, a lady 'celloist in the Fadettes.

Nan began to listen to the music again. They were playing the march from The Twilight of the Gods over-solemnly. The conductress brought down her baton for the last time. People got to their feet. The lights went on. Nan was adjusting her hat with two hatpins in her mouth. Had she got all her packages? She walked out slowly into the crimson sunset light of Washington Street, and round through a cold swirl of dustladen wind to the stage door. The women of the orchestra were coming out, short women in highcollared shirtwaists, a tall girl with high cheekbones and yellow hair, two stout women with glasses both rippling with the same laughter, the harpist, a consumptive-looking girl with white, drooping face and blue rings under her eyes; then Fitzie walking with jerky little steps, pigeonbreasted.

"O Nancibel, how sweet of you to wait... I'd just decided you wouldn't."

"Why should you think that?"

"O I don't know. I guess I must think sometimes that you're a little upstage, dear; simply horrid of me and I don't mean it a bit. Maybe it's that anybody who didn't know you would feel that you were a little, just the weenciest bit."

"I don't think I am, Fitzie."

They were drifting up the street in a compact stream of people like on a moving platform. Nan looked from face to face that passed her in a chilly flutter of expectation. She knew that before long she would see a man she would think was Wenny. What was this tremor that went through the procession of faces at sunset time, browned them, put blood in their lips, sparkle in their eyes, so that suddenly, as if dolls should come to life she would feel that she was going to meet Wenny. Dreading the pain of it, she tried to forget herself in Fitzie's shrill gossip of how the harpist had sauced the conductress and would have been fired except that she was such a good player and she'd only had to apologize and everybody had been in a dreadful temper and they'd played the Götterdämmerung piece much too slowly. So they reached Park Street.

"Fitzie, suppose we have tea at my place. D'you mind? I want to get there before Miss Spence goes away."

"It'll be charming, and is the dress finished, the blue satin? You will let me see it, won't you? I so love looking at lovely dresses the way I liked fairy tales when I was little. Even if I can't have them ..."

"There's nothing very fabulous about this one."

"O, you're so lucky, Nancibel, to be able to afford lovely dresses."

Nan thought of the dresses of the women in the Fadettes, angular, with the restlessness of bargain counters, fussily trimmed. It's not the money, she told herself, it's knowing what to wear.

"Is Mr. Macdougan back from Europe yet?" asked Fitzie with downcast eyes once they had settled themselves in the streetcar.

"Yes, he's back," said Nan drily. The car ground rattling round a corner in the tunnel and climbed out into the shattered dusk of the street. Nan had a glimpse of lights among the trees of the Public Garden. She narrowed her eyes to see the people along the pavements moving dark against the filmy brightness of shopwindows.

"Nancibel," said Fitzie after a pause, "I was so sorry about that ... when it happened."

"When what happened?"

"You know what I mean, dear ... Like Billy and me, you know."

"How absurd. I was never engaged to Fanshaw. Can't you people understand that a man and a woman can be friends? All this sentimental tommyrot makes me furious."

"It isn't that, dear. You shouldn't say such things, Nancibel, love is so beautiful."

Nan did not answer. She was thinking of Wenny bursting into her room that spring morning, how the flame of him had frozen her into a helpless clicking automaton, and when he had gone she had watched him from the window rush across the street and all the rigid life had gone out of her so that she lay with her head on the windowledge and looked at the empty snowpiled street ... agony not beauty that was.

Art Museum, called out the conductor. They alighted and walked slowly along past the pompous marble oblong of the dental clinic.

"O, Nancibel, I'd forgotten to tell you," cried Fitzie, suddenly turning excitedly to Nan, "I've seen Mabel Worthington."

"The girl from the Fadettes, your friend who eloped?"

"Yes, and just imagine it, she's terribly successful."

"What at?"

"Why, I don't just know. She's living at the Vendome, just think of that. I think she's managing concert tours, and she's married and everything. Several of the girls have been to see her."

"So she married the boy she eloped with? The Italian you said was so good looking."

"No, she didn't ... That's what so queer. She's Mrs. Van Troppfer and her husband's a Dutchman."

Nan burst out laughing.

"How shriekingly funny."

The Swansea: the gilt letters slanted down the glass door. They were in the elevator that had a familiar heavy oilsmell. Nan was still laughing. Under her laughter she was pleased to be getting back to her apartment. All afternoon she had looked forward to seeing how far her dress would be along.

"O, how do you do, Miss Taylor. I was just going," came Miss Spence's voice from the bedroom. "Now I can try fitting ... It was such a lovely afternoon, too lovely for words for those who can afford to go out in it... O, how do you do, Miss Fitzhugh, you'll be able to tell us what you think of the dress ... If you don't mind, we can fit it right now, because I mustn't be home late this evening and the cars are so crowded." Miss Spence was a little woman who talked continually, her mouth bristling with pins, in an even whiny voice; her hands were all the time darting about in front of her like lizards.

"What a beautiful blue," Fitzie was saying. "O, my dear, what a treat to see it fitted."

"Too lovely for words," echoed Miss Spence.

"It must have cost an enormous lot."

"Nonsense ... Fitzie, d'you mind putting some water to boil in the kitchenette ... When do you think you can have it ready, Miss Spence?"

"O, dear, now let me think; would day after tomorrow do?"

"But I want to wear it to dinner tomorrow. My aunt is giving one of her musical evenings."

"O, how lovely that must be. O, I must try." Miss Spence's little hands fluttered up and down the satiny front of the dress. "How about length?"

"Stunning, stunning!" cried Fitzie, who had come back from the kitchenette. "A wonderful concert gown it would make."

"Do you think so?" said Nan and felt a warm glow suffuse her whole being, so that she could not help throwing back her head a little and straightening her shoulders.

"Too lovely for words," whined Miss Spence through the pins in her mouth, standing back against the wall to look.

"I seem to remember having heard Phillips Brooks say once," Aunt M. was saying, "that a meal without fellowship was almost an enormity. It's so true. As one grows older, Nancibel, one has to eat so many lonely, tasteless meals."

Nan looked at her aunt across the round primly set table, where the four candles under their silver shades cast an uncertain creamy light on the starched cloth and gave forks and spoons and plates blue uncertain shadows.

"But I find it rather pleasant to have a meal alone now and then ... It gives me a chance to collect my thoughts."

Aunt M. was lifting a cup of cocoa to her lips, carefully like a child; she smiled wryly and said with a glint from the candles in her eyes:

"Because you can have company whenever you want. Nobody wants very much to have supper with an old woman like me."

"Why, Aunt M., you know I love to talk to you this way. The only reason I don't come oftener is that I'm so busy nowadays." Nan's fingers on her lap were tapping nervously against her knee.

"Of course, of course, dear, I understand. With your music and everything. I used to be very busy, too, and even now I'm not idle, am I?"

"I should say not."

"And then, watching your career, Nancibel, dear, I live over my own life. Think of it, dear, when I was young in those years after the rebellion ... Mary Ann, Miss Taylor will take her coffee in the other room."

"Yessum."

Aunt M. got to her feet, brushing a few crumbs off her silk dress and went through the portieres into the parlor. Nan glanced at herself in the mirror over the mantel as she followed. How pale I look tonight, she thought.

"When I was young in those years after the rebellion, Boston was a very busy place. And we were all so sanguine for the future. But now, even if I were strong enough, I would go out very little. It all seems so strange and ugly to me. And where is it going, this hideous chase after money?"

"I find a sort of splendor in it," said Nan brutally. They sat side by side on the curvebacked sofa, Nan with a small coffee cup in one hand.

"I'm happier indoors. But even here there's no real peace. The traffic on Beacon Street is so distressing."

"Marblehead would be a nice place to live."

"O, no, you wouldn't have me leave this house, would you, Nancibel, dear? This is my home. Do you remember in Mr. Emerson's poem..."

Why seek Italy? Who cannot circumnavigate the sea Of thoughts and things at home?

"I feel that way about this house. Why since I lived in my mother's house I haven't lived anywhere else. How well I remember the first excitement of having a home of my own."

"When was that, Aunt M.?"

"I have never told you, have I? It was after I decided I would never marry." Aunt M. paused. Mary Ann rustled in to take the tray of coffee things.

"Anything else tonight, mum?"

"No, I won't need anything more. Good night, Mary Ann."

"Good night, mum."

"Nan, it's a long time since you brought Mr. Macdougan in to see me."

"He's very busy this year. He's giving a course of his own."

"A very clever young man, Nancibel ... But I was telling you about the events that led up to my taking this house. It was something very near to me, which I have told to very few."

Aunt M. turned towards Nan and let her voice drop to a shaky whisper. Her eyes seemed strangely large and young and tremulous, staring out of the yellow wrinkled face.

"I had engaged myself when very young--we were more precocious in those days--to a youth of good family and connections. You've even met him, but I shall not tell you who he is. We decided to wait several years before marrying, and in the meantime there was not a dance or party in Boston suitable to a young girl where I was not to be found merry with the merriest."

People in crinolines bowing low and dancing to waltzes by Auber; our generation is different from that. We count more. Music welling out from the broken moulds of old customs. We are really breaking away seeking something genuine; true culture. Aunt M. wouldn't believe if I tried to explain.

"One night at a dance on Beacon Hill I was much struck by the appearance of a young man. I'd never seen any one so handsome before and to this day I have never seen the like of him ... Nancibel, I'm getting old. A year ago, even, I don't think I would have been able to tell you all this without my heart fluttering ... You are a dear girl to listen so attentively to your poor old aunt's reminiscences. Don't let me forget to go up to bed the minute the clock strikes ten."

They were sitting side by side on the curvebacked sofa. The old woman had snuggled close to Nan and held her hand like a child listening to a ghost story. Nan's glance roamed nervously about the room. For a long while she stared at her Aunt's hand that lay pudgy and freckled, with swollen knuckles, in her slender white hand.

"He was an Englishman named Verrey, though his skin was so dark everyone thought him an Italian. He paid court to me more charmingly than you can imagine. Every day of my life he sent me a great bunch of Malmaison roses. Without telling anyone, I broke off my engagement. Mother was dreadfully uneasy about me, and all the family hated young Verrey because he looked so foreign. I was nearly ill about him. O, Nancibel, you can't imagine how wonderful he was, so dashing and chivalrous. And so it kept up. I stopped going out and used to spend all day in my room thinking of him. My father forbade him the house, so that the only way I had of communicating with him was that a certain time each day I used to come to the window and he would walk slowly up and down the street in front of the house. I thought I'd cry my eyes out, he looked so sad and dejected. Then, to make a long story short, he came to see me one day when I was alone in the house. He was so perturbed he could hardly speak. He said I must run away with him instantly or he'd go mad with love of me. He tried to kiss me. It was terrible. I ordered him out of the house and I never saw him again. But I was awfully ill. Several days after I went to bed with brain fever. For weeks they despaired of saving me."

Nan was pressing her aunt's hand hard.

"And then?"

"Nothing. When I got well, nothing seemed to matter much. Convalescence has that effect. From that day to this I've never been able to abide the smell of roses. But, my dear, I must go up to bed. I feel badly all day if I don't get my proper sleep ... Forgive my boring you with these old women's stories. We were very silly when I was a girl. How out of date I must seem to a generation brought up on Ibsen's plays."

"Yes, our ideas are a little different nowadays," said Nan.

Outside the streetlights sparkled diamond-hard in a clear wind. Nan walked fast, her thoughts desperately tumultuous. The keen October air and the clatter of her heels on the empty pavement of Beacon Street were a relief after the senile stuffiness of her aunt's parlor. And I will be like that, spending my life explaining why I didn't dare live. No! No! Poor Aunt M. had nothing to fall back on. I have my music, my career, my sense of humor; it's not as if I were helpless before things like Fitzie. And she remembered how she'd stood at the piano the other night in that closefitting dress of royal blue satin and felt their eyes on her, and felt light coming into the bleary eyes of old people as she played to them.