Margarita's Soul Part 23

Now it was that my studies in Italian temperament came to my a.s.sistance quite as strongly as my knowledge of the rough fisher _patois_. The Italian must not be questioned nor know that anything of interest or importance hangs on his answer. Even as the Oriental he must be handled guilefully, and it was with a guileful yawn that I dismissed the subject.

"It takes an Italian to believe that wild story, Rafaello," I said.

"I'm afraid your old 'Cina was teasing Lippo. It all sounds fishy to me. Are we nearly in? I feel cold."

"Indeed no, _signore_, it is the truth. (We shall be in in eight minutes by the _signore's_ watch.) 'Cina will never again speak to an Englishman or--or one from the _signore's_ country. It is a vow. She would die first. Lippo got a chance for her to stand at her spinning for a crazy Englishman to paint in a picture--good money for it, too!--and she spat in his face. Perhaps the _signore_ will believe that?"

Again I yawned.

"Those stories mean nothing," I said, quivering with impatience. "They are but as old legends without names--and dates and places. Old women like 'Cina never can give those names and dates and places. They do not know if it was ten or twenty or fifty years ago, nor if the man were Austrian or English, or the woman Italian or French or Spanish.

Pin them down, and they begin to make excuses. But I don't know why we discuss it--it is not very interesting, even if it is true.

Nevertheless, and because you seem offended, Rafaello, and I merely want to show you that I am right, I will cheerfully give a good English sovereign to you or Lippo or the old woman herself, if she can so much as tell you the name of this famous nun and the name of her seducer. You will find she cannot, and then, since I am willing to wager something, you must take me for a fishing-trip free a whole day, in the _felucca_. Is it a bargain?"

His teeth gleamed as he swore it was a bargain and I watched him bustle off from the quay with an excitement I had not felt since my recovery. What would he discover--for that he would discover something I did not doubt. What was Margarita's mother? Some fisher girl, whose father had won an English lady's-maid with his flashing smile? Some little shopkeeper's daughter? Child, perhaps, of some sprig of n.o.bility, caught by a pair of cool, grey English eyes? I did not know, but I felt certain that the old 'Cina did.

I cannot linger too long over this part of my story, drawn out already far beyond my idle scheme, and enough is said when I tell you that the name brought me by the childishly triumphant Rafaello opened my eyes and pursed my lips into an amazed whistle.

Our little Margarita! Here was something to startle even steady old Roger. Only a few names in Italy are worthy to stand beside the splendid if impoverished House forced by pride to place its unwedded (because undowered) daughter in the convent that needs no _dot_.

Obscure in financial realms alone, it required little search to put my finger on the epitaph of that brother of the cruel letter (a Cardinal before his death), on the father's pictured cruel face--he scorned to eat with the mushroom Romanoffs!--on the carved door-posts where Emperors had entered in the great Italian days, even on the gorgeous sculptured mantel-piece sold by Margarita's grandfather, an impetuous younger brother at the time of his mad marriage with an English beauty, whirled from the stage, whose brightest ornament contemporary record believed she was destined to become, had he not literally carried her, panting, from the scene of her first triumph.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GLOOMY, FADED GLORIES OF THE MUSTY PALACE]

Some idea of the relentless iron hands that tamed that brilliant, baffled creature--and hers was the only strain in Margarita that genius need be called on to vindicate!--I won from the old caretaker, a family retainer, who showed me, on a proper day, over the gloomy, faded glories of the musty palace. She was always heretic at heart, the old gossip mumbled, with furtive glances from my gold piece to the pictured lords above her, as if afraid they would revenge themselves for this t.i.ttle-tattle, heretic and light. A servant or a duke, a flower-seller or His Eminence, all was one to her crazy English notions. And the truth--how the mad creature told it! Blurted it out to everyone, so that they had to keep her shut up, finally. And would have her dogs about her--eating like Christians! And no money, when all was said. _Her children?_ Four sons, all dead now, and their souls with Christ--one, of the Sacred College. Never a generation without the red hat, thank G.o.d. No daughters. _Not so much as one?_ Why should there be? Some were spared daughters, when there was no money, and a blessing, too.

_What figure had been cut from that group of four youths, cut so that a small hand that grasped a cup-and-ball showed plainly against one brother's sleeve?_ She did not know--how should she? Perhaps a cousin.

It was painted by a famous Englishman and kept because it might bring money some day. _Then why cut it?_ How should she know? There were no daughters and the hour was up. Would the _signore_ follow her?

And Sarah was alarmed for the Bradley blood! Sarah feared for the pollution of that sacred fluid derived from English yeomen (at best), filtered through the middle-cla.s.s expatriates of a nation itself hopelessly middle cla.s.s beside the pure strain of a race of kings that was old and majestically forgotten ere Romulus was dreamed of! Back, back through those mysterious Etruscans, back to the very G.o.ds themselves, an absolutely unbroken line, stretched the forefathers of Margarita. Long before Bethlehem meant more than any other obscure village, long before its Mystic Babe began there his Stations of the Cross and brought to an end at Calvary the sacrifice that sent his agents overseas to civilise the savage Britons and make those middle-cla.s.s yeomen possible, Margarita's ancestors had forgotten more G.o.ds than these agents displaced and had long ceased their own b.l.o.o.d.y and nameless sacrifices to an elder Jupiter than ever Paul knew.

Etruscan galleys swarmed the sea, Etruscan bronze and gold were weaving into lovely lines, Etruscan bowls were lifted to luxurious and lovely lips at sumptuous feasts, in a gorgeous ritual, before the natives of a certain foggy island had advanced to blue-woad decoration! Her people's tombs lie calm and contemptuous under the loose, friable soil of that tragic land that has suffered Roman, Persian and Goth alike (wilt thou ever rise up again, O Mater Dolorosa? Is the circle nearly complete? Would that I might see thee in the rising!) they lie, too, under the angular and reclining forms of many a British spinster tourist, panoplied in Baedeker and stout-soled boots, large of tooth and long of limb, eating her sandwiches over the cool and placid vaults where the stone seats and biers, the black and red pottery, the inimitable golden jewelry, the casques and shields of gold, the ivory and enamel, the amber and the amulets, lie waiting the inevitable Teutonic antiquary. The very ashes of the great Lucomo prince and chieftain lying below this worthy if somewhat unseductive female would fade in horror away into the air, if one of his G.o.ds, Vertumnus, perhaps, or one of the blessed Dioscuri, should offer him such a companion or hint to him that the creature was of the same species as the round-breasted lovelinesses that sport upon the frescoes of his tomb, among the lotus flowers.

Poor Sarah--I can forgive her when I consider the pathos of her.

PART SEVEN

IN WHICH THE RIVER LEAPS A SUDDEN CLIFF AND BECOMES A CATARACT

Ay cross your brow and cross your breast For never again ye'll smile, Sir Hugh!

Ye flouted them that loved ye best, Now ye must drink as ye did brew.

Syne she was warm against your side, And now she's singing the rising moon, She'll float in on the floating tide, And ye'll hold her soon and ye'll lose her soon!

_Sir Hugh and the Mermaiden._

CHAPTER XXIII

FATE SPREADS HER NET

[FROM SUE PAYNTER]

PARIS, March 4th, 188--

JERRY DEAR:

Frederick died here a week ago. His heart, you know, was never very good, and the strain of his last concerts was too much for him. They were very successful, and just before I came over, the poor fellow had sent me--in one of his periodical fits of reform, _Dieu merci!_--some beautiful jewels, chains, aigrettes and a gorgeous diamond collar, begging me to sell them, but on no account to wear them, as if I would! I sold them pretty well--it's all for the babies, you know. Poor Frederick--I'm not sure his reforms were not the hardest to bear!

He has been for so long so less than nothing to me that the sense of freedom is startling. I'm glad I came as soon as I heard he was sinking--it was not so very sudden. I was with him to the last, and the strangest people came to see him--it was tragically funny. He seemed just like a poor, disreputable brother to me, and nothing mattered, really, except to get him what little comfort one could.

I brought the children over, and I think we shall stay here indefinitely. I have a nice little _appartement_ not too far from the Bradleys, though, of course, I couldn't afford to live there! and such a dear, sensible bonne (_a tout faire_, of course) who gets the children into the park every day for me when I'm busy. For I am very seriously busy, and how, do you think? I wrote a long, gossippy letter to Alice Carter who loves _chiffons_, poor soul, though Madam Bradley doesn't give her many, telling her what was being worn and where, and how, and gave her a little account of a fashionable _fete_ that a friend of mine had described to me, and the dear creature actually took the trouble of copying it, omitting personalities, of course, and showing it to a friend of Walter's, an amazing young man who is starting some woman's magazine with a phenomenal circulation, already. He offered her a really good price for it and said if I would do the same kind of letter every month, he would pay one hundred dollars for each one--five hundred _francs_! Of course I accepted, and now I spend two days a week in the shops, getting ideas and making sketches.

You see I am a business woman, really, Jerry. I have always believed that plenty of women would do better at their husband's business, and let them hire housekeepers or attend to the house themselves! Look at the French women!

It seems so good to be here--it always agreed with me, _la belle France_, and the children seem well, too--for them.

Little Susy really has some colour. They are especially fond of the _Parc Monceau_, and this charming out-of-door life that is so easy here will do wonders for them, I'm sure.

That east wind of Boston--ugh, how I loathe it!

I feel so busy and so self-respecting--independence agrees with me. You see, with my few hundreds from father, and these letters, and the little income Roger got for me, with the princ.i.p.al put away for the children, I shall do very well indeed and owe "nothing to n.o.body." And when Susy gets old enough, I'm going to have her taught something--trade or profession, _n'importe!_--that will make her as independent as I am to-day. I think it is criminal not to. Then she needn't marry unless she wants to.

I wonder if you realise how many women marry to get away from home? Few men do, I imagine. It's not particularly flattering to you, _messieurs_, but it's the truth. I had four sisters, and I know!

You have heard, I suppose, that Margarita is actually in training for the opera? It was very exciting--Mme. M----i is really at the bottom of it, I think, though everybody agrees with her to this extent: the child really has extraordinary talent, and with her face and figure will be sure of success, one would think. Of course her voice is not phenomenal--I doubt if it is big enough for the New York opera house. How Frederick used to rail at that building!

They wanted him to play there once, you know, at some big benefit. He always said no respectable human voice could be judged there--it seems the acoustics is wrong. But it is an exceptionally fine voice, nevertheless, and so pure and unspoiled. She had nothing to unlearn, literally, and her acting, Madame says, is superb. She can memorise anything, and in such a short time!

But for a Bradley! Madame is furious that she is married.

There are plenty to have babies and live in America, she says, without her little Marguerite! _M. le mari_ does not appreciate what a jewel he wishes to shut up, she says--but I am not so sure of that! Whether he is really going to let her or is only humouring her, I don't know. It is rather an embarra.s.sing situation, _au fond_, because you know what she is--calm, lovely, enchanting--what you will, but absolutely immovable! Reasoning has no effect upon her, and then, to tell the truth, she has reasons of her own. Her desire for this is very strong, and her affection for Roger is not strong enough, apparently, to make her sacrifice herself. Do you think she has any soul, really? I mean, what we understand by that--something that takes more than two years of ordinary life to grow. Pa.s.sionate, yes. Intelligent, yes.

But a real soul? _Je m' en doute._

"Of course I love Roger, Sue," she said to me, "but why should I not do what I want to just because I love him? I can love him and sing, too."

Then Miss Jencks advances to the fray, with pleasant plat.i.tudes about giving up what we like for those we love.

"But Roger loves me, too," says _la Margarita_--"why does he not give up what _he_ likes because he loves me?"

Tableau! _Que faire alors?_

It is really rather complicated, I think, Jerry, though you will probably not agree with me, when I explain what I mean.

I have done a great deal of thinking in the years since my marriage--I have been forced to. Things which would never have occurred to me, never come into my horizon if, for instance, I had married Roger; things which would never, I can see, be likely to come into the horizon of the happily (and prosperously) married, have come to me and I have been obliged, in my poor way, to philosophise over them.

Have you ever read Ibsen's play, the "Doll's House"? I don't think it has been acted in America, and probably won't be, unless, perhaps, in Boston. But get it and read it. It is to show that a woman is a personality, aside from her family relations, and must live her life, finally, herself. At least, so I understand it. It is to be acted in London soon, and I am going to try to see it--the theatre seems to mean so much more, this side the water! One really takes it seriously, somehow, along with the other arts. But then, there is no duty on art here!

Will you tell me, Jerry, why, if Margarita really is an artist and has a great gift, she should not use it? It may not be what would best please her husband (and you know, Jerry, I would cut off my hand for Roger! But I must say what I think) but if she sees a career open to her of fame, money and satisfaction, why should the fact of her marriage prevent it? As far as fame goes, she could be better known than Roger; as far as money goes, she could almost certainly earn more than he can; as far as what _Nora_, in the play I spoke of, calls "her duties towards herself," she could surely develop more fully. That is, if it is necessary for a woman to develop herself fully in any but the physical sense--and isn't it?

It is all very perplexing and I do so wish it had happened to any one but Roger! He is much hurt, I know, though he conceals it well, of course, in his quiet, steadfast sort of way. What a man he is! He would never be willing, I am sure, to go back to his profession in New York and leave Margarita alone in Europe, exposed to all the temptations and scandal and dangers that seem almost inevitable in the life she is preparing for. They might as well be completely and legally separated, in that case. He has money enough without practising law, of course, but he would never be idle--he loves his work--and as for hanging about as her business manager--I wish you could have seen his face when Madame suggested it! I explained to her it was not precisely the sort of thing his family were accustomed to do. She can't understand it, of course--she has the French idea of a lawyer. When I told her that Mr. Bradley was really _vrai proprietaire_ and well-to-do aside from his practice, she had more respect for him.