Edith Wharton - SSC 09 Page 12

  They went down the steps to the gondola.

  

  II.

  “That, would account for their hands,” Kilvert suddenly thought, rousing himself to wave away a second offering of langoustines a la Venitienne. He looked down Mrs. Roseneath’s shining dinner-table, trying to force himself to a realisation of the scene; but the women’s vivid painted heads, the men’s polished shirt-fronts, the gliding gondoliers in white duck and gold-fringed sashes, handing silver dishes down the table, all seemed as remote and unrelated to reality as the great Tiepolesque fresco which formed the background of the scene. Before him Kilvert could see only a middle-aged life-worn man and woman torn with the fulness of human passion. “If he’s a musician, so is she, probably,” he thought; and this evocation of their supple dramatic hands presented itself as a new clue to their identity.

  He did not know why he was so anxious to find out who they were. Indeed, some secret apprehension half held him back from pressing his inquiries. “Brand the ‘cellist—” from young Breck’s tone it would seem that the name was well-known among musicians. Kilvert racked his memories; but music and musicians were not prominent in them, and he could not discover any association with the name of Brand—or any nationality either, since it might have been at home anywhere from Edinburgh to Oslo.

  Well, all this brooding was really morbid. Was it possible that he would stoop to gather up gossip about this couple, even if he succeeded in finding out who they were? No! All he wanted was to identify them, to be able to call them by name, and then enshrine them in some secret niche of memory in all their tragic isolation. “Musicians’ hands—that’s it,” he murmured.

  But the problem would not let him rest, and after dinner, forsaking the groups who were scattering and forming again down the length of the great frescoed saloon, he found a pretext for joining Breck on the balcony.

  “That man I pointed out as I left the boat—you said he was a musician?”

  “When? Oh, as you were leaving the boat? Well, he looked uncommonly like Julian Brand. You’ve never heard him? Not much in that line, are you? Thought not. They gave you a cigar, I hope?” he added, suddenly remembering his duties.

  Kilvert waved that away too. “I’m not particularly musical. But his head struck me. They were sitting near me on the boat.”

  “They? Who?” queried Breck absently, craning his head back toward the saloon to make sure that the liqueurs were being handed.

  “This man. He was with a woman, very dark, black hair turning gray, splendid eyes—dreadfully badly dressed, and not young, but tingling. Something gypsy-like about her. Who was she, do you suppose? They seemed very intimate.”

  “Love-making, eh?”

  “No. Much more—more intimate than that. Hating and loving and despairing all at once,” stammered Kilvert, reluctant to betray himself to such ears, yet driven by the irresistible need to find out what he could from this young fool. “They weren’t husband and wife, either, you understand.”

  Breck laughed. “Obviously! You said they were intimate.”

  “Well, who was she then—the woman? Can you tell me?”

  Breck wrinkled his brows retrospectively. He saw so many people in the course of a day, his uncertain frown seemed to plead. “Splendid eyes, eh?” he repeated, as if to gain time.

  “Well, burning—”

  “Ah, burning,” Breck echoed, his eyes on the room. “But I must really … Here, Count Dossi’s the very man to tell you,” he added, hurrying away in obedience to a signal from Mrs. Roseneath.

  The small, dry waxen-featured man who replaced him was well-known to Kilvert, and to all cosmopolitan idlers. He was an Anglo-Italian by birth, with a small foothold in Rome, where he spent the winter months, drifting for the rest of the year from one centre of fashion to another, and gathering with impartial eye and indefatigable memory the items of a diary which, he boasted, could not safely be published till fifty years after his death. Count Dossi bent on Kilvert his coldly affable glance. “Who has burning eyes?” he asked. “I came out here in search of a light, but hadn’t hoped to find one of that kind.” He produced a cigarette, and continued, as he held it to Kilvert’s lighter: “There are not so many incandescent orbs left in the world that one shouldn’t be able to identify them.”

  Kilvert shrank from exposing the passionate scene on the boat to Count Dossi’s disintegrating scrutiny; yet he could not bear to miss the chance of tracing the two who had given him so strange a cross-section of their souls. He tried to appear indifferent, and slightly ironical. “There are still some….”

  “Oh, no doubt. A woman, I suppose?”

  Kilvert nodded. “But neither young nor beautiful—by rule, at least.”

  “Who is beautiful, by rule? A plaster cast at best. But your lady interests me. Who is she? I know a good many people. …”

  Kilvert, tempted, began to repeat his description of the couple, and Count Dossi, meditatively twisting his cigarette, listened with a face wrinkled with irony. “Ah, that’s interesting,” he murmured, as the other ended. “Musicians’ hands, you say?”

  “Well, I thought—”

  “You probably thought rightly. I should say Breck’s guess was correct. From your description the man was almost certainly Brand, the ‘cellist. He was to arrive about this time for a series of concerts with Margaret Aslar. You’ve heard the glorious Margaret? Yes, it must have been Brand and Aslar. …” He pinched his lips in a dry smile. “Very likely she crossed over to Fusina to meet him. …”

  “To meet him? But I should have thought they’d been together for hours. They were in the thick of a violent discussion when they came on board…. They looked haggard, worn out … and so absorbed in each other that they hardly knew where they were.”

  Dossi nodded appreciatively. “No, they wouldn’t—they wouldn’t! The foolish things….”

  “Ah—they care so desperately for each other?” Kilvert murmured.

  Dossi lifted his thin eyebrows. “Care—? They care frantically for each other’s music; they can’t get on without each other—in that respect.”

  “But when I saw them they were not thinking about anybody’s music; they were thinking about each other. They were desperate … they … they …”

  “Ah, just so! Fighting like tigers, weren’t they?”

  “Well, one minute, yes—and the next, back in each other’s arms, almost.”

  “Of course! Can’t I see them? They were probably quarrelling about which of their names should come first on the programme, and have the biggest letters. And Brand’s weak; I back Margaret to come out ahead…. You’ll see when the bills are posted up.” He chuckled at the picture, and was turning to re-enter the room when he paused to say: “But, by the way, they’re playing here tomorrow night, aren’t they? Yes; I’m sure our hostess told me this afternoon that she’d finally captured them. They don’t often play in private houses—Margaret hates it, I believe. But when Mrs. Roseneath sets her heart on anything she’s irresistible.” With a nod and smile he strolled back into the long saloon where the guests were dividing into groups about the bridge-tables.

  Kilvert continued to lean on the stone balustrade and look down into the dark secret glitter of the canal. He was fairly sure that Dossi’s identification of the mysterious couple was correct; but of course his explanation of their quarrel was absurd. A child’s quarrel over toys and spangles! That was how people of the world interpreted the passions of great artists. Kilvert’s heart began to beat excitedly at the thought of seeing and hearing his mysterious couple. And yet—supposing they turned out to be mere tawdry cabochons. Would it not be better to absent himself from the concert and nurse his dream? It was odd how Dossi’s tone dragged down those vivid figures to the level of the dolls about Mrs. Roseneath’s bridge-tables.

  

  III.

  Kilvert had not often known his hostess to be in the field as early as ten in the morning. But this was a field-day, almost as important as the
day of the fancy ball, since two or three passing royalties (and not in exile either) had suddenly signified their desire to be present at her musical party that evening; and Mrs. Roseneath, on such occasions, had the soldier’s gift of being in the saddle at dawn. But when Kilvert—his own cafè-au-lait on the balcony barely despatched—was summoned to her room by an agitated maid, he found the mistress even more agitated.

  “They’ve chucked—they’ve chucked for tonight! The devils—they won’t come!” Mrs. Roseneath cried out, waving a pale hand toward a letter lying on her brocaded bedspread.

  “But do take a mouthful of tea, madam,” the maid intervened, proffering a tray.

  “Tea? How can I take tea? Take it away! It’s a catastrophe, John—a catastrophe … and Breck’s such a helpless fool when it comes to anything beyond getting people together for bridge,” Mrs. Roseneath lamented, sinking back discouraged among her pillows.

  “But who’s chucked? The Prince and Princess?”

  “Lord, no! They’re all coming; the King is too, I mean. And he’s musical, and has stayed over on purpose…. It’s Aslar, of course, and Brand…. Her note is perfectly insane. She says Brand’s disappeared, and she’s half crazy, and can’t play without him.”

  “Disappeared—the ‘cellist?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, read the note, and don’t just stand there and repeat what I say! Where on earth am I to get other performers for this evening, if you don’t help me?”

  Kilvert stared back blankly. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know? But you must know! Oh, John, you must go instantly to see her. You’re the only person with brains—the only one who’ll know how to talk to such people. If I offered to double the fee, do you suppose—?”

  “Oh, no, no!” Kilvert protested indignantly, without knowing why.

  “Well, what I’d already agreed to give is colossal,” Mrs. Roseneath sighed, “so perhaps it’s not that, after all. John, darling, you must go and see her at once! You’ll know what to say. She must keep her engagement, she must telegraph, she must send a motor after him; if she can’t find him, she must get hold of another ‘cellist. None of these people will know if it’s Brand or not. I’ll lie about it if I have to. Oh, John, ring for the gondola! Don’t lose an instant … say anything you like, use any argument … only make her see it’s her duty!” Before the end of the sentence he was out of her door, borne on the rush of Mrs. Roseneath’s entreaties down the long marble flights to the gondola….

  Kilvert was in the mood to like the shabbiness, the dinginess almost, of the little hotel on an obscure canal to which the gondola carried him. He liked even the slit of untidy garden, in which towels were drying on a sagging rope, the umbrella-stand in imitation of rustic woodwork, the slatternly girl with a shawl over her head delivering sea-urchins to the black-wigged landlady. This was the way real people lived, he thought, glancing at a crumby dining-room glimpsed through glass doors. He thought he would find a pretext for moving there the next day from the Palazzo, and very nearly paused to ask the landlady if she could take him in. But his errand was urgent, and he went on.

  The room into which he was shown was small, and rather bare. A worn cashmere shawl had been thrown over the low bed in a hasty attempt to convert it into a divan. The centre front was filled by a grand piano built on a concert-stage scale, and looking larger than any that Kilvert had ever seen. Between it and the window stood a woman in a frayed purple silk dressing-gown, her tumbled grayish hair streaked with jet tossed back from her drawn dusky face. She had evidently not noticed Kilvert the previous evening on the boat, for the glance she turned on him was unrecognising. Obviously she resented his intrusion. “You come from Mrs. Roseneath, don’t you? About tonight’s concert? I said you could come up in order to get it over sooner. But it’s no use whatever—none! Please go back and tell her so.”

  She was speaking English now, with a slightly harsh yet rich intonation, and an accent he could not quite place, but guessed to be partly Slavonic. He stood looking at her in an embarrassed silence. He was not without social adroitness, or experience in exercising it; but he felt as strongly as she evidently did that his presence was an intrusion. “I don’t believe I know how to talk to real people,” he reproached himself inwardly.

  “Before you send me away,” he said at length, “you must at least let me deliver Mrs. Roseneath’s message of sympathy.”

  Margaret Aslar gave a derisive shrug. “Oh, sympathy—!”

  He paused a moment, and then ventured: “Don’t you need it? On the boat yesterday evening I rather thought you did.”

  She turned toward him with a quick swing of her whole body. “The boat yesterday evening? You were there?”

  “I was sitting close to you. I very nearly had the impertinence to go up to you and tell you I was—sorry.”

  She received this in a wondering silence. Then she dropped down on the piano-stool, and rested her thin elbows on the closed lid of the instrument, and her drooping head on her hands. After a moment she looked up and signed to him to take the only chair. “Put the music on the floor,” she directed. Kilvert obeyed.

  “You were right—I need pity, I need sympathy,” she broke out, her burning eyes on his.

  “I wish I could give you something more—give you real help, I mean.”

  She continued to gaze at him intently. “Oh, if you could bring him back to me!” she exclaimed, lifting her prayerful hands with the despair of the mourning women in some agonizing Deposition.

  “I would if I could—if you’d tell me how,” Kilvert murmured.

  She shook her head, and sank back into her weary attitude at the piano. “What nonsense I’m talking! He’s gone for good, and I’m a desolate woman.”

  Kilvert had by this time entirely forgotten the object of his visit. All he felt was a burning desire to help this stricken Ariadne.

  “Are you sure I couldn’t find him and bring him back—if you gave me a clue?”

  She sat silent, her face plunged in her long tortured hands. Finally she looked up again to murmur: “No. I said things he can never forgive—”

  “But if you tell him that, perhaps he will,” suggested Kilvert.

  She looked at him questioningly, and then gave a slight laugh. “Ah, you don’t know—you don’t know either of us!”

  “Perhaps I could get to, if you’d help me; if you could tell me, for instance, without breach of confidence, the subject of that painful discussion you were having yesterday—a lovers’ quarrel, shall we call it?”

  She seemed to catch only the last words, and flung them back at him with a careless sneer. “Lovers’ quarrel? Between us! Do you take us for children?” She swept her long arms across the piano-lid, as if it were an open keyboard. “Lovers’ quarrels are pastry eclairs. Brand and I are artists, Mr.

  Mr. “

  “Kilvert.”

  “I’ve never denied his greatness as an artist—never! And he knows it. No living ‘cellist can touch him. I’ve heard them all, and I know. But, good heavens, if you think that’s enough for him!”

  “Such praise from you—”

  She laughed again. “One would think so! Praise from Margaret Aslar! But no—! You say you saw us yesterday on the boat. I’d gone to Fusina to meet him—really in the friendliest spirit. He’d been off on tour in Poland and Hungary; I hadn’t seen him for weeks. And I was so happy, looking forward to our meeting so eagerly. I thought it was such a perfect opportunity for talking over our Venetian programmes; tonight’s, and our two big concerts next week. Wouldn’t you have thought so too? He arrived half an hour before the boat started, and his first word was: ‘Have you settled the programmes?’ After that—well, you say you saw us….”

  “But he was awfully glad to see you; I saw that, at any rate.”

  “Oh, yes; awfully glad! He thought that after such a separation I’d be like dough in his hands—accept anything, agree to anything! I had settled the programmes; but when he’d looked them ov
er, he just handed them back to me with that sort of sotto voce smile he has, and said: ‘Beautiful—perfect. But I thought it was understood that we were to appear together?’“

  “Well—wasn’t it?” Kilvert interjected, beginning to flounder.

  She glanced at him with a shrug. “When Brand smiles like that it means: ‘I see you’ve made out the whole programme to your own advantage. It’s really a piano solo from one end to the other’. That’s what he means. Of course it isn’t, you understand; but the truth is that nowadays he has come to consider me simply as an accompanist, and would like to have our tour regarded as a series of ‘cello concerts, so that he’s furious when I don’t subordinate myself entirely.”

  Kilvert listened in growing bewilderment. He knew very little about artists, except that they were odd and unaccountable. He would have given all his possessions to be one himself; but he wasn’t, and he had never felt his limitations more keenly than at this moment. Still, he argued with himself, fundamentally we’re all made of the same stuff, and this splendid fury is simply a woman in love, who’s afraid of having lost her lover. He tried to pursue the argument on those lines.

  “After all—suppose you were to subordinate yourself, or at least affect to? Offer to let him make out your next few programmes, I mean … if you know where he’s to be found, I could carry your message. …”

  “Let him give a ‘cello tour with Mrs. J. Margaret Aslar at the piano’—in small type, at the bottom of the page? Ah,” she cried, swept to her feet by a great rush of Sybilline passion, “that’s what you think of my playing, is it? I always knew fashionable people could barely distinguish a barrel-organ from a Steinway—but I didn’t know they confused the players as well as the instruments.”

  Kilvert felt suddenly reassured by her unreasonableness. “I wasn’t thinking of you as a player—but only as a woman.”

  “A woman? Any woman, I suppose?”

  “A woman in love is ‘any woman.’ A man in love is ‘any man.’ If you tell your friend that all that matters is your finding him again, he’ll put your name back on the programme wherever you want it to be.”