Rough-Hewn Part 58

"Oh, yes," Marise nodded. She had never forgotten the lean young priest who led the open-air singing of his improvised chorus in front of his fortress-like old church. "Oh, yes, don't you remember we used to drive over just to hear his choir sing here and in another parish too?"

"He is doing wonderful work. We work together a great deal."

"You! With a cure!" Marise was astounded.

Mlle. Hasparren laughed. "Oh, yes, yes, those radical ideas of mine. Of course I still have them. But they don't seem so important as they did.

Father Armandariz and I are good friends. We both love music. That's enough. He puts cotton in his ears when I let fall a heresy, and I dip my fingers in the holy-water font and cross myself when I go to play the organ in church. Those are little things, and little things mustn't be allowed to interfere with great ones."

That evening Marise watched a choir rehearsal, Mlle. Hasparren at her piano, Father Armandariz, bony, threadbare, hollow-cheeked, his eyes gleaming with ardor, leading now the group of serious-faced Basque girls in black mantillas, now the great-chested, burly Basque men whose resonant ba.s.ses shook the little house. One of them (Mlle. Hasparren had said he was the village shoemaker) was given a ba.s.s solo and practised it over several times, while the others listened. He held his head high, drew in a great breath and sang as though it were the meaning of his life he were singing out, "Magnificat anima mea Dominum!" And then all the others with him, "My soul magnifies G.o.d!" Father Armandariz stopped them. "No, the altos were too slow on coming in. Once more." And then again, "Once more."

They all kept their eyes on him earnestly; they began again unfalteringly as many times as was necessary; before the evening was over they looked tired; but it was a good fatigue, and when they finally finished and turned to smile at each other and fold their music sheets together, their faces wore a quiet, purified serenity which Marise envied them. This was music. Not one of them was thinking of himself nor how the music had made him appear to advantage nor how he could use music as a tool to get ahead of other people, or get himself talked about.

The memory of Donna Antonia's soirees, of Mme. de la Cueva's good advice came into her mind. People called that sort of thing "art-atmosphere,"

didn't they? It was the cemetery of art, that's what it was, with the egotism of the performer dancing on the grave. One evening here, such an evening as this--there was more music in it than in months of chatter about the clothes and hair and morals and incomes of the people who make it on the platform.

At the piano Mlle. Hasparren and Father Armandariz were talking together of the next evening's rehearsal, Mlle. Hasparren occasionally ill.u.s.trating with one hand what she was saying. How deeply human was the look of intimate confidence they bent on each other, the ugly young priest and the ugly old school-teacher. They might well be thankful that they had found each other in the world.

Mlle. Hasparren turned around now and asked Marise if she would not play for them. "I would be so proud to show my friends what an old pupil of mine has come to be," she said fondly.

It seemed to Marise that she had never in her life felt so like playing.

What should it be? She swerved on her way to the piano to stoop to kiss Mlle. Hasparren's swarthy cheek, and, sitting down, with an affectionate smile at her, began the Toccata in D minor, just as Mlle. Hasparren had taught it to her, with all she had learned since then. She had never played to such an audience; when she turned around Father Armandariz was looking beatific and Mlle. Hasparren exalted with pride. She had never played so well. She had, she felt, just begun to know what music was.

Mlle. Hasparren had set up for her a folding cot in her own room, since there was no other bedroom in the tiny house. They slept side by side, near enough so that they could have reached out and clasped each other's hands as on that night so long ago when Mlle. Hasparren had pulled Marise out of the black pit. Marise could not go to sleep. Long after Mlle. Hasparren lay breathing deep, her dark face relaxed in a selfless quiet that was not more selfless than her waking look, Marise lay looking out at the stars and the mountains, thinking, trembling, sometimes feeling hot bitter tears in her eyes, sometimes feeling her heart swell high with strange, unearthly aspiration.

Mlle. Hasparren was right. She had always been right. To keep clear of all troubling, maddening, personal relations that were sure to end by poisoning you, not to want anything for yourself, to give all for music--how _safe_ you would be, to live like that. And how sweet it would be to feel safe! She never had. She was so _tired_ of feeling afraid. Why _not_ live like that? When you knew it was the only safe way! When you knew that if you did not, you would fall headlong into that dreadful mire that splashed up such indelible stains upon your mind at even the few chance contacts with it which life brought to a girl.

Yes, that was the only safe way. Never to go back to Rome at all.

Somehow to devise a life all devotion to music, with the miserable personal affections burned up in that greater ardor. Yes, that, Marise decided, that was the only tolerable, the only endurable future she could see.

People began to stand up, to put on their wraps and collect their valises. The train was pa.s.sing the outskirts of Rome. It would be in the station in a few minutes.

Marise tied on her veil over a piteous white face. She had said she would not go back to Rome at all. She had scarcely been ten days away.

She had come back. Like any other woman she had come back to the trap.

CHAPTER LIII

She had not seen him yet. She had had her breakfast sent to her room when she heard he was still at the pension. She had thought certainly he would be gone away by this time.

She knew he would not have gone away!

She stood now with Eugenia at the entrance to the Pincian, up on the hill, by the fountain, under the ilex trees looking down over the city.

This was where their first walk together had ended.

"I think I see Mr. Crittenden just come up the Trinita steps and turning this way," remarked Eugenia, looking in that direction.

If Marise could have stirred, she would have run away. She turned her head and saw him coming. Although he was still so far away that she could not make out his face, she knew by the sudden tautness of his figure, by the spring forward of his step that he had seen her.

There he came, striding strongly towards her, as he had come to seek her out, across the world, across all time. He looked infinitely familiar to her, and yet infinitely different from all she had been thinking of him.

She had forgotten! What had she been imagining him?

When he drew near enough to be sure it was she, he s.n.a.t.c.hed off his hat and swung it around his head with a bright, boyish gesture of joy. The wind ruffled his hair, the sun shone full on his bold, clear face, on his deep eyes, on his tender, full-lipped mouth.

He was smiling at her, all his heart in his smile. He was welcoming her back.

Marise felt a warm gush all over her body, as though her heart had suddenly begun to beat again, as though he had welcomed her back into life. Why, this was Neale! This was no monster to dread. If she had seen him, only seen his face that morning, only had one look from his eyes that both smiled and were steady ... she would never have run away.

She was not hurt at all, only frightened half to death! She was not just a woman in love, ready to give herself up to a man. She was Marise in love with Neale.

He had come up to them now, his breath coming fast as though he had been running. For an instant he did not speak, taking her hand silently in his. All that life had made of him looked out on her from his clear eyes.

With a beating flutter, her heart sprang up from its numb torpor of fright and spread its wings.

"Well, we certainly have missed you!" was what he finally said.

"I'm very glad to be back in Rome," she answered.

CHAPTER LIV

I

He had stood this gregarious flocking around just all he was going to, Neale decided that morning, up under the ilex trees, exchanging commonplaces with the two girls, unable to say or even to look what he felt, because Eugenia was there. And he'd had plenty of Eugenia during the last ten days.

What a nightmare those ten days had been to him! What a hideous block-head he had been to let Marise slip away from him, even for a time, before he had made a chance to see her, _really_ to see her, in a quiet place where they could hear themselves think--with none of those third and fourth persons hanging around. What had he been thinking of, drifting along like a man in a dream, with no sense of time?

But that absence of hers had waked him up. Yes, it had waked him up! He had not had one consecutive night's sleep since she had been gone, starting up continually from a doze with his arms empty when he had dreamed she was lying in them. How had he ever lived through that suspense and uncertainty without losing his mind? He was very grateful to Eugenia for having kept him from making an awful fool of himself and getting into a blind mess of confusion. She had kept him in Rome by telling him that Marise would be back any day. If it hadn't been for that--where would _he_ have been? Looking for a needle in a haystack all over Southern France, and Marise back in Rome.

Well, she was back and he had been too frightened not to have learned a little sense. He'd manage a walk with her alone, just the two of them before the day was out or--How could he?

How did you do anything? You just went and did it.

He went boldly to her room and knocked on the door. When Marise came to open it, he said, "To celebrate your return, won't you let me show you a specially lovely spot on the Campagna I've found? I've been taking some long, solitary walks while you were away." He added firmly, "No, not Miss Mills and Mr. Livingstone because they don't like to tramp, and this is 'cross country."

There! It had been no harder than that. Why in the name of heaven hadn't he thought of the simple, obvious way to get the thing done? He went back to his room and sat down, staring at the wall, to wait till afternoon came and to try to plan what he would say when it came. He hoped a great deal that she had read Browning.