The Argonauts Part 24

And he fell to thinking out; and they both fell to thinking out.

They selected among colors and kinds of materials; they examined specimens, drawings, the baron corrected them, completed them with details taken from his own fancy. After a certain time they agreed to one thing: her dress should be flame color. With Irene's delicate complexion and her fiery hair this would, as the baron thought, form a whole which would be irritating.

"In this robe you will be novel and irritating."

The proprietor of the shop, elegant and important, came in and went out, inquired, advised, and again left them to their own thoughts and decisions. They, on their part, amused themselves better and better, surrounded by a light cloud of perfumes which rose from their clothing, and by the rustle of silks which fell to their feet, like cascades of many colors. The flame-colored material was selected, still they went on selecting. The baron, with a flush appearing on his cheeks, exclaimed:

"We are pa.s.sing the time most delightfully, are we not? And who could have expected it? At a tailor's! But you and I know how to experience sensations which no one else can experience. For that it is necessary to have a sixth sense. You and I have the sixth sense."

Irene began to lose her usual formality and air of distinction; she spoke quickly and much; she laughed aloud, and, a number of times, the movement of her bosom and arms became irregular, too lively at moments, but they were full of a half dreamy gracefulness. The baron grew silent and looked at her for a while, then, with rapturous eyes, he began:

"How you are changed at this moment. How charmingly you are changed! Such surprises interest one--they irritate. You have the rare gift of causing surprises."

With gleaming eyes he begged her insistently to tell him whether the change which had taken place, the humor into which she had fallen, was spontaneous or artificial, the result of feeling, or of coquetry.

"You are without doubt the product of high training, so it is difficult to know in you that which is nature and that which is art. And such a person in that changed form is problematical--I beg you, I beg you to tell me whether in you this is nature, or art?"

Listening to these words, in which a very insolent idea was contained, she laughed and turned her eyes away. But bending toward her with a smile which might remind one of a satyr, and with a request in his voice, he asked:

"Is this nature? is it art?"

With a sudden resolve she answered:

"It is nature!"

And she wished to equal the boldness of her answer with the boldness of her look, but a flaming blush shot over her face, and the lids covered her eyes, into which shame had gushed forth.

Though maiden modesty was a painted pot, this new change, to which Irene had yielded, exercised on the baron a new irritating influence. In the midst of the rustling materials he seized both her hands, his eyes flashed magnetic rays into her flushed face; he drew her delicate form toward him. She tried to twist her hands away, and with a violent effort strove to throw her bust backward, but the fragile baron was very strong at that instant; he pressed her hands in his as in a vice, and whispered into her very face:

"Do not fight against that cry of life which is heard within you--I am a despot--I know how to will--"

With the last word he pressed his lips to hers. But that moment she, too, gained unexpected strength, and in a flash she was some steps away from him, very pale now and trembling throughout her whole body.

"This is too much of nature!" cried she.

Her head was erect, and from her eyes came flas.h.i.+ng sparks, which soon melted, however, into cold irony. Shrugging her shoulders, with a smile she exclaimed:

"Dieu! que c'etait vulgaire!"

Then holding her skirt with both hands, as if she wished not to take one atom of dust from that room with her, she went out into the shop; the baron saw her talk to the tailor for a moment with her usual coolness, and then turn to go with the ordinary words of brief leave-taking.

But now Irene sitting there on that tall stool at the window, surrounded by the fading gleam of the blue watered-silk, and against the background of the pane which was covered with a whitish gloom, seemed a statue with a delicate bust, and a somewhat prolonged profile settled in stony fixedness. The "cry of life" possessed as words the charm of novelty and daring, but when changed into an act it roused in her every feeling of offence and maiden modesty. The s.h.a.ggy beast had ventured out too far from behind the heliotropes, and had given forth too rank a smell of the den and the troglodytes. "It is vulgar!" cried she to the baron, but she understood immediately that what had taken place was neither new, nor a rare thing, but as old as the human race and as vulgar as the street is. The tailor's shop full of people, the ceaseless ringing at the door-bell, the noise of selling and buying, the pa.s.sage beyond the window--is the street.

A kiss received on the street. Street adventure! A quiver shot downward through her shoulders. Before her imagination pa.s.sed the wretched forms of women trailing in the dusk of evening along the sidewalks. On her inclined face a blush came out; that painted pot called maiden, modesty, under the form of inherited instinct and woman's pride, was laboring in her untiringly and painfully.

After a while its place was taken by disgust beyond expression.

The baron, whose single charm was in his subtlety, appeared now as a vulgar figure. That kind of mutual love, which she had thought they felt for each other, when closely a.n.a.lyzed, reminded her of pictures in which Fauns with goats' beards were chasing through the forest after Nymphs. On Irene's lips a jeering, almost angry smile, now fixed itself. What did he say: "a sixth sense." Why a sixth sense in this case? Empty words! The baron jeers at painted pots, but he makes them himself, and paints them in the ancient colors. An idyl is an old thing, and a den is old also, but the idyl would be better than the den if only it existed. But where is it? Her eyes had never seen an idyl, but they had seen, ah, they had seen what happens and takes place with loves of men and women, 'and with bonds which bear the name of sacred! Well, what is to be done with the baron--and America?

Such contempt for everything, such disbelief in all things, such a contemptuous despising of everything, and of her own self as well, embraced her and possessed her, that at the end of the meditation she said to herself: "It is all one!" She crossed her hands and pressed them firmly across her breast, bent her head somewhat, and thought: "It is all, all, all one!"

A few tears, one after another, fell on her tightly clasped fingers. "All one! If only the sooner!"

What sooner? Why sooner? With a slow movement she turned her face toward her mother's apartments; her lips which quivered, and the glistening tear which had fallen on them had the same kind of expression that a child has when crying in silence. With brows raised somewhat, she whispered:

"Mamma!"

After a while, under those brows which were like delicate little flames, her eyes began to grow mild, to lose their tears and their irony, until they took on an expression of such delight, as if they were looking at an idyl.

Meanwhile the air, modified by the gray twilight, was cut by a bright moving line. This was Cara going from her father's study with Puff tugging at her skirt. She hummed a song as she went forward. When she saw her sister she ceased humming, and called out from the end of the drawing-room:

"Do you know, Ira, father will dine with us to-day?"

In her voice a note of triumph was heard. After many weeks her father would sit for the first time with them at the family table, and then everything would go on as it should go. What it was that went ill, and why it went so, she knew not. But she had been observing, was astonished, and had fears. With that real sixth sense, which persons of keen sensitiveness possess, she felt something. She felt in the air a certain oppression, a certain trouble, and, not knowing what these signified, nor whence they were coming, she suffered. In the very same way, organisms with supersensitive nerves feel the approach of atmospheric storms. Now she advanced with a short step, erect and slender, with Puff at her skirt, while she hummed joyously.

When Irene entered her mother's study soon after, she saw, by the lamplight, a group composed of three persons. Sitting on the sofa, with glitters of black jet in her light hair, was Malvina Darvid; nearby, in a low armchair, inclining toward her, was Maryan, elegant as usual, and before him, with elbows resting on her mother's knees, knelt Cara, a bright, blue strip lying across the black silk robe of her mother.

"A picture deserving the eyes of Sarah and Rebecca!" suggested Irene, going straight to the mirror before which she began, with raised arms, to arrange and modify the knot of hair on her head.

Maryan, in good humor, was imploring his mother to let him have her portrait painted by one of the most noted artists in the city.

"His brush is famous! I cannot understand how, amid the effeteness of this city, a talent can rise which is so fresh and individual. In his landscapes there is a magnificent pleinair, and as a portrait painter he knows how to seize the soul. My mother, let me have your soul enchanted into a portrait--have you noticed that the eyes of some portraits look on us from beyond this world? There is an enchanted soul in them. Let me have your portrait painted by an artist from whose canvas comes a breath from beyond this world."

He inclined his cherub head and kissed his mother's hand, which was resting on Cara's shoulder.

"And kiss me, too!" cried Cara.

"Sentiment!" said Maryan, straightening himself, "beware of sentiment, little one. I, thy great-grandfather, say this to thee."

"Splendidly expressed!" exclaimed Irene from the mirror. "Cara's soul is so primitive, yours--"

"So decadent," put in Maryan.

"That you have a right to be called her great-grandfather."

"I greet you great-grandmother!" laughed he at Irene.

"I say this, mother, for, as you see, I understand my elder sister perfectly, but not the little one yet; however, that will come some time--surely soon. Mais revenons a nos moutons: How about the portrait?"

Malvina laughed. Her face, greatly troubled an hour before, had grown young again. A certain sunray had pierced the thick cloud at that moment. She warded off the idea of the portrait.

"Why? There are too many portraits of me already. Oh, too many!"

"Caricatures!" exclaimed Maryan, "and none of them is mine. I beg a portrait for myself specially; my own exclusive property."

"What for?" repeated Malvina. "Look at the original as often as you like. Better not have a portrait; then, perhaps, you will feel the need of seeing me oftener."

"No reproaches, dear mother! Leave reproaches, threats; let the whole patriarchal a.r.s.enal remain on that side, over there--"

With a gesture he indicated the door leading to the interior of the house.

Cara raised her head from her mother's knees, and her eyes glittered.

"But on this side let there be only sweetness, only charm, only that precious, beautiful weakness, before which I am on my knees always. As to this, that I can see the original of the portrait when I wish, that is a question! We are grains of sand scattered over the world by the wind of interesting voyages."