The Bent Twig Part 39

But the reception at the house, the big, old-fas.h.i.+oned, very rich Sommerville house, was more of an ordeal. There was the sight of the bride and groom in the receiving-line, now no longer badly executed graven images, but quite themselves--Molly starry-eyed, triumphant, astonis.h.i.+ngly beautiful, her husband distinguished, ugly, self-possessed, easily the most interesting personality in the room; there was the difficult moment of the presentation, the handclasp with Felix, the rapturous vague kiss from Molly, evidently too uplifted to have any idea as to the individualities of the people defiling before her; then the pa.s.sing on into the throng, the eating and drinking and talking with acquaintances from the Lydford summer colony, of whom there were naturally a large a.s.sortment. Sylvia had a growing sense of pain, which was becoming acute when across the room she saw Molly, in a lull of arrivals, look up to her husband and receive from him a smiling, intimate look of possession. Why, they were _married_! It was done!

The delicate food in Sylvia's mouth turned to ashes.

Mrs. Marshall-Smith's voice, almost fluttered, almost (for her) excited, came to her ears: "Sylvia--here is Mr. Page! And he's just told me the most delightful news, that he's decided to run over to Paris for a time this fall."

"I hope Miss Marshall will think that Paris will be big enough for all of us?" asked Austin Page, fixing his remarkably clear eyes on the girl.

She made a great effort for self-possession. She turned her back on the receiving-line. She held out her hand cordially. "I hope Paris will be quite, quite small, so that we shall all see a great deal of each other," she said warmly.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

SYLVIA TELLS THE TRUTH

They left Mrs. Marshall-Smith with a book, seated on a little yellow-painted iron chair, the fifteen-centime kind, at the top of the great flight of steps leading down to the wide green expanse of the Tapis Vert. She was alternately reading Huysmans' highly imaginative ideas on Gothic cathedrals, and letting her eyes stray up and down the long facade of the great Louis. Her powers of aesthetic a.s.similation seemed to be proof against this extraordinary mixture of impressions.

She had insisted that she would be entirely happy there in the sun, for an hour at least, especially if she were left in solitude with her book. On which intimation Sylvia and Page had strolled off to do some exploring. It was a situation which a month of similar arrangements had made very familiar to them.

"No, I don't know Versailles very well," he said in answer to her question, "but I believe the gardens back of the Grand and Pet.i.t Trianon are more interesting than these near the Chateau itself.

The conscientiousness with which they're kept up is not quite so formidable."

So they walked down the side of the Grand Ca.n.a.l, admiring the rather pensive beauty of the late November woods, and talking, as was the proper thing, about the great Louis and his court, and how they both detested his style of gilded, carved wall ornamentation, although his chairs weren't as bad as some others. They turned off at the cross-arm of the Ca.n.a.l towards the Great Trianon; they talked, again dutifully in the spirit of the place, about Madame de Maintenon. They differed on this subject just enough to enjoy discussing it. Page averred that the whole affair had always pa.s.sed his comprehension, "--what that ease-loving, vain, indulgent, trivial-minded grandson of Henri Quatre could ever have seen for all those years in that stiff, prim, cold old school-ma'am--"

But Sylvia shook her head. "I know how he felt. He _had_ to have her, once he'd found her. She was the only person in all his world he could depend on."

"Why not depend on himself?" Page asked.

"Oh, he couldn't! He couldn't! She had character and he hadn't."

"What do you mean by character?" he challenged her.

"It's what I haven't!" she said.

He attempted a chivalrous exculpation. "Oh, if you mean by character such hard, insensitive lack of imagination as Madame de Maintenon's--"

"No, not that," said Sylvia. "_You_ know what I mean by character as well as I."

By the time they were back of the Little Trianon, this beginning had led them naturally enough away from the frivolities of historical conversation to serious considerations, namely themselves. The start had been a reminiscence of Sylvia's, induced by the slow fall of golden leaves from the last of the birches into the still water of the lake in the midst of Marie Antoinette's hamlet. They stopped on an outrageously rustic bridge, constructed quite in the artificially rural style of the place, and, leaning on the railing, watched in a fascinated silence the quiet, eddying descent of the leaves. There was not a breath of wind. The leaves detached themselves from the tree with no wrench. They loosened their hold gradually, gradually, and finally out of sheer fullness of maturity floated down to their graves with a dreamy content.

"I never happened to see that effect before," said Page. "I supposed leaves were detached only by wind. It's astonis.h.i.+ngly peaceful, isn't it?"

"I saw it once before," said Sylvia, her eyes fixed on the noiseless arabesques traced by the leaves in their fall--"at home in La Chance.

I'll never forget it." She spoke in a low tone as though not to break the charmed silence about them, and, upon his asking her for the incident, she went on, almost in a murmur: "It isn't a story you could possibly understand. You've never been poor. But I'll tell you if you like. I've talked to you such a lot about home and the queer people we know--did I ever mention Cousin Parnelia? She's a distant cousin of my mother's, a queer woman who lost her husband and three children in a train-wreck years ago, and has been a little bit crazy ever since. She has always worn, for instance, exactly the same kind of clothes, hat and everything, that she had on, the day the news was brought to her.

The Spiritualists got hold of her then, and she's been one herself for ever so long--table-rapping--planchette-writing--all the horrid rest of it, and she makes a little money by being a "medium" for ignorant people. But she hardly earns enough that way to keep her from starving, and Mother has for ever so long helped her out.

"Well, there was a chance to buy a tiny house and lot for her--two hundred and twenty dollars. It was just a two-roomed cottage, but it would be a roof over her head at least. She is getting old and ought to have something to fall back on. Mother called us all together and said this would be a way to help provide for Cousin Parnelia's old age. Father never could bear her (he's so hard on ignorant, superst.i.tious people), but he always does what Mother thinks best, so he said he'd give up the new typewriter he'd been hoping to buy.

Mother gave up her chicken money she'd been putting by for some new rose-bushes, and she loves her roses too! Judith gave what she'd earned picking raspberries, and I--oh, how I hated to do it! but I was ashamed not to--I gave what I'd saved up for my autumn suit. Lawrence just stuck it out that he hated Cousin Parnelia and he wouldn't give a bit. But he was so little that he only had thirty cents or something like that in a tin bank, so it didn't matter. When we put it all together it wasn't nearly enough of course, and we took the rest out of our own little family savings-bank rainy-day savings and bought the tiny house and lot. Father wanted to 'surprise' Cousin Parnelia with the deed. He wanted to lay it under some flowers in a basket, or slip it into her pocket, or send it to her with some eggs or something. But Mother--it was so like her!--the first time Cousin Parnelia happened to come to the house, Mother picked up the deed from her desk and said offhand, 'Oh, Parnelia, we bought the little Garens house for you,'

and handed her the paper, and went to talking about cutworms or Bordeaux mixture."

Page smiled, appreciative of the picture. "I see her. I see your mother--Vermont to the core."

"Well, it was only about two weeks after that, I was practising and Mother was rubbing down a table she was fixing over. n.o.body else happened to be at home. Cousin Parnelia came in, her old battered black straw hat on one ear as usual. She was all stirred up and pleased about a new 'method' of using planchette. You know what planchette is, don't you? The little heart-shaped piece of wood spiritualists use, with a pencil fast to it, to take down their silly 'messages,' Some spiritualistic fake was visiting town conducting seances and he claimed he'd discovered some sort of method for inducing greater receptivity--or something like that. I don't know anything about spiritualism but little tags I've picked up from hearing Cousin Parnelia talk. Anyway, he was 'teaching' other mediums for a big price. And it came out that Cousin Parnelia had mortgaged the house for more than it was worth, and had used the money to take those 'lessons.' I couldn't believe it for a minute. When I really understood what she'd done, I was so angry I felt like smas.h.i.+ng both fists down on the piano keys and howling! I thought of my blue corduroy I'd given up--I was only fourteen and just crazy about clothes. Mother was sitting on the floor, sc.r.a.ping away at the table-leg. She got up, laid down her sandpaper, and asked Cousin Parnelia if she'd excuse us for a few minutes. Then she took me by the hand, as though I was a little girl. I felt like one too, I felt almost frightened by Mother's face, and we both marched out of the house. She didn't say a word. She took me down to our swimming-hole in the river. There is a big maple-tree leaning over that. It was a perfectly breathless autumn day like this, and the tree was shedding its leaves like that birch, just gently, slowly, steadily letting them go down into the still water. We sat down on the bank and watched them. The air was full of them, yet all so quiet, without any hurry.

The water was red with them, they floated down on our shoulders, on our heads, in our laps--not a sound--so peaceful--so calm--so perfect.

It was like the andante of the Kreutzer.

"I knew what Mother wanted, to get over being angry with Cousin Parnelia. And she was. I could see it in her face, like somebody in church. I felt it myself--all over, like an E string that's been pulled too high, slipping down into tune when you turn the peg. But I didn't _want_ to feel it. I _wanted_ to hate Cousin Parnelia. I thought it was awfully hard in Mother not to want us to have even the satisfaction of hating Cousin Parnelia! I tried to go on doing it.

I remember I cried a little. But Mother never said a word--just sat there in that quiet autumn suns.h.i.+ne, watching the leaves falling--falling--and I had to do as she did. And by and by I felt, just as she did, that Cousin Parnelia was only a very small part of something very big.

"When we went in, Mother's face was just as it always was, and we got Cousin Parnelia a cup of tea and gave her part of a boiled ham to take home and a dozen eggs and a loaf of graham bread, just as though nothing had happened."

She stopped speaking. There was no sound at all but the delicate, forlorn whisper of the leaves.

"That is a very fine story!" said Page finally. He spoke with a measured, emphatic, almost solemn accent.

"Yes, it's a very fine story," murmured Sylvia a little wistfully.

"It's finer as a story than it was as real life. It was years before I could look at blue corduroy without feeling stirred up. I really cared more about my clothes than I did about that stupid, ignorant old woman. If it's only a cheerful giver the Lord loves, He didn't feel much affection for me."

They began to retrace their steps. "You gave up the blue corduroy,"

he commented as they walked on, "and you didn't scold your silly old kinswoman."

"That's only because Mother hypnotized me. _She_ has character. I did it as Louis signed the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, because Madame de Maintenon thought he ought to."

"But she couldn't hypnotize your brother Lawrence, althought he was so much younger. He didn't give up his thirty-seven cents. I think you're bragging without cause if you claim any engaging and picturesque absence of character."

"Oh, Lawrence--he's different! He's extraordinary! Sometimes I think he is a genius. And it's Judith who hypnotizes him. _She_ supplies his character."

They emerged into an opening and walked in silence for some moments towards the Grand Trianon.

"You're lucky, very lucky," commented Page, "to have such an ample supply of character in the family. I'm an only child. There's n.o.body to give me the necessary hypodermic supply of it at the crucial moments." He went on, turning his head to look at the Great Trianon, very mellow in the suns.h.i.+ne. "It's my belief, however, that at the crucial moments you have plenty of it of your own."

"That's a safe guess!" said Sylvia ironically, "since there never have _been_ any crucial moments in a life so uninterestingly eventless as mine. I wonder what I _would_ do," she mused. "My own conviction is that--suppose I'd lived in the days of the Reformation--in the days of Christ--in the early Abolition days--" She had an instant certainty: "Oh, I have been entirely on the side of whatever was smooth, and elegant, and had amenity--I'd have hated the righteous side!"

Page did not look very deeply moved by this revelation of depravity.

Indeed, he smiled rather amusedly at her, and changed the subject.

"You said a moment ago that I couldn't understand, because I'd always had money. Isn't it a bit paradoxical to say that the people who haven't a thing are the only ones who know anything about it?"

"But you couldn't realize what _losing_ the money meant to us. You can't know what the absence of money can do to a life."

"I can know," said Page, "what the presence of it cannot do for a life." His accent implied rather sadly that the omissions were considerable.

"Oh, of course, of course," Sylvia agreed. "There's any amount it can't do. After you have it, you must get the other things too."

He brought his eyes down to her from a roving quest among the tops of the trees. "It seems to me you want a great deal," he said quizzically.

"Yes, I do," she admitted. "But I don't see that you have any call to object to my wanting it. You don't have to wish for everything at once. You have it already."