In the strange, springlike weather which prevailed during the last
days of January, Vanya was buried under skies as fleecy blue as
April's, and Marya Lanois went back to the studio apartment where she
and Vanya had lived together. And here, alone, in the first month of
the new year, she picked up again the ravelled threads of life,
undecided whether to untangle them or to cut them short and move on
once more to further misadventure; or to Vanya; or somewhere--or
perhaps nowhere. So, pending some decision, she left her pistol
loaded.
Afternoon sunshine poured into the studio between antique silken
curtains, now drawn wide to the outer day for the first time since
these two young people had established for themselves a habitation.
And what, heretofore, even the lighted mosque-lamps had scarcely half
revealed, now lay exposed to outer air and daylight, gilded by the
sun--cabinets and chests of ancient lacquer; deep-toned carpets in
which slumbered jewelled fires of Asia; carved gods from the East,
crusted with soft gold; and tapestries of silk shot with amethyst and
saffron, centred by dragons and guarded by the burning pearl.
Over all these, and the great mosque lantern drooping from above, the
false-spring sunshine fell; and through every open window flowed soft,
deceptive winds, fluttering the leaves of music on the piano,
stirring the clustered sheafs of growing jonquils and narcissus, so
that they swayed in their Chinese bowls.
Marya, in black, arranged her tiger-ruddy hair before an ancient
grotesquerie set with a reflecting glass in which, on some days, one
could see the form of the Lord Buddha, though none could ever tell
from whence the image came.
Where Vanya had left his music opened on the piano rack, the sacred
pages now stirred slightly as the soft wind blew; and scented bells of
Frisia swayed and bowed around a bowl where gold-fish glowed.
Marya, at the piano, reading at sight from his inked manuscript, came
presently to the end of what was scored there--merely the first sketch
for a little spring song.
Some day she would finish it as part of a new debt--new obligations
she had now assumed in the slowly increasing light of new beliefs.
As she laid Vanya's last manuscript aside, under it she discovered one
of her own--a cynical, ribald, pencilled parody which she remembered
she had scribbled there in an access of malicious perversity.
As though curious to sound the obscurer depths of what she had been
when this jeering cynicism expressed her mood, she began to read from
her score and words, playing and intoning:
"CROQUE-MITAINE.
"Parfait qu'on attend La Maree Rouge,
La chose est positive.
On n'sait pas quand el' bouge,
Mais on sait qu'el' arrive.
La Maree Rouge arrivera
Et tout le monde en crevera!
"Croque'morts, sacristains et abbes,
Dans leurs sacre's boutiques
Se cachent aupres des machabe's
En repetant des cantiques.
Pape, cardinal, et sacre soeur
Miaulent avec tout leurs cliques,
Lorsque les Bolsheviks reprenn 'nt en choeur;
Mort aux saligaudes chic!
"La Maree Rouge montera
Et la bourgeoisie en crevera!"
The vicious irony of the atrocious parody--words and music--died out
in the sunny silence: for a few moments the girl sat staring at the
scored page; then she leaned forward, and, taking the manuscript in
both hands, tore it into pieces.
She was still occupied in destroying the unclean thing when a servant
appeared, and in subdued voice announced Palla and Ilse.
They came in as Marya swept the tattered scraps of paper into an
incense-bowl, dropped a lighted match upon them, and set the ancient
bronze vessel on the sill of the open window.
"Some of my vileness I am burning," she said, coming forward and
kissing Ilse on both cheeks.
Then, looking Palla steadily in the eyes, she bent forward and touched
her lips with her own.
"Nechevo," she said; "the thing that dwelt within me for a time has
continued on its way to hell, I hope."
She took the pale girl by both hands: "Do you understand?"
And Palla kissed her.
When they were seated: "What religious order would be likely to accept
me?" she asked serenely. And answered her own question: "None would
tolerate me--no order with its rigid systems of inquiry and its
merciless investigations.... And yet--I wonder.... Perhaps, as a
lay-sister in some missionary order--where few care to serve--where
life resembles death as one twin the other.... I don't know: I wonder,
Palla."
Palla asked her in a low voice if she had seen the afternoon paper.
Marya did not reply at once; but presently over her face a hot
rose-glow spread and deepened. Then, after a silence:
"The paper mentioned me as Vanya's wife. Is that what you mean? Yes; I
told them that.... It made no difference, for they would have
discovered it anyway. And I scarcely know why I made Vanya lie about
it to you all;--why I wished people to think otherwise.... Because I
have been married to Vanya since the beginning.... And I can not
explain why I have not told you."
She touched a rosebud in the vase that stood beside her, broke the
stem absently, and sat examining it in silence. And, after a few
moments:
"As a child I was too imaginative.... We do not change--we women.
Married, unmarried, too wise, or too innocent, we remain what we were
when our mothers bore us.... Whatever we do, we never change within:
we remain, in our souls, what we first were. And unaltered we die....
In morgue or prison or Potter's Field, where lies a dead female thing
in a tattered skirt, there, hidden somewhere under rag and skin and
bone, lies a dead girl-child."
She laid the unopened rosebud on Palla's knees; her preoccupied gaze
wandered around that silent, sunlit place.
"I could have taken my pistol," she said softly, "and I could have
killed a few among those whose doctrines at last slew Vanya.... Or I
could have killed myself."
She turned and her remote gaze came back to fix itself on Palla.
"But, somehow, I think that Vanya would grieve.... And he has grieved
enough. Do you think so, Palla?"
"Yes."
Ilse said thoughtfully: "There is always enough death on earth. And to
live honestly, and love undauntedly, and serve humanity with a clean
heart is the most certain way to help the slaying of that thing which
murdered Vanya."
Palla gazed at Marya, profoundly preoccupied by the astounding
revelation that she had been Vanya's legal wife; and in her brown eyes
the stunned wonder of it still remained, nor could she seem to think
of anything except of that amazing fact.
When they stood up to take leave of Marya, the rosebud dropped from
Palla's lap, and Marya picked it up and offered it again.
"It should open," she said, her strange smile glimmering. "Cold water
and a little salt, my Palla--that is all rosebuds need--that is all we
women need--a little water to cool and freshen us; a little salt for
all the doubtful worldly knowledge we imbibe."
She took Palla's hands and bent her lips to them, then lifted her
tawny head:
"What do words matter? _Slava, slava_, under the moon! Words are
but symbols of needs--your need and Ilse's and mine--and Jack's
and Vanya's--and the master-word differs as differ our several
needs. And if I say Christ and Buddha and I are one, let me so
believe, if that be my need. Or if, from some high minarette, I
lift my voice proclaiming the unity of God!--or if I confess the
Trinity!--or if, for me, the god-fire smoulders only within my own
accepted soul--what does it matter? Slava, slava--the word and the
need spell Love--whatever the deed, Palla--my Palla!--whatever the
deed, and despite it."
* * * * *
As they came, together, to Palla's house and entered the empty
drawing-room, Ilse said:
"In mysticism there seems to be no reasoning--nothing definite save
only an occult and overwhelming restlessness.... Marya may take the
veil ... or nurse lepers ... or she may become a famous courtesan....
I do not mean it cruelly. But, in the mystic, the spiritual, the
intellectual and the physical seem to be interchangeable, and become
gradually indistinguishable."
"That is a frightful analysis," murmured Palla. A little shiver passed
over her and she laid the rosebud against her lips.
Ilse said: "Marya is right: love is the world's overwhelming need. The
way to love is to serve; and if we serve we must renounce something."
They locked arms and began to pace the empty room.
"What should I renounce?" asked Palla faintly.
Ilse smiled that wise, wholesome smile of hers:
"Suppose you renounce your own omniscience, darling," she suggested.
"I do not think myself omniscient," retorted the girl, colouring.
"No? Well, darling, from where then do you derive your authority to
cancel the credentials of the Most High?"
"What!"
"On what authority except your own omniscience do you so confidently
preach the non-existence of omnipotence?"
Palla turned her flushed face in sensitive astonishment under the
gentle mockery.
Ilse said: "Love has many names; and so has God. And all are good. If,
to you, God means that little flame within you, then that is good. And
so, to others, according to their needs.... And it is the same with
love.... So, if for the man you love, love can be written only as a
phrase--if the word love be only one element in a trinity of which the
other two are Law and Wedlock--does it really matter, darling?"
"You mean I--I am to renounce my--creed?"
Ilse shook her head: "Who cares? The years develop and change
everything--even creeds. Do you think your lover would care whether,
at twenty-odd, you worship the flaming godhead itself, or whether
you guard in spirit that lost spark from it which has become
entangled with your soul?--whether you really do believe the man-made
law that licenses your mating; or whether you reject it as a silly
superstition? To a business man, convention is merely a safe
procedure which, ignored, causes disaster--he knows that whenever
he ignores it--as when he drives a car bearing no license; and the
police stop him."
"I never expected to hear this from you, Ilse."
"Why?"
"You are unmarried."
"No, Palla."
The girl stared at her: "Did you _marry_ Jack?" she gasped.
"Yes. In the hospital."
"Oh, Ilse!----"
"He asked me."
"But--" her mouth quivered and she bent her head and placed her hand
on Ilse's arm for guidance, because the starting tears were
blinding her now. And at last she found her voice: "I meant I am so
thankful--darling--it's been a--a nightmare----"
"It would have been one to me if I had refused him. Except that Jack
wished it, I did not care.... But I have lately learned--some
things."
"You--you consented because he wished it?"
"Of course. Is not that our law?"
"Do you so construe the Law of Love and Service? Does it permit us to
seek protection under false pretences; to say yes when we mean no; to
kneel before a God we do not believe in; to accept immunity under a
law we do not believe in?"
"If all this concerned only one's self, then, no! Or, if the man
believed as we do, no! But even then--" she shook her head slowly,
"unless _all_ agree, it is unfair."
"Unfair?"
"Yes, it is unfair if you have a baby. Isn't it, darling? Isn't it
unfair and tyrannical?"
"You mean that a child should not arbitrarily be placed by its parents
at what it might later consider a disadvantage?"
"Of course I mean just that. Do you know, Palla, what Jack once said
of us? He said--rather brutally, I thought--that you and I were
immaturely un-moral and pitiably unbaked; and that the best thing for
both of us was to marry and have a few children before we tried to do
any more independent thinking."
Palla's reply was: "He was such a dear!" But what she said did not
seem absurd to either of them.
Ilse added: "You know yourself, darling, what a relief it was to you
to learn that I had married Jack. I think you even said something
like, 'Thank God,' when you were choking back the tears."
Palla flushed brightly: "I meant--" but her voice ended in a sob.
Then, all of a sudden, she broke down--went all to pieces there in the
dim and empty little drawing-room--down on her knees, clinging to
Ilse's skirts....
She wished to go to her room alone; and so Ilse, watching her climb
the stairs as though they led to some dread calvary, opened the front
door and went her lonely way, drawing the mourning veil around her
face and throat.