NOTHING IN THE LEAST MODERN
Sylvia was sitting in the garden, an unread book on her knees,
dreaming among red and yellow and orange gladioli. She looked with a
fixed, bright, beatific stare at the flame-colored flowers and did not
see them. She saw only Felix Morrison, she heard only his voice, she
was brimming with the sense of him. In a few moments she would go into
the house and find him in the darkened living-room, as he had been
every afternoon for the last fortnight, ostensibly come in to lounge
away the afternoon over a book, really waiting for her to join
him. And when she came in, he would look up at her, that wonderful
penetrating deep look of his ... and she would welcome him with her
eyes.
And then they would talk! Judith and Arnold would be playing tennis,
oblivious of the heat, and Aunt Victoria would be annihilating the
tedious center of the day by sleep. Nobody would interrupt them for
hours. How they would talk! How they had talked! As she thought of it
the golden fortnight hummed and sang about Sylvia's ears like a Liszt
Liebes-Traum.
They had talked of everything in the world, and it all meant but one
thing, that they had discovered each other, a discovery visibly as
wonderful for Morrison as for the girl. They had discovered each
other, and they had been intelligent enough to know at once what it
meant. They knew! And in a moment she would go into the house to him.
She half closed her eyes as before a too-great brilliance....
Arnold appeared at the other end of the long row of gladioli. He
was obviously looking for some one. Sylvia called to him, with the
friendly tone she always had for him: "Here I am! I don't know where
Judith is. Will I do?"
From a distance Arnold nodded, and continued to advance, the
irregularity of his wavering gait more pronounced than usual. As soon
as she could see the expression of his face, Sylvia's heart began
to beat fast, with a divination of something momentous. He sat down
beside her, took off his hat, and laid it on the bench. "Do you
remember," he asked in a strange, high voice, "that you said you would
like me for your brother?"
She nodded.
"Well, I'm going to be," he said, and covering his face with his
hands, burst into sobs.
Sylvia was so touched by his emotion, so sympathetically moved by his
news, that even through her happy ejaculations the tears rained down
her own cheeks. She tried to wipe them away and discovered, absurdly
enough, that she had lost her handkerchief. "Aren't we idiots!" she
cried in a voice of joyful quavers. "I never understood before
why everybody cries at a wedding. See here, Arnold, I've lost my
handkerchief. Loan me yours." She pulled his handkerchief out of his
pocket, she wiped her eyes, she put a sisterly kiss on his thin,
sallow cheek, she cried: "You dears! Isn't it too good to be true!
Arnold! So soon! Inside two weeks! How ever could you have the
courage? Judith! My Judith! Why, she never looked at a man before. How
did you dare?"
His overmastering fit of emotion was passed now. His look was of
white, incredulous exaltation. "We saw each other and ran into
each other's arms," he said; "I didn't have to 'dare.' It was like
breathing."
"Oh, how perfect!" she cried, "how simply, simply perfect!" and now
there was for an instant a note of wistful envy in her voice. "It's
_all_ perfect! She never so much as looked at a man before, and you
said the other night you'd never been in love before."
Arnold looked at her wildly. "I said that!" he cried.
"Why, yes, don't you remember, after that funny, joking talk with me,
you said that was the nearest you'd ever come to proposing to any
girl?"
"God Almighty!" cried the man, and did not apologize for the
blasphemy. He looked at her fixedly, as though unguessed-at horizons
of innocence widened inimitably before his horrified eyes. And then,
following some line of association which escaped Sylvia, "I'm not fit
to _look_ at Judith!" he cried. The idea seemed to burst upon him like
a thunder-clap.
Sylvia patted him on the shoulder reassuringly. "That's the proper
thing for a lover to think!" she said with cheerful, commonplace
inanity. She did not notice that he shrank from her hand, because she
now sprang up, crying, "But where's Judy? Where _is_ Judy?"
He nodded towards the house. "She sent me out to get you. She's in her
room--she wants to tell you--but when I saw you, I couldn't keep it
to myself." His exaltation swept back like a wave, from the crest of
which he murmured palely, "Judith! Judith!" and Sylvia laughed at him,
with the tears of sympathy in her eyes, and leaving him there on the
bench staring before him at the living fire of the flame-colored
flowers, she ran with all her speed into the house.
Morrison, lounging in a chair with a book, looked up, startled at her
whirlwind entrance. "What's up?" he inquired.
At the sound of his voice, she checked herself and pirouetted with a
thistle-down lightness to face him. Her face, always like a clear,
transparent vase lighted from within, now gave out, deeply moved as
she was, an almost visible brightness. "Judith!" she cried, her voice
ringing like a silver trumpet, "Judith and Arnold!" She was poised
like a butterfly, and as she spoke she burst into flight again, and
was gone.
She had not been near him, but the man had the distinct impression
that she had thrown herself on his neck and kissed him violently, in
a transport of delight. In the silent room, still fragrant, still
echoing with her passage, he closed his book, and later his eyes, and
sat with the expression of a connoisseur savoring an exquisite, a
perfect impression....
* * * * *
Tea that afternoon was that strangest of phenomena, a formal ceremony
of civilized life performed in the abashing and disconcerting presence
of naked emotion. Arnold and Judith sat on opposite sides of the
pergola, Judith shining and radiant as the dawn, her usually firmly
set lips soft and tremulous; Arnold rather pale, impatient, oblivious
to what was going on around him, his spirit prostrated before the
miracle; and when their starry eyes met, there flowed from them and
towards them from every one in the pergola, a thousand unseen waves of
excitement.
The mistress of the house herself poured tea in honor of the great
occasion, and she was very humorous and amusing about the mistakes
caused by her sympathetic agitation. "There! I've put three lumps in
yours, Mr. Sommerville. How _could_ I! But I really don't know what
I'm doing. This business of having love-at-first-sight in one's very
family--! Give your cup to Molly; I'll make you a fresh one. Oh,
Arnold! How _could_ you look at Judith just then! You made me fill
this cup so full I can't pass it!"
Mr. Sommerville, very gallant and full of compliments and whimsical
allusions, did his best to help their hostess strike the decent note
of easy pleasantry; but they were both battling with something too
strong for them. Unseconded as they were by any of the others, they
gave a little the effect of people bowing and smirking to each other
at the foot of a volcano in full eruption. Morrison, picking up
the finest and sharpest of his conversational tools, ventured
the hazardous enterprise of expressing this idea to them. Mrs.
Marshall-Smith, trying one topic after another, expressed an
impatience with the slow progress of a Henry James novel she was
reading, and Mr. Sommerville, remarking with a laugh, "Oh, you cannot
hurry Henry," looked to see his mild witticism rewarded by a smile
from the critic. But Morrison shook his head, "No, my dear old friend.
_Il faut hurler avec les loups_--especially if you are so wrought
up by their hurlements that you can't hear yourself think. I'm just
giving myself up to the rareness, the richness of the impression."
The new fiancée herself talked rather more than usual, though this
meant by no means loquacity, and presented more the appearance of
composure than any one else there; although this was amusingly broken
by a sudden shortness of breath whenever she met Arnold's eyes.
She said in answer to a question that she would be going on to her
hospital the day after tomorrow--her two weeks' vacation over--oh yes,
she would finish her course at the hospital; she had only a few more
months. And in answer to another question, Arnold replied, obviously
impatient at having to speak to any one but Judith, that of course he
didn't mind if she went on and got her nurse's diploma--didn't she
_want_ to? Anything she wanted....
No--decidedly the thing was too big to make a successful fête of.
Morrison was silent and appreciatively observant, his eyes sometimes
on Sylvia, sometimes on Judith; Mr. Sommerville, continuing doggedly
to make talk, descended to unheard-of trivialities in reporting the
iniquities of his chauffeur; Molly stirred an untasted cup, did not
raise her eyes at all, and spoke only once or twice, addressing to
Sylvia a disconnected question or two, in the answers to which she had
obviously no interest. Judith and Arnold had never been very malleable
social material, and in their present formidable condition they were
as little assistance in the manufacture of geniality as a couple of
African lions.
The professional fête-makers were consequently enormously relieved
when it was over and their unavailing efforts could be decently
discontinued. Professing different reasons for escape, they moved in
disjointed groups across the smooth perfection of the lawn towards
the house, where Molly's car stood, gleaming in the sun. Sylvia found
herself, as she expected, manoeuvered to a place beside Morrison. He
arranged it with his unobtrusive deftness in getting what he wanted
out of a group of his fellow-beings, and she admired his skill, and
leaned on it confidently. They had had no opportunity that day for the
long talk which had been a part of every afternoon for the last week;
and she now looked with a buoyant certainty to have him arrange an
hour together before dinner. Her anticipation of it on that burning
day of reflected heat sent thrills of eager disquietude over her. It
was not only for Judith and Arnold that the last week had been one of
meeting eyes, long twilight evenings of breathless, quick-ripening
intimacy....
As they slackened their pace to drop behind Mr. Sommerville, who
walked hand-in-hand with his granddaughter in front of them, Morrison
said, looking at her with burning eyes, "... an instrument so finely
strung that it vibrates at the mere sound of another wakened to
melody--what mortal man lives who would not dream of its response if
he could set his own hand to the bow?"
The afternoon had been saturated with emotional excitement and the
moment had come for its inevitable crystallization into fateful words.
The man spoke as though he were not wholly conscious of what he was
saying. He stepped beside her like one in a dream. He could not take
his eyes from her, from her flushed, grave, receptive face, from her
downcast, listening eyes, her slow, trance-like step as she waited for
him to go on. He went on: "It becomes, my dear, I assure you--the idea
of that possibility becomes absolutely an obsession--even to a man
usually quite his own master--"
They were almost at a standstill now, and the two in front of them
had reached the house. Sylvia had a moment of what seemed to her the
purest happiness she had ever known....
From across the lawn they saw a violent gesture--Molly had thrown her
grandfather's clinging hand from her, and flashed back upon the two,
lingering there in the sunlight. She cast herself on Sylvia, panting
and trying to laugh. Her little white teeth showed in what was almost
a grimace. "Why in the world are you two poking along so?" she cried,
passing her arm through Sylvia's. Her beautiful sunny head came no
more than to Sylvia's shoulder. Without waiting for an answer she went
on hurriedly, speaking in the tones of suppressed excitement which
thrilled in every one's voice that day: "Come on, Sylvia--let's work
it off together! Let me take you somewhere--let's go to Rutland and
back."
"That's thirty miles away!" said Sylvia, "and it's past five now."
"I'll have you there and back long before seven," asserted Molly.
"Come on ... come on ..." She pulled impatiently, petulantly at the
other girl's arm.
"I'm not invited, I suppose," said Morrison, lighting a cigarette with
care.
Molly looked at him a little wildly. "No, Felix, you're not invited!"
she said, and laughed unsteadily.
She had hurried them along to the car, and now they stood by the swift
gray machine, Molly's own, the one she claimed to love more than
anything else in the world. She sprang in and motioned Sylvia to the
seat beside her.
"Hats?" suggested Morrison, looking at their bare, shining heads. He
was evidently fighting for time, manoeuvering for an opening. His
success was that of a man gesticulating against a gale. Molly's baldly
unscrupulous determination beat down the beginnings of his carefully
composed opposition before he could frame one of his well-balanced
sentences. "No--no--it takes too long to go and get hats!" she cried
peremptorily. "If you can't have what you want when you want it, it's
no use having it at all!"
"I'm not sure," remarked Morrison, "that Miss Marshall wants this at
all."
"Yes, she does; yes, she does!" Molly contradicted him heatedly.
Sylvia, hanging undecided at the step, felt herself pulled into the
car; the door banged, the engine started with a smooth sound of
powerful machinery, the car leaped forward. Sylvia cast one backward
glance at Morrison, an annoyed, distinguished, futile presence,
standing motionless, and almost instantly disappearing in the distance
in which first he, and then the house and tall poplars over it, shrank
to nothingness.
Their speed was dizzying. The blazing summer air blew hot and vital in
their faces; their hair tugged at the pins and flew back in fluttering
strands; their thin garments clung to their limbs, molded as closely
by the compressing wind as by water. Molly did not turn her eyes from
the road ahead, leaping up to meet them, and vanishing under the car.
She tried to make a little casual talk: "Don't you love to let it out,
give it all the gas there is?" "There's nothing like a quick spin for
driving the nightmares out of your mind, is there?" But as Sylvia made
no answer to these overtures (the plain fact was that Sylvia had no
breath for speech,--for anything but a horrified fascinated glare at
the road), she said suddenly, somberly, "If I were you, I certainly
should despise me!" She took the car around a sharp curve on two
wheels.
Sylvia clutched at the side and asked wonderingly, "_Why_ in the
world?" in a tone so permeated with sincerity that even Molly felt it.
"Don't you _know_?" she cried. "Do you mean to say you don't _know_?"
"Know _what_?" asked Sylvia. Hypnotized by the driver's intent and
unwavering gaze on the road, she kept her own eyes as fiercely
concentrated, her attention leaping from one quickly seen, instantly
disappearing detail to another,--a pile of gravel here,--a half-buried
rock there.--They both raised their voices to be heard above the sound
of the engine and the rush of the car. "Know what?" repeated Sylvia
loudly.
"Why do you _suppose_ I made myself ridiculous by pulling you away
from Felix that idiotic, humiliating way!" Molly threw this inquiry
out, straight before her, angrily. The wind caught at her words and
hurled them behind.
In a flash Sylvia understood something to which she had been
resolutely closing her perceptions. She felt sick and scared. She
clutched the side, watched a hill rise up steep before them and
flatten out under the forward leap of the car. She thought hard.
Something of her little-girl, overmastering horror of things, rough,
outspoken, disagreeable, swept over her. She violently wished that she
could escape from the conversation before her. She would have paid
almost any price to escape.
But Molly's nerves were not so sensitive. She evidently had no
desire to escape or to let Sylvia. The grim little figure at the
steering-wheel controlled with her small hands the fate of the two.
She broke out now, impatient at Sylvia's silence: "Any fool could see
that it was because I couldn't bear to see you with Felix another
minute, and because I hadn't any other way to get you apart. Everybody
else there knew why. I knew they knew. But I couldn't help it. I
couldn't bear it another instant!"
She broke the glass of decent reticence with a great clattering blow.
It shivered into fragments. There was nothing now between them but the
real issue in all its uncomely bareness. This real issue, the
maenad at the wheel now held up before them in a single brutal
statement--"Are you in love with Felix? I am."
There was something eerie, terrifying, in her casting these words
out, straight before her. Sylvia looked in awe at the pale, pinched
profile, almost unrecognizable in its stern misery. "Because if you're
not," Molly went on, her white lower lip twitching, "I wish you'd keep
out. It was all right before you came with your horrible cleverness.
It was all right. It was all right."
Through the iteration of this statement, through the tumult of her own
thoughts, through the mad rush of the wind past her ears, Sylvia heard
as clearly as though she sat again in the great, dim, quiet room, a
melodious voice saying gently, indulgently, laughingly, "_Molly!_"
Secure in her own safe place of favor she felt a great wave of
generous pity for the helpless self-deception of her sister-woman.
Fired by this and by the sudden perception of an opening for an act of
spectacular magnanimity--would it be any the less magnanimous because
it would cost her nothing in the end?--she reached for the mantle of
the _beau rôle_ and cast it about her shoulders. "Why, Molly dear!"
she cried, and her quick sympathies had never been more genuinely
aroused, "Molly dear, of course I'll keep out, if you want me to. I'll
leave the coast clear to you as long as you please."
She was almost thrown from the seat by the jarring grind of the car
brought to a sudden standstill. Molly caught her hands, looked into
her face, the first time their eyes had met. "Do you mean it ...
Sylvia?"
Sylvia nodded, much agitated, touched by the other's pain, half
ashamed of her own apparent generosity which was to mean no loss to
her, no gain to Molly. In the sudden becalmed stillness of the hot
afternoon their bright, blown hair fell about their faces in shining
clouds.
"I didn't understand before," said Sylvia; and she was speaking the
truth.
"And you'll let him alone? You won't talk to him--play his
accompaniments--oh, those long talks of yours!"
"We've been talking, you silly dear, of the Renaissance compared to
the Twentieth Century, and of the passing of the leisure class, and
all the beauty they always create," said Sylvia. Again she spoke
the literal truth. But the true truth, burning on Molly's tongue,
shriveled this to ashes. "You've been making him admire you, be
interested in you, see how little _I_ amount to!" she cried. "But
if you _don't_ care about him yourself--if you'll--_two weeks_,
Sylvia--just keep out for two weeks...." As if it were part of the
leaping forward of her imagination, she suddenly started the car
again, and with a whirling, reckless wrench at the steering-wheel she
had turned the car about and was racing back over the road they had
come.
"Where are you going?" cried Sylvia to her, above the noise of their
progress.
"Back!" she answered, laughing out. "What's the use of going on now?"
She opened the throttle to its widest and pressing her lips together
tightly, gave herself up to the intoxication of speed.
Once she said earnestly: "You're _fine_, Sylvia! I never knew a girl
could be like you!" And once more she threw out casually: "Do you know
what I was going to do if I found out you and Felix--if you hadn't...?
I was going to jump the car over the turn there on Prospect
Hill."
Remembering the terrible young face of pain and wrath which she had
watched on the way out, Sylvia believed her; or at least believed that
she believed her. In reality, her immortal youth was incapable of
believing in the fact of death in any form. But the words put a stamp
of tragic sincerity on their wild expedition, and on her companion's
suffering. She thought of the two weeks which lay before Molly, and
turned away her eyes in sympathy....
* * * * *
Ten days after this, an announcement was made of the engagement of
Mary Montgomery Sommerville, sole heiress of the great Montgomery
fortune, to Felix Morrison, the well-known critic of aesthetics.