I begin to wonder about my Reverdy. At the school I see him in
association with English boys. He is not so strong as they, not so
handsome, not so alert and apt. Isabel has never had a child and wants
one with consuming passion. This boy is mine, but am I better off than
Isabel? My life grows clearer to me. I have receded from it and can see
it better. I can look out upon Rome and then close my eyes and recall
Chicago. I think of my long years of money making; then I turn to
reflection upon art and life. I thrill in the presence of Isabel; then I
remember the mild but tender passion which Dorothy aroused in me.
I thrill before Isabel, but I give my feelings no expression. There are
looks, no doubt, hesitations of speech, flutterings of the heart, that
she may hear. But she is encompassed with flame that bars my way. I do
not try to pass. We are all friends together, Isabel, Uncle Tom, and I.
No plans are made which exclude Uncle Tom. Isabel and I have no secrets,
no stealings away, no intimacies however slight, no quick withdrawals
upon the sound of his step. Everything is known to Uncle Tom. I had
impulses to all clearness of conduct in the circumstance that Uncle Tom
is so much my friend. He treats me like a father; he is always doing
generous things for me. He is delighted to see Isabel go with me to a
church or a gallery, when he is too tired or too ill to accompany us,
and that is often.
And day by day Isabel was happier. She became a creature of glories,
shining transparencies. We had books together, music together, our work
together. We had the companionship of the morning and the evening meal,
sacred rituals between beings who love each other. We had infinite talks
together with Uncle Tom or alone, as it happened. If Uncle Tom saw our
exaltation, nevertheless he knew all that was between us. For it was
beauty of life that Isabel and I shared, and who cannot know between
whom this secret exists, if he have eyes to see?
He knew I loved Isabel, if he had not forgotten all that moves in the
blood of a man of forty-two. He knew that she loved me--at any rate in
some quality of love. For Isabel used this word freely in the ecstasies
of her spirit, in the rapturous atmosphere of Italy. "I love James,
Uncle Tom--not as I love you; but I really love him! How wonderful that
he should come to us. He is like my brother, but he is something more.
He is a great friend." Uncle Tom would smile benignantly upon this
radiant woman, whom he had married for her youthful vitality, for which
he gave the happiness that comes of wealth. Perhaps in his ageing
psychology he did not know that there was passion in our hearts. Yet I
think he was a great soul, wishing Isabel to have every happiness. I
know he was my friend. There was nothing in him of the envy of January
because of my younger years, nor reproof for the Maytime sunshine that
was in the heart of Isabel.
Isabel and I had been to the Vatican several times. Uncle Tom disliked
pictures; above all he dreaded the fatigue of walking and the cold of
the churches and rooms where he was obliged to remove his hat. One
afternoon Isabel proposed that we go again to the Vatican; there was a
face there she wished to show me. We asked Uncle Tom to come with us;
but this was one of the days when he did not feel strong enough for
anything. He was keeping to his room. Perhaps later he would go to
Canape's. "You two go along. You will get on without me."
Isabel took me directly to the suite which was decorated by Pinturicchio
for Alexander VI. We looked at the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Magi,
and the Resurrection. Somehow I was more moved by these paintings than
by anything I had yet seen in Rome. The soul of this painter took
possession of me. Then recalling what Isabel had said I asked her:
"Where is the face, Isabel, you wished to show me?" "There," she said.
"Turn around." I did and saw a bronze bust on a pedestal. "That, you
mean?" Isabel nodded. I walked closer to it. It was Pinturicchio.
A deeper emotion than I had ever before felt before a work of art took
possession of me. Such wisdom, benignity, genius! What a soul belonged
to this man! I looked about to see if we were watched by guards. As we
were alone I put up my hands to caress this face, moved by some unknown
impulse. Touching the silken surface of the bronze my whole imaginative
power seemed to awake; my life spread out before me. I know not what it
was; memories of so many things; not least of all Isabel's presence
understanding what I felt. My eyes blinded; my shoulders shook a little.
Isabel came to me and gently put her hand on my arm. We walked away.
"Who was Pinturicchio?" I asked of Isabel. And she told me. I took a
guide-book out of my pocket and began to read. "There is a story," it
said, "that Pinturicchio was starved by his wife during his last
illness." I closed the book. After all had not Douglas been starved in
the finer part of his genius by the life to which he was wedded? How
would his face look in bronze, ridged with reason and controversy; what
could ever bring him out of the dust and noise of the levels where he
was battling, even to the plateaus to which poor Serafino had climbed?
After that I looked at everything of Pinturicchio's I could find in
Rome. We found his Coronation of the Virgin, his frescoes of St.
Antonio. But Isabel, who had already been to the Villa d'Este with Uncle
Tom, began now day by day to plan another excursion there. She had not
gone up to Tivoli, nor seen the cataracts; we could do all of this in an
afternoon if we did not stop to wander through Hadrian's Villa. This
time Serafino went with us; but Uncle Tom was again indisposed, and
laughingly bade us to go on and leave him to an afternoon at Canape's
with his cronies.
Serafino rode on the box with the driver, and that left Isabel and me to
something like a privacy, as we drove by the quarries of travertine
where the slaves of old Rome went blind and died hewing out the stone
that went to the building of the Coliseum and the theaters of Marcellus
and Pompey. We passed the little stream whose waters were blue with
sulphur, filling the air with its odor. The grasses and herbs were
green; here and there an almond tree was in blossom. The dark cypresses
of Hadrian's Villa stood like spires of thunder clouds against the
wonderful azures of this uplifting sky. Before us were the mountains,
pine-clad, vineyard-clad; and far up the gleam of a cascade shone like a
bent sword in the sun.
Serafino took us through the room of the d'Este Palace telling the
driver to meet us at one of the entrances to the grounds. When we
emerged and descended to the Hundred Fountains he turned away giving us
the directions to reach the carriage. He knew that this was a place
where lovers would wish to dispense with a guide.
We walked through the avenues of great cypress trees and came to the
farther end of the pools whose curbs were decorated with flowering urns.
There we looked at the palace and listened to the song of the merles.
Beside this all was silence, only the stir of the wind against the soft
strings of the trees--the most melodious harp in the world! We climbed
to an eminence, stood by an iron fence and gazed down upon the fisheries
surrounded by graceful bushes and trees. Then we found the Fontana dell'
Ovato, and a seat before it. It was a semicircle of stone perforated by
arches over which the water musically poured. Here we rested, listening
to the merles, the falling water, the whispering of the wind. Ghosts of
dead delight seemed to pass us; unseen presences of passionate gallants
and capricious loveliness, hungering hearts wounded by life, by beauty,
by desire, spoke to us through the murmuring water, the stir of the
wind, the intense silence when all sounds were turned away by the
veering of the delicious air.
And Uncle Tom was in Rome at Canape's drinking with his American
cronies! Only myself knew my starved heart, but surely he knew the heart
of Isabel. What was the attitude of mind in allowing this free
association between Isabel and me? Does the heart of age become
deadened? Does it understand; does it but partly divine these secrets;
does it for any of these reasons cease to be sensitive?
Then suddenly, as Isabel and I sat there in these enchanting
surroundings, an uncontrollable emotion seized me, one that had no
regard for a future, that sought only to realize wholly and at once an
ecstatic present. For what could be between us? I could not marry
Isabel; and what could be? Blindly, without a thought of any of these
things, I took Isabel's hands and drew her to me frightened and
trembling. Instantly I saw what I had done. Our life of frank
companionship fell away from us. A new birth was ours; but of what
wonder and terror and danger! Isabel exclaimed: "Oh, my friend!" Then
she lost her voice and whispered, "My friend!" She became relaxed,
leaned back her head, closed her eyes. Tears crept down her cheeks. And
I was silent, in a kind of madness of fear, passion, regret, nameless
sorrow. What could I say, to what could she listen? There was a long
silence. Then Isabel began to speak.
"Help me, my friend," she said. "How can I tell you how to be my friend?
Still it must be. I care for you so deeply. Let me speak, but understand
me as I try to speak, and help me. You are young and strong. You are so
companionable; I never grow tired of you--but you must know that I am
not different from you in all impulses, imaginings. But be my friend.
Take into your being the beauty we have together; these flowers of
friendship attend and keep for our garden--our Villa d'Este. Let it be
open to the sky and wind as this is, a place where innocence and
kindness may come, where children may play and the old rest. Ah, my
friend, you have lived and now be strong for me. Uncle Tom is so fond of
you. Think of all you have. You have had a wife, and you have a son. Be
noble, be understanding, for really you see I am poor and you are rich.
If possible these hands of passion which you have placed on mine must
change, and my hands must forget what you have done. Otherwise what is
the future to be?"
Isabel began to sob, between her words crying: "Oh, be my friend!" How
could I comfort her? The very comfort that her heart craved was that
which her sorrow strove to deny me the giving. I drew out my watch; we
had long overstayed our time, for we were to lunch at the Sibylla in
Tivoli. We walked slowly to the entrance where Serafino waited for us
with the carriage. He was smoking a pipe, calm and happy, and in
companionable conversation with the driver.
At a table near the Temple of Vesta here on the Castro Vetere, the
waterfalls below us, Horace's Villa above us, we dined and became happy
again.
When we got back to the pension Uncle Tom was there to greet us and to
receive Isabel's kiss upon a mischievously yielded cheek, and to hear
her rapturous account of the afternoon.
And I went forth with little Reverdy in the Borghese Gardens; afterwards
to continue my studies of the etchings of Piranesi.