Isabel now took Reverdy into her heart with an ardor that could not be
mistaken. She often went to bring him from school to the pension. She
took him in walks about the broken columns of the Forum. They clambered
together over the galleries of the Coliseum and to the heights of the
Palatine, exploring the ruins of the palaces of the Cesar's. They had
walked out to the Appian Way, and gone to listen to the merles and the
golden wrens among the cypresses of the Protestant cemetery.
Reverdy had begun to call Isabel "Mamma Isabel" and Isabel addressed him
as "son." Uncle Tom fell into the same way. The kinship between us was
strengthened by these endearments.
But I observed something of deeper, more mystical import; Reverdy was
attached to Isabel with an intense and curious filial passion. He would
rush into the room and kiss Isabel, flinging his arms about her with
ecstatic joy. She evoked this demonstration in some secret, maternal
way. And now as I tried to remember I could not recall that Dorothy had
ever caressed Reverdy--not that she was cold toward him. She was the
soul of kindness. But whenever had she held him to her breast with
demonstrative heart-hunger and expression; whenever had she played with
him, walked with him, entered into his life of game or studies? She had
never done so. Perhaps Reverdy had never had a mother after all. Now he
had one in Isabel, who seemed to direct something of the energy that she
had channeled into art and into travel to this boy of mine. But she did
not in any way withdraw her interest from me.
I was wondering after our day at the Villa d'Este if she would place
herself again in a like intimacy with me, if we should go about together
as before. No, there was no change as to program; but her eyes were so
clear, so innocently bright, her smile and laugh so gentle, yet free of
direct invitation, above all her devotion to Uncle Tom was so noble,
that I felt loath to make my approach more intimate. What I craved and
what I was glad to keep was our daily association. And now while she
always invited Uncle Tom to be with us and he more and more went his own
way, Isabel turned to Reverdy and arranged for him to accompany us about
Rome and into the country, once to Hadrian's Villa, once to Ostia where
we looked upon the sea. It did not seem to me that Isabel sought to keep
me at a distance and to bring in Reverdy as an influence to that end.
She took such great delight in having him with us. It seemed only to
happen that he went with us. It was not always so. And it was all quite
natural.
We had thus become friends in the profoundest sense. Once she referred
to Pinturicchio saying: "If you feel that you could have loved that
man, don't you see that the same feeling can exist between a man and a
woman? I am talking of that unity of two minds out of which the finest
emotions come; and in the case of artists the noblest works. Love is not
just passional love, just this flame that burns so brightly and then
dies. It may be a flame that has no material sustenance, or so slight
that we are not subtle enough to discern it; a flame that feeds on
flame, unites with another flame and grows brighter for the union; and
finds in the flame a substitute for oil. Friendship is what I mean--or
love may be a better word. Here in Rome among the old shrines and
temples where the anemones and violets bloom so profusely, before the
sculptured faces of Zeus and Aphrodite and Apollo and Bacchus, one
dreams one's self into intuitions of the old gods, and the lovely faiths
of the ancient world. And I go sometimes alone with a book to the
Borghese or to the Capitoline and there let my imagination wander in
re-creation of the visions of life and the soul that came as
interpretations to the ancients. I have lately been reading a book on
the cult of Orpheus, the Pagan Christ, one of the loveliest figures of
the Greeks. It made me believe somehow that Christ never lived, that he
is only a creation of the anonymous imagination of a hungering world.
For surely Orpheus did not live, and how closely he resembles Christ as
an embodiment of the heart's aspiration to free itself from the material
and to rise into a realm of pure beauty, understanding, devotion--all
lovely things. My friend, I was thinking of you all the while. And if
you could have been a friend of Pinturicchio in the noblest sense, why
not of me? I am not trying to play with words or with ideas, or to
perplex you, or to excite your doubts or your desires. I think you have
never had a friend. What, after all, could you find in a soul so
masculine, so lacking in intuition as Douglas; upon whom you have poured
your admiration for all these years? Has it not been for lack of some
one better to whom you could give your heart? That is why I wish that
you and I could find an enduring and inspiring union in a mutual
interest in great things. Forgive me, I grieve that all this seems a
cruel waste to me--all these years of your life."
"Is your life not a waste?" I asked before I could check the words.
"No," Isabel replied calmly, in no way offended. "After all there is a
feeling in my heart for Uncle Tom such as you might have felt for
Pinturicchio. What does one derive from love? There are riches in
admiration, gratitude, sympathy, filial tenderness, in desire for
devotion; yes, even in pity; in the bestowal of comforting hands; in
solace given in hours of fatigue and illness; in care for declining
vitality. All these expressions I have. And now, my friend, I would be a
help to you. I would give you eyes to understand your past; and a vision
to choose a better future. If you have ever been Dionysius, which you
have not, you are yet an unawakened soul. I would have you become
Orpheus, attended by the Muses of all this loveliness with which we are
surrounded here. By contrast it makes me think of America, so vast but
so without a soul. By soul I do not mean that energy which enforces
righteousness, the dream of the fanatic, the ideal of the law
fabricator; but the soul of high freedoms, delights, nobilities. For
there is just as much difference between those things as there is
between Douglas and Pinturicchio. All of this goes without saying, of
course; but I am thinking of the application of these things to you. I
am your friend, you know."
Was there reality in Isabel's words? Was she not sublimating the
materials of our thwarted relationship? Turning to Douglas I tried to
tell her what character of thinker he was and how, in spite of any
deficiency that he had, he was a brave heart and a thinking mind and a
needed builder in America.
"It may be," said Isabel. We were sitting in the Gardens of Adonis once
occupied in part by the golden house of Nero, here where St. Sebastian
was bound to a tree and pierced with arrows. What material symbols for
our thoughts! Ruins of walls, columns and capitols lay about us; and on
the air was borne the music of bells and the low murmur of Rome. In this
pause of our conversation I heard a cry and looking up saw Reverdy
running toward us, throwing up his arms in delight and falling upon the
breast of Isabel. She embraced him with all tenderness; then arose and
began to run with him about the garden. In a little while we saw Uncle
Tom approaching slowly. He was much out of breath and looked definitely
ill. How had they found us? Isabel had told Uncle Tom that we might
stroll here; and Reverdy had prevailed upon Uncle Tom to drive this way.
In a few days there was to be a service at St. Peter's which Isabel was
eager to see. She was talking to Uncle Tom about it, begging him to go,
and he was half consenting though reluctant. Reverdy was all delight
over the prospect, and it was an opportunity for me to be with Isabel.
She had never become a communicant of any church. But she abhorred
atheism. It denied the love that she saw in nature, the divinity that
permeated the human mind; the law she sensed in growth and decay; the
spirit of beauty that reigned everywhere to her imagination. We were at
one on this matter of denying a God, but the repugnance that I had had
to imperial Catholicism had been increased by Serafino's recitals of
Italy's sufferings under the Church and Austria. And in Rome one saw the
settled dominance of clericalism. Perhaps the Church was like negro
slavery. If the Church ministered to beauty and spirituality, was it not
asserted in favor of slavery that it afforded leisure; did it not
correspond to the fertilization which enriches the roots of a gorgeous
flower? I could see Isabel turning to the esthetics in the Catholic
service. "What can you say," she asked, "against a faith that surrounds
itself with pictures, sculpture, music, incense, the rhythm of rich
Latin, the appeal in words to life renewal, eternal life, purity, glory,
tenderness? Say what you will of it; condemn its external sovereignty,
of guns and poison and machinations--condemn these as you will--its
ritual calls to purer dreams. And perhaps in all our life there must be
oppression and particular injustice in order to produce the finest
blossom."
Uncle Tom seemed to be falling into more frequent indisposition. He
often lay in bed for the greater part of the morning. There were days
when he did not leave his room. Again he would go forth to Canape's; and
while he was rarely in anything like a stagger, he was often saturated
with wine, heavy and sleepy from its influence. Isabel through it all
treated him with unfailing kindness; and some of our excursions were
interrupted because of Uncle Tom's taking to bed after returning from
Canape's; or because he could not arise before noon after an evening
with his friends. She would not desert his side. Was there something in
my presence with his life with Isabel, our friendship for each other,
that woke nerves to suffering which only drink could dull?
The day of the service in St. Peter's we all set forth in one carriage,
Reverdy riding on the box, and Isabel, Uncle Tom, and I in the seat. I
noticed that Uncle Tom was more than usually self-absorbed. Isabel
patted his hand or held it, and talked to him of the objects of interest
along the way.
The service was about to begin when we entered. We walked as far as the
bronze plate which marks the comparative length of the Cathedral of
Milan, and I was looking toward the bronze pavilion with its twisted
columns which tents the tomb of St. Peter, through and around these
columns at the candles on the altar. Chanting voices echoed, soared in
hollow reverberations up and about the arches, the domes; an organ was
giving forth soft thunder in some hidden quarter.
Suddenly Uncle Tom steps back, sways, coughs. Isabel utters a slight
cry; I look at Uncle Tom and take him by the arm. Bystanders help me
support him. He has turned very pale, blue at the lips. With the
assistance of two men we take him to a carriage, drive to the pension.
We put him to bed and send for a physician.
Reverdy is sent away, and Isabel and I watch. For Uncle Tom is dying.
The doctor says it is only a matter of a few hours. Uncle Tom wishes to
make a will. Will I write it out for him? His thoughts are clear. He
remembers his possessions, his relations. To brothers and sisters he
gives handsome purses, all the rest to Isabel.
"Isabel," he says with difficulty. "Yes, my dear," she replies in a
voice of great tenderness. "Isabel, I want to give Jimmy something--ten
thousand dollars." Before she can speak I interject: "I do not need it,
Uncle Tom." He rolled his head in a negative, turned his hand feebly. "I
give it to you that you may do something for her. Then it will be from
you and from me too." Isabel stifles a sob by placing her hands tightly
over her mouth. "Write," says Uncle Tom; and I write.
The will is written. The doctor has come again. Uncle Tom signs the will
in our presence. Then he asks the doctor for medicine for his lungs. "I
seem to have a cough," he says. But it is not his lungs but his heart.
We are standing by the bed. Uncle Tom takes our hands and puts them
together. Instantly his head sinks upon the pillow. He is dead. The
doctor walks from the room. Isabel and I stand by the bed with closed
eyes, holding hands.