A PARLEY AND A PRAYER.
May was close upon the heels of June before there came a change, but one
afternoon, as Andrew paused in his playing, an atmosphere of new
intimacy seemed to touch him. He had been alone with Margery for half an
hour, and something in the music--or was it only fancy?--told him that
her thoughts were occupied with him. She had greeted him with a little
air of weariness--but not unfriendly--and, as he took her hand, she
looked at him with some indefinite question in her eyes. The impression
made by this gained on him as they talked, and, more strongly, as he
played. Once or twice he was upon the point of turning abruptly and
seeking the clue, but he had been so long perplexed, so long uncertain,
that he hesitated still. If only she would give him an opening, if she
would but come, as she had often come at Beverly, to lean above him,
humming the words of some song into which he had unconsciously drifted,
then had he had the courage to turn, to grip her hands, to ask her....
"I wonder if we would, even if we could," she said.
"What?" asked Andrew.
"How should you be expected to know? I've been a thousand miles
away--thinking of Omar. I mean whether we would 'shatter it to bits, and
then remould it nearer to the heart's desire.'"
Andrew swung round on the piano-stool, slowly chafing his palms
together. He did not dare trust himself to look at her. For the first
time since they had met in Paris, he caught an echo of the old life in
her tone.
"I wonder if we could, even if we would," he answered. "I think
so--perhaps. Whatever set you thinking about that?"
"I'm sure I don't know," said Margery, with a short laugh. "Sometimes,
in my own little way, I'm quite a philosopher! I was just thinking that
if any of us were given the chance to change things--everything--shatter
'the sorry scheme of things' into bits, as Omar says--we should perhaps
make an equally sorry bungle of the task of reconstruction. We're always
saying 'If!' but when it actually came to the point, do you suppose we'd
really want anything to be different?"
Again that singular, appealing query in her eyes. It was the old Margery
at last, simple, serious, and candid. There was a responsive light in
Andrew's face as he replied:
"Some things, no doubt. I don't think I could suggest a desirable change
in you--except one. Will you let me tell you?"
Margery nodded.
"It's more of a restoration than a change," continued Andrew. "I'd like
to see you, in every respect, precisely as you were at Beverly."
"And am I not? A little older, of course, and bound to be more
dignified, as becomes a young woman in society; but for the rest, I'd be
sorry to think you find a change in me."
Andrew wheeled back to the piano, and refingered a few chords.
"Now that you've seen the world," he said presently, "tell me what
pleases you most in life."
And he faced her again, smiling.
"Motion!" replied Margery promptly. "I can't explain that, but I know
it's so. Motion! I don't care what kind, just so long as it shows that
the world is alive and happy. I love to see things run and leap--a man,
or a horse, or a dog. I love the surf, the trees in a wind; all
evidences of strength, of activity, of--well, of _life_ in every and any
form. Not so much dancing. That always seems to me to be a forced, an
artificial kind of movement, unless it's _very_ smoothly done--and you
know, almost every one hops! But I could watch swimming and driving and
rowing for hours, and, for that matter, any outdoor sport--racing,
football, lacrosse--anything which gives one the idea that men are glad
to be alive!"
"How curious!" said Andrew.
"Curious? Why?"
"Because that's a man's point of view, not a girl's. I ask you what
pleases you most in life, and I expect that you're going to say music,
or flowers, or the play. Instead, you cut out remorselessly everything
which one naturally associates with a woman's way of amusing herself,
and give me an answer which sounds as if it came from one of the lads at
St. Paul's. That's the way they used to talk, exactly. It was all rush,
vim, get-up-and-get-out, with them. If you know what I mean, they
breathed so hard and talked so fast that it always seemed to me as if
they'd just come in from running in a high wind."
"Yes," agreed Margery, with a nod. "I know. That's what I like. That's
what I call the glad-to-be-alive atmosphere."
There fell a little silence. Andrew's fine eyes were tiptoeing from
point to point of the big, over-furnished _salon_ with a kind of amazed
disgust. He had not known that there were so many hideous things in the
world. Madame Palffy worshipped at the twin altars of velvet and gilt
paint. Much of what now encumbered the room and smote the eye had been
picked up in Venice, at the time of her ponderous honeymoon with the
apoplectic Palffy. That was twenty years before, when the _calle_ back
of the Piazza were filled with those incalculable treasures of tapestry,
carved wood, and ivory now in the _palazzi_ of rich Venetians--if,
indeed, they are not in Cluny. But the Palffys were as stupid as they
were pompous. They moved heavily round and round the Piazza, and
furnished their prospective _salon_ out of the front windows of smirking
charlatans. The irreparable and damning results of their selection, as
Andrew now surveyed them, had been modified--or, more exactly,
exaggerated--by the subsequent purchases of two decades in the
flamboyant bazars of the Friedrichs Strasse, in the "art departments" of
the big shops on Regent and Oxford streets, and in the degenerate
galleries of the Palais Royal. Madame Palffy's idea of statuary was a
white marble greyhound asleep upon a cushion of red _sarrancolin_: and
her taste ran to Bohemian glass, to onyx vases, and to plaques with
broad borders of patterned gilt, enclosing heads of simpering Neapolitan
girls--these last to hang upon the wall. There were spindle-legged
chairs, with backs like golden harps, and seats of brocade wherein
salmon-pink and turquoise-blue wrestled for supremacy; and in front of
the huge mantel (logically decked with a red lambrequin) there was a
velvet ottoman in the form of a mushroom, whereon when Monsieur Palffy
sat, his resemblance to a suffocating frog became absolutely startling.
The rest of the furniture was so massive as to suggest that it could
have been moved to its present position by no agency less puissant than
a glacier, and, for the most part, the upholstery was tufted, and so
tightly stuffed that one slid about on the chairs and sofas as if they
had been varnished. The room contained four times as much of everything
as was appropriate or even decent, and this gave all the furnishings the
air of being on exhibition and for sale. One's imagination, however, was
not apt to embrace the possibility, under any conceivable
circumstances, of voluntary purchase.
Presently Andrew's eyes came back to Margery. It was evident that she
had been watching him: for she smiled whimsically.
"Well?" she suggested.
"Can you guess what I was thinking?" he asked, with a slightly
embarrassed laugh.
"In part, I imagine," said Margery. "Wasn't it something like this:
that, as a matter of fact, I _have_ pretty well shattered my scheme of
things to bits and remoulded it--and that the new arrangement is not
altogether a success?"
"I don't seem to see you in these surroundings," returned Andrew
evasively. "At Beverly you seemed to 'belong': you were all of a piece
with the life. Here--well, it's different. That was why I asked you that
question, and that was why I thought there was something about you which
I wanted to see changed--or restored. You know we used to be very open
with each other, very good friends in every sense of the word; but now
something's come between us. I've felt it all along, and I thought
perhaps it was that you'd stopped caring for the things that used to
mean most to you, that new interests, and perhaps your success and the
compliments that people pay you, had cut the old ties, and that you had
new ideas and ideals. I've felt--I've felt, Miss Palffy, that I'd
forfeited even the small place I had in your life. You've been holding
me at a distance, haven't you? I've thought so. I asked you that
question to see if I was right or wrong, and to my surprise I find that
you are apparently the same as ever. You still love all that made the
sympathy between us. Well, then, the fault must be in me. Tell me: what
have I done, that you treat me almost as a stranger?"
"I'm sorry, very sorry," said Margery earnestly. "If I've given you any
such impression, believe me, it was quite without reason or even
intention. I've always looked upon you as one of my best friends.
Surely, I've not been holding you at a distance: that must have been a
fancy of yours. You must know that you're always welcome here, that I'm
always glad to see you. Please believe that."
But the little restraint was there!
"I can't quite explain what I mean," said Andrew. "You see, Paris is a
queer sort of place. It upsets all one's notions. There's so much that's
strange and interesting and new all about us that we're apt to find the
old things growing dim. I know, in my own case, that I'm wiser for these
few weeks, and perhaps"--he laughed unevenly--"sadder! Forgive me for
thinking that it might have been the same with you. This big city is so
full of fascinations of one sort or another, that one can hardly be
blamed if one is distracted at the first. Until I saw you that Sunday at
Mrs. Carnby's, I'd never realized what a difference a few months might
make. Your voice brought back--a lot! I forgot that it was all in the
past, that we couldn't pick up things as they were in Beverly--the
sailing, the bathing, the horseback rides, the golf, and all the rest.
Those months had made you a woman and me a man. Much that we used to do
and say was done and said and finished with forever. But I _did_ hope
that the spirit of the thing would remain, that we'd 'grown parallel to
each other,' as Mrs. Carnby says, and that we'd be nearer together,
instead of farther apart, for the separation. But no! It isn't a fancy
on my part. There's something changed. Do you remember Wordsworth?
'There hath passed away a glory from the earth'--and, Miss Palffy, there
has, there _has_! I know I'm not wrong--something's come between us, and
that something is just what I've said--Paris! Isn't it?"
"Yes!" she answered, with her eyes on his.
But Andrew Vane, the blind, did not understand.
Margery rose, almost with a shudder, crossed the room, and stood at the
window opening upon the balcony. Below, a whirling stream of cabs, bound
in from Longchamp, split around the island in the centre of the _place_,
merged again upon the opposite side, and went rocking and rattling on,
up the Avenue Victor Hugo, toward the Arc. In curious contrast to this
continuous and flippant clatter, the harsh bell of St. Honore d'Eylau
was striking six.
"I hate it!" said the girl. "I couldn't attempt to make you understand
how I loathe Paris, and how home-sick for America I am. Here--I can't
express it, but the shallowness and the insincerity and the--the
immorality of these people gets into one's blood. It's all pretence,
sham, and heartless, cynical impurity. At first I didn't see it--I
didn't understand. I was dazzled with the lights, and the fountains, and
the gaiety. I was lonely--yes: but when I remembered all there was to
see and do, remembered that here is the best in art and music and what
not, I thought I should be happy. But it's the beauty of a tropical
swamp, Mr. Vane--there's poison in the air! You wouldn't think I'd feel
that, would you?--but I do. It's all around me. I can't shut it out. I
meet it here, there--everywhere. It sickens me. It chokes me. It's just
as if something that I couldn't fight against, that was bound to conquer
me in the end, struggle as I might, were trying to rob me of all my
beliefs, and ideals, and trust in the honour of men and the goodness of
women. I hate it! I'd give--oh, what _wouldn't_ I give!--to be back in
America, on the good, clean North Shore, where things--where things are
_straight_!"
She turned upon him suddenly, her eyes full of a strange trouble that
was almost fear.
"Do you see?" she added.
"Yes," said Andrew slowly. "I think I see. That's what I meant; that's
how I thought you would feel. I'm sorry. You're right, of course: Paris
is no place for a girl--like you."
"It's no place for any one who loves what's clean and decent," said
Margery hotly. "It's no place for a _man_! I'm not supposed to know, am
I, about such things? And perhaps I don't. I couldn't tell you exactly
what I mean, even if I wanted to. But I feel it here." She laid her hand
upon her throat. "I feel the danger that I can't describe. It strangles
me. I'm afraid. I'm afraid for its influence upon any one for whom--for
whom I might care. I'm afraid for myself. It's nothing definite, you
see, and that's just where it seems to me to be so dangerous. Do you
remember when we were reading Tennyson at Beverly--'The Lotus Eaters'?"
She paused for an instant, and then, looking away from him again,
recited the lines:
"'For surely now our household hearths are cold:
Our sons inherit us: our looks are strange:
And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy.
Or else the island princes over-bold
Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings,
Before them of the ten years' war in Troy,
And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things,
Is there confusion in the little isle?
Let what is broken so remain.'"
There was something in her voice more eloquent than the music of the
words. Andrew came forward a step, as if he would have touched her, but
she looked up and met his eyes.
"And you're afraid--?" he began.
"I'm afraid," she answered, "that we've come to a land where it seems
always afternoon; and that if we don't take heed, my friend, we may not
fight a good fight, we may not keep the faith."
She made an odd little weary gesture.
"Will you play some of the 'Garden' now?" she asked. "I think I should
like it. I'm just the least bit blue."
Andrew hesitated, but the words he wanted would not come. He turned back
to the piano, fingered the music doubtfully for a moment, and then began
to play. There was no need to voice the words. They both knew them well,
and they fitted, as, somehow, the verse of Omar has a knack of doing.
"Strange, is it not, that of the myriads who
Before us passed the Door of Darkness through,
Not one returns to tell us of the Road
Which to discover we must travel too."
"I'm glad I know you," he broke in impulsively, with his fingers on the
keys. "You're a good friend."
Margery made no reply.
"My grandfather, who's the best old chap in all the world," continued
Andrew, playing the following crescendo softly, "is the only other
person of whom I can feel that as you make me feel it. He always calls
me 'Andy.' I rather like that silly little name. I wonder--"
He swung round, facing her.
"I think we're both of us a trifle homesick, Miss Palffy. I wonder if
you'd mind--calling me--that?"
He looked down for a second, and in that second Margery Palffy moistened
her lips. When she spoke, it seemed to her that her voice sounded harsh
and dry.
"I shall be very glad, if you wish it--Andy."
"Thank you. And I--?"
"If you like--yes. After all, as you say, we're friends--and a little
homesick."
"Thank you, Margery."
Andrew resumed his playing, turning a few pages.
"Ah, Love, could you and I with Fate conspire
To grasp the sorry scheme of things entire,
Would we not shatter it to bits--and then
Remould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!"
Behind him, the girl, unseen, unheard, was whispering a word for every
chord. Once, her hand went out toward the smooth, close-cropped head,
bent in eager attention above the score.
"Ah, Love!" said the music.
"Ah, love!" whispered Margery Palffy.
"What a _lot_ there is in this!" exclaimed Andrew, crashing into two
sharps.
"Yes."
Once more, to Margery, her voice seemed cold and hard.
"The good old days at Beverly--what?" said Andrew.
"Yes."
Andrew dawdled with the _andante_.
"Ah, Moon of my Delight, that knows no wane--"
"I must be going," he said, and rose to take her hand.
"I wonder," he added, retaining it, "if you know that I would give the
world to ask you just one question--and be certain of the answer?"
"Not now," said Margery steadily, "not now, please. I have many things
to think of. Listen. I'm going down to Poissy--to the Carnbys',
to-morrow. I know they mean to ask you over Sunday; and then, my friend,
you can ask me--whatever you will. No, please. Good-by."
From the window she watched him stroll across to the little island in
the centre of the _place_, there pause to await the coming of the tram,
and then, mounting to the _imperiale_, light a cigarette. Presently,
with hee-hawing of its donkey-horn, the tram swerved into the avenue
again.
The girl leaned her cheek against the heavy curtain. The tram dwindled
into the distance--toward the Arc--toward the brilliant centre of
Paris--toward danger! Then, in a still small voice, she prayed:
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who--who trespass
against us. And lead us--lead us not into temptation: but deliver us
from evil...."