It seemed very strange to Sophy, as unreal as this new love in another
way, to find herself once more in the noisy glitter of the world after
her three years of hermitage. "The crackling of thorns under a pot" it
seemed to her--of big gilded thorns under a big gilded pot. The pot
bubbled merrily, boiling over with iridescent froth; its steam was
heady, causing those who tended it to dance blithely like
self-hypnotised Arabs about a brazier. Sophy enjoyed gorgeous foolery as
much as any other, when she was in the mood. But now she was far from
the mood. It was as if Endymion had insisted on presenting Selene at the
court of Elis with "excursions and alarums," and gaudy pageants--as if
he could not feel his goddess wholly his until the curious eyes of the
courtiers approved his choice. For she had found out that it was by his
desire that his mother had so insisted on this visit. Mrs. Loring had
been quite unconscious of betraying motives when she said: "I wouldn't
urge you, my dear, but Morry so wishes it. He thinks you've been too
long in this dear, dreamy old place. Besides," she had added, smiling,
"he naturally wishes the world to see his Faery Queen...."
Sophy had mentioned this to Loring.
"Don't let's go, dear.... I'm sure your mother will understand. And I
really hate the idea," she had said to him.
But Loring had replied:
"You don't know my mother yet, Beautiful. She would feel awfully cut up
if we didn't go to her after we came back. Don't you see?-- It would
look queer to others, too...."
Sophy had yielded in the end. Yet she smiled to herself, a little
wistfully, reflecting on the meaning of the name Endymion, "a being that
gently comes over one." Here she was--to her mind the most pitiable of
trophy-ikons--a bride displayed in new attire, new jewels and new love,
to the eyes of the appraising world.
In all the conviviality poured over him as bridegroom by laughing
friends, Morris was very careful not to go too far that summer. The
friends grinned slyly--"Morry's on the water-wagon of love," the word
went round. Some wag said that the fire-water of matrimony went flat in
the second year--and "Mrs. Morry" might find her consort drinking from
other stills. This would prove a shock.
"Oh, she won't mind," a woman had said easily. "Morry's so perfectly
delightful when he's taken a bit too much. He's _so_ amusing."
But on the first occasion of this kind Sophy had minded very much
indeed. It did not happen until towards the middle of their first winter
in New York. They had given a dinner and some people had stayed on
afterwards until one o'clock. One of the guests, a young Bavarian, had
played rousingly on the piano. The keys seemed to smoke under his long,
vigorous hands. He ended with some frenzied Polish dances. Everybody was
drinking and smoking--Loring drank more than he smoked. A pretty gypsy
looking woman jumped up and began an impromptu dance to the wild music.
Loring began to dance with her. The game of drawing-room romps became
breathless.
Sophy sat amused like the rest. His head looked so oddly Greek with its
short, tossing locks above the ugly cylinders of his modern dress. He
should have had on a leopard's skin. As this thought came to her, some
one cried: "Oh, Morry!--_Do_ give us the 'Reformed Alcibiades'. Do!
_do!_--I haven't seen you do it for a whole year...."
A chorus rose at once about him. He hesitated a moment--glanced at
Sophy. She was smiling. "Shall I?" he said doubtfully.
"Well-- I confess I'm curious to see how a 'reformed Alcibiades' _would_
dance...." she said, still smiling.
Von Hoff, the young man at the piano, began a most enticing, fiery
measure. It went to Loring's head. He tossed off a whiskey and soda,
cried, "Here goes, then!" and ran from the room.
"Haven't you really ever seen him do it, Mrs. Loring?" said the woman
who had asked for the dance.
"No-- I didn't even know he could dance so cleverly----"
"You've a treat before you, then. It's _the_ most delicious thing you
ever saw...."
"Strike up, slave!" came Loring's voice from the next room. Von Hoff
"struck up." Loring had whispered him what to play as he ran out. It was
a voluptuous, half Spanish, half Oriental measure. To its rhythm Loring
danced back into the room. He had set a huge wreath of artificial roses
with flying ribbons on his head. His evening trousers were rolled up,
leaving his legs bare from the knee down. A pair of elaborate
sandals--relics of Harvard days--encased his feet. He had taken off his
coat and collar and rolled back his shirt-sleeves. A wide, white silken
scarf of Sophy's formed his peplum. Under one arm was tucked a big,
stuffed pheasant to represent the pet quail of Alcibiades. In his hand
he held a wine-cup, inverted.
The dance began charmingly. Alcibiades was evidently refusing all
invitations to drink from many invisible comrades.... The first shock of
thus seeing him comically "dressed up"--in a costume which was only
saved from low absurdity by the perfect beauty of his classic head and
slight figure--this first startled recoil having passed, Sophy watched
his amazingly graceful poses with a tolerable pleasure. She could not
really enjoy it--that her husband should prance about so attired for the
amusement of their guests--but she remembered, soberly enough, that he
was very young, and that her distaste was probably the result of maturer
years.
Then came the real shock. The dance grew frankly ludicrous. With
dextrous sleight of hand, Alcibiades made it appear as though his
"quail" were angrily demanding a drink from the inverted goblet. The
fowl finally conquers. The goblet is filled for him again and again.
Alcibiades can no longer resist temptation, thus seeing a mere fowl take
its fill. He, too, begins to drink.... The dance ends in a mad, drunken
whirl, in which Alcibiades crowns the pheasant with his wreath, and they
collapse together upon the floor in a maudlin heap.
The thing was really wonderfully well done. The guests were in ecstasies
of laughter. But Sophy felt cold and sick. It seemed to her that he
could not love her as she had thought. Else how could he turn the body
that she loved into a travesty for others to laugh at? She felt as
though the dignity of their mutual love were lying there on the floor,
sprawled and ruffled and lifeless like the stuffed pheasant....
This feeling was not apparent in her face. Her training had been too
thorough and bitter for her to let the world have even a glimpse of her
chagrin. But though no one else guessed it, Loring was aware instantly
of something wrong. As soon as he had changed back to ordinary dress,
and returned to the drawing-room, where people were now saying
good-night--he felt this. And he, too, was chagrined. He had taken just
enough liquor to make this chagrin of his savour of anger. For the first
time he felt her "superiority" not as that of a goddess, but of a wife.
She "disapproved" of him. To be "disapproved" of had always roused the
ugly side of his nature.
"And she told me herself to go ahead," he thought irefully. "Now she's
got it in for me.... I'll be curtain-lectured I suppose--get a glimpse
of the seamy side of matrimony...."
He reinforced himself with another high-ball.
When the last guest had gone he went up to Sophy. She had turned to get
her fan from a sofa where she had left it. It was the fan of white
peacock feathers that Amaldi had once admired. She thought of him
suddenly as she took it in her hand. How would he have looked had he
seen that dance?-- She reddened. Why did such thoughts come to one? Life
was quite difficult enough without these unbidden, scathing fancies. She
tried to put on a natural, easy expression. As is always the case, this
gave her face a strained look--the look of one "sitting" for a
photograph.
On his side, Loring's had an expression that Sophy was only too familiar
with--but until now, she had never seen it on _his_ face. It was the
pale, black-eyed, fixed expression of a man who has taken too much to
drink, without being in the least "drunk." Sophy could not tell what it
was she felt at that moment. It was like the pang of a strange sickness.
And again it was like a blow on an old wound. The old and new wound
seemed bleeding together in her breast. She tried to pass him with a
smile.
"It's all hours of the night.... I'm simply dropping with sleep...." she
said, her voice, at least, natural enough.
He planted himself in her way. His hands were deep in his pockets. His
white, fixed young face was dropped a little. He looked up at her stilly
from under the beautiful arch of his brows that she so loved.... They
always reminded her of Marlowe's lovely expression "airy brows." Now
they lowered like clouds over the bold, still eyes.
"I say, Selene," he blurted, enunciating his words very clearly. "Let's
have it ... and get done with it...."
"What, Morris?"
"The wigging you've got in pickle for me.... Mixing my metaphors, too,
ain't I?... There's another grievance for you.... Poetess as well as
goddess will take umbrage now...."
Sophy hated being called "poetess." That Morris should call her
"poetess" seemed the last touch of irony. She stood looking at him
gently.
"I haven't got a 'wigging' in store for you," she said. "Why are you
angry?"
"Why are _you_ angry?... But, there, that's poppycock--my asking that. I
know devilish well why you're angry. It's because I danced that
Alcibiades thing.... Well--you told me to, didn't you?"
Sophy hesitated. Then she said frankly:
"It's true I didn't like it, Morris. But that oughtn't to vex you." Her
voice trembled suddenly. "When a woman loves a man as I love you--she
can't bear to ... to see him ... like that."
"Make a fool of himself, you mean?"
Sophy went close and put her hand on his breast.
"Morris...." she said, "are you trying to quarrel ... with _me_, dear?"
Her tone was lovely as she said this. "He's so young ... so young...."
she was telling herself.
But Loring's overstrung mood sensed this maternal indulgence, and it
infuriated him still further.
"You've got me mixed with your dear Bobby, haven't you?" he asked
sneeringly.
"Oh, Morris!"
She drew back, flushing even over her neck and arms. Anger as well as
pain drove her blood.
"Well--you used just the tone you'd use to a youngster who'd been
stealing jam," he said sulkily.
Sophy stood playing with the fan of white feathers. Life seemed a
nightmare to her just then. This rude, sullen boy who was yet her
husband made her feel as if all the gods of Malice were watching her.
She could almost hear the Olympian titter go round the room. She tried
to think of some way of lifting their life out of this horrid,
commonplace quagmire into which it had slipped so suddenly--and it was
as if their life were some huge, smooth, handleless vessel upon which
she could not get a grip.
"He isn't himself--this isn't the real Morris----" her thought sanely
reminded her. "This is Whiskey...."
She lifted her slight figure with a sudden movement of determination.
"Morris, dear," she said, "I'm not going to let you quarrel with me....
Good-night."
She went swiftly by him into her bedroom. He longed to catch her arms
and stop her as she went by, but he did not dare. He turned on his heel
and went back into the drawing-room. The butler was clearing away the
tray of liqueurs and whiskey.
"Hold on a moment, Jennings," said Loring. He took another stiff drink.
As often happens, this lost dram of whiskey wrought a totally different
mood in him. Within five minutes his anger had merged into a wild
impulse of desire. He wondered now that he could have been so curt with
his Selene. He understood as in a flash of revelation why she had
objected to that "rotten dance." He wanted to tell her so with devouring
kisses. He waited until the servants had withdrawn, then went to her
bedroom door.
"Who is it?" came her voice.
"I ... Endymion," he murmured.
He was ablaze with love and repentance and--whiskey, but he was still
not in the least what could be called "drunk."
"Come in," said Sophy. Her heart failed her. Was he coming to have his
quarrel out? She felt quite numb--lifeless--as though made of wood. Her
maid had undressed her and plaited her long hair for the night. She was
sitting before the fire in her white dressing-gown. Her eyes looked very
sad to him in her quiet face. He came and threw himself on his knees
beside her.
"Forgive me ... forgive me, Selene ... forgive me...." he murmured,
unconsciously metrical. At any other time Sophy would have teased him
for it. Now she did not even notice it. She had been thinking: "George
Eliot says somewhere that 'we can endure our worst sorrows but once'....
I am enduring mine twice...."
She put her hand on the bowed head.
"Never mind, dear," she said.
He seized her bare arm in both hot hands, and his lips, still hotter,
ran over it. She shivered, trying to draw it away from him. He thought
that she shivered with love. He sprang to his feet, and, tall woman as
she was, so great was the feverish strength of his desire, he drew her
easily up from the low chair into his arms. His breath reeking of spirit
poured over her half averted face. She could not bear to struggle with
him. That would seem the last degradation.
"I'm tired, dear...." she whispered. "I'm deadly tired...."
And he laughed. And this low exultant laugh, that had once made such
music in her ears, seemed like that silent tittering of malicious gods
grown audible.
"No ... Morris ... no...." she said, bracing herself against him by her
strong, slight arms. He laughed on. He began to whisper incoherently in
her averted ear....
"Oh, moon-woman ... oh, virgin-goddess.... Don't I know all your sweet
reluctances by heart?... Isn't that what made me mad to conquer you?...
You tempted me yourself.... Listen.... I never confessed it.... Now I'll
confess for penance.... Do you know what made me first swear I'd marry
you?... Your own words, Selene!... Your own words!... It was a verse of
yours I read.... Oh, such a cock-sure ... Olympian verse!... Listen: Do
you remember?... Here's how it went...."
He muttered her own words of passionate freedom into her averted,
shrinking ear:
"I am the Wind's, and the Wind is mine!
No mortal lover shall me discover;
Freedom clear is our bridal-wine--
Oh, lordly Wind! Oh, perfect lover!..."
"There!--That's what made me set my will like steel to conquer you....
_I'll_ be her 'mortal lover' I said.... And see!-- You are in my
arms...."
He stopped aghast. In his arms, heavily drooping, her face thrust from
him against her own shoulder, she was weeping like one broken-hearted.