But this occasion, which had led Amaldi to suspect that Sophy did not
realise the state of things between her husband and Belinda, was the
cause of her first awakening to something unusual in their relationship.
It was not their boisterous romping which had done this. Sophy was too
used to the fondness of Young America for indulging in this sort of
"high-jinks" to notice particularly the rough-and-tumble of Belinda's
passage with Loring.
She had been troubled by the disgust which she felt underneath Amaldi's
quiet manner. She winced from what she divined to be his point of
view--the point of view of a cultured Athenian watching the holiday
pranks of barbarians. This mortified and disturbed her. But she had only
regretted the bad taste of the scuffle; it had not revealed to her
anything deeper. No--it was Loring's curt laugh as he turned away from
Belinda's cry of "I _hate_ you!"--it was something in Belinda's voice
and look as she gave this cry that had startled Sophy. In the girl's
voice and look there had been such concentrated, vibrating passion; in
Loring's laugh she had heard an echo of the love-laughs of her own
wooing. There was a certain note of secure mockery in it--a threat as of
something controlled--a suppressed secret triumph, that brought the past
giddily upon her.
She had glanced quickly from him to Belinda. The girl's face was
quivering--but not with anger. Certainly not with anger. For though she
frowned, her red mouth tilted upward. Her downcast eyelids fluttered as
though she, too, were veiling some suppressed, triumphant secret. There
was more than her usual almost insolent cock-sureness in the way that
she twisted up her ruddy mane again, holding the amber hairpins between
her strong, glistening teeth as she did so, and looking down in that
veiled, secretive way. It was the air of the diverted pussy-cat who
says: "All right, my nimble mouse--enjoy your seeming freedom. When I
tire of the game, I know how to stop your friskings."
Sophy did not read the exact meaning of this air of Belinda, but she saw
plainly that it indicated a certain secret understanding between her and
Morris.
From this time she could not help observing Morris and Belinda "with a
difference." If it were merely a flirtation between them it was in
execrable taste. She could not help (being human and having loved him so
well) resenting the idea that he should flirt, even in the most
superficial way, with the girl that she herself had brought into their
home. But supposing that it was more serious--supposing that this
self-willed, violent madcap had a real feeling for Morris--supposing
that in his present mood of anger against her (Sophy) he were to revenge
himself by trifling with Belinda?
Sophy could scarcely bring herself to believe him capable of this--yet
there was the possibility. Morris could be very reckless, especially
when driven by resentment. It did not yet occur to Sophy that the
feeling between the two might be mutual.
Her woman's instinct was to guard the girl temporarily in her care, from
the freakishness of her own wayward, violent nature. She thought with
dismay of Loring's constant drinking. What might he not say and do under
the double stress of wine and Belinda's provocative beauty?
And in the week that followed she saw much that made her uneasy, yet
nothing which she could actually fix upon. Certainly nothing that could
give her an excuse for speaking to Belinda. For she had decided that she
would speak to the girl if it became necessary, rather than to Morris.
She recoiled, in all her being, from speaking to him on such a subject.
Besides, she felt that it would only enrage him further. But Belinda
might listen. She might appreciate it, that Sophy should go direct to
her, instead of to her mother.
And still nothing had happened that made Sophy feel justified in taking
such a course, though _something_ there undoubtedly was--something not
just right, not just clear--a tension, a vibration. It humiliated her to
be thus on the alert. She felt like a spy. Yet she felt also that it was
clearly her duty to be watchful if only for the sake of Belinda.
She knew that Morris was in a very exasperated, cruel mood. He nursed
against her the most passionate grievance. She felt that given the
occasion he might go to excessive lengths in his angry desire to punish
her. She knew how vindictive his present temper was, because although he
had been drinking much less of late, he had not sought a reconciliation
with her. But she did not make any advances to him. She had told him one
night at Nahant that she would never again live with him as his wife,
unless he could show her beyond doubt that he loved her more than drink.
He had stared at her, literally dumb with fury. Then he had flung out of
the room, slamming the door behind him. They had never spoken on the
subject since.
One evening, towards the end of the week, Sophy stayed at home by
herself. She looked forward with relief to these quiet hours. She felt
a craving for solitude and music--to sing out some of the pain that was
oppressing her. She dined early and went to what was called "the little
music-room." This room she had had done over for her especial use. The
walls were tranquil and rather bare, of a soft cream colour. A frieze in
subdued tones after a design by Leonardo ran about it. There was only
one painting, a lovely Luini angel with a viol. The dark, polished floor
reflected jars of blue Hortensias. Two church candles on silver
"prickets" lighted the piano. The windows, flush with the sea-lawn, were
opened wide. Through them floated soft, cloud-tempered moonlight and the
deep breaths of the sea.
The room and the hour fitted her mood to perfection. She sat down at the
piano and began thinking aloud, as it were, in what Chesney had called
her "imperial purple voice."
First Russian folk music came to her. She, too, was isolated on the
_steppe_ of her own nature. The desolate words went voluming out upon
the night, in that hushed, dusky gold of the great contralto:
"Lord, hear us!... Lord God, hear us!
We are in bondage:
Like the Volga, in its chains of ice,
We are bound in the bitter ice of sorrow.
Be to us as the springtide that melts the ice,
Arise! Shine! For we sit in darkness
And in the shadow of death.
Lord, hear us! Lord God, hear us!"
She looked up as she ended, to see Amaldi standing in one of the open
windows.
"May I come in?" he said. "I shan't be disturbing you?"
She smiled, holding out her hand.
"No. Do come in, Amaldi. You're just the one person who won't disturb
me. I'm music-thirsty to-night. Now you shall play for me."
"But not until you've sung more--please," he said quickly.
"Very well. I'll sing to you, then you'll play for me. It seems strange
that I've never heard you play. But there were always so many people
about. I can't enjoy music--really, in a crowd."
She sang on for half an hour, first more Russian music, then old
Italian. He sat where he could see her face but did not seem to look at
her. Glancing at him now and then, she knew that the immobility of his
dark profile meant intense feeling, not any lack of it. When she would
have stopped at last, he begged for one more song. "Something very
simple--that you especially care for," he urged.
She thought a moment. Then she said:
"If I can remember the music I'll sing you a Scotch song called
_Ettrick_. I loved it so that I made the music for it myself. But it's
been a long, long time since I've sung it----"
Her hands wandered among the keys, gathering a harmony here, a note or
two of the melody. It was as if she were gathering flowers of sound with
her slow, caressing fingers. She found the right opening chords at last,
ventured them softly, then struck full. It was a royal burst of
sound--those chords and her violet voice together: out leaped the glad
exultant words:
"When we first rade down Ettrick,
Our bridles were ringing, our hearts were dancing,
The waters were singing, the sun was glancing.
An' blithely our voices rang out thegither,
As we brushed the dew frae the blooming heather,
When we first rade down Ettrick."
She paused, drew in a deep breath like sighing. The next chords fell sad
and heavy as earth upon the dead.
"When we next rade down Ettrick,
The day was dying, the wild birds calling,
The wind was sighing, the leaves were falling,
An' silent an' weary, but closer thegither,
We urged our steeds thro' the faded heather,
When we next rade down Ettrick."
Then came wild dissonance, and a minor like the wailing of the
wind--then once more the heavy, disconsolate chords, dirge-like,
apathetic. Her voice sounded like a voice wafting back across the river
of death in those last lines of all--so spent and inconsolable it was:
"For we never again were to ride thegither
In sun or storm on the mountain heather."
Amaldi sat very still, but his heart raced. Wonder filled him--wonder
and exultation and great pain. She was so marvellous to him--her beauty
of flesh and of spirit--now this added beauty of music. And this soul of
music in her was one with his. They were one in this at least. He felt
that if chance had been less cruel they might have been one in all
things. It seemed hateful and stupid, that the gross senselessness of
circumstance should have set them so far apart. When she ceased singing
he sprang to his feet, went close to her.
"You are wonderful ... you are wonderful...." he said shakenly. They
were both rather pale. She sat looking up at him in silence. Then she
said in a low voice:
"It is a joy to sing to one who understands as you do."
He repeated as if unable to find more fitting words:
"You are a wonderful, wonderful woman. There is no one like you. No one
... no one...."
"Dear Amaldi ... thank you," she said, much moved; and a little confused
by his impetuousness she rose from the piano, reminding him of his
promise to play for her. He submitted reluctantly. It seemed a pity, he
protested, to play after such singing. And now he flushed with the inner
tension of his thought, then paled again--for he was sure now, quite
sure, that love had failed her a second time; her own love as well as
another's. The passion in her voice had been the passion of
renunciation.
He began with an _etude_ of Bach. It was the nun in her mood that he
played to.
As an instrument the piano resembles a woman who speaks many languages
quite well. She speaks to aliens in their different tongues and people
think "what a clever linguist!" But sometime there comes one who
understands her own native language. To him her soul goes forth; he
draws from her true eloquence, the heart's warmth. Glittering facility
is put aside. Soft, sonorous, velvet-voiced the erstwhile brilliant
chatterer becomes a poet singing forth the riches of her secret self.
With the first tones drawn by Amaldi from the familiar that Sophy
thought she knew so well, she caught in a quick breath and leaned
forward. Was that the voice of her own excellent Steinway, that deep,
liquid, ringing sound that seemed to flow from the white keys without
concussion? She sat almost in tears for the perfect sound, the infinite
plaint of the music, as of a soul crying, "My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me?" The change to ineffable exultation--the triumph of the
great, crystal-white major chords that seemed to shout, "Death is
conquered!"
"Go on," she whispered when he paused. "Go on ... play me something of
your own this time...."
Amaldi glanced at her, then away again. A strange look had flashed into
his eyes as they rested on hers. It stirred her oddly. There had been
something half-mystic, half passionate in that fleeting look. She
wondered what it was he had thought of as that expression quickened his
eyes.
"Do you remember those lines in _Die Nord See_?" he asked the next
moment.
"Dort am hochgewoelbten Fenster
Steht eine schoene kranke Frau
Zart durchsichtig und marmorblass
Und sie spielt die Harfe und singt,
Und der Wind durchwuehlt ihre langen Locken
Und traegt ihr dunkles Lied
Ueber das weite, stuermende Meer."
"Yes. They always cast a sort of spell over me. But what made you think
of them just now, Amaldi?"
"Because they cast a spell over me, too. In fact they haunted me till I
put the story of that 'lovely, ill woman' into music. I'll play that for
you."
Sophy could not restrain an impulse of curiosity.
"Tell me first ... will you--what you thought her story was?"
Amaldi kept his eyes on the keyboard and spoke rather low and rapidly.
"I fancied," he said, "that love had made her a prisoner in that castle.
Then love had died. But love's ghost haunted the empty halls. I dreamed
that her sickness was a sickness of the heart and soul ... the regret
for love ... the fear of the ghost of love."
He began the opening movement as he finished speaking, a wild,
monotonous, plangent cadence, like the rhythmic beat of surf on a rocky
coast.
There is in the life of every artist, of every sensitive and lover, a
supreme inspirational hour, wherein expression seems simple as
breathing, and inevitable as birth and death. Amaldi, who was really
great in music, played that night as never until then, as it was never
given him to play again. Grief and love, these are the mighty angels
that urge genius to its fullest utterance.
As the music poured over Sophy its splendid and tumultuous mystery, she
felt like one chained upon a rock that the high tide overwhelms ...
drowning, suffocating in that passionate welter of sound. The
composition was in itself a masterpiece, but her knowledge of what it
was intended to express lent it a terrible lucidity. That woman in her
prison-castle, alone with the ghost of love--was she herself. It was her
secret malady--her soul's mortal sickness that he was revealing in that
daemonic candour of superb harmony.
She put up one hand over her eyes, as she sat gathered in upon herself.
She felt as if some barrier were too completely down between them, as
if, in some well-nigh insufferable way he touched the open wound in her
heart.
"He knows ... he knows...." she kept thinking. "He is telling me in this
way that he knows...."
And she could not be sure whether she shrank from his knowing, or
whether it was a relief to her.
There flashed silence. The exquisite, intolerable music ceased, went out
like flame. The dead silence was like a darkness.
Then Sophy forced herself to speak.
"You are very great, Amaldi," she said uncertainly, her hand still over
her eyes. "You ... you should give all your life to music."
He answered in a voice as strange as his look had been just now:
"All my life is not mine to give to music."
She could not think of any fitting response to this. Silence fell again.
She broke it nervously by asking him to play more for her, "something
not quite so despairing." She smiled as she said this, but Amaldi
thought: "She knows now that I know." This gave him a feeling of curious
satisfaction and relief. It seemed, somehow, the beginning of something,
the beginning of a new phase in their relations. Hope had stirred in
him. The future seemed to him vague yet promising like an uncharted sea.
He played for her an hour longer, all the music that she loved best.
They said good-night gravely, avoiding each other's eyes.