Kitabı oku: «Anthony The Absolute», sayfa 12

April 16th. Morning,

WE are going down to Tientsin on the forenoon train for the funeral. Then back here before night.

Heloise herself has seen to all the little necessary arrangements. She had me get what few flowers I could last night. And I believe we can get more in Tientsin. She wants to do everything she can for his memory in these last hours.

I think she is very fine about it. She exhibits no weakness. She shirks neither from what she regards as her duty in this tragic time nor from the results of her own acts. It has all come back to her, of course, in a thousand memory-shapes. It must have. But she does not speak of that.

The Minister sent over a large bunch of lilac blossoms last night, cut from the bushes in the Legation compound.

April 17th

WE came back to Peking on the late afternoon train – Heloise, Hindmann and I. But Hindmann stayed in the smoking car most of the way.

Heloise and I sat in our compartment without saying much of anything. The sober spell of the funeral service was on us both. I bought some magazines at Tientsin, and laid them on the seat close to her hand. She picked one up, and turned the pages, but without much interest. In a few moments she laid it aside. Most of the way she rested her head back in the corner of the seat and watched the little brick stations flit by, and the Chinese farms with their mud-walled compounds.

After a time I went forward and joined Hindmann. I thought Heloise would be glad of a little solitude. Then there was a chance that she might sleep a little. But I don’t believe she did, for when I looked in on her, half an hour later, she was sitting forward, chin on hand, studying the flat brown countryside with its occasional squares of green millet-spears.

She gave me a faint smile.

“Don’t go away again,” she said, her eyes back on the brown and green fields and the dingy gray compounds.

And since she was not looking at me, and seemed not to expect a reply, I just dropped down opposite her and myself gazed out the window.

After a little she spoke again, with some uncertainty in her voice.

“I’ll move my things back to our little hotel – first, Anthony.”

I must have shaken my head, for she added, more resolutely —

“I must, Anthony.”

“It would be trying for you to stay on at the Wagon-lits, of course,” I began.

“It isn’t only that,” said she; then stopped.

It was not only that, of course. The poor child was, is, penniless. But this was something I could not talk about. For the first time in many days there was an awkwardness between us. Certainly I felt it, and I think she did. We could n’t quite think out what to say. We had been in the presence of death, and love seemed a petty, selfish thing. And back of this, something had happened that I don’t quite understand now. We have no longer the poignantly intimate sense of apartness from the world that we had during those strange, wonderful days at the Hôtel de Chine. The world has thrust itself between us. I can see now that we were a million miles away from actual life, over there in our two little rooms with the shrunken door between. We did not know it then; but we were. We have become self-conscious. Many things flitted into my mind to say, but I could not say them. They were all unpleasantly flavored with Consuls-General, and big, noisy hotels, and newspapers, and legal disputes. It was depressing to think that we could no longer slip unnoticed about the quaint, barbaric old city. We are known now; conspicuous, even.

And woven through all these thoughts, deep in our common consciousness, hovered that brooding mystery of death.

“All right, Heloise,” said I, “we will get your bags back to-night. The first thing. And we won’t hurry about straightening out our plans. Wait a few days, until you feel more like facing things. What you need now, I think, is some rest.”

She shook her head. “I don’t need rest, Anthony. Goodness knows I have strength enough for six women. I can face things. No, let’s plan now. What do you want me to do?”

I sat there for several long moments, trying to think how to say it. I remember that I rubbed my forefinger back and forth along the windowsill, through the dust, and followed it intently with my eyes.

Finally she asked, still gazing out the window —

“Do you think I ought to go to Paris, Anthony?”

I nodded. Then, as she was not looking at me, said – “Yes, I do.”

“But how, Anthony? How on earth can I? Everything is mixed now.”

“I know,” said I. “But I’ve been thinking that out. We can do it.”

“Yes,” said she; “but don’t you see – ”

It was not becoming easier. So I broke out with my conclusions:

“In its essentials, dear, our plan is not changed at all.”

“That’s absurd, Anthony!”

“No. What has happened has merely deferred the payment of that money. Ultimately it will have to come to you. Something, surely. I will advance it.” She moved restlessly. I hurried on. “You will give me your note and an assignment of your claim on the estate. I – I will charge you interest, Heloise. It will be perfectly businesslike. These things are done every day. Really.”

It was no good talking on. She had turned her face away, and, under pretext of resting it on her hand, was hiding it from me. I forgot what she had said about not leaving her again, and stumbled out of the compartment and went back to Hindmann.

I did not return until he told me that we were approaching the outskirts of Peking.

She smiled, as she had before. Then I helped her on with her coat, and gathered up the magazines. We stood there, awkwardly.

Finally I said – “Well, we are n’t quite there yet. We may as well sit again.”

Then the train slowed down, and dallied along by jerky stages.

“Anthony,” said she. “I’ve been thinking, you never saw him in his younger days. He was a very likeable man, dear. He got on with people. And he was a good business man. Big and bluff, you know, and strong. I – I’ve been thinking – we should n’t have married, he and I. That was a mistake. I was too young to know what marriage means. And he was very positive. But I can’t help wishing you had seen him – before. I really think you would have liked him, Anthony. Strong men always did… You don’t think it strange of me?”

“Heloise, dear,” said I, “I’ve been thinking the same strange thoughts. I did like him. He never really knew what he was doing. Even after what happened – what he tried to do – I have n’t been able to feel any hatred. No, not even anger. Nothing but a queer sort of sorrow.”

“Oh, Anthony,” she breathed, her eyes shining. “Do you feel that way?”

Then she said – “I’ve wanted to ask you… It’s difficult… did he know about – us, Anthony?”

I could n’t say much now. But I nodded.

Her eyes were on mine; her lips were parted. “You told him, Anthony?”

I nodded again.

“Oh,” she cried softly – with immense relief on her dear face – “oh, Anthony, I’m so glad. Because he never could have felt in that terrible way toward you. He did n’t, Anthony, did he?”

I shook my head.

The train rolled into the station-shadows, and stopped.

“Because,” she was saying in my ear, as we moved slowly out into the corridor, “hard as he was sometimes, and positive, and all shaken and tortured, even he knew the real things when he found them, Anthony. It would have hurt him, but he would have been fair – once he could really get it clear.” And she whispered, right there in the corridor of the car, with passengers crowding behind us and before – “I’m so glad he knew it was you!”

Hindmann tells me that we passed Sir Robert to-day in the railway station at Tientsin. It seems that that old man and I actually brushed sleeves.

I did n’t know this. Did n’t see him at all, in fact. But Hindmann says he looked straight at me, without the slightest sign of recognition – first at Heloise and then at me.

He had a young woman with him; a rather good-looking girlish person, very thin, but “with a way about her.” Hindmann has seen her before. He thinks she ran a gambling club in Macao when he was last on the Coast.

Sir Robert himself impressed him as looking extremely old and not a little feeble, with a slight paralysis that has twisted his face up curiously on the left side.

I am glad I did not see him. I hope I never shall.

Grand Hôtel des Wagon-lits. April 17th. Later

I HELPED Heloise get her things back to our little hotel last night. Then I packed a bag and came over here and took a room.

She did n’t say anything when I told her I was going to do this. But I am sure she realizes that it is the only thing to do. It disturbs me to think of her alone over there. But now that she is known to half the white people in Peking, I will not permit myself to stay there with her. I will not have her talked about on any new grounds. And now that I am beginning to understand her, I see clearly enough that I must protect her. Lately it has seemed to me that none of the more artificial restraints that society accepts as necessary details of a working code mean much to her.

I begin to think that in certain fine ways women are more primitive than men. In the sense, I mean, that their deeper emotional nature lies closer to the roots of life than ours does. They are more elementally natural, harder to sophisticate. They feel more swiftly and surely, without the elaborate intellectual machinery that men find it necessary to call into use in order to arrive at conclusions. In certain respects they are deeper and bigger than we are.

I have read all this in the books, of course – years ago – but never before believed it in the sense that belief implies personal experience and understanding.

April 18th. Morning. (At the Wagon-lits)

YES, I was right in moving over here. Heloise admitted it to-day. I asked her if she did n’t agree with me, and she said she had come to think that my judgment is better than hers in these matters. God knows, I am unworldly enough – sometimes I feel that she and I are nothing but a couple of babes in the woods of life – but at least I am a bit more worldly than she.

And I was right in insisting that we go right on with our plan, as if nothing had happened. I have forced myself to go over the whole difficult business, thinking it out step by step; and I was right.

It is a difficult business. Sometimes, at night, when my imagination slips out of control and dream-pictures come of a home of my own, it is almost more than I can bear. Last night I had to switch on the lights and work until daylight over the notes for Volume Six. (That is to be the section devoted to “True Intervals and Natural Song.”)

I am driving myself to think constantly of the other side of the picture – to realize how beautiful Heloise is, what a person she is and what a voice she has. No home that I could conceivably offer her would be large enough to contain her life. And when I construct in my mind the years during which she would have to fight her own inclinations, deliberately confine her activities and build barriers against the growth of her own soul, my resolution strengthens. If it is hard to give her up now, it would be impossible then. I know myself well enough to know what I should be and do, then. I would be jealous of her very bigness. I would, likely as not, come to hate her beauty, her voice, her capacity for work. I would fight to make a Hausfrau of her, with babies, and meals to get – meals for me! – and sweeping and dusting to look after. And then, should I succeed in that miserable purpose; should I have to realize, every day and every night, with her beauty fading and with that wonderful edge on her voice becoming blunted and the tones growing uneven and foggy, that I had shut her out of the chance for growth that God gave her – this, after she had already taken one desperate, tragic step toward freedom – should I find myself forced to live, day after day, year after year, with any such realization as that, I think the time would come when I would want to kill myself.

The man who deliberately stops a woman’s growth – no matter what his traditions and beliefs; no matter what his fears for her – is doing a monstrous thing, a thing for which he must some day answer to the God of all life.

As civilization stands now, the woman who marries shuts herself out from the possibility of a career. Not in every instance, of course; but certainly in such an average, modest marriage as mine would have to be. I have some means, of course; but not nearly enough. And it is not likely that I shall ever “make” money in any large way.

No, I really don’t believe the thing can be done. Not yet. I like to hope that some day the world will become more nearly civilized as regards marriage. But first we must make it less a matter of land and houses and goods, and of woman as property along with these. And I think we shall probably come to some system of paying woman directly for the great service of child-bearing and rearing. Yes, we men must give up the last shreds of our thought of woman as a personal possession. We are farther from that, still, than we realize, I think. I myself am far, far from it. Where Hel-oise is concerned, I know perfectly well that I am not to be trusted. God only knows what I would do, what I would come to think and believe. For the magic that is always between us would be confused in a thousand subtle ways with the heritage, of deep-lying racial habits that are in me as in every other man.

But at least, I have come to see it. For this I am thankful.

Late Afternoon. (still the 18th.)

HELOISE understands now. And she agrees that I am right. She will accept the loan I suggested. And she will go to Paris.

She called up this afternoon – while I was writing.

“Anthony,” she said, “take me for a walk. It is stuffy here. I want some air.”

So she started out, and I met her near the eastern end of Legation Street.

“Just a little walk, Anthony,” she said. “I’m not getting any exercise these days. I don’t seem to want to go out alone any more… Up on the wall, Anthony, where we can feel the wind. And there won’t be so much dust.”

So we climbed the ramp, and walked from the Hatamen to the Chienmen and back – two miles. South of us extended the Chinese city, that lies outside the historic stronghold of the Manchus. Northward, as far as we could see, stretched the Tartar capital, now all fresh green foliage with bits of curving tile roofs peeping out in gray-brown patches. For Peking is a city of trees.

We could see the brick walls of the Imperial City, and, within that, of the Forbidden City itself; with its acres of glazed yellow roofs.

The Tartar wall is all of fifty feet high, and nearly as broad on the top. Grass grows there; and there are parapets, and the casual ruins of stone barricades where men have fought.

I told Heloise, while we walked, that I had worked it all out. I told her, too, of a curious coincidence of this very morning. I picked up a magazine in the hotel lounge, and, turning the pages, found my attention arrested by an interview with some great singers. In that paper the three finest living operatic sopranos agreed that marriage, home, domesticity, could play no part in their lives.

I felt it my duty to tell her about this. We simply have got to face these facts. And I must help keep up her courage with my own. Once she finds herself established at Paris, her work going on, the stimulus of new acquaintances and of fine music and of the stir and rush of the Western World all about her, it will not be so hard, I think. At present, the loneliness, the sense of distance from her own kind, and the perplexing reactions of the tragedy that we have both had to pass through, combine to bring her deep emotional self closer to the surface than normal.

Then, of course, she is quite dependent on me. We do not speak of this; but I know well enough that it is every moment in her thoughts.

We did not stay out long. It is most difficult when we are together. I am going to start my own work at once. It is the only way to keep steady – I can see that. I have letters to the American Minister. I shall present them tomorrow.

We lingered at the door of her hotel. Neither of us wanted to say good-by. We stood there for several moments without speaking. Then she said:

“Will you come in?”

I shook my head.

She took a few slow steps into the doorway; then stopped.

“I shall not change, Anthony – in Paris!” she said, and hurried in without looking back.

I have succeeded in getting reservations for her on the Trans-Siberian, leaving Harbin on the 23rd. That means starting from Peking on the 21st – in three days.

She says that she will not mind the long journey alone. I wish I knew of some American or English family that is going through to Moscow on that train. But I feel pretty sure that she will make the acquaintance of some fairly congenial group of tourists.

Sometimes I think of troubles that may come to her in case she should meet with no such good fortune; and then my head becomes hot and I have to clench my hands and walk out in the air. There will be men of course – and ten long days of that train! Certain ugly phrases of Sir Robert’s float to the surface of my thoughts and stay there to irritate me. I can’t help dwelling a little on the sinister code of the white men who travel in the East.

But it is no good thinking of these things. Heloise says they are only the chances of life, and that we have to take those. “And Anthony,” she added to-day, “they can annoy me, but they can’t hurt me – they can’t make any difference.”

April 19th. Noon

I SENT one of my letters of introduction to the American Minister to-day, by coolie.

He replied at once, with a cordial chit asking me to tea this afternoon.

I find that Hindmann knows him. and has spoken of me to him. It turns out that the Minister regards himself as something of an amateur in Chinese music. He knew my name.

“He showed me a big book,” said Hindmann, in telling me about it, last night. “Had a lot of queer music scales in it, and pictures of instruments. He said it was the standard authority on the subject.”

“What book?” I asked him.

“Don’t remember the title,” said he.

“But think, man! Think! Who wrote it?”

“Did n’t notice that, either. Some German, though.”

“That can not be,” said I, with some excitement, I will admit. “Neither Boag nor von Stumbostel is within five years of publishing the results of his researches. I am nearer it than they.

“My first volume, ‘The Origins of Musical Sound,’ stands now in galley proof and will be published within two years. No, no, no! There is no German work that is the authority on primitive music. There is, as yet, no authoritative work. Van Haalst, Elton, Père Avard, and twenty others, merely pointed the way. All of them pointed the way wrong in certain important respects. No, if there is an authority, it is myself. I am the standard authority. The Minister does not know what he is talking about.”

Hindmann grinned.

“Seems to me,” he observed, “it was published at Bonn.”

“At Bonn!” I shouted at him – “At Bonn!”

“Yes – I’m sure it was Bonn.”

“It was not the book of von Westfall?”

“That’s it,” said he, nodding. “That’s the guy – von Westfall.”

So the influence of that scoundrel has penetrated to Peking! He has actually got himself regarded as an “authority”! I did n’t know what to say or think. But Hindmann calmed me down a good deal. He has a steadying influence on me, anyway.

“You needn’t sputter at me,” he said. “I did n’t write it.”

“I know,” said I. “But I was not thinking of you. I do not know what to do. I was to have had tea with the Minister to-day.”

“Well,” remarked Hindmann, around his cigar, “why not?”

“Why not?” I repeated. “It is impossible. This man will wish to talk my subject – my subject! – with the work of that charlatan at his elbow. No, I will not talk with him. I can not. Don’t you see?”

“No,” said Hindmann, “not exactly.”

“I am at once placed in competition with one that I know to be an absolute impostor. The Minister will take seriously what he regards as his own views. But they will not be his own – they will be the views of von Westfall. Don’t you see? I can’t go!”

Hindmann sat for a little while, smoking and thinking. He has a very comfortable way of settling his plump person into a big arm-chair.

“Look here,” he said. “You want to go over there. It’s worth doing.”

I’m afraid I sniffed at this.

“But it is,” he went on. “So what you want to do is to go right ahead with it. Don’t be licked by a book.”

He did n’t quite understand me there. I was not “licked” at all, and I told him so.

“Prove it by going, then.” he said.

“But I’m afraid I shall insult him. I shall have to say what I believe.”

“Go ahead and insult him, then,” said he; and he took out his cigar and grinned cheerfully.