Then he knew nothing but his own incredulity, his rage, his refusal to believe what she had been telling him, his repudiation. Long after she had stopped talking and was only sitting there waiting, he could not speak. He could only say to himself, over and over: No. No. No.
Finally, in a strangled voice he said: “I’ll send him away. You’ll forget him then.”
“No, Papa,” replied Julia, very quietly. “For, if you do, I’ll go away, myself, and you’ll never see me again. Never.”
“Where will you go?” he cried. There was such a weight and pain in his chest. He fought against it. “Don’t be a fool, Julie. What will you do, without money or home? Or, do you expect to go away with—him?”
“I’ve told you, Papa,” she said, with dull calmness. “He doesn’t know. He never looks at me. You can’t shame me like this, Papa. You can’t tell him: ‘My daughter loves you, and so you’ve got to go away.’ Do you think I could live in this city, in this house, after that humiliation? Do you think I could live here, thinking of him, never forgetting him, knowing he was gone where I couldn’t follow, where he would hate me if he saw me, knowing that I had ruined him for something which wasn’t his fault?”
The choking sensation in William’s chest was almost unbearable. He still couldn’t believe. His words were incoherent: “I can’t believe a daughter of mine—You say he doesn’t even know you—like—him. Haven’t you any pride? What could you do, to make him notice you? Don’t you know all about him, Julie? The son of a bankrupt, a worthless scoundrel—”
“You made his father a bankrupt, Papa,” said Julia. “I’ve heard that if a man ruins another man, he always hates him, out of self-defense.”
“You are wrong, Julie.” Now, when it was most necessary, he could hardly speak. “I hated him for the rascal he was. I didn’t ‘ruin’ him out of revenge.” He paused. He fought against the pain which clutched his throat and chest in such an iron grip.
“That has nothing to do with Gene. I love him, and he doesn’t love me. I want him as I never wanted anything in my life, and if he goes away, I’ll die, or I’ll go away, myself.” Julia spoke impassively.
“Julie! Do you know what you are saying? Shameless things, things no young or decent girl would ever say! Julie, is your father nothing to you? Don’t you know or care about my feelings, when I hear my own daughter talk like a strumpet? You ‘want’ him, you say! Julie!”
Julia did not move. If he was fighting, she too was fighting, and now she was too desperate to care.
“You trust Gene, Papa,” she said, implacably. “Only last night you were saying how much you rely upon him, and how well he is training Tom. I’ve never let him know how I feel about him. I still don’t think he knows.
“Papa,” she went on, without pity. “Even if I gave him encouragement, which I haven’t, I don’t think Gene would have me. Who are we? What are you, Papa? You are a successful business man, but who were your parents? Whom do we know, except your associates, your hangers-on, the people who think they can get something out of you? Those who come here for the summers, for the holidays, from Philadelphia and Boston and New York—they don’t know we are alive, Papa, though this big house lies right under their noses, and they can’t escape seeing it. But Gene, Papa, is invited everywhere by those very people, who respect him, because they knew his parents and know his background, and because he is a gentleman.”
The cruel and vicious words, spoken so quietly, so ruthlessly, were like flung stones upon William’s heart. He even lifted his hand a little, as if to shield himself against them. Julia’s eyes gleamed upon him in the dusk.
All his love had come to this. His daughter sat at a distance and struck him with the stones of her words, and her eyes gleamed like stones, in the growing darkness. She hated him—his daughter.
He could not speak. He could only sit crouched in his chair, as if trying to protect himself from his knowledge of his children. The love of parents was despised, because it was given without selfishness, without demands, given from the depths of the soul, given with the soul itself. No man, thought William, with anguished incoherence, should ever give his soul to anyone. He ought to have known that love cannot be bought, not even with love, and that when one asks for love one is the most contemptible of beggars, fit only for ridicule and laughter.
Julia watched him, as he lay sunken in his chair, and exultation filled her. She had hurt him, struck him, shown him what he was. He was such a fool, her father, such a maudlin old fool.
She said, relentlessly: “If Gene ever cared for me, ever married me, his friends would be shocked. They would say: ‘How could he look at the daughter of William Prescott? Who are the Prescotts? Who is this girl? They are nobodies.’”
William did not answer. Then she saw him, shrunken and dwindled, his eyes closed. Again, exultation filled her. She beat her small fists against each other in her lap.
“Do you know, Papa, why a few of the best people even notice us? Because of Mama. Perhaps Eugene would remember that Mama was his mother’s friend. I don’t know. Do you think money could buy Gene, Papa? No!”
“Yes,” said William heavily, from the depths in which he was curled. “Yes. It could buy Eugene Arnold. You don’t know him. It could buy him.” She hardly recognized his voice, it was so thick and slow. “Yes, Julie, money could buy Eugene Arnold. It buys every man.”
“Then try to buy Gene for me, Papa,” replied Julie, with bitter contempt. She swung to her feet. “Try to buy him, Papa!”
With a terrible effort he moved in his chair. There was a taste like clay in his mouth. “Julie,” he said. And then again. “Julie. Julie, my daughter.”
“Oh, Papa!” she cried. “Can’t you see? Can’t you see that you’re acting stupidly, foolishly, unreasonably? It’s so very simple. I want Gene; I want to marry him. I love him, Papa. You have nothing against him, really. Have you? Have you?” she demanded, fiercely.
He said, after a little: “No. I have nothing against him.”
“Then, Papa, why be so unreasonable?”
Unreasonable. He no longer thought of the repellent idea of his daughter marrying Eugene Arnold. All that remained to him was the knowledge that his daughter hated him, that he was nothing to her, that she had rejected his love as all his children had rejected it, and that she could strike at him with such malevolence and cruelty because to her his love was a base thing.
An overpowering pang of grief and desolation shook him. He must have the illusion of love. He must do something for Julia, so that she would look at him with tenderness again. He could not live without the lying love of his children. Again, he must heap their hands with gifts; he must buy them with all that he had. Otherwise, he would surely die, deprived and starving.
Inch by agonizing inch, he pulled himself up in his chair. He rubbed his face with his hands. Very slowly, he said: “Julie. You should have told me before. Why did you let yourself suffer this way? Haven’t I always said I wanted to help you? Why didn’t you trust me? Look, Julie, I still can’t like Eugene Arnold. But perhaps—perhaps I have been unreasonable, as you say.”
He fought back the pain, the sickness. He held out his hand to his daughter, as a beggar holds out a hand for bread. “Julie. I’ll—try. I’ll insist that that man come here. You’re a beautiful girl, Julie. Any man in the world would want you. You’re my daughter. And I have money, Julie. You can’t help but get Gene Arnold, if you really want him, Julie. Even if he is so much older than you are, and is Chauncey Arnold’s son.”
It hurt him intolerably to breathe. “My daughter. I had hoped so much for you, Julie.”
But now she had flung herself on her knees beside his chair. Her warm young arms were about his neck. She was kissing him, and weeping, and laughing a little. “Dear, dear Papa!” she cried, and her tears were on his cheeks. “Oh, Papa, forgive me for talking to you like that. I’m just a nasty little beast. Dear, dear Papa! How much I love you, Papa!”
He put his arm about her
shoulders. He held her to him. But his arm was cold and lifeless. The bread had been offered the beggar. It had been sprinkled with the salt of unforgettable cruelty.
He took the bread. He could not live without it.
He kissed his daughter. “Julie,” he said. “My little girl. My little Julie.”
CHAPTER L
At his right, as he climbed, lay the brilliant sea, shading from plum-color around the wild black rocks of the shore to a deep and glowing cobalt just beyond, and then to a fiery aquamarine as it approached the horizon to merge with a sky no less flaming. It was not a sea, this, so much as an element of light, liquid, ever-changing, bursting into jade spume as it broke upon stones, flowing in incandescence around the pale sheer cliffs. Matthew climbed steadily, if slowly, on the round black cobbles of the road, pausing sometimes to look over the low wall at the sea, at the light-filled sky. What had Fra Leonardo called this country? “This shining land, this singing land, this resplendent vision of Heaven!”
Not too far in the distance, Matthew could see Sorrento, a crowded chaos of tiny white and yellow and pink houses, incredibly perched like a flock of birds on the face of the mountain, roofed with red tiles blazing in a hot sun of polished brass. Behind him, on the face of the grayish-black cliff, lay the little village where he lived. At his left, a high wall climbed with him, tumbling with cataracts of white, pink and red roses and, above them, mounted the terraces of silvery olive trees and vineyards, and a scattered villa or two. Women and children passed him, bare-footed, ragged, smiling, herding loaded donkeys. Politely, they stopped to let him go on unhindered. They knew this American signore well, this man with the sun-burned face, the tall slight body, the reluctant smile. They encountered him towards sunset, every day, when the bells of the campanile shook their delicate joyousness over the sea, and Vesuvio, beyond the waters, lay, a darker blue against the lighted blue of the sky.
Now Matthew heard the songs of the fishermen as they left the coast for the waters. He saw the slim white sails of their little boats, floating out on the colored ocean. Italy sang with the voices of a people who, as Fra Leonardo said so lovingly, could laugh in the face of death and hunger, of war and ruin, and who knew that laughter and song were the only answer to the mysterious tragedy of earth.
Sometimes, on the terraces above the wall to his left, Matthew saw the lemon and orange trees, sheltered under thatches of straw, and sometimes, when the sweet wind brushed his face, he could smell the almost unbearably poignant fragrance of their blossoms. Light, scent, color, vividness. He let them all pour into him, as a dying man gratefully allows life to pour into his body, revivifying him.
The narrow road dropped and rose. Between clefts in the falling slope at his right he caught narrow glimpses of some small, red-roofed house, nestling in the rocks on a lower terrace. Sometimes old open carts, drawn by donkeys, passed him, jingling. The drivers, old, too, removed their hats with the extreme courtesy of the Italian, and greeted the young man. He never rode in their carts, but that, to them, was of no importance. Their black eyes, in their sun-darkened faces, were gay with friendliness and kind acceptance. The American signore might be silent, he might reply to the gayest of greetings with only a smile, but one could see that he was “sympatico.”
The road, as it climbed, twisted and turned, and each new vista was one of supernal loveliness. Poverty might be here, but never sadness, never the grave and somber gloom of an England forever doomed to seek power, never the sleek urbanity of a Paris forever doomed to seek sophistication. Italy could never again be sophisticated; she had passed that stage ages ago.
Now, as the road rose and bent, Matthew saw the narrow steep walls of the Monastero de San Francesco, seemingly part of the soaring brown cliffs. He saw the long narrow slits of its windows, its red roofs, its climbing staircases. About it and above it lay its vineyards, its orange and lemon and olive trees, its red-earthed gardens, all terraced, every inch meticulously cultivated. Its campanile joined the thronging of delicate bells from Sorrento; the air trembled with the sweet and joyous chorus. The sky became even more luminous, the sea drowning itself in waves of purple.
There was a gate in the high stone wall that protected the terraces and kept the mountainous earth in its place. Matthew opened the gate, climbed the ancient stone steps beyond. At a little distance he saw the pacing monks in their chiostro, meditating, their hands folded, their heads bent. They saw him, too; heads inclined, gentle smiles greeted him. He went on, behind the monastero, to the vineyards, the groves of trees, the gardens. Here he found Fra Leonardo, busily tying up vine tendrils, and singing hoarsely to himself. A hymn, possibly. Knowing Fra Leonardo, Matthew did not believe this. It was probably a ribald snatch from some opera, some love-song dedicated to life and joy. But God could not be annoyed, Fra Leonardo had once remarked. Music was music, and God was the spirit of music. He could be praised in the singing of “Celeste Aida,” as well as in some chant invented by the cold Romans, a chant quite alien to this swooning warmth, this unbelievable color of earth and mountain and sea.
“I am so unorthodox,” Fra Leonardo would say, without the slightest apology or regret. “The abbot is doubtless very much annoyed with me at times. But I sing, and if I sing softly, who knows what I sing to God?”
Fra Leonardo was very short, incredibly wide and fat, and very old. He was ball-like, in his dark habit. He waddled when he walked, for, as he confessed, he enjoyed food even if it was the simplest, and he especially enjoyed wine. When he worked, he tucked his habit high up into his rope girdle, so that his thick legs were shamelessly exposed and became brown in the sun. He also rolled up his sleeves, “to keep them clean,” as he said. But he loved the sun on his arms. The other monks managed to toil more decorously clad, but Fra Leonardo was a peasant, and apparently the abbot had grown tired of rebuking him. The abbot, Fra Leonardo would sometimes say with serene pity, had been born in Rome. One did not expect much gaiety from Romans; they were cold, and they brooded, and they remembered too often the ancient grandeur of their City. Sometimes they were even foolish enough to hint wistfully that Rome, strong and dominant and terrible, might again be the center of a materialistic world. Such error, such childishness, Fra Leonardo would remark with a shrug of compassion.
In exchange for casual lessons in English, given as Fra Leonardo worked, the old monk had initiated Matthew Prescott in the dialect of “basso Italiano,” softer, more liquid, more musical and expressive than the precise and foreign language of the hard and ambitious Italian north. He always waited, toward sunset, for Matthew. If the young man disappointed him, as he occasionally did, Fra Leonardo was very unhappy until the next day.
Now he saw and heard Matthew, and his brown and enormous face sprang into a gay cobweb of a thousand wrinkles. They greeted each other with immense and careful politeness. The other monks had gone; Fra Leonardo was alone. He well knew that this was because the abbot encouraged him in his cultivation of the rich American signore who, monthly, gave a vast sum to the monastero and the monastero school. The abbot, being a Roman, was shrewd and astute. Because of the signore he did not always insist that Fra Leonardo attend the evening meditations and prayers, for this was the hour the signore had chosen for his visits. It did not matter, Fra Leonardo would reflect. If there were stains on his soul, the abbot would have to answer for them, not he. The monastero was poor, and the school for the village boys needed the lire. The lire from the hands of the American signore were more than welcome; they had enabled the abbot to enlarge the school and educate more boys, and to repair the ancient chapel.
Fra Leonardo was bald; his skull was like a golden moon. His eyes, little and black and twinkling, looked on the earth and on men with the utmost compassion, love, courtesy, and tolerance. He had a wide and almost toothless smile and the Semitic nose of the true basso Italiano. Now it was red and peeling, and very much in evidence. It shone, as his face shone at the sight of Matthew.
“How pleasant to see you, dear friend,” he said
, in his deep old voice. “I was afraid you would not come this evening, and then I should have had to join in the meditations.” He shrugged with eloquence. “That abbot has the eye of a vulture. He sees everything,” he added, lowering his voice cautiously, watchful of the pacing monks in their chiostro. Then he was happy again. “I read that book of American poems, this morning, Signore, when, I fear, I ought to have been praying. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
“I have sent for some more books for you,” replied Matthew. “That book shop in Rome is very obliging.”
He sat on a big warm stone and watched Fra Leonardo. Fra Leonardo tried to make up by toil for his lack of piety. He was worth three of the younger monks. He continued to work industriously as he talked to his friend. In his youth, he had hoped to be a priest. He had been taught to read and write by the old priest, now dead, in Amalfi, his home. But he was, as he said, such a stupid and impervious person. So condemned by God to a life of benightedness. To Matthew, however, his curious mixture of illiteracy, learning, wisdom and intelligence, was an eternal pleasure. There was a piquancy in their conversation which could never have been there had Fra Leonardo been an educated man. There were times when the old monk would give a dissertation on Shakespeare which was truly amazing, and then he would falter, and revert to the most unlettered ignorance. This sometimes disconcerted Matthew.
He had explained to Matthew that, though he could read and write fairly well in his native language, he had read few books. Matthew, who had never done anything before for any human creature, had been moved to send for packets of books from Rome. But there was so much to read! Some instinct told him that Fra Leonardo would rejoice the most in poetry, so Matthew procured for the old man the very best Italian translations of the major poets, living or dead. What the abbot thought of these books no one ever knew. But this was after Matthew, to please his friend, had begun to make his large monthly contributions to the monastero. At any rate, though the abbot was wont to look sternly upon the old monk when he passed him in the cloister, he said nothing about the books.
Let Love Come Last Page 44
