Part 58 (1/2)
”Oh, yes,” Marise nodded. She had never forgotten the lean young priest who led the open-air singing of his improvised chorus in front of his fortress-like old church. ”Oh, yes, don't you remember we used to drive over just to hear his choir sing here and in another parish too?”
”He is doing wonderful work. We work together a great deal.”
”You! With a cure!” Marise was astounded.
Mlle. Hasparren laughed. ”Oh, yes, yes, those radical ideas of mine. Of course I still have them. But they don't seem so important as they did.
Father Armandariz and I are good friends. We both love music. That's enough. He puts cotton in his ears when I let fall a heresy, and I dip my fingers in the holy-water font and cross myself when I go to play the organ in church. Those are little things, and little things mustn't be allowed to interfere with great ones.”
That evening Marise watched a choir rehearsal, Mlle. Hasparren at her piano, Father Armandariz, bony, threadbare, hollow-cheeked, his eyes gleaming with ardor, leading now the group of serious-faced Basque girls in black mantillas, now the great-chested, burly Basque men whose resonant ba.s.ses shook the little house. One of them (Mlle. Hasparren had said he was the village shoemaker) was given a ba.s.s solo and practised it over several times, while the others listened. He held his head high, drew in a great breath and sang as though it were the meaning of his life he were singing out, ”Magnificat anima mea Dominum!” And then all the others with him, ”My soul magnifies G.o.d!” Father Armandariz stopped them. ”No, the altos were too slow on coming in. Once more.” And then again, ”Once more.”
They all kept their eyes on him earnestly; they began again unfalteringly as many times as was necessary; before the evening was over they looked tired; but it was a good fatigue, and when they finally finished and turned to smile at each other and fold their music sheets together, their faces wore a quiet, purified serenity which Marise envied them. This was music. Not one of them was thinking of himself nor how the music had made him appear to advantage nor how he could use music as a tool to get ahead of other people, or get himself talked about.
The memory of Donna Antonia's soirees, of Mme. de la Cueva's good advice came into her mind. People called that sort of thing ”art-atmosphere,”
didn't they? It was the cemetery of art, that's what it was, with the egotism of the performer dancing on the grave. One evening here, such an evening as this--there was more music in it than in months of chatter about the clothes and hair and morals and incomes of the people who make it on the platform.
At the piano Mlle. Hasparren and Father Armandariz were talking together of the next evening's rehearsal, Mlle. Hasparren occasionally ill.u.s.trating with one hand what she was saying. How deeply human was the look of intimate confidence they bent on each other, the ugly young priest and the ugly old school-teacher. They might well be thankful that they had found each other in the world.
Mlle. Hasparren turned around now and asked Marise if she would not play for them. ”I would be so proud to show my friends what an old pupil of mine has come to be,” she said fondly.
It seemed to Marise that she had never in her life felt so like playing.
What should it be? She swerved on her way to the piano to stoop to kiss Mlle. Hasparren's swarthy cheek, and, sitting down, with an affectionate smile at her, began the Toccata in D minor, just as Mlle. Hasparren had taught it to her, with all she had learned since then. She had never played to such an audience; when she turned around Father Armandariz was looking beatific and Mlle. Hasparren exalted with pride. She had never played so well. She had, she felt, just begun to know what music was.
Mlle. Hasparren had set up for her a folding cot in her own room, since there was no other bedroom in the tiny house. They slept side by side, near enough so that they could have reached out and clasped each other's hands as on that night so long ago when Mlle. Hasparren had pulled Marise out of the black pit. Marise could not go to sleep. Long after Mlle. Hasparren lay breathing deep, her dark face relaxed in a selfless quiet that was not more selfless than her waking look, Marise lay looking out at the stars and the mountains, thinking, trembling, sometimes feeling hot bitter tears in her eyes, sometimes feeling her heart swell high with strange, unearthly aspiration.
Mlle. Hasparren was right. She had always been right. To keep clear of all troubling, maddening, personal relations that were sure to end by poisoning you, not to want anything for yourself, to give all for music--how _safe_ you would be, to live like that. And how sweet it would be to feel safe! She never had. She was so _tired_ of feeling afraid. Why _not_ live like that? When you knew it was the only safe way! When you knew that if you did not, you would fall headlong into that dreadful mire that splashed up such indelible stains upon your mind at even the few chance contacts with it which life brought to a girl.
Yes, that was the only safe way. Never to go back to Rome at all.
Somehow to devise a life all devotion to music, with the miserable personal affections burned up in that greater ardor. Yes, that, Marise decided, that was the only tolerable, the only endurable future she could see.
People began to stand up, to put on their wraps and collect their valises. The train was pa.s.sing the outskirts of Rome. It would be in the station in a few minutes.
Marise tied on her veil over a piteous white face. She had said she would not go back to Rome at all. She had scarcely been ten days away.
She had come back. Like any other woman she had come back to the trap.
CHAPTER LIII
She had not seen him yet. She had had her breakfast sent to her room when she heard he was still at the pension. She had thought certainly he would be gone away by this time.
She knew he would not have gone away!
She stood now with Eugenia at the entrance to the Pincian, up on the hill, by the fountain, under the ilex trees looking down over the city.