The erratic flame — Text and Context

She looked at him from beneath inscrutable lashes.

"I'm sorry you're unhappy," she said simply.

"We are all unhappy," he evaded. He poured water into the dingy kettle hanging over the fire. "You are unhappy because you are wet, and like a civilized lady want your tea. I am unhappy because my head aches most damnably! For me there is no help but time, but for you there is orange pekoe."

"For a soulless creature like a woman there is always food, eh?" she teased. "But a masculine intellect demands only spiritual sustenance?"

He laughed more naturally, as he met her mocking glance. "I must seem an awful fool to you," he said somewhat sheepishly.

She shook her head, still smiling.

"Oh, no, I was merely thinking what a mixture of sullen boy and embittered cynic you are. Do you know you are a very odd person, indeed?"

He looked at once flattered and woebegone.

"I suppose it's this damned forcing-house I've lived in." He muttered as he sliced the bread rather clumsily, with his most unclumsy-looking hands. "Limelight doesn't mellow, it scorches!" Then as he met her astonished gaze, he checked himself abruptly. "Bread and butter and cigarettes are all I can offer, unless the storm has whetted you sufficiently for bacon and eggs?"

She laughed a denial, and springing up, lifted the chuckling kettle off the hearth. The boy hurried to her assistance and their flesh met over the handle.

"So you're a celebrity?" she thrust at him, as he took the kettle from her and placed it on a table. Beneath her scrutiny his features again became a mask, except for the eyes, which gleamed liquid in the firelight.

"You flatter me," he laughed with forced lightness. "Must I decrease my importance and the romance of the occasion by revealing my humble identity?"

"No indeed!" exclaimed Anne, "that would spoil everything."

But the odd little speech about the limelight had challenged her curiosity, and as she continued to observe him, that strange sense of familiarity which the first impression of his face had given, insinuated itself into her consciousness more securely.

"No," she murmured without an appreciable pause. "Let's just be two stray cats crawling into shelter from the rain."

An expression of relief thawed his frozen young face.

"But the Persian must not be shocked if the alley-cat does not know how to behave and laps up his milk rudely." He laughed as he poured out her tea, and handed her the bread and butter. For the moment he looked almost happy, altogether boyish. He seated himself on the other side of the table, and gazed into the fire, which crackled up into their faces with the officiousness of an elderly chaperon. Its self-conscious sputter neutralized the clamor of the rain and somehow pleased him.

"How elemental," he threw out his hands in an expressive gesture. "A storm, a fire, and a cave," he looked about the shadowy room whimsically. "A man and a woman--food--. We might be in the Stone Age." His cynical gaze probed her.

Anne's laugh was a rippling murmur.

"A moment ago we were cats. Our evolution has been rapid!"

She pushed aside her chair, rose, and walking quickly to the window, peered through the crooked panes, at the dusky woods beyond.

"The rain is letting up," she announced briefly. "I must go home, or Regina will worry herself into a fever."

His somber laugh rang harshly. "So you prefer cats to cavemen?" He joined her in a couple of lazy strides. "That isn't at all up to date! May I inquire who is Regina, and still preserve our charming incognito?"

"She is my Italian maid. We are alone here this fall and she will be wild if I don't hurry. She has been with me since I was a child and I'm scarcely allowed to breathe without her permission," she replied rather more expansively than she had intended.

"Well, if you must!" he shrugged. "I suppose I ought to say something romantic about 'ships that pass in the night,' etc. But as I am a misogynist"--he hesitated, looking at her with a sarcastic smile.

She took him up gaily.

"You merely hand me my hat, and tell me I look old enough to take care of myself!" She drew the flabby object down over her head, and met his smouldering gaze with a smile.

"You're really not so glad to have me go as you pretend," she challenged. Then she caught her breath, for he had thrown out his arms with a savage look, and for a moment she thought he was going to crush her within them. But, letting them drop abruptly, he turned, and pulling his mackintosh off the wall, thrust it about her shoulders.

"Let's go, since you wish it," he said shortly.

A moment later they were stumbling down the mountainside. Almost obliterated by rain the path had become precipitous. Masses of dead leaves choked their progress. At every step they slid and waded, ankle-deep in scaly moisture, until Anne wanted to scream at the reptilian contact.

"There's something corpse-like about them," she said, as she stumbled along behind the blinding rays of the lantern.

"Why not? That's exactly what they are," he replied grimly. He held aside a sodden branch for her to pass under. "Corpses, heaped victims of the storm, as dead as you and I shall be some day, as dead as I wish I were myself this moment!" He laughed harshly. Then as her hand touched his arm, added more gently, "Surely, you are not afraid of death."

"No, of course not." She huddled more closely to his side, "Only you're so young it seems a shame----"

He interrupted her savagely.

"All the better! Life is sufficiently drab without having to pass through the horrors of decrepitude and senility. Death is the only apology the gods can offer, for having thrust us into it."

As he spoke they emerged from the dripping woods on to the road, and the walking became easier.

"Don't you want to get somewhere, to do something worthwhile before you die?" she asked looking pityingly into the young face so white and set in the lantern rays.

"Get somewhere! Do something! That is meaningless jargon. There is really no goal, no destination. We merely fool ourselves into thinking there is. Work is only a drug, a means of forgetting. A good drug, I admit, and at times even heady, but a drug, nevertheless!"

Her hold upon his arm tightened.

"Oh, how unhappy you must be! How sorry I am for you!" she cried with unmistakable sincerity. "Do tell me what is the matter. I am sure I could help you. You're so young, you probably exaggerate." She caught herself up for fear of wounding him. "I mean I'm older than you."

She held her hand out pleadingly towards him.

He clasped it in his long fingers.

"Thank you," he replied more quietly, "I believe you mean it, but I cannot, indeed I cannot!"

She did not urge, and they walked on in silence. The rain had stopped so gradually, that neither of them remembered when it had ceased to fall. Presently, they turned a bend in the road and came upon lights close at hand.

"Here's my cottage," said Anne, in a slightly surprised tone. "I didn't know we were so near. Come in and Regina will get us some supper. Then you can rest awhile before returning home."

One foot on the step, he looked up at her, as she stood on the porch above him.

"No, the play is over, the lights are out. I must return to my hut and--" beneath his breath--"my devils."

Although he had already turned about, Anne heard.

"Your devils can get along perfectly well without you. Besides I have one myself. Let us share them together. Come, I see we need each other badly tonight."

Compassionate beneath her light manner, she caught him by the back of the coat with both hands, and pulled him forcibly about. "Besides, I have your mackintosh and your sweater. You mustn't be so reckless with your property."

He followed her up the steps with obvious reluctance. She opened the door and drew him in through the glowing aperture.

"See, there's a fire," she cried gaily. "And after supper I'll play to you." She pointed to an upright in the corner. "I can play even on an old country piano," she boasted.

And then she saw his face. It was paler than the hands which sought to conceal it.

"No, no music! Never again!" he muttered. He fell weakly into the nearest chair, and with a low moan laid his head on the arm.

Sudden intuition flooded Anne's being. How blind she had been! How was it possible that she had not recognized him sooner? A figure so well known, seen and listened to by her so many times?

She approached and laid her hand on the bowed head.

"I know you now, Mr. Petrovskey. It was very stupid of me not to have guessed before, only the light in the hut was so very poor. But please don't be worried," she added gently, as his drawn young face looked up into hers. "I can keep a secret very well indeed, and my one desire is to help you. You are not fit to go back to that lonely cabin to-night. You must stay here, and we will see how you are in the morning."

He cast a wild glance about the rustic little room, as if he feared someone might spring out upon him from behind the pretty chintz curtains.

"You cannot know how terrible this is," he said. "It is only a few weeks now--since it happened." He choked over the words. "And I feel as if I should like to hide forever."

"But there is nothing to be ashamed of--" she commenced. "Ashamed," he cried, savagely. "I'm not ashamed! Only I'm full of hatred, of disgust for everyone and everything. I wish I could die!"

The tortured voice sent a lump into Anne's throat. She knelt beside the chair and laid a compassionate arm about the shaking shoulders.

"Come," said she. "You are ill and over-wrought. We will go upstairs and Regina and I will help you to bed. There's a good boy!"

The protective gesture, the kind words were too much. Utterly beside himself, he turned and laid his head upon the refuge of her breast.

"You are good, good," he whispered. "You are not disappointed in me because I'm a failure. You are not greedy like the others, who only want what they can get out of me. Yes, I will trust you and I will stay."

As he raised his head, she felt her neck was moistened with his tears.

After a sleepless night, Anne dozed late. So when Regina brought in her coffee about nine o'clock as usual, she awakened gropingly to fog. Fog, which filtered in at the windows in layers of pale moonlight, and wreathed about the house an ectoplasmic shroud until for a long moment Anne had the illusion of floating through clouds in a dreamship.

"Dio mio, it's as chill as the finger of death in here!" She closed the windows violently. "When will you learn to take care of yourself, carina?"

Anne smiled. She was accustomed to these wild admonitions. She sat up in bed and slipped into the green silk kimono which Regina was holding out to her. The contrast between her own slim white arms and the woman's knotted brown hands pleased her impersonally. She allowed her fingers to rest upon Regina's sleeve. Relaxed and peaceful, the enshrouding fog rose like a protecting wall between her and an irksome world. She sighed luxuriantly at the thought of having left it all behind her.

Then the memory of last night swooped down upon her with the clamorous beat of wings and sleep departed. She clasped Regina's wrist with tense fingers.

"Regina, how is he? Where is he this morning?" she exclaimed wide awake and anxious. "I had forgotten all about him, poor boy!"

The woman smiled benevolently. She placed the tray upon a table beside the bed.

"He sleeps, cara, he sleeps. I but this moment popped my head in at the door and he was lying there as still and quiet as a child, poverino. So don't worry your little head about him, but eat your breakfast before it freezes to a jelly."

But Anne did not hesitate. With a lithe movement she was out of bed. Twisting the brazen rope of hair about her small head, she fastened it with a massive gold hairpin. Then, a mediæval princess, in trailing green draperies, she swept from the room.

Left alone, Regina thrust hands and eyes to heaven and called out upon her picturesque God. Then she shrugged with Italian fatalism and despair. What else could she have expected? It had been so from the very first. Anne had always had her own way, ever since she herself had gone to her as nurse when as a little girl they had lived in the palazzo in Florence and her father had been the American consul. Married and a widow, she still remained the same wilful child in the eyes of the faithful, long-suffering, old woman.

With a shake of the white head, she followed her mistress out into the narrow hallway and watched disapprovingly, as she disappeared into the opposite room.

It was cold in there and Anne shivered a little as she entered. The fog shimmered in from the open window, writhing itself between her and the recumbent figure on the bed. Like Regina, she closed the window, although less violently, smiling the while to herself at the similarity of their action. Approaching the bed, she looked down upon the sleeper. He was flushed and breathing irregularly, and Anne was glad she had not trusted to Regina's optimistic inspection. For his hand and forehead were burning and her touch did not arouse him. Rather alarmed, she took him by the shoulders and shook him gently. He muttered, and opening his eyes, gazed up at her, at first vacantly, then with dawning dread.

Although her heart beat a little faster, she smiled serenely down upon him. "Well?"

He turned his head away quickly, and for a moment the unnatural flush was replaced by the glistening pallor of the day before.

"I must get up. I must go back," he said self-consciously. "I have trespassed upon you most shamefully. What can you think of me?" Still avoiding her eye, he sat up in bed and ran an unsteady hand through his tumbled hair.

The serene smile upon her lips, she shook her head.

"Do you really want to know what I think? I think you are going to stay right here, young man, for unless I am much mistaken, you have fever, and if that is the case, I shall not permit you to get up at all!"

He tossed his blonde mane impatiently.

"Fever? Nonsense! I'm perfectly all right. There's nothing the matter with me at all, and I am going to get up!" Flushed and unsteady, he stared at her defiantly, prepared to throw off the clothes and jump out of bed. Then remembered with horror that he was attired in one of Regina's ample and unpoetic nightrobes, and inhibited the impulse with a groan.

Repressing her amusement, Anne approached and took his wrist in cool, silken fingers. "I'm going to take your temperature, and if you have any fever, I shall send for a doctor at once," she announced composedly.

Horror stalked across the young face.

"No, no, you mustn't do that!" he exclaimed. "Nobody must see me, nobody must know where I am! I'll do anything you want, if only you won't send for a doctor, or let anyone know I am here!"

His feverish clasp about her hands, Anne encountered his imploring look with gravity.

"Very well, I have your promise. I don't know just how much it is worth, of course, it is up to you to show me. Now lie down again, and be a good patient while I get the thermometer and change my dress."

Head obediently on the pillow, his eyes rested upon her wistfully as she moved toward the door.

"Must you change, you look so beautiful like that," he said simply. "Your lines are so flowing, so fluid, like music. A Débussy prelude."

Her hand on the knob, she laughed a little tremulously.

"Your temperature must be even higher than I feared," she said lightly; looking at him rather shyly over her shoulder, she left the room.

The next two days she and Regina were in constant attendance. His fever had risen rapidly at first and Anne had feared that after all she might have to break her word and call in a doctor. She could even have done so without his knowledge, for most of the time he had lain in a heavy slumber, from which she and Regina had difficulty in arousing him for his medicine. But she resisted the temptation. And when the fever finally commenced to drop, experienced a triumph disproportionately disturbing, which she explained to herself as relief from the intolerable responsibility of her position.

The afternoon of the second day, as she sat beside the window the sense of relief filtering through her, Regina came into the room, and with a great show of excitement and mystery, handed her the New York paper.

She pointed to a picture on the second page, with excitement.

"Ecco lo, there he is!" she exclaimed in a whisper. "And I guessed it the moment I set eyes on him. For haven't I sat a dozen times in the gallery and listened to him while he played, poor angel!" She approached and looked down at the boy with a mixture of compassion and adoration. "Poverino, how he has suffered," she added, as she smoothed the bedclothes beneath the unshaven young chin.

Anne took the paper and looked at the photograph. It was indeed he, violin under one arm, who looked at her with cryptic eyes, eyes laden with all the tragedy of genius.

She sighed. A little shiver passed through her, as she glanced toward the bed. Why was genius inevitably companioned by suffering? Why did those who possess it harbor such strange magnetism, even when their personalities were often repellent and ugly? And as she looked upon the sleeping boy, an emotion to which she was not accustomed stole upon Anne and kindled a flame, which scorched as well as warmed. An embryonic temperament, drugged with artificial activities, somnolent from ennui, stirred within her. With a flutter of self-ridicule she focussed her attention upon the newspaper in her hand, and read through the headlines mechanically.

FAMOUS YOUNG MUSICIAN STILL MISSING IN SPITE OF FRANTIC SEARCH BY ANXIOUS RELATIVES

Alexis Petrovskey, who escaped ten days ago from the sanitarium where he had gone to recuperate from nervous shock following upon his unfortunate breakdown in Carnegie Hall last April, is still missing, and a lake near the sanitarium is being dragged for his body, as it is feared that in his state of acute melancholia he may have made away with himself. Etc., etc.

There followed encomiums upon his art and the great loss his death would be to the musical world in general.

So he had relatives, mused Anne, and for some cryptic reason was unpleasantly stirred by the fact. That ought to have occurred to her in the beginning and they were--how had the newspaper put it?--frantic? Yes, that was it. They would be, of course. And she was aiding and abetting this unnatural young man to make them so. Put in that way, the fact sounded very disagreeable, and yet--? She finished the article with an impatient sigh, and turning her head, saw that the mysterious object of her speculation was awake and looking at her. There was an odd little smile upon his lips and his eyes were very lucid. Conscious of a flaming and obnoxiously juvenile blush, she folded the paper quickly and threw it aside.

"Too late!" he exclaimed in a rather weak voice. "I have caught a glimpse of my beauteous self and know the worst. So they haven't been able to keep it out of the papers, after all? Please show it to me."

He held out a long thin hand and she gave him the paper without further parley. He sat up in bed and read the article from start to finish.

"Damn it!" he exclaimed, but rather placidly she thought. Somehow he had the air of a naughty and triumphant small boy. "This is an awful bore. What can I do to stop this parrots' talk?"