Chambers Robert William
Iole
In the purpling dusk the perfume of wistaria grew sweeter and sweeter.
“I’ve done it already—” His voice shook and failed; a thrush, invisible in shadowy depths, made soft, low sounds.
“You love me—already?” she exclaimed under her breath.
“Love you! I—I—there are no words—” The thrush stirred the sprayed foliage and called once, then again, restless for the moon.
Her eyes wandered over him thoughtfully: “So that is love.... I didn’t know.... I supposed it could be nothing pleasanter than friendship, although they say it is.... But how could it be? There is nothing pleasanter than friendship.... I am perfectly delighted that you love me. Shall we marry some day, do you think?”
He strove to speak, but her frankness stunned him.
“I meant to tell you that I am engaged,” she observed. “Does that matter?”
“Engaged!” He found his tongue quickly enough then; and she, surprised, interested, and in nowise dissenting, listened to his eloquent views upon the matter of Mr. Frawley, whom she, during the lucid intervals of his silence, curtly described.
“Do you know,” she said with great relief, “that I always felt that way about love, because I never knew anything about it except from the symptoms of Mr. Frawley? So when they told me that love and friendship were different, I supposed it must be so, and I had no high opinion of love … until you made it so agreeable. Now I—I prefer it to anything else.... I could sit here with you all day, listening to you. Tell me some more.”
XVI
HE did. She listened, sometimes intently interested, absorbed, sometimes leaning back dreamily, her eyes partly veiled under silken lashes, her mouth curved with the vaguest of smiles.
He spoke as a man who awakes with a start—not very clearly at first, then with feverish coherence, at times with recklessness almost eloquent. Still only half awakened himself, still scarcely convinced, scarcely credulous that this miracle of an hour had been wrought in him, here under the sky and setting sun and new-born leaves, he spoke not only to her but of her to himself, formulating in words the rhythm his pulses were beating, interpreting this surging tide which thundered in his heart, clamoring out the fact—the fact—the fact that he loved!—that love was on him like the grip of Fate—on him so suddenly, so surely, so inexorably, that, stricken as he was, the clutch only amazed and numbed him.
He spoke, striving to teach himself that the incredible was credible, the impossible possible—that it was done! done! done! and that he loved a woman in an hour because, in an hour, he had read her innocence as one reads through crystal, and his eyes were opened for the first time upon loveliness unspoiled, sweetness untainted, truth uncompromised.
“Do you know,” she said, “that, as you speak, you make me care for you so much more than I supposed a girl could care for a man?”
“Can you love me?”
“Oh, I do already! I don’t mean mere love. It is something—something that I never knew about before. Everything about you is so—so exactly what I care for—your voice, your head, the way you think, the way you look at me. I never thought of men as I am thinking about you.... I want you to belong to me—all alone.... I want to see how you look when you are angry, or worried, or tired. I want you to think of me when you are perplexed and unhappy and ill. Will you? You must! There is nobody else, is there? If you do truly love me?”
“Nobody but you.”
“That is what I desire.... I want to live with you—I promise I won’t talk about art—even your art, which I might learn to care for. All I want is to really live and have your troubles to meet and overcome them because I will not permit anything to harm you.... I will love you enough for that.... I—do you love other women?”
“Good God, no!”
“And you shall not!” She leaned closer, looking him through and through. “I will be what you love! I will be what you desire most in all the world. I will be to you everything you wish, in every way, always, ever, and forever and ever.... Will you marry me?”
“Will you?”
“Yes.”
She suddenly stripped off her glove, wrenched a ring set with brilliants from the third finger of her left hand, and, rising, threw it, straight as a young boy throws, far out into deepening twilight. It was the end of Mr. Frawley; he, too, had not only become a by-product but a good-by product. Yet his modest demands had merely required a tear a year! Perhaps he had not asked enough. Love pardons the selfish.
She was laughing, a trifle excited, as she turned to face him where he had risen. But, at the touch of his hand on hers, the laughter died at a breath, and she stood, her limp hand clasped in his, silent, expressionless, save for the tremor of her mouth.
“I—I must go,” she said, shrinking from him.
He did not understand, thrilled as he was by the contact, but he let her soft hand fall away from his.
Then with a half sob she caught her own fingers to her lips and kissed them where the pressure of his hand burned her white flesh—kissed them, looking at him.
“You—you find a child—you leave a woman,” she said unsteadily. “Do you understand how I love you—for that?”
He caught her in his arms.
“No—not yet—not my mouth!” she pleaded, holding him back; “I love you too much—already too much. Wait! Oh, will you wait?… And let me wait—make me wait?… I—I begin to understand some things I did not know an hour ago.”
In the dusk he could scarcely see her as she swayed, yielding, her arms tightening about his neck in the first kiss she had ever given or forgiven in all her life.
And through the swimming tumult of their senses the thrush’s song rang like a cry. The moon had risen.
XVII
MOUNTING the deadened stairway noiselessly to her sister’s room, groping for the door in the dark of the landing, she called: “Iole!” And again: “Iole! Come to me! It is I!”
The door swung noiselessly; a dim form stole forward, wide-eyed and white in the electric light.
Then down at her sister’s feet dropped Aphrodite, and laid a burning face against her silken knees. And, “Oh, Iole, Iole,” she whispered, “Iole, Iole, Iole! There is danger, as you say—there is, and I understand it … now.... But I love him so—I—I have been so happy—so happy! Tell me what I have done … and how wrong it is! Oh, Iole, Iole! What have I done!”
“Done, child! What in the name of all the gods have you done?”
“Loved him—in the names of all the gods! Oh, Iole! Iole! Iole!”
“–The thrush singing in darkness; the voice of spring calling, calling me to his arms! Oh, Iole, Iole!—these, and my soul and his, alone under the pagan moon! alone, save for the old gods whispering in the dusk–”
“–And listening, I heard the feathery tattoo of wings close by—the wings of Eros all aquiver like a soft moth trembling ere it flies! Peril divine! I understood it then. And, stirring in darkness, sweet as the melody of unseen streams, I heard the old gods laughing.... Then I knew.”
“Is that all, little sister?”
“Almost all.”
“What more?”
And when, at length, the trembling tale was told, Iole caught her in her white arms, looked at her steadily, then kissed her again and again.
“If he is all you say—this miracle—I—I think I can make them understand,” she whispered. “Where is he?”
“D-down-stairs—at b-bay! Hark! You can hear George swearing! Oh, Iole, don’t let him!”
In the silence from the drawing-room below came the solid sobs of the poet:
“P-pup! P-p-penniless pup!”
“He must not say that!” cried Aphrodite fiercely. “Can’t you make father and George understand that he has nearly six hundred dollars in the bank?”
“I will try,” said Iole tenderly. “Come!”
And with one arm around Aphrodite she descended the great stairway, where, on the lower landing, immensely interested, sat Chlorippe, Philodice and Dione, observant, fairly aquiver with intelligence.
“Oh, that young man is catching it!” remarked Dione, looking up as Iole passed, her arm close around her sister’s waist. “George has said ‘dammit’ seven times and father is rocking—not in a rocking-chair—just rocking and expressing his inmost thoughts. And Mr. Briggs pretends to scowl and mutters: ‘Hook him over the ropes, George. ’E ain’t got no friends!’ Take a peep, Iole. You can just see them if you lean over and hang on to the banisters–”
But Iole brushed by her younger sisters, Aphrodite close beside her, and, entering the great receiving-hall, stood still, her clear eyes focused upon her husband’s back.
“George!”
Mr. Wayne stiffened and wheeled; Mr. Briggs sidled hastily toward the doorway, crabwise; the poet choked back the word, “Phup!” and gazed at his tall daughter with apprehension and protruding lips.
“Iole,” began Wayne, “this is no place for you! Aphrodite! let that fellow alone, I say!”
Iole turned, following with calm eyes the progress of her sister toward a tall young man who stood by the window, a red flush staining his strained face.
The tense muscles in jaw and cheek relaxed as Aphrodite laid one hand on his arm; the poet, whose pursed lips were overloaded, expelled a passionate “Phupp!” and the young man’s eyes narrowed again at the shot.
Then silence lengthened to a waiting menace, and even the three sisters on the stairs succumbed to the oppressive stillness. And all the while Iole stood like a white Greek goddess under the glory of her hair, looking full into the eyes of the tall stranger.
A minute passed; a glimmer dawned to a smile and trembled in the azure of Iole’s eyes; she slowly lifted her arms, white hands outstretched, looking steadily at the stranger.
He came, tense, erect; Iole’s cool hands dropped in his. And, turning to the others with a light on her face that almost blinded him, she said, laughing: “Do you not understand? Aphrodite brings us the rarest gift in the world in this tall young brother! Look! Touch him! We have never seen his like before for all the wisdom of wise years. For he is one of few—and men are many, and artists legion—this honorable miracle, this sane and wholesome wonder! this trinity, Lover, Artist, and Man!”
And, turning again, she looked him wistfully, wonderingly, in the eyes.
