The Bent Twig

by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

"If you had seen her that morning," he told them both,—"like a flame of vitality—almost frightening—so vivid. She waved good-bye, and then that was not enough; she got out of the car and ran back up the hotel-step to say good-bye for just those few moments—and was off—such youth! such youth in all her—"

Sylvia cried out, "Oh, no! no! it's too dreadful!" She felt the horror sweep down on her again; but now it did not bear Felix' face among its baneful images. He stood there, shocked, stricken, but utterly bewildered, utterly ignorant—for the moment in her relief she had called his ignorance utter innocence …

They did not see him again for many days, and when he came, very briefly, speaking of business technicalities which absorbed him, he was noticeably absent and careworn. He looked much older. The gray in his thick hair had increased. He looked very beautiful and austere to Sylvia. They exchanged no more than the salutations of arrival and farewell.

Then one day, as she and Aunt Victoria and Austin Page strolled down the long gallery of the Louvre, they came upon him, looking at the Ribera Entombment. He joined them, walking with them through the Salon Carré and out to the Winged Victory, calling Sylvia's attention to the Botticelli frescoes beyond on the landing. "It's the first time I've been here," he told them, his only allusion to what lay back of him. "It is like coming back to true friends. Blessed be all true friends." He shook hands with them, and went away down the great stairway, a splendid figure of dignity and grace.

After this he came once and again to the apartment of the Rue de Presbourg, generally it would appear to use the piano. He had none in his own tiny pied-à-terre and he missed it. Sylvia immensely liked his continuing to cling for a time to the simple arrangements of his frugal bachelor days. He could now of course have bought a thousand pianos. They understood how he would miss his music, and stole in quietly when, upon opening the door, Tojiko told them that Mr. Morrison had come in, and they heard from the salon his delicately firm touch on the keys. Sometimes they listened from their rooms, sometimes the two women took possession of the little octagonal room off the salon, all white paneling and gilt chairs, and listened there; sometimes, as the weeks went on and an especially early spring began to envelop Paris in a haze of sunshine and budding leaves, they stepped out to listen on the wrought-iron balcony which looked down the long, shining vista of the tree-framed avenue. For the most part he played Bach, grave, courageous, formal, great-hearted music.

Sometimes he went away with no more than a nod and a smile to them, but more and more, when he had finished, he came out where they were, and stood or sat to exchange brief impressions on the enchanting season, or on some social or aesthetic treat which "ces dames" had been enjoying. Austin Page was frequently with them, as in the earlier part of the winter, and it was finally he himself who one day took the step of asking Morrison if he would not go with them to the Louvre. "No one could appreciate more than Miss Marshall what has always been such a delight to us all."

They went, and not only once. That was the beginning of another phase; a period when, as he began to take up life again, he turned to his old friends to help him do it. He saw almost no one else, certainly no one else there, for he was sure to disappear upon the arrival of a caller, or the announcement of an expedition in which other people were included. But he returned again and again to the Louvre with them, his theory of galleries necessitating frequent visits. Nothing could be more idiotic, he held, than to try to see on one occasion all, or even half, or even a tenth part, of a great collection of works of art. "It is exactly as reasonable," he contended, "as to read through on the same day every poem in a great anthology. Who could have anything but nausea for poetry after such a gorge? And they must hate pictures or else be literally blind to them, the people who look at five hundred in a morning! If I had looked at every picture in the Long Gallery in one walk through it, I should thrust my cane through the Titian Francis-First itself when I came to the Salon Carré."

So he took them to see only a few, five or six, carefully selected things—there was one wonderful day when he showed them nothing but the Da Vinci Saint Anne, and the Venus of Melos, comparing the dissimilar beauty of those two divine faces so vitally, that Sylvia for days afterwards, when she closed her eyes and saw them, felt that she looked on two living women. She told them this and, "Which one do you see most?" he asked her. "Oh, the Saint Anne," she told him.

He seemed dissatisfied. But she did not venture to ask him why. They lived in an atmosphere where omissions were vital.

Sylvia often wondered in those days if there ever had been a situation so precariously balanced which continued to hang poised and stable, minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day. There were moments when her head was swimming with moral dizziness. She wondered if such moments ever came to the two quiet, self-controlled men who came and went, with cordial, easy friendliness, in and out of the appartement on the Rue de Presbourg. They gave no sign of it, they gave no sign of anything beyond the most achieved appearance of a natural desire to be obliging and indulgent to the niece of an old friend. This appearance was kept up with such unflagging perseverance that it almost seemed consciously concerted between them. They so elaborately avoided the slightest appearance of rivalry that their good taste, like a cloth thrown over an unknown object, inevitably excited curiosity as to what was concealed beneath it.