The Bent Twig

by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Sylvia stood quite still, feeling immeasurably and bitterly alone.
She said to herself: "Mother is very sick. I must go home at once.
Judith." But she did not know what she said. She felt only an impulse
to run wildly away from something that gave her intolerable pain.

Mrs. Marshall-Smith turned over a page of her letter, smiling to herself, and glanced up at her niece. Her smile was smitten from her lips. Sylvia had a fantastic vision of her own aspect from the gaping face of horror with which her aunt for an instant reflected it. She had never before seen Aunt Victoria with an unprepared and discomposed countenance. It was another feature of the nightmare.

For suddenly everything resolved itself into a bad dream,—her aunt crying out, Hélène screaming and running to her, Felix snatching the telegram from her and reading it aloud—it seemed to Sylvia that she had heard nothing for years but those words, "Mother very sick. Come home at once. Judith." She heard them over and over after his voice was silent. Through their constant echoing roar in her ears she heard but dimly the babel of talk that arose—Aunt Victoria saying that she could not of course leave at once because no passage had been engaged, Hélène foolishly offering smelling-salts, Felix darting off to get a carriage to take them to the hotel where she could be out of the crowd and they could lay their plans—"Oh, my poor dear!—but you may have more reassuring news tomorrow, you know," said Mrs. Marshall-Smith soothingly.

The girl faced her aunt outraged. She thought she cried out angrily, "tomorrow!" but she did not break her silence. She was so torn by the storm within her that she had no breath for recriminations. She turned and ran rapidly some distance away to the edge of the wharf, where some small rowboats hung bobbing, their owners sprawled on the seats, smoking cigarettes and chattering. Sylvia addressed the one nearest her in a strong, imperious voice. "I want you to take me out to that steamer," she said, pointing out to the liner in the harbor.

The man looked up at her blankly, his laughing, impertinent brown face sobered at once by the sight of her own. He made a reply in Italian, raising his shoulders. Some ill-dressed, loafing stragglers on the wharf drew near Sylvia with an indolent curiosity. She turned to them and asked, "Do any of you speak English?" although it was manifestly inconceivable that any of those typical Neapolitans should. One of them stepped forward, running his hand through greasy black curls. "I kin, lady," he said with a fluent, vulgar New York accent. "What ye want?"

"Tell that man," said Sylvia, her lips moving stiffly, "to take me out to the ship that is to leave for America this morning—and now—this minute, I may be late now!"

After a short impassioned colloquy, the loafer turned to her and reported: "He says if he took you out, you couldn't git on board. Them big ships ain't got no way for folks in little boats to git on. And he'd ask you thirty lire, anyhow. That's a fierce price. Say, if you'll wait a minute, I can get you a man that'll do it for—" Mrs. Marshall-Smith and Hélène had followed, and now broke through the line of ill-smelling loungers. Mrs. Marshall-Smith took hold of her niece's arm firmly, and began to draw her away with a dignified gesture. "You don't know what you are doing, child," she said with a peremptory accent of authority. "You are beside yourself. Come with me at once. This is no—"

Sylvia did not resist her. She ignored her. In fact, she did not understand a word that her aunt said. She shook off the older woman's hand with one thrust of her powerful young arm, and gathering her skirts about her, leaped down into the boat. She took out her purse and showed the man a fifty-lire bill. "Row fast! Fast!" she motioned to him, sitting down in the stern and fixing her eyes on the huge bulk of the liner, black upon the brilliance of the sunlit water. She heard her name called from the wharf and turned her face backward, as the light craft began to move jerkily away.

Felix had come up and now stood between Mrs. Marshall-Smith and her maid, both of whom were passionately appealing to him! He looked over their heads, saw the girl already a boat-length from the wharf, and gave a gesture of utter consternation. He ran headlong to the edge of the dock and again called her name loudly, "Sylvia! Sylvia!" There was no mistaking the quality of that cry. It was the voice of a man who sees the woman he loves departing from him, and who wildly, imperiously calls her back to him. But she did not return. The boat was still so close that she could look deeply into his eyes. Through all her tumult of horror, there struck cold to Sylvia's heart the knowledge that they were the eyes of a stranger. The blow that had pierced her had struck into a quivering center of life, so deep within her, that only something as deep as its terrible suffering could seem real. The man who stood there, so impotently calling to her, belonged to another order of things—things which a moment ago had been important to her, and which now no longer existed. He had become for her as remote, as immaterial as the gaudy picturesqueness of the scene in which he stood. She gave him a long strange look, and made a strange gesture, a gesture of irrevocable leave-taking. She turned her face again to the sea, and did not look back.

They approached the liner, and Sylvia saw some dark heads looking over the railing at her. Her boatman rowed around the stern to the other side, where the slanting stairs used in boarding the harbor-boats still hung over the side. The landing was far above their heads. Sylvia stood up and cried loudly to the dull faces, staring down at her from the steerage deck. "Send somebody down on the stairs to speak to me." There was a stir; a man in a blue uniform came and looked over the edge, and went away. After a moment, an officer in white ran down the stairs to the hanging landing with the swift, sure footing of a seaman. Sylvia stood up again, turning her white face up to him, her eyes blazing in the shadow of her hat. "I've just heard that my mother is very sick, and I must get back to America at once. If you will let down the rope ladder, I can climb up. I must go! I have plenty of money. I must!"