The Bent Twig

by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

The officer stared, shook his head, and ran back up the stairs, disappearing into the black hole in the ship's side. The dark, heavy faces continued to hang over the railing, staring fixedly down at the boat with a steady, incurious gaze. Sylvia's boatman balanced his oar-handles on his knees, rolled a cigarette and lighted it. The boat swayed up and down on the shimmering, heaving roll of the water, although the ponderous ship beside it loomed motionless as a rock. The sun beat down on Sylvia's head and up in her face from the molten water till she felt sick, but when another officer in white, an elderly man with an impassive, bearded face, came down the stairs, she rose up, instantly forgetful of everything but her demand. She called out her message again, straining her voice until it broke, poised so impatiently in the little boat, swinging under her feet, that she seemed almost about to spring up towards the two men leaning over to catch her words. When she finished, the older man nodded, the younger one ran back up the stairs, and returned with a rope ladder.

Sylvia's boatman stirred himself with an ugly face of misgiving. He clutched at her arm, and made close before her face the hungry, Mediterranean gesture of fingering money. She took out her purse, gave him the fifty-lire note, and catching at the ladder as it was flung down, disregarding the shouted commands of the men above her to "wait!" she swung herself upon it, climbing strongly and surely in spite of her hampering skirts.

The two men helped her up, alarmed and vexed at the risk she had taken. They said something about great crowds on the boat, and that only in the second cabin was there a possibility for accommodations. If she answered them, she did not know what she said. She followed the younger man down a long corridor, at first dark and smelling of hemp, later white, bright with electric light, smelling strongly of fresh paint, stagnant air, and machine-oil. They emerged in a round hallway at the foot of a staircase. The officer went to a window for a conference with the official behind it, and returned to Sylvia to say that there was no room, not even a single berth vacant. Some shabby woman-passengers with untidy hair and crumpled clothes drew near, looking at her with curiosity. Sylvia appealed to them, crying out again, "My mother is very sick and I must go back to America at once. Can't any of you—can't you—?" she stopped, catching at the banisters. Her knees were giving way under her. A woman with a flabby pale face and disordered gray hair sprang towards her and took her in her arms with a divine charity. "You can have half my bed!" she cried, drawing Sylvia's head down on her shoulder. "Poor girl! Poor girl! I lost my only son last year!"

Her accent, her look, the tones of her voice, some emanation of deep humanity from her whole person, reached Sylvia's inner self, the first message that had penetrated to that core of her being since the deadly, echoing news of the telegram. Upon her icy tension poured a flood of dissolving warmth. Her hideous isolation was an illusion. This plain old woman, whom she had never seen before, was her sister, her blood-kin,—they were both human beings. She gave a cry and flung her arms about the other's neck, clinging to her like a person falling from a great height, the tears at last streaming down her face.

CHAPTER XLI

HOME AGAIN

The trip home passed like a long shuddering bad dream in which one waits eternally, bound hand and foot, for a blow which does not fall. Somehow, before the first day was over, an unoccupied berth was found for Sylvia, in a tiny corner usually taken by one of the ship's servants. Sylvia accepted this dully. She was but half alive, all her vital forces suspended until the journey should be over. The throbbing of the engines came to seem like the beating of her own heart, and she lay tensely in her berth for hours at a time, feeling that it was partly her energy which was driving the ship through the waters. She only thought of accomplishing the journey, covering the miles which lay before her. From what lay at the end she shrank back, returning again to her hypnotic absorption in the throbbing of the engines. The old woman who had offered to share her berth had disappeared at the first rough water and had been invisible all the trip. Sylvia did not think of her again. That was a recollection which with all its sacred significance was to come back later to Sylvia's maturer mind.

The ship reached New York late in the afternoon, and docked that night. Sylvia stood alone, in her soiled wrinkled suit, shapeless from constant wear, her empty hands clutching at the railing, and was the first passenger to dart down the second-class gang-plank. She ran to see if there were letters or a telegram for her.

"Yes, there is a telegram for you," said the steward, holding out a sealed envelope to her. "It came on with the pilot and ought to have been given you before."

She took the envelope, but was unable to open it. The arc lights flared and winked above her in the high roof of the wharf; the crowds of keen-faced, hard-eyed men and women in costly, neat-fitting clothing were as oblivious of her and as ferociously intent on their own affairs as the shabby, noisy crowd she had left in Naples, brushing by her as though she were a part of the wharf as they bent over their trunks anxiously, and locked them up with determination. It seemed to Sylvia that she could never break the spell of fear which bound her fast. Minute after minute dragged by, and she still stood, very white, very sick.