Children of the Market Place

by Edgar Lee Masters

I begin to wonder about my Reverdy. At the school I see him in association with English boys. He is not so strong as they, not so handsome, not so alert and apt. Isabel has never had a child and wants one with consuming passion. This boy is mine, but am I better off than Isabel? My life grows clearer to me. I have receded from it and can see it better. I can look out upon Rome and then close my eyes and recall Chicago. I think of my long years of money making; then I turn to reflection upon art and life. I thrill in the presence of Isabel; then I remember the mild but tender passion which Dorothy aroused in me.

I thrill before Isabel, but I give my feelings no expression. There are looks, no doubt, hesitations of speech, flutterings of the heart, that she may hear. But she is encompassed with flame that bars my way. I do not try to pass. We are all friends together, Isabel, Uncle Tom, and I. No plans are made which exclude Uncle Tom. Isabel and I have no secrets, no stealings away, no intimacies however slight, no quick withdrawals upon the sound of his step. Everything is known to Uncle Tom. I had impulses to all clearness of conduct in the circumstance that Uncle Tom is so much my friend. He treats me like a father; he is always doing generous things for me. He is delighted to see Isabel go with me to a church or a gallery, when he is too tired or too ill to accompany us, and that is often.

And day by day Isabel was happier. She became a creature of glories, shining transparencies. We had books together, music together, our work together. We had the companionship of the morning and the evening meal, sacred rituals between beings who love each other. We had infinite talks together with Uncle Tom or alone, as it happened. If Uncle Tom saw our exaltation, nevertheless he knew all that was between us. For it was beauty of life that Isabel and I shared, and who cannot know between whom this secret exists, if he have eyes to see?

He knew I loved Isabel, if he had not forgotten all that moves in the blood of a man of forty-two. He knew that she loved me—at any rate in some quality of love. For Isabel used this word freely in the ecstasies of her spirit, in the rapturous atmosphere of Italy. "I love James, Uncle Tom—not as I love you; but I really love him! How wonderful that he should come to us. He is like my brother, but he is something more. He is a great friend." Uncle Tom would smile benignantly upon this radiant woman, whom he had married for her youthful vitality, for which he gave the happiness that comes of wealth. Perhaps in his ageing psychology he did not know that there was passion in our hearts. Yet I think he was a great soul, wishing Isabel to have every happiness. I know he was my friend. There was nothing in him of the envy of January because of my younger years, nor reproof for the Maytime sunshine that was in the heart of Isabel.

Isabel and I had been to the Vatican several times. Uncle Tom disliked pictures; above all he dreaded the fatigue of walking and the cold of the churches and rooms where he was obliged to remove his hat. One afternoon Isabel proposed that we go again to the Vatican; there was a face there she wished to show me. We asked Uncle Tom to come with us; but this was one of the days when he did not feel strong enough for anything. He was keeping to his room. Perhaps later he would go to Canape's. "You two go along. You will get on without me."

Isabel took me directly to the suite which was decorated by Pinturicchio for Alexander VI. We looked at the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Magi, and the Resurrection. Somehow I was more moved by these paintings than by anything I had yet seen in Rome. The soul of this painter took possession of me. Then recalling what Isabel had said I asked her: "Where is the face, Isabel, you wished to show me?" "There," she said. "Turn around." I did and saw a bronze bust on a pedestal. "That, you mean?" Isabel nodded. I walked closer to it. It was Pinturicchio.

A deeper emotion than I had ever before felt before a work of art took possession of me. Such wisdom, benignity, genius! What a soul belonged to this man! I looked about to see if we were watched by guards. As we were alone I put up my hands to caress this face, moved by some unknown impulse. Touching the silken surface of the bronze my whole imaginative power seemed to awake; my life spread out before me. I know not what it was; memories of so many things; not least of all Isabel's presence understanding what I felt. My eyes blinded; my shoulders shook a little. Isabel came to me and gently put her hand on my arm. We walked away. "Who was Pinturicchio?" I asked of Isabel. And she told me. I took a guide-book out of my pocket and began to read. "There is a story," it said, "that Pinturicchio was starved by his wife during his last illness." I closed the book. After all had not Douglas been starved in the finer part of his genius by the life to which he was wedded? How would his face look in bronze, ridged with reason and controversy; what could ever bring him out of the dust and noise of the levels where he was battling, even to the plateaus to which poor Serafino had climbed?

After that I looked at everything of Pinturicchio's I could find in Rome. We found his Coronation of the Virgin, his frescoes of St. Antonio. But Isabel, who had already been to the Villa d'Este with Uncle Tom, began now day by day to plan another excursion there. She had not gone up to Tivoli, nor seen the cataracts; we could do all of this in an afternoon if we did not stop to wander through Hadrian's Villa. This time Serafino went with us; but Uncle Tom was again indisposed, and laughingly bade us to go on and leave him to an afternoon at Canape's with his cronies.

Serafino rode on the box with the driver, and that left Isabel and me to something like a privacy, as we drove by the quarries of travertine where the slaves of old Rome went blind and died hewing out the stone that went to the building of the Coliseum and the theaters of Marcellus and Pompey. We passed the little stream whose waters were blue with sulphur, filling the air with its odor. The grasses and herbs were green; here and there an almond tree was in blossom. The dark cypresses of Hadrian's Villa stood like spires of thunder clouds against the wonderful azures of this uplifting sky. Before us were the mountains, pine-clad, vineyard-clad; and far up the gleam of a cascade shone like a bent sword in the sun.

Serafino took us through the room of the d'Este Palace telling the driver to meet us at one of the entrances to the grounds. When we emerged and descended to the Hundred Fountains he turned away giving us the directions to reach the carriage. He knew that this was a place where lovers would wish to dispense with a guide.