There was a flash of Glory!—the Sun! He felt a sense of elation, of new birth. The sky turned purple, pink, gold; the color ecstasy crept into his blood. Color! the life of the world! Color clamored in his brain for expression, for air; he was obsessed with the madness that reveals, the divine madness of the artist.
The pastor stood beside him. The sun was climbing. Martin pointed to a ball of fire down deep in the lake.
“I’m going to bring it up,” he said. He slipped off his clothes and dived in, floating, twisting himself like a dolphin, spouting water in the air; then he ran along the green borders, his body gleaming in the sun. The pastor thought of the legend of the Water Gods.
They went slowly on foot toward home, stopping at the little Dorfs, where the peasants greeted them with acclamations. “A fine lad! a Staehli, every inch of him.” Martin returned their gripping handshakes, tossed down their schnaaps, gave them points on the disinfection of barns and the care of cows, danced with the maids on the green, kissed them; they pelted him with flowers.
At the door of the châlet, Angela stood waiting. He put a portfolio in her hands, bits of color he had caught on the way. Her eyes were fixed on his face. This was not the Martin she had known: it was like the same face reflected in clear water, etherealized by the refraction of light. She heard him in the fields, his strong voice filling the distance with melody. She looked up at the great mountain. An unfortunate man called Martin Steele lay there, dead.
29
The Garrisons came back to their home on Park Avenue. With Mary’s help and his own will, Floyd learnt to diagnose Julie’s actions as “psychic impulses.” She herself couldn’t do wrong; she fought against a “subconscious tendency.” From her girlhood it had always been “like that”; this was the bridge over which he could pass to reconciliation. He had every reason to be satisfied with his wife. She was in correspondence with Father Cabello, whose influence revealed itself in her piety. She became very devout, Heavenly love drove out the earthly in her. She attended daily mass; the big-eyed woman with her beautiful boy were well-known at the Cathedral. Floyd noticed after coming home from service a rapt expression on her face; she went about with upturned eyes like St. Cecilia. He had a vision of a black-robed nun. He spoke to Dr. McClaren.
“I am afraid my wife is developing a religious complex.”
“I think not,” answered the doctor. “I imagine before it gets so far, that insatiable emotional craving of hers will find a new stimulus.”
There was something wrong with Floyd. His intense desire to forget the “unpleasant” episode in Switzerland had overstrained his nerves. They reacted in a strange manner. He’d leave his home in the morning with the intention of going to see the Colonel, and would find himself wandering aimlessly in quite a different direction. He’d walk for hours through parts of the city unknown to him; he saw strange faces, strange places, another world. He lounged about where the ships came in. The immigrants had an irresistible fascination. He watched them, listened to their unintelligible jargon. A dark-eyed Madonna with a shawl on her head, a child at her breast, was not strange to him. He knew her: she was Julie’s sister. A bearded old man, carrying on his bent shoulders the tragedy of his race, looked at him with the eyes of Joseph Abravanel. A straight tall peasant with bundles, bewildered by the city, was Martin’s grandfather. It was a kind of mental phantasmagoria of those who had worked a sinister influence in his life. He couldn’t get rid of them; he saw their Past, their Present, their Future, the struggles, the agony, the hopelessness. He was flung backward, forward with them. Must he go on living with them all his life? A horror seized him.