They shared a communion so perfect, an ecstasy so deep that it resembled death. When they recovered from the swoon, Alexis laid his head upon Anne’s shoulder like a weary child.
“I want to sleep with my head upon your breast. I want to lie beside you all night, just as if we were married, just as if I had the right,” he sobbed.
Anne soothed him, as a woman soothes the child at her breast, and presently he slept. But she lay awake beside him for a long time, staring out into the moonlit night, savoring her love, her compassion, her sacrifice.
CHAPTER XX
OFFERINGS TO THE GOD OF GENIUS
The holiday season parted the lovers temporarily. Alexis’ Christmas gift, a carved emerald, about her neck, like a symbol of slavery, Anne went to Virginia to visit her aunt. She was gone two weeks and the change did her good. An invalid, her aunt saw almost no one, and the blessed sunny monotony of the days fell like balm upon Anne’s irked spirit. Wrapped in rugs, for the air was keen, she sat with the old lady in the frost-touched garden and read aloud to her from gentle, time-worn books, which they both loved. Stevenson and Thackeray, and once or twice Jane Austen. Or, if they felt particularly devilish, Bourget, or even Prévost. Well-bred salacities, as mild and unfleshly as a Watteau screen. Meanwhile, Anne’s soul basked in the radiant peace.
The winter had not proved an easy one, so far, and as the time approached for Alexis’ concert, Anne welcomed his increased absorption. His accompanist, Paul Leon, spent the greater part of the week at the house in Long Island, leaving Saturdays and Sundays as the only free days, and the greater part of these were spent either in practicing, or in talking over with Anne the programs for his coming season. Following his recital in Carnegie Hall, at the end of January, there were to be several appearances with different orchestras, including the Philharmonic. After that the projected tour of the principal cities would come. All this required a very careful and varied choice of program. And Alexis was both painstaking and meticulous. As he was temperamental as well, it naturally followed that he often changed his mind. One day, a Tchaikowsky Concerto would obsess him to the point of rapture. The next he would develop a Beethoven complex. Some waltz of Wienawski, a serenade of Kreisler would fling him into Paradise for a week. The Serenade Melancolique rode him for days like a subconscious sorrow. He would get out of bed, and still half asleep, take out his violin and play it until exhaustion overcame him.
“It is the song of a fallen angel,” he cried one night, tears falling down his working face. “The agony of lost glory, the utter hopelessness are all there.”
Her own eyes overflowing, Anne pillowed his head on her shoulder, and murmured comfort until he fell into a sorrowful slumber. Frequently she lay awake beside him for hours. These days filled with a continuous wave of sound, left her storm-tossed and weary. Fragments of concertos thundered through her tired brain. Mingled with a sonata, the piercing sweetness of a Berçeuse; the monotonous, but beautiful precision of an exercise, until her head hummed like the inside of a seashell, and her spirit felt as void. She envied Alexis his ability to throw off a mood at will. To forget the labors of the day in the transports of the night. And yet it was this very quality which she dreaded. After hours of planning programs and listening to excerpts from problematical choices, she was expected to play the grande amoureuse, to respond with ardor to Alexis’ quenchless thirst. If Anne’s embraces were tepid, her smile a little absent, her echoing and aching head was heaped with reproaches. She did not love him any more. She never had loved him. She was fickle as the new moon, and as cold. She was thinking of marrying some one else. Yes, yes, that must be it. Who was it? That snobbish fool of a Gerald Boynton, who thought he could play the piano? (The cheek of these amateurs was amusing.) Or that Marchese, of whom Ellen was constantly hinting? Why didn’t she tell him and put him out of his agony immediately? She knew he was not able to marry her, himself. He was tied hand and foot to a fond fool, who would not give him his freedom. Yes, but he would take it just the same, this precious freedom, if it tore Claire into little pieces, to wrest it from her! And so on, sometimes for an hour. Until Anne’s nerves shrieked for peace, and her tongue was numb from reiterated denials. Until exhausted, Alexis would cease as suddenly as he had begun, and laying his head upon her knees, beg for the forgiveness which was so ungrudgingly granted. The humility of his joy always aroused Anne’s compassion. Heavy with fatigue, sorrowful for his shame, she would allow Alexis to have his way.
It was not strange that Anne welcomed the peace of her aunt’s Southern household, and basked wistfully within its sunny garden.
And yet her memories, of course, were not all irksome. There had been hours of splendid companionship, moments of exquisite communion, and it was upon these that her thoughts preferred to dwell. Alexis absent was so much more comfortable than in the flesh. Safe from his fatiguing intensity, Anne wondered how she ever could have taken his moods so seriously. And his letters were so pathetic. Incoherent, ridiculously young, they poured forth an incense of supplication that was lyrical and even beautiful. Almost biblically flowery, Anne called them her ‘Songs of Alexis,’ and laughed softly over their pages.