But the man’s answer, caressing, muffled, was lost within the house.
Shivering and dazed, Alexis pulled his collar up about his throat. Lowering his head against the rain, in a bull-like, butting gesture, he strode toward Fifth Avenue.
What a fool he had been to imagine he could interest a woman like Anne, an idolized doll, surrounded by male and female sycophants, who probably took advantage of her wealth and loneliness. A woman, whimsical as a pet kitten, who had enjoyed him like a new toy for a while, but as soon as he became hackneyed, would drop him as casually as she had taken him up. Really, it would be too callow of him to expect more! In her eyes he was only a thwarted musician who had enjoyed a flashing, comet-like success, only to be swallowed once more into the nethermost void. It was not that he grudged her elegant and expensive surroundings. He could not conceive of her in any other milieu (for instance, how uncomfortable she would be in the gorgeous, ready-made, apartment on 59th Street!) But it had all frightened him a little. He had missed the leveling camaraderie of the mountain lodge. The contrast had proved too glaring for his flimsy nerves, and he had swaggered before her like a bully. What must she think of him? What an ill-bred pup he must appear in contrast with this Marchese, this stalwart, suave man of the world who had known how to put a gossiping woman in her place without loss of temper or dignity, who had hinted of his friendship with Anne as of something too solid and enduring to be shaken by trivialities. Who was this man? What place did he occupy in Anne’s life? Was he an unacknowledged lover, or a future husband? And what chance had he, Alexis Petrovskey, the musical waif, against a man of her own caste, who not only could give her the position suited to her, but the honor which it is in the power of the poorest to bestow? While he himself had actually had the temerity to offer the ironic gift of a broken life and an illicit love. The wonder was not that she had laughed at his egotistical insanity, but that she had tempered her refusal with kindliness.
Invaded by a desolate humility, he strode out from the ravine-like street on to the avenue. Disregarding a taxi which like a benevolent but unwieldy carrier-pigeon would have taken him safely home to Gramercy Square, he hurried across the wet and glistening pavement to where the park, naked, shorn, welcomed him drearily. Entering one of the windswept paths, he sank heavily on to a bench.
This was the end. He would not try to see Anne any more. He refused to draw her down into the slough of his misery again. He would finish up his affairs, settle a certain sum upon his mother and Claire, as much as he could afford, leaving only a meager allowance for his own future. Then he would go abroad and drag out the bathos of his days in some obscure corner of the old world, where his face and name had not penetrated. And perhaps the end would not be long in coming. For he had always felt that his would not be a long life. For the candle to blow out before it had spluttered to its ignominious finish, seemed suddenly both beautiful and fitting. The thought soothed his whirling senses like a promise of peace; a colossal lullaby from the infinite. Enfolded within its majestic irony, he drifted into a reverie in which all sense of time and space was lost. Chin sunk into the clammy collar of his overcoat, he gazed before him into the dripping branches of the trees. Gazed so long and remained so motionless that he did not notice when the rain ceased to fall. Nor observed that it had gradually solidified into a jelly-like fog which coiled about the trees in sickly wreaths.
He did not even look up when a hulking shadow moved between him and the enswathed world. It was not until a mechanical “move along, move along, man, the park ain’t no dormitory,” penetrated his dull senses, that he became aware of his chilled and paralyzed body. Looking stupidly up into the dim round face of the policeman, he broke into a short, hysterical laugh, rose unsteadily to his feet and laughing and coughing, wended his way down the wind-swept path in the wake of the scattering leaves.
CHAPTER X
MERRY-GO-ROUND
“Confess it, Anne. You are bored unspeakably, is it not so?” exclaimed the Marchese, as he poured a few drops of Bacardi into a cup of tea, before handing it to Anne. “As for me, who have only been in New York for two weeks, I am a ruin! Not a reposeful ruin like those I am digging up in Sicily, but rather like those of Pompeii, racked by earthquake and volcanic eruptions. How can you stand it?”
Anne smiled indulgently. The Marchese’s symbolic hyperboles always amused her. Nestling into her cushions, she sipped her doctored tea.
“I am tired, Vittorio! But what else is there to do? One has got to go through the gestures, you know.”