Читать книгу The Young May Moon - Martha Ostenso - Страница 5

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Had it not been for Paul Brule’s voice, Marcia had often thought, she would never have found anything likeable in Rolf’s best friend, the doctor. His voice was strong and deep, like Rolf’s, but it had something more, too. Marcia had wondered much about his voice for days after she had first met him. It was dark with mystery. It had been mellowed in foreign places where Paul Brule had striven to mould his accents to fit a dozen alien tongues. Marcia liked it best when he talked of strange cities he had seen, whose streets and market places he had known, whose byways he had ventured into, and whose nights and days he spoke of in a way that made her think of perfume, or of poems, or of someone singing an old song.

Paul Brule himself had almost spoiled their first meeting. He had come, only a few days after Rolf had brought her from Bethune, to offer his congratulations and to meet Rolf Gunther’s bride. He had talked very little that night, sitting slumped down in his chair after the manner of a man whose mind was heavy with melancholy.

Before he left, however, he had brightened suddenly and had taken from his pocket a small piece of green jade, carved exquisitely and mounted in a slender rim of gold. “Just a little token,” he had said then, handing it to Rolf. “I had it mounted so you could wear it for a charm. Keep it in remembrance of our friendship. You were so sudden about this that I didn’t have time to look for an appropriate gift for the bride.”

Rolf had accepted the gift, a little shame-faced and self-conscious. “You don’t have to drop a man just because he goes and gets himself married, Paul.” But Paul Brule had not replied to that. He had turned instead to Dorcas Gunther, who had left her chair and was standing beside Rolf, eager to see what Paul had given him. “Just a little thing carved from jade by one of the students in a mission in Honan, Mrs. Gunther,” he had explained.

A few minutes later, however, talking casually with Marcia, he had said quite irrelevantly, “That trinket, by the way—just between you and me, of course—dates back to the Ming dynasty. The man from whom I bought it—stole it.” She had flushed a little, perhaps from resentment that he should have chosen her to share his little deception, perhaps from vexation that he had not told Rolf the truth. It had seemed to her at the time that Paul Brule was a little contemptuous of Rolf, but in that she had been mistaken. There was no contempt in Doctor Paul, only an obscure sort of humor. Curiously like Hugh Vorse in that humor of his, she discovered.

Marcia had never told Rolf the truth about the trinket. Nor had she been able to understand just why she had not told him. Some vague feeling, perhaps, that she had been entrusted with a secret.

She had never been able to account for her feeling for Paul Brule after that night. The trivial secret had risen like a thick wall between her and the doctor. He and Rolf had become closer friends than ever, but Marcia had never quite recovered from the effects of their first meeting.

Doctor Paul Brule himself opened the door in response to her knock. He employed an old railway cook as servant, but the man was both lame and indolent. Brule was in a heavy black dressing gown as he stood, shadowed by his low, dark veranda, and frowned down at her. His frown meant nothing, Marcia reflected. Paul Brule, by no means a mild-visaged man at best, wore a perpetual threatening scowl.

“Doctor Paul,” she said quickly, “isn’t Rolf here?”

His look squeezed her heart into a tight little knot.

“Certainly not,” he said curtly.

There was something he knew. Marcia was sure of that from his manner. Though he was stern in his way, he was not ordinarily so brusque with her. Even a call at this early hour would surely not have vexed him so.

“But he has been here, hasn’t he?” she persisted.

“Late last night, yes. What’s wrong? Here—come inside.”

He swung the door back and permitted her to enter. She preceded him into the study where the light was kept burning always throughout the night, a subdued light under a rich, golden-brown shade. It was only a pale glow now in the fresh light of the morning that streamed in through the window. The study itself was a warm brown depth that showed fine facets of books and leather.

In spite of Brule’s abrupt reply to her question, Marcia could not quite free herself of the hope that she might find Rolf here. She looked quickly about the room, then swung around and faced Brule, her hands darting nervously out toward him.

“Then—he really isn’t here?” she said in a voice that startled her with its shrillness.

“He was here about midnight,” Brule told her, “for a couple of hours, I should say. I walked home with him when he left. Have you—been home?”

The merciless blood swept up over her throat and cheeks and temples. Brule’s eyes, beneath his heavy brows, were dark and without pity. For moments they stood, face to face, without speaking.

“You know, then?” The words did little more than take shape on her lips. “Rolf told you?”

Brule’s lips twitched, deepening the long hollows in his cheeks. “Yes—he told me.”

Suddenly she hated him, with a rebellious, bitter hatred, for his feelingless detachment. Why could he not say something instead of standing there uttering maddening monosyllables? She wrung her hands and went toward him, searching his face closely. Perhaps he was torturing her deliberately, luxuriating a little in the fact that her suffering was only the just reward of her own foolishness. He was capable of that, she thought.

“But don’t you understand?” she pleaded. “I came home—long before dawn—and he wasn’t there. He hadn’t been in bed, at all. Where is he, Doctor Brule, where is he? You know—you must know. Don’t torture me. Can’t you see what I’ve been through? Tell me where Rolf is.”

Paul Brule’s face darkened angrily. It made him look suddenly old, although he was only a year or so older than Rolf. She shrank back from him.

“I’ve told you all I know,” he said surlily. “I don’t know where he is. But I’m not worried about him—and you have no reason to be. Rolf is quite capable of looking after himself. But why should you go looking for him? You left him, didn’t you?”

She sank into a chair. Her eyes traveled desperately up over Brule’s black silk robe. He was like some mad priest, she thought, witholding absolution. A ferocious, inhuman priest, towering over her in his black cassock.

From far down in her throat her voice issued, toneless, faltering. But her eyes held Paul Brule’s eyes, and she knew that he was listening to her.

“I know what you are thinking of me,” she murmured. “You think I ran away from Rolf—deserted him—”

“I confess it looks a little like that to me,” Brule interrupted. As he spoke, he slipped his cigarette case from a pocket of his gown and opened it.

“But I didn’t, I tell you—I didn’t!” Marcia protested. “There has never been anyone else but Rolf. I told him last night that we couldn’t—that I couldn’t live unless—unless things were different. But I didn’t know what I was saying. I know now. I know I can go on—with him—if he’ll only—”

“A little experience is a wonderful thing sometimes, isn’t it?” Brule observed.

The sight of him standing there coolly smoking his cigarette and delivering calm judgment at a time like this was more than Marcia could stand.

“You can’t be such a fool—you can’t!” she broke out stormily. “You can’t help knowing how impossible it has been for me to live in the same house with Dorcas Gunther. I don’t belong there.”

“Then why didn’t you stay where you did belong? Why did you go to live with her?”

“Because I loved Rolf,” Marcia told him simply. “Besides, I didn’t know what it would be like. I didn’t know she’d be watching me every day—every hour—like a hawk. I didn’t know she would keep on reminding me that I’m the daughter of a man who was an unbeliever—and a drunkard—and worse. But I’ve endured it for Rolf’s sake. For him I went through that agony of conversion in the church last winter. Why do you think I’ve been able to endure Dorcas Gunther’s long prayers and Bible readings three times a day—and her fear of the devil—and her sense of sin—and all her talk about faith and repentance and salvation—and the whole thing? Why? For Rolf. I used to have some respect for such things—in spite of what they say about my father—but I’ve come to despise them, hate them—loathe them!”

Paul Brule lifted one hand in a quiet gesture of patience. “Perhaps,” he said, “I know more about all that than you give me credit for. Nevertheless,” he added, as though he were weighing his words, his eyes not upon her but upon the thin blue cloud of smoke that lay like a floating curtain athwart an early sunbeam, “nevertheless, you have much to be grateful for, my girl.”

“I have tried to be grateful,” Marcia declared, “but what can you do—in a grave? Rolf had my piano brought up from Bethune and I have scarcely touched it. I’ve been afraid. I’ve tried to forget how to sing anything but hymns. I’ve tried to forget books and poetry and pictures. Can’t you understand a little? I didn’t think I could ever forget. But I can—I can forget everything—if only Rolf will love me—as I hoped he would. That’s what I told him last night.”

Her voice failed her completely and she lay back in the chair, exhausted.

Brule looked down at her for a moment in silence. He held his cigarette to his lips, took a last deep breath, then tossed it into a small tray on a table beside him, crunching it down with the end of his thumb.

“Yes,” he said, as if to himself. “Then, why did you go to Masterson?”

Marcia straightened and gathered her hands stiffly in her lap. “Rolf told you that, too, did he?” she asked him dully.

“You seem to forget that Rolf and I have been friends ever since I came here two years ago,” he reminded her. “Under the circumstances, it isn’t hard to understand his telling me—though you probably think it none of my business to enquire into your motives concerning Masterson. If so, you may simply forget that I asked about it. My only concern in this whole affair is to make life a bit easier for both you and Rolf, if I can find any way of doing so. I don’t think you will misunderstand that.”

“I understand,” she told him, “and I’m not ungrateful. But, you see—I didn’t go to Howard Masterson.”

“I understood Rolf to say—”

“I know. I told Rolf that I was going to him. I don’t know why I told him. It was just that I knew Howard in Bethune. I took lessons from him on the piano—and he taught me to sing. He once told me he cared for me—and I think he did. But I couldn’t care for him—like that. I wanted to make Rolf angry last night. I thought of Howard coming up here from Bethune every week to choir practice. I thought of him singing—and me. I thought—oh, I don’t know what I thought, now. Can’t you understand—anything?”

Suddenly she stood up, pushing back her hair with both hands. “I—I can’t stay here, Doctor Paul. I’ve got to find Rolf. I’ve been away from the house long enough now. Dorcas will be wondering why we haven’t come back. I told her Rolf went out for a walk early. I—I wish you could come with me. He must have gone down to the yard. Somehow—I can’t tell you—I’m afraid. Something may have happened to him.”

Brule regarded her thoughtfully for a moment. “Something has happened to him,” he said at last, “something you will probably never be able to understand.”

His manner frightened her. “What do you mean?” she asked him.

“I don’t know that you would understand it if I told you,” he went on. “What you women never seem to understand is that a man may marry a woman for a better reason than the fact that he finds himself in love with her.”

“I know no better reason,” Marcia told him.

“Exactly. You forget that a man can find love—if that’s what he wants—almost anywhere. You have been talking about salvation, Marcia. A man’s salvation—and his damnation, too—in nine cases out of ten rests with some woman. That’s not sentimentality, either. It’s the unhappy truth. When I say that something has happened to Rolf Gunther, I mean that Rolf married you as a part of his own hope of salvation. I don’t know any other word for it—nor any better. It happens that I know his case, and the word fits. When you told him you were going away with Masterson, Rolf lost the hope he had of saving his soul. I know it. Last night I looked on a man who thought himself damned—he said so. He was in a dangerous mood. I thought I had talked him out of it. Then I walked home with him. But the mood evidently came back. Now, you’d better get back home and wait there. He’ll be back when he gets it thought through for himself. In the meantime, I’ll get dressed and look around for him.”

Her eyes dwelt upon him uncomprehendingly. But over her anxiety she saw something in Paul Brule’s face that she had never seen there before. Something akin to compassion, she thought.

“I’m going with you—to look for him,” she said emphatically. “I can’t go back to that house, and to Dorcas Gunther, without him.”

He turned suddenly and vanished, without a word, into an inner room.

Marcia waited by the window, her eyes wandering out over the dew-drenched grass of the lawn to the glistening hedge of pale carragana flooded with early sunlight. In an incredibly short time Brule was out of his room again, dressed as carefully as if he had taken an hour to put on his clothes. He was drawing on his gloves as he spoke to her.

“Wait out in front and I’ll bring the car around. I think we’ll run down to the yard.”

It seemed to Marcia like an age before he put his roadster into the short driveway beside the house and swung down to where she waited for him at the edge of the lawn.

“I called his mother,” he said when they were in the street at last. “She hasn’t heard from him. It’s scarcely his way of doing things.”

Marcia wanted to ask him what Dorcas had said over the telephone, but she seemed to have lost courage even for that. She pressed her hands together in her lap and leaned forward tensely as the car hurried down the avenue. Paul Brule stared steadily before him, not speaking a word. As they drove into the flats beside the river and turned toward the lumber-yard, Marcia glanced once at his face and surprised there an expression that brought that faint feeling sweeping over her again. Her hands began to tremble violently so that she had to seize her fingers and twist them to keep from crying out.

“You should never have let him go last night,” she said finally, unable any longer to bear Brule’s silence.

But he said nothing in reply. He brought the car to a halt before the door of the tiny wooden structure that served Rolf for an office. Through the door, which stood open, they could see that no one was within.

“Wait here,” Brule said. “I’ll find Essinger.”

He slipped quickly from his seat and hurried away through the gold-brown village of lumber piles. Marcia waited for only a moment in the car. She could not sit there. Voices were coming to her from the direction of a little wharf that Rolf and Essinger had built last summer, when Rolf had bought himself a canoe on one of his trips to Chicago. She got down from the car and hurried in the direction that Paul Brule had gone. Presently she emerged from behind a pile of lumber at a point that commanded an unobstructed view of the river and the little wharf. Down there, in the apricot-colored sunlight, was a strangely postured group of men—three—or was it four? Paul Brule was there—kneeling beside something on the ground. The men were stooping again ... lifting ... talking in low tones. Her eyes swam....

Against the sheen of the water she caught a glimpse of Rolf’s canoe, one end touching the shore where it had drifted, light and empty as a green leaf.

It was her cry that brought Paul Brule running to her. Her eyes fixed themselves upon him and indifferently they told her that his face was livid. Dully his voice came to her, never so stern, so sharply demanding.

“Stop it! Do you hear me! You can’t let down now!” He spoke more softly then. “Essinger found him ... near the edge ... only three feet of water.” He came close and caught her roughly or she would have fallen. “Listen, Marcia—Marcia Vorse! Rolf Gunther met with an accident, do you understand! No one must know anything else—no one must think anything else. That must remain a secret between you and me. Understand?”

How could she understand? A secret! Her mind turned crazily about a trinket of green jade ... carved in Honan ... no, dating from the Ming dynasty.... Was that the secret?

Suddenly her body became a stiff stalk, broken at the root.