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Bent Twig

<h2 id="id01941" style="margin-top: 4em">CHAPTER XL</h2> <h5 id="id01942">A CALL FROM HOME</h5> It was quite dark when they arrived in the harbor at Naples; and they were too late to go through the necessary formalities of harbor entering. In company with several other in-and outward-bound steamers, the Carnatic lay to for the night. Some one pointed out a big liner which would sail for New York the next morning, lying like a huge, gaily lighted island, the blare of her band floating over the still water. Sylvia slept little that night, missing the rolling swing of the ship, and feeling breathless in the stifling immobility of the cabin. She tossed about restlessly, dozing off at intervals and waking with a start to get up on her knees and look out through the port-hole at the lights of Naples blazing steadily in their semicircle. She tried to think several times, about her relations to Felix, to Austin—but nothing came to her mind except a series of scenes in which they had figured, scenes quite disconnected, which brought no enlightenment to her. As she lay awake thus, staring at the ceiling, feeling in the intense silence and blackness that the fluttering of her eyelids was almost audible, her heart beating irregularly, now slow, now fast, it occurred to her that she was beginning to know something of the intensity of real life—real grown-up life. She was astonished to enjoy it so little. She fell at last, suddenly, fathoms deep into youthful slumber, and at once passed out from tormented darkness into some strange, sunny, wind-swept place on a height. And she was all one anguish of longing for Austin. And he came swiftly to her and took her in his arms and kissed her on the lips. And it was as it had been when she was a child and heard music, she was carried away by a great swelling tide of joy … But dusk began to fall again; Austin faded; through the darkness something called and called to her, imperatively. With great pain she struggled up through endless stages of half-consciousness, until she was herself again, Sylvia Marshall, heavy-eyed, sitting up in her berth and saying aloud, "Yes, what is it?" in answer to a knocking on the door. The steward's voice answered, announcing that the first boat for shore would leave in an hour. Sylvia sprang out of bed, the dream already nothing more than confused brightness in her mind. By the time she was dressed, it had altogether gone, and she only knew that she had had a restless night. She went out on the deck, longing for the tonic of pure air. The morning was misty—it had rained during the night—and clouds hung heavy and low over the city. Out from this gray smother the city gleamed like a veiled opal. Neither Felix nor her aunt was to be seen. When she went down to breakfast, after a brisk tramp back and forth across the deck, she was rosy and dewy, her triumphant youth showing no sign of her vigils. She was saying to herself: "Now I've come, it's too idiotic not to enjoy it. I shall let myself go!" Hélène attended to the ladies' packing and to the labeling and care of the baggage. Empty-handed, care-free, feeling like a traveling princess, Sylvia climbed down from the great steamer into a dirty, small harbor-boat. Aunt Victoria sat down at once on the folding camp-chair which Hélène always carried for her. Sylvia and Felix stood together at the blunt prow, watching the spectacle before them. The clouds were lifting from the city and from Vesuvius, and from Sylvia's mind. Her spirits rose as the boat went forward into the strange, foreign, glowing scene. The oily water shimmered in smooth heavings as the clumsy boat advanced upon it. The white houses on the hills gleamed out from their palms. As the boat came closer to the wharf, the travelers could see the crowds of foreign-looking people, with swarthy faces and cheap, ungraceful clothes, looking out at the boat with alert, speculative, unwelcoming eyes. The noise of the city streets, strange to their ears after the days of sea silence, rose clattering, like a part of the brilliance, the sparkle. The sun broke through the clouds, poured a flood of glory on the refulgent city, and shone hotly on the pools of dirty water caught in the sunken spots of the uneven stone pavement. Aunt Victoria made her way up the gang-plank to the landing dock, achieving dignity even there. Felix sprang after her, to hand her her chair, and Helene and Sylvia followed. Mrs. Marshall-Smith sat down at once, opening her dark-purple parasol, the tense silk of which was changed by the hot Southern sun into an iridescent bubble. "We will wait here till the steward gets our trunks out," she announced." It will be amusing to watch the people." The four made an oasis of aristocracy in the seething, shouting, frowzy, gaudy, Southern crowd, running about with the scrambling, undignified haste of ants, sweating, gesticulating, their faces contorted with care over their poor belongings. Sylvia was acutely conscious of her significance in the scene. She was also fully aware that Felix missed none of the contrast she made with the other women. She felt at once enhanced and protected by the ignobly dressed crowd about her. Felix was right—in America there could be no distinction, there was no background for it. The scene about them was theatrically magnificent. In the distance Vesuvius towered, cloud-veiled and threatening, the harbor shone and sparkled in the sun, the vivid, outreaching arms of Naples clasped the jewel-like water. From it all Sylvia extracted the most perfect distillation of traveler's joy. She felt the well-to-do tourist's care-free detachment from the fundamentals of life, the tourist's sense that everything exists for the purpose of being a sight for him to see. She knew, and knew with delight, the wanderer's lightened, emancipated sense of being at a distance from obligations, that cheerful sense of an escape from the emprisoning solidarity of humanity which furnishes the zest of life for the tourist and the tramp, enabling the one light-heartedly to offend proprieties and the other casually to commit murder. She was embarked upon a moral vacation. She was out of the Bastile of right and wrong. She had a vision of what freedom from entangling responsibilities is secured by traveling. She understood her aunt's classing it as among the positive goods of life. A man in a shabby blue uniform, with a bundle of letters in his hand, walked past them towards the boat. "Oh, the mail," said Mrs. Marshall-Smith. "There may be some for us." She beckoned the man to her, and said, "Marshall-Smith? Marshall? Morrison?" The man sorted over his pile. "Cable for Miss Marshall," he said, presenting it to the younger lady with a bold, familiar look of admiration. "Letter for F. Morrison: two letters for Mrs. Marshall-Smith." Sylvia opened her envelope, spread out the folded sheet of paper, and read what was scrawled on it, with no realization of the meaning. She knew only that the paper, Felix, her aunt, the crowd, vanished in thick blackness, through which, much later, with a great roaring in her ears, she read, as though by jagged flashes of lightning: "Mother very ill. Come home at once. Judith." It seemed to her an incalculably long time between her first glance at the words and her understanding of them, but when she emerged from the blackness and void, into the flaunting sunlight, the roaring still in her ears, the paper still in her hands, the scrawled words still venomous upon it, she saw that not a moment could have passed, for Felix and her aunt were unfolding letters of their own, their eyes beginning to run quickly over the pages. Sylvia stood quite still, feeling immeasurably and bitterly alone. She said to herself: "Mother is very sick. I must go home at once. Judith." But she did not know what she said. She felt only an impulse to run wildly away from something that gave her intolerable pain. Mrs. Marshall-Smith turned over a page of her letter, smiling to herself, and glanced up at her niece. Her smile was smitten from her lips. Sylvia had a fantastic vision of her own aspect from the gaping face of horror with which her aunt for an instant reflected it. She had never before seen Aunt Victoria with an unprepared and discomposed countenance. It was another feature of the nightmare. For suddenly everything resolved itself into a bad dream,—her aunt crying out, Hélène screaming and running to her, Felix snatching the telegram from her and reading it aloud—it seemed to Sylvia that she had heard nothing for years but those words, "Mother very sick. Come home at once. Judith." She heard them over and over after his voice was silent. Through their constant echoing roar in her ears she heard but dimly the babel of talk that arose—Aunt Victoria saying that she could not of course leave at once because no passage had been engaged, Hélène foolishly offering smelling-salts, Felix darting off to get a carriage to take them to the hotel where she could be out of the crowd and they could lay their plans—"Oh, my poor dear!—but you may have more reassuring news tomorrow, you know," said Mrs. Marshall-Smith soothingly. The girl faced her aunt outraged. She thought she cried out angrily, "tomorrow!" but she did not break her silence. She was so torn by the storm within her that she had no breath for recriminations. She turned and ran rapidly some distance away to the edge of the wharf, where some small rowboats hung bobbing, their owners sprawled on the seats, smoking cigarettes and chattering. Sylvia addressed the one nearest her in a strong, imperious voice. "I want you to take me out to that steamer," she said, pointing out to the liner in the harbor. The man looked up at her blankly, his laughing, impertinent brown face sobered at once by the sight of her own. He made a reply in Italian, raising his shoulders. Some ill-dressed, loafing stragglers on the wharf drew near Sylvia with an indolent curiosity. She turned to them and asked, "Do any of you speak English?" although it was manifestly inconceivable that any of those typical Neapolitans should. One of them stepped forward, running his hand through greasy black curls. "I kin, lady," he said with a fluent, vulgar New York accent. "What ye want?" "Tell that man," said Sylvia, her lips moving stiffly, "to take me out to the ship that is to leave for America this morning—and now—this minute, I may be late now!" After a short impassioned colloquy, the loafer turned to her and reported: "He says if he took you out, you couldn't git on board. Them big ships ain't got no way for folks in little boats to git on. And he'd ask you thirty lire, anyhow. That's a fierce price. Say, if you'll wait a minute, I can get you a man that'll do it for—" Mrs. Marshall-Smith and Hélène had followed, and now broke through the line of ill-smelling loungers. Mrs. Marshall-Smith took hold of her niece's arm firmly, and began to draw her away with a dignified gesture. "You don't know what you are doing, child," she said with a peremptory accent of authority. "You are beside yourself. Come with me at once. This is no—" Sylvia did not resist her. She ignored her. In fact, she did not understand a word that her aunt said. She shook off the older woman's hand with one thrust of her powerful young arm, and gathering her skirts about her, leaped down into the boat. She took out her purse and showed the man a fifty-lire bill. "Row fast! Fast!" she motioned to him, sitting down in the stern and fixing her eyes on the huge bulk of the liner, black upon the brilliance of the sunlit water. She heard her name called from the wharf and turned her face backward, as the light craft began to move jerkily away. Felix had come up and now stood between Mrs. Marshall-Smith and her maid, both of whom were passionately appealing to him! He looked over their heads, saw the girl already a boat-length from the wharf, and gave a gesture of utter consternation. He ran headlong to the edge of the dock and again called her name loudly, "Sylvia! Sylvia!" There was no mistaking the quality of that cry. It was the voice of a man who sees the woman he loves departing from him, and who wildly, imperiously calls her back to him. But she did not return. The boat was still so close that she could look deeply into his eyes. Through all her tumult of horror, there struck cold to Sylvia's heart the knowledge that they were the eyes of a stranger. The blow that had pierced her had struck into a quivering center of life, so deep within her, that only something as deep as its terrible suffering could seem real. The man who stood there, so impotently calling to her, belonged to another order of things—things which a moment ago had been important to her, and which now no longer existed. He had become for her as remote, as immaterial as the gaudy picturesqueness of the scene in which he stood. She gave him a long strange look, and made a strange gesture, a gesture of irrevocable leave-taking. She turned her face again to the sea, and did not look back. They approached the liner, and Sylvia saw some dark heads looking over the railing at her. Her boatman rowed around the stern to the other side, where the slanting stairs used in boarding the harbor-boats still hung over the side. The landing was far above their heads. Sylvia stood up and cried loudly to the dull faces, staring down at her from the steerage deck. "Send somebody down on the stairs to speak to me." There was a stir; a man in a blue uniform came and looked over the edge, and went away. After a moment, an officer in white ran down the stairs to the hanging landing with the swift, sure footing of a seaman. Sylvia stood up again, turning her white face up to him, her eyes blazing in the shadow of her hat. "I've just heard that my mother is very sick, and I must get back to America at once. If you will let down the rope ladder, I can climb up. I must go! I have plenty of money. I must!" The officer stared, shook his head, and ran back up the stairs, disappearing into the black hole in the ship's side. The dark, heavy faces continued to hang over the railing, staring fixedly down at the boat with a steady, incurious gaze. Sylvia's boatman balanced his oar-handles on his knees, rolled a cigarette and lighted it. The boat swayed up and down on the shimmering, heaving roll of the water, although the ponderous ship beside it loomed motionless as a rock. The sun beat down on Sylvia's head and up in her face from the molten water till she felt sick, but when another officer in white, an elderly man with an impassive, bearded face, came down the stairs, she rose up, instantly forgetful of everything but her demand. She called out her message again, straining her voice until it broke, poised so impatiently in the little boat, swinging under her feet, that she seemed almost about to spring up towards the two men leaning over to catch her words. When she finished, the older man nodded, the younger one ran back up the stairs, and returned with a rope ladder. Sylvia's boatman stirred himself with an ugly face of misgiving. He clutched at her arm, and made close before her face the hungry, Mediterranean gesture of fingering money. She took out her purse, gave him the fifty-lire note, and catching at the ladder as it was flung down, disregarding the shouted commands of the men above her to "wait!" she swung herself upon it, climbing strongly and surely in spite of her hampering skirts. The two men helped her up, alarmed and vexed at the risk she had taken. They said something about great crowds on the boat, and that only in the second cabin was there a possibility for accommodations. If she answered them, she did not know what she said. She followed the younger man down a long corridor, at first dark and smelling of hemp, later white, bright with electric light, smelling strongly of fresh paint, stagnant air, and machine-oil. They emerged in a round hallway at the foot of a staircase. The officer went to a window for a conference with the official behind it, and returned to Sylvia to say that there was no room, not even a single berth vacant. Some shabby woman-passengers with untidy hair and crumpled clothes drew near, looking at her with curiosity. Sylvia appealed to them, crying out again, "My mother is very sick and I must go back to America at once. Can't any of you—can't you—?" she stopped, catching at the banisters. Her knees were giving way under her. A woman with a flabby pale face and disordered gray hair sprang towards her and took her in her arms with a divine charity. "You can have half my bed!" she cried, drawing Sylvia's head down on her shoulder. "Poor girl! Poor girl! I lost my only son last year!" Her accent, her look, the tones of her voice, some emanation of deep humanity from her whole person, reached Sylvia's inner self, the first message that had penetrated to that core of her being since the deadly, echoing news of the telegram. Upon her icy tension poured a flood of dissolving warmth. Her hideous isolation was an illusion. This plain old woman, whom she had never seen before, was her sister, her blood-kin,—they were both human beings. She gave a cry and flung her arms about the other's neck, clinging to her like a person falling from a great height, the tears at last streaming down her face. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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