The Blind Bow-boy/Chapter 11
If Campaspe had conceived the idea of making a search for Harold, she would have been hard put to think of a way to go about it. He seemed, indeed, completely cut off both from his family and from the group which had been charged, for a few weeks, with his education. She pictured him, like a kitten in a bath-tub half-full of water, struggling in an alien element. As it happened, however, one of Campaspe's most steadfast convictions was that nothing in life should be sought. People who were always seeking never found. Even if they discovered what they had been looking for, they discovered simultaneously that they really wanted something else. She held the theory that if Diogenes had stayed at home and attended to business, instead of prowling around Athens with a smelly lantern, he would have been visited by any number of honest men. Everything comes to him who waits might be a trite proverb, but experience had taught her that it was a true one. Therefore, she followed her invariable custom in such instances, dropping the matter from her mind, arranging her days as pleasantly as possible, and waiting with as much composure as she could assume, taking into consideration the fact that Harold was probably the one person alive that she cared very much about seeing.
October came to New York warm and golden. The early days of the month, indeed, resembled the sultry daughters of midsummer. Nevertheless, in spite of the unusual heat, Campaspe's friends began to return from the country and from Europe. Every train, every boat, brought more of them back, and Campaspe's mail grew heavier with invitations to lunch and dinner. Houses on Park and Madison Avenues opened their boarded eyelids and one encountered familiar and friendly motors in the Park. The Ritz, Voisin's, Pierre's, and the Crillon at one o'clock were again crowded with gay, brilliant groups. Mrs. Pollanger had even begun to plan a charity entertainment for the last days of the month. A bit of scandal enlivened, for Campaspe, the monotony of this accustomed renaissance. Amy, having lost her Paul, had, according to report, found her Paula. Laura, of course, alalways correct, had come back with the others, and had opened her house in East Sixty-eighth Street for a few weeks, long enough, at least, to afford her the opportunity of packing her boys off to school and arranging a few dinners before she went away again. The winter exodus was already a subject under discussion. Recurrence was a word that held few terrors for the members of Laura's conventional world, but fourteen consecutive winters at Palm Beach seemed almost sufficient even to this group and there was some talk of a more novel hegira, a motor trip along the Italian Riviera or an excursion to Shepheard's Hotel. Laura had begged Campaspe to join this comparatively radical party but, although Campaspe was still planning to go abroad a little later, she had no intention of travelling with any one else. Nor did the names of Spezia, Mentone, Monte Carlo, Nice, Cannes, and Genoa intrigue her. In the back of her mind were the happier alternatives of Trebizond, Chypre, Stamboul, Saïgon, and Ronda. She did not explain this directly to Laura, however. She did not definitely, indeed, refuse to become a factor in Laura's plan. It was part of her power and charm that she seldom said yes or no. At least, whenever she did say one or the other, nobody could be entirely certain that she meant it.
One day she went for a long course in her car, making several calls, stopping at Bergdorf and Goodman's to order a gown, looking in at an exhibition at the Bourgeois Gallery, and dropping off at the little shop of T. Azeez, where she purchased a pair of ear-rings, clusters of sardonyx grapes to match the crystal pendants dangling from her wrist. On her return Frederika met her at the door with the news that Harold was in the garden. Throwing her sable scarf over a chair, she hastened out to join him.
Dear Harold, I am glad to see you. Why haven't you been here before?
She was shocked by the boy's appearance. Deep grey circles had formed under his eyes. His cheek-bones seemed unnaturally prominent. He was thinner. And, Campaspe noted at once, he suggested, as usual, the dominant note of pathos. It was the one quality she had never been quite able to dissociate from him, or from any other very young person, for that matter. One never begins to be happy until one is thirty, she reflected, and then, sometimes, one only begins.
He did not seem able to muster sufficient poise to respond immediately to her greeting, and so she asked Frederika to bring out tea, and she moved freely about the garden, hoping to put him at his ease by the apparent carelessness of her manner. Her beloved Eros still aimed his bow at random and the nymph still lay prostrate on the marble sward, but the fountain had ceased to function and the basin was choked with yellow and red leaves, discarded by a neighbour's maple-tree. The pavement, too, was strewn with leaves, and the aged tortoise had burrowed under a heap of them in one corner. It was a setting replete with melancholy.
I wasn't sure you would want me, Harold replied hesitantly, at last.
He was pathetic.
Not want you! Of course, I wanted you. How, conceivably, could you get that idea?
You are her sister. . . .
Bosh! I didn't arrange that.
She seated him in a chair beside her, adjacent to the table, on which Frederika was laying out pots and bowls and cups, slices of lemon and slim sandwiches.
Frederika, Campaspe said, will you please run around the corner to the grocery and order some gin. We're all out. . . . She turned to Harold: Lemon or cream?
Lemon, please.
His hand shook, she observed, as he took the cup, but he was beginning to look more comfortable, appeared to be surer of his ground.
You've seen her? he questioned Campaspe eagerly. She's told you?
I've scarcely seen anybody else, it seems to me, looking back. She has been here nearly every day. She is sure that I know where you live.
You won't tell her, he pleaded.
I don't know.
But you will. . . .
Naturally, I won't tell her.
It was awful, Campaspe! he groaned.
A melodrama. It sounded incredible. But don't blame Alice. She didn't do it . . . She isn't clever enough to think of it, she added.
But she knew all about it. I blame her for that.
She loves you. Campaspe's manner was as simple as it was possible for her to make it.
Even after . . .
Yes. She put her hand on his wrist. I don't want you to go back to her, Harold, that is I want you to do what you really feel like doing, but it is the truth. She loves you. Of that I am certain.
Campaspe sipped her tea and nibbled a slender sandwich. Harold looked at her intently, searching her eyes.
Campaspe. . . . I don't believe I've ever loved . . . Alice. It was the first time that he had spoken the name and the effort was apparent. I've been a fool. Sometimes, up in Provincetown, sitting on the beach, I have wondered if it didn't all come about—the marriage, I mean—because she was your sister.
But, Harold, you met her first.
It's very difficult to explain. I don't believe I can explain. What I want you to try to understand is that when I married Alice I had some kind of subconscious feeling that I was marrying you.
Harold, you delightful boy! Her expression was quizzical.
I don't know myself! I don't know myself! he moaned. That's the whole trouble.
You're young, boy.
So is Bunny. So is Paul. So is Ronald. So is—he hesitated again—Zimbule, but they do.
She remained silent.
Will I ever learn to understand myself?
I think so.
It's very hard. I've been trying to get on, to do something. I'm not used to it, but it seemed the only decent thing to do. He broke off suddenly and asked, Do you know how I was brought up? Do you know about my Aunt Sadi?
Alice has told me something. I think I understand.
The best woman in the world . . . after you. It's not her fault. It's just my misfortune.
Campaspe brought him back. What have you been trying to do, Harold?
I don't want to talk about that. ever. It hasn't been a success. I've got to begin all over.
What do you want to do?
It isn't so much that. The question is what can I do?
Can't you go back to your Aunt? Campaspe hoped for a negative reply.
Yes. She wants me. She wrote me a letter asking me to come back. But what would be the good of that? That would mean going back to what I began with and staying there. Probably I could never get away again. . . . He stared at her with some embarrassment for a moment before he said: I'd thought of the stage.
Her reaction to this was direct: But you're such a bad actor!
He groaned again.
I don't know that that makes any great difference, Campaspe reminded herself aloud. Then suddenly, she exclaimed: Ihave it! The very thing! The movies. You have a good appearance, and if you were a good actor you couldn't get into the pictures. Into the pictures you shall go!
Do you mean . . . ?
She cut him off: No, I don't own a company, but I know some one who does. She tossed the name lightly out: Zimbule.
He rose to his feet. I couldn't do that, he said.
Why not? she asked, her voice as even as usual. Why not? Don't be silly any longer, Harold. You are permitting your youthful pride and prejudice to govern you too much. You must take things just a little more as they come. . . .
But . . .
Try to realize, Harold, that some day you will get over some of your notions; you will even compromise with a few that you don't get over. Even Nana—Campaspe began to laugh—, even Nana, disgusted with . . . well, with something new to her, reasoned that one should never dispute about tastes and colours because one never could be sure what one would like in the future. . . . And there is the story of the ship captain, related by Cunninghame-Graham. You see this water, he said. All my life I have loved water, . . . good air, good water and good bells, the proverb says, and yet, when I have been in an old sailing-ship out in the eastern seas, and when the water had run short been put upon two pints a day for drinking and cooking, I have stand round the barrel, and though it smelled just like the drainings of a tanyard, counted the drops when it was poured into my pannikin as if they had been gold. . . . Si, señor, . . . that is I mean, . . . how do you put it, eh?—it is not good to say fountain—out of your basin I shall never drink . . . eh, no señor.
Harold wavered. But will she want me?
That we must find out, was Campaspe's reply.
After he had departed, a half-hour later, Camipaspe strolled back into the house and on to the drawing-room. A day or so earlier she had sent for some music by Bach, in order to satisfy a certain intellectual curiosity. Bach! Bach! Bach! She met the name, enshrined in extravagant encomiums, in all the writings about music that she read, but where was Bach played? Who played Bach? She was beginning to believe that Bach was one of the veiled gods, and she wanted to settle the question for herself. Among the Etruscans certain of the most powerful deities were never seen by the people. The priests referred to these hidden idols as Dii Involuti, veiled gods. Their words were frequently quoted, but the gods themselves remained invisible. Certain savants have derived from this fact the explanation that the Etruscans may have held transcendental views in regard to the invisibility of the true god, but at least one commentator, whose work had come under Campaspe's eternally roving eye, had held that there might be a simpler interpretation of the phenomenon. The gods, he hinted, were concealed because they were no longer fit to look at. Rude tribes had carved them. Supplanted by more sightly idols, the only possible manner in which reverence might be preserved for them was to keep them behind screens, so that no comparisons could be made. And, as they were never shown, it was quite simple for the priests to aver that their splendour was so divine that ordinary senses would be overpowered by it.
In the temple of Isis at Sais, the inscription read: I am that which has been, which is, and which shall be, and no one has yet lifted the veil which hides me. It is highly probable, thought this same sapient commentator, that the goddess was black, and as the fairer race mingled with the darker in Egypt this primitive Nubian countenance, if exhibited, would no longer inspire reverence, and so a curtain was hung before her altar. The Ark of Moses, probably concealing objects which had lost their attraction for the eye, two scrawled stones, the bones of Joseph, a pot of manna, and the serpent-staff which is said to have blossomed, carried this veil into the wilderness. To this very day, indeed, the Ark is hidden. Twice the veil of the Temple has been rent: allegorically at the crucifixion and actually by Titus, but no Ark was discovered. The Jews, then, must have been saying their prayers before a veil which concealed nothing. In later days, as scepticism grew, there were those who had no desire to share the deceit practised on the Jews. There is, for example, the case of the celebrated bambino of the Aracœli Church at Rome. Alleged to have been carved by a pilgrim out a piece of wood from a tree on the Mount of Olives and painted by St. Luke while the pilgrim was asleep, this effigy is now bestowed in an Ark, but, occasionally, visitors are permitted a view of a part of the face. Flat, blackened, and rouged, this is a thing of ugliness, but it is set in jewels and the walls are covered with pictures of the miracles it has performed, pictures which have attracted the faithful in such numbers that at one time it is said to have received more fees than all the doctors of Rome. . . . Campaspe seated herself before the piano, opened the pages of the Wohltemperirtes Clavier, and struck a chord. . . .