uptown New York, but it was large, and … well, Mr.
Wimple calculated, harbouring the sordid thought for an instant, that the rent must cost her seven or eight, thousand dollars a year.
Mrs. Watson's life was delicately scented with an attar of expense. She would not drench her rooms or her existence with wealth, any more than she would spill perfume upon her garments with a careless hand. But the sensitive' nostrils of the aesthetic Mr. Wimple quivered in reaction to the aroma. For a person who despised gold, as Mr. Wimple professed to despise it, he was strangely unrepelled. Perhaps he thought it to be his spiritual duty to purify this atmosphere with his message.
There were eighteen or twenty women there when Ferdinand arrived, and no man … except a weakeyed captive husband or two, and an epicene creature with a violin, if you want to call them men. Ferdinand, with his bovine body and his leonine head, seemed almost startlingly masculine in this assemblage, and felt so. His spirit, he had often confessed, was an instrument that vibrated best in unison with the subtle feminine soul; he felt it play upon him and woo him, with little winds that ran their fingers through his hair. These were women who had no occupation, and a number of them had money; they felt delightfully cultivated when persons such as Ferdinand talked to them about the Soul. They warmed, they expanded, half unconsciously they projected those breaths and breezes which thrilled our Ferdinand and wrought upon his mood. If a woman, idle and mature, cannot find romance anywhere else or anyhow other she will pick upon a preacher or an artist.
Mrs. Watson collected Ferdinands. Just how seriously she took them—how she regarded himself, specifically—Mr. Wimple could not be quite certain.
“She is a woman of mystery,” Mr. Wimple often murmured to himself. And he wondered a good deal about her … sometimes he wondered if she were not in love with him.
He had once written to her, a poem, which he entitled “Mystery.” She had let him see that she understood it, but she had not vouchsafed a solution of herself. It might be possible, Ferdinand thought, that she did not love him … but she sympathized with him; she appreciated him; she had even fallen into a dreamy sadness one day, at the thought of how he must suffer from the disharmony in his home. For somehow, without much having been said by one or by the other, the knowledge had passed from Ferdinand to Mrs. Watson that there was not harmony in his home. She had understood. They had looked at each other, and she had understood.
“Alethea!” he had murmured, under his breath. Alethea was her name. He was sure she had heard it; but she had neither accepted it from him, nor rejected it. And he had gone away without quite daring to say it again in a louder tone.
There was only one thing about her that sometimes jarred upon Mr. Wimple … a sudden vein of levity. Sometimes Ferdinand, in his thoughts, even accused her of irony. And he was vaguely distrustful of a sense of the humorous in women; whether it took the form of a feeling for nonsense or a talent for sarcasm, it worried him.
But she understood. She always understood … him and his message.
And this afternoon she seemed to be understanding him, to be absorbing him and his message, with an increased sensitiveness. She regarded him with a new intentness, he thought; she was taking him with an expanded spiritual capacity.
It was after the music, and what a creature overladen with “art jewelry” called “the eats,” harrowing Ferdinand with the vulgar word, that he delivered his message, sitting not far from Mrs. Watson in the carefully graduated light.
It was, upon the whole, a cheerful message, Ferdinand's. It was … succinctly … Love.
Ferdinand was not pessimistic or cynical about Love. It was all around us, he thought, if we could only see it, could only feel it, could only open our beings for its reception.
“If we could only see into the hearts! If we could only see into the homes!” said Ferdinand. If we could only see, it was Ferdinand's belief, we should see Love there, unexpected treasures of Love, waiting dormant for the arousing touch; slumbering, as Endymion slumbered, until Diana's kiss awakened him.
“Mush!” muttered one of the captive husbands to the young violinist. But the young violinist scowled; he was in accord with Ferdinand. “Mush, slush, and gush!” whispered the first captive husband to the second captive husband. But captive husband number two only nodded and grinned in an idiotic way; he was lucky enough to be quite deaf, and no matter where his wife took him he could sit and think of his Liberty Bonds, without being bothered by the lion of the hour. …
The world, Ferdinand went on, was trembling on the verge of a great spiritual awakening. The Millennium was about to stoop and kiss it, as Morning kissed the mountain tops. It was coming soon. Already the first faint streaks of the new dawn were in the orient sky … for eyes that could see them. Ah, if one could only see! In more and more bosoms, the world around, Love was becoming conscious of itself, Love was beginning to understand that there was love in other bosoms, too! At this point, at least a dozen bosoms, among those bosoms present, heaved with sighs. Heart was reaching out to Heart in a new confidence, Ferdinand said. One knew what was in one's own heart; but hitherto one had often been so blind that one did not realize that the same thing was in the hearts of one's fellows. Ah, if one could only see!
Maeterlinck saw, Ferdinand said.
“Ah, Maeterlinck!” whispered the bosoms.
Yes, Maeterlinck saw, said Ferdinand. Nietzsche, said Ferdinand, had possessed a bosom full of yearning for all humanity, but he had been driven back upon himself and embittered by the world … by the German world in which he lived, said Ferdinand. So Nietzsche's strength had little sweetness in it, and Nietzsche had not lived to see the new light in the orient sky.
“Ah, Nietzsche!” moaned several sympathetic bosoms.
Bergson knew, Ferdinand opined. Several of the women present did not quite catch the connection between Bergson and Ferdinand's message, but they assumed that everyone else caught it. Bergson's was a name they knew and … and in a moment Ferdinand was on more familiar ground again. Tagore knew, said Ferdinand.
“Ah, Rabindranath Tagore!” And the bosoms fluttered as doves flutter when they coo and settle upon the eaves. Love! That was Ferdinand's message. And it appeared from the remarks with which he introduced and interspersed his own poems, that all the really brilliant men of the day were thinking in harmony with Ferdinand. He had the gift of introducing a celebrated name every now and then in such a manner that these women, who were at least familiar with the names, actually felt that they were also familiar with the work for which the names stood. And, for his part, he was repaid, this afternoon, as he had never been repaid before … never before had he been so wrought upon and electrically vivified as to-day by these emanations of the feminine soul; never before had he felt these little winds run their fingers through his hair with such a caressing touch. Once or twice the poignancy of the sensation almost unsteadied him for an instant. And never before had Mrs. Watson regarded him with such singular intentness.
Love! That was Ferdinand's message! And, ah! if one could only see!
When the others were going, Mrs. Watson asked him to stay a while, and Ferdinand stayed. She led him to a little sitting room, high above the town, and stood by the window. And he stood beside her.
“Your message this afternoon,” she said, presently, “I enjoyed more than anything I have ever heard you say before. If we could only see! If we could only see!”
Mrs. Watson lifted her blue eyes to him … and for an instant Ferdinand felt that she was more the woman of mystery than ever. For there lurked within the eyes an equivocal ripple of light; an unsteady glint that came and went. Had it not been for her words, Ferdinand might have feared that she was about to break into one of her disconcerting ebullitions of levity. But he perceived in her, at the same time, a certain tension, an unusual strain, and was reassured … she was a little strange, perhaps, because of his near presence. She was reacting to the magnetism which was flowing out of him in great waves, and she was striving to conceal from him her psychic excitement. That would account for any strangeness in her manner, any constraint.