efforts to poison his mind against
Sylvia while pretending to admire her! But I made allowances for
Claire at this moment--realizing that the situation had been one to
overstrain any woman's altruism.
She had failed in her subtleties, and there had followed scenes of bitter
strife between the two. Sylvia, the cunning huntress, having pretended
to relent, van Tuiver had gone South to his wooing again, while Claire
had stayed at home and read a book about the poisoners of the Italian
renaissance. And then had come the announcement of the engagement,
after which the royal conqueror had come back in a panic, and sent
embassies of his male friends to plead with Claire, alternately
promising her wealth and threatening her with destitution, appealing to
her fear, her cupidity, and even to her love. To all of which I listened,
thinking of the wide-open, innocent eyes of the picture, and shedding
tears within my soul. So must the gods feel as they look down upon the
affairs of mortals, seeing how they destroy themselves by ignorance
and folly, seeing how they walk into the future as a blind man into a
yawning abyss.
I gave, of course, due weight to the sneers of Claire. Perhaps the
innocent one really had set a trap--had picked van Tuiver out and
married him for his money. But even so, I could hope that she had not
known what she was doing. Surely it had never occurred to her that
through all the days of her triumph she would have to eat and sleep
with the shade of another woman at her side!
Claire said to me, not once, but a dozen times, "He'll come back to me.
She'll never be able to make him happy." And so I pictured Sylvia upon
her honeymoon, followed by an invisible ghost whose voice she would
never hear, whose name she would never know. All that van Tuiver had
learned from Claire, the sensuality, the _ennin_, the contempt for
woman--it would rise to torment and terrify his bride, and turn her life
to bitterness. And then beyond this, deeps upon deeps, to which my
imagination did not go--and of which the Frenchwoman, with all her
freedom of tongue, gave me no more than a hint which I could not
comprehend.
5. Claire Lepage at this time was desperately lonely and unhappy.
Having made the discovery that my arms were sturdy, used to doing a
man's work, she clung to them. She begged me to go home with her, to
visit her--finally to come and live with her. Until recently an elderly
companion, had posed as her aunt, and kept her respectable while she
was upon van Tuiver's yacht, and at his castle in Scotland. But this
companion had died, and now Claire had no one with whom to discuss
her soul-states.
She occupied a beautiful house on the West Side, not far from
Riverside Drive; and in addition to the use of this she had an income of
eight thousand a year--which was not enough to make possible a
chauffeur, nor even to dress decently, but only enough to keep in debt
upon. Such as the income was, however, she was willing to share it
with me. So there opened before me a new profession-- and a new
insight into the complications of parasitism.
I went to see her frequently at first, partly because I was interested in
her and her associates, and partly because I really thought I could help
her. But I soon came to realize that influencing Claire was like
moulding water; it flowed back round your hands, even while you
worked. I would argue with her about the physiological effects of
alcohol, and when I had convinced her, she would promise caution; but
soon I would discover that my arguments had gone over her head. I was
at this time feeling my way towards my work in the East. I tried to
interest her in such things as social reform, but realized that they had no
meaning for her. She was living the life of the pleasure-seeking idlers
of the great metropolis, and every time I met her it seemed to me that
her character and her appearance had deteriorated.
Meantime I picked up scraps of information concerning the van Tuivers.
There were occasional items in the papers, their yacht, the "Triton," had
reached the Azores; it had run into a tender in the harbour of Gibraltar;
Mr. and Mrs. van Tuiver had received the honour of presentation at the
Vatican; they were spending the season in London, and had been
presented at court; they had been royal guests at the German
army-manoeuvres. The million wage-slaves of the metropolis, packed
morning and night into the roaring subways and whirled to and from
their tasks, read
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