THE SCARF.

Previous
I

IT is interesting to see a man handle delicate fabrics. The mind involuntarily estimates the strength of the man in its superabundance, comparing it to the task. The contrast makes it picturesque.

Mark watched his friend Rob as he sat drawing the thin, Eastern-looking scarf through his hands; his hands were good to look at—firm and shapely. The scarf was sheer, almost of the texture of a cobweb; it was white, with an ivory tint where the folds gave it substance. It clung now and then to his hand, or yielded reluctantly as he drew it from his sleeve where it had floated. There was silence in the room, emphasized by the restless throbbing of the city below. The sails out on the bay dipped and courtesied in the fresh evening wind, and the ripples flushed red under the slanting sun.

‘Rob,’ said the older man, ‘all the same, I don’t like it; it isn’t like you.’

‘I am sorry you don’t like it, and it is like me,’ said the other, slowly. ‘I have always counted acts as the man. How would you construe it if I said: “Your acts I like, but I don’t like you”? That isn’t reasonable.’

‘You are splitting hairs, and I can’t match you at that. What I mean in plain English is, that I don’t see why your finding a scarf should necessitate or excuse you for breaking an engagement.’

‘I didn’t find the scarf; it found me. And I didn’t break the engagement; an engagement, to my thinking, is not breakable; breaking suggests force; an engagement dissolves. What is it but the outward wording of an inward state of mind existing between two mutually attracted people? the state of mind being changed—lo!—pff!’

‘You exasperate me beyond words, Rob, with your this and your that, all of it as thin as your scarf; and, what is worse, you do not seem to feel the gravity of it all, not in the least. You say in August, “Mark, congratulate me, I am the happiest man alive; I am going to be married.” In October you say, “Mark, I am a subject for congratulation, I am a disengaged man.”

‘As a friend of both yours and Mabel’s, I ask why, and you answer by holding up that miserable, dangling scarf, and say: “This is why; I found this, and I am going across the water to find the owner.”’ ‘Excuse me, but I said “This scarf found me”—therein lies a great difference.’

‘It is all so trivial I wouldn’t forgive any man living but you.’

‘Thank you.’

The scarf, floated by the breeze, caught on Rob’s shoulder; he drew it slowly down; it lengthened out with the gentle strain and fell in a misty heap to his knee.

‘Do put that cussed thing away,’ said Mark, irritably, ‘and tell me, if you are ever going to, where it came from.’

‘I can tell you that better when I have found out myself.’

‘Who is she?’

‘She is a slender woman, neither dark nor light; her hair is fluffy—not crimped; her eyes are red-brown in some lights, and she wears soft raiment.’

‘When did you meet her?’ ‘I haven’t met her yet.’

‘And what about Mabel?’

‘Oh, she is all right,’ said Rob, optimistically. ‘What I liked about her at first is exactly what I like now—she is so sensible; you can’t tell how sensible she is, Mark. She says I am preoccupied, and she doesn’t think I am earnest. She is right; I am not what she calls earnest.’

‘You told her about the scarf, of course?’

‘No, that wouldn’t interest her. Now, tenement houses are in her line. If I had invested in a tenement house she would have found me no end interesting; but this kind of a thing isn’t appreciated by her; she isn’t in it.’

‘I call it puerile and ridiculous,’ said Mark, hotly.

‘I don’t think you are quite right, then. What kind of a fabric should you take it to be?’ Mark took it in his hand. Whatever he did, he did sincerely and with care. He held the scarf up to the light; he bent his head over it and scrutinized it through his glasses; then he sniffed at it to see if it had any perfume, and stretched the meshes to see if it were hand-woven. At last he said:

‘I don’t think I know anything about it. It is made of wool, not silk; it is all delicate as a cobweb, but it does not call to my mind any stuff I ever saw. I should say it might have come from the East, possibly from India or even from Greece—Milesian wool.’

‘Yes, Milesian wool—it must be that,’ said Rob, enthusiastically.

‘You are not in earnest when you tell me you do not know anything more about it than I do?’

‘I am in earnest, but I can’t say exactly that; and yet I know nothing about the scarf except how it came to me; you would call me practical, sane—not a dreamer?’

‘Not a dreamer, if by that you mean that you are sufficiently on the earth to know how to live; but you are a mixture. I saw an old tinker yesterday—a tinker and umbrella-mender combined—a little gray tramp of a fellow, about sixty years old, stubby beard, dirty, self-possessed, master of himself and of the world so far as he was concerned in it, with an optimistic vein in spite of some hard luck, and with the most beautiful clear eyes I ever saw. He was a wanderer—a traveller, I might say. He had seen the greater part of America, and understood it, too, and he had seen it all on foot or by means of stolen car-rides. He fairly made me long to travel, with his tales of Colorado; he was immensely interesting. I talked with him for over an hour while he mended my umbrella and put a new ferule on my cane; and all the time, while I was listening to him, I was thinking: “Now, here is my friend Rob, just as he would have been without the mixture”—the mixture being, of course, your scholarly tastes and your money, half-tinker and half-student. I have no doubt but the tinker had tastes, too, but he hadn’t the money.’

‘I like the picture of your tinker.’

‘Yes, you do, that is the trouble; and it’s the tinker part of you that breaks an engagement for a scarf.’

‘What would you have me do—tell Mabel that I am earnest and interesting, and beg her to marry a tinker?’

‘No, I fancy the thing is better as it is; but I hope the scholar will have his chance some day. You are thirty?’

‘Thirty and one.’

‘Some study, much travel; a little business—not enough for an anchor; wit in one pocket, wisdom late in coming—name, Robert Dudley.’

‘And till now a friend of Mark’s.’

‘Always that.’

Rob folded the scarf slowly. It clung to his fingers; it caught wherever chance blew it; it was fluttered against his face while he carefully squared the corners together and patiently rolled its misty length into pocket size.

‘Mabel,’ he said, meditatively and impartially, ‘is much too good for me; she is moral, without being morbid; she is dignified, without being stiff; she is generous, but not weak. She reads people as she reads books. At first she thought I, as a book, was interesting, that I had an ethical flavor; but she found I was only a sort of art for art’s sake literature, and she laid me down. I did not interest her more. She has no sense of humor, and it never occurred to her that her one chance of cultivating it was to marry me. Now she will be different.’

‘Yes, she will, and some day I shall discover, under a tinker’s garb, my old friend Bob, mending umbrellas for a living, the mixture having lost its savor and the money gone.’

‘I have never heard you stick so to a simile—it seems to please you. I like your tinker idea, but I deny the outcome.’

‘Well, good-bye. I am sorry for it all.’

‘No need for that; Mabel is rid of her tinker—so far, so good; the rest “lies on the knees of the Gods.”’

‘As you will. Good-bye; I will see you off on Saturday.’

A moment later, Rob spoke sharply over the balustrade:

‘One minute more; come back, I want a last word. Sit there, will you, just where I sat; no, don’t move the chair, let it face the table. Now lean your hands on your chin, so; now look up—what do you see?’

‘What do I see? I see myself—a portion of myself—in the glass.’

‘Hitch the chair this way, so that you can see your full face—now?’

‘Well, what of it?’

‘Tell me exactly what you see, in every detail.’

Rob had darkened the room and lit the gas; it was burning just in front and over Mark’s head, lighting up his face and shoulders, but leaving the room dark behind him.

‘What do I see? I see my face and head, my collar and tie, and my shoulders, and my arms down to the elbows, and of course the table where they rest.’

‘What do you see behind you?’

‘I see—I seem to see the wall or door, I can’t tell exactly which, it is dark behind there.’

‘Can you see the pictures on the wall?’

‘Yes, by canting my head slightly, I see a frame. I can’t tell what the picture is, though; I am near-sighted at best.’

‘Yes, I know. I don’t want that picture to come into your range of vision; hold your head straight.’

‘Then I see nothing but myself,’ said Mark, turning round to see what really was behind him, and why he was put through these tactics. There was nothing behind him. Rob stood at the side of the table; but now he sat down, and said:

‘I want your attention and your friendliest belief in what I am going to tell you. I am quite in earnest, and I assume that you will credit every word I say. The interpretation you give it will be your own—I shall not combat it; but up to the point when you can consider it as a whole, I want you to hold your judgment in suspense.’

The two men sat facing each other, Rob’s face being animated by his resolve to put his thought into words, to weigh his problem in the scales of an alien mind, to try and see himself and his idea through other eyes than his own. Mark’s face was quiet, attentive, and delicate in its expression of suspended judgment. He was a man who held friendship as a sacred obligation, and was ready to meet a demand with single-minded generosity.

‘A month ago,’ said Rob, slowly weighing each word, ‘I came home from Mabel’s. We had come to an understanding as to the time for our wedding.’

Mark moved restlessly, and shaded his eyes with his hand.

‘I sat down where you have just been sitting, and leaned my chin on my hands as I made you do. I felt excited and disturbed. The full significance of the next step dawned on me in all its depth and meaning. I was carried along by my agitated thoughts, and found myself looking at myself in the glass. I was struck, as anyone is at such a moment, by the strangeness of my own face caught with some controlling emotion on it. I seemed outside and apart from my usual self. As the consciousness of observing myself came to me, I began to look more as I usually do when I casually glance in the glass, to tie my scarf, for instance. Then I fell to speculating on that other fellow that I had seen when he was unawares. I suppose it is a common experience, this meeting with oneself. I must have been quite deeply absorbed, when, gradually, I saw over my left shoulder a shadow—no, not a shadow, but a semblance of a face. There was a sort of golden halo or fringe of golden hair over a pair of smiling red-brown eyes. I caught myself smiling involuntarily in response. The eyes were above the level of my own, as if a woman were standing there looking over my shoulder and meeting my eyes in the glass. Mabel’s eyes are dark. Her eyes were a red-brown. I could not see her face—not that it was hidden, but it was as if the eyes were so absorbing that they blotted out all else. This lasted for some minutes, then I turned to see what was behind me that would produce such an illusion. There was nothing there that could be twisted or warped into any semblance of a face. I took the same position again, my chin on my hands, my elbows on the table. It was some time before I could get the vision—not till my thoughts began to wander; then I saw those strange, beautiful eyes again, and the fluffy golden hair, and not till I moved my head did they disappear. The eyes smiled at me; the vision seemed warm and human—not in the faintest degree ghostly, except that somehow I couldn’t see much but the eyes. As I say, I was driven by curiosity to turn round, and she vanished. I failed to call her to me again that night, and the next, and for some days; then she came again. I had sat here for hours waiting for her. I was determined to see what would come of it. I used to spend whole evenings here alone, waiting. When, at last, she did come, she came smiling, warm, human; and this time I saw her mouth—a large, mobile mouth, less smiling than the eyes, but most lovely. She came again and again. Once I put my hand behind me suddenly—that was a mistake. She vanished, and it was many evenings after that before she came again. The next time, strangely enough, I could see her more distinctly than ever. Her eyes were not smiling; maybe that was why I could see the rest of her face better. Then I discerned how beautiful she was. Her chin was a perfect oval, and it terminated in a lovely point below her gracious mouth; it was distractingly beautiful. My left hand was hanging by my side, and I could distinctly feel her draperies brushing tremulously against it. You will have the same sensation if you let this scarf brush across your hand—so. This silent drama went on for some weeks. I neglected everything for her. One day Mabel sent for me, and told me she had noticed my abstraction and had drawn her own conclusions, and that, if I were willing, she would like to discontinue the engagement. Willing! I felt like a knave; I was humiliated; I suffered, but I could say nothing. It was a different thing to sit and smile into those red-brown eyes of my vision, and to meet Mabel’s dark, truthful ones, and not to be able to explain anything to her; to feel that for her there was no explanation; to know that I was submerged in a stream of life of which she had no part. Then Mabel’s greatness saved me. She saw my suffering, and she did not press me for any explanation, but told me frankly that she must consider our relations as having reverted to their old standing—we must be only as friends; that she herself saw that her interests were more and more tending toward work among the poor, and her imagination absorbed in plans for the general welfare, rather than in the idea of making one man’s home supremely happy, as it undoubtedly should be made. That was about it. It was noble of her, wasn’t it? I had no choice but to accept her decision. That I wished for that very decision was bitterness to me. I see now that even then I wanted the selfish comfort of being a martyr. Mabel is the noblest woman alive; she has become my saint, instead of my wife.’

‘But you have your phantom eyes left,’ said Mark, dryly.

‘Yes, she came again that night. In my exultant humiliation I was rash: I closed my hand on the drapery that fluttered against it. I closed my hand. The smiling eyes grew large with surprise and alarm, and the face vanished—I held in my hand this scarf.’

There was silence. Then Rob continued:

‘I have sat here every night since then, often till after midnight: the face has never come back. For a while I expected to see the scarf vanish. I held it tightly for most of the night, and finally went to sleep with it wrapped closely around my arm and hand. It did not vanish—I have ceased to fear that. I know that somehow or other it has taken its material form for me, and however it came, it came from someone, and I shall meet her, whoever she is; wherever she is, she is mine. She will become mine, she waits for me. I shall carry this scarf across the sea; I shall travel with it till I meet her; she will recognize it and me; the scarf is my credential; no matter where we meet, I shall know her by her red-brown eyes and pointed chin; she will know this’—and he fluttered the full length of the scarf in the air. It shimmered and doubled on itself, and coiled and shifted in sentient evolutions as it fell again to his knee.

‘I don’t know what to think; you must not ask me to say anything,’ said Mark, as he arose to go. ‘All I can say is, that you have gone into a realm where I cannot follow—my path lies near the earth.’ ‘No, of course he could not say anything; what could he say?’ thought Rob; ‘but I am glad I told him.’

‘I don’t know what to think.’ said Mark to himself, as he went homeward. ‘Rob is as sane as I am; he is logical, given the premise, and why shouldn’t he see red-brown eyes—is there ever a minute when I cannot summon an inward vision of dark ones? Yes, is there ever a minute in my life when I am not conforming my acts, my thoughts, my very self, to a vision that is as unsubstantial as his own? What if the being whose eidolon he lives for is thousands of miles away? What if he saw her in spirit before he saw her in fact—does that mean so very much? Have I been able to banish the dark eyes, try as I did? And he has fostered the vision of the red-brown eyes till he is as sure, yes, a thousand times more sure, of his title to them than I am of ever having a right to even touch the vaguest drapery that has brushed my hand as my love passed. He follows shadows of the unseen—I follow the less substantial visions of the seen.’


Up and down on the deck of the outward-bound steamer walked Rob, happy, and with expectant eyes. He had a word for each new friend, as he passed, on deck or in the reading-room; but mostly he was walking and thinking. In Switzerland, he walked much, and always dined at the public table, and he could have told you in particulars about every other one at the table, especially as to the color of the eyes of the women. He enjoyed seeing multitudes of people; but when, on meeting a chance friend, he was asked to go in a party over some particular route, he was always going the other way. His fancy was like the wind, and he obeyed it as does the weather-cock.

In Italy he staid many weeks, always straying among crowds, dining in public, riding out to the villas, often standing on the Pincio watching the carriages as they went by, delighting in looking at the faces of the beautiful women. He strolled through galleries, less to see the pictures than to see those who looked at them. It seemed as if she must be somewhere waiting for him with those smiling eyes. Had her garments but just brushed over this stone pavement? Had her hand rested for a moment on this delicate, fretted iron-work as she leaned over to see the crowd below? Had she watched last night’s glow as the sun had sent up those golden shafts behind that dome? Had she been in Venice, and watched the black gondolas as they slipped by in the night? Was it her voice that said, out of the darkness, as one of the shadows flitted, bat-like, across his path, ‘I could stay here forever, were I not driven by fate to further shores’?

There was no desolation in his search; it was only a searching and a waiting, and where-ever the scarf floated, there was his land—his home.

‘I am the Knight of the Immaterial,’ he said to someone who detained him; ‘I follow a thought.’

He began to buy trinkets such as women wear. His luggage took on new shapes. It had corners dedicated to strange bits of regally embroidered fabrics; to rings old and wonderful; to strings of delicious yellow pearls, numerous and small as sands of the shore, gathered on a string.

At Naples he thought to find her. At Castallamarie he looked for her in the orange garden. At Amalfi he expected to see her leaning on the wall to scan the blue waters.

In the reading-room at Athens he sat looking over the American papers. People were going in and out; some were reading, as if at their own club or at home. Fussy folks turned over all the papers, looking for something which wasn’t, and never would be, there. Men exchanged greetings and news in after-dinner leisure. At Rob’s side sat Drayton, our American Charge d’Affaires. He had an appointment later at a reception, and had come in to escort a party of people who had especial claims on his attention. Suddenly Rob leaned over, and said to him:

‘Who is that lady standing there at the end of the table with her fur cloak thrown back—the beautiful one standing by the old man—that Russian, with all those decorations or orders?’ ‘That? why, that is Madame Dembevetskoi, the most beautiful woman in Athens. If she is a Russian, it is a tie between her and the Venus de Milo.’

‘I want to know her.’

‘That is all right—Americans have every privilege; I will introduce you to her to-morrow.’

‘No, now; I must meet her now.’

‘Great Scott! that is too American; you ask too much.’

‘I ask just enough, and you will accede to my request.’

The two men looked at each other, then our functionary walked away with his diplomatic courtesy a little ruffled. A moment later he was introducing to Monsieur Dembevetskoi, ‘My friend, Monsieur Robert Dudley.’

In turn, Robert was presented to Madame. The diplomat, once in action, never flinched fire, and he now engaged the Russian in an absorbing conversation, while Madame Dembevetskoi, holding with one hand her gray fur wrap, which was slipping from her, stretched out her other hand, and said, breathlessly:

‘Oh, Monsieur Dudley, please give me back my scarf!’

Fur wrap

Transcriber’s Note:

Variations in hyphenation have been retained as they appear in the original publication. Punctuation has been standardised.




<
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Clyx.com


Top of Page
Top of Page