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The Bent Twig by Dorothy Canfield

D >> Dorothy Canfield >> The Bent Twig



THE BENT TWIG

BY

DOROTHY CANFIELD

1915




CONTENTS

BOOK I
_IN ARCADIA_

CHAPTER

I SYLVIA'S HOME
II THE MARSHALLS' FRIENDS
III BROTHER AND SISTER
IV EVERY ONE'S OPINION OF EVERY ONE ELSE
V SOMETHING ABOUT HUSBANDS
VI THE SIGHTS OF LA CHANCE
VII "WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT ..."
VIII SABOTAGE
IX THE END OF CHILDHOOD


BOOK II
_A FALSE START TO ATHENS_

X SYLVIA'S FIRST GLIMPSE OF MODERN CIVILIZATION
XI ARNOLD'S FUTURE Is CASUALLY DECIDED
XII ONE MAN'S MEAT
XIII AN INSTRUMENT IN TUNE
XIV HIGHER EDUCATION
XV MRS. DRAPER BLOWS THE COALS
XVI PLAYING WITH MATCHES
XVII MRS. MARSHALL STICKS TO HER PRINCIPLES
XVIII SYLVIA SKATES MERRILY ON THIN ICE
XIX AS A BIRD OUT OF A SNARE
XX "BLOW, WIND; SWELL, BILLOW; AND SWIM, BARK!"
XXI SOME YEARS DURING WHICH NOTHING HAPPENS


BOOK III
_IN CAPUA AT LAST_

XXII A GRATEFUL CARTHAGINIAN
XXIII MORE TALK BETWEEN YOUNG MODERNS
XXIV ANOTHER BRAND OF MODERN TALK
XXV NOTHING IN THE LEAST MODERN
XXVI MOLLY IN HER ELEMENT
XXVII BETWEEN WINDWARD AND HEMLOCK MOUNTAINS
XXVIII SYLVIA ASKS HERSELF "WHY NOT?"
XXIX A HYPOTHETICAL LIVELIHOOD
XXX ARNOLD CONTINUES TO DODGE THE RENAISSANCE
XXXI SYLVIA MEETS WITH PITY
XXXII MUCH ADO
XXXIII "WHOM GOD HATH JOINED..."
XXXIV SYLVIA TELLS THE TRUTH
XXXV "A MILESTONE PASSED, THE ROAD SEEMS CLEAR"
XXXVI THE ROAD IS NOT SO CLEAR
XXXVII "... _His wife and children perceiving it, began
to cry after him to return; but the man put his
fingers in his ears and ran on, crying, 'Life!
Life Eternal_!'"
XXXVIII SYLVIA COMES TO THE WICKET GATE
XXXIX SYLVIA DRIFTS WITH THE MAJORITY


BOOK IV
_THE STRAIT PATH_

XL A CALL FROM HOME
XLI HOME AGAIN
XLII "_Strange that we creatures of the petty ways,
Poor prisoners behind these fleshly bars,
Can sometimes think us thoughts with God ablaze,
Touching the fringes of the outer stars_"
XLIII "_Call now; is there any that will answer thee_?"
XLIV "_A bruised reed will He not break, and a dimly
burning wick will He not quench_"
XLV "_That our soul may swim
We sink our heart down, bubbling, under wave_"
XLVI A LONG TALK WITH ARNOLD
XLVII "...AND ALL THE TRUMPETS SOUNDED!"




THE BENT TWIG




BOOK I

_IN ARCADIA_




CHAPTER I

SYLVIA'S HOME


Like most happy childhoods, Sylvia's early years lay back of her in a
long, cheerful procession of featureless days, the outlines of which
were blurred into one shimmering glow by the very radiance of their
sunshine. Here and there she remembered patches, sensations, pictures,
scents: Mother holding baby sister up for her to kiss, and the
fragrance of the baby powder--the pine-trees near the house chanting
loudly in an autumn wind--her father's alert face, intent on the
toy water-wheel he was setting for her in the little creek in their
field--the beautiful sheen of the pink silk dress Aunt Victoria had
sent her--the look of her mother's steady, grave eyes when she was so
sick--the leathery smell of the books in the University Library
one day when she followed her father there--the sound of the rain
pattering on the low, slanting roof of her bedroom--these were the
occasional clearly outlined, bright-colored illuminations wrought on
the burnished gold of her sunny little life. But from her seventh
birthday her memories began to have perspective, continuity. She
remembered an occasional whole scene, a whole afternoon, just as it
happened.

The first of these must have marked the passing of some unrecognized
mental milestone, for there was nothing about it to set it apart from
any one of a hundred afternoons. It may have been the first time she
looked at what was about her, and saw it.

Mother was putting the baby to bed for his nap--not the
baby-sister--she was a big girl of five by this time, but another
baby, a little year-old brother, with blue eyes and yellow hair,
instead of brown eyes and hair like his two sisters'. And when Mother
stooped over the little bed, her white fichu fell forward and Sylvia
leaned to hold it back from the baby's face, a bit of thoughtfulness
which had a rich reward in a smile of thanks from Mother. That was
what began the remembered afternoon. Mother's smiles were golden coin,
not squandered on every occasion. Then, she and Mother and Judith
tiptoed out of the bedroom into Mother's room and there stood Father,
with his University clothes on and yet his hair rather rumpled up, as
though he had been teaching very hard. He had a pile of papers in his
hand and he said, "Barbara, are you awfully busy just now?"

Mother said, Oh no, she wasn't at all. (She never was busy when Father
asked her to do something, although Sylvia could not remember ever
once having seen her sit and do nothing, no, not even for a minute!)
Then Father said, "Well, if you _could_ run over these, I'd have time
to have some ball with the seminar after they're dismissed. These are
the papers the Freshmen handed in for that Economics quiz." Mother
said, "Sure she could," or the equivalent of that, and Father thanked
her, turned Judith upside-down and right-side-up again so quick that
she didn't know what had happened, and left them all laughing as they
usually were when Father ran down from the study for something.

So Sylvia and Judith, quite used to this procedure, sat down on the
floor with a book to keep them quiet until Mother should be through.
Neither of them could read, although Sylvia was beginning to learn,
but they had been told the stories so many times that they knew them
from the pictures. The book they looked at that day had the story of
the people who had rowed a great boat across the water to get a gold
sheepskin, and Sylvia told it to Judith, word for word, as Father
always told it. She glanced up at Mother from time to time to make
sure she was getting it right; and ever afterwards the mention of the
Argonauts brought up before Sylvia's eyes the picture of her mother
that day, sitting very straight, her strong brown fingers making an
occasional mark on the papers, as she turned them over with a crisp
rustle, her quiet face bent, in a calm fixity of attention, over the
pages.

Before they knew it, the work was done, Father had come for the
papers, and showed Sylvia one more twist in the acrobatic stunt they
were learning together. She could already take his hands and run up
to his shoulders in one squirrel-like dash; but she was to learn the
reverse and come down on the other side, and she still got tangled up
with which foot to put first. So they practised whenever they had, as
now, a minute or two to spare.

Then Judith was set to play with her blocks like the baby she still
was, while Sylvia and Mother had a lesson in reading. Sylvia could
remember the very sound of Mother's clear voice as she corrected a
mistake. They were reading a story about what happened to a drop of
water that fell into the brook in their field; how, watering the
thirsty cornfields as it flowed, the brook ran down to the river
near La Chance, where it worked ever so many mills and factories and
things. Then on through bigger and bigger rivers until it reached
the Mississippi, where boats rode on its back; and so on down to the
ocean. And there, after resting a while, it was pumped up by the sun
and made into a cloud, and the wind blew it back over the land and
to their field again, where it fell into the brook and said, "Why,
how-de-do, Sylvia--you still here?"

Father had written the story, and Mother had copied it out on the
typewriter so it would be easy for Sylvia to read.

After they had finished she remembered looking out of the window and
watching the big white clouds drift across the pale bright April sky.
They were full of hundreds of drops of water, she thought, that were
going to fall into hundreds of other brooks, and then travel and work
till they reached the sea, and then rest for a while and begin all
over again. Her dark eyes grew very wide as she watched the endless
procession of white mountains move across the great arch of the sky.
Her imagination was stirred almost painfully, her mind expanding with
the effort to take in the new conception of size, of great numbers, of
the small place of her own brook, her own field in the hugeness of
the world. And yet it was an ordered hugeness full of comforting
similarity! Now, no matter where she might go, or what brooks she
might see, she would know that they were all of one family, that the
same things happened to them all, that every one ended in the ocean.
Something she had read on a piece of paper made her see the familiar
home field with the yellow water of the little creek, as a part of the
whole world. It was very strange. She tried to tell Mother something
of what was in her mind, but, though Mother listened in a sympathetic
silence, it was evident that she could make nothing out of the
incoherent account. Sylvia thought that she would try to tell Father,
the next chance she had. Even at seven, although she loved her mother
passionately and jealously, she was aware that her father's mind was
more like her own. He understood some things that Mother didn't,
although Mother was always, always right, and Father wasn't. She fell
into silence again, standing by her mother's knee, staring out of the
window and watching the clouds move steadily across the sky doing
their share of the world's work for all they looked so soft and lazy.
Her mother did not break in on this meditative contemplation. She took
up her sewing-basket and began busily to sew buttons on a small pair
of half-finished night-drawers. The sobered child beside her, gazing
up at the blue-and-white infinity of the sky, heard faintly and
distantly, for the first time in her life, the whirring reverberations
of the great mystic wheel of change and motion and life.

Then, all at once, there was a scraping of chairs overhead in Father's
study, a clattering on the stairs, and the sound of a great many
voices. The Saturday seminar was over. The door below opened, and the
students came out, Father at the head, very tall, very straight, his
ruddy hair shining in the late afternoon sun, his shirt-sleeves rolled
up over his arms, and a baseball in his hand. "Come on, folks," Sylvia
heard him call, as he had so many times before. "Let's have a couple
of innings before you go!" Sylvia must have seen the picture a hundred
times before, but that was the first time it impressed itself on her,
the close-cut grass of their yard as lustrous as enamel, the big
pine-trees standing high, the scattered players, laughing and running
about, the young men casting off their coats and hats, the detached
fielders running long-legged to their places. At the first sound of
the voices, Judith, always alert, never wasting time in reveries, had
scampered down the stairs and out in the midst of the stir-about.
Judith was sure to be in the middle of whatever was going on. She had
attached herself to young Professor Saunders, a special favorite of
the children, and now was dragging him from the field to play horse
with her. Father looked up to the window where Sylvia and Mother sat,
and called: "Come on, Barbara! Come on and amuse Judith. She won't let
Saunders pitch."

Mother nodded, ran downstairs, coaxed Judith over beyond first base to
play catch with a soft rubber ball; and Sylvia, carried away by the
cheerful excitement, hopped about everywhere at once, screaming
encouragement to the base runners, picking up foul balls, and sending
them with proud importance back to the pitcher.

So they all played and shouted and ran and laughed, while the long,
pale-golden spring afternoon stood still, until Mother held up her
finger and stopped the game. "The baby's awake!" she said, and Father
went bounding off. When he came back with the downy pink morsel,
everybody gathered around to see it and exclaim over the tiny fat
hands and hungry little rosebud mouth. "He's starved!" said Mother.
"He wants his supper, poor little Buddy! He doesn't want a lot of
people staring at him, do you, Buddy-baby?" She snatched him out
of Father's arms and went off with him, holding him high over her
shoulders so that the sunshine shone on his yellow hair, and made a
circle of gold around his flushed, sleepy face. Then everybody picked
up books and wraps and note-books and said, "Good-by, 'Perfessor!'"
and went off.

Father and Sylvia and Judith went out in the garden to the hotbed to
pick the lettuce for supper and then back in the kitchen to get things
ready. When Mother was through giving Buddy his supper and came
hurrying in to help, Sylvia was proud that they had nearly everything
done--all but the omelet. Father had made cocoa and creamed
potatoes--nobody in the world could make creamed potatoes as good as
his--and Sylvia and Judith had between them, somewhat wranglingly,
made the toast and set the table. Sylvia was sure that Judith was
really too little to be allowed to help, but Father insisted that she
should try, for he said, with a turn in his voice that made Sylvia
aware he was laughing at her, "You only learned through trying, all
those many years ago when you were Judith's age!"

Mother put on one of her big gingham aprons and made the omelet, and
they sat down to the table out on the veranda as they always did in
warm weather. In La Chance it begins to be warm enough for outdoor
life in April. Although it was still bright daylight for ever so long
after the sun had set, the moon came and looked at them palely over
the tops of the trees.

After supper they jumped up to "race through the dishes," as the
family catchword ran. They tried to beat their record every evening
and it was always a lively occasion, with Mother washing like
lightning, and Father hurrying to keep up, Sylvia running back and
forth to put things away, and Judith bothering 'round, handing out dry
dish-towels, and putting away the silver. She was allowed to handle
that because she couldn't break it. Mother and Judith worked in a
swift silence, but a great deal of talking and laughing went on
between Sylvia and her father, while Buddy, from his high-chair where
he was watching the others, occasionally broke out in a loud, high
crow of delight. They did it all, even to washing and hanging out
the dish-towels, in eleven and a half minutes that evening, Sylvia
remembered.

Then she and Judith went to sit on the porch on the little bench
Mother had made them. They tried to see who could catch the first
glimpse of the evening star every evening. Mother was putting Buddy to
bed and Father was starting the breakfast cereal cooking on the stove.
After a while he went into the living-room and began to play something
on the piano, something full of deep, swaying chords that lifted
Sylvia's heart up and down as though she were floating on the water.
The air was full of the moist fragrance of spring. When the music held
its breath for a moment you could hear the bedtime note of sleepy
birds in the oaks. Judith, who did not care much for music, began
to get sleepy and leaned all her soft, warm weight against her big
sister. Sylvia for the first time in her life was consciously aware of
being very happy. When, some time later, the evening star shone out
through the trees, she drew a long breath. "See, Judith," she cried
softly and began to recite,

"Star-light, star-bright,
First star I've seen tonight--"

She stopped short--it was Aunt Victoria who had taught her that poem,
the last time she had come to see them, a year ago, the time when she
had brought Sylvia the pink silk dress, the only dress-up dress with
lace and ribbons on it Sylvia had had up to that time. As suddenly as
the evening star had shone out, another radiant vision flashed across
Sylvia's mind, Aunt Victoria, magnificent in her lacy dress, her
golden hair shining under the taut silk of her parasol, her white,
soft fingers gleaming with rings, her air of being a condescending
goddess, visiting mortals ...

After a time Mother stepped out on the porch and said, "Oh, quick,
children, wish on the shooting star."

Judith had dropped asleep like a little kitten tired of play, and
Sylvia looked at her mother blankly. "I didn't see any shooting star,"
she said.

Mother was surprised. "Why, your face was pointed right up at the
spot."

"I didn't see it," repeated Sylvia.

Mother fixed her keen dark eyes on Sylvia. "What's the matter?" she
asked in her voice that always required an answer. Sylvia wriggled
uncomfortably. Hers was a nature which suffers under the categorical
question; but her mother's was one which presses them home.

"What's the matter with you?" she said again.

Sylvia turned a clouded face to her mother. "I was wondering why it's
not nice to be idyllic."

"_What_?" asked her mother, quite at a loss. Sylvia was having one of
her unaccountable notions.

Sylvia went to lean on her mother's knee, looking with troubled eyes
up into the kind, attentive, uncomprehending face. "Why, the last time
Aunt Victoria was here--that long time ago--when they were all out
playing ball--she looked round and round at everything--at your dress
and mine and the furniture--_you_ know--the--the uncomfortable way she
does sometimes--and she said, 'Well, Sylvia--nobody can say that your
parents aren't leading you a very idyllic life.'"

Mother laughed out. Her rare laugh was too sudden and loud to be very
musical, but it was immensely infectious, like a man's hearty mirth.
"I didn't hear her say it--but I can imagine that she did. Well, what
_of_ it? What if she did?"

For once Sylvia did not respond to another's mood. She continued
anxiously, "Well, it means something perfectly horrid, doesn't it?"

Mother was still laughing. "No, no, child, what in the world makes you
think that?"

"Oh, if you'd heard Aunt Victoria _say_ it!" cried Sylvia with
conviction. Father came out on the veranda, saying to Mother, "Isn't
that crescendo superb?" To Sylvia he said, as though sure of her
comprehension, "Didn't you like the ending, dear--where it sounded
like the Argonauts all striking the oars into the water at once and
shouting?"

Sylvia had been taught above everything to tell the truth. Moreover
(perhaps a stronger reason for frankness), Mother was there, who would
know whether she told the truth or not. "I didn't hear the end."

Father looked quickly from Sylvia's face to her mother's. "What's the
matter?" he asked.

"Sylvia was so concerned because her Aunt Victoria had called our life
idyllic that she couldn't think of anything else," explained Mother
briefly, still smiling. Father did not smile. He sat down by Sylvia
and had her repeat to him what she had said to her mother. When she
had finished he looked grave and said: "You mustn't mind what your
Aunt Victoria says, dear. Her ideas are very different from ours."

Sylvia's mother cried out, "Why, a child of Sylvia's age couldn't have
taken in the significance of--"

"I'm afraid," said Father, "that Sylvia's very quick to take in such a
significance."

Sylvia remained silent, uncomfortable at being discussed, vaguely
ashamed of herself, but comforted that Father had not laughed, had
understood. As happened so frequently, it was Father who understood
and Mother who did the right thing. She suddenly made an enigmatic,
emphatic exclamation, "Goodness _gracious_!" and reaching out her long
arms, pulled Sylvia up on her lap, holding her close. The last thought
of that remembered time for Sylvia was that Mother's arms were very
strong, and her breast very soft. The little girl laid her head down
on it with a contented sigh, watching the slow, silent procession of
the stars.




CHAPTER II

THE MARSHALLS' FRIENDS


Any one of the more sophisticated members of the faculty of the State
University at La Chance would have stated without hesitation that the
Marshalls had not the slightest part in the social activities of the
University; but no one could have called their life either isolated or
solitary. Sylvia, in her memories of childhood, always heard the low,
brown house ringing with music or echoing to the laughter and talk
of many voices. To begin with, a good many of Professor Marshall's
students came and went familiarly through the plainly furnished rooms,
although there was, of course, in each year's class, a little circle
of young people with a taste for social distinctions who held aloof
from the very unselect and heterogeneous gatherings at the Marshall
house.

These young aristocrats were, for the most part, students from the
town itself, from La Chance's "best families," who through parental
tyranny or temporary financial depression were not allowed to go East
to a well-known college with a sizable matriculation fee, but were
forced to endure four years of the promiscuous, swarming, gratuitous
education of the State University. All these august victims of family
despotism associated as little as possible with the common rabble of
their fellow-students, and accepted invitations only from such faculty
families as were recognized by the inner circle of the town society.

The Marshalls were not among this select circle. Indeed, no faculty
family was farther from it. Every detail of the Marshalls' life was in
contradiction not only to the standards and ideals of the exclusive
"town set," but to those of their own colleagues. They did not live
in the right part of town. They did not live in the right sort of a
house. They did not live in the right sort of a way. And consequently,
although no family had more visitors, they were not the right sort of
visitors.

This was, of course, not apparent to the children for a good many
years. Home was home, as it is to children. It did not seem strange
to them that instead of living in a small rented house on a closely
built-up street near the campus in the section of the city occupied by
the other faculty families, they lived in a rambling, large-roomed old
farmhouse with five acres of land around it, on the edge of the West
Side. They did not know how heartily this land-owning stability was
condemned as folly by the rent-paying professors, perching on the
bough with calculated impermanence so that they might be free to
accept at any moment the always anticipated call to a larger salary.
They did not know, not even Sylvia, for many years, that the West Side
was the quite unfashionable part of town. It did not seem strange to
them to see their father sweeping his third-floor study with his own
hands, and they were quite used to a family routine which included
housework for every one of them. Indeed, a certain amount of this was
part of the family fun. "Come on, folks!" Professor Marshall would
call, rising up from the breakfast table, "Tuesday--day to clean the
living-room--all hands turn to!" In a gay helter-skelter all hands
turned to. The lighter furniture was put out on the porch. Professor
Marshall, joking and laughing, donned a loose linen overall suit to
protect his "University clothes," and cleaned the bare floor with a
big oiled mop; Mrs. Marshall, silent and swift, looked after mirrors,
windows, the tops of bookcases, things hard for children to reach;
Sylvia flourished a duster; and Judith and Lawrence out on the porch,
each armed with a whisk-broom, brushed and whacked at the chairs and
sofas. There were no rugs to shake, and it took but an instant to set
things back in their places in the clean-smelling, dustless room.

This daily drill, coming as it did early in the morning, usually
escaped the observation of any but passing farmers, who saw nothing
amiss in it; but facetiously exaggerated reports of its humors reached
the campus, and a certain set considered it very clever to lay bets as
to whether the Professor of Political Economy would pull out of his
pocket a handkerchief, or a duster, or a child's shirt, for it was
notorious that the children never had nursemaids and that their father
took as much care of them as their mother.

The question of clothes, usually such a sorely insoluble problem for
academic people of small means, was solved by the Marshalls in an
eccentric, easy-going manner which was considered by the other faculty
families as nothing less than treasonable to their caste. Professor
Marshall, it is true, having to make a public appearance on the
campus every day, was generally, like every other professor,
undistinguishable from a commercial traveler. But Mrs. Marshall, who
often let a good many days pass without a trip to town, had adopted
early in her married life a sort of home uniform, which year after
year she wore in one form or another. It varied according to the
season, and according to the occasion on which she wore it, but it had
certain unchanging characteristics. It was always very plain as to
line, and simple as to cut, having a skirt neither full nor scant, a
waist crossed in front with a white fichu, and sleeves reaching just
below the elbow with white turn-back cuffs. As Mrs. Marshall, though
not at all pretty, was a tall, upright, powerfully built woman, with
a dark, shapely head gallantly poised on her shoulders, this garb,
whether short-skirted, of blue serge in the morning, or trailing, of
ruby-colored cashmere in the evening, was very becoming to her. But
there is no denying that it was always startlingly and outrageously
unfashionable. At a time when every woman and female child in the
United States had more cloth in her sleeves than in all the rest of
her dress, the rounded muscles of Mrs. Marshall's arm, showing through
the fabric of her sleeves, smote shockingly upon the eye of the
ordinary observer, trained to the American habit of sheep-like
uniformity of appearance. And at the time when the front of every
woman's waist fell far below her belt in a copiously blousing sag,
Mrs. Marshall's trim tautness had in it something horrifying. It must
be said for her that she did not go out of her way to inflict these
concussions upon the brains of spectators, since she always had in
her closet one evening dress and one street dress, sufficiently
approximating the prevailing style to pass unnoticed. These costumes
lasted long, and they took in the long run but little from the
Marshall exchequer: for she wore them seldom, only assuming what her
husband called, with a laugh, her "disguise" when going into town.