The Brimming Cup

ON ROCC

Life of Two Mod

l, 1

he throng of ancient memories jostling him where he stood. Without troubling to look at his watch, he informed the two young foreigners that they had a long hour to wait before t

ognizable word or two of badly pronounced English thrown in. He felt slightly vexed that he could not make them feel the proper annoyance, and added, "It m

"I've got to tip him for that!" said the y

entrated absent aspect of a person who has just heard vital tidings and can attend to nothing else. She said, "Oh,

vast incuriosity as to reason the coin which the young foreigner put into his hand, and, ringing it suspiciously on his table, divided his appraising attention between its clear answer to his challenge, and the

courting Annunziata?" he asked himself. He glanced up from pocketing the coin, and caught the look which passed between th

s, partly out of sight, just at the brink of the great drop to the Campagna. The s

ld memories out to the sea, a blue reminder of the restfulness of eternity, at the rim of the weary

k down, or away from each other's eyes as they strove to free themselves, to step forward, to clasp the other's outstretched hands. They reached down blindly, tearing at those thorny, clutching entanglements, pulling and tugging at those tenuous, tough words whi

s drawn together. "Neale, Neale dear, if I could only tell you how I want it to b

loving anybody. I never wanted to. I never thought I should. But now I'm in it, I see that it's not at all unhappiness I'm afraid of, your getting tired of me or I of you . . . everybody's so weak and horrid in this world, who knows what may be before us? That's not what would be unendurable, sickening. That would make us unhappy. But what would poison us to death . . . wha

"You do think we can always have between us that loyalty to what is deep and living? It does no

ing," he said slowly, "when I tell you now that I think it a very great deal to ask of life, a very

his speech. "Yes, yes, I see what you mean." She drew a long breath. "I can even see how fine it is of you to sa

say yes. Darling, darling Marise, you can't want it more than I! But the very intelligence that makes you want it, that makes me want it, shows me how mortally hard it would be! Think! To be loyal to what is deepest and most living in yourself . . . that's an undert

e asked him in a low voice, "Couldn't you do more for me than for yourself? One neve

nging, hoping, fearing. The man's face set. His burning look of power enveloped her like the

gratitude. "I'll never forget that as

od in his eye

ght a moment of flood-tide, and both together had been carried up side by side; the long, inevitable isolation of human lives from birth onwar

s of sobriety. They even looked away from each other, aware of their own bodies which for that instant had been left behind. They entered again into the flesh that clad their spirits, taking possession of their hands and feet and members, and ta

the sea: harmonious, serene, ripe with maturity, evocative of all

it makes you feel a midge in the sunshine with only an hour or two of life before you. What if you are, when it's life as we feel it now, such a

ptly. "You forget I got all the Fren

o college in Am

r Hugo's poetry," he surmised skeptically. "Well, how d

ave mentioned it. She explained, "It's not a famous line at all, nothing I ever heard anybody else admire

Waterloo, m

i bout dans une u

ng up in it. It gave me a feeling, inside, a real physical feeling, I mean. I wanted, oh so awfully, sometime to be so filled with some emotion, something

Neale, I believe you are the only person in the world who can really pay attention

his fancy, and

great flood that would brim my cup full. I used to go up the hill in Bayonne to the Cathedral every day and stay there for hours, trying to work up an ecstasy. I managed nearly to faint away once or twice, which was something of course. But I couldn't feel that great tide I'd dreamed of. And then, little by little . . . oh, lots of things came between the idea and my th

to have lived through! Well, when we went on into the church, and I knelt there for a while, so struck down with joy that I couldn't stand on my feet, all those wild bursts of excitement, and incredulity and happiness, that kept surging up and drenching me . . . I had a queer feeling, that awfully threadbare feeling of having been there before, or felt that before; that it was

t it is, how utterly hideous it would be to have to live without it, to

along without it, as long as I

a minute, if it goes b

think we are talking very youn

e cast them away into non

reverie, smilin

t day," she murmured; "the spray they ca

that?" asked the man. "I get anxious about that sometimes. It seems an awful jump to

ave to call it narrow, when you've

ess that a small Vermont town isn't going

ide, but it's de

u were about eleven years old wh

rse I stopped going to Ashley regularly for vacations then. But I went back for several summe

t's the place where I'm going to live with you. Any place on ea

t than you? To think how I played all around your uncle's mill and ho

eerness of our happening to meet in Rome instead of in Brooklyn, and your happening to know the town where my uncle lived and owned the mill he left me . . . that can't hold a candle for queerness, for wonderfulness, com

t we shouldn't ever have met, both of us being in the world. Didn't you ever study chemistry? Didn't they teac

plain far below them, mellowing richly

tly humorous and partly grim. "Don't you believe that, Neale, that we would have come together somehow, anyhow?" she asked, "even if you had gone straight back fro

still

ou don't believe that we could have passed a

t anything else? And what on earth did I want to do with them? Nothing! As far as I had any plans at all, it was to go home, see Father and Mother for a while, get through the legal complications of inheritance, sell the mill and house . . . I wouldn't have thought of such a thing as bothering even to go to Ashley to look at them . . . and then take the money and go off somewhere, somewhere different, a

h a look half of apology

ls; as though I'd been floundering in a marsh, deeper and deeper, and then all at once, when I thought I'd come to know there wasn't anything in the world but marsh, to come out on beautiful, fine, clean earth, where I feel the very strength of ag

t he had heard her words but vaguely. "I don't se

begin to believe that you will be loy

ment so shortly back of them, and said with a surprised an

lieve anything good of anybody for longer than that, not really in my heart of hearts. And it's my turn to tell

w life is mostly bad and cruel and dull and low, and above all that it's bound to fool you if you trust to it, or get off your guard a single minute. They don't teach you that, you know; but you see it's what they believe and what they spend all their energies trying to dodge a little, all they think they can. Then everything you read, except the silly little Bibliothèque-Rose sort of thing, makes you know that it's true . . . Anatole France, and Maupassant, and Schnitzler. Of course back in America you find lots of nice people wh

n't you love me? Don't yo

y heart a thousand times more than I ever dreamed I could love anybody. But how do I know that I'm not somehow fooling myself: but that maybe all that huge unconscio

ed treasure, "But, Neale, listen! I don't think that about you! I don't believe you're bei

d, that everybody has? Aren't you afraid that they'll get the best of us, inevitably, unless we let ourselves get so dull,

tural, unshaken accent. "Why, yes, I think it very likely that I am being fooled all the time. But I don't think i

he water of a little brook flowing into the sea? Do you think that, which is only a little trickle and a harmless and natural and healthy little trickle, could unsalt the great ocean of its savor? Why, Marise, all that you're so afraid of, all that they've made you so afraid of, . .

ock." After a moment, opening her eyes, she said, "You are better than I, you know. I'm not at all su

ted; with brains and sensitiveness and under-ballasted with experience, tha

now anything about. In ever so many ways you seem positively . . . na?ve! You needn't go thinking that I'm always highstrung and fanciful. I never showed that side to anybody before, never! Always kept it shut up and locked down and danced and whooped it up b

t, if that is what y

t before. And since I know it's not stupidness in you, why, it seems to me just splendidly and simply courageous, a kind of courage I'd never thought of before. I see now, how, after all, those stupid people had me beaten,

ot? What difference does it make, if it's a question of what you yourself feel? I'd be just as satisfied if you gave all your time to discovering t

d seriously, "You must instantly think of something perfectly prosaic and commonplace to say, or I shall be forced to take you in my arms and ki

n the Bayonne market, near enough Spain, you know, for real Malaga grapes with the aroma still on them, and for Spanish quince-paste. I bossed the old Basque woman we had for cook and learned how to cook from her, using a great many onions for everything. And I learned how to keep house by the light of nature, since it had to be done. And I'm awfully excited about having a house of my own, just as though I weren't the extremely clever, cynical, disillusioned, fascinating musical genius everybody knows me to be: only let me

le-witted chatter, but at this he brought her up short by a

to curiosity. "Touclé. Touclé. Don't you think it a pretty n

't mean to say that my Uncle Benton had p

know about

t all, as a boy, used to work right along with the mill-hands, and out chopping with the lumbermen. Maybe Uncle Burton noticed that." He was struck with a sudden idea, "By George, maybe that was why he left me the mill!" He cast his eye retrospectively on this idea and was silent for a mom

an, down from Genoa, and when I heard your name I said, 'Oh, I used to know an old Mr. Crittenden who ran a wood-working factory up

inconsequently, just to divert my mind fr

n't tell you, because she is different from everything else. You'll see for yourself, when we get there. If she's still alive." She offered a compromise, "I'll tell you what. If she's dead, I'll sit down

essed. "I can make a guess that she's some old woman, and I bet you I won't see any

h which drenched the air all about her with the perfume of young

of laughter, as if astonished, "Why, I do believe we are going to be

nto the pit of incredulity was, this time, only h

r in books or out of them. Of all the million, million love-affairs t

He asked helplessly, "Wel

can't help myself, dear Neale. Isn't th

d to carry away all his impatience, and finally said, quietly enough, "Why, yes, of course,

the faintest, faintest idea how big this thing is. All these fool clever ways of talking about it . . . they're just a screen set up

you mean. I have had dreams sometimes, that I'm in something awfully big and irresistible like a great river, flowing s

dently, "You w

ken up by the little surface waves, chopping ba

feel it or not," he made

ly, old-fashioned notion that men are stronger than wome

wn strength, sooner or later," he

e romantic!" she

rofoundly; and on this rock-like assurance

ad left the dusky edges of the world. Already the far mountains were dimmed, and the plain, passing from one deep twilig

omantic idea . . . honestly, I do wish we could both die right here an

"No, I do not, not at all, not for a single moment. I'

wn from this high place of safety into that dark plain, and we will have to cross it, pa

hand in his. "Only I'm not a bit afraid of the plain, nor the way

g, across that plain?" she asked him pai

ismayed. "But I think we will know it as

ountains, deepened, and her voice deepened with it. "Can you even

e to hers, his insistent eyes bringing hers up to meet his gaze. She

he was. Life burst over them with a roar, a superb flooding tide on whos

eaving to darkness the old, o