The Steep Path

I

‘BEFORE we go any farther I am willing to admit that the bicycle idea was rotten,’ said Augustus Foster.

His wife agreed both mentally and physically, but, being a woman of acquired marital tact, she allowed him the solace of his apology.

‘ Baedeker did n’t say,’ she said a moment later, ‘that the hills always went up and never down.’

He was immediately happier, as she had known that he would be, and he slipped his walking stick through the strap of his rucksack so that he could push the bicycle with two hands instead of one.

‘I only wish,’ continued Mrs. Foster, ‘that they were steadier things, so that we might rig up little harnesses and pull them instead of having to walk beside them and push.’

‘Yes, or rent a pair of donkeys to pull them for us. And then we could ride the donkeys,’ said Mr. Foster.

In spite of his disappointment and quite acute exhaustion, Augustus Foster made no mental resolutions not to rent, in the future, untried conveyances for use in unknown terrain. His enthusiasms were not so easily trodden upon. Because he had given his blind aunt a stereopticon for her seventyfifth birthday he had not been prevented, a year later, from building a rowboat in the laundry before he realized that the door was too narrow to allow the rowboat to be got through it. It was one of the traits which Ellen Foster liked most in her husband. It makes living with him so unexpected, she often thought; for example, just when you think you can’t stand planning another meal he suggests a picnic in Central Park. And afterward planning a meal becomes a pleasure.

She watched his broad, heavily tweeded back as he walked and pushed in front of her, and she felt a slight twinge somewhere in the region of her heart. That might once have been love, she thought, and at another time disgust, but now it is only the natural result of physical exertion.

Coming to a place where the path widened out beside a low wall, they stopped to rest. Mr. Foster stacked the bicycles against the wall; his wife took off her pack and dusted a spot for them to sit on. They looked far down upon the Ligurian Sea, blue, calm, cool.

‘If we were not so high up we could bathe,’ said Mrs. Foster.

‘We’ll bathe in it before long,’ said Augustus, ‘if we have to roll down to it. Your face is quite dirty, Ellen.’

‘It’s grease,’ replied Ellen. ’I must have rubbed my face after I fixed the wheel chain.’

She brought a melted chocolate bar out of her pocket and they ate, stickily and with no great pleasure, while the sea beat on the cliffs below. The wall, though low on the near side of the path, dropped fifteen feet to the olive terrace on the sea side so that there was no getting over it into the shade. Adversely the wall on the far side of the path rose at least twelve feet above them. They were hemmed into the long steep tunnel of sunlight. Ellen wiped bits of melted chocolate into her face with a crumpled handkerchief. She very much wanted a cold drink, but she did n’t say so. Augustus wanted a drink just as badly. Pretending to be unaware of the parched condition of their throats, he fumbled in his rucksack. He motioned to his wife to look at the fishing boat on the sea below, and when her eyes returned to the wall they rested on a large bottle of white wine, still cool from the inn cellar.

‘Augustus,’ she cried, ‘I love you this moment more than I ever have before.’

They drank in long gurgling swallows from the bottle. Mr. Foster moistened the corner of his handkerchief with a few drops of wine and carefully cleaned his wife’s face of chocolate and grease. She did the same for him. They smiled at each other.

II

They had not always smiled at each other. Now, as they resumed their wheel-pushing up the steep path, Ellen remembered the days when she was not a tactful wife, when the sight of Augustus’s broad back would have annoyed her, when the thought of a holiday in Italy alone with him would have turned her sick. She knew now that it had always been within her power to make their marriage go. But at first she had n’t known it. It had seemed to her, even while she was still passionately in love, that marriage ought to be a fifty-fifty proposition, that Augustus should make concessions equal in number and importance to hers. When he had n’t, she had stopped making concessions and declared war. The infuriating part of that period had been that Augustus had not recognized the declaration, had continued to act as though diplomatic and trade relations still existed. His unawareness, she remembered, had driven her to a state of active exasperation. She had wanted to hurt him, to find with the point of her malice the unprotected spots of his soul, and she thought it possible that she had not been entirely unsuccessful.

Augustus called over his shoulder that he thought he saw a break in the hill ahead. It looked, he said hopefully, as though the path might begin to edge around the mountain and thence descend rather than continue to climb straight to the top. And then they could fly down to the sea on these splendid bicycles.

For some time a disagreeable thought had Iain unexplored in Ellen’s mind. It was that if the path’s descent was, as it was sure to be, as steep as its ascent, it would be, if possible, harder to hold the bicycles back than it was to push them up. The cobblestones might even be arranged in a long series of steps, quite unsuitable for bicycles to fly over with any comfort or safety. She kept silent about this less from tact than from superstition. It was the kind of thing that there wras no use mentioning. In case God had n’t thought of putting steps there, it was no good calling the possibility to His attention. She called reassuringly to Augustus and tried to ignore the increasing numbness of her right arm, caught as it was between the galling strap of her pack and the hot leather of the bicycle seat.

No further words were spoken as they struggled up the almost vertical stretch to the gap in the olives. Then, miraculously, Augustus’s hope came true. The path leveled off abruptly, and, as Boone and his men saw Kentucky stretched beyond the hard-won height of Cumberland Gap, the Fosters looked down on falling terraces of olive trees, faded red roofs on the hill slope, cypress and pine on the coast rock, and, below and around it all, the living green and opal of the sea.

‘There must be,’ said Ellen, ‘some lines of poetry that would fit this moment.’

‘There are,’ said Augustus, ‘but it seems to me that the moment is of itself sufficient.’

To their left was an iron gate, half open, and, leaving their wheels, they slipped through on to the beveled olive terrace. Under the olives were clover and poppies; through twisted graygreen branches was a long satisfying vista. There was shade, and the wall to prop one’s back. There was more white wine in the bottle, and a package of strong, quick-burning cigarettes.

Ellen touched her husband’s fingers as he held a match for her.

‘All bicycles aside,’ came between puffs, ‘it was a swell idea.’

She slipped down on the grass and lay looking up at the sky. Her husband spoke to her.

‘I’ll quote you some poetry now, if you like.’

‘Do.’

‘An ant is crawling over your chin. Don’t open your mouth or he’ll walk in.’

‘Splendid,’ she said. ‘Is it original?’

‘Yes, a bit of realism. Only when you spoke he got frightened and went down your neck instead of into your mouth.’

‘Will he bite, do you think?’

‘Probably. I’m going to sleep.’ He lay on his stomach, his head resting on his bent arm. Ellen thought about him.

III

He had been hurt by her, but he had never reproached her. If he had been a religious man he might have prayed for her. As it was, he had just waited. And she had, at last, realized that she would have to do the changing. It was n’t that he was inflexible. It was more that he could n’t dissemble; that he was always himself; that he could n’t pretend.

And he was appallingly honest. She remembered her shock and rage when he had first mentioned a woman he had loved before. He had spoken of her casually, affectionately, and told Ellen of a trip they had taken together.

That had been in the first months of their marriage, when it had seemed to her unbearable that he should be capable of recalling a former love even though he had been so indiscreet as to have one. Later, much later, she was glad of this indiscriminate unburdening of his thoughts. She realized and appreciated its assurance of security. It was so with all that Augustus said or did. Those words and actions which were of themselves irritating were, in a larger sense, proof against irritation. But Ellen had not learned this in a moment.

Lying there on the warm, still grass, she meditated upon the man beside her. Was he the man whom she had loved so that no other thing mattered? Was he the insensitive monster whom she had grown to hate? Or was he the tender, philosophic blunderer whom she now regarded with dispassionate affection? The loyal, enthusiastic, and moderately stout companion who slept so confidently beside her?

She shook his shoulder and he wakened calmly.

‘What is it, my dear?’

‘Nothing—except that it’s rather late and we ought to be on our way if we expect to get to a place where we can spend the night.’

‘Of course.’ He sat up. ‘Very refreshing, that little sleep. Did you get one?’

‘No. I’ve been thinking about you, and wondering . .

‘What, Ellen?’

‘Nothing in particular. Just wondering.’

For a few hundred yards along the ridge of the hill they were able to ride their bicycles. Neither performed this act with certainty or skill. And the wheels bumped unsteadily on the uneven cobblestones. Ellen wanted to laugh. She saw Augustus and herself as a third person might have seen them. A middle-aged man and wife in tweed suits, with rucksacks on their backs, wobbling along the crest of a Ligurian hill on rented bicycles. She felt that the picture contained pathos as well as humor, but she preferred to see it only as comic. If the principal characters involved in a situation did not regard themselves as pathetic, could the situation itself be called pathetic? She thought not. If there were pathos, it existed solely in the mind of the third party, the onlooker who saw things only from his own point of view. She tried to distract this onlooker from the inference of pathos. Let him be amused, for she was willing to admit that the picture might be amusing, — a trifle whimsical, even, if he liked, — but she refused to have herself and Augustus regarded with anything bordering on pity.

Augustus stopped suddenly and dismounted. He caught the handlebars of Ellen’s machine as she wobbled up to him and held them while she got down.

‘Now we begin the steep descent.’ His smile was less spontaneous than it had been earlier in the day. The path took a sharp bend to the right and plunged down through a thicket of scrub pine. Ellen had difficulty not only in holding her wheel, but in keeping her feet from slipping on the stones. Augustus called to her to keep back, not to walk so close that her bicycle might bump his and upset them both. She tried to obey him.

The sound of voices came to them from below, and in a moment two young Italians appeared, walking easily up the path.

‘ Buona sera, signora. Buona sera, signore.’ They touched their caps and did not look surprised.

Augustus stopped them and, in what he thought was Italian, asked the way.

‘Dove vengo questa strode? ’

‘ Come? ’

‘ Questa strode? Vengo al albergo?‘

‘Si, si, signore.’

‘Quanto distanto?’

‘ Come? ’

‘Kilometre al albergo? Quanto?’

‘Si, signore!’

They touched their caps again and were off up the hill, their legs carrying them without effort, their voices rising and falling in cadence.

‘What did they say, Augustus?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘ What did you ask them ? ’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Well, let’s go on. They must have come from somewhere.’

IV

Ellen tried not to think of how she felt and looked. The branch of a pine tree caught her hair and she stopped to free it. Augustus went on, unmindful. How often he had done that! He had been so sure. So sure that she would follow and catch up to him. No need to look over his shoulder, to make certain that she was there. She wondered why she had stayed there.

The children, of course, for one thing. A mother could n’t go away and leave her children, could n’t even take them from an unappreciative father. No, it was n’t fair to call him unappreciative. He had been queer about the children, to be sure, but that did n’t mean that there was no affection. Anyway, she could n’t have disrupted their children’s home. And was that the only reason she had not left Augustus? She had felt it to be at the time. Now she was not sure whether, even without the boys, she would not have stayed. It was true that she had taken a certain delight in hurting Augustus, but could she have administered this final, fatal thrust? She was thankful that it had never been necessary to decide the question.

They had just gone on living, he bewildered and patient, she sullen and uncompromising. How long they had been, those years! How bitter and frozen life had become in the little house on Sixty-ninth Street! She had made a sort of way of living for herself outside, but it had never held much satisfaction. She was not a woman to join clubs, to meet with other women over a lunch table. Her charities were personal, uncivic. Her talent was for making the lives of her intimates agreeable. And this she had refused to cultivate. She had spent, with the children as excuse, much time in the country. Away from Augustus she had sometimes been able to forget him and her hatred of him.

A sharp stone turned the front wheel of her bicycle and pulled it from her grasp. The machine fell and she stumbled and slipped to a sitting position beside it. Augustus heard her cry and came back.

‘Are you hurt, do you think?’

‘No. Only tired. May I sit just here for a minute?’

Augustus sat down beside her on the uneven cobbles. He looked uncomfortable, hot, and apologetic. Ellen was too tired to help him with the assurance of a smile.

‘I don’t think,’ he said, ‘that it is much farther. Unquestionably the path leads down to a village of some sort.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘“Even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea.’”

‘ You have poetry much on your mind to-day, Ellen. Are you quite well?’

‘Quite, my dear Augustus. Only . . . I’m exhausted . . . you’re exhausted. We need baths and beds.’

Augustus picked up a pine needle and began to chew it. He spoke with constrained casualness.

‘We planned to stay at little country inns or even farmhouses along the way, did n’t we?’

‘Yes. That’s what we planned.’

‘If we should, quite by chance, come out on a rather grand hotel . . . quite expensive, with bathrooms and head waiters and an orchestra . . . it would n’t be right, would it, to change our plans?’

‘Our plans, dear, in regard to country inns and farmhouses, were changed about the time that the first blister on my left heel broke — three hours or more ago.’

‘Have you blisters, too?’

‘We’ll bathe, dress, eat, drink, sit on a terrace over the sea, and then sleep,’ said Ellen.

‘I feel that we are nearly there,’ said her husband. ‘ If you are strong enough to go on before you stiffen too much I think it would be well.’

They got to their swollen feet and started on. Soon they were out of the pines and down again to the olive level.

V

Ellen’s thoughts were no longer on the present. She was reconstructing in her mind the scene of a dinner party which had taken place more than eight years ago in New York. She remembered very clearly how she and Augustus had driven from Sixty-ninth Street to Gramercy Park through a wet snowstorm. The falling flakes had melted and run down the glass of the cab windows. Several times the driver had stopped to wipe off the wind shield. He had driven slowly and the street lamps had been blurred and yellow. She and Augustus had not spoken to one another. She had been uncomfortably conscious of his heavy breathing beside her in the darkness of the cab.

The dinner had been given in honor of the Viennese doctor, Aber. Augustus had wanted to go to meet the doctor, for whose work he had great respect. Most of the other guests had been scientists, except for Arnold Weinmar. Weinmar was one of those excessively rich, excessively wise and generous Jews who have helped to give meaning to the word philanthropy. Ellen had sat next him at dinner. She had met him only once before, although he and Augustus were friends.

She had been afraid that he would begin to talk of Augustus, simply because he knew that she was Augustus’s wife. In order to avoid this possibility she had opened conversation by speaking of a play she had seen the week before. Ellen was not particularly interested in the theatre and she had had no foreknowledge of Weinmar’s likes and dislikes. Nor had she been sure later of his real interest. But he had talked with an ease and sympathy that caught her mind and forced her interest. His discussion of modern drama had led back into the traditions of the theatre. He had told stories of d’Annunzio and Duse in Florence, of changes and dissension in the Theatre Frangais. Then suddenly he had stopped. He had looked at Ellen from his warm eager eyes.

‘But there are more actors off’ the stage than on it,’ he had said. ‘Now I am one. I behave as my public would have me behave. Like a weather vane which moves with the wind, I shift and turn with the approval or disapproval of others. Because one person wants me to point east, I point east. Because another wants me to point south-bysouthwest, I point south-by-southwest.’

Ellen had laughed. ‘It is a fortunate thing for the world, then, that there are such weather-vane actors as yourself.’

‘You are something like that, too, I think,’ Weinmar had replied. ‘You react — or at least you are capable of reacting — to other people as I do. It is a good thing to be able to do.’

‘The best thing I can think of,’ Ellen had said.

‘No. Not necessarily.’ And again Weinmar’s eyes had rested on hers. ‘There is another race of men, different and more difficult to deal with than ours. And it is part of our job to interpret for them.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I spoke just now of our kind, yours and mine, as weather vanes. The others are compasses. One puts them down anywhere and they face to the north. Undistracted, unpretending, steadfast. You and I must look after them, protect them, but they are none the less good. They are, if anything, more necessary to the world than we. As a matter of fact, if I could rearrange society I would place each weather vane with a compass. In that way balance might be preserved.’

The snow had been firmer and had driven in hard pellets against the windows as Augustus and Ellen went home that night. Augustus had spoken of Aber, the Viennese, and then he had asked Ellen how she had gotten on with Weinmar. They had, she said, gotten on well.

‘What did you talk about?’ he had asked.

‘We didn’t talk. He talked and I listened,’ she had answered. ‘He talked very well indeed.’

‘But what about?’

‘About? I don’t know.’ But then she suddenly had known. ‘Why yes, he talked about us, about you and me, about weather vanes and compasses.’

She had felt Augustus’s bewilderment in the cab, but she had gone on speaking, more to herself than to him.

‘About a weather vane that refused to change with the wind. About a compass that went right on . . . pointing north. . .

VI

Now, as they stumbled down along the path through the olives, she wondered what Augustus had thought about it all. Had he really suffered under her abuse? Had he understood and welcomed the change in her? What did he think of her? The strange thing was that, although he talked freely about almost everything in the world, he was inarticulate when it came to expressing what are called the deeper emotions. She was sure he had them. She wished that he might be able to talk about them. She would like to go over the whole thing with him step by step, to analyze his feelings in relation to her own. She’d try sometime.

‘Ellen!’

‘Yes.’

‘I see water ahead. The sea, I’m sure.’

‘What sea?’ asked Ellen.

They were down almost within sound of the waves. The path lay along a ledge level with the roofs of a little town and then down a long flight of steps to the piazza.

‘It makes me feel giddy,’ said Ellen, ‘to walk horizontally.’

The hotel was not quite as expensive and grand as Augustus had suggested, but it did have a bathroom, a head waiter, and a terrace.

After dinner the Fosters stretched themselves out in deck chairs on the terrace, sipped black coffee and brandy. Ellen put her hand on her husband’s knee.

‘Do you remember,’ she asked, ‘the night when we were driving home from dinner in Gramercy Park? The weather vane and the compass? It was snowing hard and you asked me what Weinmar had said to me?’

She paused, and for the moment the only sound was of the sea sucking against the rocks. Augustus turned and looked long at his wife.

‘This,’ he said, ‘is a nice place. And it has given me an idea. Would you be terribly disappointed if I hired two small boys to push our bicycles back over the hill to their owner? Then you and I could rent a little sailboat . . . ’