used to want to shriek it out to the world in the long nights when
I could not sleep. It seemed to me that I could not die with it.
It demanded some sort of expression. And now that you know, you
would scarcely believe how much less sharp the anguish of it is."
Everett continued to look helplessly at the floor. "I was
not sure how much you wanted me to know," he said.
"Oh, I intended you should know from the first time I looked
into your face, when you came that day with Charley. I flatter
myself that I have been able to conceal it when I chose, though I
suppose women always think that. The more observing ones may
have seen, but discerning people are usually discreet and often
kind, for we usually bleed a little before we begin to discern.
But I wanted you to know; you are so like him that it is almost
like telling him himself. At least, I feel now that he will know
some day, and then I will be quite sacred from his compassion,
for we none of us dare pity the dead. Since it was what my life
has chiefly meant, I should like him to know. On the whole I am
not ashamed of it. I have fought a good fight."
"And has he never known at all?" asked Everett, in a thick voice.
"Oh! Never at all in the way that you mean. Of course, he
is accustomed to looking into the eyes of women and finding love
there; when he doesn't find it there he thinks he must have been
guilty of some discourtesy and is miserable about it. He has a
genuine fondness for everyone who is not stupid or gloomy, or old
or preternaturally ugly. Granted youth and cheerfulness, and a
moderate amount of wit and some tact, and Adriance will always be
glad to see you coming around the corner. I shared with the
rest; shared the smiles and the gallantries and the droll little
sermons. It was quite like a Sunday-school picnic; we wore our
best clothes and a smile and took our turns. It was his kindness
that was hardest. I have pretty well used my life up at standing
punishment."
"Don't; you'll make me hate him," groaned Everett.
Katharine laughed and began to play nervously with her fan.
"It wasn't in the slightest degree his fault; that is the most
grotesque part of it. Why, it had really begun before I
ever met him. I fought my way to him, and I drank my doom
greedily enough."
Everett rose and stood hesitating. "I think I must go. You ought
to be quiet, and I don't think I can hear any more just now."
She put out her hand and took his playfully. "You've put in
three weeks at this sort of thing, haven't you? Well, it may
never be to your glory in this world, perhaps, but it's been the
mercy of heaven to me, and it ought to square accounts for a much
worse life than yours will ever be."
Everett knelt beside her, saying, brokenly: "I stayed because I
wanted to be with you, that's all. I have never cared about other
women since I met you in New York when I was a lad. You are a part
of my destiny, and I could not leave you if I would."
She put her hands on his shoulders and shook her head. "No,
no; don't tell me that. I have seen enough of tragedy, God
knows. Don't show me any more just as the curtain is going down.
No, no, it was only a boy's fancy, and your divine pity and my
utter pitiableness have recalled it for a moment. One does not
love the dying, dear friend. If some fancy of that sort had been
left over from boyhood, this would rid you of it, and that were
well. Now go, and you will come again tomorrow, as long as there
are tomorrows, will you not?" She took his hand with a smile that
lifted the mask from her soul, that was both courage and despair,
and full of infinite loyalty and tenderness, as she said softly:
For ever and for ever, farewell, Cassius;
If we do meet again, why, we shall smile;
If not, why then, this parting was well made.
The courage in her eyes was like the clear light of a star to him
as he went out.
On the night of Adriance Hilgarde's opening concert in Paris
Everett sat by the bed in the ranch house in Wyoming, watching
over the last battle that we have with the flesh before we are
done with it and free of it forever. At times it seemed that the
serene soul of her must have left already and found some refuge
from the storm, and only the tenacious animal life were left to do
battle with death. She labored under a delusion at once pitiful
and merciful, thinking that she was in the Pullman on her way to
New York, going back to her life and her work. When she aroused
from her stupor it was only to ask the porter to waken her half an
hour out of Jersey City, or to remonstrate with him about the
delays and the roughness of the road. At midnight Everett and the
nurse were left alone with her. Poor Charley Gaylord had lain down
on a couch outside the door. Everett sat looking at the sputtering
night lamp until it made his eyes ache. His head dropped forward
on the foot of the bed, and he sank into a heavy, distressful
slumber. He was dreaming of Adriance's concert in Paris, and of
Adriance, the troubadour, smiling and debonair, with his boyish
face and the touch of silver gray in his hair. He heard the
applause and he saw the roses going up over the footlights until
they were stacked half as high as the piano, and the petals fell
and scattered, making crimson splotches on the floor. Down this
crimson pathway came Adriance with his youthful step, leading his
prima donna by the hand; a dark woman this time, with Spanish eyes.
The nurse touched him on the shoulder; he started and awoke.
She screened the lamp with her hand. Everett saw that Katharine
was awake and conscious, and struggling a little. He lifted her
gently on his arm and began to fan her. She laid her hands
lightly on his hair and looked into his face with eyes that
seemed never to have wept or doubted. "Ah, dear Adriance, dear,
dear," she whispered.
Everett went to call her brother, but when they came back
the madness of art was over for Katharine.
Two days later Everett was pacing the station siding,
waiting for the westbound train. Charley Gaylord walked beside
him, but the two men had nothing to say to each other. Everett's
bags were piled on the truck, and his step was hurried and his
eyes were full of impatience, as he gazed again and again up the
track, watching for the train. Gaylord's impatience was not less
than his own; these two, who had grown so close, had now become
painful and impossible to each other, and longed for the
wrench of farewell.
As the train pulled in Everett wrung Gaylord's hand among
the crowd of alighting passengers. The people of a German opera
company, en route to the coast, rushed by them in frantic haste
to snatch their breakfast during the stop. Everett heard an
exclamation in a broad German dialect, and a massive woman whose
figure persistently escaped from her stays in the most improbable
places rushed up to him, her blond hair disordered by the wind,
and glowing with joyful surprise she caught his coat sleeve with
her tightly gloved hands.
"Herr Gott, Adriance, lieber Freund," she cried,
emotionally.
Everett quickly withdrew his arm and lifted his hat,
blushing. "Pardon me, madam, but I see that you have mistaken
me for Adriance Hilgarde. I am his brother," he said quietly,
and turning from the crestfallen singer, he hurried into the car.
The Garden Lodge
When Caroline Noble's friends learned that Raymond d'Esquerre was
to spend a month at her place on the Sound before he sailed to fill
his engagement for the London opera season, they considered it
another striking instance of the perversity of things. That the
month was May, and the most mild and florescent of all the
blue-and-white Mays the middle coast had known in years, but added
to their sense of wrong. D'Esquerre, they learned, was ensconced
in the lodge in the apple orchard, just beyond Caroline's glorious
garden, and report went that at almost any hour the sound of the
tenor's voice and of Caroline's crashing accompaniment could be
heard floating through the open windows, out among the snowy apple
boughs. The Sound, steel-blue and dotted with white sails, was
splendidly seen from the windows of the lodge. The garden to the
left and the orchard to the right had never been so riotous with
spring, and had burst into impassioned bloom, as if to accommodate
Caroline, though she was certainly the last woman to whom the
witchery of Freya could be attributed; the last woman, as her
friends affirmed, to at all adequately appreciate and make the most
of such a setting for the great tenor.
Of course, they admitted, Caroline was musical--well, she
ought to be!--but in that, as in everything, she was paramountly
cool-headed, slow of impulse, and disgustingly practical; in
that, as in everything else, she had herself so provokingly well
in hand. Of course, it would be she, always mistress of herself
in any situation, she, who would never be lifted one inch from
the ground by it, and who would go on superintending her
gardeners and workmen as usual--it would be she who got him.
Perhaps some of them suspected that this was exactly why
she did get him, and it but nettled them the more.
Caroline's coolness, her capableness, her general success,
especially exasperated people because they felt that, for the
most part, she had made herself what she was; that she had cold-
bloodedly set about complying with the demands of life and making
her position comfortable and masterful. That was why, everyone
said, she had married Howard Noble. Women who did not get
through life so well as Caroline, who could not make such good
terms either with fortune or their husbands, who did not find
their health so unfailingly good, or hold their looks so well, or
manage their children so easily, or give such distinction to all
they did, were fond of stamping Caroline as a materialist, and
called her hard.
The impression of cold calculation, of having a definite
policy, which Caroline gave, was far from a false one; but there
was this to be said for her--that there were extenuating
circumstances which her friends could not know.
If Caroline held determinedly to the middle course, if she
was apt to regard with distrust everything which inclined toward
extravagance, it was not because she was unacquainted with other
standards than her own, or had never seen another side of life.
She had grown up in Brooklyn, in a shabby little house under the
vacillating administration of her father, a music teacher who
usually neglected his duties to write orchestral compositions for
which the world seemed to have no especial need. His spirit was
warped by bitter vindictiveness and puerile self-commiseration,
and he spent his days in scorn of the labor that brought him
bread and in pitiful devotion to the labor that brought him only
disappointment, writing interminable scores which demanded of the
orchestra everything under heaven except melody.
It was not a cheerful home for a girl to grow up in. The
mother, who idolized her husband as the music lord of the future,
was left to a lifelong battle with broom and dustpan, to
neverending conciliatory overtures to the butcher and grocer, to
the making of her own gowns and of Caroline's, and to the delicate
task of mollifying Auguste's neglected pupils.
The son, Heinrich, a painter, Caroline's only brother, had
inherited all his father's vindictive sensitiveness without his
capacity for slavish application. His little studio on the third
floor had been much frequented by young men as unsuccessful as
himself, who met there to give themselves over to contemptuous
derision of this or that artist whose industry and stupidity had
won him recognition. Heinrich, when he worked at all, did
newspaper sketches at twenty-five dollars a week. He was too
indolent and vacillating to set himself seriously to his art, too
irascible and poignantly self-conscious to make a living, too
much addicted to lying late in bed, to the incontinent reading of
poetry, and to the use of chloral to be anything very positive
except painful. At twenty-six he shot himself in a frenzy, and
the whole wretched affair had effectually shattered his mother's
health and brought on the decline of which she died. Caroline
had been fond of him, but she felt a certain relief when he no
longer wandered about the little house, commenting ironically
upon its shabbiness, a Turkish cap on his head and a cigarette
hanging from between his long, tremulous fingers.
After her mother's death Caroline assumed the management of
that bankrupt establishment. The funeral expenses were unpaid,
and Auguste's pupils had been frightened away by the shock of
successive disasters and the general atmosphere of wretchedness
that pervaded the house. Auguste himself was writing a symphonic
poem, Icarus, dedicated to the memory of his son. Caroline was
barely twenty when she was called upon to face this tangle of
difficulties, but she reviewed the situation candidly. The house
had served its time at the shrine of idealism; vague, distressing,
unsatisfied yearnings had brought it low enough. Her mother,
thirty years before, had eloped and left Germany with her music
teacher, to give herself over to lifelong, drudging bondage at the
kitchen range. Ever since Caroline could remember, the law in the
house had been a sort of mystic worship of things distant,
intangible and unattainable. The family had lived in successive
ebullitions of generous enthusiasm, in talk of masters and
masterpieces, only to come down to the cold facts in the case; to
boiled mutton and to the necessity of turning the dining-room
carpet. All these emotional pyrotechnics had ended in petty
jealousies, in neglected duties, and in cowardly fea
r of the little
grocer on the corner.
From her childhood she had hated it, that humiliating and
uncertain existence, with its glib tongue and empty pockets, its
poetic ideals and sordid realities, its indolence and poverty
tricked out in paper roses. Even as a little girl, when vague
dreams beset her, when she wanted to lie late in bed and commune
with visions, or to leap and sing because the sooty little trees
along the street were putting out their first pale leaves in the
sunshine, she would clench her hands and go to help her mother
sponge the spots from her father's waistcoat or press Heinrich's
trousers. Her mother never permitted the slightest question
concerning anything Auguste or Heinrich saw fit to do, but from
the time Caroline could reason at all she could not help thinking
that many things went wrong at home. She knew, for example, that
her father's pupils ought not to be kept waiting half an hour
while he discussed Schopenhauer with some bearded socialist over
a dish of herrings and a spotted tablecloth. She knew that
Heinrich ought not to give a dinner on Heine's birthday, when the
laundress had not been paid for a month and when he frequently
had to ask his mother for carfare. Certainly Caroline had served
her apprenticeship to idealism and to all the embarrassing
inconsistencies which it sometimes entails, and she decided to
deny herself this diffuse, ineffectual answer to the sharp
questions of life.
When she came into the control of herself and the house she
refused to proceed any further with her musical education. Her
father, who had intended to make a concert pianist of her, set
this down as another item in his long list of disappointments and
his grievances against the world. She was young and pretty, and
she had worn turned gowns and soiled gloves and improvised hats
all her life. She wanted the luxury of being like other people,
of being honest from her hat to her boots, of having nothing to
hide, not even in the matter of stockings, and she was willing to
work for it. She rented a little studio away from that house of
misfortune and began to give lessons. She managed well and was
the sort of girl people liked to help. The bills were
paid and Auguste went on composing, growing indignant only when
she refused to insist that her pupils should study his compositions
for the piano. She began to get engagements in New York to play
accompaniments at song recitals. She dressed well, made herself
agreeable, and gave herself a chance. She never permitted herself
to look further than a step ahead, and set herself with all the
strength of her will to see things as they are and meet them
squarely in the broad day. There were two things she feared even
more than poverty: the part of one that sets up an idol and the
part of one that bows down and worships it.
When Caroline was twenty-four she married Howard Noble, then
a widower of forty, who had been for ten years a power in Wall
Street. Then, for the first time, she had paused to take breath.
It took a substantialness as unquestionable as his; his money,
his position, his energy, the big vigor of his robust person, to
satisfy her that she was entirely safe. Then she relaxed a
little, feeling that there was a barrier to be counted upon
between her and that world of visions and quagmires and failure.
Caroline had been married for six years when Raymond
d'Esquerre came to stay with them. He came chiefly because
Caroline was what she was; because he, too, felt occasionally the
need of getting out of Klingsor's garden, of dropping down
somewhere for a time near a quiet nature, a cool head, a strong
hand. The hours he had spent in the garden lodge were hours of
such concentrated study as, in his fevered life, he seldom got in
anywhere. She had, as he told Noble, a fine appreciation of the
seriousness of work.
One evening two weeks after d'Esquerre had sailed, Caroline