IIIGRINDSTONES
“Yet each man kills the thing he loves,By each let this be heard;Some do it with a bitter look,Some with a flattering word.The coward does it with a kiss,The brave man with a sword.”
—Oscar Wilde.
It was nearly nine o’clock in the evening when the young ladies entered the fashionable boarding-house drawing-room. Madame Recamier’s, on the upper West Side, was large enough to defy the heated spell; yet the group seemed languid on this tepid night in June, fluttered fans and were not disposed to chatter. No one had called. Miss Anstruther, a brilliant brunette, cried out:
“Oh, my kingdom for a man!” Mild laughter was heard. The girl went to the grand piano and said: “What shall it be?”
“No Chopin,” exclaimed Miss Beeslay.
“Do play a Chopin nocturne. Why, it’s the very night for nocturnes. There’s thunder in the air,” protested Miss Pickett.
“Listen to Anne. Isn’t she poetic—” By this time the young women were quite animated. Tea served, Madame Recamier sentdown word by the black page to ask Miss Anstruther for a little music. The dark girl pouted, yawned, and finally began the nocturne in F minor. Before she had played two bars the door-bell rang, and its echoes were not stilled before a silvery gong sounded somewhere in the rear. The drawing-room was instantly deserted.
Presently the page brought in two young men, both in evening dress.
“We should like to see Miss Anstruther and Miss Pickett,” said the delicate-looking fellow. “Say that Mr. Harold and a friend are here.” The page departed. Mr. Harold and his companion paced the long apartment in a curious mood.
“Tea! They don’t drink tea, do they?” asked the other man, a tall blond, who wore his hair like a pianist.
“I’m afraid that’s all we’ll get, Alfred; unless Madame Recamier comes down-stairs or else is magnetized by your playing. She keeps a mighty particular boarding-house.”
“For God’s sake, Ned, don’t ask me to touch a piano. I’ve only come with you because you’ve raved about this dark girl and her playing. There they are!” Two came in; introductions followed, and the conversation soon became lively.
“We drink tea,” said Anne Pickett, “because Madame Recamier believes it is good for the complexion.”
“You have a hygiene like a young misses’ school, haven’t you?” said Ned, while Harold, fascinated by the rather gloomy beauty of Miss Anstruther, watched closely and encouraged her talk. She had a square jaw; her cheek-bones were prominent. She was not pretty. The charm of her face—it was more compelling than charming—lay in her eyes and mouth. Brown, with a hazel nuance, the eyes emitted a light like a cat’s in the dark. Her mouth was a contradiction of the jaw. The lips were full and indicated a rich, generous nature, but the mask was one of a Madonna—a Madonna who had forsaken heaven for earth. Harold found her extremely interesting.
“Of course, you are musical?” he asked.
“Yes; I studied at Stuttgart, and have regretted it all my life. I can never get rid of the technical stiffness.”
“Play for me,” he begged. But playing was not to the girl’s disposition. Sultry was the night, and a few faint flashes of heat-lightning near the horizon told of a storm to come. Anne Pickett was laughing very loudly at her companion’s remarks and did not appear to notice the pair. Several times, at the other end of the long drawing-room, eyes peeped in, and once the black page put his head in the door and coughed discreetly.
It seemed a dull hour at Madame Recamier’s.
Suddenly Harold placed his hand on Miss Anstruther’s and said: “Come to the piano,”and, as one hypnotized, she went with him. He lifted the fall-board, put back the lid, glanced carelessly at the maker’s name, and fixed the seat for the young woman. Anne Pickett was watching him from the other side of the room.
“Who’s your friend? He acts like a piano man. There were three here last night.”
“H’sh!” said Ned, as the pianist struck a firm chord in C-sharp minor and then raced through the Fantaisie-Impromptu. The man beside her listened and watched rather cynically as her strong fingers unlaced the involved figures of the music. That he knew the work was evident. When she had finished he congratulated her on her touch, observing: “What a pity you don’t cultivate your rhythms!” She started.
“You are a musician, then?” Before he could answer, the page came in and whispered in her ear: “Madame Recamier wants to know if the gentlemen will have some wine.”
Miss Anstruther blushed, got up from the piano and walked toward the window. Harold followed her, and Miss Pickett called out: “Ned, we can have some champagne; old Mumsey says so.”
When Harold reached the girl she was leaning out of the window regarding the western sky. Darkness was swallowing up the summer stars: he put his hand on her shoulder, for she was weeping silently, hopelessly.
“How can you stand it?” he murmured, andthe ring in his voice caused the girl to turn about and face him, her eyes blurred but full of resentment.
“Don’t pity me—don’t pity me; whatever you feel, don’t pity me,” she said in a low, choked voice.
“My dear Miss Anstruther, let me understand you. I admire you, but I don’t see why I should pity you.” Harold was puzzled.
“Anne, he doesn’t know; Harold doesn’t know,” cried Miss Anstruther, and Anne laughed, when a sharp flash of lightning almost caused the page to drop the tray with the bottles and glasses.
It grew hot; the wine was nicely iced, so the four young people drank and were greatly refreshed. Madame Recamier was justly proud of her cellar. Anne pledged Ned, and Harold touched glasses with Miss Anstruther, while the first thunder boomed in the windows, and the other boarders out in the back conservatory shivered and thirsted.
Harold went to the piano. He felt wrought up in a singular manner. The electricity in the atmosphere, the spell of the dark woman’s sad eyes, her harsh reproof and her undoubted musical temperament acted on him like a whiplash. He called the page and rambled over the keyboard. Miss Anstruther sat near the pianist. Soon the vague modulations resolved into a definite shape, and the march from the Fantaisie in F minor was heard. It took form, itleaped into rhythmical life, and when the rolling arpeggios were reached, a crash over the house caused Miss Pickett to scream, and then the page entered with a tray.
Harold stopped playing. Miss Anstruther, her low, broad brow dark with resentment, said something to the boy, who showed his gums and grinned. “It’s de wine, missy,” he said, and went out on ostentatious tiptoe. The group in the conservatory watched the comedy in the drawing-room with unrelaxed interest, though little Miss Belt declared the thunder made her so nervous that she was going to bed. Madame Recamier rang the gong twice, and a few minutes later a smell of cooking mounted from the area kitchen. Harold started afresh. The storm without modulated clamorously into the distance, and orange-colored lightning played in at the window as he reached the big theme of the bass. It was that wonderful melody in F minor which Beethoven might have been proud to pen, and was followed by the exquisite group of double notes, so fragrant, so tender, so uplifting, that Anne Pickett forgot her wine; and the other girl, her eyes blazing, her cheek-bones etched against the skin, sat and knotted her fingers and followed with dazed attention the dance of the atoms in her brain. She saw Harold watching her as she went to school; Harold peeping in at the lodge of her college; Harold waiting to waylay her when she left her father’s house, and she saw Haroldthat terrible night! He had reached the meditation in B and her pulses slackened. After the crash of the storm, after the breathless rush of octaves, Miss Anstruther felt a stillness that did not come often into her life. The other pair were sitting very close, and the storm was growling a diminuendo in the east. Already a pungent and refreshing smell of earth that had been rained upon floated into the apartment, and Harold, his eyes fixed on hers, was rushing away with her soul on the broad torrent of Chopin’s magic music. She was enthralled, she was hurt; her heart stuck against her ribs and it pained her to breathe. When the last harp-like figure had flattened her to the very wall, she sank back in her chair and closed her eyes.
“Ho, Margery, wake up; your wine’s getting warm!” cried lively Anne Pickett as she sipped her glass, and Ned rang the bell for the page. Harold sat self-absorbed, his hands resting on the ivory keys. He divined that he had won the soul of the woman who sat near him, and he wondered. He looked at her face, a strong face, in repose with a few hard lines about the eyes and mouth. He gazed so earnestly that she opened her eyes, and catching his regard, blushed—blushed ever so lightly. But he saw it and wondered again. More wine came, but Miss Anstruther refused and so did Harold. By this time the other pair were jolly. Ned called out:
“Harold, play something lively. Wake upthe bones, old man! Your girl isn’t getting gay.” Harold looked at her, and she walked slowly toward the conservatory. Miss Pickett, crazy Anne, as they called her, went to the piano and dashed into a lively galop. Ned drank another glass of wine and began to dance from the end of the room to the piano.
“Come on, let’s have a good racket!” he yelled, as the piano rattled off in rag-time while Miss Anstruther and Harold sat on near the conservatory. The whispering increased behind them, but the girl did not hear it. The music unlocked her heart, and her commonplace surroundings faded. If she had but met a man like him that other time! She realized his innate purity, his nobility of nature. Little wonder that his playing aroused her, made live anew the old pantomime of her life. She unconsciously placed in the foreground of her history the figure of the man beside her, yet she had never before seen him. It was wonderful, this spiritual rebirth. Only that morning she told the girls at breakfast she could never love again—she hated men and their ways. “They are animals, the best of them!” and Madame Recamier laughed the loudest.
Harold left her, took another glass of wine, and seeing Miss Pickett light a cigarette, asked permission to do the same.
“Can’t I bring you another glass of wine?” Harold tenderly asked. The gang of girls in the conservatory nudged one another and staredwith burning eyes at Miss Anstruther through the lattice. She gently shook her head, and again he saw her blush. She did not stir. He began the luscious nocturne in B—the Tuberose Nocturne, and Madame Recamier’s gong sounded. The page entered and said:
“No more piano playing to-night. Madame wants to sleep.”
Miss Anstruther started so angrily that there was a titter behind the lattice. But she did not notice it; her whole soul was bent on watching Harold. He spoke to Ned, and Miss Pickett’s jarring laugh was heard.
Then he went over to her, and, sitting down beside her, leaned and touched her face with his finger. The girl grew white and she felt her heart beat. At the next word, the old, tired, cold look came back, and she faced him as she had first received him.
Then suddenly the laughter behind the lattice grew noisy. Anne Pickett screamed out:
“Another of Margery’s dreams shattered!”
Ned laughed and rang for more wine.
As they came down the steps the next morning Harold said to Ned:
“My boy, there are worse crimes than murdering a woman.”
“Oh, let’s get a cocktail,” croaked Ned.