"Where is she? What has become of the young woman who is not a model or to be had for the asking? Why not try the head once more from memory?" Howell asked abruptly one day, after his pupil had worked for an entire morning with the listless accuracy that is almost infuriating to the real artist.
Taken off his guard, Philip cried out:—
"She is dead! My father murdered her and threw the pieces out of the window."
For a moment Howell was startled. Then, as he looked at the face turned toward him, proud yet quivering at a wound, he read therein a tragedy whose underlying principles were greater than mere murder.
"Come and tell me about it, or you will let it kill your work and you also," he said, fastening his eyes upon Philip in compelling sympathy, at the same time stretching out his hand with a gesture wholly compassionate, and motioning him to follow to an inner room beyond the studio, where strangers never entered.
It was quite an hour before the pair returned, the master's arm resting on Philip's shoulder.
"Now," he said, "we will make alive again, for that is the sculptor's trade. This is my studio, and what I tell my pupils to do, they obey if they are able, and it is the concern of no one outside. But this time make her joyous and not pensive, in love with life; make her look up; part her lips as though she were about to sing; twine poppies in her hair to carry out her name; a butterfly on her shoulder, the Greek emblem of immortality. Then she shall live here with us, and you can look at her when you see nothing but bone and muscles in the lump of clay you are working."
So Philip went to work once more, buoyed up in that some one understood and did not scoff, and that some one was the master, who knew. But he saw the real Poppea only once to speak to her, at Stephen Latimer's, before the time when the Felton ladies bore her with them to New York for her musical début, in that season of social introduction that is crowded between Thanksgiving and Christmastide. She was cordial and the very same when looked at from a distance, but when Philip stood before her, he was conscious of a subtle change, a certain veiling and holding back of self, where all had been spontaneous and freely given before, yet, as a woman, this added distinctly to her charm.
"Can she know about my father; is it turning her away from me?" was his constant thought, finally to be banished by the impossibility of such a thing being the case, for the studio walls had no ears, and violent as John Angus was in private, Philip well knew from his summer's experience that it was no part of his father's policy to hold up his dislikes or grievances for the public to peck at.
The next time that he saw Poppea it was through the doorway of a flower-trimmed room, where she had been singing. During the intermission a stringed quartet was playing Mendelssohn'sSongs without Wordsfrom behind a screen of palms. In the circle that surrounded her, to which she was in course of being presented by Miss Emmy, the evening gowns of women were equally mingled with the black coats of the men, while the figure nearest to her, holding her bouquet of Maréchal Neil roses and ferns, was that of Bradish Winslow.
As Philip gazed hesitant about entering alone and yet wishing to, he stepped backward, and in so doing jostled some one who was looking over his shoulder. Turning, he saw that it was Hugh Oldys.
"Are you going to speak to her?" Philip asked eagerly after the first words of greeting.
"Yes, surely, I am only waiting for the crowd to thin a little; I think, Philip, that she will be glad to see some home faces among all these strangers."
As they waited, Caleb came through the wide hall with an envelope in his hand, peering anxiously into every masculine face. When he caught sight of Hugh, he drew close to him, standing on tiptoe the better to reach his ear.
"This here's a telegraph despatch fo' you, Marsa Hugh, and de boy what brings it says it's a 'mergency and wants to be opened spry. Doan yo' want to step in the little 'ception room and circumnavigate it private like? Dem 'mergency despatches is terrible unsettlin', sah!"
Hugh seized the envelope, opening it with a nervous twist as he crossed the hall to the room indicated by Caleb where there was a drop-light, Philip following close.
"Your father has had a serious accident. Your mother unstrung. Bring up MacLane or Grahammond, to-night, if possible.Stephen Latimer."
"Your father has had a serious accident. Your mother unstrung. Bring up MacLane or Grahammond, to-night, if possible.Stephen Latimer."
Hugh dropped into a chair, and spreading the paper on the table, read it a second time, motioning Philip to do likewise.
"MacLane and Grahammond are both brain specialists, I think; it must be that the accident is to his head. I wonder where they live," he said, half to himself and half aloud. Then turning to Caleb, who stood at a respectful distance, the embodiment of discreet curiosity, he asked him if there was a city directory in the house.
"Not jest that big ornery volume what dey keeps in drug stores, Marsa Hugh, but Miss Emmy, she's got de little Blue Book on her desk, what records all de quality, sah, and guarantees 'em true, and I'll fotch it right away."
Hugh jotted the two addresses on a card, then rising, shook himself as though to be sure he was awake. At this moment the tones of a clear mezzo-soprano voice floated across the hall.
"What's this dull town to me? Robin's not here!"
"What's this dull town to me? Robin's not here!"
Poppea was singingRobin Adair. Hugh listened until the verse was ended, his face white and drawn with contending emotions. Then turning abruptly to Philip and reading both comprehension and sympathy in his glance, he said abruptly:—
"Tell her that I've been here, but was called away by bad news from home. No—not that, it might spoil her evening. Only say that I could not wait," and taking his hat and coat that Caleb was holding, he went out.
By the time Poppea had answered the last encore that her strength would allow, a Creole folk-song ending in the minor key, Philip had made his way through the throng that surrounded the girl, who was radiant with a success that must appeal to her artistic sense, if her natural woman's love of approbation was in the background. When she saw Philip, her whole expression changed and softened, while the lips that had been parted in laughing repartee drooped to wistfulness.
Bradish Winslow, who still kept his post, noticed the change at once, and, following her eyes for the cause, was surprised at his own feeling of relief upon discovering Philip.
Poppea came forward and, refraining from putting her hand upon his shoulder in the old way that marked his boyishness, greeted him as she would any other young fellow of nineteen, drawing him into a little group back of the long piano where he saw Miss Emmy and half a dozen of the Quality Hill colony. At the same time, he was conscious that her eyes were looking over his head in a rapid search for something or some one that she did not see, which reminded him of the message.
"Hugh Oldys has been here," he said, "and was very sorry that he could not wait to see you."
"Then he has gone? Why could he not wait?"
Philip, who read Poppea's moods with mercurial swiftness, was tempted to add some words of explanation, but Winslow, hearing Poppea's question, intervened, saying, to her ear alone:—
"Now you have earned a rest in cooler air where you can enjoy the reflection of the pleasure you have given. Miss Emmy has a surprise for you; Capoul, the most expressive emotional tenor of a decade, is coming in from the opera where he is singing Wilhelm Meister inMignon. You have never heard it? Ah, there is so much music that I wish to hear again for the first time through watching you hear it."
The next morning Poppea slept late, owing to the fact that Nora had slipped in and closed the shutters fast. She had intended taking the early train for home, as three days would elapse before she was to sing at an afternoon concert given for the benefit of a fashionable charity.
When Nora finally judged that it was proper for the household protégée, in whom she took no small pride, to awake, and brought her coffee and rolls to her room, after the Feltons' winter custom, Poppea found herself undergoing a sort of nervous reaction caused by the excitement of the night before and the lack of air in the shuttered room. Twelve o'clock was the next train possible, and entering the library to make positive her going, she found Stephen Latimer standing before the fire, while the ladies and Mr. Esterbrook sat opposite him in benumbed silence, Miss Emmy having her handkerchief pressed to her eyes.
Miss Felton motioned Poppea to the lounge beside her: "Mr. Latimer has brought us dreadful news! Please tell her, Stephen."
For a moment Poppea thought that she would suffocate; suppose that Daddy was dead and she away! Then she found herself listening as through rushing water to the story of how Mr. Oldys, when superintending the placing of a heavy piece of the new machinery, had been instantly killed by its fall.
The mill hands, becoming demoralized in their wild rush to get a physician, had broken the news abruptly to Madam Oldys, which at first she did not believe. But later, when they brought her husband home and Dr. Morewood was sitting by watching for a heart collapse, her mind, not her body, had suddenly given way—not weakly or plaintively, but violently, in a manner that no one who had witnessed her frailty would have deemed possible, so that restraint was imperative.
Hugh had been sent for the previous evening, and two specialists were even then on their way to Harley's Mills for consultation. Latimer himself had come down to inform Hugh's new employers, as well as to do some friendly acts of necessity.
"I am going home at noon," was Poppea's spoken answer to Latimer, but between the brief words he read much besides.
"I expected that you would, and told Oliver Gilbert so in passing," was his reply.
"How is Hugh?" was her first question, when after the bustle of transit they were seated in the train with no other passengers in their immediate vicinity.
"Perfectly quiet, but as one stunned; his sorrow for his father is deep enough, but his anguish at his mother's condition is heartrending."
"Is there—do you think that there is anything I could do if I should go there?" she faltered.
"Not now, my child; it is a time when no friend and not even a man's wife must come between him and his sorrow, his thoughts are only for the eye of God. Such help as Charlotte needs below stairs is being given by Jeanne and Satira Potts."
"And the funeral?"
"Will be from St. Luke's to-morrow."
The next day Poppea and Oliver Gilbert followed with the rest, the Feltons, Mr. Esterbrook, and half the summer colony. She only caught a glimpse of Hugh, who, tearless, looking neither to the right or left, seemed hewn from marble.
How could she go back to town, Poppea thought, and wreathe her hair and sing? If only she knew, if she could comfort Hugh in anyway; but he saw no one but Stephen Latimer. She had set her feet on the path of self-support and could not leave it now; there was nothing to do but wait.
Two weeks passed and public interest in Hugh Oldys's affairs had reached a high pitch. Were the Mills to be abandoned? What would become of the expectant men? Then it was whispered, though not maliciously, that Mr. Oldys's affairs were seriously involved, and that a strong, alert man with a keen business head would be required to save the property.
Poppea being at home one morning within the month of Mr. Oldys's death, Stephen Latimer came to the post-office house, and being as usual questioned as to whether there was any improvement in Mrs. Oldys's condition, said, almost as though he were giving a requested message.—
"No, there is none, nor ever likely to be; the specialists gave this as their decision yesterday and advised that she be sent at once to a trustworthy asylum, because the strain of her care, even if competent nurses came between, would be too much for any one person."
"Will Hugh let her be taken away?" asked Poppea, with dilating eyes and hands tightly clasped.
"No, never! He says that from now on he will, if necessary, withdraw from everything else to care for her and keep the home intact, in case that she comes to herself, and missing something, wonders.
"This is not all," Latimer continued. "In order to have the money to care for her, his father's funds being all placed in this new venture, he must leave his profession, assume immediate control of the Mills, and fight it out to a finish. But in this forced work lies his salvation. When I saw him to-day, I marvelled at the new nobility of his face. Resolution has always been its chief characteristic, now resignation is blended with it. God grant that hope, born of the two, may presently soften its set lines."
That Hugh had wholly put away his need of her was the meaning that Poppea took from Latimer's words. Then she, too, would lose herself in work, and the next day that she went to the city to sing, she let Miss Emmy persuade her that she owed it to her art to tarry between times and take the lessons that Tostelli was so eager to give her. When once hard at work, with the best music to be heard by way of relaxation, small wonder if the days were winged to Poppea, and at times disappointment and responsibility alike seemed the unreal things of life; she would have been less than a woman had it been otherwise.
On returning from her singing lesson in the middle of a bitter cold January afternoon, Poppea had walked the short distance from Chickering Hall back to the Felton house on Madison Square, so far up in the clouds that she was quite unconscious that her feet touched the icy pavements. For not only had Tostelli commended her improved vocalization with true Italian fervor expressed in elaborate French, but he had praised her first teacher, Stephen Latimer, saying: "He who has brought out Mademoiselle's voice thus far without a scratch or strain or a falsity has done so much that she may hope to be anything that she wills, even anartisteof the Grand Opera, after much study abroad. That she can also act, I am ver' certain, for what she sings that she is for the time, gay,triste,pathetique, simplecomme en enfant,mais toujours naturel,toujours ravissante." Then he had asked her to take the leading part in an operetta that was to be given by his pupils toward the end of the season in one of the ample old houses on Gramercy Park that boasted a perfectly equipped private theatre.
So buoyed up was she by his words that she had crossed the park, the exquisite articulation of its crystal-covered trees still further keeping up the illusion of fairyland wherein she was for the moment living, and reached the steps of the house, before she realized where she was, and that she was expected to make a round of calls with Miss Emmy instead of going to sit by the fire and think it all out as she desired. She had been in the company of others all day and had the need, possessed by all those of her temperament, to be alone to realize herself.
"Are the ladies at home?" was her question to Caleb as he opened the door, knowing that the day's history would be forthcoming.
"Yes, Missy, and Mr. Esterbrook too; he doan seems to feel right peart to-day. He didn't go to the club for his luncheon, and he isn't going to the painter man's what's doing his picture. Miss 'Liz'beth's going out later, but Miss Emmy's 'cided not to budge herself, and's taking her comfort in the sitting room, where I'm to bring de tea soon's you come."
"Good!" cried Poppea, running up to her room as swiftly as she had done many years before when Winslow had caught her dancing. Only this time, instead of kneeling in front of the open window for breath, she threw off her street things, loosened her hair that had been compressed by her hat, and slipping on a soft crimson wrapper that she and Satira Potts had fashioned when she had been getting together what the latter insisted upon calling her "trowsoo" for the city, went down to the sitting room, the door of which stood hospitably open.
The upstairs sitting room was one of the unsurpassed institutions of the day among those who had sufficiently ample houses to allow for it. Usually occupying the front room of the second floor, it served both as a watch-tower of the street and a comfortable place of retreat when "not at home," or "engaged," according to the moral veracity of the family, was the word at the door. While there is a certain responsibility about the coherent furnishings of all other rooms, from the music room of bare floor and scant drapery to the library with its heavy rugs, draped alcoves, and precise shelving—the sitting room may take tribute from all others. A small upright piano, an open case of books, a table serving both for writing and a comfortable litter of magazines, deep nestlike chairs and a lounge that invites impromptu sleep without the ceremonious disrobing suggested by a bedroom, a joyful canary or two, and a shelf of blooming plants in the sunniest window complete the setting.
The modern living room is undoubtedly grandchild of the sitting room that abdicated in its favor a quarter of a century ago, owing to an increasing contraction in house room. For the living room in ordinary houses is more often a combination of library, drawing and dining room, than a separate bit of luxury; also it is usually on the first floor, and therefore below the range of safety for flowing hair, kimonos, slippers, and pajamas.
When Poppea entered the Feltons' sitting room and saw Miss Emmy in one of the deep chairs, released from stays and elaborate hair-dress, actually sitting on her feet in curled-up comfort, while she petted Diva the great fox-gray Angora, so-called from the vocal quality of her purr,—whose wonderful fur enveloped her mistress like a lap robe,—she knew that Miss Elizabeth had already gone out and she felt a sudden relaxation and rush of comfort that brought tears of pleasure very near to her eyes.
"Ring for the tea, child, and then we can shut the door and be by ourselves," said Miss Emmy, keeping her eyes fixed on the fire.
When Caleb had brought in and lighted the kettle lamp and put another lump of the unctuous Liverpool coal upon the fire, Poppea seated herself on the tiger rug by Miss Emmy's chair and fed bits of Sally Lunn cake to the cat while she waited for the elder woman to speak of the something that lay behind her eager, restless expression.
"Tell me about your day," said Miss Emmy, abruptly.
Poppea began with her call at Mrs. Hewlett's, that the songs for her afternoon musical of the next week might be chosen. In addition to the list of old English ballads, Mrs. Hewlett had asked if she knew any darky songs, and finding that she did, suggested that she make a separate specialty of these as novelty was amust bein social entertaining. Then Gloria Hooper had taken her home to luncheon almost forcibly, and there Bradish Winslow had drifted in and walked with her over to Chickering Hall. Tostelli's comments and the hopes that were aroused in her rounded out the narrative, while she waited, hands clasped about her knees and her eyes gazing into Miss Emmy's, for her judgment upon the matter.
"You are beginning, Poppea. Every one is very nice to you, as they should be, and New York seems to you the promised land; so it seemed to me thirty-five years ago. This singing, half socially, half professionally, is very pleasant while it lasts; but if, when the winter is over, you've made up your mind that you are going to let music hold the first place, then you must go on,—go abroad and study with the concert stage, if not opera, for the goal."
"Oh, Aunty, Aunty, you fly too fast!" Poppea cried. "Daddy is first, though music fills up all the gaps and fits in between times and people, and is letting me earn enough to save and help Daddy when he shall need it. I am not even dreaming of opera, and 'abroad' is such a far-away place. Why can't I stay where I am for at least a half a dozen years?"
"Why? because they won't let you;" then as if she feared by the look of pained wonder on Poppea's face that she had gone too far in the rather bitter mood that was upon her, she laughed lightly.
"There, there, you mustn't mind my nonsense, but I'm in a state of rebellion myself to-day, and so wish every one else to be likewise. I've just told sister Elizabeth that I will go on no more of the wild-goose-chase performances known as 'making formal calls,' and that after the dinners and other entertainments that are already afoot between now and March are over, I shall withdraw from what is known as 'society'; not from my real friends, mind you, but merely from the tyranny of the thing that should be called the 'Institution for Amusement at the expense of one's own and one's neighbors' Comfort.' If Elizabeth wishes to continue, she must, to use a card phrase, 'go it alone.'
"I am going abroad in the early spring, and when I return, I mean to spend most of my time at Westboro, and see if Jeanne and Stephen Latimer between them cannot find some work for my hands and brain that will keep my heart from either freezing or turning wholly to stone," and Miss Emmy broke off and held up Diva before her face in a vain effort to suppress a dry sob that made her voice tremble.
"Why, Miss Emmy, I have always thought that you loved New York and all the people with whom you have lived so many years,—the art galleries, theatres, music, shops, and all the rest. Don't you remember what you said to me about it last autumn when you urged me to come down and try my luck? That no American has lived or is fit to judge how or where they will spend their lives until they have seen and known New York," and Poppea arose to her knees in front of her admonisher, an expression of incredulity on her upturned face, and her hands clasped in a half-beseeching, half-defensive attitude.
"Yes, I believe I did say that among other things, and it is true none the less because, after having tried it for the best of my life, I have decided to leave it before it leaves me. The New York that I knew is passing in more senses than one. When I first came to it, making the journey from Boston by boat, Washington Square was the north side of the residential city limit, the present corners of Fourteenth Street and Fifth Avenue cow pastures. There were many charming country houses all through the northern part of the Island and more especially near the Hudson, Bradish Winslow's grandfather, on the maternal side, living in one of them. We ourselves went to visit at the Waddell mansion set on the edge of a farm with its wheat fields near what is now the corner of Fifth Avenue and Thirty-seventh Street, the site of a church, a crowded city in itself and this was less than forty years ago. Young as you are, you can see the changes that seven or eight years have made, Poppea."
"Yes, I remember the fire-bell that pealed out numbers, and people looked in little books that they kept in their pockets to see in what district the fire was. Nora used to take me to a place down in Fourteenth Street where I fed goats and chickens through the fence, and there was a house on Broadway a little above Union Square that stood in a high-fenced garden where we used to feed the peacocks.
"But now the streets seem so much gayer and better lighted at night, and then it is easier to get about; there are so many street-cars instead of the slow, jolting busses, and the elevated railroad over there on Sixth Avenue is almost like flying. Though I'm very sorry there is to be a new opera-house so far uptown in the place of the dear old Academy, for I suppose the first of a thing must always seem the best because it is the first," and Poppea's first night at the opera again came before her, but this time there was more pleasure than pain in the memory.
Was it possible that she had been too sensitive? The people by whom she was surrounded seemed to make her one of themselves without question, and yet, coming from Quality Hill as many of them did, they must all know.
"It is not simply the growth of the city that appals me," she heard Miss Emmy's voice say as if from a distance. "Formerly, society was one; you knew your friends well, their houses and their coachmen in the distance. We who entertained did it to give our friends pleasure to the best of our ability. Now people are beginning to entertain to outvie, and this bidding for guests and the game of chance, where the victory is to the purse if it is only used with a certain degree of discretion, is drawing strangers to our social midst, and presto, society is no longer one but many, and we shall soon be driven by the crowd from our houses to entertain in hotels.
"Look at this!" and Miss Emmy tossed a couple of cards into Poppea's lap. One was the ordinary engraved card of a formal afternoon reception announcing that Mrs. John Sellers and the Misses Sellers would be at home on January the twenty-fourth, from four to seven. The second card bore simply the name of Mrs. M. E. Wilson, the address on both cards being the same.
"I do not see anything amiss about these cards," said Poppea, examining them carefully.
"Not in the cards, but in the facts back of them. Maria Wilson, one of the best known of the old set, has a large house, well furnished, but her husband's means have been decreasing ever since the Tweed Ring panic ten years ago. The Sellers are from Minneapolis, rich, ambitious, and their daughters decently educated, but as a family in a social sense positively unknown. Maria Wilson has rented them her house for the winter, herself included, for an enormous price. It is at their reception in her house where she is to stand sponsor for them, and if it is a success, it shows that society in New York is no longer able to stand upon its own resources. It is the entering wedge, for as soon as we cease to know personally those we invite, one must have police in dress suits to see that the strangers that come do not steal the spoons."
"How do you know all this, Aunty dear?" asked Poppea, a bewildered expression crossing her face as she began to wonder if the social fabric could possibly be woven of other than the silk and fair colors in which it presented itself to her.
"Know? Maria Wilson came here to luncheon to-day and not only told me the scheme, but asked me to receive atherreception (as she called it) and bring you to sing 'in a perfectly friendly way,' which, of course, means without pay. I'm quite through with it all, and then, besides, dear child, I'm very tired; lately I only seem to breathe an inch at a time when I'm in a close room. I must get away and be myself for a little, even though it is a rather poor thing to be, I'm afraid.
"Now as to this trip abroad—I want to see England in May and then go to the continent for two months, and you must go with me, Poppea."
"You want me? But how about Miss Elizabeth and Mr. Esterbrook? Are they not going?"
"No, dear; I have struck at last. It is late in the day, I allow, but once before my eyes close I must see through them without benefit of the spectacles of other opinions. Besides, poor Willy is losing his hold upon things. Even Elizabeth has agreed that we must put our affairs at Harley's Mills into the hands of Hugh Oldys, and Mr. Cragin, our lawyer here, has practically all the responsibility at this end. Poppea child, whatever you do or do not do in this world, do not put off living your life to the full every day that it is possible. To-morrow is a good word for hope to know, but remember that it is a bad word for a woman's heart to feed upon. Will you go with me, dear?"
Poppea was looking into the fire, watching the little flock of sparks creep up and burn a pathway through the soot. "Folks going to meeting," Satira Pegrim had called them when she had watched the same procession, born of the wood embers, in the foreroom chimney. Without looking up, she could feel Miss Emmy's eyes upon her face and knew that the question in them was a double one.
"I should like to go abroad with you," she said at last, still keeping her eyes upon the fire, "and I crave living to the full, but that it might hurt some one else and, through them, me."
"That is what I thought for years, and now I know that what I thought would hurt another did not exist. You say that you would like to go. Now the remaining question is, will you?"
"I will try to make it yes, but between now and then something might happen or Daddy might need me, dear Miss Emmy."
"That will do for a beginning, child. See, the kettle has quite boiled away and you must have fresh water."
"De mail, ladies," said Caleb, advancing at that moment with half a dozen letters on his salver, while at the same time they discovered that Diva, unobserved, had finished the cake.
Miss Emmy's mail consisted of invitations, while of Poppea's two letters one was from Oliver Gilbert, the other from Hugh Oldys.
Gilbert wrote carefully and in detail of every village happening, how that it was proposed, through the influence of the Quality Hill people who did not like the prosaic name of the old town, to unite Westboro and Harley's Mills into a single town to be known as West Harbor. In this case the Westboro post-office would be consolidated with his, and he thought, under the circumstances, with the double work, he would be justified in resigning "his charge." What did Poppea think of it? Then he dwelt upon Hugh Oldys's kindness in coming frequently to see them and supping at the post-office house on Sunday nights. But he did not add that Hugh had cross-questioned him most keenly and persistently about any possible ideas that he might entertain about Poppea's origin, and had quietly told him that sooner or later he should find it out, thus putting Gilbert into something akin to rage; for, blindly enough, the one dread of his life was that some one should appear to claim the lady baby.
For the moment Poppea was divided. Was this change, by any chance, another scheme of John Angus's to oust her Daddy, or was it a providential happening to render it easy for Gilbert to retire? Being optimistic under all her trials, she decided upon the latter and turned to the other letter.
Hugh wrote in a subdued rather than in a sad key and, without reference to the interim, picked up their friendship as it was before the night of his return when the fabric began to change its weave and pattern. That he felt the need of her old-time letters and direct companionship he did not hesitate to say, at the same time taking it for granted that his would be a comfort to her. He told her freely of his daily routine of life and asked for hers in such a frank way, free alike from either restraint or curiosity, that the comrade emerged once more, and she resolved again to write him the weekly letter of his college days.
Ah, what a boy he seemed, however much his manhood had been tried and developed in the last few months, compared to the men who crowded about her at the musicals, lavish in words of praise, personal compliments, and gifts of flowers. To be sure, they all seemed a part of the play world in which she was living—all but Bradish Winslow, and as he in a sense had stepped accidentally into her life in its own home surroundings, so he seemed in a way to belong to it.
"A polished man of the world" was Miss Felton's favorite expression concerning him; yet knowing this as she did, there was something about Winslow's personality, his deference, at once soothing and stimulating, that when she was with him made it the most natural and desirable place for her to be; but when he was absent, the condition was altered, and she not only wondered at a certain influence that he held over her, but experienced a sharp sense of repulsion at it.
It was the last of March when the rehearsals for the operetta drew to a close. The performance would be given in Easter week. Two large houses were to be thrown together for the occasion,—one for the musical part of the affair, the other for the cotillon and supper following, the two being joined by a covered passage between the gardens in the rear.
Poppea's character in the rather fantastic performance was that of a young girl of the pastoral type, who for a part of the play personated an actress, and for this scene, in which there was a dance, she was to utilize the green muslin Perdita gown of her first appearance at Quality Hill. Of course at this season the poppies must be artificial and more abundant for stage effect, and after many protestations she was told that she simplymusthave her eyes pencilled and a dash of color added to her cheeks to guard against nervous pallor.
When the night came, Mr. Esterbrook was not well, and Miss Felton, for some accountable reason, in no mood for going out, so that Miss Emmy and Poppea went to the Hoopers' alone in the depths of the last new carriage which, as though to carry out Miss Emmy's announcement that her days for light blue and pink were over, was lined with rich wine-colored cloth.
Poppea hardly knew whether she wished most to go or to run away, but by the time that she stood behind the dark green plush curtain peeping at the audience from between its folds, the desire for achievement had come to her, and she was ready to stay and conquer. Very lovely were the young society girls of the chorus arrayed as shepherdesses; unembarrassed and statuesque was the contralto of the piece, Gloria Hooper, otherwise Daphnis, the lover, a superb brunette and daughter of the house; but for the time the sense of the music dominated her; she was no longer Poppea of the Post-office in whose way stood many fears, but Sylvaine of the Invincible Charm, whom she was personating.
Among the familiar faces in the audience, Philip's and Bradish Winslow's were the only ones that her memory retained as the orchestra finished the tinkling overture, full of the piping of shepherds, the sound of cow-bells, and the tripping of dancing feet, and the curtain was drawn aside. Then in a moment all faces vanished but that of Tostelli, who was conducting from under the shelter of a thick palm in a tub. He had faith in her, nor was it misplaced.
After the first act there was a storm of applause and flowers. In coming forward to bow, hand in hand with Gloria, her eyes fell upon a figure standing behind the last row of chairs. It was John Angus, who had evidently come without knowledge that Poppea was taking part, for the expression of his face was so blended of surprise, incredulity, anger, and something else akin to dread, which she could not formulate, that she was obliged to close her eyes for a second to blot it out, and then fortunately Sylvaine again absorbed her.
It was toward the end of the last act that the dance came, and as the time changed for it, something compelled Poppea, she abandoned the set steps she had been taught and improvised until the measure ended. Then the final storm of applause descended upon her. "Brava! brava!" Tostelli cried. Coming from under his bush, he first shook her by both hands and then kissed them publicly, saying for her ear alone, "For you the grand opera is near—very near!"
Still the applause continued. Tostelli looked at her to see if she could stand a repetition of the intricate song of the rather artificial scene, but she shook her head. The revulsion had come; she was no longer Sylvaine but herself, alone and among strangers but for the face of Philip, whose eyes hung on her own.
Stretching out one arm as though to enjoin silence, she stepped forward, her eyes seeing above and beyond. Then the clear legato notes ofRobin Adairrang forth.
"What's this dull town to me? Robin's not here!"
"What's this dull town to me? Robin's not here!"
The effect of this sudden transition was marvellous, tears filled eyes to which they were strangers, and for no reason that their owners could understand.
Then Poppea, as soon as she could break away, her arms laden with flowers, looked for Miss Emmy, her one desire being to get home and be alone. But Winslow, who was her shadow for the time, told her that Miss Emmy had heard through some one who had come in from the club, where Dr. Markam, the Feltons' physician, happened to be spending the evening when sent for, that Mr. Esterbrook had been taken suddenly ill. Miss Emmy had at once returned, and would send Nora back in the carriage for Poppea as soon as possible.
"Is there any quiet spot where I can wait?" begged Poppea; "I'm so tired."
"Yes, at the end of the hall there are chairs among those palms; go there, and I will bring you some supper, for I'm sure that you are hungry quite as much as tired."
For a few moments Poppea waited at the place indicated, then the cooler air of the improvised passage, which was quite empty, tempted her, and crowding herself behind one of the curtains with which it was draped, she found an opening through which she could breathe the air of the first truly spring night.
Approaching voices sounded that she recognized as belonging to the three women who, aside from the Misses Felton, had done the most toward her establishment—Mrs. Hewlett; her hostess Mrs. Hooper, Gloria's mother; and a young widow, Hortense Gerard, a favorite cousin of Bradish Winslow's.
Fearing that they would insist upon her dancing the cotillon if she made known her presence, Poppea remained behind the curtain, and they, evidently in search of air also, seated themselves near by on a low divan. Presently the sound of her own name made Poppea regret her action, but it was already too late.
Mrs. Hewlett."Well, Miss Gilbert has certainly achieved a great success; what a social institution she has become in a few months!"
The Widow."Yes, but she will cease to be as quickly as she has achieved; the very fact that we have admired her so much this winter is the reason why no one will want her next."
Gloria's mother."I'm not so sure of that, Hortense; I only wish that I could be. I'm afraid she's come to stay, or thinks she has as far as the men are concerned; they all take hersoseriously. My Johnnie had the folly to say this morning that as soon as he was a senior he should offer himself, and you know very well that your cousin Bradish won't let us say a word about her in his presence. Why didn't the Feltons have better sense than to take her into their family, a less than nobody? It puts the whole thing upon a semisocial footing: otherwise we need not have recognized her except by the envelope with the check in it."
Mrs. Hewlett."I think you are a little hard on her, Charlotte; she's a very sweet girl and not responsible for her origin, or rather lack of it, though of course it would be deplorable if she should marry one of our sons."
The Widow."Ithink I'll put it into some rich old rascal's head to offer to put up for her training abroad for an operatic career: she'll surely jump at that bait. Possibly even Brad might work himself up to that extent; in fact, I think it's a case when he would put himself out to any degree short of matrimony, which proves her dangerous, for if Brad will go so far, others less seasoned will go the whole ribbon. She's probably got a lot of magnetic bad blood beneath her baby skin. Think of her art and craft in dropping intoRobin Adairto-night after that Frenchy rigmarole. Yes, she's got all the born wit of an adventuress, and she must go before she outwits us."
Mrs. Hewlett."I had never thought of her in that light, before, but of course it may be so, and no mother wishes her sons to—"
They go on to the ball-room. Poppea clings to the curtain for support, her hand showing her hiding-place to Winslow, who has come through an opposite curtain with a plate and a glass of champagne.
"Drink this!" he said, in a voice that trembled. But Poppea shook her head.
"How long have you been here? Ever since those shameless fence cats came?"
Another motion of the head, this time in the affirmative.
"Then you've heard every word they said?"
"Yes," Poppea's lips managed to say. At the same time pride came to her rescue; she raised her head and looked him in the face in a way that was both supplication and a challenge.
Hastily putting aside the food that he had brought, Winslow threw back the curtain, and before she could resist, drew her into an anteroom out of the passageway.
"Sit down!" he commanded. Poppea dropped into a chair, but still kept her eyes, now grown dull with despair, upon him; in fact, it seemed impossible for her to remove them.
"Don't look at me so, child! I should like to wring every one of their scrawny necks; only tell me what to do, and I will do it."
"You can do nothing," were the words formed by Poppea's dry lips, but no sound came.
Suddenly stepping toward her and resting one knee on the divan, he began to speak rapidly in a voice whose vibrant tones were moderated with difficulty.
"I can, perhaps, do nothing alone, butwe, we can do everything.
"Marry me, Poppea. I love you wholly, finally, and have ever since the night when I first met you, also on painful ground. But together we will put away the pain, and you shall trample on those harpies that have stuck their claws in you. As Bradish Winslow's wife your word will be law, your position in society unassailable, and my cousin Hortense in particular will come grovelling to you by to-morrow, afraid of what she thinks you may know of her.
"Come to me, child, and let me protect you once for all!"
Poppea dragged herself slowly to her feet until her face was on a level with his, her eyes still fastened upon him, but the dulness was gone, and they blazed with a wild fury akin to delirium, and the color in her cheeks outdid the rouge that had not been wiped away.
"There is no one among them all to compare with you!" he whispered, his voice turning hoarse; so moved was he by her wistful beauty that it became a pain.
She did not seem to hear the last words; her anger blazed out and cooled, and her motions were like those of a somnambulist. She put her hand to her head as though listening for something that she had forgotten but yet expected, but the Knight of the Grail and his music had deserted her.
"Yes, I will marry you," she said in steady, monotonous voice, wholly lacking in emotion.
"Come then, we will go in and announce it to our hostess before the trio may guess the good—that they have done," and he leaned forward to clasp her to him, but as she shrank back, one arm before her face, still as some one who walks in a dream and wards off danger, he merely drew her hand through his arm, still grasping it.
"Not to-night, to-morrow! please let me go home!" and at that moment a man-servant came up to say that Miss Felton's carriage and maid were waiting for Miss Gilbert.
The picture of the night was in three panels,—that of the morning in one.
According to Nora, Mr. Esterbrook had suffered a shock, that indefinite something that may mean so many things. He had been in the library and had evidently fallen in crossing the room. Miss Felton had found him and had sent for two or three doctors, who were now with him; she was terribly upset, and so the woman babbled on until the house was reached.
Three coupés were lined up before the door, and the house was lighted from top to bottom. Poppea judged that the physicians were still in consultation.
The cook opened the door, explaining that Caleb was wanted upstairs, and that Nora was to go at once to Miss Felton.
On her way to her room Poppea passed through the sitting room and tapped at Miss Emmy's door, which stood ajar, but there was no answer; the room was empty, so she continued on her way.
Turning up the light, she looked about the pretty bedroom, her eyes lingering on each article it contained. Was it possible that only four hours had elapsed since she had left it? Yes, the little Dresden clock was tinkling twelve.
Flowers from a concert of two days before filled the jars on the mantel-shelf, then she remembered that all the tributes of that evening had been forgotten and left behind. Philip had brought her a wicker basket of daffodils such as later in the season starred the bank garden below the parapet at home. She hoped that he would not know and be hurt; as for the rest, what did it matter?
The night was warm, yet she closed the window, and crouching before the hearth, lit the symmetrical pile of small logs put there chiefly for ornament. Stripping off her gay attire and dropping it in a heap on the floor of the dressing closet, she threw a wrapper about her and again kneeled before the fire, as though its upward motion was a spell against the loneliness of the room. As she looked at the curling flames, her eyes dilated, and a terror that was an absolute pain swept over her: a strain of music had penetrated the fog that enveloped her brain; it was the song of the Knight—the Knight of the Grail.
"Oh, God, what have I done?" she whispered to the fire, "promised to marry Bradish Winslow, when I have vowed that I would never marry untilthatis no longer a mystery. Promised to marry him, not for love, but to trample on those who were trampling on me. It is true that when I am with him there is something that makes me wish to stay, but when I am alone, I want to keep away. There is no one to speak to, no one to ask; if only I could feel Daddy's hand upon my hair to-night. Ah, little mother, won't you ask God to help me in some way that I can feel and understand? To-morrow it will be too late!"
Clasping the locket to her breast, she crouched lower and lower until her face almost touched the fire guard. The wood snapped and a live coal fell upon the carpet. Crushing it out with her slipper, her eye fell upon something white beside the hearthstone. Picking it up she saw that it was Hugh's weekly letter that she had read and laid by the clock and that a draught had wafted to her feet. Holding it between her palms, she gradually grew calm, and as she looked at it the only recourse opened before her: she must write to Winslow so that he would receive the letter when he awoke.
Going to the secretary with its litter of invitations and complimentary social notes, she swept them to the floor with a gesture half contempt and half full of the regret of renunciation. Then having cleared the shelf, she began to write, slowly as a child pens its copy, giving each letter a separate stroke and weighing its value. She had need of this care, for before she had finished, the sheet was wet with tears.
Quarter of one, tittered the silly little clock. Poppea knew that no mail would be taken from the pillar at the street corner before six, but it might be her only chance to get out unobserved. The lights in the extension, where Mr. Esterbrook's rooms were located, were burning brightly; now was her chance. Slipping on a long ulster, she went down without meeting any one, threw off the night latch on the door, and closed it behind her. Two of the cabs had gone, and the driver of the one remaining slept upon the box.
It was but a step to the corner and back, the only live thing that she encountered being a long-bodied cat which seemed to separate itself from the shadow of one pair of steps only to be swallowed by another shadow farther on. Gaining her room once more, she put out the light and threw herself upon the bed without undressing.
In the room beyond, which was Miss Felton's, Miss Emmy was pacing to and fro. The consulting physicians had gone and their own family stand-by, Dr. Markam, was now coming from Mr. Esterbrook's quarters ushered by Caleb, Miss Felton remaining behind.
"Tell me the best and worst," said Miss Emmy, following the doctor down to the sitting room.
Dr. Markam looked at her keenly as if to gauge the quality of her emotion, then said tersely, "The best is that he may be quickly released by another stroke, the worst that he may live for years partly or wholly helpless and with clouded mental faculties. Go up and try to persuade Miss Elizabeth that it is unnecessary for her to remain. She is not used to illness or misery. Caleb will stay to-night, and the nurse that I shall send will be here by daylight," and after drinking the glass of wine that Caleb offered him instinctively, he went out, thinking to himself how little his old friend Esterbrook had, at the end of life, to show for the elaborate trouble of his living.
Thus bidden, Miss Emmy crept softly into the outer room of Mr. Esterbrook's suite, then, not finding Elizabeth, she went through the dressing closet to the inner room where a night lamp burned with the pale rays of moonlight.
On the bed in the corner she could see the outline of Mr. Esterbrook's form, still as though he no longer breathed. A second look revealed a stranger object. Kneeling by the bed in the attitude of passionate despair, her face buried in the quilt, her hands clasping the rigid one, was Miss Elizabeth.
Miss Emmy could not at once take in the details; her natural supposition was that her sister was ill or had fainted and slipped from the near-by arm-chair. Going to her she touched her on the shoulder, and in a low tone gave the doctor's message about the nurse and the sufficiency of Caleb for the night.
Suddenly Miss Felton turned, but without moving from her kneeling posture, and her sister started back, amazed at the entire change in her face. Haggard and worn, furrowed under the eyes and pinched at the nostrils, it was a woman of seventy-five, not sixty-four, that looked up, while the carefully braided hair, always so exact a coronal to the unbending head, was loosened in a gray, dishevelled mass. Again Miss Emmy tried to explain the doctor's words. Pulling herself to her feet with difficulty, Miss Felton clutched her sister by one shoulder, almost screaming in her ear.
"I will not go! I will not have a nurse! Caleb will stay with us; Caleb will be sufficient." Then as Miss Emmy did not move or seem to understand, she shook her arm.
"I am going to care for him now, because I love him, have always loved him, and you, or else your shadow, have always stood between. If he could have stepped out of it for a month, a week, he would have known. I thought once that you too loved him and you were my frail little sister, my charge, and so I repulsed him, suppressed my nature, and kept back. But you, you called him 'Willy' and played kitten and knitting ball with him until you tired, until it was too late. Now he will never know; but if he lives, and I can make him comfortable, he may perhaps realize the comfort, and through it that I love him. Now go—and leave us together at last! And if the people talk, tell them that Miss Felton does not care!"
Shaken, nay, almost shattered, Miss Emmy dragged herself from the room, clinging from chair to table like a child who creeps. Of all the possibilities of life, this that had happened seemed the most impossible. Elizabeth, the emotionless woman of perfect balance and judgment! Like a condemned criminal but half conscious of what he is accused, she groped her way along the hall. She must speak to some one, it seemed, or lose her mind.
Poppea had sent a message by Nora that she must be called if needed. Surely her need was great, so she opened the girl's door and listened before entering.
"I am not asleep," said Poppea from the white draped bed, and raising herself on her elbow, she lit the night lamp on the bed stand.
"Is he—is Mr. Esterbrook any worse? Is he very sick?"
"Yes, but being sick is not the worst," and Miss Emmy told Poppea briefly what her sister now seemed to glory in, willing that the whole world should know.
Clasping her arms about the fragile creature, scarcely more than a bundle of ribbon and lace, Poppea held her close, crying, "Poor Aunty, dear Aunt Emmy, you are not blamable, neither didyouknow."
After a few minutes the girl's human sympathy relaxed the tension, and freeing herself, Miss Emmy sat down by the bed.
"What is it, child? You are not yourself to-night, any more than I am. Were you not well received? Something has happened. What is it?"
Poppea shivered as she tried to frame a sentence that should be truthful and yet not reveal, then she said:—
"One day you said that I could not keep on for long singing as I had this winter 'because they will not let you.' Every one was very kind, but afterward—it chanced to come to me that the women on whom I counted 'will not let me' continue, as you said, so I am going home, again—to-morrow."
"That is not all, Poppea."
"That is all that I shall ever say," she answered with the fixed intent that always astonished those who for the first time realized her capacity for firmness.
"You do not need; I understand. I, too, am going home to the Hill, Poppea, because they will not let me stay."
"Oh, Aunty! Aunty!" she cried, "lie down beside me. I'm afraid, afraid of I don't know what, as I used to be when I slept in the little hooded cradle and Daddy came and put Mack in beside me and sat and held my hand."
Then peace fell gently on Miss Emmy because this young creature needed her.
Bradish Winslow left the Hooper's as soon after Poppea as he might without having the two departures coupled. Not for the first time in his life had he been repelled and enraged by the absolute lack of social sincerity on the part of the group of women who, in their day, were the cohesive element of society. Yet he never realized the responsibility in the matter of men of his stamp who condone nearly everything in a woman so long as she is modish and amusing. Lighting a cigar and leaving his top-coat open that he might feel the vigor of the night air, Winslow strolled slowly from Gramercy Park westward to the Loiterers' Club. Contrary to his usual gregarious habits, he made his way to one of the least brilliantly lighted retiring-rooms, and ordering some club soda and Scotch, a kind of whiskey that was considered a marked eccentricity in the era of Rye and Bourbon, stretched himself on a sofa, hands behind head, and gave himself up wholly to steadying his nerves.
An hour later he entered his own bachelor home, a substantial and conservative house in one of the wide streets that cross lower Fifth Avenue, a little north of Washington Square. The house was neither his birthplace nor the home of his childhood, but a legacy from a great-aunt, the last of the Bradish name. It was twelve years since a woman other than a caretaker or housemaid had lived in it; the first six it had remained virtually closed, while during the second half of the period, Winslow had developed the two first floors as suited the fancy of a man who entertained elegantly and conservatively, not choosing to establish a carousing Bohemia at too close range. If he had some or any of the vices of his class and position, he chose to pursue them away from his normal surroundings and at his own pace, where at any moment he might either outdistance them or drop behind without clamor.
Hence the house, as he entered it with his latch-key, had the subdued and grave air of any family residence in the same quarter. Turning out the lights in the lower rooms, he went to his personal suite on the second floor, lighted some gas-jets in the three rooms, rang for his man, and gave directions that he was to be wakened at half-past nine, breakfast in his room, and would under no consideration see any one before eleven o'clock. Then as the valet, but half awake, stumbled out, steadying himself by the portières as he drew them to, Winslow gave a sigh of relief, and flinging himself into a chair before the hearth, as Poppea had done, he stirred the embers and kindled a fire that was not for warmth but like summoning a sympathetic yet reticent friend.
Winslow's feeling during the two hours since he had, as he considered, rushed to Poppea's rescue was dual; he congratulated himself not a little that for once in his life he had let himself be swayed by a generous impulse and his own emotion. Also his curiosity was very expectant as to the stir that would be made by the announcement of his engagement to Poppea on the morrow and the consternation it would for various reasons cause. He could see the pallor come to the unprotected portion of his cousin Hortense's cheeks as she wondered if "Brad" would ever tell that baby-faced girl how desperately she had worked to enmesh him, and how deliberately and cleverly he had forced her to show a trumpless hand. Then there were others, and the thoughts of them were here and there tinged with regret. He had never been unscrupulous in his pleasures; he had simply lived life to the full as he saw it. As he was in a somewhat exalted and generous mood, why do things by halves?
Going to a large mahogany secretary in the corner, he unlocked a deep drawer that was hidden by a panel and took therefrom several bundles of letters and some photographs; to these he added a picture from a silver frame on the mantle, of a very charming dark woman, well-groomed and poised, but with an air of not belonging exactly to his world. He held the bundle to his chest a moment as he stood looking into the fire; opening a pit in the middle of the molten coals, he cast the letters into it, not even glancing at the superscriptions, and only separating them sufficiently to be sure that they would ignite, sat and watched them until they were consumed.
From their ashes came a more natural mood. The house was at best rather gloomy; how Poppea's coming would brighten it, and her voice echo up and down those great rooms when she laughed; for he meant that she should laugh and have no time for tears. The idea was very soothing; he wondered why he had never seriously contemplated marrying before.
Jove! but she was beautiful and unusual; he would have a miniature painted of her in the green muslin with the poppies in her hair. Then he would take her everywhere that people might envy him her loveliness.
No, he would not! Formulating the thought brought a sharp revulsion. He would take her abroad, away from the carpers and fawners alike, where they two should be alone; for, after all contributing motives, what he had said was true, he had loved Poppea at first sight, and as far as the better side of his nature was concerned, he loved her finally.
What a splendid ring he would buy her to-morrow, no to-day! a ruby held in a setting of poppy leaves to form the flower. Ah! but she already held the spell of oblivion over him. He liked to feel this. Of course they would be married in a month; there was no reason for delay. The old man Gilbert? That was easily fixed: an annuity as a parting gift from Poppea and some tears, of course. It would be strange if she did not show some feeling, and besides, ingratitude was one of the traits he most detested in a woman.
So when Winslow at last settled himself in his bed, severe almost as a hospital cot, that stood in an alcove curtained from the luxurious room to which it formed a sharp contrast, there was a smile on his lips, and closing his eyes, he brought his finger-tips together, touched them fervently, and flung a message into the dark. He well knew how to play the lover, but it was only this night that he realized what it was to be entirely in love with some one other than himself.
The morning, like the night, was mild, but with the chilly undercurrent suggestive of sudden rain that divides April from May. The city, always early to awake in some quarter, now wore its widespread spring alertness, and the venders of plants in a cheerful burst of bloom added their cries to the street sounds.
Looking toward the square for a sign of color in the tree-tops, Poppea saw a jet of water rising from the fountain that filled the air with spray through which some birds were flitting. That the fountain was being set in order showed that the same spring impulse was moving the city wheels that sent all the little hillside springs rushing madly to swell the tide of Moosatuck. How she hungered and thirsted for a sight of it!
At half-past nine, precisely to the moment, the time that he had been directed, Winslow's valet came in, closed the windows, drew the curtains across the alcove, and after arranging the toilet articles in the ample bathroom, which was also used as a dressing-closet, went out until the bell should say that his master wished his breakfast. For accustomed to luxury as Winslow was in externals, his primitive tastes were direct and simple and he detested the fuss and servility of bodily service.
When in half an hour's time, clad in a comfortable bath-gown, he lounged into the library and rang for his coffee, picking up the letters that were neatly piled on the desk, so quickly does the mind of man travel to direct issues, that he was already considering the coming change of breakfasting in one of the smaller rooms below stairs, and picturing Poppea, gowned in some filmy draperies, flitting in like one of the streaks of morning sunshine. As he glanced carelessly at the writing upon the various envelopes that he might receive a clew as to which, if any, were worth the trouble of opening on this particular morning, Poppea's characters fixed his eye. It is true that he had previously received but two or three brief notes from her, acknowledging flowers or an invitation, but the writing, full of decision and so opposite from the girl's almost poetic appearance, was of the type that is called characteristic and became fixed in the memory.
So she was moved to write immediately upon getting home, was his first thought; but instead of hastily tearing the note open, he turned it slowly and reflectively in one hand as he poured himself a cup of coffee, then drank it deliberately, and seated himself, before releasing the letter with a careful stroke of the paper-knife.
He had vainly tried the whimsical experiment of judging of the contents by the sense of touch. Everything about his connection with Poppea had been unusual, hence its added piquancy. Why should he not expect that its completion should be on the same plane? He almost dreaded the finding of a gushing and honeyed first love-letter of the newly engaged girl in her early twenties.
He read the letter through, then rubbed his eyes, turned the paper to the light, and read anew. In it was expressed gratitude to him coupled with self-reproach for allowing a bitter hurt to be revenged even in thought by the idea of marriage. There was a request for forgiveness, not for the retracting of a promise so much as for the sense of injury that had made the promise possible, and then the final statement that she would never take another's name until she had one of her own to yield. Piteous as was her agony of mind expressed, not so much in the words used as in their haste and almost incoherence, Winslow felt forcibly that the nature that lay beneath had its depths and measures of pride that his world could not fathom, because it was based upon a frankness, a fundamentalnoblesse oblige, that could neither be denied or argued away. A princess Poppea was, though wandering from her kingdom.
One thing was evident through it all. She had been doubtless attracted to him in a way, but she did not love him; her suffering, therefore, was complicated, but not keenly direct, as more and more every moment he felt his disappointment to be. Also the wind was taken out of any fanciful balloon of his self-sacrifice, and it fell collapsed.
No, she did not love him,—"By God, but she shall!" he cried, bringing his clenched hand down on the stand with a fervor that dashed the delicate porcelain cup and saucer to the floor in shivering fragments. "Life's been getting a sleepy nuisance these two years. What better to wake me up than to track her origin and find her name? Time, money, and grip I've got, if luck will only come in and take the fourth hand!
"What a conquest to remove her fantastic fortress and make her desire my love at one bound!"
This was the second time that a man had made this wish; a different man pitched in a different key.
This man, like the other, having made a resolution, went on his accustomed way, which in Winslow's case was to dress with unusual care, a dark red carnation, the prevailing flower for morning wear, in his buttonhole. His business affairs calling him down town but three days a week, he took a leisurely morning walk to the club, where he read the papers and listened to other news that would never appear in print. On some one's remarking upon the success that Miss Gilbert had achieved the previous night, that she had left early on account of Mr. Esterbrook's sudden illness before all the deserved congratulations had reached her, and that those who knew her best said that not less than two men of wealth were ready to back her for the study necessary to an operatic career, Winslow merely looked up, apparently only mildly interested, and observed in neutral tones:—
"Her voice has operatic capacity doubtless, but I should judge she lacked the physique. By the way, what is the news of poor old Esterbrook? A nice outlook ahead of us who grow old as bachelor dandies, I must say."
But what hethoughtwas, "The cats have begun to weave their cradle for Poppea's undoing, and when they find she has gone, they will lay it to their strategy. Damn them!"