When she came into the apartment sitting-room, she found Polly Harris in her shabby brown trappings and another member of the family whom Polly had dutifully brought to call.
“It’s Sam Sparling,” Polly announced in boyish fashion. “Have you seen by the papers he’s to open here Christmas afternoon? This is Bliss Hobart’s prize,” waving her hand in Thurley’s direction. “Now beware of Sam because even duchesses fall in love with him and he has trunks full of yellowed mash notes—”
Sam interrupted by frowning at Polly and saying, “Come over here, my dear, don’t be afraid. I’m too busy to get up a new affair before New Year’s.”
He had the cultured, pleasant voice of a well-bred Englishman and Thurley could picture his irresistible methods of love-making, although he was far older than she fancied and his mouth framed by ironical furrows. He had really white hair combed into a brisk pompadour, bright eyes like a young pointer’s and he dressed in noticeable fashion, with a fine black and white check suit with exaggerated flares, patent leather boots and silk shirt and tie matching the suit in pattern. Still, it was no wonder Sam Sparling could “get across” withRomeoone day and the next week be giving out an interview in which he was quoted as remembering the day Disraeli said to him—!
“What a dear she is!” he remarked to Polly. He had the habit of talking about a person in front of that person when he wished to be complimentary or to findfault. “A flapper in a thousand,” putting on goldpince-nezwith the foreign straight-across nose-piece which Thurley had never seen. “By Jove, is Bliss sure she’s a singer? I could make an actress out of that girl.”
“You’ve not heard her sing,” Polly capered about. “When she sings, I am inspired to tear up all the opera scores I’ve fancied were any good and begin again. Because Thurley has promised me to sing the title rôle in my opera—now haven’t you?” Polly’s little face was distressingly in earnest.
Sam shook his head and began talking to Thurley about Polly. “She is irrepressible, isn’t she? Fancies she can out-Wagner Wagner—when she is just bound to end up by writing songs for a ballad singer—one dressed in sheer muslin with velvet wrist bows—possessing a thin, carefully tutored soprano that will always trill certain words.”
Polly picked up a cushion and unceremoniously pitched it towards him. It fell between Thurley and Sam and Sam knelt gracefully upon it, adding, “Would that I could have one of these when I’m trying to look romantic in this position before a matinée of school girls—ugh, the old bones do make a howl if I use them carelessly! Thurley, don’t mind us! You see I’m one of those old-young boys that just stay old-young to the finish—always wearing a gardenia in their buttonhole and their hat tilted rakishly over the left eye. Some day I’ll just go to sleep and I’ll be toted to the Little Church Around the Corner with a last gardenia in my buttonhole and I hope some friend of mine will protest against that awful firebell embellished funeral march. At least I’m entitled to have the Faust waltz played—I always have my greatest luck with stage proposals when that is softly heard as coming from the supposed supper room of ahunt ball—and a bill poster without saying, ‘The End of an Old Beau!’ After it is all over, I hope they’ll say, ‘Well, Sam never grew old while he was among us—let’s hope he won’t start the habit now wherever he’s blown off to!’”
He jumped up as he finished, holding out his hand, and Thurley took it shyly.
“Don’t mind our nonsense—she’s quite timid, isn’t she? Reminds me of the way my leading ladies act when on the stage and when off they rage like a stable boy if some one happens to cross their notions.” He studied her a moment longer and remarked, “She is pretty—I can’t find a single flaw.”
Thurley was pretty that afternoon; perhaps the ooze had lent her the vivid coloring or it was her bright red coat with the great silver buttons and the ermine tam slanting down and showing her dark hair.
“I’m stupid,” she began, “because I’ve been working so hard.”
Sam settled himself on a sofa to take in the surroundings. Polly was watching something out of the window so Thurley took opportunity to remove her wraps and come to sit sedately beside the famous old man.
“But I’m not really timid,” she supplemented naïvely, at which he turned about crying bravo, and threatening Hobart with losing his prima donna in order that she become Sam Sparling’s leading lady.
“She’s taking inventory of my wrinkles, Polly,” he complained, “and my white hair and the wretched old hump o’ years that has fastened itself on my back. Bring her to the Christmas matinée and let her see me in lavender-striped trousers and cutaway coat, the misunderstood young man turned from his father’s mansion,returning in the last act to his steam yacht and his second best Rolls Royce—let her have a go at me and come behind to have tea afterwards,” he put his hand down and covered Thurley’s—a thin, tired hand with prominent, blue veins and a handsome ring of sapphires on the little finger.
“Haven’t you a good sort of leading woman?” asked Polly.
“No, the only real bond between us is a mutual love of Roquefort salad dressing,” he sighed. “Her idea of art is to be undressed quite halfway down her back and to fall on my neck in limp giggles.”
“Why do you have her then?” Thurley asked seriously.
“Youth, my child—she is a lovely, young thing, pink and white, straight, slim, very good to gaze upon—and she knows it. She can wear a wrap consisting of four flounces of purple chiffon and a strip of rose satin and make the audience stare at her impudent, untalented little self while theylistento my lines! The combination lets my wrinkles, humped back and cantankerous joints slip by unheeded. That is a penalty we pay for growing old. Never mind, Thurley, you’ve years in which to revel in having both talent and youth—divine combination!” Sam’s bright eyes grew moody, he was remembering, as Thurley rightly guessed, the wonderful, golden years in London when he was Romeo in appearance as in voice and passion, when he was dark eyed, melancholy young Hamlet and the critics gently insinuated that as King Lear he was a trifle youngish although his makeup was superb! Those were the years when people loved his Shakespeare because his youth illumined it and he passed by with proper scorn the smart comedies requiring a morning garden backdrop, a duel in the library andleading ladies who were possessed of more dimples than brains.
“Why don’t you play old rôles?” Thurley demanded innocently, Polly smothering a giggle.
“She doesn’t appreciate my romantic little heart and notions, does she? Let her see me a swashbuckling hero in hip boots and a green plumed bonnet while my black charger is led across the stage by bribes of sugar—then she’ll understand.”
“No, she can’t understand, Sam dear, until she has reached the matronly age and still wants to do Juliet and Senta and managers try to show her the error of her ways—and figure!”
Thurley looked up at her new friend to wonder what form the ooze took with him. But he good-naturedly patted her cheek, saying much to her relief:
“I see you are human and not going to ask me to recite ‘Gunga Din.’ I return the compliment by not demanding that you tear off Tosti’s ‘Good-by.’ I only ran in to welcome you to our circle and to tell you, as senior member, a few facts about the others. They will tell you about me fast enough—”
“Never happy unless he has a breach of promise suit waiting for him in the morning’s mail,” promptly supplemented Polly. “Always has it rumored he is to marry a prominent whiskey dealer’s widow—sells his mash notes per pound to Caleb, owns a hothouse of gardenias and has them shipped all over the map—at heart a flinty old bachelor warrior—a splendid, precious, cross pal—a jewel of an actor who makes you laugh and cry as easily as you breathe.”
“There is a young woman,” said Sam calmly, pointing an accusing finger, “who will never write grand opera—never! Watch how pale she grows. But she will dosomething heroic, has all the salamander qualities with none of their viciousness. Would snatch a funeral wreath right off a door to make a present to some one she loved, very whippy temperament, believes that bothering over one’s soul is an emotional luxury, must have had an antique little romance back somewhere. Where did you come from, Polly, anyhow? Sort of neighborhood, I fancy, where the prevailing fashion was to have your great-aunt’s deceased poodles stuffed and mounted to preside over dark, chilly parlors.... Of course, Polly jumped the stockade and landed among us—a forlorn child with squeaky shoes, as I remember her. She’s as proud as Punch and stubborn as a bull terrier, so we let her starve knowing that sometime or other she is going to bump smack into Fame and he’ll never let go of her. But not grand opera, Polly girl.”
“I shall stay in New York,” Polly announced, fastening her coat, “and I shall write a grand opera in which Thurley shall sing. You will all have to beg my pardon.” Her brown eyes showed the hurt in them and Sam Sparling began helping her with refractory buttons of her wrap.
“I’ll have my apology engraved on a gold scroll and you can use it for a dinner gong—on the gong handle will be a bas relief of myself—gardenia and all. So you can beat me up thrice a day.”
Thurley was laughing; she wondered if Miss Clergy had napped during the turmoil. “Don’t go,” she begged. “Please stay a long time.”
“We can’t, we’ve a raft of calls. I always take Polly because she can break away so neatly. I’m the sort that sits and sits, ending by halfway swallowing my cane handle and getting nowhere in particular.”
“Will we really go to the matinée?” she asked Polly.
“Of course. I’ll call for you—and tea in Sam’s dressing room. Oh, Thurley, you haven’t begun to realize New York as yet—not Bliss’s New York, but your New York and mine and Sam’s, too.”
“Why do you love it so?” asked Thurley.
Polly leaned her two by four self against a chair as she answered, “Oh, because—when I walk down the Avenue sunny mornings and see ragamuffins sharing an ice cream cone and visiting British peeresses with their fresh faces and dowdy clothes vying with our American heiresses with their smart creations and hunks of black pearls, when I come upon nice, happy boys and girls from up state or clever Middle West men here on important commissions and bronzed cowpunchers and trim naval officers, to say nothing of portly men of finance bowling along—I’m New York mad. Besides, when I have to watch the traffic cops and white baby prams becoming friendly, to gaze at a window of caramels, mountains of them, and right next to it to gaze at a window of paintings on silk guarded by the Pinkertons, when I have to stop to watch the man in Childs’ turn flapjacks and know that inside Sherry’s sit the prettiest, best dressed, quite the most decent men and women in the world nibbling at tomato surprise and whispering as to how many apartment houses the waiters own, when I see Pekinese spaniels airing their new jewelry and mongrels scrapping over a bone, when I can go to a ten-cent movie or sit in a box at the opera and wear Ernestine Christian’s adorable brown velvet dress, when I happen upon dainty brides buying chintz remnants at Wanamaker’s, spotting burglars chatting over their prospects at the Five Points a few moments later—and when I can ride home sardine fashion in a subway express or take a battered hansom what ’as seen better days, pin a bunch offlorist’s seconds to my chest and drift down towards Washington Square or, once in a while, be picked up by Caleb or Collin or Ernestine and be glided home in a motor—well—I love New York,” she paused out of breath.
Sam bent and kissed her. “Marry me,” he demanded.
Thurley was noticeably embarrassed.
Polly burst out laughing. “That’s Sam’s remedy for all ills, Thurley. When Ernestine had to move out of her old apartment, Sam was engaged to her until she was satisfactorily settled in her new one. It bucked her up no end.”
Thurley shook her head. “I’m afraid I’ve not come on enough really to entertain you—do call a year from now.”
Sam laid his tired hand on her head in mock solemnity. “Don’t let Hobart cheat you of what you deserve—remember, every woman has the right to at least one trousseau!” After which they left, Polly calling back something as to the time of their meeting on Christmas afternoon.
Thurley stole to Miss Clergy’s door but the little ghost lady was fast asleep.
“Every woman has the right to at least one trousseau,”—she wished he had not said it. She did not want even deep-down, hidden regrets.... French exercises, Italian opera scores, singing lessons, English reading selections, dancing, fencing, horseback, social etiquette, makeup, costuming, stage directions—pretend, pretend,pretendthings ... and they were trimming the church at the Corners—Dan and Lorraine this year, Lorraine with her ring.... What strange people, at odds with each other and their own selves—what queer, detached lives—what remarkable theories, fantastically expressed!where was the saneness of it, the rhythm—that was it—the rhythm? Would she experience it and be satisfied after she had made her bow to the public? Could the ooze always answer the requirements of her savage young heart?
After the Christmas matinée, when Thurley with eyes as large as saucers, so Polly reported, had watched Sam play a difficult rôle in superb fashion and had taken tea with him in his dressing room, she returned alone to the hotel.
Polly was due at a Greenwich Village affair, Caleb was with Collin in the country, Ernestine in Chicago practising scales, as her letter to Thurley would intimate, and at Birge’s Corners ... ah, that was the ooze, it was no longer real! So Thurley came into the dingy sitting room—at least it now seemed dingy—to find that Miss Clergy had suffered an attack of neuralgia and had been ordered off to bed. The high tea in Sam’s dressing-room had robbed her of her appetite, so she did not go downstairs for dinner but changed her party frock for a schoolgirl blue serge and stoically settled herself at her books. She promised herself that after she had diligently studied she would go into the ooze and celebrate her real Christmas!
As she put her hand on the table the new bracelet Miss Clergy had given her that morning struck the wood with a metallic clink. It was a handsome thing set with diamonds, handsomer than anything Dan had afforded. But it had been given her with the generosity of a jailor in lieu of any one else’s daring to give her such an article!
Thurley began an irregular verb conjugation in sing-song fashion, fighting off a savage mood. The telephoneinterrupted her and half a second later she was saying in the gladdest voice she possessed:
“Tell Mr. Hobart to come right up,” hanging up the receiver and running to the mirror to see just how much of a fright she looked.
She had no time to think of a change of costume for in he came, a veritable domestic gentleman muffled in an ulster, holly in his buttonholeandsomething in white tissue paper and tied with red ribbon.
“Merry Christmas! I had five minutes’ extra time and I thought I’d drop in to take the chance of finding you. Had an idea you’d be in the doldrums, first Christmas out of the backyard, y’know.” Unasked, he slipped off the ulster and Thurley saw he was in evening dress. “Thing at the club,” he explained, noticing her expression. “Well, what have we been doing? Don’t tell me that rascal of a Sam had you behind for tea.”
“He did.” Thurley suddenly found her old wild-rose self as she told him of the matinée.
When she finished he said, those curious gray eyes of his narrowing, “A good singer should have a good—” holding out the white tissue paper parcel.
“Oh, what?” she demanded. “It’s the only present I’ve had that was done in white tissue paper. Nothing came from home and the others laugh at Christmas. Miss Clergy gave me this bracelet—but the bill was in the box,” she added resentfully. “But this—this is direct from Santa Claus.”
“It’s a good mascot,” he informed her gravely. “Always keep it to say little heathen prayers or curses to and tell it your troubles and your joys. In short, treat it like a regular fellow.”
Thurley scrambled the paper and ribbon away.“Why—I bought you almost the same,” she said unconsciously.
Hobart laughed. “You actually bought your sternmaestroa present?”
Thurley was absorbed in looking at the little Buddha carved from lapis lazuli with gold for the features and diamonds for eyes. “This one is much lovelier,” she said.
“Tell me—did you really buy me a present?” he demanded.
She nodded.
“Why haven’t you handed it over?”
“Because—I bought presents for every one—the sort of things you people laugh at—but you seemed different from the others so I bought you a Buddha because I thought you needed some one to tell your real secrets to—and then, after I wrapped it up, I began to think you would not like it—”
“Will you get it or shall I send a court order for my property?”
Thurley vanished, reappearing with the teakwood case. “Isn’t it odd that we both bought the same thing?”
Hobart’s face was boyish as he took the gift. “Why, Thurley,” he told her, “I believe I’m training an angel unawares.”
“You mean me?” she asked humbly.
“What made you speak of telling real secrets?” he stroked the little idol as he spoke.
“I don’t know—only where do the real things go to when the unreal have to come first and take up all one’s time?”
Hobart started towards her; he seemed about to say something very secret. Thurley looked at him wistfully, every memory concerning the Corners, her dissatisfactionsand rebellions vanished. She assumed a gay, star-like mood.
But he thought better of it and became the polite and baffling Bliss Hobart with whom no one took liberties, least of all a girl protégée. It would be wiser to tell the secrets to the little Buddha whose silence was of golden quality. Perhaps, if years ago, more years ago than Thurley knew, one’s secret things had not been used as public jokes....
“I’m afraid I cannot answer,” he said brusquely. “Leave my greetings for Miss Clergy and don’t try to wear your mascot as a watchguard—happy days, to-morrow as usual.” Patting her on the shoulder, he dismissed himself.
Thurley set the mascot before her books and returned to grubbing. Two hours later she glanced up and the diamond eyes gave her a jolly twinkle.
“I say,” she remarked out loud, “you are first aid to the agitated! Now tell me—didn’t he for just a moment treat me as if I were a realwoman?”
So passed the first New York Christmas!
The next day, when Thurley went for her lesson, she had the pleasure of being snubbed and scolded. But passing out of the studio, she saw the little Buddha sitting on his desk very close to where his hand must reach each time he took up his pen or blotted a letter!
Ernestine Christian did not return to town until February, having been induced to play engagements on the Pacific coast. It was the mid-winter thaw when she arrived. She telephoned Thurley almost immediately and, to Thurley’s delight, asked her to come and have coffee that afternoon as it was a Sunday and lessons were not a consideration.
“Sure you won’t come along?” Thurley asked Miss Clergy, dutifully, as she made ready.
“Quite sure, my dear. This wind would start every bone aching to perdition,” Miss Clergy told her, “and do put on a prettier dress—there may be guests.”
Thurley looked at her proverbial blue serge with hesitation. “Oh, I can’t bother to be done up in a real creation—we’ve such loads to talk over and Ernestine’s clothes are the sort one never really notices and yet, describing them as detached things, they are quite wonderful. Do you think I ought to change?” for it suggested itself to her that Bliss Hobart might drop in for greetings.
“I should. You can’t be too particular, Thurley. The time is coming when the world will want to know what sort of frocks you wear every clock stroke of the day.” Here Miss Clergy yawned and settled back among innumerable cushions and Thurley spied the cover of a popular novel—one of Caleb’s, to make it the more amusing—peeping forth.
“Well, if I must—I must,” she said, darting into herroom and donning a tea-green velour with wee fur buttons up to the arctic verge of her pink ears. She wrapped a mantle of green around herself in careless, becoming fashion, kissed Miss Clergy somewhere between the chin and forehead and left her to revel in Caleb’s self-starting romance in which a homely hero was quite the mode.
She found Ernestine walking about her salon with Silver Heels perched cordially on her shoulder, purring for joy at his mistress’ return. Ernestine was busy telling the maid wherein she had neglected to carry out orders and why the decorators would be recalled to make amends. There was a pettish air about her criticisms, Thurley thought, for when Thurley came in with wide opened arms, Ernestine merely gave her a shoulder pat, saying,
“Don’t try to visit until I’ve finished my anvil chorus. On Caleb’s recommendation I had a firm do things for me—gaze at the fiasco. It is terribly disquieting to leave one’s place as one likes it and return to find it the back parlor of a flourishing merchant!”
“Oh, but it doesn’t look so!” Thurley defended. “That fire screen is a joy.”
“It may as well be put away,” Ernestine told the maid. “There’ll be a charity kettle-drum soon enough and I’ll have to donate something for the raffle. That will do nicely. Every one wants things one has worn or used—I’ve a notion the next time to send my last quarter’s telephone directory—I don’t doubt but what it would actually be bid for ... there, Agnes, get hold of the firm early in the morning and don’t call me. You know what is wrong and I cannot personally stand a battle with interior decorators. Come inside, Thurley; take off your green riding-hood cloak and let me see you.Ah, lovely, lovely!” she caressed the gown as Thurley would have wished to be caressed herself. “Why, you have promoted yourself famously—the hair is charming, not a hint of Birge’s Corners left! Nice child, how proud we shall all be—go ’way, Silver Heels, I’ve a new playmate—shall we stay in my room and pray heaven no one interrupts us? I ordered black coffee and crullers so we can be extra wild. Tell me all you have seen and done.”
Ernestine threw herself on a chaise longue gracefully—she had a perfect way of doing everything. Caleb had declared her to be the only woman who could really look fetching while done up in curl papers! As she lay there in her negligee of skillfully blended blue and gray chiffon without a hint of lace to relieve the sulky loveliness of the colors, Thurley experienced the same shyness she had that first day in Bliss Hobart’s studio.
“Did your concerts go well?” she asked.
“Do you want these cushions piled on top of you and myself acting as paperweight on top of them?” Ernestine raised herself on one thin arm. “Continuez!Why not ask if unknown admirers sent me red, red roses or if I played Chaminade for the Benevolent Newsboys’ Association when I was their honor guest—ask if I climbed Mt. McKinley or was lost in Death Valley—you disappointingmidge, your looks belie you utterly.”
“What is the popular topic?” Thurley was capable of teasing, too. “Caleb Patmore?”
Ernestine’s sallow cheeks flushed. She made a clucking noise which brought Silver Heels from under the lounge. “I hope you eat so many frosted crullers you’ll take on weight, bringing Bliss’s wrath on your impudent shoulders. I want to know about you—whom have you met?—how is the ghost-lady?—the voice of gold—whatdo you think of us now? Sorry you came?” She laughed over at Thurley in friendly fashion and the fagged artist vanished.
So Thurley, while February slush-rain beat in vain at windows and raw winds mercilessly blew, told Ernestine all that had happened from the time they said good-by in December.
“I did hate you when you wrote so about Christmas. That wasn’t fair. Why couldn’t you have let me have that last bromidic holiday?”
“My child, I cannot endure Christmas and birthday things. I can stand Valentine’s Day much easier. I don’t know—but I’m so weary playing holiday matinées and having the audience one glitter of new watches, bracelets and other trifling remembrances, of having their minds groggy from too much dinner and demanding me to play carols with tumity-tum tunes while my piano must be holly decorated. Rather prejudiced me. And birthdays are devil days since they remind me I never wanted to be born, yet some unknown law of rhythm would have it so. Here I am, earthbound in a sallow, fleshy envelope when I’d love to be cloud free to drift here, there, without restraint, creed, convention—or the greed for crullers,” helping herself to a second. “Perhaps it was rough on a new little beggar, smashing up her bandbox ideas. Never mind, I thought of you—run open the second drawer of that white chest and find the jeweller’s box—it is for you. See if you like it.”
Thurley obeyed, coming back to her chair to examine the box. “How good you are!” she said, as she came upon a little blue leather and gold faced clock not much bigger than a revenue stamp.
“A practice clock when you go on deadly tours.Tuck it in your bag as a memento and years hence you can say, ‘Ernestine Christian—rest her bones for they seldom rested when I knew her—gave it to me in my salad days.’ One can always use such trifles. That reminds me, I have a beaver jacket Polly may be induced to accept; write ‘Polly—jacket’ on that pad so I’ll remember. I’ll hunt her up to-morrow. Caleb says she has been doing supe work in the movies; tough luck for any one but Polly. But I’ve no doubt she fancies it gains inspiration for her for the America opera.
“So! Bliss says a nice word occasionally and you like Sam Sparling—one of God’s own, Thurley—nowhebelieves in Santa Claus. And you think Collin Patmore’s pictures superb? Wait until you see his house—Parva Sed Apta he has named it—and his garden! There is a fierce rivalry between Collin’s garden and Caleb’s and likewise their houses. Collin dubs his a château and I think Caleb claims his is a really true lodge! Funny boys! We’ll go up there in the summer and see for ourselves. Oh, yes, Thurley, tell me about Miss Clergy! I want to ask her if I may take you abroad this summer; three months across would do wonders for you. Bliss mentioned it before I went away. I want to see your eyes the first time you gaze at the Alhambra in the moonlight. We’ll give Italy half our time, a few weeks in Paris and six days in London. You’ll return not knowing yourself.”
“But the money? When, oh, when can I earn?” Thurley asked in distress.
“Don’t bother about money; just let me tell you what to pack and what to leave behind. Collin goes to sketch near Barcelona and we may take the same steamer over—wouldn’t that be a lark? Collin is the nicest courier I know, besides being the greatest portrait painter. Isuppose he will give his next season’s subjects Spanish coloring and a red rose just tumbling off their left ear à la Carmen. One year he did Russia and I vow every western society woman he painted had the mysterious air of stilettos concealed in fans and poisoned cigarettes that Moscow alone can impart. He’ll run out of countries by and by, as France, Italy and England are old stories.”
“Can’t he paint people just as they are?”
“That’s the trouble. He would if he was not careful to have a supply of ‘atmosphere’ to shoot into muddy complexions and wriggling noses and to blur softly over deep-seated moles and other excess facial baggage. I am the only woman he ever painted without thought for future commissions.”
“Did he ever paint Mr. Hobart?” she wondered if she betrayed a blush.
“Haven’t you seen? But, then, you’ve never been at Parva Sed Apta. It was Bliss’s portrait that gave Collin his sudden rise. When you look at it, you will understand.” Ernestine fell to telling of Sam Sparling’s early stage days and her own début when she actually had worn white net with pearls, following by a dissertation on Polly’s angelic stubbornness and hopelessness and on how she planned to snub Caleb if he wrote a sequel to “Victorious Victoria” and advice about the attitude Thurley had best take towards her future associates at the opera house.
“Won’t we be terribly intimate?” she asked in surprise.
“Dear, no! Oh, you’ll have pictures taken together in loving attitudes, go to parties and all that—send each other flowers at proper times. But you’ll never be like the ‘family’ towards each other and, when you areolder, you will realize the singular honor it has been to become one of the family so readily. You may loathe the tenor who singsRomeoto yourJulietand the woman who is leading contralto may be a deadly enemy—but that matters nothing. You sing your rôle and leave it and your art personality behind in your dressing-room. You will find that the others also have their own affairs, interests and opinions. They are not keen for the advent of a new, charmingdivaof whom they are certain to be jealous and angry of success so swiftly, easily achieved. You are a musical phenomenon, Thurley, and, as there are not many in any one generation, you must be guided accordingly.”
“Please tell me how the ‘family’ started.” Thurley had not yet reached the stage where talking of herself and her accomplishments was of keen interest.
“It was Bliss’s idea,” Ernestine paused as if undecided how much to tell. “He is a rare soul—the jewel in the toad’s head, we call him. But he wears an armor of worldly practicability and cynicism; he must be very sure of one before he lets one know the real man.... Some years ago, when his opinions were just beginning to find favor, he met Sam Sparling and they had a fearful row—terrific—Sam said Bliss Hobart was all sorts of a fool and, after they had it out, they found that each meant the same thing when you sifted it down to the makings. So they were comrades. They were together quite a lot because Sam had him put on plays and then Sam went to London and Bliss into the opera and music field.” Here she paused again. “Anyway, they had really started the family—and when Bliss had a letter from Sam about Collin Hedley, an American starving in London, whom Sam was sending back to New York to paint Bliss’s portrait, he prepared to welcome this Collinas a brother, and so he did. The great picture was painted and Collin was made. Now Collin and Caleb came from the same little Middle West town and, lo and behold, up turns Caleb fresh from a fifteen-dollar-a-week newspaper job and keen as mustard for writing ‘big stuff.’ Inspired by Bliss’s picture and by Bliss and the whole outlay of atmosphere into which they led him, Caleb wrote his first best seller—it had heart in it, too—and although Bliss and Collin wanted to duck him in the rain barrel for degrading his talent, they loved him for himself and he joined them. Then, enter Ernestine Christian! Now this was funny—I was playing London concerts then and I met Sam: he recited at a royal benefit at which I played. We sat out between the numbers talking about ‘what I like to eat’ and ‘what you like to eat’ and ‘what color you like best’ and ‘what color I like best’ and so on, you know, the usual procedure. And when I sailed for America I had a letter of introduction to the trio—”
Thurley finished the confession. “Then they all met and loved you in different ways.”
“Tell me how?”
“Bliss as a comrade and Collin as a big sister and Caleb as a real man loves a real woman.”
“You’ve grown up, Thurley,” was Ernestine’s comment. “But I must tell you that little Polly was added quite unexpectedly. She was posing as a sprite for Collin; you know Collin does children’s portraits with pastel backgrounds of favorite fairy tales, half indistinct—very good idea and quite the rage. Polly is an ideal sprite, brownie or gnome model and Collin had run across her by accident. The first morning she posed she fainted dead away—slam bang—on the floor, and it was a real faint because she hadn’t had a square meal in two days,just samples of cereals and Hudson River elixir. They discovered her fierce pride and her tragic ambition and her adorable self, so she has been our Polly ever since—”
“Loving Collin—”
“Loving Collin, woman of the world,” repeated Ernestine. “Then Polly blew in one night in her audacious fashion accompanied by Mark Wirth. Now we had seen Mark dance and enjoyed him but knew him to be a will o’ the wisp person and Lissa Dagmar, who I hope stays in Paris for all time, had bewitched him and we really don’t approve of that kind of thing. Mark, however, was like the foundling in a basket, crying feebly during the stormy night, and we just could not turn him away although Lissa tried her best to make inroads into our ‘family.’ She cried and bribed and writhed because she still remained aloof from the charmed circle. And we kept Mark and made him one of us, scolding him roundly every chance we had.”
“And now I am the infant,” said Thurley slowly, “but why don’t you like Madame Dagmar?” recalling the purring voice she had once heard.
“She is impossible—a large person dressed fantastically in sort of medieval patterns; she has Titian hair and serpent green eyes, those heavy, white lids in which purplish veins spread in profusion, and a wretched voice with the unexplained phenomenon of being able to reach a tiptop note far above the range of any other soprano in the world. This one note is as soft and clear as if it were heaven-sent. It has made her a name and a fortune, the one divine sound coming as a reward for poor technique and wobbly trills. She tried opera, failed miserably, and does concert tours where people crowd to see her gowns and wait for that tree-top call. The restof the time she gives singing lessons. We call her the ‘Voice Assassin,’ and Bliss Hobart threatens to appeal to the authorities if she does not take down her shingle. Ten dollars for twenty minutes and nothing of value to the pupil save seeing and hearing what is wisest to avoid! However, like many impossible persons, she has a following, a personality—a—a—way with her. She will pet and coo over you, if Mark does not, and you had best be outwardly polite; it is wisest thus, paying no heed to her since Lissa proceeds on the principle of ‘what he thought he might require, he went and took the same as me.’ To Lissa playfulness always means experience, although the other fellow may not know it! And then—”
“Madame Dagmar, Mr. Mark Wirth,” the maid announced.
Ernestine sank back among the cushions, groaning. “I cannot be a low order of animal life and refuse to see her—she has just returned from Paris, I presume ... oh, Thurley, help me up! Say we’ll be in,” she told the maid, staggering to her feet with an exaggerated gesture.
Surpressing a very genuine giggle, Thurley followed Ernestine into the drawing room where they met an effusive person wearing a hat which expressed all the best ideas of the Wright brothers and a gown of shimmering mauve with gaudy peacock embroideries.
“My sweet children,” Lissa began in her cloying voice, “to think I find you both here ... and this is Thurley? What a dear! I know all about you, because Mr. Hobart speaks of no one else with the same enthusiasm. Of course I never hope to be called in as a consulting teacher—dear no,” here she gave a snarly little laugh, “I’m considered a real villainness by certain persons. But I shall be fairy godmother anyway—therealways is an unasked fairy at the christening, you remember! This is Mark Wirth—” a sweep of her white, jewelled hand intimated the handsome chap with burnished gold hair and eyes as blue as Thurley’s. Two things about Mark saved him from being merely an Adonis—his long forehead, the forehead of a man who often complains of being persecuted because of his tenacity to prove his point, and the astute expression of his eyes.
“Sit down, every one. I am just back from tour myself—well, what are your hopes and fears?”
Ernestine let Lissa take the center of the stage.
“Mark isn’t going on tour, I can’t spare him,” here another snarly laugh. Thurley fancied Mark Wirth flushed with annoyance.
“Oh, Mark, when you have such bully chances!” Ernestine protested.
“I can stay in town as well—do let’s talk of some one else,” he said.
“I want Mark to stop Grecian dancing, there is no definite future in it now débutantes have taken it up”—her artificially shaped eyebrows lifting as a danger signal—“and make a specialty of ballroom dancing—”
Ernestine held up her hand. “God forbid,” she said reverently. “I saw Mark dance in the Harvard Stadium—please let him continue to use his brains as well as his feet.”
“There’s room for a difference of opinion. For myself, my classes promise to be large this season—and I’ve wonderful frocks. I’ve reopened the Hotel Particular and tried to get Collin or Caleb on the ’phone but their men say they are not about. I only saw Bliss by accident,” she gave a side glance at Thurley, “it was then I learned about you!”
“Is the Hotel Particular as smart as ever?” Ernestine hastened to ask.
“I’ve had no end of things done to it. Come and see. Which you never do. Isn’t it strange, Miss Precore, I pay five calls to this person’s begrudged one?” and Lissa smiled in her most disagreeable fashion.
Ernestine tried to smooth over the accusation by praising Lissa’s frock.
“Mark played rouge-et-noir at Monte Carlo and I won a winter’s wardrobe,” Lissa boasted.
Ernestine rose and ordered fresh coffee. She was embarrassed that Thurley must meet the first real scandal in her house, not but what she would and must meet many such and not that it shocked Ernestine for she had always been indifferent to such situations. But latent motherhood pricked through the armor of indifference. She began in an extremely spirited manner to talk of things to which the answers could be anything but personal. She directly engaged Lissa in conversation, leaving Mark free to drift over towards Thurley. Within a few moments they began laughing over some nonsense, to Lissa’s annoyance, in the same spirit with which Thurley and Dan had one time laughed—at least two lifetimes ago!
Mark sat on a straddle chair before her to admire her wild-rose coloring, contrasting it with Lissa’s well rouged cheek. He liked Thurley’s green frock which brought out the whiteness of her skin and the glorious, deep sea eyes, purple in the winter’s afternoon light. Presently this embryo prima donna and the famous dancer, who for the time being mistook shadow for substance, found themselves discussing juvenile sports which both really had rebelled at leaving behind.
“You skate? So do I—let’s go incog—I’ll weara mustache—there is certain to be a crowd if we’re known,” Lissa heard Mark saying.
“ ... and in summer I can play five sets of tennis—and dance half the night,” Thurley made answer.
“Splendid—Collin has a wonderful court, I want to take you up there—”
Lissa’s pink lips were thin and shrewd. “Come, dear,” she said to Mark in her softest voice, “the little girl will be hoarse to-morrow if you keep her chattering like a magpie.”
And Thurley, as Ernestine told Hobart afterwards, sank in her first feminine harpoon! She rose as obediently as if she were but half her age, saying,
“We can plan about it later, yourauntis calling you!”
After which Lissa, snarls and purrs all in one, and Mark more confused and brief in his farewells than Ernestine had ever seen him, made an inharmonious exit. And Ernestine kissed Thurley and twirled her about, saying, “Oh beautiful—beautiful—beautiful!”
Like all clever women who have met defeat often enough to escape it in the future, Lissa realized the best way to vanquish an enemy was to know her intimately. Therefore, she invited Thurley to dinner at the Hotel Particular. The pink card looked very innocent as Thurley read in Lissa’s exaggerated handwriting,
“I’ve asked no one else, dear child, because I want really to know you. And I shall not take no for an answer—I’ll come and get you if you don’t appear at the stroke of seven.”
Thurley showed the card to Bliss Hobart before they began their lesson, watching his brows draw together in quick alarm and then lift cynically. He threw it aside with an annoyed gesture.
“I don’t like Lissa’s trying to bag my game, but you’ll have to go, I suppose, and be done with it. Please don’t absorb any of her silly notions. You’ve been brought up so far as any nice child would be and you are not spoiled. You could be very easily spoiled, Thurley, and a frightful person if you were. Some persons have single- and some multiple-compartment minds. That is why a single-compartment-minded person may have a tragic experience and it proves the end of him, whereas a multiple-compartment-minded person emerges unscathed, to all appearances, only a part of him harmed. The single-compartment-minded person can comprehend but one viewpoint, good or bad, one aim, believe in but one result—if it is good, all is well—if it is bad—disaster,hopeless and lasting. You have forgotten Birge’s Corners too quickly, Thurley, to make me fear you are of the single-compartment variety. But, please, take everything Lissa says with a large punctuation of mental salt and try to wastebasket her entire influence.”
Thurley laughed. “What I planned to do, for I do not like her and I do like Mark Wirth. Yet she interests me. Besides, I must know some bad people!”
Hobart shook his head. “If only you never need to—heigho, here we go, talking against time—”
“Tell me, does Mark Wirth really love her?” Thurley insisted. She had grown to feel more at home with Hobart than she had fancied could occur; even during his abrupt, aloof moments she sensed the gentler part of him as being merely sidetracked for the time being.
“Mark,” said Hobart as he sat at the piano, “is a case of the old warning, ‘Vices first abhorred, next endured, last embraced.’ That is why I beg you to make your visits to the Hotel Particular far between and few.”
“But sometime he will love some one and then he’ll find himself,” Thurley concluded. “Can he go on dancing attendance on a silly old woman who wants him to sacrifice his art to be a professional ballroom dancer?”
“You are here for a singing lesson,” Hobart tried to argue, “but, as you are on the subject, suppose you suggest that thought to Mark, if you ever have a moment alone with him. Don’t tell him if there is a door ajar—unless you look into the next room first. Lissa is the eternal vigilante when it comes to Mark. Bah, it is all bad tasting, let’s sing some ballads to get the very idea out of our heads.” He began, “Hark, hark, the lark” which Thurley sang—and as she sang it to him, she did it exquisitely.
As she finished, he asked, “You and Lady Sensible are good pals, are you not?”
“You mean Ernestine? Oh, yes, I love her,” Thurley began rapturously, “even when she is at her meanest.”
“Bravo! I will tell you something. Lady Sensible is a great artist, none greater in her way, but if she would buy Christmas presents for cross singing teachers and halfway cry when she thought cross teachers had bought nothing for her, if she would be unbecomingly rosy when she took tea with a certain old actor and jump right up and down and say, ‘Oh—Oh!’ when she saw Collin’s latest portrait, also sitting up half the night to read that rascal Caleb’s latest novel, although she knows it to be worthless—I think Lady Sensible could play lullabies that would give women the patience of eternity and girls the thrill of expectant motherhood and inspire men on to the heights. Don’t tell her I say this for I have already tried to argue it out with her, but she fights me back with her desiccated logic! But, Thurley, do you keep your childish appreciation of things and that adorable intuition—then all the world will go a-hunting laurel wreaths for you!”
He bent and kissed her forehead, pushing her away from him and concluding, “Off with you—I warrant you haven’t opened a French book to-day. And you have actually made me sentimental! But when you are both a real artist and a real girl, I shall tell you a wonderful secret—now, am I such a tyrant?” He waved his hand at her until she unwillingly disappeared.
Outside the door Thurley began to smile and the secretary and stenographer caught its contagion and smiled at each other as Thurley passed ahead. The elevator man and the doorman both felt unquestionably chirked up asshe gazed at them. Every regret or loneliness or jealous thought concerning the Corners had vanished. She felt sacred, set apart from every one and she would only share the reason with a lapis lazuli idol with a painted gold mouth and very twinkling diamond eyes!
Thurley’s visit to the Hotel Particular, Lissa’s box of a place, left her with the belief there never was any end to surprises. She had worn a white silk dress, falling straight from the shoulders, flattering herself that for a dinner with a middle-aged singing teacher she was properly costumed.
But when she came into the house, she saw her error. For here she encountered elegance at home. The drawing-room had the intimate charm of a French salon with its old ivory and dull blue brocaded hangings. The furniture was painted peacock blue and covered with rose taffeta with a silver sheen and a solemn, stuffed parrot on a gaily painted stand looked at her in cynical amusement.
All about the room, which was oppressively perfumed as well, were numerous photographs of Lissa taken at various ages and of handsome men, young, old, middle-aged and all of them autographed with superlative sentiments to, “Lissa Dearest” or “Dear Girl Lissa” or “Adorable Madame Dagmar”! During her moment of waiting Thurley tiptoed about to read the inscriptions.
There were several of Mark of decidedly more recent date, some in his dancing attire and others in evening dress; these were inscribed, “To Lissa, Best Pal Ever,” and in corresponding vein and as Thurley’s blue eyes stared at the firm writing, she wondered if it was right for a man with such a mind as Mark’s merely to dancethrough life and leave a trail of battered hearts behind him!
There was a lack of books in the room or trifles indicating pronounced tastes in any subject. The truth was that the only battles of life which Lissa considered were worth fighting were those against her double chin and, beyond handsome editions bound to match handsome sofa pillows, she gave no thought to the printed page.
Even the piano seemed displeasing in its peacock blue frame with leopard skin rugs spread fantastically before the blue and gold bench. Thurley read the titles of the music on the rack. She had a suspicion she would find cloying, East Indian love songs or French chansons with smallraison d’être, and she was smiling at having been so utterly correct when Lissa swept into the room in a striking cherry red velvet with a complete armor of jet jewelry, saying in affected fashion,
“What is the little one thinking about? Do you like those songs? Or don’t they let you have a go at them? I imagine your layout is as heavy as a boiled English pudding!”
Rather confused, Thurley nodded.
“How larky to have you alone! I suppose you had to steal away to me.” She stroked Thurley’s cheek and the girl winced under the soft, sure touch, too practised, suggestive of a claw beneath the velvety fingers.
“It is so pleasant to come, Madame Dagmar—”
“Madame? Lissa! I insist! Why, I’m not your grandmother, silly sweet, years do not matter in our world! What have those disgruntled persons tried to tell you?”
A gong sounded the dinner hour and Lissa led her into a fantastic dining-room where a table groaned under unwholesome goodies.
“Don’t mention banting,” Lissa said, sitting down unceremoniously, reaching for anchovies and caviar. “I adore eating. I don’t believe in denying oneself any of the good things of life. Come, Thurley, pretend you are at home, wherever that is, and have a schoolgirl feast of it. The desserts will be poor because cook is so involved in a breach of promise suit.” With small regard for etiquette, Lissa was “wading in,” as Dan Birge would have said.
Thurley contrasted it with the “family” dinner parties where food was merely the medium of their getting together; where every one talked first and ate last. Not so with Lissa; she had a quick, untidy way of swallowing her food and talking while she did so; she spotted her bodice in revolting fashion, dabbing at the stain with her napkin and saying she ought to be sent to bed!
In fact, Lissa had little time to talk to Thurley until the café noir was served in the salon. Then, uncomfortable from the six-course dinner to which she had done full justice, now dipping into a box of puffy chocolates with nut centers and taking absinthe with practised sips, she turned her rather fleshy face towards Thurley and remarked,
“You know, the only way I remember places in Europe is by the things we had to eat at them! Take Stratford-on-Avon, for instance, I always appear animated when it is mentioned, but not because of the Hathaway woman or Bill Shakespeare, but the wonderful gooseberry tarts ... then Rome—what cheese! And Moscow—with its caviar and cordials—and Amsterdam with boiled beef and a delectable shrimp sauce,” she halfway closed her eyes as she sipped the rest of her absinthe and rebuked Thurley for refusing it.
“Perhaps you smoke?” she suggested. “My throatwon’t stand for it and I take sweets as a consolation.”
“No, thank you—at least not yet.” Thurley wondered if she would ever cease meeting famous persons and going to wonderful houses where she had an entirely new scheme of life handed to her stamped with a seal of approval!
“Do have a chocolate,” Lissa pressed them on Thurley. She had a sort of, “May I—oh,mayI?” air which Dickens’ Mr. Pumblechook possessed when asking for the pleasure of merely shaking hands.
Thurley took one but laid it aside. “Mr. Hobart forbids it,” she said.
Lissa made a little moue. “The world does not obey Bliss Hobart, even if it does consult him. For my part, we are cordial enemies, both knowing the other’s weak points. After all, Bliss was never cut out for anything more extraordinary than a first husband. But of course he will never marry,” the green eyes watching Thurley carefully.
“Why not?” Thurley was unconscious of her betrayal.
Lissa gave a contented purr; she would have something to tell Mark! “Because, although no one really knows much about it, he disappears very mysteriously every summer for weeks at a time. He cannot be reached by letter or telegraph, I’ve heard, and of course, in this day and age, as in any other, he does not go alone.”
“Not—not that sort of thing,” Thurley was too angry to conceal the fact.
“Why not? Every one knows that Bliss Hobart, whose mother was an Italian and father an American, was born and brought up in Italy where he acquired the romantic tendencies of that land. Some say he sang well when he was twenty, but something happened andhe had a fever which took his voice and turned his hair gray and then he came to America where he has been a clever but presuming person with the aroma of mystery to make him all the more enticing. You will find out, Thurley; wait until he vanishes around the first of June.”
“Of course the family knows where he goes.” Thurley spoke the name before she thought; it brought sharp, black lights into the green eyes.
“That ridiculous family, so reserved and exclusive, they bore me! Well, not even being the family skeleton, I can’t say, but I fancy they know little. Now you take such a conceited, haughty person as Ernestine Christian or that stupid Caleb or Collin with his childish, impossible manners or that queer little wisp—Polly something—”
“But you forget I am the baby of the family,” Thurley reminded.
“A thousand pardons. My dear, I did not mean to offend. Of course I have my own circle, too. I am welcome in the best homes in France and England and I am always being taken for a marquise. I have my own theories about art and quite as much of a clientele as these fossils you have been bundled into without a warning. Don’t let them monopolize you with their nunnish, strange ideas—so utterly loveless—”
“But I have promised never to marry,” Thurley interrupted.
Lissa laughed. “Artists seldom have the hen spirit! For myself, I am always more interested in a second wedding than a first, and if the first is only to tell you what to avoid in the second, why have the first?”
“But—” began Thurley rather helplessly.
“For a second wedding I always see myself in a gownof gold brocade and a blond veil, both guiltless of trimming.” Lissa’s eyes strayed toward a photograph of Mark which stood on a nearby gilt table.
“But—it isn’t right, you know, to—” Thurley was naught but a huge gaucherie.
Lissa threw back her head to laugh, her plump white chin quivering after the soft sound ceased. Absinthe brought about freedom of speech—and liberty for all! “A fig for man-made laws! Don’t you know laws are made for the mass? Are you one of them? You know you are not or you would not have a fairybook life, coming to New York to be trained by Bliss Hobart! You may not know it as well as I, but I tell you this much—I would not ask you to dinner if you were merely one of the mass. Count me snobbish, if you like, you’ll be the same. None of us have time for any one who does not make it worth our while. I was careful to find out about you before I wrote you the note—and when you are very famous, perhaps you’ll write a ‘recommend’ card for me or let me polish off a song or two; even Bliss admits I can coach!”
She went to a table to find an album, beckoning to Thurley to join her. “See—here and here—and this one—aren’t they as famous as your family? Look at this photo and that autograph, well, what did I tell you? Don’t become lop-sided, Thurley, or change into a crabbed spinster. Live and let love come to you—you are a genius, a super-creature—you have the right to love as you please!”
“You do believe so?” Thurley fairly whispered the words. She fancied she had so stolidly locked away love from her wild-rose heart!
“I know so! The greatest artists have always been exceptions to the rule, never meek slaves of the law.”In a clever, vivacious manner, Lissa proceeded to tell risque stories of this actor and that singer, the pianist who loved and hated all in a month and loved and hated again before another fortnight passed, the artist’s model who became morganatic queen of a small Balkan kingdom and threw aside her rank to join her worthless, gypsy lover, dancers who did so and so, the poet and novelist who had never spoken the word constancy and whose works the humdrum, constant world accepted with reverent unquestioning!
As she stood there in her flaring red velvet gown, the clever lamplight showing the beauty of her hair, perfume addling Thurley’s brain, the purring, soft voice never ceasing and the green eyes smiling fixedly, Thurley began to wonder if it would not be well to be friends with Lissa, despite Hobart and Ernestine, to know the other side of the art world—all its phases and possibilities—for had she not a multiple-compartment mind?
After a little, Lissa drew her to her and they walked to a tête-à-tête and sat there, Lissa drinking absinthe and Thurley hearing more strange, wicked but fascinating things all of which might become realities for herself and still keep the letter of her vow to Abigail Clergy.
“The greater the artist the more unmoral he must be, not immoral, that is for the commoner—but unmoral—morals do not matter. Art is a question of light and shade, ability, press agents—so on. An artist cannot achieve if hampered by petty, binding laws and paltry promises; he must have freedom of thought and action, see—I make no pretense, Thurley, of being a Victorian matron,” she pointed to the rows of photographs all of which were of men.
“I am Lissa Dagmar and society knows and values me because I dare to be what I am. Society sends meits most precious débutantes to take lessons—and some day, you, too, Thurley, will laugh as I do at these fragile ideals the world weaves about us people who do things. The peoplewho have things to domay be nuns and monks and model married couples, but thosewho do things—wait, wait until you meet your opera associates—où, la-la,” she broke into a French street song ending with an unexpectedly high note which thrilled Thurley’s whole being.
“Oh, Lissa Dagmar,” she said, as fascinated as a country lad with the fair snake charmer, “let me come to see you again—”
Lissa leaned back in contentment. She had thrown the spell as she planned—since she had not forgotten that Thurley had called her Mark Wirth’s aunt! She was telling more of her scheme of things when Mark himself dropped in and was, for once, an unwanted guest.
“I’m awfully glad to see you,” he told Thurley. “Hobart said you would be here—so I came.” He avoided Lissa’s eyes. “He said I must bring you home because he does not like stray cab drivers and he says you’ve no car of your own. I say, Lissa, I’ve got the coast engagement and if I have my company ready by the first of April, we’ll be on our way.”
Lissa mumbled a response. Mark was looking at Thurley’s half flushed cheeks and startled eyes, the prim white gown cut high in the neck—a contrast to Lissa’s sumptuous red velvet which revealed a fifth vertebra!
“Oh, do take me home. I’ve heard such a world of new things and eaten such a goody shop that I’ll have hard work to be of any use to-morrow!” It was a relief to have Mark appear; there was a hint of the boy Dan in his manner and his handsome self hoveringabout her. She looked at Lissa and enjoyed her discomfiture, wondering if when she had dissected her theories she would still believe in them or if there were not something of the sorceress about Lissa with her purring voice and velvet-like hands. Then, realizing that Mark was one of Lissa’s “pet robins,” as she named him, that he—all the old-time horror which the Corners had bestowed upon its “nice” girls rushed over her and she grew monosyllabic and preoccupied as she made ready to accept his escort.
Lissa kissed her good-night and added, “Drop in on your way home, Mark, I’ve something to tell you.”
“Oh, you want to see me to-night?” His voice was rather lack-lustre.
As the cab rolled off in the night, Lissa standing at the glass doors, a striking figure in her crimson gown, Mark said anxiously,
“What did you talk about? Lissa’s such a rattlebox when she has had absinthe!”
Thurley answered coldly, “Art,” after which Mark tried to explain his coming tour but it brought no response from Thurley. She was trying to decide three things all at once.
Did she or did she not believe Lissa’s theories? Should she have a contempt for Mark who evidently did coincide with them or should she, womanlike, flirt with him since he seemed most willing? Lastly, where did Bliss Hobart go to of a summer? Perhaps green lights showed in Thurley’s eyes as well.
But she would have been still more disillusioned had she seen Mark an hour later returning to the Hotel Particular and finding an enraged, ugly woman, harsh-voiced, red-faced, clad in a pink chiffon negligee with hideous flounces.
“You needn’t think she’ll look at you,” she began accusingly, pounding her heavy fists on the table. “She is Hobart’s prize and he is no saint, even if he does have his playtime where the neighbors can’t see him! How dare you come in here and take her home—an insult to me,” letting rage carry her to the top notch of unreason and unrestraint while Mark, sullen yet anxious to appease, was forced to watch the entire procedure. Presently he found opportunity to reply,
“I say, don’t tear it off rough! Have I neglected you or done anything without your approval? I’ve held up my best work to please you, because you want to stick in New York where you have a drag. Don’t you think that is something? But I’ll do the coast thing if it means a break,” a determined look replacing the anxious expression.
Lissa’s eyes narrowed. She saw she had overreached herself. Cleverly, she began a retreat. “Mark dear, I’m jealous! I’m not a nice young thing like Thurley—and you were a naughty bear to drop in and take her home—leave poor Lissa all aloney. Please, honey, kiss me; say you love me; you won’t go ’way out to the coast. I won’t let you. Remember all I’ve given up for you,” pointing at the photograph of an elderly, well known man of finance. “I must have love, Mark, and loyalty—such as I give the one I love.”
“Yes, but not servility—not crushing every bit of originality and decency from a chap—that girl’s eyes look you through!”
“Where would you have been if not for me?” Lissa was holding him half by force. “Who helped you when you had the fever? Who introduced you to Newport, who—”
Mark threw off her arm roughly. “Stop! SometimesI wish you’d let me find my own gait in my own way—maybe it wouldn’t be dancing—”
Lissa burst into effective sobs. “Don’t say you want to be a horrid old lawyer or sawbones! Why is it so many wonderful men have loved me, yet I give my heart to a sulky boy that cannot appreciate what it means—why is it?” she demanded of the empty absinthe glass.
Mark almost laughed. “I’ll play fair,” he said doggedly, “but I do the coast tour in April.”
“You’ll grow away from me—”
“Which might be a good thing. I thought you didn’t want constancy, did you tell Thurley so—try to make her see your death-in-life stuff?”
“You’ve been drinking!”
“No, you’ve been drinking and I’ve been thinking. You know, Lissa, it’s well enough to play off a few weeks of nonsense abroad; something about Monaco and Florence get into your blood. But, after all, a fellow must think ahead and so ought a woman. I want to be the soap-and-water-washed sort I was. Makes me wish I hadn’t danced a step—had a hammer-toe or a club-foot so I couldn’t!”
“You’ve been talking to Bliss,” she said sharply.
“He does jerk me up now and then.”
Lissa threw back her head and closed her eyes. “Have I wasted the finest love of my live on a cad?” she asked of some unseen presence. “Have I told my secrets, the secrets of my inner shrine—”
“Not inner shrine,” Mark could not refrain from adding, “inner shrink!”
Lissa sprang to her feet. “You young idiot,” she said between set teeth, “you know I’ll not let you go until I’m ready to—I never do—I’ll show the whole pack of prudes that I can beat their game—”
Then the cad in the boy, which is in every boy, came to the surface and battled for supremacy in his handsome face right and wrong; he smiled in smug fashion symbolic of the fact that he had passed up the struggle.
“Maybe I’ve just wanted to see how you cared,” he suggested. “Got any more of that stuff to drink?” He sat on the tête-à-tête and, waiting until she poured it out, let him celebrate the defeat of his better half. “My word, Thurley has a long road to go!”