IV
Ihaveseen her—and I don’t wonder!
It was on Tuesday evening just as the dusk was falling. I had come home from a walk, and as I climbed the first narrow stair I saw in the hall above me, a woman standing under the gas, reading a letter. I caught her in silhouette, a black form, very tall and broadening out into a wide hat, but even that way, without feature or detail, arresting. Then, as she heard me, she stepped back so that the light fell on her. I knew at once it was Miss Harris, tried not to stare, and couldn’t help it.
She is really remarkably good-looking—an oval-faced, dark-eyed woman, with black hair growing low on her forehead and waving backward over her ears. Either the size of the hat, or her earrings (they were long and green), or a collarless effect about the neck, gave her a picturesque, unconventional air. The stage was written large all over her. When I got close I saw details, that she had beautifully curly lips—most people’s come together in astraight line like a box and its lid—and a fine nose, just in the right proportion to the rest of her face. Also she wore a gray fur coat, unfastened, and something in her appearance suggested a hurried dressing, things flung on.
She looked up from the letter and eyed me with frank interest. I approached embarrassed. A secret desire to have all people like me is one of my besetting weaknesses. I am slavish to servants and feel grateful when salesladies condescend to address me while waiting for change. The fear that Betty would find it out could not make me pass Miss Harris without a word. So I timidly smiled—a deprecating, apologetic smile, a smile held in bondage by the memory of Mrs. Ferguson.
Miss Harris returned it brilliantly. Her face suddenly bore the expression of one who greets a cherished friend. She moved toward me radiating welcome.
“You’re on the third floor,” she said in a rich voice, “Mrs. Harmon Drake.”
I saw a hand extended and felt mine enclosed in a grasp that matched the smile and manner. Miss Harris towered over me—she must be nearly six feet high—and I felt myself growing smaller andpaler than the Lord intended me to be before that exuberantly beaming presence. My hand was like a little bundle of cold sticks in her enfolding grip. I backed against the banisters and tried to pull it away, but Miss Harris held it and beamed.
“I’ve read your name on your door every time I’ve passed,” she said, “and I’ve hoped you’d some day open the door and find me standing there and ask me to come in.”
I could see Betty’s head nodding at me, I could hear her grim “I told you so.”
I made polite murmurs and pressed closer to the banister.
“But the door was never opened,” said Miss Harris, bending to look into my face with an almost tender reproach. I felt I was visibly shrinking, and that the upward gaze I fastened on her was one of pleading. Unless she let go my hand and ceased to be so oppressively gracious I would diminish to a heap upon the floor.
“Never mind,” she went on, “now I know you I’ll not stand outside any more.”
I jerked my hand away and made a flank movement for the stairs. Five minutes more and she would be coming up and taking supper with me.She did not appear to notice my desire for flight, but continued talking to me as I ascended.
“We’re the only two women in the upper part of this house. Do I chaperon you, or do you chaperon me?”
I spoke over the banisters and my tone was cold.
“Being a married woman, I suppose I’m the natural chaperon.”
The coldness glanced off her imperturbable good humor:
“You never can tell. These little quiet married women—”
I frowned. The changed expression stopped her and then she laughed.
“Don’t be offended. You must never mind what I say. I’m not half so interesting if I stop and think.”
I looked down at her and was weak enough to smile. Her face was so unlike her words, so serenely fine, almost noble.
“That’s right, smile,” she cried gaily. “You’ll get used to me when you know me better. And you’re going to do that, Mrs. Drake, for I warn you now, we’ll soon be friends.”
Before I could answer she had turned and run down the stairs to the street.
I let myself into the sitting-room and took off my things. I have neat old-maidish ways, cultivated by years of small quarters. Before I can sit with an easy conscience I have to put away wraps, take off shoes, pull down blinds and light lamps. When I had done this I sat before the register and thought of Miss Harris.
There was something very unusual about her—something more than her looks. She has a challenging quality; maybe it’s magnetism, but whatever it is that’s what makes people notice her and speak of her. Nevertheless, she was notde notre monde—I apologize for the phrase which has always seemed to me the summit of snobbery, but I can’t think of a better one. It was not that she was common—that didn’t fit her at all—unsensitive would be a fairer word. I felt that very strongly, and I felt that it might be a concomitant of a sort of crude power. She didn’t notice my reluctance at all, or I had a fancy that she might have noticed it and didn’t care.
I was sitting thus when Mrs. Bushey came bounding ebulliently in. Mrs. Bushey bounds in quite often, after physical culture, or when the evenings in the other house pall. She wore a red dress undera long fur-lined coat and stopped in pained amaze when she saw me crouched over the register.
“Cold!” she cried aghast, “don’t tell me you haven’t enough heat?”
It was just what I intended telling her, but when I saw her consternation I weakened.
“Itisa little chilly this evening,” I faltered, “but perhaps—”
Mrs. Bushey cut me short by falling into the Morris chair as one become limp from an unexpected blow.
“What am I to do?” she wailed, looking up at the chandelier as though she expected an answer to drop on her from the globes. “I’ve just got four tons of the best coal and a new furnace man. I pay him double what any one else on the block pays—double—and here you arecold.”
I felt as if I was doing Mrs. Bushey a personal wrong—insulting her as a landlady and a woman—and exclaimed earnestly, quite forgetting the night Roger and I had frozen in concert.
“Only this evening, Mrs. Bushey, I assure you.”
But she was too perturbed to listen:
“And I try so hard—I don’t make a cent anddon’t expect to. I want you all to be comfortable, no matter how far behind I get. That’s my way—but I’ve always been a fool. Oh, dear!” She let her troubled gaze wander over the room— “Isn’t that a beautiful mirror? It came from the Trianon, belonged to Marie Antoinette. I took it out of my room and put it in here for you. WhatshallI do with that furnace man?”
I found myself telling her that an arctic temperature was exactly to my taste, and making a mental resolution that next time Roger came he could keep on his overcoat, and after all, spring was only six months off.
“No,” said Mrs. Bushey firmly, “I’ll have it right if I go to the poorhouse, and that’s where I’m headed. I had a carpenter’s bill to-day—twenty-six dollars and fourteen cents—and I’ve only eleven in the bank. It was for your floor”—she looked over it—“I really didn’t need to have it fixed, it’s not customary, but I was determined I’d give you a good floor no matter what it cost.”
I was just about suggesting that the carpenter’s bill be added to my next month’s rent when she brightened up and said an Italian count had taken the front room on the floor above.
“Count Mario Delcati, one of the very finest families of Milan. A charming young fellow, charming, with those gallant foreign manners. He’s coming here to learn business, American methods. I’m asking him nothing—a young man in a strange country. How could I? And though his family’s wealthy they’re giving him a mere pittance to live on. Of course I won’t make anything by it, I don’t expect to. His room’s got hardly any chairs in it, and I can’t buy any new ones with that carpenter’s bill hanging over me.” She smoothed the arm of the Morris chair and then looked at the floor. “It’s really made your floor look like parquet.”
I agreed, though I hadn’t thought of it before.
“You have a good many chairs in this room,” she went on, “more than usually go in a furnished apartment, even in the most expensive hotels.”
I had two chairs and a sofa. Mrs. Bushey rose and drew together her fur-lined coat.
“It’s horrible to think of that boy with only one chair,” she murmured, “far from his home, too. Of course I’d give him any I had, but mine are all gone. I’d give the teeth out of my head if anybody wanted them. It’s not in my nature to keep things for myself when other people ought to have them.”
I gave up the Morris chair. Mrs. Bushey was gushingly grateful.
“I’ll tell him it was yours and how willingly you gave it up,” she said, moving toward the door. Then she stopped suddenly and looked at the center-table lamp. “He’s a great reader, he tells me—French fiction. He ought to have a lamp and there’s not one to spare in either house.”
She looked encouragingly at me. I wanted the lamp.
“Can’t he read by the gas?” I pleaded.
“My dear,” said Mrs. Bushey, with a reproving look, “canyouread by the gas?”
Conquered by her irrefutable argument, I surrendered the lamp. She was again grateful.
“It’s so agreeable, dealing with the right sort of people,” she said, fastening the last button of her coat. “All the others in the house are so selfish—wouldn’t give up anything. But one doesn’t have to ask you. You offer it at once.”
The count arrived yesterday afternoon, and we are now fast friends. Our meeting fell out thus:— I was reading and heard a sound of footsteps on the stairs, footsteps going up and down, prowling restless footsteps to which I paid no attention, as theygo on most of the time. Presently there was a knock at my door and that, too, was a common happening, as most things and people destined for our house find refuge at my portal—intending lodgers for Mrs. Bushey, the seedy man who has a bill for Mr. Hamilton, the laundress with Mr. Hazard’s wash, the artist who is searching for Miss Bliss and has forgotten the address, the telegraph boy with everybody’s telegrams, the postman with the special deliveries, and Miss Harris’ purchases at the department stores.
I called, “Come in,” and the door opened, displaying a thin, brown, dapper young man in a fur-lined overcoat and a silk hat worn back from his forehead. He had a smooth dark skin, a dash of hair on his upper lip, and eyes so black in the pupil and white in the eyeball that they looked as if made of enamel.
At the sight of a lady the young man took off his hat and made a deep bow. When he rose from this obeisance he was smiling pleasantly.
“I am Count Delcati,” he said.
“How do you do?” I responded, rising.
“Very well,” said the count in careful English with an accent. “I come to live here.”
“It’s a very nice place,” I answered.
“That is why I took the room,” said the count.“But now I am here I can’t get into it or find any one who will open the door.”
He was locked out. Mrs. Bushey was absent imparting the mysteries of physical culture and Emma, the maid, was not to be found. In the lower hall was a pile of luggage that might have belonged to an actress touring in repertoire, and the count could think of nothing better to do than sit on it till some one came by and rescued him. Not at all sure that he might not be a novel form of burglar, I invited him into my parlor and set him by the register to thaw out. He accepted my hospitality serenely, pushing an armchair to the heat, and asking me if I objected to his wrapping himself in my Navajo blanket.
“How fortunate that I knocked at your door,” he said, arranging the blanket. “Otherwise I should surely be froze.”
I had an engagement at the dentist’s and disappeared to put on my things. When I came back he rose quickly to his feet, the blanket draped around his shoulders.
“I am going out,” I said. “I have to—it’s the dentist’s.”
“Poor lady,” he murmured politely.
“But—but you,” I stammered; “what will you do while I’m gone?”
Holding the blanket together with one hand he made a sweeping gesture round the room with the other.
“Stay here till you come back.”
I thought of Roger or Betty chancing to drop in and looked on the ground hesitant. There was a slight pause; I raised my eyes. The count, clasping the two ends of the blanket together over his breast, was regarding me with mild attention.
“But if any of my friends come in to see me?”
“I will receive them—varrinicely,” said the count.
We looked at each other for a solemn second and then burst out laughing.
“All right,” I said. “There are the books and magazines, there are the cigarettes, the matches are in that Japanese box and that cut glass bowl is full of chocolates.”
I left him and was gone till dark. At six I came back to find the room illuminated by every gas-jet and lamp and the count still there. He had quite a glad welcoming air, as if I might have been his mother or his maiden aunt.
“You here still,” I cried in the open doorway.
He gave one of his deep deliberate bows.
“I have been varri comfortable and warm,” he designated the center table with an expressive gesture, “I read magazines, I eat candy and I smoke—yes”—he looked with a proud air into the empty box—“yes, I smokeallthe cigarettes.”
Then we went into the next house to find Mrs. Bushey.
My supper—eggs and cocoa—is cooked by me in the kitchenette. It is eaten in the dining-room or bedroom (the name of the apartment varies with the hour of the day) on one end of the table. The effect is prim and spinsterly—a tray cloth set with china and silver, a student lamp, and in the middle of the table, a small bunch of flowers. People send them sometimes and in the gaps when no one “bunches” me I buy them. To keep human every woman should have one extravagance.
I was breaking the first egg when a knock came on the door, and Miss Harris entered. She came in quickly, the gray fur coat over her arm, a bare hand clasping gloves, purse and a theater bag, all of which she cast on the divan-bed, revealing herself gowned in black velvet.
“Good evening, dearie,” she said, patting at her skirt with a preoccupied air, “would you mind doing me a service?”
I rose uneasily expectant. I should not have been surprised if she had asked for anything from one of my eggs to all my savings.
“Don’t look so frightened,” she said, and wheeled round disclosing the back of her dress gaping over lingerie effects: “Hook me up, that’s all.”
As I began the service Miss Harris stood gracefully at ease, throwing remarks over her shoulder:
“It’s a great blessing having you here, not alone for your sweet little self,” she turned her head and tried to look at me, pulling the dress out of my hands, “but because before you came I had such a tragic time with the three middle hooks.”
“What did you do?”
“Went unhooked sometimes and at others walked up and down the stairs hoping I’d find one of the inhabitants here, or a tramp, or the postman. He’s done it twice for me—a very obliging man.”
I did not approve, but did not like to say so.
“There’s an eye gone here.”
“Only one,” said Miss Harris in a tone of surprise, “I thought there were two.”
“Shall I pin it?”
“Please don’t. How could I get out a pin by myself, and I won’t wake you up at midnight.”
“But it gaps and shows your neck.”
“Then if the play’s dull, the person behind me will have something interesting to look at.”
“But really, Miss Harris—”
“My dear, good, kind friend, don’t be so proper, or do be proper about yourself if it’s your nature and you can’t help it, but don’t be about me. When I’m on the stage I’ll have to show much more than my neck, so I may as well get used to it.”
“Miss Harris!” I said in a firm cold tone, and stopped the hooking.
I caught the gleam of a humorous gray eye.
“Mrs. Drake!” She whirled round and put her hands on my shoulders and looked into my face with a sweetness that was quite bewitching. “You dear little mouse, don’t you know you’re one kind and I’m another. Both are nice kinds in their way, so don’t let’s try to mix them up.”
There is something disarmingly winning about this woman. I think for the first time in my life I have met a siren. I pulled my shoulders from thegrasp of her hands, as I felt myself pulling my spirit from the grasp of her attraction.
“I’ve not finished your dress,” I said.
She turned her back to me and gave a sigh.
“Go on, Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi,” she said, and then added: “Are you the mother of anything?”
“No,” I answered.
“Too bad,” she murmured, “you ought to be.”
I didn’t reply to that. In the moment of silence the sound of feet on the stairs was audible. They came up the passage and began the ascent of the next flight. Miss Harris started.
“That’s my man, I guess,” she said quickly and tore herself from my hands.
She ran to the door and flung it open. I could see the man’s feet and legs half-way up the stairs.
“Jack,” she cried in a joyous voice, “I’m here, in Mrs. Drake’s room. Come down;” then to me: “It’s Mr. Masters. I’m going to the theater with him.”
The feet descended and Mr. Masters came into view. He was the man Roger and I had seen in the passage.
He took Miss Harris’ proffered hand, then sent alook at me and my room that contained a subtle suggestion of rudeness, of bold and insolent intrusion. Before she could introduce us he bowed and said easily:
“Good evening, Mrs. Drake. Saw you the other night in the hall.”
I inclined my head very slightly. His manner and voice increased my original dislike. I felt that I could not talk to him and turned to Miss Harris. Something in her face struck me unpleasantly. Her look was bent upon him and her air of beaming upon the world in general was intensified by a sort of special beam—an enveloping, deeply glowing beam, such as mothers direct upon beloved children and women upon their lovers.
The door was open and Mr. Masters leaned upon the door-post.
“Nice little place you’ve got here,” he said. “Better than yours, Lizzie.”
Miss Harris withdrew her glance from him, it seemed to me with an effort, as if it clung upon him and she had to pluck it away.
“Finish me,” she said, turning abruptly to me, “I must go.”
All the especial glow for me was gone. Her eyeslit on mine vacant and unseeing. I suddenly seemed to have receded to a point on her horizon where I had no more personality than a dot on a map. I was not even a servant, simply a pair of hands that prepared her for her flight into the night with the vulgar and repulsive man. This made me hesitate, also I didn’t want to go on with the hooking while Mr. Masters leaned against the door-post with that impudently familiar air.
“If Mr. Masters will go into the passage,” I said.
He laughed good-humoredly, but did not budge. Miss Harris made a movement that might easily have degenerated into an angry stamp.
“Oh, don’t be such an old maid,” she said petulantly. “Do the collar and let me go.”
I couldn’t refuse, but I went on with the hooking with a flushed face. What a fool I had been not to take Betty’s advice. Charming as she could be when she wanted, Miss Harris was evidently not a person whose manners remained at an even level.
“Have you heard Miss Harris sing?” asked Mr. Masters.
“Yes, through the register.”
“That’s a bad conductor. You must come up and hear her in her own rooms some evening.”
“If Miss Harris wants me to.”
“Mrs. Drake will some day hear me sing in the Metropolitan,” said the lady.
“Some day,” responded Mr. Masters.
There was something in his enunciation of this single word, so acid, so impregnated with a sneering quality that I stopped my work and cast a surprised glance at him.
He met it with a slight smile.
“Our friend Lizzie here,” he said, “has dreams—what I’m beginning to think are pipe dreams.”
“Jack,” she cried with a sudden note of pleading, “you know that’s not true. YouknowI’ll some day sing there.”
“I know you want to,” he replied, then with the air of ignoring her and addressing himself exclusively to me: “Miss Harris has a good voice, I might say a fine voice. But—all here,” he spread his fingers fan-wise across his forehead and tapped on that broad expanse, “the soul, the thing that sees and feels—absent, nil,” he fluttered the spread fingers in the air.
I was astounded at his cruel frankness—all the more so as I saw it had completely dashed her spirits.
“Rubbish, I don’t believe a word of it,” I answered hotly, entirely forgetting that I was angry with her.
“Not a bit,” he returned coolly, “I’ve told her so often. A great presence, a fine mechanism,” he swept her with a gesture as if she had been a statue, “but the big thing, the heart of it all—not there. No imagination, no temperament, just a well regulated, handsomely decorated musical box. Isn’t that so, Lizzie?”
He turned from me and directly addressed her, his eyes narrowed, his face showing a faint sardonic amusement. I wondered what she was going to say—whether she would fly at him, or whether, like the woman I knew, she would hide her mortification and refuse him the satisfaction of seeing how he hurt her.
She did neither. Moving to the divan, she picked up her coat, showing me a face as dejected as that of a disappointed child. His words seemed to have stricken all the buoyancy out of her and she shrugged herself into the coat with slow fatigued movements. Bending to pick up her gloves and glasses she said somberly:
“I’ll get a soul some day.”
“We hope so,” he returned.
“He doesn’t know anything about it,” I said in an effort to console.
“Oh, doesn’t he!” she answered bitterly. “It’s his business.”
“I’m a speculator in voices,” he said, “and our handsome friend Lizzie here has been an investment that, I’m beginning to fear, won’t pay any dividends.”
He laughed and looked at her with what seemed to me a quite satanic pleasure in his tormenting.
I could think of nothing to say, bewildered by the strange pair. Miss Harris had gathered up her belongings and moved to the door with a spiritless step.
“Good night,” she said, glancing at me as if I was a chair that had temporarily supported her weight in a trying moment.
“Good night,” said Mr. Masters cheerfully. “Some day go up and hear Lizzie sing and see if you can find the soul in the sound.”
He gave a wave with his hat and followed her down the hall.
I shut the door, and am not ashamed to confess, leaned upon it listening. I wanted to hear her attackhim on the lower flight. But their footsteps died away in silence.
I cleared away my supper, sunk in deep reflections. What an extraordinary woman! One moment treating you like her bosom friend, the next oblivious of your existence, and most extraordinary of all, meekly enduring the taunts of that unspeakable man. I couldn’t account for it in any way except that she must be going to marry him—and that was a hateful thought. For if shewasrude, and had the manners of a spoiled child, there was something about her that drew you close, as if her hands had hold of yours and were pulling you softly and surely into her embrace.