V
Rogerand I went out to dinner last night, down-town to our favorite haunt in University Place.
I put on my best, a brown velveteen princesse gown (one of Betty’s made over), my brown hat with the gold rose and my amber beads. I even powdered my nose, which I was brought up to think an act of depravity only perpetrated by the lost and fallen. When I am dressed up I really do not look thirty-three. But I’ll have to buy two little rats to puff out my hair at the sides. It’s too flat under that hat. Roger was pleased when he saw me—that’s why I did it. What’s the fun of dressing for yourself? Some one must look at you admiringly and say, well, whatever it’s his nature to say. I suppose Mr. Masters would exclaim, “Gee, you’re a peach!” Roger said, “I like you in brown.”
I love going down Fifth Avenue in the dark of a winter evening. The traffic of business is over. Motors and carriages go spinning by, carrying peopleto dinners. The big glistening street is like an artery with the joyous blood of the city racing through it, coursing along with the throb, throb, throb of a deathless vitality. And the lights—the wonderful, glowing, golden lights! Two long lines of them on either side that go undulating away into the distance, and broken ones that flash by in a yellow streak, and round glaring ones like the alarmed eyes of animals rushing toward you in terror.
And I love the noise, the near-by rumble and clatter, and outside it the low continuous roar, the voice of the city booming out into the quiet of the fields and up into the silence of the skies. One great, unbroken sound made up of millions of little separate sounds, one great consolidated life made up of millions of little separate life, each of such vital importance to the one who’s living it.
We had lots to talk about, Roger and I. We always do. We might be wrecked on a desert island and go on talking for ten years without coming to the end. There are endless subjects—the books we read, the plays we see, pictures over which we argue, music of which I know nothing, and people, the most absorbing of all, probably because gossiping is a reprehensible practise. There is nothing I enjoymore. If I hadn’t been so well brought up I would be like the women in the first act ofThe School for Scandal. Sometimes we make little retrospective journeys into the past. But we do this cautiously. There are five years we neither of us care to touch on, so we talk forward by preference.
Of course I had to tell Roger of Miss Harris and Mr. Masters. It lasted through two courses.
“What a dog!” was Roger’s comment.
“Roger,” I said earnestly, “do you think she could be in love with such a man?”
Roger shrugged.
“How canItell?”
“But could any woman—any possible kind of a woman? And she’s a very possible kind. Something comes from her and finds your heart and draws it right out toward her. She couldn’t.”
“Perhaps you don’t understand this enigmatical lady.”
“Maybe I don’t understand everything about her, I’ve only known her a few days. But I can feel—it’s an instinct—that underneath where the real things are she’s true and sound.”
I can see into Roger more clearly than he knows, and I saw that he wasn’t at all interested in MissHarris. He looked round the room and said indifferently:
“Why does she have a cad like that hanging about?”
“Perhaps underneath there’s something fine in him.”
“Very far underneath, buried so deep nobody but Miss Harris can find it.”
“Roger, don’t be disagreeable. You’ve never seen either of them.”
“Evie, dear, your descriptions are very graphic. Do you know what I think?” He looked at me, smiling a little, but with grave eyes. “I think that you’re seeing Miss Harris through yourself. You’re putting your brain into her head and your heart into her body and then trying to explain her. That’s what’s making her such a puzzle.”
The waiter here produced a casserole with two squabs in it and presented it to Roger’s gaze as if it were a gift he was humbly offering. Roger looked at it and waved him away as if the gift was not satisfactory.
“They look lovely,” I called, and Roger smiled.
The squabs occupied him and my thoughts occupied me finally to find expression in a question:
“Roger, what is a gentleman?”
He looked surprised.
“A gentleman? What do you mean?”
“Just what I say—what is it?”
“You know.”
“No, I don’t. That’s just the point. There are lots of things that everybody—young people and fools—seem to understand and I don’t. One is the theory of vicarious atonement, one is why girls are educated to know nothing about marriage and children, which are the things that most concern them, and one is what makes a man a gentleman.”
Roger considered:
“Let’s see—at a blow. A gentleman is a man who observes certain rules of behavior founded on consideration for the welfare and comfort of others.”
“It sounds like the polite letter writer. Can a gentleman tell lies?”
“To benefit himself, no. To shield others, yes.”
“If he was noble inside—in his character—and uncouth outside, would he be a gentleman?”
“What do you mean by uncouth?”
“Well—wore a watch chain made of nuggets like a man I met in Dresden, and ate peas with his knife?”
“No.”
“Then, if he had beautiful manners and a bad heart, would he be one?”
“If his bad heart didn’t obtrude too much on his dealings with society, he might.”
“Is it all a question of clothes and manners?”
“No.”
“You’ve got to have besides the clothes and manners an inner instinct?”
“That’s it.”
I mused for a moment, then, looking up, caught Roger’s eye fixed on me with a quizzical gleam.
“Why this catechism?”
“I was thinking of Mr. Masters.”
“Good heavens!” said Roger crossly, his gleam suddenly extinguished. “Can’t you get away from the riff-raff in that house? I wish you’d never gone there.”
“No, I can’t. I was wondering if Mr. Masters, under that awful exterior had a fine nature, could he possibly be a gentleman?”
“Evie,” said Roger, putting down his knife and fork and looking serious, “if under that awful exterior Mr. Masters had the noble qualities of George Washington, Sir Philip Sidney and the ChevalierBayard he could no more be a gentleman than I could be king of Spain.”
“I was afraid that’s what you’d say.” I sighed and returned to my squab.
I said no more about it, but when I got home my thoughts went back to it. I hated to think of Lizzie Harris in the company of such a man. If she was lacking in judgment and worldly knowledge some one ought to supply them for her. She was alone and a stranger. Mrs. Bushey had told me she came from California, and from what I’d heard, California’s golden lads and lassies scorned the craven deference to public opinion that obtains in the effete East. But she was in the effete East, and she must conform to its standards. She probably had never given them a thought and had no initiated guide to draw them to her attention. Whatever Betty might say, I was free to be friendly with whomever I pleased. That was one of the few advantages of being a widow,déracinéeby four years in Europe. By the morning I had decided to put my age and experience at her service and this afternoon went up-stairs to begin doing it.
She was in her front room, sitting at a desk writing. A kimono of a bright blue crêpe enwrappedher, her dark hair, cloudy about the brows, was knotted loosely on the nape of her neck. She rose impulsively when she saw me, kissed me as if I was her dearest friend, then motioned me to the sofa, and went back to her place at the desk.
The room is like mine, only being in the mansard, the windows are smaller and have shelf-like sills. It was an odd place, handsome things and tawdry things side by side. In one corner stood a really beautiful cabinet of red Japanese lacquer, and beside it a three-legged wooden stool, painted white with bows of ribbon tied round each leg as if it was some kind of deformed household pet. Portions of Miss Harris’ wardrobe lay over the chairs, and the big black hat crowned the piano tool. On the window-sill, drooping and withered, stood a clump of cyclamen in a pot, wrapped in crimped green paper. Beside it was a plate of crackers and a paper bag, from whose yawning mouth a stream of oranges had run out, lodging in corners. The upright piano, its top covered with stacked music, the wintry light gleaming on its keys, stood across a rear angle of the room and gave the unkempt place an air of purpose, lent it a meaning.
It must be confessed Miss Harris did not look asif she needed assistance or advice. She was serene and debonair and the blue kimono was extravagantly becoming. I sat down upon the sofa against a pile of cushions. The bottom ones were of an astonishing hardness which obtruded through the softness of the top ones as if an eider-down quilt had been spread over a pile of bricks. I tried to look as if I hadn’t felt the bricks and smiled at Miss Harris.
“See what I’ve been doing,” she said, and handed me a sheet of note paper upon which were inscribed a list of names.
I looked over them and they recalled to my mind the heroines of G. P. R. James’ novels of which, in my teens, I had been fond.
“Suggestions for my stage name,” she explained. “How does number three strike you?”
Number three was Leonora Bronzino.
“That’s an Italian painter,” I answered.
“Is it? What a bother. Would he make a fuss?”
“He’s been dead for several hundred years.”
“Then he doesn’t matter. What do you think of number five?”
I looked up number five—Liza Bonaventura.
I murmured it, testing the sound. Miss Harriseyed me with attention, rapping gently on her teeth with the pen handle.
“Is it too long?”
I wasn’t sure.
“Of course when I got to be famous it would be just Bonaventura. And that’s a good word—might bring me luck.”
“Why don’t you use your own name?”
She laughed, throwing back her head so that I could see the inside of her mouth, pink and fresh like a healthy kitten’s.
“Lizzie Harris on a program—never!” Then suddenly serious, “I like Bonaventura—‘Did youhearBonaventura last night inTannhäuser’—strong accent on the hear. ‘How superb Bonaventura was inCarmen.’ It has a good ring. And then I’ve got a little dribble of Spanish blood in me.”
“You look Spanish.”
She nodded:
“My grandmother. She was a Spanish Californian—Estradilla. They owned the Santa Caterina Rancho near San Luis Obispo. My grandfather was a sailor on a Yankee ship that used to touch there and get hides and tallow. He deserted and marriedher and got with her a strip of the rancho as big as Long Island. And their illustrious descendant lives in two rooms and a kitchenette.”
She laughed and jumped up.
“I’m going to sing for you and you’ll see if Bonaventura doesn’t go well with my style.”
She swept the hat off the piano stool and seated herself. The walls of the room are covered with an umber brown burlap which made an admirable background for her long body clothed in the rich sinuous crêpe and her pale profile uplifted on an outstretched white neck.
“I’ll sing you something that I do rather well—Elizabeth’s going to be one of my great rôles,” she said, and struck a chord.
It wasDich Theure Halleand she sang it badly. I don’t mean that she flatted or breathed in the wrong place, but she sang without feeling, or even intelligence. Also her voice was not especially remarkable. It was full, but coarse and hard, and rolled round in the small room with the effect of some large unwieldly thing, trying to find its way out. What struck me as most curious was that the rich and noble quality one felt in her was completely lacking in her performance. It was commonplace,undistinguished. No matter how objectionable Mr. Masters might be I could not but feel he was right.
When she had finished she wheeled suddenly round on the stool and said quickly:
“Let me see your face.”
“It’s—it’s a fine voice,” I faltered, “so full and—er—rich.”
She paid no attention to my words, but sent a piercing look over my embarrassed countenance. Her own clouded and she drew back as if I had hurt her.
“You don’t like it,” she said in a low voice.
“Why do you say that—what nonsense. Haven’t I just said—”
“Oh, keep quiet,” she interrupted roughly, and giving the piano stool a jerk was twirled away from me into a profile position. She looked so gloomy that I was afraid to speak.
There was a moment’s pause, during which I felt exceedingly uncomfortable and she sat with her head bowed, staring at the floor. Then she gave a deep sigh and murmured.
“It’s so crushing—you all look the same.”
“Who?”
“Everybody who knows. And I’ve worked sohard and I’m eaten up,” she struck her breast with her clenched fist, “eaten up in here with the longing to succeed.”
The gesture was magnificent, and with the frowning brows and somber expression she was the Tragic Muse. If she could only getthatinto her voice!
“I’ve been at it two years, with Vignorol—you know him? I’ve learnt Italian and German, and nearly all the great mezzo rôles. And the polite ones say what you say, and the ones who don’t care about your feelings say ‘A good enough voice, but no temperament.’” She gave her body a vicious jerk and the stool twirled her round to me. “How in heaven’s name can I get temperament?”
“Well—er—time—and—er—experience and sorrow—” I had come up-stairs to give advice, but not on the best manner of acquiring temperament.
She cut me short.
“I’ve had experience, barrels of it. And time? I’m twenty-six now—am I to wait till I’m seventy? And sorrow? All my relations are dead—not that I care much, most of them I didn’t know and those I did I didn’t like. Shall I go and stand on the corner of Forty-second Street and Broadway and clamor for sorrow?”