XIX
Thenext morning, while I yet slept, she came knocking and rattling at my door. When I let her in she upbraided me for having it locked, unmindful of my sleepy excuses that as the street door was generally open all night it was wisdom to keep one’s apartment firmly closed.
She was in the blue kimono over her nightgown, and when I got back into bed—for it was too early for breakfast—sat down on the edge of the couch and told me that she had decided to accept Mrs. Ferguson’s offer to send her to Europe.
I had expected some move but hadn’t dared to hope for this. It was impossible to hide my agitation, to wipe the expression of startled excitement off my face. She paid no attention to me, would not have noticed if I had fallen flat in a dead faint, so engrossed was she in her plans. Staring out of the window with narrowed far-seeing eyes, she developed her program, oblivious of the fact that I was not answering, more like a person thinkingaloud than one consulting another. When she finally paused, I said hoarsely, afraid to believe it:
“Mrs. Ferguson may have changed her mind. You wouldn’t hear of the offer when she made it.”
She treated the suggestion as preposterous.
“What an idea! Who ever heard of any woman changing her mind on such a subject.”
“You’ve changed yours,” I answered faintly.
“I’m different, and besides I’ve changed it for the better. She’ll be only too glad to send me. Why think of what it means to her! She’ll be known as the patron of one of the greatest living prima donnas. That’s a thing that doesn’t happen to everybody. Is the morning paper down-stairs? I want to see what steamers are leaving this week. I’ll go as soon as I can get off. Oh, I won’t meet anybody, and it doesn’t matter if I do.”
The door closed on her and I fell back on the pillows like a marionette whose wire has broken. Limp as a rag I lay looking up at the ceiling, and out of my mouth issued a sigh that was almost a groan. It was all I had power for. The tension snapped, I suddenly felt myself invaded by a lassitude so deep, so vast that it went to the edges of the world and lapped over. I would like to havebeen removed to a far distance and lain under a tree and watched the leaves without moving or thinking or speaking. I would like to have stayed in bed and looked at the dusty circle of cement flowers from which the chandelier hung, for years and years.
She came hastening back with the paper, tore it apart, and spreading it on the table read the shipping advertisements. Several steamers were due to sail within the week. She decided on the best and throwing the paper on the floor, said briskly:
“I’ll see her about it this morning before she goes out. There’s no need to bother about it before breakfast. I’ll just take a cup of coffee down here with you and then go up and dress. Let’s get it now.”
I rose, telling her to set the table while I dressed. She put on two cups, each trip to the table impeded by the paper, over which she trampled with loud cracklings, then she gave it up and followed me, talking. My toilet, performed with mutilated rites owing to its publicity, took me from room to room, with Lizzie at my heels. When I shut the door on my bath, she leaned against it and through the crack gave me her opinion on the rival merits of Paris and Berlin as centers of musical study.
While I was making the breakfast she stood in the entrance of the kitchenette, then, squeezing by her with the coffee pot in one hand and a plate of toast in the other, she did not give me enough room and the toast slid off the plate and was strewed afar. She picked up a piece and sat down eating it, her elbows on the table, while I gathered up the rest. Hot and disheveled I took my place opposite while she watched me, biting delicately at her toast, benignly beautiful and fresh as a summer’s morn.
She was stretching her hand for her cup when a disturbing thought made her pause. She dropped the hand and looked at me in consternation:—her big trunk was no good, it had been broken three years ago coming from California.
“Oh, well”—a happy solution occurred to her and she held out her hand for the cup—“I can borrow one of yours. That large one with the Bagdad portière over it. I’ll return it as soon as I get there. You don’t mind loaning it to me, do you, dearest?”
I gave it, warmly, generously, effusively. It wasn’t like giving Mrs. Bushey the lamp. There was no necessity for diplomatic pressure. I would have given her my jewels, my miniatures, my last cent in the bank, my teeth like Fantine, each andall of my treasures, to have her go. Nobody knows how I wanted her to go. It was not that I had ceased to love her—I will do that till I die. It was not that I had hopes Roger would forget her—he may be as faithful as Penelope for all I know. I was unable to stand any more. I was down, done, ended. I wanted to creep into my little hole, curl up and lie still. I wanted to look at the wreath of cement flowers for years. I wanted immunity from the solving of unsolvable questions, respite from trying to straighten out what persisted in staying tangled, freedom to regain my poise, reinstate my conscience, patch up the broken pieces of my heart. An immovable body had encountered an irresistible force, and though the immovable body was still in its old place, it had been so scarred and torn and tattered by the irresistible force that only rest would restore it.
That was two days ago. In the interim there has been no rest—I have spent most of the forty-eight hours in taxicabs and at telephones—but relief is in sight.
Lizzie is going.
It is all arranged. Betty has dispersed the pupils and renewed her European offer. Between taxicabsshe caught me here yesterday and told me that few women have the privilege of being the patron of one of the greatest living prima donnas. The privilege sat soberly upon her and she was going to make herself worthy of it by giving one of the greatest living prima donnas every advantage that Europe offers.
In the afternoon Lizzie and I went down to the steamship office and bought her ticket, and then to the banker’s to draw the first instalment on her letter of credit. It was a royally generous letter and I said so. Lizzie didn’t think it was too much and went over a list of expenses to prove it. She is to go to Berlin—Vignorol wanted Paris but as a dramatic singer she preferred Berlin. I gathered from a casual remark that Vignorol was hurt at her desertion of him and his country. But this didn’t trouble her.
“Vignorol! I don’t see that it was so kind of him to want to take me for nothing. It would have made him. He’s only known here in New York now and as my teacher he would have been known all over the world.”
The steamer sails the day after to-morrow and this afternoon I sent up the trunk. I had offeredto come in the evening and help her pack and then backed out. In an offhand manner, as she was sorting piles of sheet music, she said Roger was coming in after dinner to say good-by. She seemed engrossed by the music, gave an absent-minded assent when I said I couldn’t help that night. I could not tell whether she had at last guessed and was exhibiting unusual tact or whether she was still unconscious. I knew that every minute of the next day was filled and it would be Roger’s only chance to see her alone. It was difficult to imagine him proposing in a room littered with his lady’s wardrobe. But love is said to find out a way and if a man’s in earnest he can put the question just as well in a fourth-floor parlor full of clothes, as he can by moonlight in a bower.
I had been waiting for this interview, braced and steeled for the announcement. It was the final trial and I was going to go through with it proudly and stoically if I died the day after. I did not feel quite as if I should die. Hope springs eternal in the human breast, that’s why we don’t all, sometime or other, commit suicide. Hope upheld me now: with a career beckoning she might refuse him. It was but a sickly gleam. No woman, comprehensibleto me, would ever put the greatest career the world offers before Roger Clements. The hope lay in the fact that Lizzie was not a comprehensible woman.
With great inward struggle I preserved my pride and stoicism through the rest of the afternoon. They were still with me when, in the evening I lay down on the divan bed, whence I can hear all ascending footsteps. The wreath of cement flowers gradually faded, and the daylight sounds of the house were absorbed in the evening quiet. Night had possession of the city for what seemed an endless time when I heard him going up: from the street, past my floor, up the next flight, and the next, then the far faint closing of Lizzie’s door. Rigid in the dark I pictured the meeting—the room with its high blaze of gas, the open trunks and scattered garments, and Lizzie with her smile and the enveloping beam of her glance.
It was profoundly still in the back room, only the tiny ticking of my watch on the table. The old tomcat, who at this hour was wont to lift up his voice in a nuptial hymn, had gone afield for his wooing. The parlors and bedrooms in the extensions were quiet, their lighted windows throwing a soft yellow light into my darkened lair. Our littlebit of the city held its breath in sympathy with me, prone with fixed eyes, seeing those two in the parlor.
Would he work up to it in gentle gradations, gracefully and poetically as men did in novels, or blurt it out in one great question which (for me at least) would have made life blossom as the wood did when Siegmund sung? They would probably stand—people didn’t sit when such matters were afoot—and if she said yes would he take her in his arms then and there? Under the same roof, just two floors above me, they might be standing now, enfolded, cheek to cheek. Pride and stoicism fell from me and I pressed my face into the pillow and moaned like a wounded animal.
The watch ticked on. It was evidently not going to be short and tempestuous. Roger was an unhurried person and he would probably proffer his suit with dignified deliberation. I was certain, if he was successful, he’d come in and tell me on the way down. I couldn’t see him passing my door and not remembering. The place was dark, he might think I was asleep and go by. I got up and lit the lights, thinking as I stretched up with the match, that they were signals telling him I was here, waiting, ready to wish him joy.
Then I looked at the watch—only just nine. He might be hours longer. I could spend the time in preparation, be ready to meet him with a frank unforced smile.
I went to the back window and looked up at the stars for courage. The sky was sprinkled with them—big ones and bright pin points. For centuries they had been gazing down at the puny agonies of discarded lovers, unmoved and cynically curious, winking at them in derision. The thought had a tonic effect. Under its stimulus I straightened my ancestors, askew after a morning’s dusting, and touched up the bunch of daffodils on the table. Then the effect began to wear off. I reached for the watch—twenty minutes past nine.
If she had refused him it would have been done by now. Lizzie wasn’t one to spare or mince her words. I’d better get ready for him. I went to the mirror and saw a ghost, and the stars’ stern message was forgotten. That I should some day be dust was not a sustaining thought now when I was so much a suffering sentient thing, sunk down in the midmost of the moment. I brushed some rouge on my cheeks and smiled at the reflection to seeif I could do it naturally. It was ghastly, like the grimace of a corpse that had expired in torment.
Then suddenly I dropped my rouge and gave a smothered cry—I heard Lizzie calling my name. For a moment power of movement seemed stricken from me. I had not thought that she would be the one to tell me. She called again and I opened the door and went into the hall. Her head was visible over the banisters.
“Have you got the key of that trunk?” she said. “It’s packed and I want to lock it.”
It was a ruse to get me up there. Even Lizzie wouldn’t announce an engagement at the top of her voice down two flights of stairs. I found the key and mounted, holding to the hand-rail. It seemed a long climb. When I got to the top I had no breath, though I had gone slowly, and I trembled so that I was afraid she would notice it, and laid the key on the table.
The trunk was packed, its lid down, and another, open, with garments trailing over its sides, stood in the middle of the floor. Round it lay the unpacked remains of Lizzie’s wardrobe, in mounds, in broken scatterings, in confused interminglings. If acyclone had descended on neat closets and bureau drawers, scooped out their contents, carried it with a whirling centripetal motion into the center of the room, took a final churning rush through it and dashed out again, the place could not have presented a more wildly disheveled appearance.
In an unencumbered corner, an eddy untouched by the cyclone’s wrath, Roger stood putting on his coat. We looked across the chaos, bowed and smiled. I knew my smile by heart. Roger’s was something new, rose no higher than his lips, leaving his eyes somber, I might say sullen. Lizzie, without words, had snatched up the key and knelt by the trunk. She looked untidy, hot and rather cross. They certainly had not the appearance of lovers.
I fell weakly into a chair and awaited revelations. None came. Roger buttoned his coat, Lizzie made scratching noises with the key. There was something strained and sultry in the silence. Could she have refused him? One of the disappointing things about people in real life is their failure to rise to the dramatic expression fitting to great moments. Had I been in a play I would have used words vibrating with the thud of my own heart-beats. What I did say was:
“Have you had a nice evening?”
“Very,” said Roger with a dry note.
“Have we,” murmured Lizzie, busy with the key. “I’m sure I don’t know. I’ve not had time to say a word to Mr. Clements.”
“I’m afraid I’ve been rather in the way,” he remarked, the dry note a trifle more astringent.
“Well, the truth is you have,” she answered. “Are you sure this is the right key, Evie?”
The gleam of hope brightened into a ray. I sat forward on the edge of the chair looking from Lizzie’s bent back to Roger’s face, which had reddened slightly and had a tight look about the mouth. I am, by nature, a shy and modest person, and under normal conditions the last thing I would do would be to force another’s confidence. But Ihadto know. I had to drag the truth out of them if it came with a shriek like the roots of the fabled mandrake.
“Haven’t you talkedat all?” I exclaimed, with an agonized emphasis that might have betrayed me to a child of twelve.
They did not appear to notice it. Roger moved from his corner, picking his way round a clump of boots that had been whirled near the sofa.
“Talk?” said Lizzie, still engaged with the key. “How can people talk when they’re packing to go to Europe? There! It’s in and it turns. Thank goodness the lock’s all right.”
She rose and surveyed the room with an intent frowning glance.
“That,” pointing to the other trunk, “I’ll begin on now and finish to-morrow. This,” turning to the full one, “is done. I’d better lock it at once and get it out of the way.”
She turned back to it and gave a series of tentative pushes at the lid which rose rebelliously over bulging contents.
Nothing had happened! She hadn’t let him speak—he hadn’t dared—no opportunity had offered? What did it matter how or why? The sickening thudding of my heart began to grow less. I leaned my elbow on my knees and my forehead on my hands, feeling at last as if I was going to be Early Victorian and swoon.
Under the shadow of my fingers I could see Roger’s feet stepping carefully among the boots. Skirting tangled heaps of millinery, they arrived at the trunk. I dropped my hands and watched while he addressed himself to Lizzie’s back.
“Good night.” He stretched out his hand. “Good-by.”
She turned, saw the hand and put hers into it; then, for the first time smiled, but not with her habitual rich glow.
“Good-by. I’d ask you to stay but there’s really too much to do. I’ve got to have to-morrow free to finish up in.”
The hands separated and dropped. His back was toward me and I was glad of it.
“Perhaps we’ll meet again some day.”
“Oh, surely.” The abstraction of her look vanished, her smile flashed out brilliant and dazzling. “But not here, not this way. You’ll see me soon in my right place—behind the footlights.”
He murmured a response and moved toward the door. She turned back to the trunk, pressing on it and then drawing back and pressing again. He passed me with a low “Good night, Evie,” and I answered in the same tone.
He was at the door when she ceased her efforts, and drawing herself up with a deep breath, called peremptorily:
“Come here, Mr. Clements.”
He stopped, the door-knob in his hand.
“What is it, Miss Harris?”
She stood back from the trunk, flushed and irritated.
“Just sit on this trunk, please. It must be locked to-night.”
Her eye on him was as the eye of a general or a subaltern, impersonal, commanding, imperious.
He met it and stood immovable. In the fifteen years I have known him I had never seen him look so angry.
“Hurry up,” she said sharply. “I’d ask Evie but she’s not heavy enough.”
He answered with icy politeness:
“Miss Harris, I am very sorry, but I’ve already stayed too long. There are other men in the house, who will surely only be too happy to sit on your trunk whenever you choose to command them,” and he opened the door.
“Oh, very well, if you’re going to be so disobliging,” she answered, angry now in her turn. Then to me: “Come over here, Evie, and help. If we both press as hard as we can I think we can do it. I don’t care to wait till the morning. I want this locked now.”
I rose obediently and began to steer my waythrough the cyclone’s track. Roger came in, shutting the door with a bang.
“Mrs. Drake’s in no condition to make such exertions. She’s been ill and oughtn’t to be asked to do such things. Evie, don’t touch that trunk.”
“That’s perfect rubbish. I’m not asking her toliftit. Come on, Evie.”
I stopped, looking helplessly from one to the other. They glared at each other, his face pale, hers red. They seemed on the verge of battle and I knew what Lizzie was like when her temper was up.
“Oh, don’t fight about a trunk,” I implored.
“I’ve not the slightest intention of fighting about anything,” said Roger, looking as if, had a suitable adversary been present, he would have felled him to the ground. “But I won’t have you making efforts that are unnecessary and that you’re unable to make.”
“You talk like a perfect fool,” said Lizzie, with the flashing eye of combat I knew so well.
He bowed.
“I’m quite ready to admit it. But as a perfect fool I absolutely refuse to let you make Mrs. Drake help shut that trunk.”
“Then do it yourself.”
As usual she had the best of it. Roger knew it and bore upon his face the look of the bear in the pit at whom small boys hurl gibes. When she saw the symptoms of defeat she began to melt.
“It’ll not take five minutes—just one good pressure on this corner. There’s a hat box that sticks up and has to be squeezed down.”
With a white face of wrath Roger strode over the clothes and sat on the trunk. I have never believed that he could be ridiculous, my Roger hedged round with the dignity that is the Clements’ heritage, but he was then, boiling with rage, perched uncomfortably on the sloping lid. A hysterical desire to laugh seized me and I backed off to my chair, biting my under lip, afraid to speak for fear of exploding into a screaming giggle.
They were unconscious of anything funny in the situation, one too angry, the other too engrossed. With a concentrated glance she surveyed the trunk, directing the bestowal of his weight. When she had finally got him in the right place, she knelt, key in hand, and in answer to a curt demand he rose and flopped furiously down. To the protesting crunching of the hat box, the lid settled and the click of the lock sounded.
“Done,” she cried triumphantly, falling back in a sitting posture on the floor.
Roger got up.
“Have I your permission to go?” he asked with elaborate deference.
“You have,” said his hostess, and from the floor looked up with a bright and beaming face from which every vestige of bad temper had fled. “Good-by—good luck. And remember, the first performance I give in New York I expect to see you applauding in the bald-headed row.”
As the door shut on him my laughter came like the burst of a geyser. Lizzie, still on the floor, looking at me with annoyed surprise, made it worse. When she asked me in a hostile voice kindly to tell her what the joke was, it got beyond my control and I became hysterical. It wasn’t very bad—I always do things in a meek subdued way—but I laughed and cried when I tried to explain and laughed again.
When she saw there was no use ordering me not to be an idiot, she got up, grumbling to herself and began on the second trunk. She kept stepping round me carrying armfuls of clothes, trailing skirts over my knees, leaning forward from a kneelingposture to jerk blouses, cloaks and petticoats from the back of my chair. I tried to retreat into corners, but she worked in wide comprehensive sweeps, wherever I went coming after me to find something that was under my chair or upon which I was sitting. Finally she used me as a sort of stand, throwing things on me and plucking them off, muttering abstractedly as she worked.
I was recovering and she was inspecting a skirt outheld at arm’s length when she said musingly:
“I hadn’t the least idea Roger Clements was so bad-tempered. He’s just a self-sufficient cross-grained prig. Gets into a rage when I ask him to sit on a trunk. I can’t stand that kind of man.”
I bade her good night and went down-stairs.
The lights were burning high. I put them out and laid down on the bed. My laughter and tears were over. Fatigue, anger and pain were sensations that existed somewhere outside me, in a world I had left. I seemed to have no body, to be a spirit loosened from fleshly trammels, floating blissfully in prismatic clouds.
I floated in them, motionless in ecstatic relief, savoring my joy, knowing the perfection of peace, till the windows paled with the dawn.