XVIII
Ihaven’tseen her for two days. Yesterday morning I went up-stairs to leave the hat, found her door open and her rooms empty. Emma says she has been out most of the time. I waited in all afternoon, expecting to hear Betty on the telephone in a state of wrath about the pupil. Also I had my ear trained for the postman’s light ring. At any moment I might get a letter now from Roger, announcing his engagement. Why should not Lizzie’s absences abroad be spent in walks with him?
As usual the anticipated didn’t happen. Betty did telephone but in amiable ignorance of her protégée’s revolt. She had run to earth a second pupil, who would be ready the following morning at eleven. Would I please tell Lizzie and did I know how the first lesson had gone? I prevaricated—I can do that at the telephone when Betty’s stern gaze is not there to disconcert me. I was really afraid to tell her, and besides, I, too, was getting rebellious. Let Lizzie manage her own affairs and fight her ownfights. I said cheerfully she would tell Betty about it, and hung up the receiver wondering what would happen. Then I wrote a note to Lizzie about the new pupil, went up-stairs, knocked, and getting no response, pushed it under the door.
For the rest of the day I sat waiting like a prisoner in the death cell.
This morning, when I leaned out of the back window and looked down on the damp soil and bare shrubs of the yard, I felt the first soft air of spring. The sunlight slanted on the brick walls, the wet spots on the walk around the sun-dial shrunk as I watched them. On the top of a fence a scarred and seasoned old cat, at which Mr. Hamilton was wont to throw beer bottles, stretched lazily, blinking at a warm inviting world. I leaned farther out—tiny blunt points of green were pushing through the mold along the walk. Mrs. Phillips, sure in her ownership of the yard, had planted crocuses. Winter wasn’t lingering in the lap of spring—he had jumped off it at a bound.
I turned from the window and went into the front room, wondering vaguely why winter should always be a male and spring a female. The tin roof was dry, the hot bright sun had licked up the sparrow’sbath. Across the street a line of women from the tenements were advancing on the park, pushing baby carriages—buxom broad-hipped mothers with no hats and wonderful coiffures of false hair. It was a glorious morning, the air like a thin clear wine. I put on my things and went out.
The street showed sunny and clear, fair bright avenues inviting the wayfarer to wanderings. Children sped by in groups and scattering throngs. Smart slim ladies strolled with dogs straining at leashes. Friends met and stood in talkative knots, motors flashed by attended by the fluttering of loosened veils. On the fringe of benches along the park wall the idle sunned themselves, lax and lazy. Down-town, where the women shop, men would be selling arbutus at the street corners. Soon naughty boys with freckled noses would trail in hopeful groups along the curb, holding up stolen lilacs to ladies in upper windows—yes, spring had come.
I bought a bunch of daffodils at the florist’s and went into the park. The first hint of green was faint on the lawns, and points of emerald were breaking out along the willow boughs. Through the crystal air the sounds of children at play came musically—little yaps and squeals and sudden sweet runs oflaughter. The glass walls of the casino were a-dazzle, and revolving wheels caught the sun and broke it on their flying spokes.
I was near the lake when I saw Lizzie. She was walking up a side path that crossed mine, her head down, her step quick and decided. She didn’t see me and I stood and waited. Then her eye, deep and absorbed, shifted, caught me, and she came to an abrupt halt. For the first startled moment there was an indecision about her poised body and annoyed face that suggested flight. If I did not share her dismay, I did her surprise. This was the hour set for the second lesson. Of course she might have told Betty that she would give no more, also she might have been hastening to the tryst with the new pupil. You never could tell. In answer to my smiling hail she approached, not smiling but looking darkly intent and purposeful.
“Which way are you going?” she said, by way of greeting.
I have been called a tactful person, and acquaintance with Lizzie has developed what was an untrained instinct into a ripened art:
“Nowhere in particular. I’m just strolling about in the sun.”
Obviously relieved, she said:
“I’m going over there—” pointing to the apartment-houses across the park. “I have business on the west side.”
The new pupil lived on the east side. So she really had given it up.
“You’ve told Mrs. Ferguson that you won’t give that lesson—the one she telephoned about?”
A sudden blankness fell on her face.
“Didn’t you get the letter I put under your door?” I cried in alarm. I couldn’t bear just now, with everything failing me, to have Betty angry.
She nodded, looking down and scraping on the ground with her foot. Then slowly raised her eyes, and glimpsing at me under her lashes, broke into a broad smile.
“I forgot all about it.”
“Oh, Lizzie! How could you? If you’ve made up your mind to end it the least you could do was to let her know. That’s reallytoobad.”
“Yes, I suppose it is.” Her hasty contrition was far from convincing. “Perfectly awful. I ought to be punished in some painful way. Look here, Evie, dearest, I’m in a hurry. Why can’t you just pop into a taxi and go down and explain it to her?”
“I’ll tell you why I can’t, simply and clearly—because I won’t.”
“Goodness, how provoking of you.” She didn’t seem at all provoked. Her only concern was to get away from me and go to the mysterious business on the west side. She bent sidewise to catch her skirt and moved away. “Then I will, this evening, to-morrow morning—”
I caught her by the arm.
“Lizzie, listen. Mrs. Ferguson is my best friend. I made her do this and I can’t have you treating her so rudely. I thought, of course, you’d told her.”
She laid her hand on my detaining fingers, and as she spoke in her most coaxing manner smoothed them caressingly, detaching them from their hold.
“Dear girl, I know all that. Every word you say is true. And I’ll fix it, I’ll straighten it all out. There won’t be the slightest trouble.”
“Will you telephone those people?” I implored.
My hand was dislodged. She drew away.
“Indeed I will, the first moment I get.” She paused, arrested by a thought. “What’s their name? I’ve forgotten.” Then backing off: “Youtelephone them. You see I can’t now and I don’t know when I’ll be near a booth. Say I’m sick, or have lefttown, or anything you like. Just any excuse until I can attend to it. Good-by. I’ll probably come in and see you this afternoon.”
She turned and made off as quickly as she could, a tall vigorous figure, moving with a free swinging step. I stood and watched her hastening down the path between the trunks of the bare trees. There was not a trace upon her of the tempest of two nights before. It might never have been. Her whole bearing suggested coursing blood and high vitality. She was very like the irresponsible and endearing creature I had known when I first went to Mrs. Bushey’s.
I gave up my walk and went home to send the telephone. As I hurried along I wondered where she could be going and why she seemed so light in spirit. I was in that feverish state of foreboding when the simplest events assume a sinister aspect. The thought crossed my mind that she might be going to elope with Roger. It would be like her to elope, and though it would be very unlike him (about the last thing in the world one could conceive him doing), he might have become clay in the hands of that self-willed and beguiling potter.
“Well,” I thought, “so much the better. It’llbe over.” And I decided the best thing for me to do would be to go back to Europe and join the spinsters and widows in the pensions.
I sent the telephone, trying to soothe an angry female voice that complained of a morning “utterly ruined.” I sent another one to Betty, who was also discomposed, having heard from the mother of “the barbarous child.” Betty wouldn’t believe her, had evidently championed the teacher with heat. Betty is a stalwart adherent, a partisan, and I foresaw battles in high places.
The afternoon drew to a golden mellow close and I lay on the sofa waiting for Lizzie. I hadn’t relinquished the idea of the elopement but it did not seem so probable as it had in the morning. Anyway, if she hadn’t eloped—if she did come in to see me—I had made up my mind I would ask her pointblank what she intended to do about Roger. It was one word for Lizzie and two for myself. I really thought if things went on the way they were, I should go mad. Not that it would matter if I went mad, for nobody depends on me, nor am I necessary to the progress or welfare of the state. But I don’t want to be an expense to my friends. And I don’t know whether one hundred and sixty-fivedollars a month is enough for maintenance in an exclusive lunatic asylum and I know they would never send me to any but the best.
When a knock came I started and called a husky “Come in.” The door opened—there had been no elopement. Roger stood on the threshold, smiling and calm, which I knew he wouldn’t have been if he was a bridegroom. Marriage would always be a portentous event with a conscientious Clements.
Whatever I might be with Lizzie I couldn’t be pointblank with Roger, though I had known him for fifteen years and her for six months. I explained my trepidation by a headache and settled back on the sofa. He was properly grieved and wanted me to follow Mrs. Ashworth to the south. I saw myself in a white dress on a hotel piazza being charming to men in flannels and Panama hats, and the mere thought of it made me querulous. He persisted with an amiable urgence. If my opinion of him hadn’t been crystallized into an unchangeable form, I should have thought him maddeningly stupid. I began to wonder, if the present state of affairs lasted much longer, if I wouldn’t end by hating him. I was thinking this when Lizzie came in.
I had never seen her, not even in the gladdest daysbefore her illness, look as she did. The old Lizzie was back, but enriched and glorified. She entered with a breathless inrush, shutting the door with a blind blow, her glance leaping at me and drawing me up from the cushions like the clutch of a powerful hand. It seemed as if some deadening blight had been lifted from her and she had burst into life, enhanced and intensified by the long period of hibernation. Her lips were parted in a slight, almost rigid smile, her eyes, widely opened, had lost their listless softness and shone with a deep brilliance.
Roger gave a suppressed exclamation and rose to his feet. I think she would have astonished any man, that Saint Anthony would have paused to look, not tempted so much as held in a staring stillness of admiration. She was less the alluring woman than the burning exultant spirit, cased in a woman’s body and shining through it like a light through a transparent shell.
“Lizzie!” I exclaimed on a rising note of question. I had a sense of momentous things, of a climax suddenly come upon us all.
“I’ve been to Vignorol,” she said, and came toa halt in front of me, her gaze unwavering, her breast rising to hurried breaths.
“How do you do, Miss Harris,” said Roger, coming smilingly forward. He had the air of the favored friend who shows a playful pique at being overlooked.
The conventional words, uttered in an urbane tone, fell between us like an ax on a stretched thread. It can be said for him that he knew Lizzie too little to realize what her manner portended. He evidently saw nothing except that she was joyously exhilarated and looked unusually handsome.
She gave him a glance, bruskly quelling and containing no recognition of him. It was her famous piece-of-furniture glance, to which I had been so often treated. It was the first time Roger had ever experienced its terrors and it staggered him. In bewilderment he looked at me for an explanation. But she was not going to let any outside influence come between us. I was important just then—a thing of value appropriated to her uses.
“I’ve been two days fighting it out, trying to make up my mind to do it. And this morning, when you met me, I was going there.”
“Well?” I was aware of that demanding look of Roger’s, which, getting nothing from me, turned to her. That was useless, but how was he to know?
“I sang for him,” she said, the brilliant eyes holding mine as if to grasp and focus upon herself every sense I had.
“Lizzie!”
The premonition of momentous things grew stronger. Underneath it, in lower layers of consciousness, submerged habits of politeness made themselves felt. I ought to get Roger into the conversation.
“I sang better than I ever did before. And Vignorol, who used to scold and be so discouraged, told me I’d got it!”
“Lizzie!”
For a moment we stared at each other, speechless, she giving the useful pair of ears time to carry to the brain, the great news.
Then the subconscious promptings grew too strong to be denied and I said:
“Mr. Clements will be as glad as we are to know that.”
Thus encouraged, Roger emerged from his astonishment. He was not as debonair as at the beginning,also he evidently wasn’t sure just what it was all about, but he seized upon the most prominent fact, and said, without enthusiasm, rather with apprehension:
“This doesn’t mean, Miss Harris, that you’re thinking of returning to your old profession?”
Her look at him was flaming, as silencing as a blow. I don’t know why she didn’t tell him to hold his tongue, except that she was too preoccupied to waste a word. He flinched before it, drew himself up and backed away, dazed, as he might have been if she really had struck him.
Having brushed him aside she went on to me. The main fact imparted, her exultation burst forth in a crowding rush of words:
“It wasn’t my voice—but that’s better, he says it’s the long rest—it was the other thing—the temperament, the soul. It’s got into me. I knew it myself as soon as I began to sing. I felt as if something that bound me was gone—ropes and chains broken and thrown away. It was so much easier. Before I was always making efforts, listening to what they told me, trying to work it out with my head. And to-day! Oh, Evie, I knew it, I felt it—something outside myself that poured into me andcarried me along. I could just let myself go and be wonderful—wonderful—wonderful!”
She threw out her arms as if to illustrate the extent of her wonderfulness, wide as she could stretch, then brought her hands together on her bosom, and, with half-shut eyes, stood rapt in ravished memory.
We gazed mutely at her as if she were some remarkable spectacle upon which we had unexpectedly chanced.
“I sang and sang,” she said softly, “and each time it was better. Vignorol wouldn’t let me go.”
“What did he say?” I asked.
“He kissed me,” she murmured dreamily.
Roger in his corner moved and then was still.
“But what did he suggest about you? What did he want you to do?”
My mouth was dry. Sitting on the edge of the sofa I clutched the sides of it as if it was a frail bark and I was floating in it over perilous seas.
“Go back to where I belong,” she said, and then came out of her ecstasy and began to pace up and down, flinging sentences at me.
“Try it again and do it this time. He says I can, and I know I can. Oh, Evie, to get away from all this—those hateful pupils, those hideous lessons—thosewomen! To go back to my work, be among my own people.” She brushed by Roger, her glance, imbued with its inward vision, passing over him as if he was invisible. “It’s like coming out of prison. It’s like coming to life again after you were dead.”