“I don’t understand you,” said Ladislaw, in a deeply injured voice.
“You’ll trust your whole life to me, and yet--”
The little wood was dark and unfamiliar, and he found it very
disagreeable to hurry along at the pace she set.
“And yet you behave--” he went on.
“I’m not trusting my whole life to you,” replied Ethel vehemently. “I’d
be sorry to think there was nothing better than that to trust in!”
“That’s not quite the way to talk to the man you’re going to marry, is
it?” he asked. “I’ve always tried my best to do what you wanted. I don’t
see why you shouldn’t trust me.”
“I don’t see, either, Lad,” Ethel answered, with her discounting
frankness. “Only somehow you seem so--so dreadfully strange to me. I
never understand you. I know you must be fond of me, or you wouldn’t
have asked me to marry you; and I know it’s a sensible, practical idea
if we’re going on tour. But I can’t--I can’t--” She choked down a sob.
“I can’t feel--friendly--with you!”
“I don’t want you to. I want you to love me.”
“But they ought to go together!” she cried. “I’m awfully grateful to
you, and I love to hear you sing, but I’m afraid! Oh, it’s not fair to
you, because I know I’ll never feel like that!”
“You will some day,” he answered, with a patience that frightened her
still more.
“I’ve got to be honest with you, Lad. I’m sure I shall never feel so.
It’s only because I want this chance so much--so much that I’d do almost
anything to get it. I know that if I can once sing in public, I shall be
all right, and--”
He laughed softly.
“It doesn’t go so fast,” he said. “Nothing does. You will have what
every one else has--two failures for each triumph, two pains for every
joy. You will have hard work, discouragement, anxiety, and a good many
other troubles you’ve never thought of. That’s why I ask you to marry
me, because you need some one to protect you. If you don’t love me, very
well! I’ll love you twice as much, to make up for it.”
His hand fell lightly on her shoulder. She sprang aside hastily.
That did not offend him. He never seemed to be offended or impatient. He
was always reasonable, kind, sympathetic; and yet, instead of being
pleased or touched by this, Ethel found it disquieting and mysterious.
His polite endurance of her changing humors was more like that of
indifference than that of love. Of course, he did love her. He must, and
she was a very fortunate girl to have found, at the very beginning of
her career, a man who loved her and who could and would help her so
greatly.
This first venture was in itself a thing very displeasing to her. It
was a vaudeville act of his own devising, in which, with several changes
of costume, they would sing snatches from the most popular operas, all
woven together to make a silly story. She tried to look beyond that, to
the great triumphs of the future. She tried to feel that these triumphs
would be ample compensation for the monstrous sacrifice she was making
of her life.
Once in a while, in a brief flash, she half realized what she was doing.
The memory of her mother came back to her--that gentle and quiet woman
who had held so steadfastly to her own ideals.
No matter how ardent her desire for perfection in her beloved art, no
matter how splendid her ambition, Ethel could not be rid of a secret and
bitter sense of guilt. It was wrong--she knew it--it was wrong and
unworthy to marry Ladislaw.
“But why?” she demanded of herself. “I don’t care anything about love,
and men, and things like that. Ladislaw knows it, and if he doesn’t
care, why should I? Anyhow, it’s too late now. I’ve promised, and I’m
going to keep my word. Mother would want me to do that. Oh, but if
mother had been here, she would have understood! She would never have
let me get into such a dreadful, miserable, heartbreaking situation! If
she could come now, just for one little minute, just to say one word--”
But there was no one there except Ladislaw. The lights of the railway
station gleamed before them, and he drew close to her.
“Give me one kiss, Ethel!” he said, very low.
She hated his voice, she hated to have him so near her, she hated
herself. The little wood seemed like a black and sinister forest.
“No!” she said brusquely, as she had often spoken to him before.
This time he was not patient and humble. He caught her arm, and tried to
draw her to him.
“You shan’t treat me like a dog!” he muttered.
In growing alarm, she stared at him in the dark, and she fancied she saw
his white teeth revealed by a wolfish grin. With a violent wrench, she
freed herself. With the swiftness of terror, she ran out of that haunted
wood into the safe, bright road before the station.
As she stood there, flushed and panting, trying to consider the
situation, he came leisurely up to her.
“You can’t go back now--not after that telegram you sent your aunt,” he
said. “There’s nowhere for you to go, except with me. You haven’t even
your ticket or your purse. You gave them to me to keep--and I mean to
keep them!”
“I don’t care--I’ll walk,” she retorted, in a trembling voice.
“Walk where?” he inquired. “You told your aunt you were going away to
get married. You’ll have hard work explaining that you changed your
mind; and you’ll have hard work getting home at all without a penny.
Come! Here’s the train. Don’t be a little fool!”
The long, mournful hoot of the approaching engine came to her ears.
“Oh, give me my purse!” she cried in terror and despair. “Oh, please!
Oh, please, Ladislaw!”
“I won’t,” he said. “If you won’t come with me, I’ll leave you here
alone. You’ll be sorry, Ethel. You’ll lose your chance to be a singer,
and you’ll lose more than that. Your aunt won’t take this very well.”
She looked around in anguish. The ticket office was closed for the
night, and there were only strangers on the platform. All about that
little lighted oasis were the woods and fields and tiny distant houses,
filled with more strangers.
V
“Ethel!” cried a voice.
It was the voice of the one person who would understand and help and
solace her--a voice she could never hear again in this world, strong,
tender, and clear.
“Oh, mother!” she cried.
“Ethel!”
It came again, and not the voice of a spirit, but real, and close at
hand.
“It’s some one in that taxi,” whispered Ladislaw. “Better not answer.”
“But it’s grandmother!” said Ethel, astounded.
She flew to the old lady like a stone from a catapult.
“Grandmother, what _are_ you doing here?” she demanded, wild with
delight and relief.
“Nothing!” replied the old lady serenely. “Present your friend to me.”
“I--” began Ethel.
Ladislaw was already there, hat in hand.
“Mr. Metz, grandmother,” she said.
“Ah! Mr. Metz!” the old lady repeated, looking thoughtfully at him. Her
calm old eyes seemed terrible to him. “Are you leaving?” she asked.
He hesitated for a moment. Then he remembered that Ethel had never
seemed to regard her grandmother as especially important. She was old,
and poor, and obscure; what harm could she do?
“Yes,” he said. “Ethel and I are going to be married. She’s already sent
a telegram to her aunt in the city, to tell her.”
“You are a rash young man,” said the old lady, in a tone almost
friendly.
“Rash?” he repeated, with a faint frown.
“Very!” said she. “It is a surprise to me, because I see that you are
not American. Americans marry that way--for love; but with the people of
Europe, it is often different. They think of how they shall live. They
wish a dot--a dowry--something more than love. It is very beautiful,
this; because the poor little Ethel will never have anything.”
Metz was too much taken aback to be discreet.
“But she will!” he said. “Her aunt will--”
“Her aunt has only the income of an estate. She leaves nothing to Ethel;
and certainly she _gives_ nothing to Ethel when she is the wife of Mr.
Metz.”
“But I thought--” he began.
Suddenly the frail little old creature blazed into magnificent wrath.
“Be off!” she cried, raising her hand in a threatening gesture. “Away
with you, miserable, beggarly fortune hunter! Wolf! _Bestia!_ Be off!”
He started back. She leaned out of the window, her voice wonderfully
strong and vigorous for her years. As he retreated, even above the roar
of the incoming train, he heard her only too plainly, and was aware that
other people heard her, too.
“Beggarly fortune hunter! Wolf! _Bestia!_ Away with you!”
He was glad to climb on board.
The taxi went hastening back along the dark, still roads, and the old
lady held the sobbing Ethel tight in her arms.
“But what is there to cry about?” she asked, in tears herself. “Foolish
little one! You shall stay with me, my little bird, until you are ready
to fly away. There was something put by for you to have--later. You
shall have it now, for the singing lessons. Why do you cry, then? You
shall sing, I tell you!”
Ethel was silent for a time.
“Grandmother!” she said. “The first time you called me--it sounded--I
thought it was--mother!”
The old lady’s arm tightened about her.
“It is the same voice,” she said.
MUNSEY’S
MAGAZINE
DECEMBER, 1923
Vol. LXXX NUMBER 3