THE OPAL
Three years had passed, and Sybil, now the reigning queen of the New
York stage, still lived in the quiet little red brick house among the
West Thirtieths, to the great indignation of Mrs. Lawton. Inside there
was a frank luxury clearly explained to love-sealed eyes by that one
elastic word "salary"; though an observant outsider, noting the
age-darkened, carved wood, the rare polar-bear robes, and the exquisite
bits of bronze, must have thought her a marvellously lucky buyer, or a
remarkably well-paid actress. But there were no such observers at hand;
perhaps that was why Sybil's vine-dripping, flower-crowded windows
seemed to laugh in the face of the grim, shade-drawn propriety of the
entire block.
At the rear of the red brick house was a small cooper or carpenter shop
that faced on the other street. It had long been unoccupied, so that
when Stivers took a notion to hire it for a store-room and sort of
laundry, she got it cheap; and after the neighbors had once or twice
seen her going in and out, and hanging a few pieces of linen to dry,
there was no further heed paid to the matter. But if one was very
intimate with Mrs. Stivers, and received from her a shop key, why, one
could both enter and leave the house from the back street without
bothering with the front door bell.
Sybil had "overflowed," as Dorothy said, and had swept away Stivers's
too dreadful parlor, and in its stead there was now a library and
sitting-room combined--a nook glorious in winter because of an open fire
and in summer made dim and cool by many clambering vines, and sweet by
boxes of mignonette crowding the small balcony, a room full of the
scattered riches of rare books, of carved ivories, of miniatures, of
bubbles of Venetian glass, beautiful as jewels and almost as precious, a
room for study, for dreams, for love, and sometimes a room for bitter
brooding and regret.
Visitors to this house were a rare occurrence, but Sybil had just been
speeding the parting guest in the person of her mother, who was "to pick
up" John at Forty-second Street, and thus receive protection on the
homeward ride to Riverdale; for "positively in these days," she
declared, "unless you're perfectly white and doubled together with age,
men ogle you as if you were twenty. There was a dreadful little
pot-bellied, Hebraic person--that sounds queer, doesn't it, but it's an
absolutely correct expression and perfectly descriptive of the man's
shape--and I declare to you he kept his eyes on my face until I felt
quite agitated, and everyone in the car must have noticed his conduct.
Yet John Lawton was so unfeeling as to tell me that if I stopped looking
at the man, I wouldn't know that he was staring. Not know it, indeed!
Why, I could feel anyone ogling me through the back of my neck! Still,
after such an experience, I hope I shall not miss John!"
Mrs. Lawton had devoted one of her three days to her old friend, Mrs.
Van Camp, and to shopping, and two days to Sybil. She had arrived in
state, and after a supercilious glance at her, had addressed the owner
and mistress of the house as "Stivers"--though Sybil was most
punctilious in calling her Mrs. Stivers. She had so traduced the coffee
(which was perfect) by asking "if the blackness was not the result of
licorice," that, though Jane Penny had maintained a strictly respectful
attitude, murder had shown so plainly in her eye that Letitia had not
dared to take the second cup she longed for, for fear of poison. And
when she was alone with her daughter she remarked: "She's a cat, that
Stivers! Clean and neat, like any other cat, and purry! Oh, yes, she can
purr about _you_, but she's crafty, cunning, shrewd! You keep your desk
locked, my dear! She's too soft-footed for my taste; she's got an eye
for a key-hole, too!"
While Jane said to herself: "There's a vain old cockatoo--overbearing,
hectoring, using her high and mighty birth as an excuse for wiping her
shoes on us as is beneath her. I guess I could add a chapter to her
family history that would take the wind out of her sails pretty quick!
But my bank book's more important to me than her nasty slurs! 'Stivers,'
indeed! It's a wonder it wasn't 'Penny.' The young ladies don't find it
beneath them to call me Mrs. Of course in this one it might be policy,
but the other one does it, too. It's plain enough to me the daughters
get their decent manners from the father. A nice old man that, a
gentleman clear through and always welcome here, even by Mr. Thrall;
though for appearance sake he does then have to come hat and stick in
hand and make a proper fifteen-minute or half-hour call and go. Poor,
pale old gentleman; he's an idolator, if ever there was one, just bowing
down to and worshipping those girls of his'n. If he knew the secret of
that little locked closet upstairs, if he knew of the dinner-jacket, the
lounging robe hanging there, he'd die without a word right as he stood.
Poor old gentleman! But, Lord! how our boss does hate that old cockatoo!
and how she does ko-tow to him and bridle and smirk! Not but what she
looks well enough at the supper-table, for with all her rouge she can
carry her clothes well. I think Mr. Thrall dislikes her for one thing,
because of the likeness he sees in her to Miss Sybil. I overheard her
saying in fun to him: 'I shall be just like mamma when I am as old,' and
he said: 'Then for God's sake die in your youth!' and, though she tried
hard to look angry, she had to laugh, and he looked ashamed of himself,
and asked pardon.
"It does beat all, how long this affair lasts. Talk about worshipping
the ground she walks on; I believe he's jealous of the air she breathes.
Well, my nest is getting a good warm lining, for they are both generous,
and she's easy to serve besides, which is more than I can say of the
Missus, who is always prowling about the wardrobe room, ready to make a
fuss about a quarter of a yard of gold or silver lace, or an inch or
two of linen-backed velvet, and weighing the camphor-gum to see if it
agrees with the amount mentioned in the bill. These splendid Shaksperian
productions deprive her of the delight of dickering with authors for new
plays, and so she drives Barney wild by her visits to the box-office,
and keeps tab on me in the wardrobe, hoping to prevent the escape of a
nickel through someone's hands. That woman's heart--if she has
one--bears the dollar-mark, I'll wager!"
In the library, Sybil, being alone, dropped down on an old French
tabouret, and with chin in hand fell into a reverie. Her other hand drew
from her bosom the little diamond heart, whose centre was a registered
ruby, flawless and exquisite. It had been Stewart's first gift to her
after she had forgiven him, and he had said, very earnestly: "The real
value of this jewel is in a word engraved back of that ruby. No,
beloved! you cannot open and read without a jeweler's help, but if the
locket will not open for you, why, when you have to remove it in your
dressing-room, it will not open for another and betray our secret. No, I
will not tell the precious word--only wear it always. If the ornament is
not suitable to your gown or the occasion, then wear it inside and out
of sight--but wear it, beloved, for my sake!"
And now she wondered still what was the word that to him made the value
of this rare gift? Was it _love_? Was it _forgiveness_? Was it
_beloved_? She sighed a little. The house was rather lonely since her
father and mother had departed. They had come down to see her new great
triumph as Beatrice in "Much Ado about Nothing."
Her improvement was wonderful, and Thrall had thrilled with pride when
he had heard it commented upon. For Beatrice is a test part that
combines comedy the lightest, airiest, and most polished, with both
pathos and passion. All actors know that more technical knowledge is
required for fine high-comedy acting than for sentiment or even tragedy.
And it would have been a bold man who in the first weeks of Juliet had
ventured to suggest a future Beatrice in the inexperienced, though
immensely tragic, young actress.
Yet here she was, Thrall's ideal Beatrice, well-born, well-bred,
beautiful, graceful, but possessed of a young devil of mockery that you
saw dancing in her eyes and heard in her bubbling laughter. The stings
of her wit seemed healed by the honey of her manner. Full of
affectations, airs, and graces toward the courtiers, her "If I were a
man!" speech was so full of tender love and sorrow for her injured
cousin Hero that its final hot burst of rage and scorn left her with
tears wet upon her cheeks.
And consummate artist that he was, Thrall threw such sudden passionate
intensity into Benedick's answer, "By this hand I love thee!" that it
was no wonder the act brought the people upstanding; and one old
playgoer remarked that "it was like watching an exhibition of skilful
fencing, where flying sparks made you uncertain whether the bout was
friendly or a duel to the death."
Thrall had kept his promise; he had warned her away from so many
pitfalls that some of the critics declared she had triumphed through
what she had not done almost as much as through what she had. She had
avoided the absolute shrewishness with which Beatrice is often invested;
also the vindictive ferocity of the "If I were a man!" that catches the
gallery, while it "makes the judicious grieve," and wonder, too, why
Benedick should have been called upon for assistance by such a
man-eating creature. Neither did she fire her best witticisms
point-blank at the audience and pause--to make her "point." And better
still, she avoided that strained, unnatural merriment that makes the
public pity the evident fatigue of an otherwise satisfactory Beatrice.
And this last bore strongest witness to the depth of study she had given
to the play--yes, the play; for the actress who studies only her own
lines gains but the narrowest and baldest view of the character. Sybil
had studied the environment of the brilliant, high-born, wilful "she
Mercutio," as Jim Roberts in an inspired moment of intoxication had
termed Beatrice, in order to know in what manner she should address her
impertinences to her uncle--whether with a spoiled-child daring, made
pardonable by a respectful bearing; in open insolence, or in veiled
dislike. So she studied Leonato carefully, and so she did all the
characters she came in contact with, with the result that her manner
varied according to her varying companions; and the tension of the bow
was not strained to the breaking-point at any time.
Actors and certain critics knew that that swallow-like skimming from
laughing badinage to biting satire--that fine restraint, that incredible
lightness of touch was backed by certainty, that certainty meant
knowledge, and that knowledge meant work. Yet, though Thrall told her
again and again that she had in herself the same mocking spirit that
informed Beatrice, she would have it that he and he alone had made the
performance possible to her. And though he denied it, the assertion was
like nectar to the vanity of the artist--like balm to the heart of the
man who longed to serve her.
And as it happened the newspapers had, in so many words, hailed her as
Queen of the Stage. The term had not been inspired by a suggestion from
him. It was extravagant, perhaps, but it was impromptu. And as he read
it, the blood swept over his face so redly that the watchful eyes of
Mrs. Thrall, sitting behind the tea-urn at the breakfast-table, saw and
noted, and when he had left for the theatre, she had studied eagerly
that side of the paper, but could not solve the riddle of that deep
flush of pleasure. For, though the notice of the play was very
flattering to his Benedick, he could not be moved so by the praise of a
single newspaper, she thought, even though he triumphed doubly as actor
of a part and as managerial producer of nobly correct scenery.
No, she could not solve the riddle; she could never have understood
that, because the praise had not been extorted, it was doubly precious,
or that one who lauded Sybil--magnified him.
* * * * *
"Yes," the girl said to herself, as she sat there, "he has crowned me,
but--" She sighed, and turned the ruby to catch the light. "I wonder
what your message is? One word, he says; perhaps it's _faith_. And yet,
no! that would be satirical. What is there to be faithful to--no
churchly vows! no!" she bit her lip to silence.
She missed Dorothy very greatly, now, in the lull that always follows
the hurry and excitement of preparing for a production, for an irregular
love is a great isolation--of necessity.
Dorothy, now two years a wife, had become so precious that she might no
more be permitted to pass through that tunnel than to kneel before the
car of the Juggernaut. Indeed, Leslie challenged the right of the very
winds of heaven to blow too harshly on her face, and if any sweet folly
of exaggerated care escaped him John Lawton was on hand to bring it to
his attention.
"Ja!" said Lena, who was herself preparing for marriage to her "Mickle,"
her "mash-man." "Ja, my Miss Lady, I youst hav' ter make of der lies to
der Herr Galts und der Herr Boss in der fron' uf der house, und keep
der' tentions, vile der Miss Dorrie-Galts com' by der back porch und
find out uf she's got any feet on der legs. Youst vat I tell you--der
Herr Mens vatch her like der two pig cats, und, ven she get der chance,
she laf und say, 'Lena! com' take me out uf der cottin'-battin, quvick!
und let's see den uf I break ven I cross der room!"
When the news had reached Sybil first, she had lain across her bed and
sobbed and wept the night away. But next day, when she had repeated it
to Thrall, she had withstood the piercing inquiry of his searching eyes,
until she heard the sigh of relief that told her he had seen no sign of
pain. And she had had hard work to convince him that the splendor of the
gift he wished her to send the happy, expectant young mother would not
be consistent with her supposed salary, and that Leslie would not be as
innocently unobservant as Dorothy.
So now she had not the dear pleasure of her sister's occasional visits.
Her face was unutterably sad. Suddenly she stretched her arms above her
head, in the same passionate gesture which she had used that night at
the old White house, under the starry sky, and now as then she cried out
against the bondage that held her! Then it had been poverty--now it was
sin! She wore her crown; she lived in luxurious comfort; Stewart's
loyalty was complete, beyond question, but--"Love and the world well
lost!" she quoted, and laughed aloud--such a woful little laugh. For
now, with tear-washed, experienced eyes, she saw the awful error she had
made, when in ignorant young passion she had declared "that love was
enough"!
A certain austere power of endurance had developed in her during these
crowded years. She neither whimpered nor complained, only to her own
soul she admitted that lawful, virtuous living was better than love
alone; that one could not depart from rectitude and morality without
sorrow, tears, and much bitterness of spirit. Just at first the wild
sweetness of the forbidden fruit enthralled her--the romance of secret
love, the thrill of stolen caresses, of fingers pressed under cover of a
stage direction, of kisses swiftly given upon the little "scolding" lock
of hair upon her neck, as he deftly and gallantly tied her veil after
rehearsal, the precious rare half-days stolen from task-mistress and the
world, and spent with her among the palms and poinsettias. Then all the
levity fell from him, and he was at his fascinating best--witty,
gracious, tender, sympathetic, wholly free from the smell of the
footlights that some actors carry about with them all their days. The
tiny notes pressed into warm palms, the code of signals--had all been so
deliciously mysterious that she had felt herself a real heroine of
romance.
"Poor little fool!" she murmured, contemptuously now, for she recalled
that for a time in her infatuation she had felt how ineffably superior
was her own romantic, secret, self-sacrificing love to the dull,
commonplace, strictly legalized affection of Dorothy and Leslie. But
since then--oh, since then! she had had time to wake from her beautiful
dream, she had had time to think and to suffer. She knew now that the
beautiful temple of love must stand on a foundation of legality, or it
would tremble dangerously under every wind that blew! She no longer
found anything to deride in the word "propriety," since she had come in
bitterness of spirit to realize its meaning: "What ought to be--what
should be." And dear Dorothy's life was what it should be, and she had
peace and security and had never known humiliation. "Humiliation!" Sybil
twisted her hands and gasped aloud, "God! oh, God!" at the recollections
that came to her. For Stewart Thrall's wife had kept her word and stood
at his side, and shared his popularity, and applauded him from her box,
and called him "dear" before all men on all possible occasions. And
suspecting that Sunday evenings might not be spent with "the boys," she
had inaugurated small "at homes," to give her dear Stewart a chance to
gather his valued friends about him in his own home. And he who had
never disregarded public opinion felt compelled to dance attendance upon
his wife in name, who held him to his bond for her vanity and
convenience. The trite endearments necessity forced from his lips were
torture to Sybil when she chanced to hear them; and oh, the agony of a
woman, who is secretly loved, when she sees the man who is hers--for
whom she has paid with her pride and honor and self-respect--held to the
side of another woman, by her legitimate rights! Just as maddening pain
will sometimes drive a sufferer to press upon the torturing wound, so
Sybil would cry to herself: "She is his true wife, and I am a--caprice!"
It was not true, she knew it was not true, yet a strange necessity for
self-torture forced her to repeat the cruel words, as it forced her
often to remind Stewart that it was time for him to hasten to some
appointment, to drive or to lunch with Mrs. Thrall, who much enjoyed
displaying publicly the devotion of her actor-husband. And once, when
Sybil had longed to attend a sacred concert that offered her an only
opportunity to hear a certain great singer, she had been forced either
to accept Roberts's escort or remain at home, because Mr. Thrall learned
at the last moment that Lettice had invited a large party, who were to
return afterward and sup with them in the informal way "dear Stewart so
enjoys." And, having swiftly decided in favor of a long evening of
loneliness at home, taking a bitter pleasure in her own suffering, she
had tried to hasten his departure, saying: "A man should never keep his
wife waiting."
And in sudden passion, shamed, wounded, angry, he had turned upon her,
forbidding her ever to so misapply that word again. "If you must call
her Mrs. Thrall, well, be it so--that is enough to bear!"
But Sybil pressed upon the wound, insisting obstinately: "But she is
your wife!" and he had doggedly contradicted: "No! no! She is a sort of
legalized money-changer in the temple of marriage! She is not a wife!
Our wedded life is a monstrous hypocrisy! We are false to ourselves,
false to society, false in word, deed, and thought! And yet she is a
good woman, whose legal and technical virtue would certainly have given
her the valued right to hurl rocks at the woman taken in adultery. Wife?
She? The woman whose companionship dragged me down to a lower level than
that at which she found me? Oh, I see in your cloudy, scornful face your
contempt for the man who blames a woman, and Lettice Rowland Thrall
should not be censured for not giving what she has not to give! But oh,
her chains are very heavy, and my bondage grows more bitter day by day!
Sometimes I think that I could welcome the death that, taking me from
you, beloved, would at least free me from her!"
Frankness was so natural to Sybil's nature that the secrecy and
stratagem of intrigue wearied her; the manoeuvring, the clandestine,
the sly, the underhand, shamed her. She knew now the secret of the
window-curtained door in Thrall's private office, opening on a narrow
passage that led up a stair to another door opening in turn behind a
wardrobe in a dressing-room--her dressing-room now these three years.
And Jim Roberts knew of it, too; she wondered why, and reddened as she
glanced toward a key that lay in an open desk-drawer.
"Oh!" she groaned, "how can I bear it! I love him! I love him! but it is
not right that love should bring only dishonor! I do not need churchly
vows to keep me loyal! I shall be faithful till I die; but I am a woman,
and I long for the privileges and prerogatives that marriage gives--and
that _she_ receives!"
She thought that she hid her suffering--she tried to do so, and
sometimes, in her work, forgot for a while her false position and the
weight of the chains she had herself forged. But those brilliant blue
eyes saw more than she guessed; and always, beside the growing hatred of
his bitter bondage, there was the agony of fear that this young
creature, made to win love, would weary of the double life, would some
day be sought by one brave enough to take her to wife--knowing all there
was to know! He saw glowing admiration in the eyes of men young and
free, and he cursed them in his heart _for_ their freedom, for he knew
he had no claim upon her, no legal tie bound her to him. She, the wife
of his heart and soul, might turn from him. Her beautiful, cloudy face
might flash into smiles for another, should she weary of him and of his
secret love. Therefore _his_ days, too, were often days of torment, and
the blonde woman, who watched them both with cold, keen eyes, knew much
and understood perfectly. She believed the taste for forbidden fruit was
common to all men. Thrall's conduct in the past had done little to
dispel that belief; but she knew now that his love for the beautiful,
gifted girl, whose faith he longed to justify by wedding her, was a
real--and oh! galling thought--a _loyal_ love! In the past her
suspicions had often borne fruit, and she could recall certain gas-lit,
laughing trysts, very scant of secrecy, mere counterfeit amours, that he
had lived to loathe, and she knew that this was no such caprice.
When he escaped for a little, she knew that he was at the feet of the
girl whose sombre eyes were so woful that sometimes they moved her heart
to a faint throb of pity. A nobler, warmer, more self-sacrificing woman
would have set them free, to find a purer faith, to form happier ties.
But Lettice, forced to realize the existence of this great mutual love,
this loyal passion, watched, and slowly grew to hate--intensely,
bitterly to hate--them both. Verily a noxious plant is illegitimate
love, and its poison far-reaching!
"Oh! Dorothy!" cried Sybil to the silent walls; "dear little mother to
be! I shall be so thankful when you can once more bring a breath of
honesty, of every-day open frankness, into this house!"
And then she heard a step, light but firm, coming from the back of the
hall, and the blood rushed into her face as she sprang to her feet, for
her fear was great lest the approaching man might read her grieving
thoughts in her face.
He entered, and, tossing a bunch of violets to the table, came to her,
and, taking her in his arms, buried his face in the cloudy, dark hair
that had always tempted him. Presently he said: "I should have been here
earlier, sweetheart, for I thought you would be lonely after your
people's departure." (She looked gratefully at him.) "But Jim kept me;
yes, he has broken loose again, and though I had someone take him home
and look after him, I was so doubtful of his being able to play to-night
that I gave his small part to an understudy, and that all took time."
"How good you are to that poor, worthless fellow! I don't believe any
other man in the world would be so generous and so patient as you are."
But Thrall said quickly, almost sharply: "Don't--don't say that!" and
turned away his face, while Sybil continued:
"But actors are so queer--actresses, too. They will hide malice under
compliments; they will deliver innuendoes in a jest; they will make most
injurious statements about one another; but let one of them be stricken
down with sickness or trouble and every hand goes instantly into the
pocket, even if it is already nearly empty, and the only feeling is
sympathy, the only thought relief for the unfortunate. You are a
generous people, Stewart!"
"_You?_" he repeated, pointedly.
And she laughed, and answered: "Oh, well! _we_ are generous--is that
better?"
"Yes!--much!" he answered, and knelt at her feet.
"What are you doing there?" she asked.
"One kneels to a queen!" replied he. She laughed, and flushed a little.
She had become actress enough to send out early for her papers. "And,"
he added, "particularly when one wishes to make an offering. This is an
anniversary, beloved!"
Her color fled, for that was the one unsympathetic note that had ever
sounded between them. She did not understand him in that one respect. To
her it seemed almost indelicate to remind her of that day when she had
forgiven. She was to understand him later; but now he saw the shadow on
her face, and his interpretation was, she "regrets her generosity," and
all his love shone appealing in his eyes as he took her hand, and,
whispering, "In memory of your mercy, beloved," slipped a great ring
upon her finger.
She glanced down at it, and a startled cry came from her lips. It was an
opal--a marvel! a very wonder! It was not merely the play of color
through the soft, milky translucence, the ghost of blue, the vivid
flecks of green, the pale rose deepening into flashes of ruby red, the
amber glow, but it was the strange quiver and throb in it that made it
seem alive--uncanny! She looked at him questioningly. "Did he not know,
then," she asked herself, "the superstition attached to this noblest,
most fascinating gem, that he offered it as a love gift?"
"See," he said, "how sharp the diamond scintillations are compared to
this softened glory! Do you see that throbbing that keeps the colors all
the time in play? That's my heart, beloved, as it quivers with pain and
shame when, belonging to you utterly, I have to ignore you before the
world. Do you guess how I suffer--I, who am bound--I, who am helpless! I
live only by your mercy--for I love you with all my soul!"
And, woman-like, she hid her own grief, and comforted him, and arranged
her violets and talked over their mutual triumphs and Dorothy's last
note. For he had great regard for the gentle creature in whom he
recognized great moral strength. And, as he was leaving, he looked at a
trophy of small arms and weapons on the wall, and said: "This Turkish
inlaid thing is rusting, Sybil, and this dagger--which is genuine--needs
attention, too. Let Jane Penny bring them over to-night, with that
bulldog revolver I left upstairs. If Jim is straightened up by that time
he will clean the whole outfit to-morrow. The property-man's
shooting-irons are all out of kilter, too. There'll be a good day's job
to clean and oil them all, but it's the sort of pottering work Jim
likes. Good-by, sweetheart! Take an hour's rest, dear, before going to
the theatre. Beatrice needs to be well keyed up, you know." He kissed
her lips and eyes and hair, and left her.
And she stood and cried: "He loves me! He has crowned me! I love him
with my whole heart! I thank him from my very soul! But oh, what a
position is mine! Unmarried--I am deprived of all freedom and girlish
pleasures! A wife--I am denied the honors and prerogatives of marriage!"
Her eyes fell upon the great opal, quivering, glowing, glinting! "He
suffers, too," she said. "Poor Stewart!" and again she wondered if he
knew the superstition attached to opals, and, turning, took the rusting
weapons from the trophy.