Thurley had no calling cards—not every detail can be achieved in a
magical space of time—so she told the maid to say it was Miss Precore
and that she was expected. At which she was shown into the strangest
living-room, to her untutored eyes, that she could imagine. It had a
black and white tiled floor and green Pompeiian furniture with oddly
shaped cushions in still odder places and distinctive mirrors hung on
dull, green chains. The piano was in the center of the room and all about
the walls were bizarre black and white etchings and some fascinating
marines. At the end of the room, the light striking it in excellent
manner, was the portrait of a man. As Thurley looked at it, she wondered
if she was to go from strange room to stranger room seeing portraits
which fascinated her and then meet their originals only to gaze on
another portrait equally strange and winsome.
This man was noticeable for his well-shaped head with its short, dark
hair and fine, large eyes, hazel she would judge, slightly mocking and
lying-in-wait in their expression. They were encased with spectacles of
scholarly aspect. He had a womanish chin and the tortured, lined brow of
the apostle. Dressed in riding togs, he was sitting on the bench of an
old garden, one hand betraying slim, artistic fingers as it rested on the
head of a grizzled dog.
Thurley was settling herself in a nearby chair, trying to become
accustomed to this very different sort of “scenery,” when a woman began
saying in a deep, rich voice,
“Poor youngster, tired out, aren’t you? Was it scales? How I hated them!
Don’t worry, I shall not ask you to sing. Put this cushion behind you—ah,
here we are.”
Thurley stared at her hostess, the same scarlet-lipped, clever-faced
woman of the portrait, her blue-black hair combed high to-day and her
spatulate hands clasping her knee in boy fashion. She wore no jewelry,
but a frock the consonance of copper and silver. It gave the effect of
sunset over still water and a silver-coated Persian cat stalked out to
settle himself in the fold of her skirt.
“It was very good of you to ask me,” Thurley began, feeling rather ill at
ease.
“I never ask any one I don’t want. So don’t feel obligated. Every one
says I’m selfishness personified. Bliss says you’re to be one of our
family and I want to be sort of elder sister—anyway, don’t you approve
of tea and scandal at the same time?” Her smile softened her face. She
reached over to a smoking stand and found a cigarette.
Encouraged, Thurley leaned forward to say, “I’m afraid I don’t know about
the family. You see I’m quite raw, as they say. And dreadfully confused.
I find I have to acquire so many things besides singing exercises.”
“I look back fourteen years and see myself as I look at you. I was
droll for a year or so. But Bliss claims you have a sense of humor, so
everything else will follow like sheep. You don’t understand, do you?”
she said kindly. “Let’s see what the ‘family’ can do for you. Bliss is
such a bear at explaining that he has really turned you over to me. You
see, Thurley, there are so many hundreds of the near-famous and so many
truly-great persons who abuse the name that a select little coterie
of us—myself and five others—after rather depressing and humorous
experiences have formed what we call the family, and we are going to
adopt you. It’s quite a recommendation, but you’ll realize it more five
years from now. By the way, I shall not ask you to smoke—bad for tender
throats.”
“How beautiful,” Thurley said softly, “a family!”
“Just a title, of course, but we have our parties and our times together
and we talk of what we like in the manner we like—rather hard to plunge
headlong into the real meaning of things. I think Bliss was precipitate
in asking you to the Thursday dinner party.”
“He hasn’t.”
“But he will—that’s his way. He’s such a busy dear that he never does
things properly. Now in the family are myself and Polly Harris, whom
you’ll know better after seeing than I can tell you. Remember she has a
Packard personality in that Lizzie Ford body of hers. Then Collin Hedley—”
“The artist who did your picture?”
“The same. And Mark Wirth, as great a dancer as you will ever see,”
her lips folded into a displeased expression but she did not explain
the reason, “and Bliss and there will be yourself. Then there are Sam
Sparling, the English actor, and the original of that portrait,” she
pointed to the man who had interested Thurley. “His name is Caleb
Patmore.”
“Why, he writes stories,” Thurley said. “Even Birge’s Corners has become
aware of him.”
“Bless his wicked heart!” Ernestine said swiftly.
Thurley began to wonder why Caleb Patmore ever used any other woman as
a model for heroines or Collin Hedley for his paintings. Perhaps it was
Ernestine’s unusual fashion of dress which made every one feel that she
had worn only the least beautiful of her gowns or the careless, homely
way she dressed her hair or her unjewelled, ugly hands which could
coax from the pianoforte such music as Thurley had never dreamed could
exist—or her sarcastic worldliness tempered with a girlish idealism which
made her face bright with smiles. Then there was the strange, restless
sadness in her eyes and the way the scarlet mouth had of dropping into
hurt little curves, symbolic of many things of which Thurley was still
ignorant. Ernestine Christian was indifferent, even insolent, regarding
her fame, but jealously proud of her theories about it. And when she
mentioned Bliss Hobart a few moments later, she said enthusiastically,
“He is such a wonderful idealist, so tremendously sincere and fearless!
Most idealists lack the courage to express themselves and they live and
die with the world no wiser, but Bliss—! some day, when you, too, have
become worldly wise and a bit tired ’way inside, you will understand.”
To which Thurley innocently replied, “Is Caleb Patmore an idealist?”
Ernestine began playing with the fringe of her sash. “Now what do you
think?”
Thurley looked at the portrait and then at her hostess. “I don’t know,”
she evaded.
“Tut-tut, tell me what you think! Never mind what you know.”
“His novels, even though they sell in as small towns as the Corners, are
rather—rather—” She floundered piteously.
Ernestine came to the rescue, her scarlet lips curving down in hurt
fashion as she answered, “His novels for the most part comprise tattling
on blondined art models—and brides! Caleb believes that art must be on a
strictly commercial basis and that no art should be enduring, ‘any more
than a bath,’ as he explains, ‘but quite as necessary and frequent.’”
“Oh, he is wrong!” Instinctively Thurley was displeased.
“May you always think so, but when the distressingly rich wheeze up in
satin-lined cabs and ask you to accompany them to a distressingly vulgar
palace and have you sing a song or two at a thousand dollars each; when
every one comes salaaming and saluting you, and you, too, begin to have
visions of acquiring a vulgar palace all your own and are, therefore,
pompous and impossible as so many of us foolish children of light allow
ourselves to become; when you look about the salon to select the richest
husband or admirer and deliberately neglect your voice for your coiffure
and your repertoire for your wardrobe—well, perhaps you may withstand it,
but it is a rare happening! Bliss says he has yet to find it otherwise.”
“A thousand dollars a song.” Thurley recalled that day—how many lifetimes
ago—that Dan engaged her to sing at his circus in connection with “the
great swinging man” and had emptied his spending-money pocket into her
ragged lap. “Oh, no, they only pay a thousand dollars a song in one of
Mr. Patmore’s novels.”
“Mr. Patmore,” continued the woman who loved him more dearly than she did
herself, “takes his copy from friends, like a bee flitting here and there
and returning to the hive honey-laden. We have all accused him of hiding
behind screens to gain conversation.”
Thurley laughed. “Do they never tip over?”
“They do if we suspect he is behind them,” Ernestine replied with a smile.
“What does he do with all his money? He must be very rich if the reports
are true. Why even at the Corners we sold a hundred copies of ‘Victorious
Victoria,’ and it was stupid, even the description of a new way for
Victoria to be kissed.”
“‘Victorious Victoria’! It is engraven on my heart. I tried harder to
make him burn the manuscript than I did to play well before Queen Mary
and King George,” she said in a dull voice. “Yet she was ‘Victorious
Victoria,’ for she gave her sponsor a new motor and a lot of foolish
jewelry and a Japanese valet and some first editions that he boasted of
having wrenched from a millionaire at an auction sale! You see, Caleb
thinks there is no need to sacrifice for one’s ideals or to be above
a purchase price for mediocre work. He says, ‘Writing is a trade. We
must all come in on a time clock or be taken to an insane asylum. Give
the public what it wants and with their money we can buy what we want.
Let the public take the consequent softening of the brain. Younger
generations will always be appearing like spring violets and measles to
save us authors’ and artists’ bacon!’ There is the alpha and omega of his
philosophy. One might as well throw oneself against a stone fortress as
to make him reason otherwise. Blind, blind as an adder!” She broke off
abruptly to call Thurley’s attention to some pottery she had picked up in
Dutch Guiana which could not be obtained save as one became a friend of
the natives.
Then a maid came in with the tea-cart and Ernestine began asking as to
“one lump or two—cream or sugar or lemon.”
“Your dress is so interesting,” Thurley remarked to break the lull.
“Thanks. I loathe clothes, yet have to have those dreadful creations when
I go on tour—the critics always expect it. They put notices in the social
columns, too! My revenge will come when I am in the perilous forties.
I shall be constantly clad in black chiffon and steel embroideries with
ermine and broadcloth for the outer layers. I aspire to be the sort of
older-than-I-look-but-not-yet-ancient person who has the proper air of
mystery, always an asset, the sure, fine lines of a Helleu dry point, you
know.”
“No, I don’t know,” Thurley admitted drolly.
Ernestine clapped her hands. “Fine, we are coming on! Take some more
marmalade. Please don’t let them spoil you, Thurley, you’re so nice as
you are. I mean the army of make-overs who assail any one with ability.
They have not begun attacks as yet. Wait until you are asked for written
recommendations and some one invents a Thurley perfume. Oh, that you
might be spared!” She held up her hands in horror.
“Does Mr. Hobart really think I shall be a great singer?” Thurley was
experiencing her first stage fright, hence the repetition.
“No one sees him the second time unless he does,” Ernestine informed her.
“Tell me about yourself. Remember I’m a cross pianist who dislikes having
ability and yet would die if I did not. You can trust me, because no one
ever comes near me!”
“Don’t you adore your work?” Thurley asked in reproach.
Ernestine shook her head. “Really, I think genius is something no other
member of your family would countenance, something your ancestors have
saved up to hand you unawares. I cannot help playing the piano. They say
I even make people _like_ Bach, but I wish I could, for it is life to me,
after a fashion, and death after another. You cannot mix house-and-garden
living and a career any more than oil and water. It must be the choice
absolute of one or the other. If a big person marries, she often marries
some one inferior and therein lies disaster. Moral, do not marry.”
Thurley’s fingers stole inside her pocket to clutch at the corner of
Betsey’s letter. “But you can be happy, if you do not marry,” she said
uneasily.
“Has it begun to worry so soon? Wake up, Silver Heels! Tell her there
is much else besides the little hope-chest crowded with pink-ribboned
nighties and cook books.” She stirred the Persian kitten with her slipper
toe.
“I—I’ve been engaged,” Thurley announced, not knowing why.
“Of course you have, living in a small town and with those eyes! Who
was he—not the constable? I could believe anything of you, Thurley, but
that!” Ernestine was kindly and teasing all in one.
“Just a nice boy,” she said with an effort, “but I gave him up.”
“You did wisely. It is the trying to delude ourselves to clutch with
one hand for a laurel wreath and for orange blossoms with the other.
That is what makes us failures on both sides of the question. You must
see Collin’s lovely country place up the Hudson, and we must go to some
lectures together. Besides, you have all Europe to exclaim over. I’m
going to walk through Spain next summer. Come along?”
“I’d love to if—if I have the money—”
“We’ll find the money. You must do these things. Bliss is making a little
machine out of you with his blessed, idealistic self, hidden like a monk
under his habit. Never mind—bright days for Young America—want to hear me
play?”
“Would you, really?”
“Listen!” Rising, she went to the piano and began “The Two Larks,”
gliding from that into some things of Grieg.
When she finished, Thurley, ruthlessly scattering cake crumbs, came
beside her. The timid country girl had vanished. She was the wild-rose
Thurley with the “fire, dash, touch of strangeness.”
“Let me sing for you! You can tell me the truth, better than Mr. Hobart.
Oh, but you can!” she begged.
Ernestine pointed to the shelves of music, but Thurley shook her head.
“I’ll play for myself,” sitting on the bench beside her hostess.
The chords were few and far between, but the girl’s voice rose high and
clear with the ethereal quality of a child’s, as she sang an old Scotch
ballad.
Ernestine Christian drew her to her with a sudden, deft gesture. “Shall
I pity or congratulate you?” she asked, her sallow cheeks flushed with
excitement.
Then they fell to talking, as women will, of lighter things, and by
degrees Thurley found herself in Ernestine Christian’s bedroom—a striking
affair in yellow lacquered furniture with Chinese designs in gold, ivory
walls and huge, black fur rugs which she had brought from Russia. There
was point de venise and fillet lace over gray silk for the furniture
coverings and a veritable sheath of photographs, among which Thurley
found Bliss Hobart’s.
Then Thurley found herself taking note of Ernestine’s gowns, learning
many things which she resolved to put into practice. She discovered
that Ernestine Christian had just celebrated her thirtieth birthday and
was indifferent to the fact in any way; that Bliss Hobart had had a
fever when a lad and hence the grayish hair; that Polly Harris was as
good a treat as a fairy pantomime but she carried a heartbreak bravely
concealed, for she loved Collin Hedley, the childish, irresponsible
artist, and she had not the greatness of genius in herself for which
she so longed. Also, there was a Madame Lissa Dagmar whom Ernestine
disapproved of but spoke no open ill concerning. This Madame Dagmar
threatened the welfare of Mark Wirth, the dancer, for she had fallen in
love with him and turned his head with strange notions, and, lastly, this
Thurley’s woman heart told her, Ernestine Christian loved the popular,
irreverent novelist, Caleb Patmore, but she believed marriage would
interfere with his work as well as her own, so she steadfastly stood him
off in that tantalizing fashion common to women of brilliant attainments
and childish, hungry hearts.
When Thurley left her, the sting as to Lorraine and Dan’s engagement had
been spirited away—she knew not how. Perhaps it was the graceful way in
which Ernestine had welcomed her, the new surroundings, the music, the
confidences about these “stars in the artistic firmament,” as Birge’s
Corners would have expressed it, the knowledge she was to be one of the
sacred family which had hidden its existence even from press agents, or,
thrilling thought, that she was to be famous and rich—or was it none of
these? Was it that Thurley learned more about Bliss Hobart?—that he was
an idealist who seldom expressed ideals, lest they become trampled upon
and return to him in cynical disguise; that he was not old but young in
fact and unmarried, and, as yet, interested in no woman personally save
as his two friends, Polly and Ernestine, amused him; and, best of all,
that he told Ernestine to be particularly nice to Thurley Precore, nicer
than she had been to any other girl he had trained and presented to the
public!