Hobart did invite Thurley to the family dinner party. With customary
tardiness the invitation did not reach her until the afternoon of the
day, late afternoon in fact, after a fatiguing round of “polishings
off,” as she dubbed them, and an hour with Miss Clergy during which she
had read aloud from an archaic little romance and had listened to the
ghost-lady murmur her opinions.
Very swiftly it was becoming clear to Thurley that fame, even the great,
dazzling fame of which the workaday world reads with awe, merely meant
one had a different standard of values; that all emotions such as joy,
sorrow, anger, renunciation, cowardice, heroism and so on were relative.
Tom Jones and wife and child in Skiddeoot, Missouri, might attain as
great joy over acquiring a terrifically green-colored bungalow and
veneered mahogany to decorate the parlor, while Mrs. Tom was to have a
woman to wash, and Mr. Tom membership in the Skiddeoot bowling club—quite
as much joy as Ernestine Christian when she stayed at Buckingham Palace
an honored guest and had on her dressing table the miniatures of the
young princes and a certain jewelled box given her by the king of Italy.
The lives of these luminaries, when one came to know them on equal
footing, were composed of a multitude of trivial details, the same as
were the Joneses’ of Skiddeoot—the proper breakfast food, annoyance of a
thunder shower, the wrong-sized-gaiters, the intense dislike of parsnips,
the fondness for Japanese prints, the staunch conviction as to when the
world was to end, the way to eat one’s melons (in Skiddeoot it would
be porridge), the best style of spring motor car (in Skiddeoot it would
be whether to have the Ford wheels red or yellow)—and so on through an
endless list of things about which physical and mental existence is
centered.
Thurley had been exceptionally spared the grind and slow advancement of
the average artist. On the other hand, she had experienced both grind and
decidedly depressing experiences during her travels in the box-car. She
was now placed, as it were, in the front ranks of the artistic world and
allowed to gaze about, investigate, presume, acquire knowledge, as much
as her own possibilities would permit. Her possibilities being above the
average, Thurley, inside of the few months in New York, had come to the
settled conviction that folks were really just folks no matter how they
were dressed, and the artists quite the same as the population of Birge’s
Corners, only in a different setting and with a different set of values.
It was rather disappointing to come to the conclusion, not at all
romantic and stimulating or in keeping with the conclusions Caleb
Patmore’s “Victorious Victoria” had arrived at in an amazingly short
space of time. It was like a child’s suddenly being put on everyday
relations With Santa Claus himself and finding out, besides his ability
to ride reindeer skyward, and, toy-laden, shoot down narrow chimneys,
that he had a gouty foot the same as Oyster Jim’s, was rather caustic
if his eggs were overdone, was a Republican, body, boots and breeches,
the same as Ali Baba, and, if he lost three games of cribbage straight
running, was distinctly “peeved.”
So Thurley advanced beyond the illusions of the uninitiated. Before she
came into Bliss Hobart’s dominion she had been one of the public, the
sort of public who believe newspaper reports of opera singers having
frolicsome boa-constrictors as family pets, to welcome them when they
stagger home under van-loads of orchids from the evening’s work! She saw
now with the clear, innocent eyes of youth, which is so often wiser than
dictatorial and narrow middle age, that the common lot was the universal
lot and that in the sum total of all things the famous ones were spared
no more nor less nor given greater qualities of endurance or supreme
power.
Had the invitation to the “family” dinner come a week ago, Thurley would
have hesitated before accepting. But Ernestine Christian’s personality—as
yet it was not Ernestine Christian’s real self since she betrayed that
to no one—had woven a big-sister armor about Thurley’s wild-rose self.
She was eager to become one of the family, unconscious of the honor for
which many had sighed and bribed for in vain. She showed the note to Miss
Clergy and became very flapperlike on the subject of her costume.
“Wear any you like,” Miss Clergy said fondly. “Dear me, I sha’n’t go. I’m
an old lady, sleepy as an infant by half after eight.”
“Must I always be alone?” Thurley protested.
Miss Clergy, whose girlhood had been bounded on all sides by the “Polite
Letter Writer” and “Godey’s Lady’s Book,” hesitated. “Take a maid,” she
urged.
“For protection? Goodness, no! Why, I’ve walked at midnight in the
darkest road at home, when Philena would be taken very ill and we had to
have the north end doctor. I’ll go alone—and wear my green velvet.”
“If you want more dresses—” began Miss Clergy cheerily. When one had a
wild-rose girl with the voice of a lark, revenge just naturally lost its
grim and ugly aspects.
But Thurley shook her head and vanished, singing snatches of her
exercises and finding out that she was not so tired as she had fancied;
the languor had magically vanished. She propped Hobart’s tantalizing note
on her dressing table as she did her hair.
Thurley—
Come and be christened at seven-thirty. The family must know
the baby.
B. H.
Thurley deliberately powdered her face and added a soupçon of superfluous
rouge. She was thinking, “Now I shall know the real man, the real Bliss
Hobart,” dropping into a hum instead of singing aloud, always a symptom
of rare joy.
Presently she appeared to say good night to Miss Clergy, a radiant
young person looking, as Caleb Patmore said afterwards, “an up-to-date
historical romance bound in green velvet and silver lace.” But she was
disappointed in Hobart’s apartment, for she realized at a glance it was
only more of his “setting”; that here he existed as Bliss Hobart the
critic and master, not Bliss Hobart the man. It was equally as awesome
as his studio offices, but in a more distinguished, definite style.
There was rare, decorative wall paper, with shellacked panels set in
the yellow, marbleized walls reproducing the design made by David for
the great Napoleon. Black, velvety carpet covered the tiled floors, the
chairs were of deep mouse color edged with gold fringe, there were pale
gray hangings against shell pink satin screens and a tiled Portuguese
mantel of blue and yellow.
She found Ernestine Christian and Caleb Patmore waging a lively argument,
with Bliss Hobart enjoying it hugely. Nor did they stop after Thurley’s
bashful entrance and Hobart’s introduction,
“The family infant! Remember, ‘children should be seen and not heard.’
There’s the chair for you, and if you are very ‘pie’ and don’t contradict
your elders, you’ll be rewarded later.”
Thurley accepted the rôle gladly. It was evident they considered her
a promising infant. Some day she would be able to tell them the same
half-patronizing things or be introducing some other prodigy into the
family in equally clever, blasé fashion. That first and memorable dinner
party was more of an education than all the lessons Thurley had endured
since her New York advent. Here she saw the demonstration of the theories
taught her regarding form, cleverness and so on. Long before the evening
was ended, she felt she could now dispense with the social secretary, the
beauty doctor and the gymnast. She had only to observe her “family” and
practise the results of the observation before her mirror.
“We are waiting for Polly Harris and Collin Hedley,” Hobart remarked
during a lull in the battle. “Polly is as punctual as an alarm clock, but
Collin would not be on time at his own funeral, if it were possible. We
always give him a half hour leeway and never mind because Polly is such
fun when she rages.”
Thurley murmured some reply, and then Caleb Patmore, who had been looking
at her almost rudely, began anew his argument. Despite his depraved ideas
regarding novel writing, Thurley liked him. He had the clean-cut business
air which she admired, rather than the air of the proverbial long-haired
novelist with a hemstitched neck scarf.
“Of course we respect Daphne,” he said grudgingly. “For five years she
has made her living writing poetry—POETRY—and how many can say as much?
No bribes of the corset makers for limerick advertisements ever tempted
her, but now she has sensibly surrendered in favor of marrying one Oscar
Human, Indiana plumber at large. The only remarkable thing about it is
that Oscar Human would marry a failure poetess who must have forgotten
how to cook a boiled dinner or be interested in the new style nickel
fittings! Well, luck to Daphne Rhodes, but what good was it all? A
starved, embittered space filler, she admitted, soothing a makeup man’s
difficulties by rounding out the page with a plump sonnet.”
Ernestine walked over to the mantel in order to look as majestic as
possible, so Hobart called out. She was very lovely in her crystal
colored satin with silvery panels and those interesting, homely hands of
hers clasped awkwardly.
“You do love fleshpots, Caleb, no matter whether an Indiana plumber or
an editor bestows them. You’ll have Daphne taking orders for your next
novel, I dare say—a premium with every new kitchen sink Oscar installs!
You wretch! I’ve no doubt Daphne is going to be happy, at least her
experience as a poetess will mercifully teach her never to let this Oscar
know how commonplace he is. Therein will lie the success of the union. As
soon as Polly comes, we’ll decide on the wedding present. For my part, I
think Daphne has done a brave thing to hold to the best in herself, and,
when she saw she was unable to attain her goal, to drop back gracefully
into the house-and-garden rank and file.”
Caleb shrugged his shoulders. “Well, long ago I became tired of being a
literary chameleon and trying to match up every editor’s bark! I found
out what the reading public wanted and I have given it to them—great
hunks of it! I haven’t come out so badly, eh? Now, Daphne could have done
the same.” He leaned back in his chair looking defiantly at Ernestine.
“You are trying to make me the man in the divorce case; his wife took the
furniture and the five children and he took the blame. But I challenge
you, Caleb, to prove that you have ever really written a good story—a
story you felt and loved and were willing to fight for until it was
printed.”
“You’ve never gone through my attic trunks,” he reminded. “Besides, the
public doesn’t like highbrow stories. They like stories about people who
are capable of wearing pink underwear, and a villain must be a villain
if found carrying a riding crop. Just when I am settled in my mind
concerning my next heroine, Ernestine breaks out with uplift, as annoying
as to have a motor stuffed with relatives drive up to the door at dinner
time,” he informed Hobart. “Can’t you lend a hand?”
“How can I, when I want to stay friends with you both? By Jove, there’s
the bell; they’ve arrived.”
Ernestine blew Caleb a kiss and murmured, “If one cannot write _au
naturel_, I presume it must be _au gratin_!”
Then there swept into the room two of the strangest and most delightful
persons Thurley had ever seen. Collin Hedley came first, a fair-haired,
boyish man with eyes so joyous and brilliant one could not look at them
for long, and the bristly head of the plebeian with deep incurvation
of the temples. He was most carelessly dressed, but no one would have
noticed that as long as his eyes smiled; he had a mad Van Dyke beard and
a lovable yet combative mouth which might or might not prophesy many
things.
But it was Polly Harris who captivated Thurley’s heart and made
her forget her shyness. Polly had the fashion of bombarding one’s
self-consciousness. She could have changed the saying, “A cat may look at
a king” to “a cat may order a king.” Even Bliss Hobart lost dignity in
her presence.
“Polly can teach you to write _vers libre_ on your cuff and tell a
Chicago art patron from a Pittsburg coal dealer at a distance of fifty
yards,” was Hobart’s universal recommendation. But Polly Harris could do
a great deal more.
She reminded one, although her age was less than Ernestine’s, of October
sunshine, partly because she was a tiny, wood-brown thing, an oddity, a
fact she well knew, flat-chested as a boy, with tanned skin, eyes like
topazes, if she were happy, and her brown hair bobbed like a child’s
and fastened with a ridiculous velvet bow. Her dresses were inevitably
the same—since her income was likewise—Polly’s regimentals, they called
them, brown corduroy for winter, made in semi-smock, semi-Eton-jacket
style with an abbreviated skirt and stout little boots laced as if
for a walking tour. In the summer Polly appeared in brown cotton made
in similar fashion and when she was dragged to some formal affair she
would be induced to wear her “heirloom,” a brocaded brown velvet which
Ernestine had brought from Paris. Polly was just Polly with her crisp
little voice, a heart of gold and a tongue which could be sharp as a
battle lance or as tender as pink rosebuds.
“The only sprite in captivity,” the family dubbed her, pitying her
impossible aim—to write grand opera—and never hinting what tragedy lay
before her when the tanned face would wrinkle and the bobbed hair turn
gray. It was as probable that Polly Harris could write a grand opera as
that Betsey Pilrig could lead the Russian ballet—but Polly, as so often
happens in the case of “captured sprites,” saw none of the absurdity
encasing her ambitions.
No one knew just how she lived, for she had the fierce pride of failures.
“Sure ’nuff” successes or “comers” are always more amenable to loans and
helping hands. In her sky parlor, the tiptop room in a bohemian New York
rooming house, Polly somehow wrested from fate and the world at large
a living. Limericks and hack work of hideous monotony and starvation
wage with the pride of her family behind her! Her father had been an
Ohio judge and her grandfather a senator, while Polly, alone and without
resources, had wilfully burned family bridges some years before and
drifted to New York to write her operas.
Even Polly admitted the first operas were hopeless, bravely burning them
as one does old love letters. But grand opera remained her goal; nothing
less would or could satisfy her. After seven desperate years of work and
insufficient means, Polly had become one of the family of the very great
and was envied by all; it meant, however, that she took from this family
not one jot of aid or influence nor permitted them to know whether “we
are eating to-day or we are moving our belt strap into the next hole.”
Sometimes the family outwitted Polly Harris and helped her in spite of
herself, but more often they knew it was kindest to not try. So they
did the finest thing of all because the girl’s fine self deserved and
demanded it—they took her in as one of them and talked of the day her
operas should be sung, listening to her pitiful dreams as kindly as they
would have listened to Wagner could he have been among them telling of
his Rhinegold! Polly had become a character in artistic New York and when
the near-great enviously urged her to make use of the truly great, to
accept some easy position as secretary or companion to this celebrity or
that, Polly’s eyes would change to angry, storm things and she would turn
on them with the threat that they would still see her win out, some day
the great theme would come to her and the world admit her success! Then
she would repay the beloved family for their kindness in not forcing old
clothes and baskets of food, loans of money—as one tipped a maid. Polly
would be famous, as famous as Ernestine Christian or Bliss or the lazy
deceiver of a Caleb or Collin Hedley whom Polly loved in strange fashion
although he was honestly unconscious of the fact.
Until then painting lamp shades at night, writing wretched verse for some
wretched publication, doing a child’s song cycle for almost the cost of
the music paper, harmonizing impossible marching songs, substituting at
a Harlem movie house as the piano player—none of these was too mean for
Polly to do since they sustained her until the day the great theme should
whisper itself!
“The thing which keeps Polly afloat,” Ernestine had declared, “is that
she is glad for every one else who wins out—it has made her so sunny
hearted she just can’t go under.”
Polly approached Thurley with open arms, saying in her crisp fashion,
“Bliss tells me you have never known father, mother nor telephone number
and we can baby you all we like,” bending down unexpectedly to kiss her.
Before Thurley answered, Polly whirled around to demand, “Listen, every
one, I’ve come to the conclusion we should all be thankful for anything
that makes cold chills go up and down our spines,” dashing into some
nonsensical adventure told in her own fashion.
Hobart waited until the conclusion, after which he offered Thurley his
arm and led the way into the dining room which proved to be an enclosed
sort of terrace with wonderfully imitated flowering shrubs, green striped
awnings, a lily pool fountain giving a touch of the unreal and illusive.
Wicker chairs, artificial ascension lilies and Canterbury bells were in
profusion. The room was called the “village green,” Caleb whispered to
Thurley, and on nights when the thermometer skidded below zero, Hobart
delighted to come into this exquisite little oasis of almost tropical
heat and make his guests forget the sleet and frost without. Two chairs
were tipped against their well appointed places, one for Mark Wirth, the
dancer, and one for Sam Sparling, the actor, Thurley learned, a family
custom always observed.
As they sat about the table, Thurley between Polly and Collin, Polly
remarked naïvely:
“I’m trying to get Collin to tell me why women who dabble in water colors
always paint ‘Pharaoh’s Horses’ with chests like inflated, tuppenny
balloons?”
“How can a mere painter of fried egg sunsets answer?” he retorted. “Oh, I
say, about Daphne’s wedding present—Polly doesn’t want to send it.”
At which a chorus of “why nots” issued, to which Polly said forcibly:
“Because it will remind her of what she can never have. Pick out some
nice, golden oak and green plush article which will do credit to the
establishment of one Oscar Human, plumber at large. It will be salve on
a throbbing wound. Daphne will think, bless her amateurish old heart,
that it is _our_ choice and being typical of the golden oak and green
plush atmosphere which must always be hers, she’ll still feel one of us!
But that green metal desk set with silver trim—horrors, think of its
shivering with loneliness in Oscar’s back parlor!”
“Right,” Hobart added, “I’ll get the picture of a wistful tabby cat
staring at oysters fairly shivering in their shells and a battenberg
doily underneath—no, that would be too broad—we’ll get—I say, here’s our
infant fresh from Birge’s Corners and Birge’s Corners’ brides—nearly one
herself if the truth were known! What ho, Thurley, what would you propose
to give a Birge’s Corners’ bride that would meet the town’s approval?”
Flushing as she thought of Lorraine’s chest of linens, the new house
which was to cost twenty thousand dollars—and then of Ernestine’s
necklace which cost that alone—Thurley, without hesitation, answered,
“Why, a cut glass punch bowl with the silver hooks all around it for the
little glasses!”
“The infant is christened,” Hobart pronounced after the applause ended.
“I nominate a shopping committee of Ernestine Christian and Thurley
Precore.”
During the rest of the supper party Thurley remained a spectator until
Hobart whispered that she sing for them and she rose, for the first time
in her life, reluctant to obey.
“She has not done well,” she heard Hobart saying as she finished, “stage
fright—too few of us—too small a room—the opera stage, five thousand
people and she would sing as if her throat were copper lined—however—”
Polly Harris finished the sentence for him. “However, if Ernestine wisely
realizes the limitations of the pianoforte, Thurley Precore will never
have to realize the limitations of her voice.”
Caleb took Ernestine and Thurley home in his machine, Collin and Polly
following in the former’s roadster. Being the infant, Thurley was left
at her hotel first of all with fond good nights and quips about the
sandman’s speedy arrival! She regretted that she was not allowed to whirl
about taking Polly home and then Collin and then Ernestine and, finally,
to be left alone with this rich, willful novelist-slacker and have him
tell about his world even as Ernestine had hinted of hers.
As she undressed, the memories of the evening being rehearsed by her
dramatic self and shamedly admitting she had been a stupid country lass
who had not sung one-tenth as well as she could, Thurley realized another
valuable thing, one which the public does not take the pains to decipher,
that artists, in order to be successes, must, _per se_, acquire definite
and almost narrow ways and methods of living such as dressing, recreation
and so on, _their personalities must crystallize and become impenetrable
to the onslaught of the personalities which they will undertake to
interpret or create_. Here, in part, lies the secret of fame. Once one
has one’s own self quite modelled and secure from invasion, the tortures
of creation and interpretation become but the day’s work just as the man
with grimy hands polishes the most expensive limousine body and returns
homeward via a street car.
The members of the family had distinct and original personalities—true,
they did not seem to be the complement of their forms of artistic
achievement; Collin’s pictures never reminded one of Collin nor
Ernestine’s programs have many of her own favorites, but back of their
work, a haven to temperament, stood these people’s personalities which
carried them bravely on the tidal wave of success. Whether or not
something else stood behind these personalities and formed the universal
trinity of expression was to be determined later—when one did not suggest
cut glass punch bowls with hooks as wedding gifts!
But as Thurley lay down to sleep, too excited to remember Birge’s
Corners, she determined with amusing worldliness to set to work
developing her own personality, to both pamper and crystallize
it, pitting it against this wild rose Thurley who blushed and who
sneezed—unpoetic truth—just when she should not!