Like all clever women who have met defeat often enough to escape it in
the future, Lissa realized the best way to vanquish an enemy was to know
her intimately. Therefore, she invited Thurley to dinner at the Hotel
Particular. The pink card looked very innocent as Thurley read in Lissa’s
exaggerated handwriting,
“I’ve asked no one else, dear child, because I want really to know you.
And I shall not take no for an answer—I’ll come and get you if you don’t
appear at the stroke of seven.”
Thurley showed the card to Bliss Hobart before they began their lesson,
watching his brows draw together in quick alarm and then lift cynically.
He threw it aside with an annoyed gesture.
“I don’t like Lissa’s trying to bag my game, but you’ll have to go,
I suppose, and be done with it. Please don’t absorb any of her silly
notions. You’ve been brought up so far as any nice child would be and
you are not spoiled. You could be very easily spoiled, Thurley, and
a frightful person if you were. Some persons have single- and some
multiple-compartment minds. That is why a single-compartment-minded
person may have a tragic experience and it proves the end of him,
whereas a multiple-compartment-minded person emerges unscathed, to all
appearances, only a part of him harmed. The single-compartment-minded
person can comprehend but one viewpoint, good or bad, one aim, believe
in but one result—if it is good, all is well—if it is bad—disaster,
hopeless and lasting. You have forgotten Birge’s Corners too quickly,
Thurley, to make me fear you are of the single-compartment variety. But,
please, take everything Lissa says with a large punctuation of mental
salt and try to wastebasket her entire influence.”
Thurley laughed. “What I planned to do, for I do not like her and I do
like Mark Wirth. Yet she interests me. Besides, I must know some bad
people!”
Hobart shook his head. “If only you never need to—heigho, here we go,
talking against time—”
“Tell me, does Mark Wirth really love her?” Thurley insisted. She had
grown to feel more at home with Hobart than she had fancied could occur;
even during his abrupt, aloof moments she sensed the gentler part of him
as being merely sidetracked for the time being.
“Mark,” said Hobart as he sat at the piano, “is a case of the old
warning, ‘Vices first abhorred, next endured, last embraced.’ That is why
I beg you to make your visits to the Hotel Particular far between and
few.”
“But sometime he will love some one and then he’ll find himself,” Thurley
concluded. “Can he go on dancing attendance on a silly old woman who
wants him to sacrifice his art to be a professional ballroom dancer?”
“You are here for a singing lesson,” Hobart tried to argue, “but, as you
are on the subject, suppose you suggest that thought to Mark, if you
ever have a moment alone with him. Don’t tell him if there is a door
ajar—unless you look into the next room first. Lissa is the eternal
vigilante when it comes to Mark. Bah, it is all bad tasting, let’s sing
some ballads to get the very idea out of our heads.” He began, “Hark,
hark, the lark” which Thurley sang—and as she sang it to him, she did it
exquisitely.
As she finished, he asked, “You and Lady Sensible are good pals, are you
not?”
“You mean Ernestine? Oh, yes, I love her,” Thurley began rapturously,
“even when she is at her meanest.”
“Bravo! I will tell you something. Lady Sensible is a great artist,
none greater in her way, but if she would buy Christmas presents for
cross singing teachers and halfway cry when she thought cross teachers
had bought nothing for her, if she would be unbecomingly rosy when she
took tea with a certain old actor and jump right up and down and say,
‘Oh—Oh!’ when she saw Collin’s latest portrait, also sitting up half the
night to read that rascal Caleb’s latest novel, although she knows it
to be worthless—I think Lady Sensible could play lullabies that would
give women the patience of eternity and girls the thrill of expectant
motherhood and inspire men on to the heights. Don’t tell her I say this
for I have already tried to argue it out with her, but she fights me
back with her desiccated logic! But, Thurley, do you keep your childish
appreciation of things and that adorable intuition—then all the world
will go a-hunting laurel wreaths for you!”
He bent and kissed her forehead, pushing her away from him and
concluding, “Off with you—I warrant you haven’t opened a French book
to-day. And you have actually made me sentimental! But when you are both
a real artist and a real girl, I shall tell you a wonderful secret—now,
am I such a tyrant?” He waved his hand at her until she unwillingly
disappeared.
Outside the door Thurley began to smile and the secretary and
stenographer caught its contagion and smiled at each other as Thurley
passed ahead. The elevator man and the doorman both felt unquestionably
chirked up as she gazed at them. Every regret or loneliness or jealous
thought concerning the Corners had vanished. She felt sacred, set apart
from every one and she would only share the reason with a lapis lazuli
idol with a painted gold mouth and very twinkling diamond eyes!
* * * * *
Thurley’s visit to the Hotel Particular, Lissa’s box of a place, left
her with the belief there never was any end to surprises. She had worn a
white silk dress, falling straight from the shoulders, flattering herself
that for a dinner with a middle-aged singing teacher she was properly
costumed.
But when she came into the house, she saw her error. For here she
encountered elegance at home. The drawing-room had the intimate charm of
a French salon with its old ivory and dull blue brocaded hangings. The
furniture was painted peacock blue and covered with rose taffeta with a
silver sheen and a solemn, stuffed parrot on a gaily painted stand looked
at her in cynical amusement.
All about the room, which was oppressively perfumed as well, were
numerous photographs of Lissa taken at various ages and of handsome men,
young, old, middle-aged and all of them autographed with superlative
sentiments to, “Lissa Dearest” or “Dear Girl Lissa” or “Adorable Madame
Dagmar”! During her moment of waiting Thurley tiptoed about to read the
inscriptions.
There were several of Mark of decidedly more recent date, some in his
dancing attire and others in evening dress; these were inscribed, “To
Lissa, Best Pal Ever,” and in corresponding vein and as Thurley’s blue
eyes stared at the firm writing, she wondered if it was right for a man
with such a mind as Mark’s merely to dance through life and leave a
trail of battered hearts behind him!
There was a lack of books in the room or trifles indicating pronounced
tastes in any subject. The truth was that the only battles of life which
Lissa considered were worth fighting were those against her double chin
and, beyond handsome editions bound to match handsome sofa pillows, she
gave no thought to the printed page.
Even the piano seemed displeasing in its peacock blue frame with leopard
skin rugs spread fantastically before the blue and gold bench. Thurley
read the titles of the music on the rack. She had a suspicion she would
find cloying, East Indian love songs or French chansons with small
_raison d’être_, and she was smiling at having been so utterly correct
when Lissa swept into the room in a striking cherry red velvet with a
complete armor of jet jewelry, saying in affected fashion,
“What is the little one thinking about? Do you like those songs? Or don’t
they let you have a go at them? I imagine your layout is as heavy as a
boiled English pudding!”
Rather confused, Thurley nodded.
“How larky to have you alone! I suppose you had to steal away to me.” She
stroked Thurley’s cheek and the girl winced under the soft, sure touch,
too practised, suggestive of a claw beneath the velvety fingers.
“It is so pleasant to come, Madame Dagmar—”
“Madame? Lissa! I insist! Why, I’m not your grandmother, silly sweet,
years do not matter in our world! What have those disgruntled persons
tried to tell you?”
A gong sounded the dinner hour and Lissa led her into a fantastic
dining-room where a table groaned under unwholesome goodies.
“Don’t mention banting,” Lissa said, sitting down unceremoniously,
reaching for anchovies and caviar. “I adore eating. I don’t believe in
denying oneself any of the good things of life. Come, Thurley, pretend
you are at home, wherever that is, and have a schoolgirl feast of it. The
desserts will be poor because cook is so involved in a breach of promise
suit.” With small regard for etiquette, Lissa was “wading in,” as Dan
Birge would have said.
Thurley contrasted it with the “family” dinner parties where food was
merely the medium of their getting together; where every one talked
first and ate last. Not so with Lissa; she had a quick, untidy way of
swallowing her food and talking while she did so; she spotted her bodice
in revolting fashion, dabbing at the stain with her napkin and saying she
ought to be sent to bed!
In fact, Lissa had little time to talk to Thurley until the café noir
was served in the salon. Then, uncomfortable from the six-course dinner
to which she had done full justice, now dipping into a box of puffy
chocolates with nut centers and taking absinthe with practised sips, she
turned her rather fleshy face towards Thurley and remarked,
“You know, the only way I remember places in Europe is by the things we
had to eat at them! Take Stratford-on-Avon, for instance, I always appear
animated when it is mentioned, but not because of the Hathaway woman or
Bill Shakespeare, but the wonderful gooseberry tarts ... then Rome—what
cheese! And Moscow—with its caviar and cordials—and Amsterdam with boiled
beef and a delectable shrimp sauce,” she halfway closed her eyes as she
sipped the rest of her absinthe and rebuked Thurley for refusing it.
“Perhaps you smoke?” she suggested. “My throat won’t stand for it and I
take sweets as a consolation.”
“No, thank you—at least not yet.” Thurley wondered if she would ever
cease meeting famous persons and going to wonderful houses where she
had an entirely new scheme of life handed to her stamped with a seal of
approval!
“Do have a chocolate,” Lissa pressed them on Thurley. She had a sort of,
“May I—oh, _may_ I?” air which Dickens’ Mr. Pumblechook possessed when
asking for the pleasure of merely shaking hands.
Thurley took one but laid it aside. “Mr. Hobart forbids it,” she said.
Lissa made a little moue. “The world does not obey Bliss Hobart, even if
it does consult him. For my part, we are cordial enemies, both knowing
the other’s weak points. After all, Bliss was never cut out for anything
more extraordinary than a first husband. But of course he will never
marry,” the green eyes watching Thurley carefully.
“Why not?” Thurley was unconscious of her betrayal.
Lissa gave a contented purr; she would have something to tell Mark!
“Because, although no one really knows much about it, he disappears very
mysteriously every summer for weeks at a time. He cannot be reached by
letter or telegraph, I’ve heard, and of course, in this day and age, as
in any other, he does not go alone.”
“Not—not that sort of thing,” Thurley was too angry to conceal the fact.
“Why not? Every one knows that Bliss Hobart, whose mother was an Italian
and father an American, was born and brought up in Italy where he
acquired the romantic tendencies of that land. Some say he sang well when
he was twenty, but something happened and he had a fever which took his
voice and turned his hair gray and then he came to America where he has
been a clever but presuming person with the aroma of mystery to make him
all the more enticing. You will find out, Thurley; wait until he vanishes
around the first of June.”
“Of course the family knows where he goes.” Thurley spoke the name before
she thought; it brought sharp, black lights into the green eyes.
“That ridiculous family, so reserved and exclusive, they bore me! Well,
not even being the family skeleton, I can’t say, but I fancy they know
little. Now you take such a conceited, haughty person as Ernestine
Christian or that stupid Caleb or Collin with his childish, impossible
manners or that queer little wisp—Polly something—”
“But you forget I am the baby of the family,” Thurley reminded.
“A thousand pardons. My dear, I did not mean to offend. Of course I have
my own circle, too. I am welcome in the best homes in France and England
and I am always being taken for a marquise. I have my own theories about
art and quite as much of a clientele as these fossils you have been
bundled into without a warning. Don’t let them monopolize you with their
nunnish, strange ideas—so utterly loveless—”
“But I have promised never to marry,” Thurley interrupted.
Lissa laughed. “Artists seldom have the hen spirit! For myself, I am
always more interested in a second wedding than a first, and if the first
is only to tell you what to avoid in the second, why have the first?”
“But—” began Thurley rather helplessly.
“For a second wedding I always see myself in a gown of gold brocade and
a blond veil, both guiltless of trimming.” Lissa’s eyes strayed toward a
photograph of Mark which stood on a nearby gilt table.
“But—it isn’t right, you know, to—” Thurley was naught but a huge
gaucherie.
Lissa threw back her head to laugh, her plump white chin quivering after
the soft sound ceased. Absinthe brought about freedom of speech—and
liberty for all! “A fig for man-made laws! Don’t you know laws are made
for the mass? Are you one of them? You know you are not or you would not
have a fairybook life, coming to New York to be trained by Bliss Hobart!
You may not know it as well as I, but I tell you this much—I would not
ask you to dinner if you were merely one of the mass. Count me snobbish,
if you like, you’ll be the same. None of us have time for any one who
does not make it worth our while. I was careful to find out about you
before I wrote you the note—and when you are very famous, perhaps you’ll
write a ‘recommend’ card for me or let me polish off a song or two; even
Bliss admits I can coach!”
She went to a table to find an album, beckoning to Thurley to join her.
“See—here and here—and this one—aren’t they as famous as your family?
Look at this photo and that autograph, well, what did I tell you? Don’t
become lop-sided, Thurley, or change into a crabbed spinster. Live and
let love come to you—you are a genius, a super-creature—you have the
right to love as you please!”
“You do believe so?” Thurley fairly whispered the words. She fancied she
had so stolidly locked away love from her wild-rose heart!
“I know so! The greatest artists have always been exceptions to the
rule, never meek slaves of the law.” In a clever, vivacious manner,
Lissa proceeded to tell risque stories of this actor and that singer,
the pianist who loved and hated all in a month and loved and hated again
before another fortnight passed, the artist’s model who became morganatic
queen of a small Balkan kingdom and threw aside her rank to join her
worthless, gypsy lover, dancers who did so and so, the poet and novelist
who had never spoken the word constancy and whose works the humdrum,
constant world accepted with reverent unquestioning!
As she stood there in her flaring red velvet gown, the clever lamplight
showing the beauty of her hair, perfume addling Thurley’s brain, the
purring, soft voice never ceasing and the green eyes smiling fixedly,
Thurley began to wonder if it would not be well to be friends with Lissa,
despite Hobart and Ernestine, to know the other side of the art world—all
its phases and possibilities—for had she not a multiple-compartment mind?
After a little, Lissa drew her to her and they walked to a tête-à-tête
and sat there, Lissa drinking absinthe and Thurley hearing more strange,
wicked but fascinating things all of which might become realities for
herself and still keep the letter of her vow to Abigail Clergy.
“The greater the artist the more unmoral he must be, not immoral, that is
for the commoner—but unmoral—morals do not matter. Art is a question of
light and shade, ability, press agents—so on. An artist cannot achieve
if hampered by petty, binding laws and paltry promises; he must have
freedom of thought and action, see—I make no pretense, Thurley, of being
a Victorian matron,” she pointed to the rows of photographs all of which
were of men.
“I am Lissa Dagmar and society knows and values me because I dare to
be what I am. Society sends me its most precious débutantes to take
lessons—and some day, you, too, Thurley, will laugh as I do at these
fragile ideals the world weaves about us people who do things. The
people _who have things to do_ may be nuns and monks and model married
couples, but those _who do things_—wait, wait until you meet your opera
associates—où, la-la,” she broke into a French street song ending with an
unexpectedly high note which thrilled Thurley’s whole being.
“Oh, Lissa Dagmar,” she said, as fascinated as a country lad with the
fair snake charmer, “let me come to see you again—”
Lissa leaned back in contentment. She had thrown the spell as she
planned—since she had not forgotten that Thurley had called her Mark
Wirth’s aunt! She was telling more of her scheme of things when Mark
himself dropped in and was, for once, an unwanted guest.
“I’m awfully glad to see you,” he told Thurley. “Hobart said you would be
here—so I came.” He avoided Lissa’s eyes. “He said I must bring you home
because he does not like stray cab drivers and he says you’ve no car of
your own. I say, Lissa, I’ve got the coast engagement and if I have my
company ready by the first of April, we’ll be on our way.”
Lissa mumbled a response. Mark was looking at Thurley’s half flushed
cheeks and startled eyes, the prim white gown cut high in the neck—a
contrast to Lissa’s sumptuous red velvet which revealed a fifth vertebra!
“Oh, do take me home. I’ve heard such a world of new things and eaten
such a goody shop that I’ll have hard work to be of any use to-morrow!”
It was a relief to have Mark appear; there was a hint of the boy Dan in
his manner and his handsome self hovering about her. She looked at Lissa
and enjoyed her discomfiture, wondering if when she had dissected her
theories she would still believe in them or if there were not something
of the sorceress about Lissa with her purring voice and velvet-like
hands. Then, realizing that Mark was one of Lissa’s “pet robins,” as she
named him, that he—all the old-time horror which the Corners had bestowed
upon its “nice” girls rushed over her and she grew monosyllabic and
preoccupied as she made ready to accept his escort.
Lissa kissed her good-night and added, “Drop in on your way home, Mark,
I’ve something to tell you.”
“Oh, you want to see me to-night?” His voice was rather lack-lustre.
As the cab rolled off in the night, Lissa standing at the glass doors, a
striking figure in her crimson gown, Mark said anxiously,
“What did you talk about? Lissa’s such a rattlebox when she has had
absinthe!”
Thurley answered coldly, “Art,” after which Mark tried to explain his
coming tour but it brought no response from Thurley. She was trying to
decide three things all at once.
Did she or did she not believe Lissa’s theories? Should she have a
contempt for Mark who evidently did coincide with them or should she,
womanlike, flirt with him since he seemed most willing? Lastly, where did
Bliss Hobart go to of a summer? Perhaps green lights showed in Thurley’s
eyes as well.
But she would have been still more disillusioned had she seen Mark an
hour later returning to the Hotel Particular and finding an enraged, ugly
woman, harsh-voiced, red-faced, clad in a pink chiffon negligee with
hideous flounces.
“You needn’t think she’ll look at you,” she began accusingly, pounding
her heavy fists on the table. “She is Hobart’s prize and he is no saint,
even if he does have his playtime where the neighbors can’t see him!
How dare you come in here and take her home—an insult to me,” letting
rage carry her to the top notch of unreason and unrestraint while Mark,
sullen yet anxious to appease, was forced to watch the entire procedure.
Presently he found opportunity to reply,
“I say, don’t tear it off rough! Have I neglected you or done anything
without your approval? I’ve held up my best work to please you, because
you want to stick in New York where you have a drag. Don’t you think
that is something? But I’ll do the coast thing if it means a break,” a
determined look replacing the anxious expression.
Lissa’s eyes narrowed. She saw she had overreached herself. Cleverly, she
began a retreat. “Mark dear, I’m jealous! I’m not a nice young thing like
Thurley—and you were a naughty bear to drop in and take her home—leave
poor Lissa all aloney. Please, honey, kiss me; say you love me; you won’t
go ’way out to the coast. I won’t let you. Remember all I’ve given up
for you,” pointing at the photograph of an elderly, well known man of
finance. “I must have love, Mark, and loyalty—such as I give the one I
love.”
“Yes, but not servility—not crushing every bit of originality and decency
from a chap—that girl’s eyes look you through!”
“Where would you have been if not for me?” Lissa was holding him half
by force. “Who helped you when you had the fever? Who introduced you to
Newport, who—”
Mark threw off her arm roughly. “Stop! Sometimes I wish you’d let me
find my own gait in my own way—maybe it wouldn’t be dancing—”
Lissa burst into effective sobs. “Don’t say you want to be a horrid old
lawyer or sawbones! Why is it so many wonderful men have loved me, yet I
give my heart to a sulky boy that cannot appreciate what it means—why is
it?” she demanded of the empty absinthe glass.
Mark almost laughed. “I’ll play fair,” he said doggedly, “but I do the
coast tour in April.”
“You’ll grow away from me—”
“Which might be a good thing. I thought you didn’t want constancy, did
you tell Thurley so—try to make her see your death-in-life stuff?”
“You’ve been drinking!”
“No, you’ve been drinking and I’ve been thinking. You know, Lissa, it’s
well enough to play off a few weeks of nonsense abroad; something about
Monaco and Florence get into your blood. But, after all, a fellow must
think ahead and so ought a woman. I want to be the soap-and-water-washed
sort I was. Makes me wish I hadn’t danced a step—had a hammer-toe or a
club-foot so I couldn’t!”
“You’ve been talking to Bliss,” she said sharply.
“He does jerk me up now and then.”
Lissa threw back her head and closed her eyes. “Have I wasted the finest
love of my live on a cad?” she asked of some unseen presence. “Have I
told my secrets, the secrets of my inner shrine—”
“Not inner shrine,” Mark could not refrain from adding, “inner shrink!”
Lissa sprang to her feet. “You young idiot,” she said between set teeth,
“you know I’ll not let you go until I’m ready to—I never do—I’ll show the
whole pack of prudes that I can beat their game—”
Then the cad in the boy, which is in every boy, came to the surface and
battled for supremacy in his handsome face right and wrong; he smiled in
smug fashion symbolic of the fact that he had passed up the struggle.
“Maybe I’ve just wanted to see how you cared,” he suggested. “Got any
more of that stuff to drink?” He sat on the tête-à-tête and, waiting
until she poured it out, let him celebrate the defeat of his better half.
“My word, Thurley has a long road to go!”