Thurley’s summer was spent unwisely. She excused this by apparently sound
reasons. First, she was tired from the season’s work and the unusual
social demands which it seemed wisest to endure. Secondly, her jealous
curiosity was roused at Bliss Hobart’s mysterious departure without
explanation of where he was going or how long he would remain away, an
almost brusque leave-taking which consisted of a brief cup of tea at
Thurley’s apartment, telling her some critical things about her voice and
answering lightly when she questioned him as to his whereabouts,
“I go to my castle in Spain, really, nothing but a simple little
hermitage in the Maine woods. I assure you it would be of no interest.
Now I must be off, for it is like uprooting an oak every time I go away.
I like to leave things as shipshape as possible before I begin to play.”
“Are you never lonesome?” she persisted.
“I’ve all the inhabitants of the forest,” he answered. “Good-by. I
understand you’ve accepted for the yachting party, the one Lissa is
giving.” His face expressed displeasure.
Thurley nodded; she had intended to escape it until this identical moment
when his bland, impersonal manner was fuel for her folly.
“You’ll get good ideas as to what to avoid. I have always contended that
to build a virtuous wall around one’s self was questionable,—better
be able to view all that is happening, good and bad, and make one’s
deductions accordingly. Lissa reminds me of the basilisk serpent who
could ‘look one to death.’ Have a care, Thurley; you’ve no more youth and
energy to spare than most of us.” And he left her.
The third reason, and this, too, was an annoying secret, was that Thurley
wanted to see the Boston Valley hills and Birge’s Corners. She wanted to
go home! Yet not as Thurley Precore, prima donna, but just as Thurley,
as unknown but as loved as when she had raced through the village with
Dan in pursuit or climbed chestnut trees to the discredit of her manners,
helping make daisy chains for the primary class to carry into church on
Children’s Day or working her bit of a garden with wholehearted interest
and disregard of her appearance.
The notion was absurd and impossible, and, as a powerful destroyer of
whim, Thurley accepted the invitation to Lissa’s yachting party and
cruised along the coast of Newfoundland in a yacht which had been lent to
Lissa by one of her devoted pupils.
The yachting party was not a pleasant affair all told. But it was
interesting and exciting. Lissa herself was the discordant note, with
the faculty of stirring every one up about something and then losing
interest in it and being provoked if the others did not play sheep and
do likewise. She had a subtle fashion of reminding every one that, after
all, she was the hostess and if they wished they could all get off the
yacht at any time they liked and walk home from Newfoundland!
Lissa played with Mark in cat-and-mouse fashion, flirted desperately
with Caleb to arouse Ernestine’s jealousy, and Caleb, who regarded her
as stunning copy, resolved to transplant her bodily in her most daring
combination of orange satin with black velvet streamers into his next
best seller. There were ways of gaining revenge, he informed Ernestine,
who stayed by herself on the upper deck, dressing in uninteresting smock
affairs and talking over prosy matters with Collin Hedley and Polly,
while Thurley and Mark romped about to brave Lissa’s displeasure as they
made pseudo-love in audacious fashion.
After four weeks of this vapid sport, every one had succeeded in getting
on every one else’s nerves and the party disbanded, its members each
vowing that, although so and so was a dear, they would never go away with
them again, and Thurley flew on to the mountains to visit Miss Clergy and
find an enforced peace in the sanitarium routine.
War broke out in Europe with its astonishing effects and complications
and when the fall came to rescue Thurley from feeling as aged as the
gentleman from Calcutta who had chronic neuralgia and had occupied the
veranda chair next to Miss Clergy’s, New York began to hum with winter
plans and she returned to Hortense and the apartment with positive
delight and eagerness.
Ennui in the young is more deadly than in the middle-aged, since it is an
unnatural happening. The press agent who wrote attractive squibs about
Miss Precore yachting and in the mountains little dreamed that Thurley
started her season with as much zest as the squirrel in the squirrel
cage who, from his endless pursuit of nothing, seems to be the proof
extraordinary to the world that it is possible for one person to make a
quarrel!
Ernestine Christian had romped over to Devonshire to meet a congenial
friend who would wheel through the country and thus repay her for the
yachting trip, but she was caught in the war clouds and reached home with
difficulty.
Caleb met her as was customary, although all she said by way of a welcome
was,
“I’ve had a fright of a time. Europe is seething like a witches’ caldron.
I’m out of my own cigarettes and special kind of hair nets and my fingers
feel like sticks. Dalrymple, the best coach I’ve ever had, has rushed to
Canada to go into training!”
“You look fagged,” Caleb admitted as he drove her home. “Well, as nearly
as I can make out every one has a grouch on. Thurley is beginning to have
bad mannerisms; Bliss must take her in hand. Lissa has ruined her with
nonsensical notions and Mark dawdles about only to waste her time. You
haven’t asked as to myself,” he reminded her childishly.
“I brought you a hand-illumined thing,” she answered.
“Oh, certainly—always remember the servants when returning home. It pays!
By Jove, that’s a nice hullo for a chap, to say nothing of having stood
for your glooms in Newfoundland—”
“You were listening behind tall vases to get our conversation,”
she reproached. “I dare say you’ve a hundred pages’ getaway on a
worst-seller.”
Caleb was silent and then, instead of impetuous defense, he said in a
dreary tone, “Don’t believe I’ll bother you again, Ernestine. It just
‘riles’ you and discourages me.”
“Oh, do drop in for dominoes; no one else ever lets me win so often,” she
returned, a bundle of nerves and womanish imaginings, prepared to enter
her apartment and find fault and be adorably generous all in one.
Caleb was right concerning Thurley’s mannerisms. Her first adverse
criticism proved a mental stab at which she recoiled with agonizing and
amusing self-excuses.
“Miss Precore has adopted an unpleasant habit of swaying her body when
her voice ascends the scale. Hitherto one of the greatest delights of
this young artist was the splendid simplicity which charmed every one who
heard and saw her. Not for an instant did she forget the great essentials
of musical art—to conceal art itself. She was as unconscious of the
audience or the opera company as if she were, in truth, the composer’s
mental vision when actually writing the title part! It is to be hoped
that this habit and the air of self-consciousness may be done away with
before either becomes fixed. To lose such an example of artistic triumph
as Thurley Precore has demonstrated to us would be irreparable.”
No one mentioned the criticism to Thurley—there was no need to do so.
Two days after it was printed and her manager told her she must go on a
concert tour in February, Thurley dressed herself deliberately in a gown
as gleamingly white and glitteringly silver as a path of moonlight; it
fairly clothed her in romance. She tied green tulle about her hair and,
taking a cloak of emerald green velours, she drove to Bliss Hobart’s
apartment, having had Hortense first ’phone to ask if he would be at home.
During the drive she planned what she should say with the artifice of a
world coquette. Thurley had fallen prey to Lissa’s spell, yet she had,
being denied the simple ties of acknowledged relationships, found scant
solace in the bizarre theories of a small but powerful portion of the
world. She had told herself with the recklessness of youth that she was
different from others, therefore she had the right to live in different
fashion, to love in different fashion if she chose ... she would not stay
a convent sort of celebrity with every one adoring and applauding and
copying her in every way imaginable yet no one becoming happily related
to her. She regarded Ernestine as a remote, though precious, older
sister who had made a bad error in becoming so aloof; she wanted Collin
to marry Polly Harris in the good old-fashioned way, since Polly had
no more chance of writing successful opera than the fire escape of her
attic of turning into a marble stairway. She was undecided as to Caleb’s
destiny. Lissa was interesting, even with her jealousies and vanities,
her greed for all material things—Thurley suddenly realized that Lissa
was interesting because she never corrected one, she never proved the
wrong of this or the right of that—and who, not excepting rosy youth,
does not incline to him who never reproves but merely condones? Mark did
not really interest Thurley, since she had ceased trying to deny the
truth to herself—that she loved Bliss Hobart in such tense fashion that
she thought of him as her inspiration in whatsoever she did! The only
solace she had when Hobart busied himself with new pupils, going here
and there to decide this or that question, or when society women flocked
about to try their best to fascinate, was that he treated the entire
world with the same indifference and kindly patronage and, if Thurley
still hoped through magical power to waken in him romantic love, she had
sense enough to keep her secret well hidden—from herself most of the
time—in order that she might do her work and stay within his jurisdiction.
She found Hobart and Caleb Patmore playing chess, a favorite recreation
of the former’s.
“I’m quite a gamester,” Caleb said, with visible relief as she appeared.
“Ernestine lapses into childhood via dominoes and Collin actually stops
painting to drag me into casino—casino, Thurley! Why do you not stroke my
brow or show some symptom of humanity? Polly Harris yearns for cribbage;
you know Polly still hints of that ancestry of hers where she had
school marms for aunts and judges for uncles and her cousins all went to
military academies. Why this odd devil takes to chess for his pleasure—I
understand it not. Help, ho, Thurley, take my place—will you?”
Thurley hesitated. It was not to her liking nor her intention to have
any one present at her visit, but she dallied the question gracefully,
submitting a list of songs for the concert tour and pretending grave
anxiety as to the recovery of one of the songbirds recently in a motor
accident.
As she rose to go, inventing a dinner engagement, Hobart accompanied
her into the reception hall, leaving Caleb straddled on the fire-settle
wondering—who knows what?
“What did you really want?” Hobart asked, as she paused before the door.
“Don’t tell me you’re going to do Red Cross work and wear a uniform—”
“It’s the criticism,” she said simply. “It hurt—you might have warned me
when you saw my faults.”
“I warned you not to waste summers,” he reminded. “I said all I could.
You are no longer my pupil and I have other things which take my time.”
“What shall I do?” she demanded petulantly. “I will not be a mere
shooting-star person as so many would like to see me—”
“Well, well, let us see.” He placed his hands on her shoulders in the
benevolent, paternal fashion she so admired. But she spoiled it by trying
to flirt with him as she looked up.
He dropped his hands as if he read the meaning of the coquettish gaze.
“Suppose you find a hobby, Thurley; put all your airs and mannerisms
into it. It often works for the best good—what shall it be? Collecting
butterflies or canes, opening Indian mounds—trying to write a
play—discovering the fourth dimension—eh?”
Tears were in her eyes. And the big ache of her heart was changed into a
sob which rose in her throat with a penitent murmur.
“You are cruel,” she said in a fierce little rage.
“You funny, lovely, little fool!” he laughed, but in soul-healing
fashion. “Just be the old Thurley and we’ll love you as we did at first!”
After which he opened the door and went down to her cab, telling her how
becoming was the costume she wore as _Elsa_ and promising to send her
a book of golf anecdotes which he considered excellent. She drove off
feeling somewhat as Hortense Quinby had expressed it—a mere onlooker at
something she craved but could never attain. She wanted to rout Caleb
from the fire-settle and sit there herself until Bliss Hobart should
return, to say to him with the assurance with which loved wives are
blessed,
“Darling, how stupid of any one to come in to-night—please bolt the door
and finish the story we started. I’ll snuggle down on this cushion and
lean against your knee. I like to watch the fire as you read to see the
characters slip about the coals.... I’m very silly, Bliss, but there’s no
need for me to reform, God made you wise enough for us both!” ...