Thurley went directly home instead of keeping a luncheon engagement with
Ernestine. She wanted to spend the afternoon in remembering all he had
said. The greatness of his vision and the new standard for art had not
impressed her as much as the moment when he had taken her hands—or told
of his false love. Then Miss Clergy’s promise crossed the clearness of
her reflection, blurring it badly; Dan’s bucolic letter on her desk
marred her thoughts as well—so did the flowers from Mark, the handsome
gift book from some one else; a myriad of incidents and engagements came
to spoil the reverie. As sacred to her as the vision which had been
shared with her, Thurley kept telling herself, “I am of the vanguard ...
and I love him ... no other man can tempt me ... I love him, therefore I
can live up to his vision and help him ... for he is sadly limited. He
merely expresses what some one else must do.... I love him,” and when
the charming question hinted itself to her,—“Suppose this man of a great
vision and grave purpose, burned clean of youthful tragedy, should love
_you_—what then?”—Thurley admitted that vows were brittle things and that
if the circumstances so fell out she would not hesitate to prove the
statement.
The next morning when she was writing Hobart a note trying to express
something of all she felt towards his vision and his influence, as Dante
said of Virgil, “their guide, their master and their friend,” Lissa
dropped in for a call.
“Bliss sails at noon for England,” she informed Thurley. “Isn’t it
wonderful to be all important, war or no war? They want him to patch them
all up with patriotic art—I suppose he’ll come back an earl in spite of
himself—”
Whereat Thurley felt as heartbroken as a girl deserted by her bona fide
lover, as she tried to chat pleasantly and not betray her disappointment.
She entered again the squirrel cage of doubts and subterfuges until she
felt as absurd at having seriously considered being one of the vanguard
as one who admits having won a husband through a matrimonial agency.
Lissa’s way was quite comfortable—uneasy lies a head which does not wear
a becoming hat was the greatest depth of her philosophy!
So Thurley dragged the summer through, wondering why Dan had ceased
to write to her, imploring her to return to the Corners or permit him
to visit her in New York. In the true sense Thurley was glad Dan had
not written, although no woman can ever quite forgive a man whose
interest in her ceases. She was piqued, on her mettle to sing her best
and disprove Hobart’s flowery vision, as she had told herself it was,
to sing so well and live so flippantly that she could say to him with
truth, when he returned, “Your vision is impractical,” and when a certain
multi-millionaire, a chewing-gum king he was, to make it the more
humorous, made love to Thurley and plied her with attentions, Thurley did
not hesitate to flirt with him publicly until Sunday newspapers, despite
the war, devoted a page of pictures and lurid writing with repeated
exclamations about “the young _diva_ whose vow never to marry has not
kept her from being soul mate to the chewing-gum king!”
The chewing-gum king was boresome after a little; horse-racing, good
wine, pretty women without brains, clothes trees upon which to display
his wealth, were the extent of his possibilities. And Thurley, without
hesitation, proceeded to pass him over to willing rivals who had watched
the apparent progress of the affair with scantily concealed envy.
Miss Clergy had not gone to the mountains but stayed with Thurley, who
flitted restlessly from one watering spot to another, appearing at the
private affairs for war charities, now and then running into Caleb or
Ernestine or Collin who, likewise, seemed to be having a table d’hôte
vacation, a little of everything and none of it satisfying.
Hortense Quinby, again in charge of Thurley’s apartment, and Polly Harris
proved the only exciting events in the long holiday. Without warning
Hortense left Thurley as suddenly as she had attached herself to the
retinue, a desertion which brought Thurley into town to see why this
sudden resignation of a now valued member of her staff.
She found Hortense in a khaki uniform with innumerable brass buttons and
a mock knapsack across her chest, her restless eyes sparkling with a new
eagerness as when she had pleaded to become necessary to some one who
was already famous. Hortense was to do land duty in behalf of the French
war orphans, only, as she told Thurley forcibly, until America entered
the war and overseas duty confronted her. At last she could prove her
worth to the world! The land duty in behalf of the orphans, as nearly as
Thurley could make out, was to appear publicly as often as possible to
solicit subscriptions from all who passed by,—a more exciting form of
the occupations of old men to be seen on side streets, a restaurant sign
harnessed on both chest and back, announcing the wonders of pot roast and
noodles for fifty cents—pie extra.
“But just when you’ve learned to be of such use to me,” Thurley urged,
“the way you keep everything going—why, Hortense, weren’t you happy?”
At which Thurley was treated to the initial outburst of Hortense’s
emotional spree.
Briefly, it was this: The chance for the great adventure was presenting
itself to women whose lives had had neither adventure nor romance. And
if romance and adventure had not been theirs, it was their duty as
individual souls to create it, woo it, pursue it, anything to obtain some
smart and stinging knowledge of the world at large. It was better to wear
out than to rust out, this strange, middle-aged rebel said, her long,
thin hands fondling the buttons of her toy uniform.
“Ah, but I thought it was for the orphans,” suggested Thurley, who had,
unostentatiously, paid for the support of half a dozen of them.
Well, it _was_ the orphans, true enough—but the orphans were a means
to an end—there, that was the situation! Being third rail to fame was
not satisfactory, it was like leading a hungry man outside a restaurant
window wherein are displayed three-inch steaks flanked by asparagus and
keeping him there, close to the food it is true, but separated by a
window glass which, if he breaks it, means jail!
Being associated with genius had merely whetted her appetite for
expression, nor was she alone, she added, all over America were women
realizing that the opportunity for self-expression, freedom of speech
and action was theirs; they would proceed on the quest for adventure,
something to be an everlasting antidote against the drab pattern of their
ladylike lives! Few suspected this rebel germ was quickening in the flat,
thin chests of conscientious, rubber heeled librarians, middle aged, a
trifle unwholesome spinsters like Hortense—but it was true. Whether or
not it was milk for French orphans, which was a worthy cause playing into
the hands of the restless searchers, a cause was being given them and
take it they would!
So Hortense, for the time being, passed from Thurley’s life with Thurley
pondering after she had stamped from the room with a ringing, military
tread and given Thurley her headquarters address, adding that she would
see trench life or commit suicide!
When Thurley sought out Polly to beseech her to come and look after
things, particularly now that Thurley was to begin coaching for her new
title rôle in Liszt’s “Saint Elizabeth,” she found Polly giving a party
royal in her attic, celebrating being left a small legacy by a maiden
aunt. The aunt had also left Polly a letter expressing her opinion that
her niece had been nothing if not a fool to have left a good home with a
decent furnace for a tenement and a daily diet of macaroni.
As Thurley looked at the hilarious feast, well under way, she laughed in
spite of herself and wondered whether or not the aunt’s shade was walking
restlessly! For Polly in a new frock as brown as Spanish fish nets on the
Santander sands, was pouring out claret with a lavish hand and pressing
alligator pear salad and jellied chicken on her nearest guest, the table
abundantly strewn with every eatable known to luxury.
“Polly’s pretending her opera has been a success, I do believe,” a more
practical guest whispered to Thurley. “She’s determined to burn her
money up as fast as she can; she’s loaned us all ten dollars—”
Thurley found Polly quite determined to pay no heed to her aunt’s letter.
“Why should I remember I come of gentle people?” she asked, her brown
eyes sparkling naughtily. “I’d rather have one or two glorious parties,
treat myself to all the music I want for a season than to go snailing
back to Painted Post and live in a cottage completely surrounded
by neighbors. I’ve run wild too long, Thurley dear—don’t look so
disappointed. Why, you beautiful, lovely thing, what right have you to
show me the error of my ways, you with a king’s ransom on your fingers
this minute? Yet, Thurley, when I look at you and summon my Scotch second
sight to lend me wisdom, you seem fey to me, fated as the Scotch know the
world. Shall I tell you your _possibilities_?”
“It’s the claret,” Thurley insisted. She did not want to talk about
herself because she did not seem a struggling, interesting human being
like the rest.
“No, it’s not claret but second sight. Bliss knows I have second sight;
he’s often asked me for opinions—for everything but my operas,” she added
a trifle bitterly. “Now you do seem fey, as if you ought to become a
rosy-cheeked matron, the sort that has a big, brick house just packed
with young people who all confide in you, and a nice, gentle sort of
relatives, linen closets with lavender bags between the snowy piles, jam
closets, rooms with old, soft rugs and mellowed furniture, all kinds of
books and pictures and nothing so wonderful that art dealers would ever
employ burglars to borrow. Just the kind of things that years afterwards
would cause your children to say, ‘Oh, that was mother’s—I shall never
give it up,’ or ‘Here is her shawl. How she laughed at herself for
huddling so eternally in it! Let’s keep it in the cedar chest she had as
a bride, she’d like to have it so, I’m certain!’ You understand, Thurley
dear, the lovely common things inspired by some one not common! There,
that’s quite as smart as Caleb himself could have said it.”
Forgetting her errand and Hortense, Thurley repeated, “It’s the claret,
Polly—and you’re quite mad....”
She rushed home to practise scales diligently, remembering with every
thump of the keys that she was never to marry—tum-tum-tum, and that
Bliss Hobart was a visionary dreamer—tum-tum, art never could be placed
on a moral, idealistic basis, never—ti-ti, she had no idea of trying
to be one of the vanguard because how useless it would be when one was
tied to a ghost lady—tum-tum-ti, that wretched bohemian of a Polly had
unsettled her—ti-ti-ti, anyway, Bliss had said he would not consider a
vow to a ghost lady as binding—tra-la-la, yet after confiding his great
secret, why did he rush off without a good-by, expecting her to do what?
Why didn’t he go scold Ernestine or Caleb or Collin, some one besides
herself—ta-ta-tum, she finished with a final thump and a superbly clear
note which brought Miss Clergy to the door to applaud.
For the first time Thurley turned from her in recoil. She seemed a jailer
preventing Polly’s vision from coming true—and what a lovely vision it
had been!...
“Thurley, are you ill?” Miss Clergy was asking.
“I’m tired of everything,” she answered, without controlling her temper,
“of singing and New York and myself—and you,” like a walli-walli
windstorm she swept out of the room, remaining alone until she could
laugh off her outburst by a light, humorous explanation of a tight
slipper or the alarming story told by the weekly weight on undeniably
uniform scales!
When Hobart did return, he was a tired and not easily enlivened man whose
summer had been spent overseas planning things calculated to counteract
the effects of “military poison ivy,” so he said enigmatically. He met
Thurley with seemingly weary interest and a disapproving shake of the
head when she tried again to convince him that her way and Lissa’s way
was the best—as well as the easiest—and the chewing-gum king only one of
a handful of “pet robins!”
Then he looked at her in her sophisticated maze of gold cloth and gave a
boyish laugh. “If you told me you were totally depraved, I should only
laugh,” he said. “You are trying to fool yourself into thinking yourself
a first water adventuress, so how can you expect to fool me? Come, come,
what terrific things have you allowed to happen to your voice! We shall
have to send you to the nursery to begin again! So Lissa coached you! I
knew the voice assassin’s marks of violence.”
He busied himself with getting Thurley’s voice in shape for her opening
night. They did not talk again of the vision or Thurley’s snap judgment
regarding life. Once Thurley ventured to say he looked tired and he
answered that when a man is used to really ‘living’ for three months of
the year, to be shunted into another channel tells on his disposition,
but he would weather it all right and he was very glad to have been of
service.
“I think one of the hardest things in the world,” he added, “is to be the
man highest up! To have no one to whom you can go and dump your budget
of woes and worries. Sometimes I long for a limited, brainless task,
devoid of responsibility, sure of an uninterrupted lunch hour and a sick
benefit.”
Wondering over his words, Thurley reached her apartment to find a letter
from Dan, hesitating before she opened it to wonder what had made him
break the long and unexplained silence. Then she found her answer.
Dan and Lorraine had a son! Dan had written Thurley to tell her he loved
his wife as he had never loved any one before—not even Thurley. He had
confessed to Lorraine his unloyal, wayward impulses and she had forgiven
him. Their joy over Boy was so great that he wanted Thurley to be friends
“with the family.” He ended almost naïvely, he hoped that she would
understand and be happy for them all!
So a new, engulfing envy, seconded by Polly’s little prophecy, beset
her and during the winter and spring there was but one outcome, Thurley
worked as she had never worked before, deaf to pleas about her health,
bitter towards her admirers, aloof from Hobart and the others of the
family, working without pausing, as if to drown the very whisper of the
things nearest her heart.
With the declaration of war came a multitude of surprises and
readjustments regarding the family. To Thurley’s surprise her own
interest was poised, critical as if the war were past history and not in
the making. Miss Clergy was “not interested,” the Civil War had written
itself for all time on her ghost heart. Mark was not going, he declared;
Collin took the rôle of a misguided pacifist; Caleb plunged headlong
into a war novel, “The Patriotic Burglar,” upon which he was to realize
a fortune and retrieve some very asinine losses on the stock exchange.
“The Patriotic Burglar” was to be called upon to pay his income tax, and
how explain the income of a hundred thousand a year, partly obtained by
the theft of Clementine Van Schaick’s pearl necklace! Now Clementine
was a little volunteer worker at the income tax office—enter High Ike,
the patriotic burglar, they meet—and here romance fairly skidded under
the speed of Caleb’s typewriter. No soldier was to be without a copy,
commissioned officers would be expected to carry five at least, and that
was as far as the war affected him!
Ernestine took the pessimistic view one would have expected of her. The
country was going to the dogs, she declared, really mistaking her own
intensive selfishness for the failure of the country.
Hobart, who had already been fighting “art battles” abroad, had little
time in which to express opinions and Thurley, having word from Hortense
Quinby that she expected to sail for overseas shortly, began to reflect
on the social readjustment which would result from the needed advertising
of charities, loans, what not, since the only logical advertisers and
workers would be the hitherto domestic women who would now step beyond
the firesides and lift up their voices.
Thurley came to think more concerning Hobart’s vision, the final victory
for America in establishing a new morale for permanent art than she
did of the need for guns and men, although she generously wrote checks
and sang gratis. As for Lissa, she believed in having things to do
credit to her patriotism and her complexion simultaneously. A toque of
blue poppies, a red tulle veil worn à la odalisque and a besashed and
bepleated bit of white scenery for a frock, the American version of
Nanette and Rintintin, faithful mascots who saved Paris from the Hun,
worn on a silver cord, these completed her opinion of the war and in this
outfit, to Thurley’s surprise and amusement, she appeared one warm May
day to say languidly,
“Being meatless day, I’ve taken the rat from the cat and am here for a
cocktail. There’s a dear! Oh, hum, all my pupils are rushing off to be
motor corps girls or kitchen drudges or something like that. When I have
to appear enthusiastic and call them all little Joans of Arc, I feel
like saying, ‘How can I conserve a cup of mush spilled on the kitchen oil
cloth?’ and let them go forth properly shocked to the last bit of braided
uniform! What does Bliss say about the opera? I should think with all
those horrid German singers sent packing there would be a big opportunity
for us home-growns. Bliss has always been obstinate about my appearing.
I’m as sure of success as you are.”
Before she left, Thurley understood the part Lissa meant to take in
the war—to go overseas apparently to sing for the boys and in reality
discover and capture a widower duke for her second husband.
“Why not?” she asked. “I’m sure women have the right to seek their
fortune?”
“Not at such a time. They should be sure they are needed before they go
across to eat up sugar and beef and wheat—even to take up space. There
should be an examining bureau where every one could be proved a hundred
per cent needed.”
“Ridiculous! Think of the chance to know titled women. I wouldn’t wonder
if I went to London after the war—a few titled patronesses and one is
established! Of course you are bound to meet them over there, when they
are all scrubbing floors and cooking. It’s so easy to become socially
elevated these days! Look at the people right in America who have slaved
at the Red Cross rooms to become socially exposed! Oh, I know the
majority are self-sacrificing, but the other side is worth a place in
history, too.”
After she left and Thurley opened the window to banish Lissa’s heavy and
synthetic perfume, she thought of her cold-blooded determination to find
a duke, a disabled duke would do if his title was sound, and marry him
or become friendly with blue-blooded women of England who welcomed all
who came to serve!
To condemn a class is not only useless but ethically a grave error. No
one has ever given it credence save fanatics or disgruntled, long-haired
socialists. But to argue both sides of the question, giving each fair
representation and admit the errors and the virtues of both—that is
common sense.
So Thurley sat this May afternoon while the city throbbed with its new
turmoil, thinking of many things, all of which related to Hobart’s
prophecy—that America must win the violet crown, definite recognition
by the Old World that America had established new standards for art,
independent of the frayed and tarnished rules which had, in a sense,
caused present bloodshed. As a nation’s art progresses, the nation’s
virility weakens, so history has proved, Thurley reasoned. When art
reached a state of so-called perfection, commercial, physical and
religious supremacy of the nation dimmed—because the foundation for that
art was not made of common sense rules but fantastic and self-indulgent
exceptions. Let the foundation for art be moral even if limited to begin
with, inspired by self-sacrifice and with sincerity its determining
motif and that nation can advance in art without fear of decadence. She
went to the window to close it, looking down at the busy, broad street
where strange posters met her gaze, women in uniforms, women stopping
pedestrians to beg for the cause, women making speeches, boys screaming
out something and waving banners, while echoes of a popular military song
floated up to her,—all gay anesthesia for the horror of the war. The
great and needed romance of war had taken its clutch on America; reality
was left unhampered for the battlefield. That was the great division of
the forces. From now on anything tinged with military trimmings would
be accepted. Fortunes won by a trifling penwiper made of red, white and
blue cheesecloth! An actress however infamous of character and threadbare
as to ability would be lauded and her salary tripled when she screeched
camp ditties or waved a flag! Pictures with the flag would sell, pictures
with soul and peaceful backgrounds would be shoved aside, books such as
Caleb’s would flood the market, military diaries would come in droves to
the editors’ payroll. For the time being art would be a necessary factor
in arousing emotions and sustaining interest. It always had been so, it
always must be so at such a crisis.
It occurred to her that if Hobart’s vision could have been realized
before this crisis what a mightier, more direct influence true art
would have in rousing the commoner. For it would be an art of spiritual
sincerity and no one would be forced to discriminate among a myriad of
near-art wares and mercenary efforts in patriotic guise. The peasant
whose taste for opera and pictures is unsullied until he mingles with the
conglomeration which this over-generous nation offers is to be preferred!
And afterwards, Thurley thought,—strangely enough, when peace had
come—would the vanguard of art be brave enough to banish forever the
surplus wares, false standards and begin anew?—for these swashbuckling
profiteers would be loath to cry quits.