IV

The next morning Oswald Henshawe, in a frock-coat and top-hat, called

to take Aunt Lydia and me to church. The weather had cleared before

we went to bed, and as we stepped out of our hotel that morning, the

sun shone blindingly on the snow-covered park, the gold Diana flashed

against a green-blue sky. We were going to Grace Church, and the

morning was so beautiful that we decided to walk.

“Lydia,” said Henshawe, as he took us each by an arm, “I want you to

give me a Christmas present.”

“Why, Oswald,” she stammered.

“Oh, I have it ready! You’ve only to present it.” He took a little

flat package from his pocket and slipped it into her muff. He

drew both of us closer to him. “Listen, it’s nothing. It’s some

sleeve-buttons, given me by a young woman who means no harm, but

doesn’t know the ways of the world very well. She’s from a breezy

Western city, where a rich girl can give a present whenever she wants

to and nobody questions it. She sent these to my office yesterday. If

I send them back to her it will hurt her feelings; she would think I

had misunderstood her. She’ll get hard knocks here, of course, but I

don’t want to give her any. On the other hand--well, you know Myra;

nobody better. She would punish herself and everybody else for this

young woman’s questionable taste. So I want you to give them to me,

Lydia.”

“Oh, Oswald,” cried my aunt, “Myra is so keen! I’m not clever enough

to fool Myra. Can’t you just put them away in your office?”

“Not very well. Besides,” he gave a slightly embarrassed laugh, “I’d

like to wear them. They are very pretty.”

“Now, Oswald....”

“Oh, it’s all right, Lydia, I give you my word it is. But you know

how a little thing of that sort can upset my wife. I thought you

might give them to me when you come over to dine with us to-morrow

night. She wouldn’t be jealous of you. But if you don’t like the idea

... why, just take them home with you and give them to some nice boy

who would appreciate them.”

All through the Christmas service I could see that Aunt Lydia was

distracted and perplexed. As soon as we got back to the hotel and

were safe in our rooms she took the brown leather case from her muff

and opened it. The sleeve-buttons were topazes, winy-yellow, lightly

set in crinkly gold. I believe she was seduced by their beauty. “I

really think he ought to have them, if he wants them. Everything is

always for Myra. He never gets anything for himself. And all the

admiration is for her; why shouldn’t he have a little? He has been

devoted to a fault. It isn’t good for any woman to be humoured and

pampered as he has humoured her. And she’s often most unreasonable

with him--most unreasonable!”

The next evening, as we were walking across the Square to the

Henshawes, we glanced up and saw them standing together in one of

their deep front windows, framed by the plum-coloured curtains. They

were looking out, but did not see us. I noticed that she was really

quite a head shorter than he, and she leaned a little towards him.

When she was peaceful, she was like a dove with its wings folded.

There was something about them, as they stood in the lighted window,

that would have discouraged me from meddling, but it did not shake my

aunt.

As soon as we were in the parlour, before we had taken off our

coats, she said resolutely: “Myra, I want to give Oswald a Christmas

present. Once an old friend left with me some cuff-links he couldn’t

keep--unpleasant associations, I suppose. I thought of giving them

to one of my own boys, but I brought them for Oswald. I’d rather he

would have them than anybody.”

Aunt Lydia spoke with an ease and conviction which compelled my

admiration. She took the buttons out of her muff, without the box, of

course, and laid them in Mrs. Henshawe’s hand.

Mrs. Henshawe was delighted. “How clever of you to think of it,

Liddy, dear! Yes, they’re exactly right for him. There’s hardly any

other stone I would like, but these are exactly right. Look, Oswald,

they’re the colour of a fine Moselle.” It was Oswald himself who

seemed disturbed, and not overpleased. He grew red, was confused

in his remarks, and was genuinely reluctant when his wife insisted

upon taking the gold buttons out of his cuffs and putting in the

new ones. “I can’t get over your canniness, Liddy,” she said as she

fitted them.

“It’s not like me, is it, Myra?” retorted my aunt; “not like me at

all to choose the right sort of thing. But did it never occur to

you that anyone besides yourself might know what is appropriate for

Oswald? No, I’m sure it never did!”

Mrs. Myra took the laugh so heartily to herself that I felt it was

a shame to deceive her. So, I am sure, did Oswald. During dinner he

talked more than usual, but he was ill at ease. Afterwards, at the

opera, when the lights were down, I noticed that he was not listening

to the music, but was looking listlessly off into the gloom of the

house, with something almost sorrowful in his strange, half-moon

eyes. During an _entr’acte_ a door at the back was opened, and a

draught blew in. As he put his arm back to pull up the cloak which

had slipped down from his wife’s bare shoulders, she laughed and

said: “Oh, Oswald, I love to see your jewels flash!”

He dropped his hand quickly and frowned so darkly that I thought he

would have liked to put the topazes under his heel and grind them up.

I thought him properly served then, but often since I have wondered

at his gentle heart.

[Illustration: (Two women, one playing piano and the other with her

chin in her hands)]

V

During the week between Christmas and New Year’s day I was with Mrs.

Henshawe a great deal, but we were seldom alone. It was the season

of calls and visits, and she said that meeting so many people would

certainly improve my manners and my English. She hated my careless,

slangy, Western speech. Her friends, I found, were of two kinds:

artistic people--actors, musicians, literary men--with whom she was

always at her best because she admired them; and another group whom

she called her “moneyed” friends (she seemed to like the word), and

these she cultivated, she told me, on Oswald’s account. “He is the

sort of man who does well in business only if he has the incentive of

friendships. He doesn’t properly belong in business. We never speak

of it, but I’m sure he hates it. He went into an office only because

we were young and terribly in love, and had to be married.”

The business friends seemed to be nearly all Germans. On Sunday

we called at half-a-dozen or more big houses. I remember very

large rooms, much upholstered and furnished, walls hung with large

paintings in massive frames, and many stiff, dumpy little sofas,

in which the women sat two-and-two, while the men stood about the

refreshment tables, drinking champagne and coffee and smoking fat

black cigars. Among these people Mrs. Myra took on her loftiest and

most challenging manner. I could see that some of the women were

quite afraid of her. They were in great haste to rush refreshments to

her, and looked troubled when she refused anything. They addressed

her in German and profusely complimented her upon the way she spoke

it. We had a carriage that afternoon, and Myra was dressed in her

best--making an especial effort on Oswald’s account; but the rich and

powerful irritated her. Their solemnity was too much for her sense

of humour; there was a biting edge to her sarcasm, a curl about the

corners of her mouth that was never there when she was with people

whose personality charmed her.

I had one long, delightful afternoon alone with Mrs. Henshawe in

Central Park. We walked for miles, stopped to watch the skating,

and finally had tea at the Casino, where she told me about some of

the singers and actors I would meet at her apartment on New Year’s

eve. Her account of her friends was often more interesting to me

than the people themselves. After tea she hailed a hansom and asked

the man to drive us about the park a little, as a fine sunset was

coming on. We were jogging happily along under the elms, watching the

light change on the crusted snow, when a carriage passed from which

a handsome woman leaned out and waved to us. Mrs. Henshawe bowed

stiffly, with a condescending smile. “There, Nellie,” she exclaimed,

“that’s the last woman I’d care to have splashing past me, and me in

a hansom cab!”

I glimpsed what seemed to me insane ambition. My aunt was always

thanking God that the Henshawes got along as well as they did, and

worrying because she felt sure Oswald wasn’t saving anything. And

here Mrs. Myra was wishing for a carriage--with stables and a house

and servants, and all that went with a carriage! All the way home she

kept her scornful expression, holding her head high and sniffing the

purple air from side to side as we drove down Fifth Avenue. When we

alighted before her door she paid the driver, and gave him such a

large fee that he snatched off his hat and said twice: “Thank you,

thank you, my lady!” She dismissed him with a smile and a nod. “All

the same,” she whispered to me as she fitted her latchkey, “it’s very

nasty, being poor!”

That week Mrs. Henshawe took me to see a dear friend of hers, Anne

Aylward, the poet. She was a girl who had come to New York only a few

years before, had won the admiration of men of letters, and was now

dying of tuberculosis in her early twenties. Mrs. Henshawe had given

me a book of her poems to read, saying: “I want you to see her so

that you can remember her in after years, and I want her to see you

so that we can talk you over.”

Miss Aylward lived with her mother in a small flat overlooking the

East River, and we found her in a bathchair, lying in the sun and

watching the river boats go by. Her study was a delightful place that

morning, full of flowers and plants and baskets of fruit that had

been sent her for Christmas. But it was Myra Henshawe herself who

made that visit so memorably gay. Never had I seen her so brilliant

and strangely charming as she was in that sunlit study up under the

roofs. Their talk quite took my breath away; they said such exciting,

such fantastic things about people, books, music--anything; they

seemed to speak together a kind of highly flavoured special language.

As we were walking home she tried to tell me more about Miss Aylward,

but tenderness for her friend and bitter rebellion at her fate choked

her voice. She suffered physical anguish for that poor girl. My

aunt often said that Myra was incorrigibly extravagant; but I saw

that her chief extravagance was in caring for so many people, and

in caring for them so much. When she but mentioned the name of some

one whom she admired, one got an instant impression that the person

must be wonderful, her voice invested the name with a sort of grace.

When she liked people she always called them by name a great many

times in talking to them, and she enunciated the name, no matter

how commonplace, in a penetrating way, without hurrying over it or

slurring it; and this, accompanied by her singularly direct glance,

had a curious effect. When she addressed Aunt Lydia, for instance,

she seemed to be speaking to a person deeper down than the blurred,

taken-for-granted image of my aunt that I saw every day, and for

a moment my aunt became more individual, less matter-of-fact to

me. I had noticed this peculiar effect of Myra’s look and vocative

when I first met her, in Parthia, where her manner of addressing my

relatives had made them all seem a little more attractive to me.

One afternoon when we were at a matinée I noticed in a loge a young

man who looked very much like the photographs of a story-writer

popular at that time. I asked Mrs. Henshawe whether it could be he.

She looked in the direction I indicated, then looked quickly away

again.

“Yes, it’s he. He used to be a friend of mine. That’s a sad phrase,

isn’t it? But there was a time when he could have stood by Oswald

in a difficulty--and he didn’t. He passed it up. Wasn’t there. I’ve

never forgiven him.”

I regretted having noticed the man in the loge, for all the rest of

the afternoon I could feel the bitterness working in her. I knew that

she was suffering. The scene on the stage was obliterated for her;

the drama was in her mind. She was going over it all again; arguing,

accusing, denouncing.

As we left the theatre she sighed: “Oh, Nellie, I wish you hadn’t

seen him! It’s all very well to tell us to forgive our enemies; our

enemies can never hurt us very much. But oh, what about forgiving

our friends?”--she beat on her fur collar with her two gloved

hands--“that’s where the rub comes!”

The Henshawes always gave a party on New Year’s eve. That year most

of the guests were stage people. Some of them, in order to get there

before midnight, came with traces of make-up still on their faces.

I remember old Jefferson de Angelais arrived in his last-act wig,

carrying his plumed hat--during the supper his painted eyebrows

spread and came down over his eyes like a veil. Most of them are dead

now, but it was a fine group that stood about the table to drink the

New Year in. By far the handsomest and most distinguished of that

company was a woman no longer young, but beautiful in age, Helena

Modjeska. She looked a woman of another race and another period, no

less queenly than when I had seen her in Chicago as Marie Stuart, and

as Katharine in _Henry VIII_. I remember how, when Oswald asked her

to propose a toast, she put out her long arm, lifted her glass, and

looking into the blur of the candlelight with a grave face, said: “To

my coun-n-try!”

As she was not playing, she had come early, some time before the

others, bringing with her a young Polish woman who was singing at

the Opera that winter. I had an opportunity to watch Modjeska as

she sat talking to Myra and Esther Sinclair--Miss Sinclair had once

played in her company. When the other guests began to arrive, and

Myra was called away, she sat by the fire in a high-backed chair, her

head resting lightly on her hand, her beautiful face half in shadow.

How well I remember those long, beautifully modelled hands, with

so much humanity in them. They were worldly, indeed, but fashioned

for a nobler worldliness than ours; hands to hold a sceptre, or a

chalice--or, by courtesy, a sword.

The party did not last long, but it was a whirl of high spirits.

Everybody was hungry and thirsty. There was a great deal of talk

about Sarah Bernhardt’s _Hamlet_, which had been running all week and

had aroused hot controversy; and about Jean de Reszke’s return to

the Metropolitan that night, after a long illness in London.

By two o’clock every one had gone but the two Polish ladies.

Modjeska, after she put on her long cloak, went to the window, drew

back the plum-coloured curtains, and looked out. “See, Myra,” she

said with that Slav accent she never lost, though she read English

verse so beautifully, “the Square is quite white with moonlight. And

how still all the ci-ty is, how still!” She turned to her friend;

“Emelia, I think you must sing something. Something old ... yes, from

_Norma_.” She hummed a familiar air under her breath, and looked

about for a chair. Oswald brought one. “Thank you. And we might have

less light, might we not?” He turned off the lights.

She sat by the window, half draped in her cloak, the moonlight

falling across her knees. Her friend went to the piano and commenced

the _Casta Diva_ aria, which begins so like the quivering of

moonbeams on the water. It was the first air on our old music-box

at home, but I had never heard it sung--and I have never heard it

sung so beautifully since. I remember Oswald, standing like a statue

behind Madame Modjeska’s chair, and Myra, crouching low beside the

singer, her head in both hands, while the song grew and blossomed

like a great emotion.

When it stopped, nobody said anything beyond a low good-bye. Modjeska

again drew her cloak around her, and Oswald took them down to their

carriage. Aunt Lydia and I followed, and as we crossed the Square we

saw their cab going up the Avenue. For many years I associated Mrs.

Henshawe with that music, thought of that aria as being mysteriously

related to something in her nature that one rarely saw, but nearly

always felt; a compelling, passionate, overmastering something for

which I had no name, but which was audible, visible in the air that

night, as she sat crouching in the shadow. When I wanted to recall

powerfully that hidden richness in her, I had only to close my eyes

and sing to myself: “_Casta diva, casta diva!_”

[Illustration: (A key-ring with many keys)]