A fleeting, illusory hint of spring appeared for the moment in that
street known among all the world's great avenues--the Champs Elysées,
the Nevsky Prospect, the Corso, Unter den Linden--as "The Avenue." Its
pavements glistened with a slippery coating of mud that had yesterday
been snow, its windows blossomed with hothouse daffodils and narcissi,
also with flowery hats and airy garments that made the passer-by shiver
by their contrast with the cutting March wind. In and out, among
automobiles and pedestrians, darted that fearless optimist, the
metropolitan sparrow, busy already with straws and twigs for his spring
building.
A girl, moving alone and rather wearily among the chattering throng,
caught this hint of changing seasons, and a wave of nostalgia passed
over her that was like physical illness. A flower-vendor held out a tray
of wilted jonquils. She bought a few of them--only a few, because she
must needs be careful of her money--and held them to her face hungrily.
They brought to her mind gardens where such flowers were already pushing
their fat green buds up out of the fragrant earth--Storm garden,
Philip's little patch of bloom--encouraged by a breeze that was full of
sunlight. She saw the birds that flitted to and fro over those gardens
upon their busy errands: sweet-whistling cardinals, bluebirds with rosy
breasts, exquisite as butterflies; the flashing circles of white made by
mocking-birds' wings as they soar and swoop. The noisy street faded from
her eyes and ears, and she moved among the crowd as if she were walking
a Kentucky lane, with the March wind in her hair.
So she was not at all surprised to meet a familiar face, and murmured
absently, her thoughts on other matters, "That you, Mag?"
Then she came to herself with a start. The woman to whom she had spoken
had passed quickly. Jacqueline wheeled in time to catch a glimpse of her
in the crowd; a flashily dressed, too-stylish figure, mincing along on
very high heels, and dangling in one hand a gilt-mesh bag. The paint
that made a mask of her face, the heavy black rimming her eyes, the very
perfume that left its trail behind her, told their own story. But the
carriage of the head, the free, country-girl's swing of the shoulders,
were unmistakable. It was Mag Henderson.
Jacqueline followed her, half running. She had so longed for the sight
of a face from home that the thought of losing her seemed unbearable. It
did not matter to Kate Kildare's daughter that this was a woman of the
streets, a hopeless derelict. She remembered only that she had once been
her faithful, devoted ally.
But it mattered to Mag Henderson. Impossible that she had failed to
recognize Jacqueline; impossible that she did not hear the clear,
ringing voice crying after her, "Mag, wait for me, wait!"
Her cheeks were flushed with something besides rouge, the loose lips
trembled. She, too, knew what it was to be hungry for the sight of a
face from home.... Perhaps the recording angel put it down to Mag
Henderson's account that she did not once hesitate, did not once look
back, moving on so rapidly that at last Jacqueline, impeded by the
staring throng, breathless, almost weeping in her disappointment, lost
sight of her entirely, and gave up the pursuit.
She went her way, with hanging head. "Mother would have caught her," she
thought, "or Jemmy. They'd have _made_ her wait!"
For long afterwards she was haunted by that brief glimpse of the
creature who a few months before had been as round and sleek and pretty
as a petted kitten; the tragic eyes, old for all their feverish
brilliance, the soft cheeks already hollow beneath their paint. However
unjustly, Mag Henderson came to typify for Jacqueline the spirit of New
York.
Her feet were dragging when she reached the respectable, shabby
brownstone front that housed her and her ambitions, together with those
of some thirty other more or less hopeful aspirants to fame and fortune,
who might be heard as she entered amid much clattering of dishes in the
basement dining-room.
The halls were faintly reminiscent of meals that had gone before, and
Jacqueline, holding her jonquils to her face, decided against dinner.
She made her way up two flights to her room, and sat down upon the bed,
shivering, battling with a sense of discouragement that was almost
panic.
The streets had lost their fleeting semblance of Spring long before she
reached this place she called home, and were like bleak cañons through
which the wind whistled hungrily. Jacqueline remembered a time not long
since when she had found the wind bracing, stimulating, a playmate
daring her to a game of romps. But that was a country wind, coming clean
over wide spaces of hill and meadow; not this thing which filled her
eyes and lungs with gritty dust, and whirled old newspapers and
orange-peel and filthy rags along the gutters.
It was not the first time she had found herself lately battling with a
sense of acute discouragement. Her singing-master, a fat and
onion-smelling artist recommended very wisely by Channing, had been at
first enthusiastic about the possibilities of her voice; but recently
she had found it difficult to please him.
"Der organ is there, _ja wohl_, der organ. But Herr Gott im Himmel, is
it mit der organ alone dot zinging makes himself? Put somesing _inside_
der organ, meine gnädiges fraülein, I beg of you!"
That was just what Jacqueline seemed no longer able to do. What energy,
what spirit she had, went into the mere business of living, and there
was none left for song. A voice is, more than any other physical
attribute, the essence of vitality; and nature had other uses just then
for Jacqueline's vitality.
She did not understand, however, and sat there shivering uncontrollably,
facing the grim fact of failure. Worse than failure--fear.
From where she sat, she could see her reflection in the mirror, and she
looked at herself with frowning distaste. Jacqueline's beauty was oddly
under eclipse just then. "I'm getting ugly--and whoever heard of an ugly
prima donna?" she groaned in her innocence.
Then, suddenly, she saw what had been in her landlady's mind when,
happening to pass her in the hall that morning, the woman had remarked
casually, "You said you was _Miss_ Leigh, didn't you? or was it _Mrs._
Leigh?"
Jacqueline had answered as casually; but now she understood the
question. With a sharp intake of breath, she realized that the time had
come for her to seek another home in this great, homeless wilderness of
houses, that heeded her unhappy presence "as the sea's self should heed
a pebble cast."
She unlocked a drawer, and proceeded to investigate her finances rather
anxiously. She had come away with nothing but the money that happened to
be in her purse, and her little string of pearls, her one jewel, upon
which a pawnbroker, realizing her utter ignorance of values, had made
her an infinitesimal advance. The lessons she was taking were expensive,
and she knew that she must save for a time of need not far in the
future. It was tantalizing to know that the generous allowance from her
mother was accumulating untouched in a Frankfort bank, because she did
not dare to draw upon it for fear of being traced.
"Though if mother really wanted to find me, she could have done it
without that!" thought the girl, and suddenly buried her head in a
pillow, sobbing for her mother.
She did not allow herself to cry long. "It is not good for me," she told
herself soberly; and presently achieved a quivering smile at the thought
of her mother's face when at last she should send for her and show what
she had to show.
"There won't be any need of forgiveness then," she whispered. "Not for
either of us!"
Of Philip she did not allow herself to think at all. The girl was
gaining a strength of will in those days that exerted itself even over
her thoughts, and her lips had become as firm as Mrs. Kildare's....
Philip was done with her, of course, since he did not come to her--just
as she was done forever with Percival Channing.
In her first revulsion of feeling on learning that her lover had after
all not deserted her of his own free will, she had turned to him,
bruised and hurt as she was by that terrible hour with her mother,
confident of his help in her need. No lesson of life was ever to make
Jacqueline anything less than confident of the world's kindness.
But marriage with Philip had at least taught her a better judgment of
men, and at her first sight of Percival Channing she knew that never
again would there be anything he could offer her which she would care to
accept. She realized at last the full depth and enormity of her mistake,
but she set herself proudly to abide by the consequences, asking no
quarter.
Art was still left to her, fame; and these she must win with no
assistance except her own determination. Her career lay open before her.
Perhaps some day her mother and Philip would cease to be ashamed of her;
would even be a little proud of her....
Now, after all, was Art to fail her? Was she never to be famous after
all?
Jacqueline hurriedly turned up the corners of her mouth, having read
somewhere that it is impossible to despair so long as the lips are kept
in that cheerful position. But the fear at her heart remained.
She did not know where to go. Landladies asked questions, and she was
not a very good liar. Suppose they should be rude to her? In all her
life, nobody had ever been rude to Jacqueline. She felt that it would be
more than she could bear.--And at the last to go to some strange
hospital, to suffer, perhaps to die, among people whose names she did
not know, she who had known by name every man, woman, child, and beast
within twenty miles of Storm!... Was there none of all those friends who
would befriend her now, who would take her in without question, and
stand by her until her need was past? Surely somewhere, somewhere....
From long habit, she went on her knees to think her problem out; and the
answer came, as it so often comes to people on their knees--came with a
remembered fragrance of sun upon pine-branches, a steady sound among
tree-tops of the wind that always blows above the world.
Some hours later Jacqueline took a train for Frankfort; and she passed
Storm station at night, on her way to a town in the Kentucky mountains.
* * * * *
So it happened that there came to Philip, in Paris, the letter that told
him he had found both his father and his wife.
Jacques Benoix, glancing out of his schoolhouse door at the unwonted
sound of wheels in the trail below, had been startled to see a woman
descending from a wagon, whom he at first mistook for Kate Kildare
herself. She was helped by Bates the peddler, met by good chance in the
town below.
"Here comes another worker for the Lord's vineyard!" beamed the peddler,
as the school-teacher, recovering his breath, hurried to meet them.
"And a most welcome one! If I were a religious man, I should think you
an answer to prayer, so great is our need of help."
"Help? Do you think _I_ can be of any help?" asked Jacqueline,
wistfully--a very changed Jacqueline she was, pale and drawn-looking,
and with a new little dignity about her which the physician was quick to
observe. "I'm not a capable person, you know, like mother and Jemmy. I
do know a little about sewing, though, and cooking, and housekeeping,
and--and--"
"Singing, I remember," smiled her host, "and making people comfortable,
I think? The very things we need most, my dear. It is maddening in a
place like this to be limited to one set of brains, and arms, and
legs--and those masculine. Ah, but I am glad that you have come!"
"So am I." Jacqueline breathed a grateful sigh. "But--" she swallowed
hard, and looked him squarely in the face--"I want you to know that I am
hiding away from everybody.--Must I tell you why?"
He took off his spectacles, so that she saw his eyes. Great kindliness
dawned in them, a warm, understanding, tender gravity that had once
before reminded her of somebody she trusted. He leaned toward her.
"I, too, am hiding away from those I love.--Must I tell you why, my
daughter?"
She stared at him, her gaze widening. Suddenly she knew him, and with a
little cry, her arms went about his neck.