There was a dark scattering of people through the beehive-shaped
yellowshot emptiness of the Boston Theatre. On the stage in white
dresses against red draperies the ladies' orchestra played the overture
to Light Cavalry, violin bows sawing in unison, cheeks puffed out at
trumpets, drumsticks dancing. In front stood the conductress in a neat
tailored suit waving her arms discreetly. Nan sat in on the aisle with
her little black hat topping some packages on the seat beside her,
looking at the conductress's white gloves, thinking bitterly of
suffragettes setting bombs under Asquith in London while the shiny glib
marchtime of the music made her remember Balaklava and her spine going
cold as she read: Into the valley of death charged the six hundred. How
was it things she read never thrilled her now like that? Rights for
Women ought to excite her as much as that silly antiquated poem. The
music had stopped; two women in front of her were talking about the
cretons at Jordan Marsh's. Let's see, had she bought the lace for the V,
the ruching Miss Spence wanted, that blue crepe de chine, the buttons?
She'd make sure on her list anyway after she'd picked up Fitzie. Fine it
would be, if Miss Spence could finish it in time for Aunt M.'s tomorrow
night. All those old people put her on her mettle; they'd think the
brightness of it daring, bleared eyes watching her as she stood straight
in tight royal blue, a gleam of red caught into her hair out of the
violin. She had to affirm her separateness from poor dear Aunt M. and
her friends. The orchestra was playing selections from The Tales of
Hoffman which set Nan remembering being in Paris with Gertrude Fagan,
the smell of tea and pastry through the foggy tang of the air on the rue
Cambon, shopping, jumping in and out of cabs with silky things in tissue
paper packages, hotel François Choiseuil and the two of them giggling
together in the evening beside a pink shade over sole with wine sauce.
If it had been Wenny in Gertrude's place; the thought set her blood
seething. But I have you, my love: the word fluttered in her throat. She
moistened her dry lips with her tongue. The music had stopped.
Nan looked about her restlessly. On the stage she could see Fitzie among
the violins, next to a tall redhaired girl. That was where the other
girl, Mabel something, used to stand last year, the girl who ran away
with the flushfaced boy Fitzie told about, with bright teeth, the
Italian who looked like a young Greek god, like Wenny perhaps. And he
was dead. In all these months she should have got used to his being
dead, but still when she thought of him she had to tell herself quickly
he was dead, to escape the horrible pain of thinking of him, wishing him
alive. Or did that all mean there was no death, that he was utterly
surrendered to her. Fitzie 'ld say that, poor lonely Fitzie. Dull
program it was this afternoon; a dismal ending for all that work and
hysterical eagerness up at the conservatory, a lady 'celloist in the
Fadettes.
Nan began to listen to the music again. They were playing the march from
The Twilight of the Gods over-solemnly. The conductress brought down her
baton for the last time. People got to their feet. The lights went on.
Nan was adjusting her hat with two hatpins in her mouth. Had she got all
her packages? She walked out slowly into the crimson sunset light of
Washington Street, and round through a cold swirl of dustladen wind to
the stage door. The women of the orchestra were coming out, short women
in highcollared shirtwaists, a tall girl with high cheekbones and yellow
hair, two stout women with glasses both rippling with the same laughter,
the harpist, a consumptive-looking girl with white, drooping face and
blue rings under her eyes; then Fitzie walking with jerky little steps,
pigeonbreasted.
"O Nancibel, how sweet of you to wait... I'd just decided you wouldn't."
"Why should you think that?"
"O I don't know. I guess I must think sometimes that you're a little
upstage, dear; simply horrid of me and I don't mean it a bit. Maybe it's
that anybody who didn't know you would feel that you were a little, just
the weenciest bit."
"I don't think I am, Fitzie."
They were drifting up the street in a compact stream of people like on a
moving platform. Nan looked from face to face that passed her in a
chilly flutter of expectation. She knew that before long she would see a
man she would think was Wenny. What was this tremor that went through
the procession of faces at sunset time, browned them, put blood in their
lips, sparkle in their eyes, so that suddenly, as if dolls should come
to life she would feel that she was going to meet Wenny. Dreading the
pain of it, she tried to forget herself in Fitzie's shrill gossip of how
the harpist had sauced the conductress and would have been fired except
that she was such a good player and she'd only had to apologize and
everybody had been in a dreadful temper and they'd played the
Götterdämmerung piece much too slowly. So they reached Park Street.
"Fitzie, suppose we have tea at my place. D'you mind? I want to get
there before Miss Spence goes away."
"It'll be charming, and is the dress finished, the blue satin? You will
let me see it, won't you? I so love looking at lovely dresses the way I
liked fairy tales when I was little. Even if I can't have them ..."
"There's nothing very fabulous about this one."
"O, you're so lucky, Nancibel, to be able to afford lovely dresses."
Nan thought of the dresses of the women in the Fadettes, angular, with
the restlessness of bargain counters, fussily trimmed. It's not the
money, she told herself, it's knowing what to wear.
"Is Mr. Macdougan back from Europe yet?" asked Fitzie with downcast eyes
once they had settled themselves in the streetcar.
"Yes, he's back," said Nan drily. The car ground rattling round a corner
in the tunnel and climbed out into the shattered dusk of the street. Nan
had a glimpse of lights among the trees of the Public Garden. She
narrowed her eyes to see the people along the pavements moving dark
against the filmy brightness of shopwindows.
"Nancibel," said Fitzie after a pause, "I was so sorry about that ...
when it happened."
"When what happened?"
"You know what I mean, dear ... Like Billy and me, you know."
"How absurd. I was never engaged to Fanshaw. Can't you people understand
that a man and a woman can be friends? All this sentimental tommyrot
makes me furious."
"It isn't that, dear. You shouldn't say such things, Nancibel, love
is so beautiful."
Nan did not answer. She was thinking of Wenny bursting into her room
that spring morning, how the flame of him had frozen her into a helpless
clicking automaton, and when he had gone she had watched him from the
window rush across the street and all the rigid life had gone out of her
so that she lay with her head on the windowledge and looked at the empty
snowpiled street ... agony not beauty that was.
Art Museum, called out the conductor. They alighted and walked slowly
along past the pompous marble oblong of the dental clinic.
"O, Nancibel, I'd forgotten to tell you," cried Fitzie, suddenly turning
excitedly to Nan, "I've seen Mabel Worthington."
"The girl from the Fadettes, your friend who eloped?"
"Yes, and just imagine it, she's terribly successful."
"What at?"
"Why, I don't just know. She's living at the Vendome, just think of
that. I think she's managing concert tours, and she's married and
everything. Several of the girls have been to see her."
"So she married the boy she eloped with? The Italian you said was
so good looking."
"No, she didn't ... That's what so queer. She's Mrs. Van Troppfer
and her husband's a Dutchman."
Nan burst out laughing.
"How shriekingly funny."
The Swansea: the gilt letters slanted down the glass door. They were in
the elevator that had a familiar heavy oilsmell. Nan was still laughing.
Under her laughter she was pleased to be getting back to her apartment.
All afternoon she had looked forward to seeing how far her dress would
be along.
"O, how do you do, Miss Taylor. I was just going," came Miss Spence's
voice from the bedroom. "Now I can try fitting ... It was such a lovely
afternoon, too lovely for words for those who can afford to go out in
it... O, how do you do, Miss Fitzhugh, you'll be able to tell us what
you think of the dress ... If you don't mind, we can fit it right now,
because I mustn't be home late this evening and the cars are so
crowded." Miss Spence was a little woman who talked continually, her
mouth bristling with pins, in an even whiny voice; her hands were all
the time darting about in front of her like lizards.
"What a beautiful blue," Fitzie was saying. "O, my dear, what a treat
to see it fitted."
"Too lovely for words," echoed Miss Spence.
"It must have cost an enormous lot."
"Nonsense ... Fitzie, d'you mind putting some water to boil in the
kitchenette ... When do you think you can have it ready, Miss Spence?"
"O, dear, now let me think; would day after tomorrow do?"
"But I want to wear it to dinner tomorrow. My aunt is giving one of
her musical evenings."
"O, how lovely that must be. O, I must try." Miss Spence's little hands
fluttered up and down the satiny front of the dress. "How about length?"
"Stunning, stunning!" cried Fitzie, who had come back from the
kitchenette. "A wonderful concert gown it would make."
"Do you think so?" said Nan and felt a warm glow suffuse her whole
being, so that she could not help throwing back her head a little and
straightening her shoulders.
"Too lovely for words," whined Miss Spence through the pins in her
mouth, standing back against the wall to look.
"I seem to remember having heard Phillips Brooks say once," Aunt M. was
saying, "that a meal without fellowship was almost an enormity. It's so
true. As one grows older, Nancibel, one has to eat so many lonely,
tasteless meals."
Nan looked at her aunt across the round primly set table, where the four
candles under their silver shades cast an uncertain creamy light on the
starched cloth and gave forks and spoons and plates blue uncertain
shadows.
"But I find it rather pleasant to have a meal alone now and then ... It
gives me a chance to collect my thoughts."
Aunt M. was lifting a cup of cocoa to her lips, carefully like a child;
she smiled wryly and said with a glint from the candles in her eyes:
"Because you can have company whenever you want. Nobody wants very much
to have supper with an old woman like me."
"Why, Aunt M., you know I love to talk to you this way. The only reason
I don't come oftener is that I'm so busy nowadays." Nan's fingers on her
lap were tapping nervously against her knee.
"Of course, of course, dear, I understand. With your music and
everything. I used to be very busy, too, and even now I'm not idle, am
I?"
"I should say not."
"And then, watching your career, Nancibel, dear, I live over my own
life. Think of it, dear, when I was young in those years after the
rebellion ... Mary Ann, Miss Taylor will take her coffee in the other
room."
"Yessum."
Aunt M. got to her feet, brushing a few crumbs off her silk dress and
went through the portieres into the parlor. Nan glanced at herself in
the mirror over the mantel as she followed. How pale I look tonight, she
thought.
"When I was young in those years after the rebellion, Boston was a very
busy place. And we were all so sanguine for the future. But now, even if
I were strong enough, I would go out very little. It all seems so
strange and ugly to me. And where is it going, this hideous chase after
money?"
"I find a sort of splendor in it," said Nan brutally. They sat side by
side on the curvebacked sofa, Nan with a small coffee cup in one hand.
"I'm happier indoors. But even here there's no real peace. The traffic
on Beacon Street is so distressing."
"Marblehead would be a nice place to live."
"O, no, you wouldn't have me leave this house, would you, Nancibel,
dear? This is my home. Do you remember in Mr. Emerson's poem..."
Why seek Italy?
Who cannot circumnavigate the sea
Of thoughts and things at home?
"I feel that way about this house. Why since I lived in my mother's house
I haven't lived anywhere else. How well I remember the first excitement
of having a home of my own."
"When was that, Aunt M.?"
"I have never told you, have I? It was after I decided I would never
marry." Aunt M. paused. Mary Ann rustled in to take the tray of coffee
things.
"Anything else tonight, mum?"
"No, I won't need anything more. Good night, Mary Ann."
"Good night, mum."
"Nan, it's a long time since you brought Mr. Macdougan in to see me."
"He's very busy this year. He's giving a course of his own."
"A very clever young man, Nancibel ... But I was telling you about the
events that led up to my taking this house. It was something very near
to me, which I have told to very few."
Aunt M. turned towards Nan and let her voice drop to a shaky whisper.
Her eyes seemed strangely large and young and tremulous, staring out of
the yellow wrinkled face.
"I had engaged myself when very young--we were more precocious in those
days--to a youth of good family and connections. You've even met him,
but I shall not tell you who he is. We decided to wait several years
before marrying, and in the meantime there was not a dance or party in
Boston suitable to a young girl where I was not to be found merry with
the merriest."
People in crinolines bowing low and dancing to waltzes by Auber; our
generation is different from that. We count more. Music welling out from
the broken moulds of old customs. We are really breaking away seeking
something genuine; true culture. Aunt M. wouldn't believe if I tried to
explain.
"One night at a dance on Beacon Hill I was much struck by the appearance
of a young man. I'd never seen any one so handsome before and to this
day I have never seen the like of him ... Nancibel, I'm getting old. A
year ago, even, I don't think I would have been able to tell you all
this without my heart fluttering ... You are a dear girl to listen so
attentively to your poor old aunt's reminiscences. Don't let me forget
to go up to bed the minute the clock strikes ten."
They were sitting side by side on the curvebacked sofa. The old woman
had snuggled close to Nan and held her hand like a child listening to a
ghost story. Nan's glance roamed nervously about the room. For a long
while she stared at her Aunt's hand that lay pudgy and freckled, with
swollen knuckles, in her slender white hand.
"He was an Englishman named Verrey, though his skin was so dark everyone
thought him an Italian. He paid court to me more charmingly than you can
imagine. Every day of my life he sent me a great bunch of Malmaison
roses. Without telling anyone, I broke off my engagement. Mother was
dreadfully uneasy about me, and all the family hated young Verrey
because he looked so foreign. I was nearly ill about him. O, Nancibel,
you can't imagine how wonderful he was, so dashing and chivalrous. And
so it kept up. I stopped going out and used to spend all day in my room
thinking of him. My father forbade him the house, so that the only way I
had of communicating with him was that a certain time each day I used to
come to the window and he would walk slowly up and down the street in
front of the house. I thought I'd cry my eyes out, he looked so sad and
dejected. Then, to make a long story short, he came to see me one day
when I was alone in the house. He was so perturbed he could hardly
speak. He said I must run away with him instantly or he'd go mad with
love of me. He tried to kiss me. It was terrible. I ordered him out of
the house and I never saw him again. But I was awfully ill. Several days
after I went to bed with brain fever. For weeks they despaired of saving
me."
Nan was pressing her aunt's hand hard.
"And then?"
"Nothing. When I got well, nothing seemed to matter much. Convalescence
has that effect. From that day to this I've never been able to abide the
smell of roses. But, my dear, I must go up to bed. I feel badly all day
if I don't get my proper sleep ... Forgive my boring you with these old
women's stories. We were very silly when I was a girl. How out of date I
must seem to a generation brought up on Ibsen's plays."
"Yes, our ideas are a little different nowadays," said Nan.
Outside the streetlights sparkled diamond-hard in a clear wind. Nan
walked fast, her thoughts desperately tumultuous. The keen October air
and the clatter of her heels on the empty pavement of Beacon Street were
a relief after the senile stuffiness of her aunt's parlor. And I will be
like that, spending my life explaining why I didn't dare live. No! No!
Poor Aunt M. had nothing to fall back on. I have my music, my career, my
sense of humor; it's not as if I were helpless before things like
Fitzie. And she remembered how she'd stood at the piano the other night
in that closefitting dress of royal blue satin and felt their eyes on
her, and felt light coming into the bleary eyes of old people as she
played to them.
She had reached Massachusetts Avenue where the pavements were full of
people coming out of the moving-picture theatres, standing in knots on
the corner waiting for streetcars. For a moment she was caught up,
elated, in the stream of windfreshened faces, bodies uncramping
deliciously after the stiff seats of theatres. Her eyes ran thrillingly
over faces that streamed past her, like her fingers over pianokeys. She
walked fast, with exhilaration, until at a corner where she turned up
past a drugstore, the curve of a cheek under a boy's mashed-down felt
hat, full lips laughing, made her stop still suddenly. Dizzy blackness
welled up through her. She stood panting on the corner. Whites of eyes,
heads jerked towards her, puzzled looks as people passed. She walked
back and forth in front of the drugstore. A hallucination, of course.
But could she have seen him? Before she knew it she had called out:
"Wenny!" People were looking at her. She walked hurriedly up the dark
street, breathless, running away from them. She spun in the grip of a
horrible nausea.
* * * *
"Why, Confucius looks sleeker than ever, Nan," said Fanshaw, and ran the
tips of his fingers round the big blue teapot. They sat in the open
window looking out at the misty russet trees of the Fenway, with the
teatable between them.
"He never goes hungry, or rather thirsty."
"Imagine this weather for the end of October ... St. Martin's summer."
"That's a nice name for it."
"Nicer than ours. Indian summer always makes me think of Hiawatha."
A sound of pounding and spades cutting gravel came up from the street
below. Nan watched the blue backs of three laborers bend and straighten,
bend and straighten as they worked in a hole in the street. A man in a
black felt hat with a corncob pipe stuck in his beet face stood over
them.
"Curious for them to be tearing up the street at this time of the
year," said Fanshaw, languidly.
"Our watermain burst. There wasn't a drop of water in the house
this morning."
"How awkward."
Nan did not hear him. One of the laborers had looked up. For a moment
his eyes were black, shining into hers. O, but he can't really see me
from down there. The face was lean brown between curly black hair and an
unshaven chin. With an eager child's smile he raised a hand. As the hand
fell she had a glimpse of a dark chest scooped in taut muscles towards
the belly under his open blue shirt. He was again a blue back bending
and straightening with the three other backs. Crazy fires danced
through her.
"Yes, I had to go round to Gertrude Fagan's to wash." There was a
dead veil between her and Fanshaw.
"And how is the fiery Gertrude?"
"Very well."
"The last time I met that lady on the street she cut me dead ... I
suppose she's too taken up with the world beyond to notice us
terrestrial beings."
"Nonsense, Fanshaw, Gertrude's an awfully nice person ... You must have
done something she didn't like. She's very easily offended."
"Do the spooks continue to flourish?"
"You mean her automatic writing. Well, what of it? You shouldn't scoff
at things you don't understand."
"That's better than being awed by them, Nan."
"Anything more I can do for you, Miss?"
It was the Irish girl who came to clean. She stood in the shadow by the
door with her hand at her sides. Pretty smiling lips.
"No, nothing tonight, Marion. I'm sorry I kept you so late today."
"That's all right. Good night, Miss."
Nan smiled warmly at her through the dusk of the room. At the end of the
hall the door shut sharply.
"More tea, Fanshaw?"
"No, thanks."
While she poured a few drops of tea into her cup she glanced out the
window again. Italians they were, probably, smelling of pipes and sweaty
shirts and garlic. There's Marion. If I were Marion Reily instead of
Nancibel Taylor ... to stroll along twilit streets with backward looks
through the lashes; that boy'd rub the clay off his hands and follow me;
kidding talk on park benches, fumbling work-rough hands, ditchdiggers'
hands, hardmuscled arms crushing, moist hot lips bearing down, panting.
The cold voice of Aunt M. when she was a little girl too excited at the
circus: Careful, Nancibel, careful, Nancibel.
"But, Fanshaw," she was saying, straining to keep the tumult out of her
voice, "suppose there were a life after death."
Fanshaw did not answer for a moment. She saw his eyes dusky grey,
troubled. The straight line of his lips tightened. All this is me,
smalltalk over teacups and polished hardwood floors and Fanshaw's
drawling Harvardese. Marion's neat dark figure had gone off down the
street with quick jerky steps. Nan looked back into the darkening room.
"Is there any reason to believe," Fanshaw was saying in a tone that
arrested all her attention suddenly, "that people in the next life would
be any less futile than people in this life? It's horrible to want to do
way with death."
"How can you feel that way? It's all such fun," she said boisterously.
So Fanshaw too ... She felt he was changing the subject.
"Coming back on the Baltic, Nan ... you should have seen Edgar. He
blossomed into a regular society butterfly and actually forced me to
play bridge with some dreadful girls named Van Ryn he dug up somewhere."
"New Yorkers?"
"Yes."
"Was the famous Mrs. Harry Van Ryn along?"
"Was she? You should have seen how she dressed! Might have thought it
was the Lusitania. Her daughters were quieter than she was, and rather
more intelligent, I must allow them that."
They were silent a while. Rosy afterglow flowed like water through
the window.
"Where did you go besides Siena?"
"O, to Arezzo, Urbino, and then to Assissi and San Gimingiano."
"You wretch, stole a march on me ... And there I was up at Squirrel
Island with Aunt M., bored to the ears. Never mind, I'll have my revenge
some day."
Fitzie's Italian who smelt of garlic and looked like a young Greek god,
dark face and a boy's full wistful smile. The gods were ever young and
Mabel Worthington eloped with youth and married an elderly Dutchman for
his money and lived at the Vendome.
Fanshaw was on his feet.
"Must you run away so soon?"
He nodded. Her cheerful social voice rang bitterly in her ears as she
stood in the middle of the empty room. She was full of dull surprised
pain like a disappointed child. So that's dead, she heard herself say.
Am I growing old? Is everything going to die like that? Twenty-nine
isn't old.
She switched on the light and took her violin. I can get in an hour's
practice before getting ready to go to the Smithers ... O, I can't play.
I'm too wretchedly nervous this afternoon. Perhaps Gertrude'll be in.
She went to the phone in the hall to call the number. As she waited with
the receiver against her ear, something made her remember Fitzie saying
in her thrill excited whisper: And Salinski says you played as if you
had a soul. Let's see, when was that? Think I've been in this apartment
nearly four years, four years scraping on the fiddle. Gertrude doesn't
answer. Tomorrow morning I must get hold of Fitzie. She promised to take
me to see that girl. Quite exciting her career has been: the Fadettes
and then that disreputable episode with the Italian. How much she must
know about life! Probably decided she couldn't play or she wouldn't have
gone into the agency business. Wonderful to cut loose the way she has.
Fitzie says she comes from quite a good family out in Waltham.
Nan had put the teacups on the tray with the pot and was carrying them
out into the kitchenette. O that wretched girl forgot the garbage. She
took up the little zinc pail and put it on the dumbwaiter. I'll ask John
to empty it as a special favor. While she stood pulling on the rope,
gingerly so as not to dirty her hands, she heard loud laughter from one
of the kitchens below. Wish I'd noticed more about the people living in
this house; there must be some queer fish. She felt herself smiling. How
shocked Aunt M. was when I told her where I'd taken an apartment. She
washed the teacups and the pot and left them to dry in the rack beside
the sink. When she opened the tin box to put the cake in, there came to
her a familiar smell of stale bread and crackers. She dropped the lid
sharply. Why do I go on doing these little things day after day? The
indigestion of the little. A woman's life may always be that. O, I must
know about other people's lives. Mabel Worthington, is her life just
pots and pans and combs and nailfiles and doilies? She went into her
bedroom. Only half-past six by the little porcelain clock on the mantel,
a whole hour before I need be at the Smithers. She lifted the shade and
peered down into the blue darkness of the street. The workmen had gone.
Under the lamppost she could see the patched place they had left. She
let herself sink into a chair and remained a long while looking out the
window with the shade between her and her room. Occasionally a man or
woman walked past from the direction of Huntington Avenue. On their way
home to dinner. Endless family tables, and other tables, kept women
pouring out champagne for fashionably dressed men, the fast set. Women
throwing back their heads and laughing through the smoke of their
cigarettes. Perhaps that's how Mabel Worthington would be, with
high-piled hair bleached with peroxide and a whisky voice. If I were
like that dining tonight with Wenny among cocktails and offcolor
stories. The Back Bay siren. She shuddered and threw open the window.
Fog was coming in, blurring the streetlights. He always loved the fog.
Perhaps once more out of the streaming faces and the clicking feet, his
funny shambling walk, his hands, ditchdiggers' hands, the hair curling
crisply about his forehead the way it curled on foggy nights.... As the
fog thickened the people passing under the window became shadowy and the
sound of their steps dull and muffled.
Behind her in the room the clock struck seven silvery discreet little
strokes. Nan jumped guiltily to her feet. She must dress. As she
arranged her hair she wondered if she should take her violin. They'd be
sure to ask her to play, but perhaps it would impress them more if she
said she had forgotten it.
* * * *
"Perhaps it's suede you wanted, Miss," said the thin blonde saleslady,
narrowing her eyes as she leaned towards Nan across the counter.
"The material doesn't matter a bit. It's a certain color I'm looking
for, can't you understand?" said Nan peevishly. She held herself in and
said again firmly in her natural voice: "A warm pearl grey."
Nan was very tired. The late afternoon bustle of the department store
and the atmosphere of perfumes and women's furs and breathedout air and
the close smell of fabrics were almost unbearable. She had been shopping
all afternoon so that her legs ached and she had a faint pain between
her eyes. While the woman went off for a new box of gloves, Nan stared
dully at the holly-wreathed sign above the counter: Do Your Christmas
Shopping Early. Her eyes followed the wearisome curlicues of the gothic
capitals.
"Here you are, Miss," said the saleslady, with a desperate attempt at
sprightliness in her voice.
"That's it," said Nan. She found herself looking in the white face of
the saleslady, itself a little like wrinkled kid. "Busy time this must
be for you."
"Busy! No time to breathe."
"I don't see how you do it."
"Don't think about it. Only way. Never think about things," said the
saleslady, breathlessly writing out the slip.
Nan found herself drifting down the aisle of the store, a package added
to those under her arm and stuffed into her bag, among fat jostling
women and angular women with disapproving lips and small tired women
with saggy eyes; she glanced in the waxen face under slimy hair of a
floorwalker, tried ineffectually to approach the notions counter and at
last found herself looking at the clock beside the elevator. Half-past
four, time to meet Fitzie at the tearoom. The elevator smelt of oil,
heavy like castor oil. Was it her mother's voice, or some governess's
out of her childhood: Now, Nancibel, if you can't be more ladylike
you'll have to take some castor oil? How tired she was this afternoon.
Silly to come shopping in the afternoon so near the Christmas season.
Christmas comes but once a year.
Let us laugh and have good cheer,
La la dee dee, la la dee dee.
Beyond nodding cherries in a grey woman's hat, the face of the elevator
man, black face with an ivory grin, and his suave negro voice
announcing: Mezzanine Floor: Ladies' and Misses' garments and imported
lingerie, Ladies' and Misses' hats and footwear. Way back, please ...
Second Floor: Men's and Boys' clothes, ready and custom made, sporting
goods; Men's and Boys' haberdashery and footwear. Let the lady out,
please ... Third Floor: House furnishings, rugs, verandah furniture and
imported goods ... At the top floor Nan stumbled out of the elevator and
had to sit down on the bench in front of it, she was so tired. She
counted over the little packages on her lap. That's right, I haven't
lost anything.
"Nan, it's all fixed."
Fitzie, in a red hat with a feather, popped out of the soggy mass of
women in the elevator crisp and bristling with excitement. She sat down
beside Nan on the bench.
"My dear, you look a sight; you must be dreadfully tired. Never mind,
some tea'll freshen you up famously.... But it's all fixed about our
tour."
"You mean the orchestra?"
"Of course, Nancibel. We open next Monday in Montreal."
"It'll be dreadfully cold up there, I should think."
"But think, dearest, how wonderful! I've never traveled in my life
before. We'll go all the way out to the Coast, San Francisco and all
that."
"Fitzie, before you go we mustn't forget to call on Mabel Worthington.
I'm very curious to meet her."
"O, we will, but let's get a table before they are all snapped up. I'm
perishing."
The waitress had pretty brown eyes. She can't be more than eighteen,
thought Nan as they sat down. Eleven years younger than I am. What
happens in eleven years! Nothing. Everything. A mere kid Wenny would
have been eleven years ago, inky-fingered curlypated schoolboy.
"And how's your aunt?" Fitzie was asking.
"I'm rather worried about her ... Poor Aunt M. hasn't been a bit well
this last month. I've been trying to get her to go south."
"I should think Florida 'ld be just the thing."
"She's afraid she'd be lonely."
"Why don't you go with her?"
"But my music, Fitzie! I can't afford to lose a whole winter at this
stage of the game, and Salinski's promised me some extra hours."
"O, I see."
Nan frowned.
"You don't mean you think I ought to give up everything and go, do
you?"
"Of course not, but the conflict between one's love for one's family and
one's wanting a career is sometimes dreadful, positively dreadful ... Of
course, it's none of my business and I shan't say anything one way or
the other."
"But what tommyrot ... You know perfectly well how I feel about my
career."
"Of course, dear, of course," said Fitzie nibbling at a piece of toast.
"You'll be interested in what Mabel has to say about that. She's made
more of a career than any of the girls in our time at the Conservatory."
"I don't mean quite that by career," said Nan laughing.
"Of course not, you are much too wellbred, dearest ... But could you
go tomorrow?"
"Not tomorrow ... But, how about Saturday?"
Nan gulped down a cup of weak milky tea with relief. The chatter at the
tables round about and the smothered selection from the Arcadians out of
the victrola in the corner of the tearoom sucked all the remaining
energy out of her so that she sat limp, staring at her friend's new red
hat. Utterly ridiculous, like a redbird, she was thinking.
"Why not tomorrow?" insisted Fitzie. "I shall be dreadfully busy
Saturday. It'll be my last useful day. We leave Sunday night. Isn't it
too wonderful! Think of the places I'll see and the people I'll meet and
everything ... Of course it'll be exhausting too."
"I almost wish I were going with you."
"But you can't have engagements all day tomorrow, Nancibel."
"I'm going to stay in the house tomorrow."
"O, you poor dear!" Fitzie leaned over and patted Nan's hand. "That's
quite all right. Of course, I understand. Of course, we'll go Saturday."
Nan winced. She felt a sudden rage against all this womanish chatter and
chirping talk. The smell of women, perfume, furs, dry goods was choking
her. I must get out of here.
"Walk with me to the Touraine, Fitzie. I'm going home in a taxi."
"You extravagant thing. But I simply can't. I've got so much to do ...
preparations for departure."
"And that Worthington girl?" asked Nan in a carefully offhand voice as
they were going down in the packed elevator.
"O, I'll call her up and make a date. She's always in at teatime.
Shall I phone you, dear?"
"Yes, do." Fitzie's short pigeon-breasted figure was caught into the
stream of women down the main aisle of the store, over which the arcs
hovered like big lilac-white balloons. A last glimpse of the red hat. O,
I should have spoken of it; she'll be offended. But such a sight ... The
revolving doors swung Nan out on to the pavement, where the air was cold
and hard. The signs down Washington Street brandished metallic facets of
light. The crowd streamed endlessly dark against the motionlessness of
the wide windows of stores. From automobiles moving in compact opposed
streams came the rasp of racing motors and a smell of scorched gasoline.
Nan made her way slowly through a barbed painful tunnel of light and
noise and cold. With a little sigh she sank back into the springy seat
of the taxi and let the packages slip out of her hands. There was a
musty smell about it that brought up childish dreams of elegance. That
picture eternally repeated in the movies of the elegantly gloved heroine
stepping into her limousine. To arrive that way stately at the side
doors of concert halls, to be handed out by sleekhaired men in frock
coats, to stand a moment waiting in a long tightfitting dress of royal
blue, her violin in one hand, a smell of roses about her, and from
everywhere the terrible dizzy murmur of the waiting audience. Had Mabel
Worthington attained all that already? Why, she can't even play, all
she's done has been to flaunt her sex. She must be a veritable harlot. I
must see her to find out.
They were turning the corner out of Massachusetts Avenue. Nan tapped
suddenly on the window.
"I want to stop at that fruit store ... That's right."
"All right, Miss," said the driver smiling. He was a pertlooking young
man with a red face and a horseshoe scarf pin.
Why am I so timid? I have personality as much as the next girl, she was
thinking as warmed by the young man's smile she wandered about the fruit
store trying to decide what to buy. At last she lit on some pears. While
the Greek, a sallow man with a long nose and close-cropped hair, was
putting them in a bag, she spied some Japanese persimmons in a box. "O,
I must have some of those for the color."
"They are mighty good ... sweet as honey," said the Greek.
"At last!" she muttered, closing her eyes with a little sigh when,
having paid off the taxi, she stood in the elevator of the Swansea. As
she let the packages slide from her arms into the armchair in the living
room, she felt a crushing sense of loneliness. She poured the orangered
persimmons into a blue bowl on the teatable. How beautiful they are. If
I only had someone to show them to. She threw herself into a bustle of
preparations for supper. She lit two burners in the kitchenette. Toast
and boiled eggs and then I'll go to bed with a book. The usualness of
the smell of the gas-burners and boiling water and toast oppressed her.
Was she going to spend all her life puttering about that miserable
kitchenette? If I were at Aunt M.'s in the little room I had when I was
a child it would be cosy to be made a fuss over and have breakfast
brought up to me in bed by Mary Ann in the morning.
After supper she remembered she hadn't looked at the letters she had
brought up from the mailbox. One from Salinski, what on earth?
Dear Miss Taylor:
It is with infinite regret that I must announce to you that on account
of great and pressing business I shall be forced to omit your next three
lessons, making our following engagement for January 26....
I know what that means. He's losing interest in me. He can't treat me
like that. I'll phone him. He has no right not to explain what he means.
She went to the phone and jerked off the receiver. Then she put it back
weakly and burst into tears. O, I'm all distraught this evening. How
horribly silly. I'll go to bed and read.
Once in bed, in her white bedroom, with the reading light over her
shoulder and the rest of the room in cosy shadow and the persimmons in
their blue bowl on a chair within reach, she began to feel calmer. She
lay a long while staring at the ceiling with Locke's Beloved Vagabond
unopened in her hand. Is it just that I'm feeling low this evening, or
is everything crumbling, breaking down to let in the floods of platitude
the way the noise of pianolas seeps in through apartment-house walls?
The persimmons glowed like lacquer. Sweet as honey, the Greek had said
they were. Vermilion, the color, was more than red or orange. Was it
Wenny or Fanshaw used to talk about how the three of them were like
people out of another age lost in a grey swamp of dullness in their
vermilion barge? Another age. If she'd lived in another age. The
grandeur that was Rome. Decline and fall. What careers women had then.
Dread career of adultery and crime. Messalina. Was it on the Pincian her
gardens had been? Somewhere in Baedeker. Carried in a litter through
howling streets, swinging above the torches and the black dripping backs
of slaves with an arm about the neck of a young curlyhaired lover, long
ringed fingers clasped about the hard muscle of his shoulder, into the
walled gardens winy with the smell of overripe fruits sweet as honey.
Great gates closing on streets full of crowds that shrieked challenging,
mocking, Messalina. In the hush of the garden on the Pincian she and
Wenny in each other's arms, with their lips touching, sweet as honey.
Nan felt hot shudders go through her, her cheeks were fire. She pressed
her dry eyes against the white cool linen of the pillow and lay on her
face rocking to and fro. Then she jumped out of bed and began to walk
about her narrow bedroom. She must go out.
From the apartment below came the sound of a piano and a man's nasal
voice singing:
I know a spot where the sun is like gold
And the cherry blooms burst with snow.
Nan threw open the window and looked out into the empty street. Two
cats, arched scuttling shadows, were circling about the lampost. The
night was suddenly ripped with their caterwauling. Shivering with cold
and disgust, Nan sat a long time in the chair by the window, her palms
pressed against her hot tearless eyes. Down the street she heard from
time to time the lovewail of a cat.
* * * *
A bellboy's brown back shiny with buttons preceded them down the dark
red-carpeted hall. In spite of Nan's casual stroll beside Fitzie who
walked with her face pushed forward eagerly and a smile ready on her
lips, she felt strangely uneasy. I merely want to see what she's like,
she said to herself, constricting her flutter of excitement as she
constricted her wrists buttoning her tight kid gloves. Merely to
observe. The boy knocked on a brown door at the end of the hall. Nan
could feel her heart pumping.
"Come!" The voice was deep, throaty under velvet. The room was bright,
wide, looped salmon colored curtains, brisk air with a smell of flowers,
freesias. The woman walked towards them, holding out a hand.
"Hello, Fitzie. Why, how splendid... I always wanted to meet you, Miss
Taylor.... You see, I admired you from afar up at Jordan." Her hand was
firm and cool. She had brown eyes, a skin flushed with olive, hair like
ebony, and at the waist of a simply cut tuniclike black dress two small
red chrysanthemums. "Do sit down. O it is good of you to have come."
As she sat down she spread out one arm along the top of the brocaded
sofa. Above a long brown neck, Preraphaelite neck, poised a little
pointed chin. Nan felt herself sitting stiffly with pursed lips. She let
herself sink back in her chair.
"O Fitzie, I've heard about the tour. Isn't it great? I almost wish I
were going along. Think of the squalling and squabbling there'll be;
won't it be grand? It was funny enough going out to Worcester that time,
but the grand continental tour of the embattled Fadettes'll be an unholy
shriek."
There was a knock at the door. A waiter came in half hidden under a
teatray balanced over one shoulder.
"Would either of you prefer a cocktail or a glass of port or
something?"
"O no, tea will be just delicious," said Fitzie, shaking hastily the
red feather of her hat.
"Nothing could be better than tea, Mrs. Van Troppfer," said Nan quietly.
"Did you know, Fitzie, I've given up the violin? After all this time,
isn't it ridiculous?" The brown eyes were looking in Nan's, wide amused.
"Yes, I'm afraid I'm a rolling stone, and certainly I shan't gather
moss. Think how they'd be horrified up at the conservatory.... I'm going
to try to sing again. You see, I always had wanted to sing and only took
up the violin because I could get quicker money by it. Then I had mother
to support."
"Really, I never knew that," said Fitzie, suspending a spoonful of
pastry half way to her mouth.
"O families are a perpetual problem, aren't they?" said the
Worthington girl, laughing.
Nan ate a cream cornucopia delicately, between sips of tea. The crisp
pastry and the faint cheese flavor in the white cream made her think of
Paris, station restaurants, and fogs and concerts.
"We are going abroad again in a week or two and I'm going to work like a
Trojan ... try to strike while the iron's hot. You see, my husband and
Hammerstein claim that I have a good stage presence and ought to take a
whack at the Opera Comique. That's what the Fadettes did for me! I keep
telling them that I'm too long-necked to be a singer ... but I guess
I'll take a try at it. Maybe I'll have luck."
"Your husband must have great connections," said Fitzie in a humble
tone.
"That won't do any good unless I manage to learn to sing, will it?" She
turned laughing to Nan, "Do have a little more tea, I'm afraid I'm
boring you with all my chatter.... I hear you are studying with
Salinski, Miss Taylor. How do you find him? He knows the instrument all
right, but it's difficult to hold him down, he's getting so social these
days."
"Still if he's really interested in your work," Nan heard herself say.
"O, that's another thing ... He never was interested in me, I know
that."
There was a knock at the door. "Come!" called the Worthington girl. The
bellboy came in with a telegram on a plate.
"All right, bring it here; thanks."
It was a creamfaced boy with a snub nose. Nan watched a tense, adoring
look come into his eyes as he put the plate within the Worthington
girl's reach. That's how she does it. The boy left the room hurriedly,
flushing as if her smile stung. With languid fingers she crumpled the
telegram.
"You must excuse me," she said. "Isn't it wretched being in a hotel this
way? They never give you any peace ... Did you ever study music in
Paris, Miss Taylor?"
"No, only in Boston."
"I was wondering if they were as stupid over there about it as they are
here. Isn't it hopeless?" She laughed happily, cuddling into the corner
of the sofa and taking little bites out of a cream cornucopia. "Still,
we'll see what turns up."
"Who are you studying with?"
"O, that's the great question ... It's really more difficult than
getting married. I have to look them over and they have to look me
over."
Nan began to put on her gloves.
"Must you go?"
"I'm afraid so."
"Then so must I," said Fitzie hastily. "It's been just lovely to
see you, Mabel dear."
"I was hoping Van Troppfer would get in before you left.... He'll be
disappointed not seeing you."
The Worthington girl went with them to the door. As they turned the
corner of the red-carpeted hall Nan had a glimpse of her smiling at them
from the half open door, tall and dark against a streak of light.
They walked down the stairs and out on the street in silence. Then
Fitzie turned suddenly to Nan and said:
"Isn't she just wonderful?... Now you must tell me what you think of
her. O, she's the girl who'll have a career."
"I suppose her vulgarity was to be expected. She wears her clothes
beautifully, doesn't she?"
"Well, she always did do that. Everybody admitted her to be the best
dressed girl in the orchestra."
"I wonder where she learned it?"
"I believe she came of a good family in reduced circumstances; that's
all there is about it."
"Well, Fitzie, I'm going home. If I don't see you again before you go,
here's wishing you all the luck in the world." Nan leant and kissed
Fitzie on the cheek.
"You will write, won't you, dearie? I'll let you know the addresses."
"Of course, I will."
Nan walked fast down a cross street. What a relief to be alone.
Shouldn't have left Fitzie so abruptly, but couldn't stand her chatter a
moment longer. Silly to be so upset; what am I so upset about anyway? My
nerves are jumpy as the dickens this winter. In a cold fury of dismay
she walked home through the yellow twilight, her chin pressed into her
fur neckpiece as she leaned against the wind that blew razorkeen down
the long street that led to the Fenway and made her ears sting and her
forehead ache. Muffled by closed windows, shattered by the gusty wind,
there came to her from the houses on either hand wail and tinkle of
music students doing their scales on piano and violin, growls of cellos,
trilling of dramatic sopranos. Street of scales; they expect to climb
into life up their scales like up ladders. She remembered savagely she
hadn't practiced that day. And that Worthington girl, did she ever
practice, did she work and contrive to get on, or was everything as easy
to her as the bellboy's frightened blush under her smile? And this
husband she had picked up, what could he be like? A short loud man in a
checked suit probably, with a bulging red vest and a brown derby. I'm
glad I didn't see him, men like that are too disgusting.
She dug her chin into her fur and battled furiously with the wind. If
it'ld only snow it wouldn't be so cold. At length the letters spelling
out The Swansea were dark against the light ahead of her, she was in the
elevator, the key was clicking softly in the lock of her door. The
homelike smell was soothing to her nostrils. Thank heavens, I left the
heat on. Before taking off her hat and gloves she stood a moment in the
window, her hands over the steampipes. The sky, beyond the hardetched
tangle of branches of the Fenway and the purple cubes of the further
apartment houses, was a wide empty yellow, chilling to green overhead.
Nan felt its bitter emptiness like a rasp on a half-healed wound. With
wincing lips she pulled down the shade and turned her back on the
window.
That night she dreamed that she sat in the great yellowshot beehive of
the Boston theatre and that Fanshaw sat on one side of her and Wenny on
the other, both in evening dress, and she was a little girl in spotted
calico with her hair in pigtails and on the stage was the orchestra of
the Fadettes playing like mad and in front of them Mabel Worthington
with her mouth open and her head thrown back and a sheet of music
agitated in front of her and Nan kept turning to Wenny and to Fanshaw
and saying: I can't hear a word, not a single word. Suddenly Wenny had
slipped from her side and was in a taxi with his arms round the
Worthington girl, kissing her, kissing her, and Nan was in another taxi
driven by a young man with a red face and a diamond horseshoe in his tie
and they were hurtling through red-flaring streets under a black sky,
streets lined with faces staring and hands pointing and to all Nan's
crying to them to tell her where he had gone there was no answer but
hissing and stamping and catcalls.
Nan sat up in bed rubbing her forehead trying to remember what she had
been dreaming. The glow of the street-light in her window was full of
furtive padded movement. Snow.
* * * *
Nan closed the front door gently behind them.
"My, I'm glad to get in again," said Gertrude Fagan.
"Why, dear?"
"It's so horrible a night like this. I hate it all."
"What do you mean? But we'd better go up to my room. We'll wake Aunt M.
if we sit down here, and it's so hard to get her to sleep again."
"I don't suppose she's much better, is she?" whispered Gertrude Fagan as
they tiptoed up the heavily carpeted stairs. Nan winced when a board
creaked on the second flight.
"No," she was whispering over her shoulder, "though there doesn't seem
to be any danger of another stroke just at present. There doesn't seem
to be any cure for the aphasia, though Doctor Smythe talks wisely enough
about it ... Whew, it's hot in here."
Nan went to the window without turning on the light and pushed it up
hard. A heavy scent of lilacs came in off the Public Garden where the
occasional lights were misted with the green of young leaves. Beyond,
the electric signs of Boylston and Tremont Streets sent a great glare up
into the milky spring sky. An automobile whirred past. There were steps
on the pavements. She turned back into the room.
Gertrude Fagan sat on the bed with her hat on her knee. The reading lamp
she had just switched on threw her eyes into shadow.
"Look, Nancibel, at my shadow on the wall," she said harshly. "Wouldn't
think I had a hooked beak like that, would you?"
"How absurd, Gertrude! Look, this is the room I used to have when I was
a little girl ... I'll put you up next door."
"But, really, I ought to go home."
"No, you'll be perfectly comfortable here. You know you don't like going
home alone at night."
"Not a night like this," said Gertrude Fagan shuddering.
"But it's the finest night we've had this spring."
"I hate it; it makes me feel unclean, as if I hadn't washed all day. And
there's a sense of unclean things prowling about one ... It shatters my
nerves a night like this."
"I wonder if I don't feel that way too, really," Nan said in a low dead
voice. "Look, Gertrude, are you too tired to work the board again
tonight?"
"You mean you want to try again?"
Nan nodded.
"Of course I could keep it up for a little while," said Gertrude Fagan,
getting eagerly to her feet. "You're sure your aunt won't mind if I
spend the night? Seeing me appear mysteriously at the breakfast table
might surprise her."
"Poor Aunt M., she's gone beyond surprise, Gertrude; she probably won't
recognize you. It's almost as if she were dead."
"Horrible! She was such a brilliant person ... I always felt there was a
strange magnetism about her, something I couldn't explain, like about
you. Probably all your family had it ... What a nice room this is, the
antithesis of those horrible paths across the Common ... O, didn't you
feel it, Nancibel, in the theatre and shoving our way through the crowd
home, a horrible lack of spirituality in all the faces?"
"Rather that they have strange secrets I can never know." Nan was
leaning over the chiffonier, fumbling in a drawer. "Here's the ouija
board." She turned into the swath of light, holding out before her a
yellow varnished board with a semicircle of letters on it.
"He taught you to think that. His was an earthspirit. Now he is
purified."
"Please, Gertrude,... You never knew him," Nan snapped out. Her fingers
were taut about the edge of the ouija board.
"Why, I met him several times."
"I mean really knew him."
"Why are you angry at me, Nancibel?"
Without answering, Nan began taking the books off the small table where
the reading light stood. She drew up two chairs and put a small
three-legged wooden pointer on the board. Then she went to the window
again and looked down into the welter of broken lights and green-spun
shadows of the Public Garden. That night of premature spring the three
of them had walked into town under a sky of coppery flame and all the
streets had seemed to fall into a procession behind them and they had
seemed gay and strong enough to trample the whole world, was this all it
led to these choking lilacs that smelt of death? Or was it all mirage,
false? Behind her she could feel Gertrude Fagan moving restlessly about
the room. Nan half closed her eyes and breathed deep of the fetor of
blossoms and gasoline and lurking bodies; then came back to the table,
her face still and pale. Gertrude Fagan already sat at the table with
the tips of her fingers on the wooden pointer, her eyes black, fixed on
the black of the window.
"Think of him, Nancibel," she said in a shaky voice.
Nan put her fingers on the other end of the pointer and closed her eyes.
Above the pounding of her heart she could hear the slow rasp of the
other girl's breathing. So they waited.