One winter day while Vickers Price was "selling nails," as he still
expressed his business career, there came in his mail a queer little
scrawl, postmarked Pittsburg. It was from Delia Conry, and it ran:--
"We've been home a month. We live in a hotel. I don't like it. The bird you
gave me died. Mother says she'll get me a new one. I wish I could see you.
Love from Delia."
But not a word from Mrs. Conry! Fosdick, drifting through Rome on his way
to Turkestan, wrote:--
"... What has become of the Conry? She has disappeared from the cities of
Europe with her melodious songs and beautiful hair. Are you touring the
States with her? Or has she rediscovered Mr. Conry--for a period of
seclusion? ... To think of you serving hardware to the barbarians across
the counter enlivens my dull moments. From the Sargasso Sea to St.
Louis,--there is a leap for you, my dear."...
While he "served hardware to the barbarians" and in other respects
conformed to the life of a privileged young American gentleman, Vickers
Price dreamed of those Roman days, the happiest of his life. If that night
they two had taken life in their hands? ... Could the old Colonel have read
his son's heart,--if from the pinnacle of his years filled with ripe deeds
he could have comprehended youth,--he might have been less sure that the
hardware business was to be "the making of Vick"!
What had come to her? Had she accepted her lot, once back in the groove of
fate, or had she rebelled, striking out for her own vivid desire of joy and
song, of fame? Vickers would have liked to hear that she had rebelled, was
making her own life,--had taken the other road than the one he had accepted
for himself. His tender, idealizing heart could not hold a woman to the
sterner courses of conduct.
For, as Fosdick had told him in Rome, the young man was a Sentimentalist
with no exact vision of life. His heart was perpetually distorting whatever
his mind told him was fact. This woman, with her beauty, her love of music,
had touched him at the lyric moment of life, when reality was but the
unstable foundation for dream. Life as might be, glowing, colored, and
splendid,--life as it was within him, not as this hideous maelstrom all
about him reported. And why not the I, the I! cried the spirit of youth,
the egotistic spirit of the age. For all reply there was the bent, gray
head of the Colonel at his desk in the office beside him. "One sentiment
against another," Fosdick might say....
Finally Stacia Conry wrote, a little note: she was to be in St. Louis on
the fourteenth for a short time and hoped that he would call on her at the
hotel. A perfectly proper, colorless little note, written in an unformed
hand, with a word or two misspelled,--the kind of note that gave no
indication of the writer, but seemed like the voice of a stranger. However,
as Vickers reflected, literary skill, the power to write personal little
notes did not go necessarily with a talent for music--or for life. Nannie
Lawton wrote intimate notes, and other women, single and married, whom
Vickers had come to know these past months. But their cleverest phrases
could not stir his pulses as did this crude production.
The woman who was waiting for him in the little hotel parlor, however, gave
him a curious shock,--she was so different in her rich street costume from
the woman in black and white, whose picture had grown into his memory. She
seemed older, he thought, thus accounting for that strange idealizing power
of the mind to select from a face what that face has specially given it and
create an altogether new being, with its own lineaments graven in place of
actual bone and tissue. It takes time to correct this ideal misreport of
the soul, to accept the fact! Except for the one glance from the gray eyes
which she gave him as they shook hands, Stacia Conry did not stir the past.
But she was voluble of the present.
"You did not expect this! You see my husband had some work to attend to
near here, and I thought I would come with him.... No, we left Delia in
Pittsburg with his mother,--she wanted to see you, but she would be in the
way."
They came soon to her singing, and her face clouded.
"I haven't been able to get an opening. I wanted to sing the Cycle with an
orchestra. But I haven't succeeded,--our Pittsburg orchestra won't look at
any talent purely domestic. It is all pull over here. I haven't any
influence.... You must start with some backing,--sing in private houses for
great people! We don't know that kind, you see."
"And concerts?" Vickers inquired.
"The same way,--to get good engagements you must have something to show....
I've sung once or twice,--in little places, church affairs and that kind of
thing."
Vickers laughed as Mrs. Conry's expressive lips curled.
"They tell you to take everything to begin with. But singing for church
sociables in Frankfort and Alleghany,--that doesn't do much! I want to go
to New York,--I know people there, but--"
Vickers understood that Mr. Conry objected.
"It must come sometime," she said vehemently; "only waiting is killing. It
takes the life out of you, the power, don't you think?"
"Could you sing here?" Vickers asked,--"now, I mean? I might be able to
arrange it."
"Oh, if you could!" Mrs. Conry's face glowed, and her fingers played
nervously with her long chain. "If I could give the Cycle with your
accompaniment, here in St. Louis where you are so well known--"
Vickers smiled at the picture of his debut in St. Louis drawing-rooms.
"I will ask my sister to help," he said. "I should like her to call."
Mrs. Conry became suddenly animated, as if after a period of depressing
darkness she saw a large ray of sunshine. She had thought of possibilities
when she had persuaded her husband to take her to St. Louis, but had not
expected them to develop at once.
"You see," she continued quickly, "if I can get a hearing here, it means
that other people may want me,--I'll become known, a little."
"My mother couldn't have it," Vickers explained, "nor my sister, because of
our mourning. But Mrs. Lawton,--that would be better any way." He thought
of Nannie Lawton's love of _reclame_, and he knew that though she would
never have considered inviting the unheralded Mrs. Conry to sing in her
drawing-room, she would gladly have _him_ appear there with any one,
playing his own music.
"Yes, we'll put it through! The Songs of the Cities." He repeated the words
with sentimental visions of the hours of their composition.
"And then I have some more,--Spanish songs. They take, you know! And
folk-songs." Mrs. Conry talked on eagerly of her ambitions until Vickers
left, having arranged for Isabelle to call the next day. As he took his way
to the Lawtons' to use his influence with the volatile Nan in behalf of
Mrs. Conry, his memory of their talk was sad. 'America, that's it,' he
explained. 'She wants to do something for herself, to get her
independence.' And he resolved to leave no stone unturned, no influence
unused, to gratify her ambition.
So Isabelle called on Mrs. Conry in company with Nannie Lawton. Vickers
little knew what an ordeal the woman he loved was passing through in this
simple affair. A woman may present no difficulties to the most fastidiously
bred man, and yet be found wanting in a thousand particulars by the women
of his social class. As the two emerged from the hotel, Isabelle looked
dubiously at Mrs. Lawton.
"Queer, isn't she?" that frank lady remarked. "Oh, she's one of those stray
people you run across in Europe. Perhaps she can sing all right, though I
don't care. The men will be crazy after her,--she's the kind,--red hair and
soft skin and all that.... Better look out for that young brother of yours,
Isabelle. She is just the one to nab our innocent Vickie."
Isabelle's report of her call had some reserves.
"Of course she is very striking, Vick. But, you see,--she--she isn't
exactly our kind!"
"That is Nan," the young man retorted impatiently. "I never heard you say
that sort of thing before. What on earth is 'our kind'? She is beautiful
and has talent, a lot of it,--all she wants is her chance. And why
shouldn't she have it?"
Isabelle smiled at his heat, and replied caressingly:--
"She shall have all that Nan and I can do for her here. But don't be
foolish about her. I suspect you could be with a woman--because of your
dear old heart.... If she can't sing a note, she'll make a hit with her
looks, Nan says!"
So the musicale was arranged. There were mostly women in Mrs. Lawton's
smart little music room when Mrs. Conry rose to sing a series of
introductory songs. She was very striking, as Isabelle and Mrs. Lawton had
foreseen that she would be,--rather bizarrely dressed in a white and gold
costume that she had designed herself, with a girdle of old stones strung
loosely about her waist. She was nervous and sang uncertainly at first so
that Vickers had to favor her in his accompaniment. He could see the
trembling of her white arm beside him. The Cycle of the Cities came near
the end of the programme, and when Vickers took his seat to play the
accompaniments, he was aware that a number of men had arrived and were
standing in the hall, peering through the doors at the performance. He knew
well enough what the men were thinking of him, sitting there playing his
own songs,--that it was a queer, monkey performance for the son of Colonel
Price! The fine arts are duly recognized in American cities; but the
commercial class, as always has been its wont, places them in a category
between millinery and theology.
She had chosen _Paris_ to open with, and gave the song with assurance,
eliciting especially from the men in the hall the first real applause. Then
followed _Vienna, Munich_. She was singing well, gaining confidence. When
it came to _Venice_,--Vickers remembered as he followed her swimming voice
the twilight over the Campagna, the approaching mass of Rome,--even the
women woke to something like enthusiasm. As she uttered the first note of
_Rome_, she glanced down at Vickers, with a little smile, which said:--
"Do you remember? This is _ours_,--I am singing this for you!"
Her face was flushed and happy. She sang the difficult music as she had
sung that last night in Rome, and Vickers, listening to the full voice so
close to him, heard again the high sad note of the street singer, in the
golden spring day, uttering this ancient melody of tears,--only this time
it was woven with laughter and joy. When she finished, he sought her eyes;
but Mrs. Conry was sweeping the gathering with a restless glance, thinking
of her encore....
Afterwards the women said agreeable things about Vickers's music,
especially the _Paris_ and the _Venice_. About Mrs. Conry they said that
her voice was good, "somewhat uncultivated," "too loud for drawing-room
music,"--safe criticisms. The men said little about the music, but they
clustered around the singer. Mrs. Lawton looked significantly at Isabelle
and winked. One old gentleman, something of a beau as well as a successful
lawyer, congratulated Vickers on his "tuneful" music. "It must be a
pleasant avocation to write songs," he said....
They dined at the Lawtons', and afterwards Vickers took Mrs. Conry to the
hotel. She was gay with the success she had had, the impression she had
made on the men.
"Something'll come of this, I am sure. Do you think they liked me?"
"You sang well," Vickers replied evasively, "better than well, the _Rome_."
In the lobby of the hotel she turned as though to dismiss him, but Vickers,
who was talking of a change to be made in one of the songs, accompanied her
to the parlor above, where they had practised the music in preparation for
the concert. Mrs. Conry glanced quickly into the room as they entered, as
if expecting to find some one there. Vickers was saying:--
"I think we shall have to add another one to the Cycle,--_New York_ or
something to stand for--well, what it is over here,--just living!"
The door of the inner room opened and a man appeared, coatless, with a
much-flowered waistcoat.
"So you're back," the man remarked in a heavy voice.
"My husband," Mrs. Conry explained, "Mr. Vickers Price!"
Mr. Conry shuffled heavily into the room. He was a large man with a big
grizzled head and very red face, finely chased with purple veins. He gave
Vickers a stubby hand.
"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Price. Heard about you from Delia. Sit down."
Conry himself stood, swaying slightly on his stout legs. After a time he
chose a seat with great deliberation and continued to stare at the young
man. "Have a cigar?" He took one from his waistcoat pocket and held it
towards the young man. "It's a good one,--none of your barroom smokes,--oh,
I see you are one of those cigarette fiends, same as Stacia!"
There was a conversational hiatus, and Vickers was thinking of going.
"Well, how was the show?" Conry demanded of his wife. "Did you sing
good,--make a hit with the swells? She thinks she wants to sing," he
explained with a wink to Vickers, "but I tell her she's after
sassiety,--that's what the women want; ain't it so?"
"Mrs. Conry sang very well indeed," Vickers remarked in default of better,
and rose to leave.
"Don't go,--what's your hurry? Have something to drink? I got some in there
you don't see every day in the week, young man. A racing friend of mine
from Kentuck sends it to me. What's yours, Stacy?" ...
When the young man departed, Stacia Conry stared at the door through which
he had disappeared, with a dead expression that had something disagreeable
in it. Conry, who had had his drink, came back to the parlor and began to
talk.
"I went to a show myself to-night, seeing you were amusing yourself....
There was a girl there who danced and sang,--you'd oughter seen her....
Well, what are you sittin' staring at? Ain't you coming to bed?"
His wife rose from her seat, exclaiming harshly, "Let me alone!" And Conry,
with a half-sober scrutiny of the woman, who had flung herself face down on
the lounge, mumbled:--
"Singing don't seem to agree with you. Well, I kept my word; gave you the
money to educate yourself." ...
"And I have paid you!" the wife flashed. "God, I have paid!"
The man stumbled off to bed.
* * * * *
Vickers, on leaving the hotel, walked home in the chill night, a sickening
sensation in his heart. If he had been a shrewd young man, he might have
foreseen the somewhat boozy Mr. Conry, the vulgar setting of the woman he
loved. If there had been the least thing base in him, he might have
welcomed it, for his own uses. But being a sentimentalist and simple in
nature, the few moments of intercourse with Mr. Conry had come like a
revelation to him. This was what she had sold herself to for her education.
This was what she was tied to! And this what she sought to escape from by
her music, to place herself and her child beyond the touch of that man!
Vickers in his disgust overlooked the fact that little Delia seemed to love
her father, and that though Conry might not be to his taste, he might also
be a perfectly worthy citizen, given occasionally to liquor. But love and
youth and the idealizing temperament make few allowances. To give her that
freedom which her beauty and her nature craved, he would do what he could,
and he searched his memory for names and persons of influence in the
professional world of music. He had the fragments of a score for an opera
that he had scarce looked at since he had begun "to sell nails"; but
to-night he took it from the drawer and ran it over,--"Love Among the
Ruins,"--and as he went to sleep he saw Stacia Conry singing as she had
sung that last night in Rome, singing the music of his opera, success and
fame at her feet....
The something that Mrs. Conry hoped for did come from that introduction at
the Lawtons'. The wife of one of those men she had charmed called on her
and invited her to sing "those pleasant little songs Mr. Price wrote for
you" (with Mr. Price's appearance, of course!). And several women, who were
anxious to be counted as of the Lawton set, hastened to engage Mrs. Conry
to sing at their houses, with the same condition. Vickers understood the
meaning of this condition and disliked the position, but consented in his
desire to give Mrs. Conry every chance in his power. Others understood the
situation, and disliked it,--among them Isabelle. Nannie Lawton threw at
her across a dinner-table the remark: "When is Vick going to offer his
'Love Among the Ruins'? Mrs. Conry is the 'ruins,' I suppose!"
And the musicales, in spite of all that Vickers could do, were only
moderately successful. In any community, the people who hunt the latest
novelty are limited in number, and that spring there arrived a Swedish
portrait painter and an Antarctic traveller to push the beautiful singer
from the centre of attention. So after the first weeks the engagements
became farther spaced and less desirable, less influential. Mrs. Conry
still stayed at the hotel, though her husband had been called to another
city on a contract he had undertaken. She realized that her debut had not
been brilliant, but she clung to the opportunity, in the hope that
something would come of it. And naturally enough Vickers saw a good deal of
her; not merely the days they appeared together, but almost every day he
found an excuse for dropping in at the hotel, to play over some music, to
take her to ride in his new motor, which he ran himself, or to dine with
her. Mrs. Conry was lonely. After Isabelle went to California for her
health, she saw almost no one. The women she met at her engagements found
her "not our kind," and Nan Lawton's witticism about "the ruins" and
Vickers did not help matters. Vickers saw the situation and resented it.
This loneliness and disappointment were bad for her. She worked at her
music in a desultory fashion, dawdled over novels, and smoked too many
cigarettes for the good of her voice. She seemed listless and discouraged.
Vickers redoubled his efforts to have her sing before a celebrated manager,
who was coming presently to the city with an opera company.
'She sees no way, no escape,' he said to himself. 'One ray of hope, and she
would wake to what she was in Europe!'
In his blind, sentimental devotion, he blamed the accidents of life for her
disappointment, not the woman herself. When he came, she awoke, and it was
an unconscious joy to him, this power he had to rouse her from her apathy,
to make her become for the time the woman he always saw just beneath the
surface, eager to emerge if life would but grant her the chance.
His own situation had changed with the growing year. The Colonel, closely
watching "the boy," was coming gradually to comprehend the sacrifice that
he had accepted, all the more as Vickers never murmured but kept steadily
at his work. Before Isabelle left for California, she spoke plainly to her
father:--
"What's the use, Colonel! No matter how he tries, Vick can never be like
you,--and why should he be any way?"
"It won't have done any harm," the old man replied dubiously. "We'll see!"
First he made his son independent of salary or allowance by giving him a
small fortune in stocks and bonds. Then one day, while Mrs. Conry was still
in the city, he suggested that Vickers might expect a considerable vacation
in the summer. "You can go to Europe and write something," he remarked, in
his simple faith that art could be laid down or resumed at will. Vickers
smiled, but did not grasp the opportunity eagerly. When he told Mrs. Conry
that afternoon of the proposed "vacation," she exclaimed enviously:--
"I knew you would go back!"
"I am not sure that I shall go."
She said perfunctorily: "Of course you must go--will you go back to Rome? I
shall be so glad to think you are doing what you want to do."
He turned the matter off with a laugh:--
"The dear old boy thinks two months out of a year is long enough to give to
composing an opera. It's like fishing,--a few weeks now and then if you can
afford it!"
"But you wouldn't have to stay here at all, if you made up your mind not
to," she remarked with a touch of hardness. "They'll give you what you
want."
"I am not sure that I want it," he replied slowly, "at the price."
She looked at him uncomprehendingly, then perceiving another meaning in his
words, lowered her eyes. She was thinking swiftly, 'If we could both go!'
But he was reflecting rather bitterly on that new wealth which his father
had given him, the dollars piling up to his credit, not one of which he
might use as he most dearly desired to use them--for her! With all this
power within his easy reach he could not stretch forth his hand to save a
human soul. For thus he conceived the woman's need.
It came to Mrs. Conry's last engagement,--the last possible excuse for her
lingering in the city. It was a suburban affair, and the place was
difficult to reach. Vickers had invited the Falkners to go with them, to
prevent gossip, and Bessie willingly accepted as a spree, though she had
confided to Isabelle that "Mrs. Conry was dreadful ordinary," "not half
good enough for our adorable Vickers to _afficher_ himself with."
Nevertheless, she was very sweet to the beautiful Mrs. Conry, as was
Bessie's wont to be with pretty nearly all the world. It was late on their
return, and the Falkners left them at the station. With the sense that
to-night they must part, they walked slowly towards the hotel, then stopped
at a little German restaurant for supper. They looked at each other across
the marble-top table without speaking. The evening had been a depressing
conclusion to the concert season they had had together. And that morning
Vickers had found it impossible to arrange a meeting for Mrs. Conry with
the director of a famous orchestra, who happened to be in the city.
"You must go to-morrow?" Vickers asked at last. "I may get a reply from
Moller any day."
Mrs. Conry looked at him out of her gray eyes, as if she were thinking many
things that a woman might think but could not say, before she replied
slowly:--
"My husband's coming back to-morrow--to get me." As Vickers said nothing,
she continued, slowly shaking the yellow wine in her glass until it
circled,--"And it's no use--I'm not good enough for Moller--and you know
it. I must have more training, more experience."
Vickers did know it, but had not let himself believe it.
"My little struggle does not matter,--I'm only a woman--and must do as most
women do.... Perhaps, who knows! the combination may change some day,
and--" she glanced fearlessly at him--"we shall all do as we want in
another world!"
Then she looked at her watch. It was very late, and the tired waiters stood
leaning listlessly against their tables.
"I am tired," she said at last. "Will you call a cab, please?"
They drove silently down the empty boulevard. A mist came through the cab
window, touching her hair with fine points. Her hand lay close to his.
"How happy we were in Rome! Rome!" she looked out into the dark night, and
there were tears in her eyes. "You have been very good to me, dear friend.
Sometime I shall sing to you again, to you alone. Now good-by." ...
His hand held hers, while his heart beat and words rose clamorously to his
lips,--the words of rebellion, of protest and love, the words of youth. But
he said nothing,--it was better that they should part without a spoken
word,--better for her and better for him. His feeling for her, compact of
tenderness, pity, and belief, had never been tested by any clear light. She
was not his; and beyond that fact he had never looked.
So the carriage rolled on while the two sat silent with beating hearts, and
as it approached the hotel he quickly bent his head and kissed the hand
that was in his.
"Come to-morrow," she whispered, "in the morning,--once more."
"No," he said simply; "I can't. You know why."
As Vickers stepped out of the cab he recognized Conry. The contractor had
been looking up and down the street, and had started to walk away, but
turned at the sound of the carriage wheels and came over towards them.
Something in his appearance, the slouch hat pulled forward over his face,
the quick jerky step, suggested that he had been drinking. Vickers with a
sensation of disgust foresaw a scene there on the pavement, and he could
feel the shrinking of the woman by his side.
"Good evening, Mr. Conry," Vickers said coolly, turning to give Mrs. Conry
his hand. A glance into Conry's eyes had convinced him that the man was in
a drunken temper, and his one thought was to save her from a public brawl.
Already a couple of people sauntering past had paused to look at them.
Conry grasped the young man by the arm and flung him to one side, and
thrusting his other hand into the cab jerked his wife out of it.
"Come here!" he roared. "I'll show you--you--"
Mrs. Conry, trembling and white, tried to free her arm and cross the
pavement. The driver, arranging himself on the seat, looked down at
Vickers, winked, and waited. Conry still dragged his wife by the arm, and
as she tried to free herself he raised his other hand and slapped her
across the face as he would cuff a struggling dog, then struck her again.
She groaned and half sank to the pavement. The curious bystanders said
nothing, made no move to interfere. Here was a domestic difference, about a
woman apparently; and the husband was exerting his ancient, impregnable
rights of domination over the woman, who was his....
All these months Vickers had never even in imagination crossed the barrier
of Fact. Now without a moment's wavering he raised his hand and struck
Conry full in the face, and as the man staggered from the unexpected blow
he struck him again, knocking him to the ground. Then, swiftly
disentangling the woman's hand from her husband's grasp, he motioned to the
cab driver to pull up at the curb and carried her into the cab. When
Vickers closed the door, the driver without further orders whipped up his
horse and drove into a side street, leaving the group on the pavement
staring at them and at Conry, who was staggering to his feet....
Within the cab Mrs. Conry moaned inarticulately. Vickers held her in his
arms, and slowly bending his head to hers he kissed her upon the lips. Her
lips were cold, but after a time to the touch of his lips hers responded
with a trembling, yielding kiss.
Thus they drove on, without words, away from the city.