That afternoon Eden Bower was lying on the couch in her music room, her
face turned to the window, watching the pigeons. Reclining thus she could
see none of the neighbouring roofs, only the sky itself and the birds
that crossed and recrossed her field of vision, white as scraps of paper
blowing in the wind. She was thinking that she was young and handsome and
had had a good lunch, that a very easy-going, light-hearted city lay in
the streets below her; and she was wondering why she found this queer
painter chap, with his lean, bluish cheeks and heavy black eyebrows, more
interesting than the smart young men she met at her teacher's studio.
Eden Bower was, at twenty, very much the same person that we all know her
to be at forty, except that she knew a great deal less. But one thing she
knew: that she was to be Eden Bower. She was like some one standing
before a great show window full of beautiful and costly things, deciding
which she will order. She understands that they will not all be delivered
immediately, but one by one they will arrive at her door. She already
knew some of the many things that were to happen to her; for instance,
that the Chicago millionaire who was going to take her abroad with his
sister as chaperone, would eventually press his claim in quite another
manner. He was the most circumspect of bachelors, afraid of everything
obvious, even of women who were too flagrantly handsome. He was a nervous
collector of pictures and furniture, a nervous patron of music, and a
nervous host; very cautious about his health, and about any course of
conduct that might make him ridiculous. But she knew that he would at
last throw all his precautions to the winds.
People like Eden Bower are inexplicable. Her father sold farming
machinery in Huntington, Illinois, and she had grown up with no
acquaintances or experiences outside of that prairie town. Yet from her
earliest childhood she had not one conviction or opinion in common with
the people about her,--the only people she knew. Before she was out of
short dresses she had made up her mind that she was going to be an
actress, that she would live far away in great cities, that she would be
much admired by men and would have everything she wanted. When she was
thirteen, and was already singing and reciting for church entertainments,
she read in some illustrated magazine a long article about the late Czar
of Russia, then just come to the throne or about to come to it. After
that, lying in the hammock on the front porch on summer evenings, or
sitting through a long sermon in the family pew, she amused herself by
trying to make up her mind whether she would or would not be the Czar's
mistress when she played in his Capital. Now Edna had met this
fascinating word only in the novels of Ouida,--her hard-worked little
mother kept a long row of them in the upstairs storeroom, behind the
linen chest. In Huntington, women who bore that relation to men were
called by a very different name, and their lot was not an enviable one;
of all the shabby and poor, they were the shabbiest. But then, Edna had
never lived in Huntington, not even before she began to find books like
"Sapho" and "Mademoiselle de Maupin," secretly sold in paper covers
throughout Illinois. It was as if she had come into Huntington, into the
Bowers family, on one of the trains that puffed over the marshes behind
their back fence all day long, and was waiting for another train to take
her out.
As she grew older and handsomer, she had many beaux, but these small-town
boys didn't interest her. If a lad kissed her when he brought her home
from a dance, she was indulgent and she rather liked it. But if he
pressed her further, she slipped away from him, laughing. After she began
to sing in Chicago, she was consistently discreet. She stayed as a guest
in rich people's houses, and she knew that she was being watched like a
rabbit in a laboratory. Covered up in bed, with the lights out, she
thought her own thoughts, and laughed.
This summer in New York was her first taste of freedom. The Chicago
capitalist, after all his arrangements were made for sailing, had been
compelled to go to Mexico to look after oil interests. His sister knew
an excellent singing master in New York. Why should not a discreet,
well-balanced girl like Miss Bower spend the summer there, studying
quietly? The capitalist suggested that his sister might enjoy a summer on
Long Island; he would rent the Griffith's place for her, with all the
servants, and Eden could stay there. But his sister met this proposal
with a cold stare. So it fell out, that between selfishness and greed,
Eden got a summer all her own,--which really did a great deal toward
making her an artist and whatever else she was afterward to become. She
had time to look about, to watch without being watched; to select
diamonds in one window and furs in another, to select shoulders and
moustaches in the big hotels where she went to lunch. She had the easy
freedom of obscurity and the consciousness of power. She enjoyed both.
She was in no hurry.
While Eden Bower watched the pigeons, Don Hedger sat on the other side of
the bolted doors, looking into a pool of dark turpentine, at his idle
brushes, wondering why a woman could do this to him. He, too, was sure of
his future and knew that he was a chosen man. He could not know, of
course, that he was merely the first to fall under a fascination which
was to be disastrous to a few men and pleasantly stimulating to many
thousands. Each of these two young people sensed the future, but not
completely. Don Hedger knew that nothing much would ever happen to him.
Eden Bower understood that to her a great deal would happen. But she did
not guess that her neighbour would have more tempestuous adventures
sitting in his dark studio than she would find in all the capitals of
Europe, or in all the latitude of conduct she was prepared to permit
herself.
V
One Sunday morning Eden was crossing the Square with a spruce young man
in a white flannel suit and a panama hat. They had been breakfasting at
the Brevoort and he was coaxing her to let him come up to her rooms and
sing for an hour.
"No, I've got to write letters. You must run along now. I see a friend of
mine over there, and I want to ask him about something before I go up."
"That fellow with the dog? Where did you pick him up?" the young man
glanced toward the seat under a sycamore where Hedger was reading the
morning paper.
"Oh, he's an old friend from the West," said Eden easily. "I won't
introduce you, because he doesn't like people. He's a recluse. Good-bye.
I can't be sure about Tuesday. I'll go with you if I have time after my
lesson." She nodded, left him, and went over to the seat littered with
newspapers. The young man went up the Avenue without looking back.
"Well, what are you going to do today? Shampoo this animal all morning?"
Eden enquired teasingly.
Hedger made room for her on the seat. "No, at twelve o'clock I'm going
out to Coney Island. One of my models is going up in a balloon this
afternoon. I've often promised to go and see her, and now I'm going."
Eden asked if models usually did such stunts. No, Hedger told her, but
Molly Welch added to her earnings in that way. "I believe," he added,
"she likes the excitement of it. She's got a good deal of spirit. That's
why I like to paint her. So many models have flaccid bodies."
"And she hasn't, eh? Is she the one who comes to see you? I can't help
hearing her, she talks so loud."
"Yes, she has a rough voice, but she's a fine girl. I don't suppose you'd
be interested in going?"
"I don't know," Eden sat tracing patterns on the asphalt with the end of
her parasol. "Is it any fun? I got up feeling I'd like to do something
different today. It's the first Sunday I've not had to sing in church. I
had that engagement for breakfast at the Brevoort, but it wasn't very
exciting. That chap can't talk about anything but himself."
Hedger warmed a little. "If you've never been to Coney Island, you ought
to go. It's nice to see all the people; tailors and bar-tenders and
prize-fighters with their best girls, and all sorts of folks taking a
holiday."
Eden looked sidewise at him. So one ought to be interested in people of
that kind, ought one? He was certainly a funny fellow. Yet he was never,
somehow, tiresome. She had seen a good deal of him lately, but she kept
wanting to know him better, to find out what made him different from men
like the one she had just left--whether he really was as different as he
seemed. "I'll go with you," she said at last, "if you'll leave that at
home." She pointed to Caesar's flickering ears with her sunshade.
"But he's half the fun. You'd like to hear him bark at the waves when
they come in."
"No, I wouldn't. He's jealous and disagreeable if he sees you talking to
any one else. Look at him now."
"Of course, if you make a face at him. He knows what that means, and he
makes a worse face. He likes Molly Welch, and she'll be disappointed if I
don't bring him."
Eden said decidedly that he couldn't take both of them. So at twelve
o'clock when she and Hedger got on the boat at Desbrosses street, Caesar
was lying on his pallet, with a bone.
Eden enjoyed the boat-ride. It was the first time she had been on the
water, and she felt as if she were embarking for France. The light warm
breeze and the plunge of the waves made her very wide awake, and she
liked crowds of any kind. They went to the balcony of a big, noisy
restaurant and had a shore dinner, with tall steins of beer. Hedger had
got a big advance from his advertising firm since he first lunched with
Miss Bower ten days ago, and he was ready for anything.
After dinner they went to the tent behind the bathing beach, where the
tops of two balloons bulged out over the canvas. A red-faced man in a
linen suit stood in front of the tent, shouting in a hoarse voice and
telling the people that if the crowd was good for five dollars more, a
beautiful young woman would risk her life for their entertainment. Four
little boys in dirty red uniforms ran about taking contributions in their
pillbox hats. One of the balloons was bobbing up and down in its tether
and people were shoving forward to get nearer the tent.
"Is it dangerous, as he pretends?" Eden asked.
"Molly says it's simple enough if nothing goes wrong with the balloon.
Then it would be all over, I suppose."
"Wouldn't you like to go up with her?"
"I? Of course not. I'm not fond of taking foolish risks."