The following months of her life always seemed to Lilly to have hung
suspended without any forward march to them, and entirely surrounded
with a colorless fluid which distorted reality, as a hand seen through a
fish bowl of water is distorted. There descended upon her whole rows of
days that were swollen with inertia. Her little window looked out upon
an ocean of roofs, and across her distant horizon was a strident picture
in electricity of an old woman in a Dutch cap beating a tub of
proclaimed soap flakes into an incandescent froth.
She would sit with her cheek crumpled against her hand, looking out over
this, her mind hardly stirring. There still lay three one-hundred-dollar
bills, crisply warm, against her bosom, and during the long arid spell
that followed her first stroke of good fortune they were to her like a
sedative touch, pressing down a more and more frequently recurring
rise of fear.
Two or three mornings a week she ventured in among the agencies,
occasionally an address handed out to her which she followed up,
always vainly.
There was something gone from Lilly, these months, as if a line of
resiliency within her had snapped like a rubber band. It showed most in
her slowed step and her head not quite so flung up.
One Saturday night she did earn twenty dollars, singing, a
red-white-and-blue paper cap on her head, the "Star-spangled Banner" and
the "Marsellaise" on the up-and-down-stream excursion of the Annual
Convention of Commercial Photographers.
During their clambake and dance at Grody's Grove, just beyond Coney
Island, she remained on the boat, lying back in a deck chair, facing a
night brilliantly pointed with stars. The machinery of her mind might
have ceased with the chugging of the boat. She lay the five hours of her
wait, floating in a state of the complete disembodiment of which she was
peculiarly capable.
At one o'clock the convention, highly inflamed, came trooping back on
board, the boat nosing downstream, brilliant and terrible with orgy.
Twice she was grasped by revelers who were little more than bashing
bulls, and before she could fight them off, her face and neck, through
the sheerness of her blouse, were covered with hot, wet, and beery
kisses. The third time she fought off with her hatpin, inflicting a deep
red scratch across a too loose jowl. She took refuge, finally, finding
out by desperate instinct the only other woman on board. A cook down in
the reeking kitchen of the one-screw steamer, who had grown old so
horribly that her only remaining tooth was a tusk that hung deeply
beneath her lower lip. But she found out a bench rug for Lilly, so that
the trip home she lay there in the stench of strong foods and hot
machinery, stupefied with misery.
And yet, withal, a certain exultation had hold of her these strangely
unreal weeks, her terror of the life about to be subdued somewhere
underneath her consciousness, and each to-morrow reassuringly remote.
The long unfettered days. Her own latchkey to come and go at will. The
lay of those three crisp bills against her heart. Her little economies,
however, grew against a day which she hardly contemplated and for which
she certainly did not plan. Very often she ate in her own room, a
sandwich and a bottle of milk from a corner delicatessen. She had
already learned those small private economies of the petty and penny
wise. The mirror-pasted handkerchief. The gas-jet-brewed egg. The
hand-fluted ruching. Once, in her absence, Mrs. Neugass had pressed out
her dark-brown-cloth coat suit, wrinkled from weeks in her suitcase, and
which she had left hanging before the open window.
The print of these kindly people was like an indelible rubber stamp into
the premises. Mr. Neugass had already presented her with a jar of Millie
face cream and a preparation for cleaning kid gloves. Sundays she was
invariably importuned to dine with the family, and of occasional
evenings, Alma Neugass, angular and full of the knobs of protruding
neckbones, elbows, and shoulder blades, and with little sacs under her
eyes as if she had wept down into them that life could be so tasteless,
would knock at her door, and for an hour or two, and sometimes up to
midnight, sit on the edge of Lilly's bed, the drone of their
conversation surviving repeated rappings from the parental bedroom,
adjoining.
There was something about Alma of an old glove just about ready to
breathe out and flatten from the print of a recent hand. Fifteen years
of debit and credit and days which swung with pendulum fidelity within
the arc of routine had creased and dried her of sap.
The whiteness of Lilly and the swift, shining, backward rush of her hair
were a source of wistful and vicarious delight to her. "Whoever named
you Lilly was right," she said upon one of these midnight confabs so
immemoriably dear to women, when hairpins can be removed and the dig of
skirt bands unhooked. "You're so snowy, and soft, too; you feel like a
kitten's ear. And that shining head of yours!"
"But all my life I've wanted to be blond. Sun people I call them."
"Millie is a blonde," said Miss Neugass, glancing toward one of the
photographs that graced even Lilly's wall. "There's a girl was born
in the sun!"
"You've been part of her sun, Miss Neugass. Your parents have told me
how for eight years half of your earnings went toward her education."
"Life is a beehive, Miss Parlow," said Alma, her rather grandiloquent
and apiarian simile highly inaccurate, "some of us are the drones, some
the workers, and some the queens. Millie happened to be a queen."
"How can you say that? Happened! What if Napoleon had never left
Corsica, or Lincoln the backwoods, or Jeanne d'Arc her village, just
because they decided environment had placed them there."
"Quite right, but it is their being queens, drones, or workers
determines their action."
"Well, whether or not I was born for it, I aspire to be a queen."
"Fine. Only be sure your arm is long enough to reach what you want."
"But how can I tell if I don't stretch and stretch?"
"You can't. Most of us never know when we've used up the last inch of
reach, and keep on straining to touch what God or circumstance, or call
it what you will, has placed beyond us."
"Yes, but it is not knowing makes us capable of hoping and striving."
"To me that is one of the tragedies of living. The hearts that pass by
the jobs they are fitted for, to eat themselves out struggling to do
what they think they're fitted for."
"You're a fatalist."
"Not at all. The way to know the reach of your arm is to sprain it. I
sprained mine, and it wasn't until the ligaments began to pull that I
had the courage to face the fact that I was made out of bookkeeper
instead of concert-pianist stuff."
"You, Miss Neugass, a pianist!"
"Sounds queer to you, doesn't it?"
"What--interfered?"
"My own realization. One night before he moved from the neighborhood
Doctor Feldman sent pa a pair of seats for De Pachman. I was seventeen
then, and Millie seven. Ma stayed in the store and pa and I went. I
remember as if it were yesterday. The concert was at Beethoven Hall and
it snowed so that when we arrived I made pa slip off his shoes under the
chair, for his socks to dry. I had been studying for eight years then
and my teacher was arranging a recital. Strangest thing, but De Pachman
played every single thing of Chopin's that I had on my own little
repertoire, only under his touch it was real lace played into perfect
design. I think pa must have lived through everything with me that
night. He's got the finest musical instinct in the family, Millie
included. We didn't say a word all the way home, but next day when I
told him that I was going to business college on the money we were going
to put into the recital, he didn't say a word, either. Just patted my
hand. He knew! It wasn't so much a matter of technique, only when I
played Nocturne in D flat a hammer inside the piano case hit a wire;
when De Pachman touched those same keys a nerve kissed a heartbeat."
"Alma--Neugass! You poor--you splendid girl!"
Curled up there on the narrow bed, her bony profile against the wall and
her knees hugged up to her after the manner of the excessively thin, a
smile had come out on Miss Neugass's face as if the taste of
renunciation were anything but bitter.
"I don't know what kind of a pianist I might have made, but I do know
I've made a good bookkeeper and that a little talent took a chance on
stepping aside for a bigger."
"You mean your sister?"
"There's a talent for you! Millie has a voice like one of those
revolving barber poles, as round at the bottom as it is at the top, and
it goes up and up seemingly without end. There never was any doubt
about Millie."
"Oh, Miss Neugass, you frighten me! What if my arm is too short? Your
sister's teacher, Ballman, to whom your mother sent me, says so little."
"Ballman is a great voice builder, but he doesn't concern himself with
the future of his pupils. He's a dear old fogy with a single-track
mind."
"What did he used to say of your sister?"
"Nothing much except that he used to call her his wonder-child and shut
up like a clam when we tried to discuss her future with him. What you
need now, if you're ever really going to get anywhere, is an audition."
"Audition?"
"One of the big opera directors to hear you. It's not easy to arrange at
the Metropolitan. Ballman has no pull. It takes a man like Auchinloss or
Trieste or one of the big guns."
"If only I could get started, Miss Neugass, on the right track!"
"I'll tell you what I'll do. When Auchinloss comes this winter I'll have
him hear you. That may pave the way to something. He's the prince of
them all. His judgment never fails. He's only stamped his approval on
five or six, but he's never missed. They say he heard Paula Anchutz
singing her baby to sleep one night as he happened to pass her cottage,
and he rang her door bell."
"Auchinloss discovered Paula Anchutz!"
"He decided her greatness after a few bars. Some day I'll read you
Millie's letter home about her audition in Vienna. After about six bars
of the 'Jewel Song' he leaped up over the footlights, screamed at her,
kissed her, drew up a chair, and began to plan out the entire campaign
of her future, so rapidly that the poor child said everything was
swinging in circles before her."
Her eyes two flaming orbits, Lilly sat staring, her lips slightly open.
"And that was the beginning."
"Yes, that was the beginning of--everything," said Miss Neugass, with a
twist on her lips.
"Oh, I--Even to hear it thrills me so that I--Thrills me so! But what,
Miss Neugass--what if he hadn't--"
"That is where you must make up your mind to take your medicine. There's
an article about him in this month's _Musical Gazette_. If he thinks
you've the stuff great singers are made of, it's a repetition of his
scene with Millie every time. But this article goes on to say, if he
rubs his hands together and says, 'Very nice,' and walks off, that means
he thinks you will probably make a better bookkeeper or baby dandler
than you will a prima donna. Millie used to write that around the opera
house in Vienna, when Auchinloss started rubbing his hands together
after an audition, everybody used to have the smelling salts ready."
"Miss Neugass--you've heard me practice. Tell me the truth! Do you think
my ambition is bigger than my voice? Tell me as you would your sister."
The veil of a pause hung between them, Miss Neugass unfolding her legs
and letting them hang over the side of the bed, as if she would flee
the moment.
"Why, I'm no critic, Miss Parlow. All I inherit is some of my father's
natural musical instinct."
"You're evading me, like Ballman does! Tell me! You may save me as you
saved yourself. Am I chasing a phantom?"
"I swear to you I don't know. I like your voice. I think it has a
beautiful rich quality. I agree with Ballman, it has fine timbre."
"Timbre--I'm tired hearing that--"
"That counts in voice almost as much as range."
"No, no, don't evade. You think it lacks range?"
"I don't know. It lacks something--as if--well, if you'll pardon my
saying it, as if it didn't reach as far as your temperament could
fling it."
"That's it exactly! I feel that about myself in everything--almost as
if--as if it would take another generation of me to complete me--if--if
you get what I mean."
"There is something in that."
"I know what you think in your heart. I'm a vaudeville product with a
grand-opera aspiration."
"I'm not capable of judging."
"You judged your sister."
"Ah, but Millie's voice there was no mistaking. Her talent needed
hardly to be developed. It opened naturally, like a rose. Nine voices
out of ten have to be drilled for like precious ore. Just you study on.
I'll have Auchinloss hear you when he comes over."
"You're sure, Miss Neugass, they're coming?"
"That's what the papers keep saying. She's to sing three operas in
January, with Auchinloss conducting. We're expecting daily to hear from
my sister, verifying it."
"You don't know--exactly?"
"No."
"If only--You don't think it will be this side of January? You see,
after January my--my plans may be uncertain."
"I understand. He's to conduct his own symphony in December, to be
played the first time in this country, somewhere around Christmas in
Boston, I think."
"Will you be wanting this room then?"
Miss Neugass swung her face with its considerable dip of nose toward
Lilly.
"You don't think this place will hold Millie any more? You don't think,
for instance, the great Du Gass could receive the reporters--here!"
"But, after all, it's her home."
A levelness of expression came down over the face of Miss Neugass, as if
a shade had been lowered across it, her voice, too, leveled of any
inflection.
"Of course," she said, "you know about my sister and--Auchinloss."
"You mean--"
"Oh, I realize everybody knows--that is, everybody except my parents."
"I didn't--"
"That's because you don't belong yet! Wait until you've worked your way
in a bit. I've known it long enough. Two years."
"Then she--you--"
"She was a baby when she left, Miss Parlow. Even if there had been the
money to send me along with her, we wouldn't have felt the need of it. I
could have staked my life on that child. Not that I'm blaming her, only
I--God! I could have staked my life."
"He's--"
"Already married. She wrote me the whole story two years ago. It's an
old one. So old it's got barnacles. I sometimes wonder it came to me
with the terrible shock it did. She was so young--too young to get ahead
so quickly even with her gifts. He has a son almost her age. He's forty
and she's twenty. The wife in an insane asylum somewhere outside of
Paris. Our Millie! I don't think I even realize it yet. Beauty and the
Beast they call them in Milan."
"Horrible!"
"That baby. The whole world before her. It was all with her or nothing,
she wrote, and she chose all. She sang six leading roles that first
year. It made her. I--I don't blame her, somehow--that baby. It's him I
hate. Sometimes I wonder how I'm going to hold back, when I lay hands on
him, from--killing. But I won't. I'll grin and bear it just as if her
beautiful little white self were no more to me than an alabaster vase
after it's cracked."
"And your parents?"
"That's all she writes of, now that she thinks she is coming, to keep it
from them! I wake up nights in a cold sweat over it. Wringing wet with
the fear of my job."
"Your mother and sweet little old father!"
"That's it; they're like two babes in the woods morally. They don't know
any gradation except black and white. Virtue and sin. A woman is good or
a woman is rotten bad. She falls or she doesn't."
"Oh, I know the relentlessness of that single-track code of right and
wrong."
"My stepmother, good soul that she is, would take the last stitch off
her back for what she calls honest need, but I've seen her slam the door
in the face of one of our neighbor girls in trouble who's come to my
father begging for help--medicine. That's what I'm up against, Miss
Parlow, keeping from those two old people what their daughter--is."
"Oh, my dear, my dear!"
"I don't know why I'm airing my troubles here. God knows you are bottled
up enough about yours, if you have any, but I thought surely you knew.
Everyone does. Is it any wonder that my sister's home-coming is a
nightmare to me? She doesn't want to come; I can read between the lines
of her letter she's fighting it. But you see, Auchinloss is a great man.
He's been invited to conduct his own symphony at its American _première_
and naturally has taken this opportunity to bring about her American
debut. You can imagine my parents' pride."
"I can see it. Why, your father can't keep his face straight--he's
always sort of smiling, slyly, to himself."
"Their daughter, Millie du Gass, coming home with an opera triumph back
of her in every European city, the great Auchinloss himself coming to
conduct for her American debut. That is the kind of homecoming they're
looking forward to and the kind I must make possible for them. My
mother, who screams out every girl in trouble who dares to come into the
drug store for help!"
When Lilly bade Alma Neugass good night, they kissed, a dark bony hand
lingering on each of Lilly's shoulders.
"You've your decision before you yet, Miss Parlow, and you're young and
pretty, too. Much as I love that little sister of mine, and can't find
it in my heart to blame her, I know that somewhere there are women big
enough not to have to pay the price. You--there's something about
you--something so, if you'll permit me to say it, so boyish--so
clean--so wholesome. You should be big enough not to have to pay
the price."
"If only I felt that your sister--cared. That is so horrible--the
beauty-and-the-beast part. To place personal ambition above her
body--the body that holds her soul! Ugh!"
"She sent his picture. He's hairy like an ape. My. little white
sister--he's--hairy, I tell you, like an ape."
"I think I would have to want something--love something--enough to tear
out my very heart for it before I could pay her price. Nothing on earth,
Miss Neugass, can be so hideous--as that! I--I imagine it's flying in
the face of the first law of nature--nothing so hideous as giving of
self to--in--in--payment--"
Tears were racking the worn form of Miss Neugass, Lilly wrapping her in
arms that soothed.
"You musn't," she said; "you've your big job ahead of you."
Through the left wall came a sharp trilogy of raps.
"All right, ma. Coming!" cried Miss Neugass, starting up instantly, her
voice lifted and absolutely without tremor.
That night Lilly dreamed the whole of her marriage. Her father with his
face distorted by lather before his shaving mirror. The Leffingwell Rock
Church. Little Evelyn Kemble placing the white-satin cushion. Herself
and Albert finally locking the door of their new little home that
wedding night.
It was then she awoke with a scream.