As she finished, her sense of freedom was complete. She had not
realized how uneasy she was feeling about Stanley. She did not doubt
his generosity, did not doubt that he genuinely intended to leave her
free, and she believed that his delicacy was worthy of his generosity.
Still, she was constantly fearing lest circumstances should thrust them
both--as much against his will as hers--into a position in which she
would have to choose between seeming, not to say being, ungrateful, and
playing the hypocrite, perhaps basely, with him. The little general
eluded, Stanley voluntarily removed; she was indeed free. Now she
could work with an untroubled mind, could show Mrs. Brindley that
intelligent and persistent work--her "biggest if in all the world"--was
in fact a very simple matter.
She had not been settled at Mrs. Brindley's many hours before she
discovered that not only was she free from all hindrances, but was to
have a positive and great help. Mrs. Brindley's talent for putting
people at their ease was no mere drawing-room trick.
She made Mildred feel immediately at home, as she had not felt at home
since her mother introduced James Presbury into their house at Hanging
Rock. Mrs. Brindley was absolutely devoid of pretenses. When Mildred
spoke to her of this quality in her she said:
"I owe that to my husband. I was brought up like everybody else--to be
more or less of a poser and a hypocrite. In fact, I think there was
almost nothing genuine about me. My husband taught me to be myself, to
be afraid of nobody's opinion, to show myself just as I was and to let
people seek or avoid me as they saw fit. He was that sort of man
himself."
"He must have been a remarkable man," said Mildred.
"He was," replied Mrs. Brindley. "But not attractive--at least not to
me. Our marriage was a mistake. We quarreled whenever we were not at
work with the music. If he had not died, we should have been
divorced." She smiled merrily. "Then he would have hired me as his
musical secretary, and we'd have got on beautifully."
Mildred was still thinking of Mrs. Brindley's freedom from pretense.
"I've never dared be myself," confessed she. "I don't know what myself
really is like. I was thinking the other day how for one reason and
another I've been a hypocrite all my life. You see, I've always been a
dependent--have always had to please someone in order to get what I
wanted."
"You can never be yourself until you have an independent income,
however small," said Mrs. Brindley. "I've had that joy only since my
husband died. It's as well that I didn't have it sooner. One is the
better for having served an apprenticeship at self-repression and at
pretending to virtues one has not. Only those who earn their freedom
know how to use it. If I had had it ten or fifteen years ago I'd have
been an intolerable tyrant, making everyone around me unhappy and
therefore myself. The ideal world would be one where everyone was born
free and never knew anything else. Then, no one being afraid or having
to serve, everyone would have to be considerate in order to get himself
tolerated."
"I wonder if I really ever shall be able to earn a living?" sighed
Mildred.
"You must decide that whatever you can make shall be for you a living,"
said the older woman. "I have lived on my fixed income, which is under
two thousand a year. And I am ready to do it again rather than
tolerate anything or anybody that does not suit me."
"I shall have to be extremely careful," laughed Mildred. "I shall be a
dreadful hypocrite with you."
Mrs. Brindley smiled; but underneath, Mildred saw--or perhaps
felt--that her new friend was indeed not one to be trifled with. She
said:
"You and I will get on. We'll let each other alone. We have to be more
or less intimate, but we'll never be familiar."
After a time she discovered that Mrs. Brindley's first name was
Cyrilla, but Mrs. Brindley and Miss Stevens they remained to each other
for a long time--until circumstances changed their accidental intimacy
into enduring friendship. Not to anticipate, in the course of that
same conversation Mildred said:
"If there is anything about me--about my life--that you wish me to
explain, I shall be glad to do so."
"I know all I wish to know," replied Cyrilla Brindley. "Your face and
your manner and your way of speaking tell me all the essentials."
"Then you must not think it strange when I say I wish no one to know
anything about me."
"It will be impossible for you entirely to avoid meeting people," said
Cyrilla. "You must have some simple explanation about yourself, or you
will attract attention and defeat your object."
"Lead people to believe that I'm an orphan--perhaps of some obscure
family--who is trying to get up in the world. That is practically the
truth."
Mrs. Brindley laughed. "Quite enough for New York," said she. "It is
not interested in facts. All the New-Yorker asks of you is, 'Can you
pay your bills and help me pay mine?'"
Competent men are rare; but, thanks to the advantage of the male sex in
having to make the struggle for a living, they are not so rare as
competent women. Mrs. Brindley was the first competent woman Mildred
had ever known. She had spent but a few hours with her before she
began to appreciate what a bad atmosphere she had always breathed--bad
for a woman who has her way to make in the world, or indeed for any
woman not willing to be content as mere more or less shiftless, more or
less hypocritical and pretentious, dependent and parasite. Mrs.
Brindley--well bred and well educated--knew all the little matters
which Mildred had been taught to regard as the whole of a lady's
education. But Mildred saw that these trifles were but a trifling
incident in Mrs. Brindley's knowledge. She knew real things, this
woman who was a thorough-going housekeeper and who trebled her income
by giving music lessons a few hours a day to such pupils as she thought
worth the teaching. When she spoke, she always said something one of
the first things noticed by Mildred, who, being too lazy to think
except as her naturally good mind insisted on exercising itself,
usually talked simply to kill time and without any idea of getting
anywhere. But while Cyrilla--without in the least intending it--roused
her to a painful sense of her own limitations, she did not discourage
her. Mildred also began to feel that in this new atmosphere of ideas,
of work, of accomplishment, she would rapidly develop into a different
sort of person. It was extremely fortunate for her, thought she, that
she was living with such a person as Cyrilla Brindley. In the old
atmosphere, or with any taint of it, she would have been unable to
become a serious person. She would simply have dawdled along,
twaddling about "art" and seriousness and careers and sacrifice,
content with the amateur's methods and the amateur's results--and
deluding herself that she was making progress. Now--It was as
different as public school from private school--public school where the
mind is rudely stimulated, private school where it is sedulously
mollycoddled. She had come out of the hothouse into the open.
At first she thought that Jennings was to be as great a help to her as
Cyrilla Brindley. Certainly if ever there was a man with the air of a
worker and a place with the air of a workshop, that man and that place
were Eugene Jennings and his studio in Carnegie Hall. When Mildred
entered, on that Saturday morning, at exactly half-past ten,
Jennings--in a plain if elegant house-suit--looked at her, looked at
the clock, stopped a girl in the midst of a burst of tremulous noisy
melody.
"That will do, Miss Bristow," said he. "You have never sung it worse.
You do not improve. Another lesson like this, and we shall go back and
begin all over again."
The girl, a fattish, "temperamental" blonde, burst into tears.
"Kindly take that out into the hall," said Jennings coldly. "Your time
is up. We cannot waste Miss Stevens's time with your hysterics."
Miss Bristow switched from tears to fury. "You brute! You beast!" she
shrieked, and flung herself out of the room, slamming the door after
her. Jennings took a book from a pile upon a table, opened it, and set
it on a music-stand. Evidently Miss Bristow was forgotten--indeed, had
passed out of his mind at half-past ten exactly, not to enter it again
until she should appear at ten on Monday morning. He said to Mildred:
"Now, we'll see what you can do. Begin."
"I'm a little nervous," said Mildred with a shy laugh. "If you don't
mind, I'd like to wait till I've got used to my surroundings."
Jennings looked at her. The long sharp nose seemed to be rapping her
on the forehead like a woodpecker's beak on the bark of the tree.
"Begin," he said, pointing to the book.
Mildred flushed angrily. "I shall not begin until I CAN begin," said
she. The time to show this man that he could not treat her brutally
was at the outset.
Jennings opened the door into the hall. "Good day, Miss Stevens," he
said with his abrupt bow.
Mildred looked at him; he looked at her. Her lip trembled, the hot
tears flooded and blinded her eyes. She went unsteadily to the
music-stand and tried to see the notes of the exercises. Jennings
closed the door and seated himself at the far end of the room. She
began--a ridiculous attempt. She stopped, gritted her teeth, began
again. Once more the result was absurd; but this time she was able to
keep on, not improving, but maintaining her initial off-key quavering.
She stopped.
"You see," said she. "Shall I go on?"
"Don't stop again until I tell you to, please," said he.
She staggered and stumbled and somersaulted through two pages of
DO-RE-ME-FA-SOL-LA-SI. Then he held up his finger.
"Enough," said he.
Silence, an awful silence. She recalled what Mrs. Belloc had told her
about him, what Mrs. Brindley had implied. But she got no consolation.
She said timidly:
"Really, Mr. Jennings, I can do better than that. Won't you let me try
a song?"
"God forbid!" said he. "You can't stand. You can't breathe. You
can't open your mouth. Naturally, you can't sing."
She dropped to a chair.
"Take the book, and go over the same thing, sitting," said he.
She began to remove her wraps.
"Just as you are," he commanded. "Try to forget yourself. Try to
forget me. Try to forget what a brute I am, and what a wonderful
singer you are. Just open your mouth and throw the notes out."
She was rosy with rage. She was reckless. She sang. At the end of
three pages he stopped her with an enthusiastic hand-clapping. "Good!
Good!" he cried. "I'll take you. I'll make a singer of you. Yes, yes,
there's something to work on."
The door opened. A tall, thin woman with many jewels and a superb fur
wrap came gliding in. Jennings looked at the clock. The hands pointed
to eleven. Said he to Mildred:
"Take that book with you. Practice what you've done to-day. Learn to
keep your mouth open. We'll go into that further next time." He was
holding the door open for her. As she passed out, she heard him say:
"Ah, Mrs. Roswell. We'll go at that third song first."
The door closed. Reviewing all that had occurred, Mildred decided that
she must revise her opinion of Jennings. A money-maker he no doubt
was. And why not? Did he not have to live? But a teacher also, and a
great teacher. Had he not destroyed her vanity at one blow, demolished
it?--yet without discouraging her. And he went straight to the bottom
of things--very different from any of the teachers she used to have
when she was posing in drawing-rooms as a person with a voice equal to
the most difficult opera, if only she weren't a lady and therefore not
forced to be a professional singing person. Yes, a great teacher--and
in deadly earnest. He would permit no trifling! How she would have to
work!
And she went to work with an energy she would not have believed she
possessed. He instructed her minutely in how to stand, in how to
breathe, in how to open her mouth and keep it open, in how to relax her
throat and leave it relaxed. He filled every second of her half-hour;
she had never before realized how much time half an hour was, how use
could be made of every one of its eighteen hundred seconds. She went
to hear other teachers give lessons, and she understood why Jennings
could get such prices, could treat his pupils as he saw fit. She
became an extravagant admirer of him as a teacher, thought him a
genius, felt confident that he would make a great singer of her. With
the second lesson she began to progress rapidly. In a few weeks she
amazed herself. At last she was really singing. Not in a great way,
but in the beginnings of a great way. Her voice had many times the
power of her drawing-room days. Her notes were full and round, and
came without an effort. Her former ideas of what constituted facial
and vocal expression now seemed ridiculous to her. She was now singing
without making those dreadful faces which she had once thought charming
and necessary. Her lower register, always her best, was almost
perfect. Her middle register--the test part of a voice--was showing
signs of strength and steadiness and evenness. And she was fast
getting a real upper register, as distinguished from the forced and
shrieky high notes that pass as an upper register with most singers,
even opera singers. After a month of this marvelous forward march, she
sang for Mrs. Brindley--sang the same song she had essayed at their
first meeting. When she finished, Mrs. Brindley said:
"Yes, you've done wonders. I've been noticing your improvement as you
practiced. You certainly have a very different voice and method from
those you had a month ago," and so on through about five minutes of
critical and discriminating praise.
Mildred listened, wondering why her dissatisfaction, her irritation,
increased as Mrs. Brindley praised on and on. Beyond question Cyrilla
was sincere, and was saying even more than Mildred had hoped she would
say. Yet-- Mildred sat moodily measuring off octaves on the keyboard
of the piano. If she had been looking at her friend's face she would
have flared out in anger; for Cyrilla Brindley was taking advantage of
her abstraction to observe her with friendly sympathy and sadness.
Presently she concealed this candid expression and said:
"You are satisfied with your progress, aren't you, Miss Stevens?"
Mildred flared up angrily. "Certainly!" replied she. "How could I
fail to be?"
Mrs. Brindley did not answer--perhaps because she thought no answer was
needed or expected. But to Mildred her silence somehow seemed a denial.
"If you can only keep what you've got--and go on," said Mrs. Brindley.
"Oh, I shall, never fear," retorted Mildred.
"But I do fear," said Mrs. Brindley. "I think it's always well to fear
until success is actually won. And then there's the awful fear of not
being able to hold it."
After a moment's silence Mildred, who could not hide away resentment
against one she liked, said: "Why aren't YOU satisfied, Mrs. Brindley?"
"But I am satisfied," protested Cyrilla. "Only it makes me afraid to
see YOU so well satisfied. I've seen that often in people first
starting, and it's always dangerous. You see, my dear, you've got a
straight-away hundred miles to walk. Can't you see that it would be
possible for you to become too much elated by the way you walked the
first part of the first mile?"
"Why do you try to discourage me?" said Mildred.
Mrs. Brindley colored. "I do it because I want to save you from
despair a little later," said she. "But that is foolish of me. I
shall only irritate you against me. I'll not do it again. And please
don't ask my opinion. If you do, I can't help showing exactly what I
think."
"Then you don't think I've done well?" cried Mildred.
"Indeed you have," replied Cyrilla warmly.
"Then I don't understand. What DO you mean?"
"I'll tell you, and then I'll stop and you must not ask my opinion
again. We live too close together to be able to afford to criticize
each other. What I meant was this: You have done well the first part
of the great task that's before you. If you had done it any less well,
it would have been folly for you to go on."
"That is, what I've done doesn't amount to anything? Mr. Jennings
doesn't agree with you."
"Doubtless he's right," said Mrs. Brindley. "At any rate, we all agree
that you have shown that you have a voice."
She said this so simply and heartily that Mildred could not but be
mollified. Mrs. Brindley changed the subject to the song Mildred had
sung, and Mildred stopped puzzling over the mystery of what she had
meant by her apparently enthusiastic words, which had yet diffused a
chill atmosphere of doubt.
She was doing her scales so well that she became impatient of such
"tiresome child's play." And presently Jennings gave her songs, and
did not discourage her when she talked of roles, of getting seriously
at what, after all, she intended to do. Then there came a week of vile
weather, and Mildred caught a cold. She neglected it. Her voice left
her. Her tonsils swelled. She had a bad attack of ulcerated sore
throat. For nearly three weeks she could not take a single one of the
lessons, which were, nevertheless, paid for. Jennings rebuked her
sharply.
"A singer has no right to be sick," said he.
"You have a cold yourself," retorted she.
"But I am not a singer. I've nothing that interferes with my work."
"It's impossible not to take cold," said Mildred. "You are unreasonable
with me."
He shrugged his shoulders. "Go get well," he said.
The sore throat finally yielded to the treatment of Dr. Hicks, the
throat-specialist. His bill was seventy-five dollars. But while the
swelling in the tonsils subsided it did not depart. She could take
lessons again. Some days she sang as well as ever, and on those days
Jennings was charming. Other days she sang atrociously, and Jennings
treated her as if she were doing it deliberately. A third and worse
state was that of the days when she in the same half-hour alternately
sang well and badly. On those days Jennings acted like a lunatic. He
raved up and down the studio, all but swearing at her. At first she
was afraid of him--withered under his scorn, feared he would throw open
his door and order her out and forbid her ever to enter again. But
gradually she came to understand him--not enough to lose her fear of
him altogether, but enough to lose the fear of his giving up so
profitable a pupil.
The truth was that Jennings, like every man who succeeds at anything in
this world, operated upon a system to which he rigidly adhered. He was
a man of small talent and knowledge, but of great, persistence and not
a little common sense. He had tried to be a singer, had failed because
his voice was small and unreliable. He had adopted teaching singing as
a means of getting a living. He had learned just enough about it to
enable him to teach the technical elements--what is set down in the
books. By observing other and older teachers he had got together a
teaching system that was as good--and as bad--as any, and this he
dubbed the Jennings Method and proceeded to exploit as the only one
worth while. When that method was worked out and perfected, he ceased
learning, ceased to give a thought to the professional side of his
profession, just as most professional men do. He would have resented a
suggestion or a new idea as an attack upon the Jennings Method. The
overwhelming majority of the human race--indeed, all but a small
handful--have this passion for stagnation, this ferocity against
change. It is in large part due to laziness; for a new idea means work
in learning it and in unlearning the old ideas that have been true
until the unwelcome advent of the new. In part also this resistance to
the new idea arises from a fear that the new idea, if tolerated, will
put one out of business, will set him adrift without any means of
support. The coachman hates the automobile, the hand-worker hates the
machine, the orthodox preacher hates the heretic, the politician hates
the reformer, the doctor hates the bacteriologist and the chemist, the
old woman hates the new--all these in varying proportions according to
the degree in which the iconoclast attacks laziness or livelihood.
Finally we all hate any and all new ideas because they seem to imply
that we, who have held the old ideas, have been ignorant and stupid in
so doing. A new idea is an attack upon the vanity of everyone who has
been a partisan of the old ideas and their established order.
Jennings, thoroughly human in thus closing his mind to all ideas about
his profession, was equally human in that he had his mind and his
senses opened full width to ideas on how to make more money. If there
had been money in new ideas about teaching singing Jennings would not
have closed to them. But the money was all in studying and learning
how better to handle the women--they were all women who came to him for
instruction. His common sense warned him at the outset that the
obviously easygoing teacher would not long retain his pupils. On the
other hand, he saw that the really severe teacher would not retain his
pupils, either.
Who were these pupils? In the first place, they were all ignorant, for
people who already know do not go to school to learn. They had the
universal delusion that a teacher can teach. The fact is that a
teacher is a well. Some wells are full, others almost dry. Some are
so arranged that water cannot be got from them, others have attachments
of various kinds, making the drawing of water more or less easy. But
not from the best well with the latest pump attachment can one get a
drink unless one does the drinking oneself. A teacher is rarely a
well. The pupil must not only draw the water, but also drink it, must
not only teach himself, but also learn what he teaches. Now we are all
of us born thirsty for knowledge, and nearly all of us are born both
capable of teaching ourselves and capable of learning what we teach,
that is, of retaining and assimilating it. There is such a thing as
artificially feeding the mind, just as there is such a thing as
artificially feeding the body; but while everyone knows that artificial
feeding of the body is a success only to a limited extent and for a
brief period, everyone believes that the artificial feeding of the mind
is not only the best method, but the only method. Nor does the
discovery that the mind is simply the brain, is simply a part of the
body, subject to the body's laws, seem materially to have lessened this
fatuous delusion.
Some of Jennings's pupils--not more than two of the forty-odd were in
genuine earnest; that is, those two were educating themselves to be
professional singers, were determined so to be, had limited time and
means and endless capacity for work. Others of the forty--about
half-thought they were serious, though in fact the idea of a career was
more or less hazy. They were simply taking lessons and toiling
aimlessly along, not less aimlessly because they indulged in vague talk
and vaguer thought about a career. The rest--the other half of the
forty--were amusing themselves by taking singing lessons. It killed
time, it gave them a feeling of doing something, it gave them a
reputation of being serious people and not mere idlers, it gave them an
excuse for neglecting the domestic duties which they regarded as
degrading--probably because to do them well requires study and earnest,
hard work. The Jennings singing lesson, at fifteen dollars a
half-hour, was rather an expensive hypocrisy; but the women who used it
as a cloak for idleness as utter as the mere yawners and bridgers and
shoppers had rich husbands or fathers.
Thus it appears that the Jennings School was a perfect microcosm, as
the scientists would say, of the human race--the serious very few,
toiling more or less successfully toward a definite goal; the many,
compelled to do something, and imagining themselves serious and
purposeful as they toiled along toward nothing in particular but the
next lesson--that is, the next day's appointed task; the utterly idle,
fancying themselves busy and important when in truth they were simply a
fraud and an expense.
Jennings got very little from the deeply and genuinely serious. One of
them he taught free, taking promissory notes for the lessons. But he
held on to them because when they finally did teach themselves to sing
and arrived at fame, his would be part of the glory--and glory meant
more and more pupils of the paying kinds. His large income came from
the other two kinds of pupils, the larger part of it from the kind that
had no seriousness in them. His problem was how to keep all these
paying pupils and also keep his reputation as a teacher. In solving
that problem he evolved a method that was the true Jennings's method.
Not in all New York, filled as it is with people living and living well
upon the manipulation of the weaknesses of their fellow beings--not in
all New York was there an adroiter manipulator than Eugene Jennings. He
was harsh to brutality when he saw fit to be so--or, rather, when he
deemed it wise to be so. Yet never had he lost a paying pupil through
his harshness. These were fashionable women--most delicate, sensitive
ladies--at whom he swore. They wept, stayed on, advertised him as a
"wonderful serious teacher who won't stand any nonsense and doesn't
care a hang whether you stay or go--and he can teach absolutely anybody
to sing!" He knew how to be gentle without seeming to be so; he knew
how to flatter without uttering a single word that did not seem to be
reluctant praise or savage criticism; he knew how to make a lady with a
little voice work enough to make a showing that would spur her to keep
on and on with him; he knew how to encourage a rich woman with no more
song than a peacock until she would come to him three times a week for
many years--and how he did make her pay for what he suffered in
listening to the hideous squawkings and yelpings she inflicted upon him!
Did Jennings think himself a fraud? No more than the next human being
who lives by fraud. Is there any trade or profession whose
practitioners, in the bottom of their hearts, do not think they are
living excusably and perhaps creditably? The Jennings theory was that
he was a great teacher; that there were only a very few serious and
worth-while seekers of the singing art; that in order to live and to
teach these few, he had to receive the others; that, anyhow, singing
was a fine art for anyone to have and taking singing lessons made the
worst voice a little less bad--or, at the least, singing was splendid
for the health. One of his favorite dicta was, "Every child should be
taught singing--for its health, if for nothing else." And perhaps he
was right! At any rate, he made his forty to fifty thousand a
year--and on days when he had a succession of the noisy, tuneless
squawkers, he felt that he more than earned every cent of it.
Mildred did not penetrate far into the secret of the money-making
branch of the Jennings method. It was crude enough, too. But are not
all the frauds that fool the human race crude? Human beings both
cannot and will not look beneath surfaces. All Mildred learned was
that Jennings did not give up paying pupils. She had not confidence
enough in this discovery to put it to the test. She did not dare
disobey him or shirk--even when she was most disposed to do so. But
gradually she ceased from that intense application she had at first
brought to her work. She kept up the forms. She learned her lessons.
She did all that was asked. She seemed to be toiling as in the
beginning. In reality, she became by the middle of spring a mere
lesson-taker. Her interest in clothes and in going about revived. She
saw in the newspapers that General Siddall had taken a party of friends
on a yachting trip around the world, so she felt that she was no longer
being searched for, at least not vigorously. She became acquainted
with smart, rich West Side women, taking lessons at Jennings's. She
amused herself going about with them and with the "musical" men they
attracted--amateur and semi-professional singers and players upon
instruments. She drew Mrs. Brindley into their society. They had
little parties at the flat in Fifty-ninth Street--the most delightful
little parties imaginable--dinners and suppers, music, clever
conversations, flirtations of a harmless but fascinating kind. If
anyone had accused Mildred of neglecting her work, of forgetting her
career, she would have grown indignant, and if Mrs. Brindley had
overheard, she would have been indignant for her. Mildred worked as
much as ever. She was making excellent progress. She was doing all
that could be done. It takes time to develop a voice, to make an
opera-singer. Forcing is dangerous, when it is not downright useless.
In May--toward the end of the month--Stanley Baird returned. Mildred,
who happened to be in unusually good voice that day, sang for him at
the Jennings studio, and he was enchanted. As the last note died away
he cried out to Jennings:
"She's a wonder, isn't she?"
Jennings nodded. "She's got a voice," said he.
"She ought to go on next year."
"Not quite that," said Jennings. "We want to get that upper register
right first. And it's a young voice--she's very young for her age. We
must be careful not to strain it."
"Why, what's a voice for if not to sing with?" said Stanley.
"A fine voice is a very delicate instrument," replied the teacher. He
added coldly, "You must let me judge as to what shall be done."
"Certainly, certainly," said Stanley in haste.
"She's had several colds this winter and spring," pursued Jennings.
"Those things are dangerous until the voice has its full growth. She
should have two months' complete rest."
Jennings was going away for a two months' vacation. He was giving this
advice to all his pupils.
"You're right," said Baird. "Did you hear, Mildred?"
"But I hate to stop work," objected Mildred. "I want to be doing
something. I'm very impatient of this long wait."
And honest she was in this protest. She had no idea of the state of
her own mind. She fancied she was still as eager as ever for the
career, as intensely interested as ever in her work. She did not dream
of the real meaning of her content with her voice as it was, of her
lack of uneasiness over the appalling fact that such voice as she had
was unreliable, came and went for no apparent reason.
"Absolute rest for two months," declared Jennings grimly. "Not a note
until I return in August."
Mildred gave a resigned sigh.
There is much inveighing against hypocrisy, a vice unsightly rather
than desperately wicked. And in the excitement about it its dangerous,
even deadly near kinsman, self-deception, escapes unassailed. Seven
cardinal sins; but what of the eighth?--the parent of all the others,
the one beside which the children seem almost white?
During the first few weeks Mildred had been careful about spending
money. Economy she did not understand; how could she, when she had
never had a lesson in it or a valuable hint about it? So economy was
impossible. The only way in which such people can keep order in their
finances is by not spending any money at all. Mildred drew nothing,
spent nothing. This, so long as she gave her whole mind to her work.
But after the first great cold, so depressing, so subtly undermining,
she began to go about, to think of, to need and to buy clothes, to
spend money in a dozen necessary ways. After all, she was simply
borrowing the money. Presently, she would be making a career, would be
earning large sums. She would pay back everything, with interest.
Stanley meant for her to use the money. Really, she ought to use it.
How would her career be helped by her going about looking a dowd and a
frump? She had always been used to the comforts of life. If she
deprived herself of them, she would surely get into a frame of mind
where her work would suffer. No, she must lead the normal life of a
woman of her class. To work all the time--why, as Jennings said, that
took away all the freshness, made one stale and unfit. A little
distraction--always, of course, with musical people, people who talked
and thought and did music--that sort of distraction was quite as much a
part of her education as the singing lessons. Mrs. Brindley, certainly
a sensible and serious woman if ever there was one--Mrs. Brindley
believed so, and it must be so.
After that illness and before she began to go about, she had fallen
into several fits of hideous blues, had been in despair as to the
future. As soon as she saw something of people--always the valuable,
musical sort of people--her spirits improved. And when she got a few
new dresses--very simple and inexpensive, but stylish and charming--and
the hats, too, were successful--as soon as she was freshly arrayed she
was singing better and was talking hopefully of the career again. Yes,
it was really necessary that she live as she had always been used to
living.
When Stanley came back her account was drawn up to the last cent of the
proportionate amount. In fact, it might have been a few dollars--a
hundred or so--overdrawn. She was not sure. Still, that was a small
matter. During the summer she would spend less, and by fall she would
be far ahead again--and ready to buy fall clothes. One day he said:
"You must be needing more money."
"No indeed," cried she. "I've been living within the hundred a
week--or nearly. I'm afraid I'm frightfully extravagant, and--"
"Extravagant?" laughed he. "You are afraid to borrow! Why, three or
four nights of singing will pay back all you've borrowed."
"I suppose I WILL make a lot of money," said she. "They all tell me so.
But it doesn't seem real to me." She hastily added: "I don't mean the
career. That seems real enough. I can hardly wait to begin at the
roles. I mean the money part. You see, I never earned any money and
never really had any money of my own."
"Well, you'll have plenty of it in two or three years," said Stanley,
confidently. "And you mustn't try to live like girls who've been
brought up to hardship. It isn't necessary, and it would only unfit
you for your work."
"I think that's true," said she. "But I've enough--more than enough."
She gave him a nervous, shy, almost agonized look. "Please don't try
to put me under any heavier obligations than I have to be."
"Please don't talk nonsense about obligation," retorted he. "Let's get
away from this subject. You don't seem to realize that you're doing me
a favor, that it's a privilege to be allowed to help develop such a
marvelous voice as yours. Scores of people would jump at the chance."
"That doesn't lessen my obligation," said she. And she thought she
meant it, though, in fact, his generous and plausible statement of the
case had immediately lessened not a little her sense of obligation.
On the whole, however, she was not sorry she had this chance to talk of
obligation. Slowly, as they saw each other from time to time, often
alone, Stanley had begun--perhaps in spite of himself and
unconsciously--to show his feeling for her. Sometimes his hand
accidentally touched hers, and he did not draw it away as quickly as he
might. And she--it was impossible for her to make any gesture, much
less say anything, that suggested sensitiveness on her part. It would
put him in an awkward position, would humiliate him most unjustly. He
fell into the habit of holding her hand longer than was necessary at
greeting or parting, of touching her caressingly, of looking at her
with the eyes of a lover instead of a friend. She did not like these
things. For some mysterious reason--from sheer perversity, she
thought--she had taken a strong physical dislike to him. Perfectly
absurd, for there was nothing intrinsically repellent about this
handsome, clean, most attractively dressed man, of the best type of
American and New-Yorker. No, only perversity could explain such a silly
notion. She was always afraid he would try to take advantage of her
delicate position--always afraid she would have to yield something,
some trifle; yet the idea of giving anything from a sense of obligation
was galling to her. His very refraining made her more nervous, the
more shrinking. If he would only commit some overt act--seize her, kiss
her, make outrageous demands--but this refraining, these touches that
might be accidental and again might be stealthy approach-- She hated
to have him shake hands with her, would have liked to draw away when
his clothing chanced to brush against hers.
So she was glad of the talk about obligation. It set him at a
distance, immediately. He ceased to look lovingly, to indulge in the
nerve-rasping little caresses. He became carefully formal. He was
evidently eager to prove the sincerity of his protestations--too eager
perhaps, her perverse mind suggested. Still, sincere or not, he held
to all the forms of sincerity.
Some friends of Mrs. Brindley's who were going abroad offered her their
cottage on the New Jersey coast near Seabright, and a big new
touring-car and chauffeur. She and Mildred at once gave up the plan
for a summer in the Adirondacks, the more readily as several of the men
and women they saw the most of lived within easy distance of them at
Deal Beach and Elberon. When Mildred went shopping she was lured into
buying a lot of summer things she would not have needed in the
Adirondacks--a mere matter of two hundred and fifty dollars or
thereabouts. A little additional economy in the fall would soon make
up for such a trifle, and if there is one time more than another when a
woman wishes to look well and must look well, that time is
summer--especially by the sea.
When her monthly statement from the bank came on the first of July she
found that five thousand dollars had been deposited to her credit. She
was moved by this discovery to devote several hours--very depressed
hours they were--to her finances. She had spent a great deal more
money than she had thought; indeed, since March she had been living at
the rate of fifteen thousand a year. She tried to account for this
amazing extravagance. But she could recall no expenditure that was not
really almost, if not quite, necessary. It took a frightful lot of
money to live in New York. How DID people with small incomes manage to
get along? Whatever would have become of her if she had not had the
good luck to be able to borrow from Stanley? What would become of her
if, before she was succeeding on the stage, Stanley should die or lose
faith in her or interest in her? What would become of her! She had
been living these last few months among people who had wide-open eyes
and knew everything that was going on--and did some "going-on"
themselves, as she was now more than suspecting. There were many
women, thousands of them--among the attractive, costily dressed throngs
she saw in the carriages and autos and cabs--who would not like to have
it published how they contrived to live so luxuriously. No, they would
not like to have it published, though they cared not a fig for its
being whispered; New York too thoroughly understood how necessary
luxurious living was, and was too completely divested of the follies of
the old-fashioned, straight-laced morality, to mind little shabby
details of queer conduct in striving to keep up with the procession.
Even the married women, using their husbands--and letting their
husbands use them--did not frown on the irregularities of their sisters
less fortunately married or not able to find a permanent "leg to pull."
As for the girls--Mildred had observed strange things in the lives of
the girls she knew more or less well nowadays. In fact, all the women,
of all classes and conditions, were engaged in the same mad struggle to
get hold of money to spend upon fun and finery--a struggle matching in
recklessness and resoluteness the struggle of the men down-town for
money for the same purposes. It was curious, this double mania of the
men and the women--the mania to get money, no matter how; the instantly
succeeding mania to get rid of it, no matter how. Looking about her,
Mildred felt that she was peculiar and apart from nearly all the women
she knew. SHE got her money honorably. SHE did not degrade herself,
did not sell herself, did not wheedle or cajole or pretend in the least
degree. She had grown more liberal as her outlook on life had widened
with contact with the New York mind--no, with the mind of the whole
easy-going, luxury-mad, morality-scorning modern world. She still kept
her standard for herself high, and believed in a purity for herself
which she did not exact or expect in her friends. In this respect she
and Cyrilla Brindley were sympathetically alike. No, Mildred was
confident that in no circumstances, in NO circumstances, would she
relax her ideas of what she personally could do and could not do. Not
that she blamed, or judged at all, women who did as she would not; but
she could not, simply could not, however hard she might be driven, do
those things--though she could easily understand how other women did
them in preference to sinking down into the working class or eking out
a frowsy existence in some poor boarding-house. The temptation would
be great. Thank Heaven, it was not teasing her. She would resist it,
of course. But--
What if Stanley Baird should lose interest? What if, after he lost
interest, she should find herself without money, worse of than she had
been when she sold herself into slavery--highly moral and
conventionally correct slavery, but still slavery--to the little
general with the peaked pink-silk nightcap hiding the absence of the
removed toupee--and with the wonderful pink-silk pajamas, gorgeously
monogramed in violet--and the tiny feet and ugly hands--and those
loathsome needle-pointed mustaches and the hideous habit of mumbling
his tongue and smacking his lips? What if, moneyless, she should not
be able to find another Stanley or a man of the class gentleman willing
to help her generously even on ANY terms? What then?
She was looking out over the sea, her bank-book and statements and
canceled checks in her lap. Their cottage was at the very edge of the
strand; its veranda was often damp from spray after a storm. It was
not storming as she sat there, "taking stock"; under a blue sky an
almost tranquil sea was crooning softly in the sunlight, innocent and
happy and playful as a child. She, dressed in a charming negligee and
looking forward to a merry day in the auto, with lunch and dinner at
attractive, luxurious places farther down the coast--she was stricken
with a horrible sadness, with a terror that made her heart beat wildly.
"I must be crazy!" she said, half aloud. "I've never earned a dollar
with my voice. And for two months it has been unreliable. I'm acting
like a crazy person. What WILL become of me?"
Just then Stanley Baird came through the pretty little house, seeking
her. "There you are!" he cried. "Do go get dressed."
Hastily she flung a scarf over the book and papers in her lap. She had
intended to speak to him about that fresh deposit of five thousand
dollars--to refuse it, to rebuke him. Now she did not dare.
"What's the matter?" he went on. "Headache?"
"It was the wine at dinner last night," explained she. "I ought never
to touch red wine. It disagrees with me horribly."
"That was filthy stuff," said he. "You must take some champagne at
lunch. That'll set you right."
She stealthily wound the scarf about the papers. When she felt that all
were secure she rose. She was looking sweet and sad and peculiarly
beautiful. There was an exquisite sheen on her skin. She had washed
her hair that morning, and it was straying fascinatingly about her brow
and ears and neck. Baird looked at her, lowered his eyes and colored.
"I'll not be long," she said hurriedly.
She had to pass him in the rather narrow doorway. From her garments
shook a delicious perfume. He caught her in his arms. The blood had
flushed into his face in a torrent, swelling out the veins, giving him
a distorted and wild expression.
"Mildred!" he cried. "Say that you love me a little! I'm so lonely
for you--so hungry for you!"
She grew cold with fear and with repulsion. She neither yielded to his
embrace nor shook it off. She simply stood, her round smooth body hard
though corsetless. He kissed her on the throat, kissed the lace over
her bosom, crying out inarticulately. In the frenzy of his passion he
did not for a while realize her lack of response. As he felt it, his
arms relaxed, dropped away from her, fell at his side. He hung his
head. He was breathing so heavily that she glanced into the house
apprehensively, fearing someone else might hear.
"I beg pardon," he muttered. "You were too much for me this morning.
It was your fault. You are maddening!"
She moved on into the house.
"Wait a minute!" he called after her.
She halted, hesitating.
"Come back," he said. "I've got something to say to you."
She turned and went back to the veranda, he retreating before her and
his eyes sinking before the cold, clear blue of hers.
"You're going up, not to come down again," he said. "You think I've
insulted you--think I've acted outrageously."
How glad she was that he had so misread her thoughts--had not
discovered the fear, the weakness, the sudden collapse of all her
boasted confidence in her strength of character.
"You'll never feel the same toward me again," he went fatuously on.
"You think I'm a fraud. Well, I'll admit that I am in love with
you--have been ever since the steamer--always was crazy about that
mouth of yours--and your figure, and the sound of your voice. I'll
admit I'm an utter fool about you--respect you and trust you as I never
used to think any woman deserved to be respected and trusted. I'll
even admit that I've been hoping--all sorts of things. I knew a woman
like you wouldn't let a man help her unless she loved him."
At this her heart beat wildly and a blush of shame poured over her face
and neck. He did not see. He had not the courage to look at her--to
face that expression of the violated goddess he felt confident her face
was wearing. In love, he reasoned and felt about her like an
inexperienced boy, all his experience going for nothing. He went on:
"I understand we can never be anything to each other until you're on
the stage and arrived. I'd not have it otherwise, if I could. For I
want YOU, and I'd never believe I had you unless you were free."
The color was fading from her cheeks. At this it flushed deeper than
before. She must speak. Not to speak was to lie, was to play the
hypocrite. Yet speak she dared not. At least Stanley Baird was better
than Siddall. Anyhow, who was she, that had been the wife of Siddall,
to be so finicky?
"You don't believe me?" he said miserably. "You think I'll forget
myself sometime again?"
"I hope not," she said gently. "I believe not. I trust you, Stanley."
And she went into the house. He looked after her, in admiration of the
sweet and pure calm of this quiet rebuke. She tried to take the same
exalted view of it herself, but she could not fool herself just then
with the familiar "good woman" fake. She knew that she had struck the
flag of self-respect. She knew what she would really have done had he
been less delicate, less in love, and more "practical." And she found
a small and poor consolation in reflecting, "I wonder how many women
there are who take high ground because it costs nothing." We are prone
to suspect everybody of any weakness we find in ourselves--and perhaps
we are not so far wrong as are those who accept without question the
noisy protestations of a world of self-deceivers.
Thenceforth she and Stanley got on better than ever--apparently. But
though she ignored it, she knew the truth--knew her new and deep
content was due to her not having challenged his assertion that she
loved him. He, believing her honest and high minded, assumed that the
failure to challenge was a good woman's way of admitting. But with the
day of reckoning--not only with him but also with her own
self-respect--put off until that vague and remote time when she should
be a successful prima donna, she gave herself up to enjoyment. That
was a summer of rarely fine weather, particularly fine along the Jersey
coast. They--always in gay parties--motored up and down the coast and
inland. Several of the "musical" men--notably Richardson of
Elberon--had plenty of money; Stanley, stopping with his cousins, the
Frasers, on the Rumson Road, brought several of his friends, all rich
and more or less free. As every moment of Mildred's day was full and
as it was impossible not to sleep and sleep well in that ocean air,
with the surf soothing the nerves as the lullaby of a nurse soothes a
baby, she was able to put everything unpleasant out of mind. She was
resting her voice, was building up her health; therefore the career was
being steadily advanced and no time was being wasted. She felt sorry
for those who had to do unpleasant or disagreeable things in making
their careers. She told herself that she did not deserve her good
fortune in being able to advance to a brilliant career not through
hardship but over the most delightful road imaginable--amusing herself,
wearing charming and satisfactory clothes, swimming and dancing,
motoring and feasting. Without realizing it, she was strongly under
the delusion that she was herself already rich--the inevitable delusion
with a woman when she moves easily and freely and luxuriously about,
never bothered for money, always in the company of rich people. The
rich are fated to demoralize those around them. The stingy rich fill
their satellites with envy and hatred. The generous rich fill them
with the feeling that the light by which they shine and the heat with
which they are warm are not reflected light and heat but their own.
Never had she been so happy. She even did not especially mind Donald
Keith, a friend of Stanley's and of Mrs. Brindley's, who, much too
often to suit her, made one of the party. She had tried in vain to
discover what there was in Keith that inspired such intense liking in
two people so widely different as expansive and emotional Stanley Baird
and reserved and distinctly cold Cyrilla Brindley. Keith talked
little, not only seemed not to listen well, but showed plainly, even in
tete-a-tete conversations, that his thoughts had been elsewhere. He
made no pretense of being other than he was--an indifferent man who
came because it did not especially matter to him where he was.
Sometimes his silence and his indifference annoyed Mildred;
again--thanks to her profound and reckless contentment--she was able to
forget that he was along. He seemed to be and probably was about forty
years old. His head was beautifully shaped, the line of its
profile--front, top, and back--being perfect in intellectuality,
strength and symmetry. He was rather under the medium height, about
the same height as Mildred herself. He was extremely thin and loosely
built, and his clothes seemed to hang awry, giving him an air of
slovenliness which became surprising when one noted how scrupulously
neat and clean he was. His brown hair, considerably tinged with rusty
gray, grew thinly upon that beautiful head. His skin was dry and
smooth and dead white. This, taken with the classic regularity of his
features, gave him an air of lifelessness, of one burnt out by the fire
of too much living; but whether the living had been done by Keith
himself or by his immediate ancestors appearances did not disclose.
This look of passionless, motionless repose, like classic sculpture,
was sharply and startlingly belied by a pair of really wonderful
eyes--deeply and intensely blue, brilliant, all seeing, all
comprehending, eyes that seemed never to sleep, seemed the ceaselessly
industrious servants of a brain that busied itself without pause. The
contrast between the dead white calm of his face, the listlessness of
his relaxed figure, and these vivid eyes, so intensely alive, gave to
Donald Keith's personality an uncanniness that was most disagreeable to
Mildred.
"That's what fascinates me," said Cyrilla, when they were discussing
him one day.
"Fascinates!" exclaimed Mildred. "He's tiresome--when he isn't rude."
"Rude?"
"Not actively rude but, worse still, passively rude."
"He is the only man I've ever seen with whom I could imagine myself
falling in love," said Mrs. Brindley.
Mildred laughed in derision. "Why, he's a dead man!" cried she.
"You don't understand," said Cyrilla. "You've never lived with a man."
She forgot completely, as did Mildred herself, so completely had Mrs.
Siddall returned to the modes and thoughts of a girl. "At home--to
live with--you want only reposeful things. That is why the Greeks,
whose instincts were unerring, had so much reposeful statuary. One
grows weary of agitating objects. They soon seem hysterical and
shallow. The same thing's true of persons. For permanent love and
friendship you want reposeful men--calm, strong, silent. The other
kind either wear you out or wear themselves out with you."
"You forget his eyes," put in Stanley. "Did you ever see such eyes!"
"Yes, those eyes of his!" cried Mildred. "You certainly can't call
them reposeful, Mrs. Brindley."
Mrs. Brindley did not seize the opportunity to convict her of
inconsistency. Said she:
"I admit the eyes. They're the eyes of the kind of man a woman wants,
or another man wants in his friend. When Keith looks at you, you feel
that you are seeing the rarest being in the world--an absolutely
reliable person. When I think of him I think of reliable, just as when
you think of the sun you think of brightness."
"I had no idea it was so serious as this," teased Stanley.
"Nor had I," returned Cyrilla easily, "until I began to talk about him.
Don't tell him, Mr. Baird, or he might take advantage of me."
The idea amused Stanley. "He doesn't care a rap about women," said he.
"I hear he has let a few care about him from time to time, but he soon
ceased to be good-natured. He hates to be bored."
As he came just then, they had to find another subject. Mildred
observed him with more interest. She had learned to have respect for
Mrs. Brindley's judgments. But she soon gave over watching him. That
profound calm, those eyes concentrating all the life of the man like a
burning glass-- She had a disagreeable sense of being seen through,
even to her secretest thought, of being understood and measured and
weighed--and found wanting. It occurred to her for the first time that
part of the reason for her not liking him was the best of reasons--that
he did not like her.
The first time she was left alone with him, after this discovery, she
happened to be in an audacious and talkative mood, and his lack of
response finally goaded her into saying: "WHY don't you like me?" She
cared nothing about it; she simply wished to hear what he would say--if
he could be roused into saying anything. He was sitting on the steps
leading from the veranda to the sea--was smoking a cigarette and gazing
out over the waves like a graven image, as if he had always been posed
there and always would be there, the embodiment of repose gazing in
ineffable indifference upon the embodiment of its opposite. He made no
answer.
"I asked you why you do not like me," said she. "Did you hear?"
"Yes," replied he.
She waited; nothing further from him. Said she:
"Well, give me one of your cigarettes."
He rose, extended his case, then a light. He was never remiss in those
kinds of politeness. When she was smoking, he seated himself again and
dropped into the former attitude. She eyed him, wondering how it could
be possible that he had endured the incredible fatigues and hardships
Stanley Baird had related of him--hunting and exploring expeditions
into tropics and into frozen regions, mountain climbs, wild sea voyages
in small boats, all with no sign of being able to stand anything, yet
also with no sign of being any more disturbed than now in this seaside
laziness. Stanley had showed them a picture of him taken twenty years
and more ago when he was in college; he had looked almost the same
then--perhaps a little older.
"Well, I am waiting," persisted she.
She thought he was about to look at her--a thing he had never done, to
her knowledge, since they had known each other. She nerved herself to
receive the shock, with a certain flutter of expectancy, of excitement
even. But instead of looking, he settled himself in a slightly
different position and fixed his gaze upon another point in the
horizon. She noted that he had splendid hands--ideal hands for a man,
with the same suggestion of intense vitality and aliveness that flashed
from his eyes. She had not noted this before. Next she saw that he
had good feet, and that his boots were his only article of apparel that
fitted him, or rather, that looked as if made for him.
She tossed her cigarette over the rail to the sand. He startled her by
speaking, in his unemotional way. He said:
"Now, I like you better."
"I don't understand," said she.
No answer from him. The cigarette depending listlessly from his lips
seemed--as usual--uncertain whether it would stay or fall. She watched
this uncertainty with a curious, nervous interest. She was always
thinking that cigarette would fall, but it never did. Said she:
"Why did you say you liked me less?"
"Better," corrected he.
"We used to have a pump in our back yard at home," laughed she. "One
toiled away at the handle, but nothing ever came. And it was a
promising-looking pump, too."
He smiled--a slow, reluctant smile, but undeniably attractive. Said he:
"Because you threw away your cigarette."
"You object to women smoking?"
"No," said he. His tone made her feel how absurd it was to suspect him
of such provincialism.
"You object to MY smoking?" suggested she; laughing, "Pump! Pump!"
"No," said he.
"Then your remark meant nothing at all?"
He was silent.
"You are rude," said she coldly, rising to go into the house.
He said something, what she did not hear, in her agitation. She paused
and inquired:
"What did you say?"
"I said, I am not rude but kind," replied he.
"That is detestable!" cried she. "I have not liked you, but I have
been polite to you because of Stanley and Mrs. Brindley. Why should
you be insulting to me?"
"What have I done?" inquired he, unmoved. He had risen as she rose,
but instead of facing her he was leaning against the post of the
veranda, bent upon his seaward vigil.
"You have insinuated that your reasons for not liking me were a
reflection on me."
"You insisted," said he.
"You mean that they are?" demanded she furiously. She was amazed at her
wild, unaccountable rage.
He slowly turned his head and looked at her--a glance without any
emotion whatever, simply a look that, like the beam of a powerful
searchlight, seemed to thrust through fog and darkness and to light up
everything in its path. Said he:
"Do you wish me to tell you why I don't like you?"
"No!" she cried hysterically. "Never mind--I don't know what I'm
saying." And she went hastily into the house. A moment later, in her
own room upstairs, she was wondering at herself. Why had she become
confused? What did he mean? What had she seen--or half seen--in the
darkness and fog within herself when he looked at her? In a passion
she cried:
"If he would only stay away!"