She paid the landlady five dollars from a plump little purse of gold
mesh.
“And I’m expecting a--a gentleman to see me within the next half-hour,”
she said.
“Certainly, ma’am; I’ll show him right into the drawring-room and call
you. I hope you’ll like the surroundings, ma’am; I have nobody in my
house but the most refined--”
“Oh, I’m sure I shall. Good day.”
She sat on the edge of the bed in the furnished room she had just
rented, and her face had the look of the girl’s face in a little
autotype of “The Soul’s Awakening through Books” that hung on the
wall opposite her. At last _her_ soul was awake; she could hear it
whispering, whispering in her bosom. Or was that sound merely the
exultation of her excited heart?
At any rate, her soul was awake. She knew it, she could feel it, and it
made her tingle. At last she had broken her bonds, she had proclaimed
herself a real person in a real world. Her doll existence and her
doll-self were further behind than the doll’s house she had left. She
was free--free to be herself, free to live her own life as her own
desires decreed.
“Free! free!” she repeated under her breath. “Free!”
Her very presence gave a glamour to the shabby little room, so
palpitating with life was she, so dainty and pretty and sweet, and so
palpably young. The coils of her bright-brown hair were smooth and
artfully simple, as only the fingers of an expert hair-dresser could
have made them; her clear-skinned, brunette coloring showed the fine
hand of nature given every chance to produce its best; the delicate,
dark curves of her eyebrows, the carmine bows of her lips, the
changing, liquid velvet of her gold-brown eyes, were masterpieces of
the same supreme artist. She was as fair as an April morning that has
somehow strayed into the luxuriance of June.
Suddenly she realized that the air in the little room was close, that
the single tall window was closed top and bottom. With a quick rustle
of silken draperies, she fluttered over to it and threw it wide.
The sounds that came in were not the metallic tenor shriek of the
“elevated,” the rumbling of wagons on cobblestones, the whining of
surface cars: they were voices of the world. She held out her arms to
them before returning to her perch on the bed.
There was such a dazzling host of things to be done that she could
not begin to do anything. Her two big cowhide suitcases, standing in
rather disdainful opulence beside the shabby chiffonier, invited her to
unpack; but she dismissed the invitation with a toss of her head. How
could she desecrate her first hour of freedom by putting clothing into
bureau drawers? A mote-filled streak of sunshine, oblique with late
afternoon, offered more congenial occupation. She let her eyes rest on
it, and dreamed. It was pale golden, like hope, like the turrets of
castles in Spain, like the wealth awaiting claimants at the foot of a
rainbow. For a long time she looked into it, and her face put off its
first flush of exultation for the wistful doubtfulness of reverie.
There was a knock at her door.
“Yes?” she answered.
“Your gentleman friend is a-waiting for you in the drawring-room,
ma’am,” announced the landlady’s voice from outside.
“All right; thank you. I’ll be right down,” she said.
She arose in a small flutter of excitement, and patted her faultless
hair before the mirror, turning her head this way and that. Gone was
her doubtfulness, her wistfulness; she had brightened like a mirror
when a lamp is brought into the room. The warm color in her cheeks
deepened, and her eyes felicitated their doubles in the mirror. Lightly
she fluttered down the broad stairway to the tiled hall below. At the
entrance to the parlor she paused a moment, then swept back the heavy
curtain with such an air as one might use in unveiling a statue.
A man, sitting in the big Turkish rocking-chair between the front
windows, rose hastily to his feet. He was a compact, short-statured,
middle-aged man, with a look of grave alertness behind the friendly set
of his face.
“Mrs. Wendell?” he murmured, coming forward.
“And so you,” she said, still poising between the curtains, “are Ames
Hallton!” Immediately she laughed. “That sounds like melodrama,” she
exclaimed. “I’m very glad to see you.”
They shook hands. Her eyes continued to regard him with the puzzled
interest that wonderful objects frequently inspire when seen closely.
There was a faint shadow of disappointment on her face, but she did not
allow it to linger.
“It was kind--it was awf’ly kind of you to come,” she said. “Sha’n’t we
sit down? Do you know, I almost thought you wouldn’t come.”
“Your letter was very interesting,” he returned dryly.
“I tried to make it that way--so interesting that you just couldn’t
keep from coming.” She folded her hands in her brown-silk lap and
gravely bowed her head so that light from the window could bring out
the copper tints in her hair. She felt the judicial expression of
the gray eyes watching her, and chose the simplest means of making
partizans of them. “I was quite desperate, and after I’d read your
‘Love’s Ordeal’ I knew you were the one person who could help me.”
“Have you already left your husband?” he inquired.
She winced a little, and her brows protested. “You remind me of a
surgeon,” she said; “but that’s what I need--that’s what attracted me
to you in your book. It’s all so calm and simple and scientific. It
made me realize for the first time what I was--it and Ibsen’s ‘Doll’s
House.’ I was nothing but a plaything, a parasite, a mistress, a doll.”
She bowed her head in shame. The warm color flooding her cheeks was as
flawless as that in the finest tinted bisque.
“What you say is very, very interesting,” murmured Hallton; and she
knew from his changed tone that the fact of her beauty had at last been
borne in upon him.
With renewed confidence, almost with boldness, she lifted her head and
continued: “You see, I was married when I was only eighteen--just out
of boarding-school. I was already sick of hearing about love; everybody
made love to me.”
“Of course,” said Hallton, slightly sarcastic.
“I couldn’t help that, could I?” she complained, turning the depths of
her gold-brown eyes full upon him.
He lowered his own eyes and pursed his lips.
“No, of course not,” he admitted. “And then, when you realized that you
were--inconveniently situated, you decided to imitate _Nora_ in the
‘Doll’s House,’ and get out? Is that it?”
“Well, yes; but--”
“So you explained to your husband how you felt, and left him?”
“I didn’t exactly explain; my thoughts seemed to be all mixed up: I
thought it would be better to write, after I’d thought a little more.”
Again she allowed the glory of her eyes to be her best apologist. “I
was going to write as soon as I’d had a talk with you. You see, I came
away only two hours ago, and Harry--my husband--will just think I’ve
gone to visit somewhere.” Her beauty made a confident appeal that he
would sanction her position.
But Hallton looked out of the window.
“And what do you expect to do to earn your living,” he asked, “now that
you’ve decided to quit being a parasite?”
It was cruelly unfamiliar ground, this necessity he put upon her of
answering questions with mere words; she had become accustomed to use
glances as a final statement of her position, as a full and sufficient
answer for any question that a man could ask her. Nevertheless, she
drew herself together and addressed Hallton’s unappreciative profile:
“My husband will give me an allowance, I’m sure, until I decide on
some suitable occupation; or, if he is mean enough not to, there’ll be
alimony or--or something like that, won’t there?” Her eyebrows began to
arch a little as Hallton continued to look out of the window, and her
lips lost some of their softness. “That is one of the things I wished
to speak to you about,” she explained. “I thought perhaps I might take
up writing, and I thought you might tell me the best way to begin.”
Hallton put one hand to his forehead.
“However, of course the most important thing,” she resumed steadily,
“is for me to live my own life. That’s what I’ve come to realize: I
must express myself, I must be free. Why, I didn’t know I had a soul
until I found myself alone a short time ago in the little room that
I had rented myself, all for myself. I’ve been a chattel--yes, a
chattel!” Her voice quavered; she hesitated, waiting for at least a
glance of encouragement.
“I hoped you’d understand, that you’d advise me,” she murmured. “I’m
afraid I’m frightfully helpless; I’ve always been that way.”
“My God! yes, madam!” he exploded, facing her; “I should think you
were!”
She made no reply; she did not even show surprise by a change of
expression; she simply sat up very straight and faced him with the look
of clear-eyed intelligence that she had found best suited to situations
utterly beyond her comprehension. She waited, calm-browed, level-eyed,
judicious-mouthed, for him to explain, to apologize.
“I beg your pardon,” he said.
Her silence demanded more.
“I was rather overcome; I was about to take a cheap, narrow view of
your--your dilemma,” he explained. “I was about to say that your
troubles were as common as dirt, and that you were wrong to take them
so idealistically, and not to realize the simplest fundamentals, of--.
Women are going through a period of readjustment just now, of course.
Your troubles probably aren’t much greater than those of any woman, or
man, who goes out to hunt a job. You don’t need to smash things, to
kick up a row.”
She watched, with the penetrating gaze of a Muse, his half-disgusted
attempts to be polite. She had not the slightest idea what he was
driving at; she merely understood that only his regard for her beauty
and womanhood kept him from saying wild, irrational things. It occurred
to her that he might be mentally unbalanced; geniuses often were.
“Look here,” he continued, growing increasingly excited under her look
of beautiful, understanding aloofness, “wouldn’t it be a good thing if
you decided, before beginning to live your own life, just what sort of
life your own life is--what you want to make of it? You’re breaking
away from a beastly artificial environment; aren’t you afraid you’ll
have as hard a time as, say, a pet canary turned out to make a living
among the sparrows? Besides, canaries are quite as useful as sparrows.”
“I hardly think,” she said with great determination, “that I can
be compared to a pet canary; and I’ll have to ask you to be more
considerate in referring to my husband. He may not understand me, but
he is kind, and as good as he knows--”
“Excuse me,” interrupted Hallton, putting his hand to his forehead;
“but I have no recollection of referring to your husband at all.”
“You spoke of my breaking away from him,” she said, “and you called
him a beastly artificial--I won’t repeat what you said.” The delicate
curves of her cheeks warmed with the memory of the unfamiliar
appellation, with faint doubt as to her first idea of its value.
“However, that’s neither here nor there. I wish to ask you a simple,
straightforward question, Mr. Hallton: do you, or do you not, think it
is right for persons to live their own lives?”
For a moment she thought she had succeeded in bringing him back to a
humble consideration of her case; he looked at her with something like
consternation in his face, his alert, gray eyes blinking rapidly. Light
from the window made her massed hair a soft, golden glimmer above the
sweet, injured, girlish seriousness of her face; her lips softened,
curved downward, like a troubled child’s.
But Hallton turned from her to look out of the window.
“Your own life, your own life!” he exploded again. “Why, you great,
big, beautiful doll, that’s your own life--a doll’s life! When is a
doll not a doll?” He got out of his chair and jerked his coat together
at the throat. His lower jaw protruded; he looked through rather
than at her, and his eyes were sick and tired. “Even your talk is
the talk of an automaton; you haven’t an idea without a forest of
quotation-marks around it,” he said. “If you weren’t so good-looking,
you’d be a private in that big brigade of female nincompoops who write
their soul-troubles to the author of the latest successful book. Your
beauty removes you from that class--at least as long as I look at you.”
He bowed to her, with an expression slightly resembling a sneer.
“Your beauty makes you a temptation; for you’d soon be looking for
another cage, or another doll’s house, and any man might be glad to
feed you. If I weren’t so busy, and you weren’t so devoid of character,
common sense, everything else that--”
“Oh, you brute!” she cried, recoiling from the crassly material
admiration in his eyes. “How dare you speak to me like that?”
“Perfect!” He bowed with his hand on his heart. “I press the
button, and you utter the absolutely obvious remarks. You are a
masterpiece--such a doll as would grace any home of the middle of the
last century. And my advice to you is to go back to your home and to
your devoted husband. I take it for granted that he is devoted: the
prices which you mechanical beauties command usually include devotion
by the bucketful. But perhaps I’m unnecessarily harsh because I see you
slipping through my fingers. Good day, Mrs. Wendell; and good luck!”
She saw him go with a feeling that the universe had suddenly been
inverted and that she was scrambling around amid a Noah’s ark load
of displaced properties. It was not so much that he had disturbed
her ideals, her plans, her dream of freedom, but that he could have
treated her so cavalierly; that he could have been so impolite, so
unreasonable, so brutal; that he could so completely have failed to
understand her--that was what left her as dazed and terrified as a lost
child.
“Oh, he is a cad, a perfect beast!” she gasped to herself as she fled
up the broad stairway to her room.
She threw herself down on the hard little bed, crumpled silks, crumpled
hair, crumpled rose-petals of cheeks, crumpled pansies-and-dew of eyes.
All her sweetness and delicacy wilted and drooped and quivered in the
cold, gathering gloom of the little room. The city snarled and rumbled
and hissed and groaned outside, and its great composite voice was the
voice of loneliness incarnate.
“Oh, there’s no one to take care of me!” she sobbed suddenly, and burst
into a flood of tears.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: Half-tone plate engraved by H. Davidson