“Lizzie, don’t mind what he says.”
Her hand was cold under mine.
“He knows,” she answered almost in a whisper, “he _knows_.”
“I can get backers for you”--it was rash, but I know how to manage
Betty--“better than he ever was, the best kind of backers.”
She jerked her hand away and glared at me.
“What do you mean by that? Do you think he’s going to give me up? Why,
you must be crazy.” She jumped to her feet looking down at me with a
face of savage anger. “Do you think I haven’t made good? Have they,”
with a violent gesture to the door, “told you so? They’re fools,
idiots, imbeciles. Masters give me up--ah--” She turned away and then
back. “Why he’s never had any one with such promise as I have. He’s
banking on me. I’m going to bring him to the top. He borrowed the money
to send me to Vignorol. Throw me down now, just when I’m getting there,
just when I’m proving he was right? Oh, I can’t talk to you. You’ve no
sense. You’re as big a fool as all the rest.”
And she rushed out of the room, banging the door till the whole
apartment shook.
I lay thinking about it till Emma came to get me my supper. She was
right in one thing--I _was_ a fool. In my blundering attempt at
encouragement I had gone straight to the heart of her fear, dragged it
out into the light, held up in front of her the thing she was trying
not to see--that Masters would give her up. Fool--it was a mild name
for me. And _poor_ Lizzie--tragic Bonaventura!
It’s night again and I am dressed in my best with a fur cloak on to
keep off the chill. I’ve got to write, not a sudden visitation of the
Muse, but to ease my mind. If you haven’t got a sympathetic pair of
ears to pour your troubles into, pouring them out on paper is the next
best thing.
It’s two days since I have seen Lizzie. Yesterday I was in my room all
day nursing my cold and expecting her, but she didn’t come. Neither did
she to-day, and all I could surmise was that she was angry with me for
being a fool. As I feel I was one and yet don’t like to hear it from
other people, I made no effort to get into communication with her.
This evening I was well enough to go out in a cab with all my furs and
a foot warmer, to dine with Roger’s widowed sister, Mrs. Ashworth. I
was a good deal fluttered over the dinner, guessed why it had been
arranged. It was a small affair, the Fergusons, Roger and I. Preceded
by a call from Mrs. Ashworth, it had a meaningful aspect, a delicate
suggestion of welcoming me into the family. I blush as I write it.
I don’t know why I should, or why love and marriage are matters
surrounded by self-consciousness and shame. Who was it explained the
embarrassment of lovers, their tendency to hide themselves in corners,
as an instinctive sense of guilt at the prospect of bringing children
into a miserable world? I think it was Schopenhauer. Sounds like
him--cross-grained old misanthrope.
Mrs. Ashworth is Roger’s only near relation and he regards her as
the choicest flower of womanhood. I don’t wonder. In her way she
is a finished product, no raw edges, no loose ends. Everything is
in harmony--her thin faintly-lined face, her silky white hair, her
pale hands with slightly prominent veins, her voice with its gentle
modulations. Nothing cheap or second rate could exist near her. She
wouldn’t stamp them out--I can’t imagine her stamping--they would
simply wither in the rarified atmosphere. Her friends are like herself,
her house is like herself. When I go there I feel strident and coarse.
As I enter the portal I instinctively tune my key lower, feel my high
lights fading, undergo a refining and subduing process as if a chromo
were being transmuted into a Bartolozzi engraving.
As my cab crawled down-town--I need hardly say Mrs. Ashworth lives in a
house on lower Fifth Avenue, built by her father--I uneasily wondered
if the Bohemian atmosphere in which I dwelt had left any marks upon me.
I tried to obliterate them and made mental notes of things I mustn’t
mention. Memories of Miss Bliss’ golden corset string rose uneasily,
and Lizzie Harris, and oh, Mr. Masters! I ended by achieving a sense of
grievance against Mrs. Ashworth. No one had any right to be so refined.
It was all very well if you inherited a social circle and large
means, but-- The cab drew up with a jolt and I alighted. All unseemly
exuberance died as the light from the door fell on me. I spoke so
softly the driver had difficulty in hearing my order and when I walked
up the steps I minced daintily.
But it was a delightful dinner. Harry and I were on one side, Betty
and Roger on the other. At the foot of the table was Mrs. Ashworth’s
son, Roger Clements Ashworth, a charming boy still at college. It was
all perfectly done, nothing showy, nothing in the fashion. Betty’s
pearls looked a good deal too large beside the modest string that Mrs.
Ashworth wore, which was given to her great, great grandmother by
Admiral Rochambeau. The dining-room walls were lined with portraits,
with over the fireplace, that foundation stone of the family’s glory,
Roger Clements, “The Signer.”
I thought of my apartment and my late associates and felt that I was
leading a double life.
When I came home the house was very silent. Mounting the dim dirty
stairs with the smell of dead dinners caught in the corners, I wondered
how Mrs. Ashworth could countenance me. But after all, it was part of
her fineness that she had no quarrel with the obscure and lowly. If she
could not broaden the walls of her world--and you had only to talk to
her ten minutes to see that she couldn’t--within those walls all was
choice and lovely. I would have to live up to it, that was all.
I had got that far when I heard a heavy step and Mr. Masters loomed
up on the flight above. The stairs are very narrow and I looked up
smiling, expecting him to retreat. He came on, however, not returning
my smile, staring straight before him with an immovable, brooding
glance. I can’t say he didn’t see me, but he had the air of being so
preoccupied that what his eye lighted on did not penetrate to his
brain. As at our first meeting I received an impression of brutal
strength, his broad shoulders seeming to push the walls back, his
flat-topped head upheld on a neck like a gladiator. I intended asking
him about the concert and the notices, but his look froze me, and I
backed against the wall for him to pass.
As he brushed by he growled a word of greeting. He was in the hall
below when I broke out of the consternation created by his manner,
leaned over the rail and called down:
“Mr. Masters, how is Miss Harris?”
“All right,” he muttered without stopping or looking up and went on
down the lower flight to the street.
They had had the interview.
The house was as silent as a tomb. I stole to the foot of the upper
flight, looked up and listened. Not a sound. The rustling of my dress
as I moved startled me. What _had_ he said to her? I couldn’t read his
face--but his manner! I wavered and waited, the street noises coming
muffled through the intense stillness. Then I decided I’d not intrude
upon her, and came in here. Whatever happened she’ll tell me in her own
good time, and the quietness up there is reassuring. Her anger is apt
to take noisy forms. If she had been throwing oranges out of the window
I would have heard her. But I do wish I might have seen her to-night.
X
I DIDN’T sleep well that night. The memory of Mr. Masters’ set sullen
face kept me wakeful. At four I got up, lit the light and tried to
read Kidd’s _Social Evolution_. Through the ceiling I could hear Mr.
Hamilton’s subdued snoring on the floor above. It seemed like the deep
and labored breathing of that submerged world whose upward struggle I
was following through Mr. Kidd’s illuminating page.
After breakfast, when no sign or word had come from Lizzie, I decided
to stay in till I heard from her. I dawdled through the morning and
when Emma was cleaning up went out on the landing and listened. The
upper floors were wrapt in quiet. I stole up a flight and a half and
looked at her door--tight shut and not a sound. I went down again
worried, though it was possible she had gone out and I not heard her.
After lunch I opened the register and listened--complete silence.
During the rest of the afternoon I sat waiting for her footfall. Dusk
came and no woman had mounted the stairs. At seven a tap came at my
door and Count Delcati pushed it open.
The count brought letters from the Italian aristocracy to its New York
imitation and goes to entertainments that the rest of us read of in
the papers. He was arrayed for festival and looked like an up-to-date
French poster, a high-shouldered black figure with slender arms
slightly bowed out at the elbows. His collar was very stiff, his shirt
bosom a clear expanse of thick smooth white. He wore his silk hat back
from his forehead, and his youthful yet sophisticated face, with its
intense black eyes and dash of dark mustache, might have been looking
at me from the walls of the Salon Independent.
He removed his hat, and standing in the doorway, said:
“Have you seen her to-day?”
“No,” I answered. “Have you?”
He shook his head.
“I think she must be away. When I came home at six I went up there and
knocked, but there was no answer.”
There was nothing in this to increase my uneasiness. She came and
went at all hours, often taking her dinner at what she called “little
joints” in the lower reaches of the city. Nevertheless my uneasiness
did increase, gripped hold of me as I looked at the young man’s gravely
attentive face.
“Have you seen her since the concert?” he asked.
“Yes, the day after, when you were all in here.”
“She hadn’t seen the notices?”