“Lizzie, I can get the money for you to go back to Vignorol--I can get
people who will stand behind you and give you every chance.”
She looked listlessly at the wall and shook her head.
“It’s no use. I don’t want it. Masters was right. I know it now.”
“You mean--” I stopped; it seemed too cruel.
But she was minded now to be as ruthlessly clear-sighted about herself
as she had once been obstinately blind.
“The whole equipment--I haven’t got it. He banked too much on my
looks, thought they were going to go farther than they did. If I’d had
a great voice--one of the wonderful voices of the world, like Patti
or Melba--it wouldn’t have mattered about not having the rest. But
there are hundreds with voices as good as mine. He thought beauty and
dramatic instinct were going to carry me through. He knew I had the one
and he thought he could give me the other--train it into me. Nobody
knows how hard he tried. He used to make me stand up and go over every
gesture after him, he even made marks on the floor where I was to put
my feet. And then he’d sit down and hold his head and groan. Poor
Jack”--she gave a little dry laugh--“he had an awful time!”
I could realize something of Masters’ desperation. To have discovered a
song-bird in the western wilds, hoped to retrieve his fortunes with it
and then found a defect in its mechanism that neither work nor brains
nor patience could supply--it _was_ bitter luck.
“He was an artist,” she went on. “He could have gone straight to the
top but he lost his voice after the first few years, while he was still
touring the small European towns.”
I noticed that she spoke in the past tense, her tone one of melancholy
reminiscence as if he really _was_ dead. She might have been delivering
his funeral sermon and placing flowers of memory on his tomb.
“Why couldn’t you have got from him what he tried to teach you? I can’t
understand, you’re so intelligent.”
She mused for a moment, then said:
“I’ve been thinking of that myself while I’ve been lying here. Looking
back I don’t seem to have given it my full mind and I’ve been wondering
if perhaps I wasn’t too taken up with him. I couldn’t get away from
the real romance, the love-making and the quarrels, first one and then
the other. There wasn’t anything else in my life. I hadn’t time to be
interested in those women I had to pretend to be. My affairs and me
were the only things that counted.”
“But you were so much in earnest, so desperately anxious to succeed.”
She gave me a side look, sharp and full of meaning.
“Because, though I wouldn’t acknowledge it, I knew he wanted to break
with me and the only way I could keep him was to make good.”
“Good heavens, how horrible!” I winced under her pitiless plain
speaking.
“Yes, it was,” she said gently.
There was a pause. The little palliatives I had to offer, the timid
consolations, were shriveled up by that fierce and uncompromising
candor. Her voice broke the silence, quietly questioning:
“I suppose you think I did a very bad thing?”
“Oh, Lizzie, don’t ask me that. I can’t sit in judgment. That’s for
you, not for me.”
She looked at her hands, long and thin on the quilt. Thus down-drooped,
her face was shockingly haggard and wasted. Yet of the storm which had
caused this ruin she was now speaking with a cold impersonal calm, as
if it had all happened to somebody else. My own emotions that swelled
to passionate expression died away before that inscrutable and baffling
indifference.
“He was a very fine man,” she said suddenly.
“_Fine?_” I gasped.
“Yes, in lots of ways. About his art and work for one thing--he had
great ideals. And he was very good to me.”
That was the coping stone. I heard myself saying in a faint voice:
“How?”
“Well, for one thing, he never lied to me. He told the truth about the
singing, about me, about everything. He wasn’t a coward, either. He
didn’t run away and send me a letter. He came and had it out with me,
made me understand.”
This time I couldn’t speak. Her next words were like the laying of the
final wreath on the bier of the loved and respected dead:
“It had to end and he ended it. He didn’t care how much it hurt me, or
what I felt, or what anybody thought. That’s the right way to be--not
to let other people’s feelings make you afraid, not to be considerate
because it’s easier than fighting it out. He was a fine man.”
That was John Masters’ obituary as delivered by his discarded mistress.
The thing I couldn’t get over was that she showed no signs of
penitence. As far as I could see she was in no way inclined to admit
her fault, to bow her head and say, “I have sinned.” Her own conduct
in the affair seemed to be the last thing that troubled her. Yet I
can say that I, a woman with the traditional moral views, could not
think her either abandoned or base. I don’t know to what world or creed
she belonged, or to what ethical code she adhered, except that it was
not mine or anybody else’s that I have ever known. Whatever it was it
seemed to uphold her in her course. What was done was done and that
was the end of it. No strugglings of inner irresolution, no attempt to
exonerate or exculpate, disturbed her somberly steadfast poise. What
would have been admirable to any one was her acceptance of the blow,
and her recognition of her lover’s right to deliver it.
As she improved, moved about the room and took her place against
accustomed backgrounds, I began to realize that the change in her
was more than skin deep. Her wild-fire was quenched, her moods, her
beamings, her flashes of anger were gone. A wistful passivity had
taken their place, lovely but alien to her who was once Lizzie Harris.
Whatever Masters had said in that last interview had acted like an
extinguisher on a bright and dancing flame. It made me think of Dean
Swift and Vanessa. Nobody knows what the dean said to Esther Vanhomrigh
in the arbor among the little trees--only she had returned from it a
broken thing to die soon after. Her lover had killed her; Lizzie’s had
not quite, but he had certainly put out the light in that wayward and
rebellious spirit.
It has its good points, for those people who are to help her find her
more comprehensible, much more to their liking than they would the old
Lizzie. Roger, for example, has met her again and is quite impressed.
It was the other afternoon when I was sitting with her in her front
room. The door was open and as I talked I listened for steps that would
stop two flights below at _my_ door. I had had no word that steps might
be expected, but one doesn’t always need the word. There are mornings
when a woman wakes and says to herself, “He’ll come to-day.” It had
been one of these mornings.
At five, when the lights were lit and I had put on the tea water to
boil, I heard the ascending feet. If it was some one for me could I
bring them up? Lizzie would be delighted. I ran down and found him
standing at my door preparing to knock with the head of his cane. Would
he mind coming up--I didn’t like to leave her too much alone? No, he
wouldn’t, and up he came.
Lizzie, long and limp in the easy chair, was sheltered from the lamp
glow by the paper rose. She smiled and held out her hand and I saw he
was shocked by the change in her, as well he might be. The only other
time he had seen her was the night of the concert, the climax of that
little day to which every dog of us is entitled.
All things that are frail and feeble appeal to Roger. Both he and Mrs.
Ashworth get stiff and ice-bound before bumptious, full-fed, prosperous
people. He sat down beside her and made himself very agreeable. And
I was pleased, immensely pleased; could better endure the thought of
Lizzie like a smashed flower if by her smashing she was to win his
approval and interest.
As I made the tea I could hear their voices rising and falling. Coming
up the passage with the tray the doorway framed them like a picture and
I stopped and gazed admiringly. It was like the cover of a ten-cent
magazine--a graceful woman and a personable man conversing elegantly
in a gush of lamplight. The lamplight was necessary to the illusion,
for it hid Roger’s wrinkles and made his gray hair look fair. He could
easily have passed for the smooth-shaven, high-collared wooer, and
Lizzie, languidly reclining with listening eyes, quite fittingly filled
the rôle of wooee.
An hour afterward, as we went down-stairs, Roger was silent till we got
to my door. Then he said:
“She seems very different from what she was that night when I saw her
in your room.”
“She is different. You don’t seem to realize she’s been very sick.”
“Yes--but--”