NO THOROUGHFARE
It was hours later, well along toward one o'clock in the morning when
Rush coming into his room saw a light under the door communicating with
his sister's and, knocking, was told he might come in.
He found her in bed for the night, reclining against a stack of pillows
as if she had been reading, but from the way she blinked at the softened
light from the lamp on her night table, it appeared that she had switched
it on only when she heard him coming. She might have been crying though
she looked composed enough now;--symmetrically composed, indeed, a braid
over each shoulder, her hands folded, her legs straight down the middle
of the bed making a single ridge that terminated in a little peak where
her feet stuck up (the way heroines lie, it occurred to Rush, in the last
act of grand operas, when they are dead) and this effect was enhanced by
the new-laundered whiteness of the sheet, neatly folded back over the
blankets and the untumbled pillows.
"You always look so nice and clean," he told her, and, forbearing to sit
on the edge of the bed as a pat of her hand invited him to, pulled up a
chair instead. It was going to be a real talk, not just a casual
good-night chat.
"We were wondering what had become of you," he said. "Poor Graham
was worried."
"Graham!" But she did not follow that up. "I decided we'd had temperament
enough for one evening," she explained in a matter-of-fact tone, "so when
I saw I was going to explode I came away quietly and did it in here. By
the time it was over I thought I might as well go to bed."
"It doesn't look as if you'd exploded very violently," he observed.
"Oh, I've cleared away the ruins," she said. "I hate reminders of a
mess."
It was like her exquisiteness to do that and it tightened his throat to
think about it. He'd have liked to make sure what the cause of the
explosion had been, but thought he'd better wait a while for that. All he
ventured in the way of sympathetic approbation was to reach out and pat
the ridge that extended down the middle of the bed. "It certainly has
been one devil of an evening," he said.
"I suppose it has," she agreed, thoughtfully. Then, noticing that this
had rather thrown him off his stride, she went on, "Tell me all that's
been happening since I ran away. How did Paula act when it was over?"
"I haven't seen her," he said. "She never came down at all. Of course it
must have been--well, in a way, a devil of an evening for her, too.
Though I can't believe our being there cramped her style very much in
singing those songs. If it did, I'd hate to think what she would have
done if we hadn't been. I hope March liked his own stuff. He was there
all the while, you know. She must have had him tucked away in that little
old room of Annie's that opened off the nursery. Somewhere anyhow,
because long after every one else had gone, he came down-stairs with the
Frenchman. I got one surprise just then all right. He's a private
soldier, did you know that? Just a plain doughboy."
"Overseas?" Mary asked.
"As far as Bordeaux, with the Eighty-sixth. Saxaphone player with one of
the artillery bands. In a way I'm rather glad of it. That that's what he
turns out to be, I mean."
"Why?" Mary made the word rather crisply.
"Oh, well," Rush explained uncomfortably, "you know what it had begun to
look like. Paula quarreling with father about him and not going down to
dinner; and--cutting loose like that over his music. But of course there
couldn't be anything of that sort--with a chap like that."
"What is the lowest military rank," Mary inquired, "that you think Paula
could fall in love with?"
The satirical import of her question was not lost upon him but he held
his ground. "It may sound snobbish but it's true just the same," he
insisted. "A doughboy's a doughboy, and Paula wouldn't get mixed up with
one--any more than you would."
There was a silence after that.
"His music didn't sound to me like doughboy music," Mary observed at
last. "Nor his going to Walt Whitman to get the words."
"Was that Walt Whitman? It sounded to me as if he was making it up as he
went along." He had the grace to grin at himself over that admission,
however. "Oh, well," he concluded, "Paula's all right anyhow. I think
she's--wonderful, myself. Only poor old dad! He is a peach, Mary. It's
funny how differently I remember him. He acted like one real sport
to-night."
"Afterward, you mean." Mary, it seemed, would not have characterized her
father's behavior earlier in the evening in just that way. "Tell me all
about it. Only reach me a cigarette first."
He obeyed the latter injunction with an air of protest. "It's the only
thing you do that I wish you didn't," he said.
"Why? Do you think it's bad for me?"
He wouldn't commit himself by answering that. The retort it offered her
was obvious. "It doesn't seem like you," he explained.
"Very well," she said, taking a light from his match, "then I shall go on
just to keep you reminded that I'm not plaster of Paris. I like to have
somebody around who doesn't think that."
"Father doesn't," Rush asserted, and got so eager a look of inquiry from
her that he regretted having nothing very substantial to satisfy it
with. "Oh, down there in the hall," he said, "after everybody but March
and the Frenchman had gone. Aunt Lucile began fussing about you. She was
rather up in the air, anyway. She'd done the nonchalant, all
right,--overdone it a bit in fact--as long as there was any one around
to play up to. But when we had got rid of the Novellis--they were the
last--she did a balloon ascension. She had a fit or two in general and
then came round to wondering about you. Wanted to know when we'd last
seen you--what _could_ have happened to you,--that sort of thing. I'd
been having a little talk with Graham so I supposed I knew. But of
course I said nothing about that."
He was looking rather fixedly away from her and so missed her frown of
incomprehension. "Well, but father?" she asked.
It had been coming over him that what his father had said was not just
what he wanted to report to Mary. Not while she felt about him as she
had confessed, down there in New York, she did. But he had let himself
in for it.
"Why, it wasn't much," he said; "just that nothing could have happened to
you; that you wouldn't 'fall off anything and break.' What you said about
plaster of Paris made me think of it. He was only trying to get Aunt
Lucile quieted down."
"While he had Paula on his mind, he didn't want to be bothered about me.
That's natural enough, of course." Her dry brittle tone was anything but
reassuring. Still without looking at her, he hurried on.
"Well, it _is_ natural that he should be worried about Paula. I know
how I'd feel about a thing like that. It was rather weird while we
waited after Aunt Lucile went up to bed for those two to come down.
Old Nat was fussing around the drawing-room, shutting up and putting
things to rights. Dad sent him to bed, too, told him we'd do the
locking up ourselves. I got the idea that he was expecting Paula to
come sailing down, with March, you know, and perhaps didn't want any
one around. So I made a bluff of going to bed myself. But he told me
to stick; said we'd settle down and have a smoke presently. I don't
know how long it was before we heard LaChaise and March coming but it
seemed a deuce of a while.
"Dad was right on the job then, calm as a May morning. He introduced
March and me and said something polite about his music, never a word
about his having been hiding all the evening.
"Then LaChaise spoke to dad in French. Said there was some business he
wanted to talk with him about and that he'd like an appointment. I wasn't
sure that dad quite got him so I crashed in and interpreted.
"Dad reached out and took hold of me, as if he was sort of glad that I
was there, and told me to tell Mr. LaChaise that we had plenty of time
right now, and if there was anything to discuss the sooner we got at it,
the better.
"I handed that on in French--I tried not to lose any of the kick out of
it--and while I was doing that March made a move to go.
"Dad told him not to. I wish you could have been there. I remember he
said after inviting him to stay, 'I imagine you are as much concerned in
this as any one.' It didn't faze March though. He said that he didn't
believe that what Mr. LaChaise had to say concerned him. Then he made a
stiff little bow for good night and went off down the hall to get his
hat. Oh, that wasn't like a doughboy, I'll admit. I went to the door
with him and we made a little conversation there for a minute or two just
to--take off the edge. That's when I found out where he'd been.
"Father had taken LaChaise into the drawing-room when I got back but I
don't believe either of them had said three words. They were waiting for
me. Dad led off by asking what he thought of March, and LaChaise told
him, though you could see that wasn't what was on his mind. He said March
had a very strong and original talent and that he believed he had operas
in him. There was one about finished that he was going to look at
to-morrow. Then he pulled up short and said it was Paula he wanted to
talk about.
"Dad caught that all right without waiting for me to translate it. What
he wanted to get at, right at the jump off, was whether Paula knew
LaChaise had come down to talk about her. Was he to consider Mr.
LaChaise her emissary? I took a chance on _émissaire_ for that and it
worked all right.
"Well, the Frenchman said, as cool as you please, that he was. Said he
wouldn't have ventured to intrude otherwise:--and dad froze to ice right
there. But LaChaise went on and spoke his piece just the same. He said
he'd come to-night to verify the enthusiastic reports he had heard of her
singing but that she had outdone them all. He said the voice itself was
unusual, of great power and of beautiful quality, adequate in range for
anything that could be expected of her. But he said that was only the
beginning of it. The important things were that she was a real musician
in the first place and a woman with real passions in the second.
"I didn't know whether to translate that to dad or to shut the Frenchman
up myself right there. I would have liked to take a punch at him. But, of
course, you're nothing but a part of the machinery when you are
interpreting, so I handed it on, without looking at dad. All he said was,
'We'll get to the point, if you please, Monsieur.'
"LaChaise understood that without waiting for me. He said he had had no
hesitation in offering Paula a contract to sing the leading dramatic
soprano rôles at Ravinia this summer and that he had told her if it
worked anywhere near as well as he expected it to there was no doubt of
her getting a good Metropolitan engagement next season. He finished up by
saying he had had to ask her to make a decision as soon as possible
because he was at that moment negotiating with some one else who couldn't
be put off very long.
"Dad asked then whether Paula had given him an answer to-night. LaChaise
told him she had accepted--subject to his obtaining dad's consent. Then
he finished up with a full-dress bow. 'That is the point you have asked
me to come to, Monsieur,' he said.
"Dad never said a word for a minute. You could see it must have been
ghastly for him. I guess LaChaise must have seen it himself, for he went
on and tried to soften it down a bit. Said he didn't want to seem to
_brusqué_ the affair. All he wanted to ask dad to-night was that he
should agree to consider the matter, bearing in mind that a real artist
like _madame_, his wife, couldn't be kept shut up in a brass tower
indefinitely.
"Dad cut him off rather short on that. He said that from a legal or
business point of view, which was all that could possibly concern
LaChaise, his consent wasn't necessary. If his wife signed a contract he
would put no obstacles in the way of her fulfilling it. Beyond that he
had obviously nothing to say.
"Well, that was about all. They both put on all the trimmings saying good
night to each other and LaChaise thanked me very handsomely for
interpreting. I chucked him into his overcoat and let him out the front
door.--And bolted it after him, you bet! Lord, but I hated to go back to
dad after that.
"I needn't have worried though. When we sat down for our smoke in the
library, it was exactly as if nothing had happened. I'd have been tearing
my hair but old dad.... He certainly is a peach."
Rush paused there for some comment from her and when she made none,
looked around at her. Her hands were lightly clasped across her breast,
her eyelids nearly closed. Save for her barely perceptible breathing, she
lay dead still.
"Have I talked you to sleep?" he asked.
"No," she said, "I was thinking what a mixed-up thing life is. The way
you can't help liking and admiring the people you wish you could hate and
hating and hurting the ones you love." Then her eyes came open with a
smile and she held out a hand toward him. "You don't have to answer that.
It's the sort of silly thing people say when they have been drinking gin.
What I was really wondering was whether there will be anything about Mr.
March's opera in that contract Paula signs with LaChaise?"
This startled him. "I never thought of that," he answered. "Do you
suppose that's it? Oh, it can't be! She wouldn't chuck dad for that
doughboy piano tuner. Not Paula!"
"Oh, no," said Mary. "She wouldn't do that. It wouldn't look to her like
that, anyhow. She's got enough, don't you see, for everybody; for dad
and--and the doughboy as well. Father wouldn't have any less, if he could
just make up his mind that he didn't have to have it all. And as for the
other, why, it might be the greatest thing that could possibly happen to
him;--being in love with Paula and writing operas for her and having her
sing them the way she sang those songs to-night. I suppose that's what a
genius needs. And you couldn't blame her exactly. At least there always
have been people like that and the world hasn't blamed them--no matter
how moral it pretends to be. It's the other sort of people, the ones who
won't take anything unless they can have it all and who can't give
anything unless they can give it all--those that haven't but one thing to
give--that are--no good."
He didn't more than half understand her, which was fortunate, since he
was rather horrified as it was. He put it down broadly as the same sort
of nervous crisis that he had encountered in New York, a sort of
hypersensitiveness due to the strain of war work--the thing he had amused
her by speaking of as shell-shock.
"I think perhaps I know what has upset you to-night," he said
uncomfortably. "At least Graham told me about it."
She looked at him with a puzzled frown. It was the third time that he had
brought up the Stannard boy's name. What in the world...?
"He's terribly distressed about it," Rush went on. In his embarrassment
he wasn't looking at her and she composed her face. "He didn't
mean to shock you or--or offend you. He says he gave you reason enough
to be offended, but only because you didn't understand. He says he
has always--cared for you a lot. He said he thought you were the
most--well, about the most perfect thing in the world. Only to-night
he said he got carried off his feet and went further than he had any
right to. And he simply can't bear to have you think that he meant
anything--disrespectful. He felt he had to apologize to you before he
went home, but you didn't come down so finally he told me about it and
made me promise that I'd tell you to-night. Of course, I don't know what
he did," Rush concluded, "but I can tell you this. Graham Stannard's a
white man; they don't make them whiter than that."
Her reply, although it was unequivocally to the effect that it was all
right--Graham needn't worry--failed, altogether, to reassure him. Was
this, after all, he wondered, what she had exploded about? She prevented
further inquiry, however, by an abrupt change of the subject, demanding
to be told what it was that he and his father, all these hours, had been
talking about.
He took up the topic with unforced enthusiasm. He had been surprised and
deeply touched over the discovery that his father did not require to be
argued out of the project either to send him back to Harvard or to start
him in at the bottom in Martin Whitney's bank. "If he'd just been
through it all himself, he couldn't have understood any better how I
feel about it."
"Did you tell him about the farm?" Mary asked.
This was an idea of Graham's which she and Rush had been developing with
him during the half hour in the drawing-room before they had gone down to
dinner. Young Stannard, during his two years on a destroyer, had
conceived an extraordinary longing for Mother Earth, and had filled in
his dream in tolerably complete detail. What he wanted was an out-of-door
life which should not altogether deprive him of the pleasures of an urban
existence; and he accomplished this paradox by premising a farm within
convenient motoring distance of Chicago, on one of the hard roads.
Somewhere in the dairy belt, out Elgin way perhaps. You could have
wonderful week-end house parties in a place like that, even in winter,
with skiing and skating for amusements, and in summer it would be simply
gorgeous. And, of course, one could always run into town for the night if
there was anything particular to come for.
Mary had volunteered to keep house for them and they had talked a lot of
amusing nonsense as to what her duties should be. Graham, too, had a kid
sister, only seventeen, who fitted admirably into the picture. She loved
the country, simply lived in riding breeches and rode like a man--a sight
better than most men--and drove a car like a young devil. There was
nothing, in fact, she couldn't do.
Graham was altogether serious about it. He had been scouting around
during the fortnight since his return and had his eyes on two or three
places that might do. There was one four-hundred-acre property that was
altogether desirable, ideal in fact, except for the one painful
particular that the cost of it was just about twice as much as Graham's
father was willing to run to. But if Rush would go in with him they need
seek no further. The thing was as good as settled.
"I did talk to father about it," Rush now told Mary. "The thing is a real
idea. Graham and I talked seriously about it while we were smoking before
we went up-stairs. The scheme is to run a dairy, hog and poultry
combination on a manufacturing basis and then sell our whole product
direct to two or three customers in town, one or two of the
clubs--perhaps a hotel. Deliver by motor truck every day, you see, and
leave the middleman out entirely. It's the only way to beat the game.
Father saw it like a shot. He said it would take a lot of money, of
course, but he thought he could manage my share."
Mary relaxed just perceptibly deeper in the pillows and her eyelids
drooped again. "It's getting awfully late," Rush said; "don't you want to
go to sleep?" But he needed no urging to go on when she asked him to tell
her all about it, and for another half hour he elaborated the plan.
He was still breezing along on the full tide of the idea, when,
happening to glance at her little traveling clock, he pulled himself up
short, took away her extra pillows, switched off her night lamp and
ordered her to go to sleep at once. Her apparent docility did not
altogether satisfy him and two or three times during the hour before he
himself fell asleep, he sat up to look under the door and see whether
she had turned the light on again.
He was right about that, of course. The enforced calm Mary had imposed
upon herself as a penance for the tempest of emotion she had
indulged--she had lain without moving, hardly a finger, from the time she
remade that bed and crept back into it until hearing Rush coming she
switched on the light--had had a sort of hypnotic effect upon her. So
long as her body did not move, it ceased to exist altogether and set her
spirit free, like a pale-winged luna moth from its chrysalis to adventure
into the night. The light it kept fluttering back to was that blinding
experience with March while the music of his song had surged through her
and her hand had been crushed in his.
Rush's coming in had brought her back to that tired still body of hers
again; his voice soothed, his presence comforted her; at his occasional
touch she was able to relax. (If only there were some one who loved her,
who would hold her tight--tight--) She hoped he would go on talking to
her; on and on. Because while he talked she could manage to stop
thinking--by the squirrel-like process of storing away all the ideas he
was suggesting to her for consideration later.
But when the respite was over and she lay back in the dark again, she
made no effort to deny admission to the thoughts that came crowding so
thickly. She must think; she must, before the ordeal of the next
breakfast table, have taken thought. She must have decided if not what
she should do, at least what she could hope for. She was much clearer and
saner for the little interlude with Rush.
Suppose in the first place;--suppose that Paula's rebellion was serious.
Suppose the Tower of Brass violated and the Princess carried away by the
_jinn_ or upon the magic carpet--whichever it was--to a world where none
of them could follow her. Suppose John Wollaston bereft again. Would not
Mary's old place be hers once more? Would not everything be just as it
had been during those two years before her father went to Vienna?
But some instinct in her revolted utterly at that. It was an instinct
that she could not completely reason out. But she knew that if such a
calamity befell, her old place would not exist or would be intolerable
if it did.
Suppose again:--suppose that Paula's rebellion could be somehow
frustrated. Would it be possible to save Paula for her father by saving
March from Paula? In plain words, by diverting him from Paula to herself.
That was a disgustingly vulgar way of putting it. But wasn't it what she
meant? And if she couldn't be honest with her own thoughts.... Well then,
were her powers of attraction great enough, even if they were consciously
exerted to the utmost, to outpull Paula's with a musician, with a man
whose songs she could sing as she had sung to-night?
That moment in Annie's old bedroom off the nursery supplied concretely
enough the answer to her question. They had been soul to soul in there,
they two. There was no language to describe the intimacy of it, except
perhaps the hackneyed phrases of the wedding service which had lost all
their meaning. And while they had stood together in the half dark, Paula
had opened the door, bringing the light in with her. She had taken him
confidently in her strong hands and kissed him and led him away without
one hesitating backward thought.
And the truth seemed clear enough, incandescent, now she looked back at
it, that it was Paula who had possessed him all along. That moment which
she had called her own had been Paula's. Mary had got it because she had
happened to come in and sit down beside him. She had, as it were, picked
his pocket. She stood convicted the moment the rightful owner appeared.
That was how much her chance of "saving" March from Paula amounted to.
What a hypocrite she had been to use that phrase even in her thoughts.
Save him from Paula, indeed! Paula could give him, even if she gave only
the half loaf, all he needed. She could inspire his genius, float it
along on the broad current of her own energy. Compared to that, what
could Mary give? What would it, her one possible gift, amount to?
She pulled herself up short. Wallowing again! No more of that. She'd
leave March alone, and on that resolution she'd stop thinking about him.
She'd think about Rush and Graham and the farm.
Graham! They didn't come, Rush had said, any whiter than that. Probably
he was right about it. It was a wonderful quality, that sort of
whiteness. What was it he had done (she didn't even remember!) that had
caused him such bitter self-reproach? You couldn't help liking him. It
ought not to be hard to fall sufficiently in love with him. And out on a
farm... A farmer's wife certainly had enough to do to keep her from
growing restless. With a lot of children, four to half a dozen,--no one
could call that a worthless life.
And it was practicable. With an even break in the luck, she could
accomplish the whole of it. A man like Graham she could make happy. Her
one gift would be enough for him; all he'd want. What was it he had told
Rush to-night? That he had always thought her the most perfect...
At that, appallingly, she was seized in the cold grip of an unforeseen
realization. She couldn't marry a boy like that--she couldn't marry any
man who regarded her like that--without first telling him what she was;
what she was not! She would have to make clear to him--there was simply
no escape from that--the nature of the thing that had happened in that
tiny flat in New York where she had lived alone so long.
It was possible, of course, oh, more than that, probable even, that after
hearing the story he would still want to marry her. That he might regard
her, no matter what she said, as having been wronged; her innocence,
though once taken advantage of by a scoundrel, intact. His love would be
reenforced by pity. He'd think of nothing, in the stress of that moment,
but the desire to protect her, to provide a fortress for her.
But would she dare, on these terms, marry him, or any other man for that
matter, no matter how ardently he professed forgiveness? It wouldn't be
until after the marriage was an accomplished thing, its first desires
satisfied, its first tension relaxed, that the story of her adventure
would begin to loom black and thunderous over the horizon of his mind.
(Who was the man? How could it have happened? In what mood of madness
could she have done such a thing? Might it ever,--when might it
not--happen again?) No! Marriage was difficult enough without being
handicapped additionally by a perennial misgiving like that. No
thoroughfare again!
She started once more around the circle, but one can not keep at that
sort of thing forever. About sunrise she fell asleep.