SETTLING PAULA
Anthony March might deny as much as he pleased that he was "enough of an
Olympian to laugh" at life's ironies, but it remained true that his God
had a sense of humor and that March himself appreciated it. When, well
within that same twenty-four hours, a third member of the Wollaston
family insisted upon telling him her troubles and asking him what she'd
best do about them, he conceded with the flicker of an inward grin (not
at all at the troubles which were serious enough nor at their sufferer
who was in despair), that the great Disposer, having set out to demolish
that philosophy, enjoyed making a thorough job of it.
It was about four o'clock on Sunday afternoon that he came to Paula's
cottage at Ravinia to get the score to _The Outcry_. The maid who opened
the door informed him that her mistress wasn't at home, but when he told
her what he wanted, and she had gone rather dubiously up-stairs to see
about it, it was Paula herself who, after a wait of ten minutes or so,
came down with the manuscript in her hand.
He was, perhaps, just the one person in the world she'd have come down to
see. All the explanation she volunteered to herself was that he didn't
matter. It didn't matter, this was to say, if he did perceive that she
had been crying for days and days and looked an utter wreck.
And then his errand brought her a touch of comfort. The acceptance of
_The Outcry_ for production restored the proprietary feeling she once
had had about it. She was the discoverer of _The Outcry_ and if you'd
asked her who was responsible for the revival of interest in it and for
the fact that it was now to be produced, I think she'd have told you
quite honestly that she was. Hadn't she asked them all to come to her
house to hear it? And sung the part of "Dolores" herself at that very
informal audition?
And I'll hazard one further guess. It is that her quarrel with John made
March's opera a rather pleasanter thing to dwell on a little. She had
taken it up in defiance of his wish in the first place; her abandonment
of it had acquired from its context the color of a self-sacrificial
impulse. She would carry out her contract, she had told John down in
Tryon, but she wouldn't sing "Dolores" for anybody. Well, now that her
love-life with John was irremediably wrecked, there was a sort of
melancholy satisfaction in handling, once more, the thing that stood as
the innocent symbol of the disaster.
That's neither here nor there, of course. Paula was totally unaware of
any such constellation about her simple act of deciding to carry down the
score herself instead of handing it over to the maid.
The sight of him standing over the piano in her sitting-room cheered her
and the look of melancholy she brought down-stairs with her was replaced
by a spontaneous unexpected smile. Just as Mary, out at Hickory Hill, had
predicted, she remembered how well she liked him. She laid the manuscript
on the piano in order to give him both hands.
"I can't tell you how pleased I am about it," she said. "I wish you all
the luck in the world."
He brightened responsively at that but looked, she thought, a little
surprised, too.
"I am glad you're pleased about it," he told her. "I wasn't quite sure
you'd know. Of course, they telephoned."
She stepped back, puzzled. "But of course I know!" she said. "Haven't I
been working on it for weeks! Why, it was right here in this room that
they decided on it. Days ago. I've been trying frantically to find you
ever since."
"Oh," he said, "you mean _The Outcry_. I thought you were congratulating
me on my engagement to marry Mary."
She stared at him in simple blank incredulity. "To marry Mary! Mary
Wollaston? You don't mean that seriously?"
"It's the only serious fact in the world," he assured her.
"But John--Does John know about it?" she demanded.
"Yes," he said.
She drew a long breath, then pounced upon him with another question. "Did
you tell him about it, or was it Mary who did?"
"It was I," March said. "I was the first one to see him after it
happened."
"He hadn't suspected anything, had he?" she persisted.
She was vaguely aware that he was a little puzzled and perhaps in the
same degree amused by her intensity, but she had no interest in half
tones of that sort.
When he answered in the sense she expected, "No, I can testify to
that. He was taken completely by surprise when I broke it to him;" she
heaved another long breath, turned away, and sat down heavily in the
nearest chair.
"Poor old John!" she said. But she didn't let that exclamation go
uninterpreted. "I didn't mean anything--personal by that," she went on.
"Only--only I didn't think John could make up his mind to let her
marry--anybody." Then in a rush--an aside, to be sure, but one he was
welcome to hear if he chose.--"He wanted her so much all to himself."
Whether he heard it or not, he failed, she thought, to attach any special
significance to that last comment of hers. He said that John had been
very nice about it, though he was, as any father would be under the
circumstances, taken aback. He had consented to regard the arrangement as
an accomplished fact and would, March hoped, in time be fully reconciled
to it. Then he went back rather quickly to the matter of his opera.
"Of course, it means more than ever to me now," he said, putting his hand
on the manuscript, "to get this produced. If it goes moderately well it
will help in a good many ways."
She found some difficulty in again turning her mind to this theme and
answered absently and rather at random, until she perceived that he was
getting ready to take his leave. He was saying something about an
appointment with LaChaise.
"Is it at once?" she asked. "Do you have to go right away?"
"I'm to have dinner with him and his secretary, who can talk English, at
six," March said, "but I thought I'd carry this off somewhere and read it
before I talked with them. It's been a long way out of my mind this last
three months."
"Don't go," Paula said. "It seems so--so nice to have you here. Sit down
and read your score. Then you'll have a piano handy in case you want to
hear anything." She added as she saw him hesitate, "I won't bother
you--but I'm feeling awfully lonely to-day."
At that, of course, he relinquished, though a little dubiously she
thought, his intention to go. She set about energetically making matters
convenient for him, cleared a small table of its litter and set it in the
window where he would have the best light; chose a chair for him to sit
in; urged him to take off his coat; and began looking about for something
for him to smoke--but not quite successfully. She was sure there were
cigarettes of Mary's somewhere about.
He didn't care to smoke just now, he said. If he felt later like
resorting to a pipe he would.
Was there anything else? Didn't he want a pencil and paper to make notes
on? No, he was supplied with everything, he said.
But for all the ardor of these preparations of hers, she was a little
disconcerted and aggrieved at the way he took her at her word and plunged
into the study of his score.
She found herself a novel and managed, for five minutes or so, to pretend
to read. Then she flung it aside and drifted over to the piano bench and
after gazing moodily a while at the keyboard, began in a fragmentary way
to play bits of nothing that came into her head. But she stopped herself
short in manifest contrition when, happening to look around at him, she
saw a knot of baffled concentration in his forehead.
"Of course, you can't read if I do that," she said. "I'm sorry." Then
under cover of the same interruption, "How did John look when you saw him
this morning? Like a wreck? What time was it, anyway? It must have been
frightfully early that he left here because I waked as soon as it was
really light and he was gone by then."
"I don't know that he looked particularly a wreck," March said. "Not any
worse, I mean, than he looked out at Hickory Hill the day you opened the
season here."
"He didn't say anything about me, did he?" she asked.
"No," March said, "I don't think he did."
"I suppose you'd remember it if he'd happened to tell you that he loathed
and hated me and never wanted to see me again." Then she rose and went
over to the opposite side of his little table and leaning down spread her
hands out over his score.
"Oh, I know I said I wouldn't bother, but do stop thinking about this and
talk to me for a minute. We're having--we're having a perfectly hideous
time. He and I. We've been fighting like cat and dog for four days. I
don't exactly know what it's all about, except that it seems we hate each
other and can't go on. You've got to tell me what to do. It all started
with you anyway. With the time you brought around those Whitman
songs.--That was the day Mary came home from New York, too," she added.
"All right," he said, shutting down the cover upon his manuscript,
"then Mary and I will try to patch you up. That is, if we haven't
already done it."
Her face darkened. "Don't try to talk the way they do," she commanded.
"I'm not intelligent enough to take hints. Do you mean that the whole
trouble is that I'm jealous of Mary? And that now she's going to marry
you I'll have nothing to be jealous of? Well, you're wrong both ways.
There's more to it than that. And that isn't going to stop just because
she's marrying you. She'll always be there for him. And he'll be there
for her. You'll find that out before you've gone far."
He didn't seem disposed to dispute this, nor to be much perturbed about
it, either. He annoyed her by saying, "Well, if it's a permanent fact,
like snow in February, what's the good of taking it so hard?"
"You can go south in February," she retorted. Then she went on, "I want
to know if you don't think I've a right to be jealous of her. I'd saved
his life. He admitted that. But when we went south, afterward, he simply
didn't want me around. Sent me home pretending I'd be wanted for
rehearsals. And then he sent for her. They spent a week
together--talking! As far as that goes, they could have done it just as
well if I'd been there. They can talk right over my head and I never know
what it's all about. Wait till they begin doing that with you! I don't
suppose they will though. You're a talker, too. He told her things he'd
never told me-about his money troubles. What he said to me was that he
didn't want to stand in the way of my career. He left her to tell me the
truth about it, later,--after I'd told him I didn't want any
career--though I'd just been offered the best chance I ever had. And
then, when he came and found that I'd done--for him--what he'd been
trying to make me do for myself, he was furious. We fought all night
about it. And when I came down the next morning, ready to do anything he
wanted me to, he'd wandered off with Mary. To talk me over with her
again.--Tell her some more things, I suppose, that I didn't know about."
March had nothing to interpose here, it seemed, in Mary's defense, for
her pause gave him ample opportunity to do so. He merely nodded
reflectively and loaded and lighted his pipe.
"Well," she demanded presently, "can you see now that there's something
more to it than jealousy? Whatever I try to do, he fights. When I wanted
to begin singing again last spring, he fought that. And when I wanted to
give it all up, after he'd so nearly died, he wouldn't let me. And when
I'd refused the best chance I'd ever had, for him, and then changed
around and accepted it because of him, he seemed to hate me for doing
that. And he simply boiled when I told him I'd gone and got the money,
myself, from Wallace Hood."
"Yes," March said, so decisively that he startled her, "I know all about
it up to there. That was Thursday afternoon, wasn't it? Go on from then."
The interruption disconcerted her. "There isn't much more--to tell," she
went on, but a good deal less impetuously. "Except that we fought and
fought and fought. About eight o'clock that night I said I was going to
the park to see the performance;--just to get a rest from talking. Mr.
Eckstein was there and the Williamsons and James Wallace, so I asked them
all to come home with us. And Fournier and LaChaise, too. And we got on
your opera and LaChaise played part of it and then I read a lot of it
with Fournier. So they didn't go home till after three. John thought I
was keeping them there in order not to be left alone with him.--Well,
what was the good of talking, anyhow? We did get started again on Friday,
though; all day long. And Friday night we--made up, in a way. At least, I
thought we did.
"Well, and then yesterday morning Rush telephoned out from town and said
he thought John ought to come in to see Mary. She wasn't very well. I
told him to go if he liked. I was feeling perfectly awful, yesterday,
myself--and I was billed for _Thais_ last night. There isn't another
soprano up here who wouldn't have cancelled it, feeling the way I did.
But I told John that if he thought Mary needed him more than I did, he'd
better go.--I wish he had gone. After he'd telephoned to say he wasn't
coming--he'd talked to Mary herself, that time--he kept getting colder
and gloomier and more--unendurable from hour to hour. And after the
performance, we had the most horrible fight of all. He told me I had kept
him away from Mary on purpose,--because I was jealous of her. He said he
could never forgive himself for the way he'd treated her--in order to
curry favor with me. And he said that the first thing in the morning he
was going to her. That's all.--Oh, well, I said a few things to him, too.
Do you wonder?"
By way of a flourish, she flashed to her feet again at this conclusion
(she'd been up and down half a dozen times in the course of her appeal to
him as jury), and walked away to a window. But after the silence had spun
itself out to the better part of a minute, she whipped round upon him.
"Have you been listening to a word I've said?" she demanded.
"Yes," he said, but with the contradictory air of fetching himself back
from a long way off. "Truly! I've listened to every word. And I don't
wonder a bit."
"Don't wonder at what?"
"That you said a few things to him, too. You've got a valid grievance, it
seems to me. You couldn't be blamed for quarreling with him over it as
bitterly as possible."
She barely heeded the words. They never did mean much to Paula. But his
look and his tone reached her, and stung.
"Look here!" she said with sudden intensity. "Before we go any farther, I
want to know this. Did Mary really need John, yesterday?"
She saw him turn pale and she had to wait two or three long breaths for
her answer. But it came evenly enough at last.
"I happened to turn up instead. And she's perfectly all right, to-day."
Her eyes filled with tears. She turned forlornly away from him and
dropped down upon a settee. "You hate me, too, now, I suppose. As
well as he."
He sat down beside her and laid a hand upon her shoulder. "My dear," he
said--and his own voice had a break of tenderness in it,--"I couldn't
hate any one to-day if I wanted to. And I never could want to hate you.
If there's anything I can do to help with John Wollaston.... But you see,
if you want to keep your grievance you don't need any help. Nobody can
take it away from you. It's only if you want to get rid of it--because
it's making you beastly unhappy, no matter how valid it is--that you need
any help from me or any one else. If that's what you want, I'll take a
shot at writing you a prescription."
"Go crawling back to him on my knees, I suppose," she said in a tone not
quite so genuinely resentful as she felt it ought to be. "And ask him to
forgive me. What's the good of that when he doesn't love me?--Oh, of
course I know he does--in a way."
His hand dropped absently from her shoulder. After a thoughtful moment he
sprang up and took a turn of the room. "Do you know," he said, halting
before her, "'in a way' is the only way there is. The only way any two
people ever do love each other. That's what makes half the trouble, I
believe. Trying to define it as if it were a standard thing. Like
sterling silver; so many and so many hundredths per cent. pure. Love's
whatever the personal emotion is that draws two people together. It may
be anything. It may make them kind to each other, or it may make them nag
each other into the mad-house, or it may make them shoot each other dead.
It's probably never exactly the same thing between any two pairs of
people..."
"Don't talk nonsense," she said petulantly.
"I'm not a bit sure it's nonsense," he persisted. "I only just thought of
it, but I believe I've got on to something. Well, if I'm right, then the
problem is to adjust that emotion to your life, or your life to that
emotion, in such a way that the thing will work. There aren't any rules.
There can't be any. It's a matter of--well, that's the word--adjustment."
She could not see that this was helping her much. It was not at all the
line she'd projected for him. Yet she was finding it hard not to feel
less tragic. She had even caught herself, just now, upon the brink of
being amused. "Wait till you've tried to adjust something, as you say,
with John, and have had him tell you what you think until you believe
you do. When he's really being perfectly unreasonable all the while."
"Of course," March observed with the air of one making a material
concession, "he is a good bit of a prima donna himself."
"What do you mean by that?" she demanded. And then, petulantly, she
accused him of laughing at her, of refusing to take her seriously, of
trying to be clever like the Wollastons.
"Look here, Paula," he said, and he put so much edge into his tone that
she did, "have you ever spent five minutes out of the last five years
trying to think what John was, besides your husband? I don't believe it.
When I spoke of him to you, months ago, as a famous person you didn't
know what I was talking about. He is. He's got a better chance--say to
get into the next edition of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, than you
have. He's got a career. He had it long before he knew you existed.--How
old was he when he came to Vienna? About fifty, wasn't he?"
"Forty-nine," she said with the air of one making a serious
contradiction; but her, "Oh, well,--" and a little laugh that followed it
conceded that it was not.
"He'd had a career then for a long time," March went on. "He was
established. He had things about as he wanted them. And then, out of
nowhere, an irresistible thing like you came along and torpedoed him. He
must have realized that he had gone clean out of his head about you. A
man of that age doesn't fall in love unconsciously, nor easily either. He
must have had frightful misgivings about persuading you to marry him. On
your account as well as his own. Because he is that, you know.
Conscientious, I mean. Almost to a morbid degree."
"Oh, yes," she conceded, "they're both like that. They spend half their
time working things out trying to be fair."
He gave her a quick look, then came and sat down beside her again.
"Well, then," he said, "we're on the right track. Just follow it along.
You're the one big refractory thing in his life. The thing that
constantly wants reconciling with something else,--at the same time that
you're the delight of it, and the center and core of it. And while he's
trying to deal with those problems justly, you know, he's taking on all
of yours, too. He's trying to see things with your eyes, feeling them
with your nerves, and since he's got a kind of uncanny penetration, I'd
be willing to bet that he can tell you, half the time, what you're
thinking about better than you could yourself. No wonder, between his
conscience and his desire--your mutual desire--he's unreasonable. And
since he's too old to be reformed out of his conscience that leaves the
adjustment up to you."
"I don't know what more I can do," she said. "I've offered to give up
everything."
"Yes," he said with a grunt, "that's it. I don't wonder he flew at you.
_That's_ the thing you'll have to give up!"
He rose and stood over her and thumped home, his point with one fist in
the palm of the other hand. "Why, you've got to give up the nobility," he
said. "The self-sacrificial attitude. You've got to chuck the heroine's
rôle altogether, Paula. That's what you've been playing, naturally
enough. It makes good drama for you, but look where it leaves him! First
you give up your career for him, and then you give him up for the career
you've undertaken for his sake. You've contrived to put him in the wrong
both ways. Oh, not meaning to, I know; just by instinct. Well, give that
up. Give up the renunciatory gesture. Go to him and tell him the truth.
That you want, in a perfectly human selfish way, all you can get, both of
him and of a career. They aren't mutually exclusive really. It ought to
be possible to have quite a lot of each."
"You think you know such a lot," she protested rebelliously, "but
there's only one thing I want, just the same, and that's John, himself."
"No doubt that's true this afternoon," he admitted. "You sang _Thais_
last night and several thousand people, according to this morning's
paper, cheered you at the end of the second act. But I believe I can tell
you your day-dream. It's to be the greatest dramatic soprano in the
world--home for a vacation. With John and perhaps one or two small
children of the affectionate age around you."
Her face flamed at that. "John _has_ been talking about me this morning!"
she cried.
He shook his head. "It was only a chance shot," he told her. "I'm sorry
if it came close enough home to hurt. But there couldn't be a better
day-dream than that and there's no reason I can see why it shouldn't come
reasonably true, if you'll honestly try for as much of it as you can get.
That's the prescription, anyhow. Give up nobility and all the heroic
poses that go with it and practise a little enlightened selfishness
instead. Perhaps by force of example you may persuade John Wollaston to
abandon about half of his conscience. Then you _would_ be settled."
With that he went back to his score and by no protest or expostulation
could she provoke another word out of him. She fidgeted about the room
for a quarter of an hour or so. Then with the announcement that she was
going to dress, left it and went up-stairs.
When she came down a while later in street things and a hat she presented
him with a new perplexity.
"I've been trying everywhere I can think of to get a car," she said, "and
there simply isn't one to be had. I even tried to borrow one."
He asked her what she wanted of a car. Where she wanted to go.
"Oh, can't you see!" she cried, "I don't want to send for John again to
come to me. I want to go to him. It's too maddening!"
"Well," he said, with a grin, "if you really want--desperately--to go to
him, of course there's the trolley."
She stared at him for a moment and then perceiving, or thinking she
perceived, something allegorical about the suggestion, she gave a laugh,
swooped down and kissed him and went.