BRENT had an apartment in the rue de Rivoli, near the Hotel
Meurice and high enough to command the whole Tuileries garden.
From his balcony he could see to the east the ancient courts
of the Louvre, to the south the varied, harmonious façades of
the Quay d'Orsay with the domes and spires of the Left Bank
behind, to the west the Obélisque, the long broad reaches of
the Champs Elysées with the Arc de Triomphe at the boundary of
the horizon. On that balcony, with the tides of traffic far
below, one had a sense of being at the heart of the world,
past, present, and to come. Brent liked to feel at home
wherever he was; it enabled him to go tranquilly to work
within a few minutes after his arrival, no matter how far he
had journeyed or how long he had been away. So he regarded it
as an economy, an essential to good work, to keep up the house
in New York, a villa in Petite Afrique, with the Mediterranean
washing its garden wall, this apartment at Paris; and a
telegram a week in advance would reserve him the same quarters
in the quietest part of hotels at Luzerne, at St. Moritz and
at Biarritz.
Susan admired, as he explained his scheme of life to her and
Palmer when they visited his apartment. Always profound
tranquillity in the midst of intense activity. He could shut
his door and he as in a desert; he could open it, and the most
interesting of the sensations created by the actions and
reactions of the whole human race were straightway beating
upon his senses. As she listened, she looked about, her eyes
taking in impressions to be studied at leisure. These
quarters of his in Paris were fundamentally different from
those in New York, were the expression of a different side of
his personality. It was plain that he loved them, that they
came nearer to expressing his real--that is, his inmost--self.
"Though I work harder in Paris than in New York," he
explained, "I have more leisure because it is all one kind of
work--writing--at which I'm never interrupted. So I have time
to make surroundings for myself. No one has time for
surroundings in New York."
She observed that of the scores of pictures on the walls,
tables, shelves of the three rooms they were shown, every one
was a face--faces of all nationalities, all ages, all
conditions--faces happy and faces tragic, faces homely, faces
beautiful, faces irradiating the fascination of those abnormal
developments of character, good and bad, which give the
composite countenance of the human race its distinction, as
the characteristics themselves give it intensities of light
and shade. She saw angels, beautiful and ugly, devils
beautiful and ugly.
When she began to notice this peculiarity of those rooms, she
was simply interested. What an amazing collection! How much
time and thought it must have taken! How he must have
searched--and what an instinct he had for finding the unusual,
the significant! As she sat there and then strolled about and
then sat again, her interest rose into a feverish excitement.
It was as if the ghosts of all these personalities, not one of
them commonplace, were moving through the rooms, were pressing
upon her. She understood why Brent had them there--that they
were as necessary to him as cadavers and skeletons and
physiological charts to an anatomist. But they oppressed,
suffocated her; she went out on the balcony and watched the
effects of the light from the setting sun upon and around the
enormously magnified Arc.
"You don't like my rooms," said Brent.
"They fascinate me," replied she. "But I'd have to get used to
these friends of yours. You made their acquaintance one or a few
at a time. It's very upsetting, being introduced to all at once."
She felt Brent's gaze upon her--that unfathomable look which
made her uneasy, yet was somehow satisfying, too. He said, after
a while, "Palmer is to give me his photograph. Will you give me
yours?" He was smiling. "Both of you belong in my gallery."
"Of course she will," said Palmer, coming out on the balcony
and standing beside her. "I want her to have some taken right
away--in the evening dress she wore to the Opera last week.
And she must have her portrait painted."
"When we are settled," said Susan. "I've no time for anything
now but shopping."
They had come to inspect the apartment above Brent's, and had
decided to take it; Susan saw possibilities of making it over
into the sort of environment of which she had dreamed. In
novels the descriptions of interiors, which weary most
readers, interested her more than story or characters. In her
days of abject poverty she used these word paintings to
construct for herself a room, suites of rooms, a whole house,
to replace, when her physical eyes closed and her eyes of
fancy opened wide, the squalid and nauseous cell to which
poverty condemned her. In the streets she would sometimes
pause before a shop window display of interior furnishings; a
beautiful table or chair, a design in wall or floor covering
had caught her eyes, had set her to dreaming--dreaming on and
on--she in dingy skirt and leaky shoes. Now--the chance to
realize her dreams had come. Palmer had got acquainted with
some high-class sports, American, French and English, at an
American bar in the rue Volney. He was spending his
afternoons and some of his evenings with them--in the
evenings winning large sums from them at cards at which he
was now as lucky as at everything else. Palmer, pleased by
Brent's manner toward Susan--formal politeness, indifference to
sex--was glad to have him go about with her. Also Palmer was
one of those men who not merely imagine they read human nature
but actually can read it. He _knew_ he could trust Susan. And
it had been his habit--as it is the habit of all successful
men--to trust human beings, each one up to his capacity for
resisting temptation to treachery.
"Brent doesn't care for women--as women," said he. "He never
did. Don't you think he's queer?"
"He's different," replied Susan. "He doesn't care much for
people--to have them as intimates. I understand why. Love
and friendship bore one--or fail one--and are
unsatisfactory--and disturbing. But if one centers one's life
about things--books, pictures, art, a career--why, one is
never bored or betrayed. He has solved the secret of
happiness, I think."
"Do you think a woman could fall in love with him?" he asked,
with an air of the accidental and casual.
"If you mean, could I fall in love with him," said she, "I
should say no. I think it would either amuse or annoy him to
find that a woman cared about him."
"Amuse him most of all," said Palmer. "He knows the
ladies--that they love us men for what we can give them."
"Did you ever hear of anyone, man or woman, who cared about a
person who couldn't give them anything?"
Freddie's laugh was admission that he thought her right. "The
way to get on in politics," observed he, "is to show men that
it's to their best interest to support you. And that's the
way to get on in everything else--including love."
Susan knew that this was the truth about life, as it appeared
to her also. But she could not divest herself of the human
aversion to hearing the cold, practical truth. She wanted
sugar coating on the pill, even though she knew the sugar made
the medicine much less effective, often neutralized it
altogether. Thus Palmer's brutally frank cynicism got upon
her nerves, whereas Brent's equally frank cynicism attracted
her because it was not brutal. Both men saw that life was a
coarse practical joke. Palmer put the stress on the
coarseness, Brent upon the humor.
Brent recommended and introduced to her a friend of his, a
young French Jew named Gourdain, an architect on the way up to
celebrity. "You will like his ideas and he will like yours,"
said Brent.
She had acquiesced in his insistent friendship for Palmer and
her, but she had not lowered by an inch the barrier of her
reserve toward him. His speech and actions at all times,
whether Palmer was there or not; suggested that he respected
the barrier, regarded it as even higher and thicker than it
was. Nevertheless she felt that he really regarded the
barrier as non-existent. She said:
"But I've never told you my ideas."
"I can guess what they are. Your surroundings will simply be
an extension of your dress."
She would not have let him see--she would not have admitted to
herself--how profoundly the subtle compliment pleased her.
Because a man's or a woman's intimate personal taste is good
it by no means follows that he or she will build or decorate
or furnish a house well. In matters of taste, the greater
does not necessarily include the less, nor does the less imply
the greater. Perhaps Susan would have shown she did not
deserve Brent's compliment, would have failed ignominiously in
that first essay of hers, had she not found a Gourdain,
sympathetic, able to put into the concrete the rather vague
ideas she had evolved in her dreaming. An architect is like
a milliner or a dressmaker. He supplies the model, product of
his own individual taste. The person who employs him must
remold that form into an expression of his own
personality--for people who deliberately live in surroundings
that are not part of themselves are on the same low level with
those who utter only borrowed ideas. That is the object and
the aim of civilization--to encourage and to compel each
individual to be frankly himself--herself. That is the
profound meaning of freedom. The world owes more to bad
morals and to bad taste that are spontaneous than to all the
docile conformity to the standards of morals and of taste,
however good. Truth--which simply means an increase of
harmony, a decrease of discord, between the internal man and
his environment--truth is a product, usually a byproduct, of
a ferment of action.
Gourdain--chiefly, no doubt, because Susan's beauty of face
and figure and dress fascinated him--was more eager to bring
out her individuality than to show off his own talents. He
took endless pains with her, taught her the technical
knowledge and vocabulary that would enable her to express
herself, then carried out her ideas religiously. "You are
right, _mon ami_," said he to Brent. "She is an orchid, and of
a rare species. She has a glorious imagination, like a bird
of paradise balancing itself into an azure sky, with every
plume raining color and brilliancy."
"Somewhat exaggerated," was Susan's pleased, laughing comment
when Brent told her.
"Somewhat," said Brent. "But my friend Gourdain is stark mad
about women's dressing well. That lilac dress you had on
yesterday did for him. He _was_ your servant; he _is_ your slave."
Abruptly--for no apparent cause, as was often the case--Susan
had that sickening sense of the unreality of her luxurious
present, of being about to awaken in Vine Street with Etta--or
in the filthy bed with old Mrs. Tucker. Absently she glanced
down at her foot, holding it out as if for inspection. She
saw Brent's look of amusement at her seeming vanity.
"I was looking to see if my shoes were leaky," she explained.
A subtle change came over his face. He understood instantly.
"Have you ever been--cold?" she asked, looking at him strangely.
"One cold February--cold and damp--I had no underclothes--and
no overcoat."
"And dirty beds--filthy rooms--filthy people?"
"A ten-cent lodging house with a tramp for bedfellow."
They were looking at each other, with the perfect understanding
and sympathy that can come only to two people of the same fiber
who have braved the same storms. Each glanced hastily away.
Her enthusiasm for doing the apartment was due full as much to
the fact that it gave her definitely directed occupation as to
its congeniality. That early training of hers from Aunt Fanny
Warham had made it forever impossible for her in any
circumstances to become the typical luxuriously sheltered
woman, whether legally or illegally kept--the lie-abed woman,
the woman who dresses only to go out and show off, the woman
who wastes her life in petty, piffling trifles--without
purpose, without order or system, without morals or personal
self-respect. She had never lost the systematic instinct--the
instinct to use time instead of wasting it--that Fanny Warham
had implanted in her during the years that determine
character. Not for a moment, even without distinctly definite
aim, was she in danger of the creeping paralysis that is
epidemic among the rich, enfeebling and slowing down mental
and physical activity. She had a regular life; she read, she
walked in the Bois; she made the best of each day. And when
this definite thing to accomplish offered, she did not have to
learn how to work before she could begin the work itself.
All this was nothing new to Gourdain. He was born and bred in
a country where intelligent discipline is the rule and the
lack of it the rare exception--among all classes--even among
the women of the well-to-do classes.
The finished apartment was a disappointment to Palmer. Its
effects were too quiet, too restrained. Within certain small
limits, those of the man of unusual intelligence but no marked
originality, he had excellent taste--or, perhaps, excellent
ability to recognize good taste. But in the large he yearned
for the grandiose. He loved the gaudy with which the rich
surround themselves because good taste forbids them to talk of
their wealth and such surroundings do the talking for them and
do it more effectively. He would have preferred even a vulgar
glitter to the unobtrusiveness of those rooms. But he knew
that Susan was right, and he was a very human arrant coward
about admitting that he had bad taste.
"This is beautiful--exquisite," said he, with feigned
enthusiasm. "I'm afraid, though, it'll be above their heads."
"What do you mean?" inquired Susan.
Palmer felt her restrained irritation, hastened to explain.
"I mean the people who'll come here. They can't appreciate
it. You have to look twice to appreciate this--and people,
the best of 'em, look only once and a mighty blind look it is."
But Susan was not deceived. "You must tell me what changes
you want," said she. Her momentary irritation had vanished.
Since Freddie was paying, Freddie must have what suited him.
"Oh, I've got nothing to suggest. Now that I've been studying
it out, I couldn't allow you to make any changes. It does
grow on one, doesn't it, Brent?"
"It will be the talk of Paris," replied Brent.
The playwright's tone settled the matter for Palmer. He was
content. Said he:
"Thank God she hasn't put in any of those dirty old tapestry
rags--and the banged up, broken furniture and the patched crockery."
At the same time she had produced an effect of long tenancy.
There was nothing that glittered, nothing with the offensive
sheen of the brand new. There was in that delicately toned
atmosphere one suggestion which gave the same impression as
the artificial crimson of her lips in contrast with the pallor
of her skin and the sweet thoughtful melancholy of her eyes.
This suggestion came from an all-pervading odor of a heavy,
languorously sweet, sensuous perfume--the same that Susan
herself used. She had it made at a perfumer's in the faubourg
St. Honoré by mixing in a certain proportion several of the
heaviest and most clinging of the familiar perfumes.
"You don't like my perfume?" she said to Brent one day.
He was in the library, was inspecting her _selections_ of
books. Instead of answering her question, he said:
"How did you find out so much about books? How did you find
time to read so many?"
"One always finds time for what one likes."
"Not always," said he. "I had a hard stretch once--just after
I struck New York. I was a waiter for two months. Working
people don't find time for reading--and such things."
"That was one reason why I gave up work," said she.
"That--and the dirt--and the poor wages--and the
hopelessness--and a few other reasons," said he.
"Why don't you like the perfume I use?"
"Why do you say that?"
"You made a queer face as you came into the drawing-room."
"Do _you_ like it?"
"What a queer question!" she said. "No other man would have
asked it."
"The obvious," said he, shrugging his shoulders.
"I couldn't help knowing you didn't like it."
"Then why should I use it?"
His glance drifted slowly away from hers. He lit a cigarette
with much attention to detail.
"Why should I use perfume I don't like?" persisted she.
"What's the use of going into that?" said he.
"But I do like it--in a way," she went on after a pause. "It
is--it seems to me the odor of myself."
"Yes--it is," he admitted.
She laughed. "Yet you made a wry face."
"I did."
"At the odor?"
"At the odor."
"Do you think I ought to change to another perfume?"
"You know I do not. It's the odor of your soul. It is
different at different times--sometimes inspiringly sweet as
the incense of heaven, as my metaphoric friend Gourdain would
say--sometimes as deadly sweet as the odors of the drugs men
take to drag them to hell--sometimes repulsively sweet, making
one heart sick for pure, clean smell-less air yet without the
courage to seek it. Your perfume is many things, but
always--always strong and tenacious and individual."
A flush had overspread the pallor of her skin; her long dark
lashes hid her eyes.
"You have never been in love," he went on.
"So you told me once before." It was the first time either
had referred to their New York acquaintance.
"You did not believe me then. But you do now?"
"For me there is no such thing as love," replied she. "I
understand affection--I have felt it. I understand passion.
It is a strong force in my life--perhaps the strongest."
"No," said he, quiet but positive.
"Perhaps not," replied she carelessly, and went on, with her
more than manlike candor, and in her manner of saying the most
startling things in the calmest way:
"I understand what is called love--feebleness looking up to
strength or strength pitying feebleness. I understand because
I've felt both those things. But love--two equal people united
perfectly, merged into a third person who is neither yet is
both--that I have not felt. I've dreamed it. I've imagined
it--in some moments of passion. But"--she laughed and
shrugged her shoulders and waved the hand with the cigarette
between its fingers--"I have not felt it and I shall not feel
it. I remain I." She paused, considered, added, "And I
prefer that."
"You are strong," said he, absent and reflective. "Yes, you
are strong."
"I don't know," replied she. "Sometimes I think so.
Again----" She shook her head doubtfully.
"You would be dead if you were not. As strong in soul as in body."
"Probably," admitted she. "Anyhow, I am sure I shall always
be--alone. I shall visit--I shall linger on my threshold and
talk. Perhaps I shall wander in perfumed gardens and dream of
comradeship. But I shall return _chez moi_."
He rose--sighed--laughed--at her and at himself. "Don't delay
too long," said he.
"Delay?"
"Your career."
"My career? Why, I am in the full swing of it. I'm at work
in the only profession I'm fit for."
"The profession of woman?"
"Yes--the profession of female."
He winced--and at this sign, if she did not ask herself what
pleased her, she did not ask herself why. He said sharply, "I
don't like that."
"But _you_ have only to _hear_ it. Think of poor me who have to
_live_ it."
"Have to? No," said he.
"Surely you're not suggesting that I drop back into the
laboring classes! No, thank you. If you knew, you'd not say
anything so stupid."
"I do know, and I was not suggesting that. Under this
capitalistic system the whole working class is degraded.
They call what they do 'work,' but that word ought to be
reserved for what a man does when he exercises mind and body
usefully. What the working class is condemned to by
capitalism is not work but toil."
"The toil of a slave," said Susan.
"It's shallow twaddle or sheer want to talk about the dignity
and beauty of labor under this system," he went on. "It is
ugly and degrading. The fools or hypocrites who talk that way
ought to be forced to join the gangs of slaves at their tasks
in factory and mine and shop, in the fields and the streets.
And even the easier and better paid tasks, even what the
capitalists themselves do--those things aren't dignified and
beautiful. Capitalism divides all men except those of one
class--the class to which I luckily belong--divides all other
men into three unlovely classes--slave owners, slave drivers
and slaves. But you're not interested in those questions."
"In wage slavery? No. I wish to forget about it. Any
alternative to being a wage slave or a slave driver--or a
slave owner. Any alternative."
"You don't appreciate your own good fortune," said he. "Most
human beings--all but a very few--have to be in the slave
classes, in one way or another. They have to submit to the
repulsive drudgery, with no advancement except to slave
driver. As for women--if they have to work, what can they do
but sell themselves into slavery to the machines, to the
capitalists? But you--you needn't do that. Nature endowed
you with talent--unusual talent, I believe. How lucky you
are! How superior to the great mass of your fellow beings who
must slave or starve, because they have no talent!"
"Talent?--I?" said Susan. "For what, pray?"
"For the stage."
She looked amused. "You evidently don't think me vain--or
you'd not venture that jest."
"For the stage," he repeated.
"Thanks," said she drily, "but I'll not appeal from your verdict."
"My verdict? What do you mean?"
"I prefer to talk of something else," said she coldly,
offended by his unaccountable disregard of her feelings.
"This is bewildering," said he. And his manner certainly
fitted the words.
"That I should have understood? Perhaps I shouldn't--at
least, not so quickly--if I hadn't heard how often you have
been disappointed, and how hard it has been for you to get rid
of some of those you tried and found wanting."
"Believe me--I was not disappointed in you." He spoke
earnestly, apparently with sincerity. "The contrary. Your
throwing it all up was one of the shocks of my life."
She laughed mockingly--to hide her sensitiveness.
"One of the shocks of my life," he repeated.
She was looking at him curiously--wondering why he was thus uncandid.
"It puzzled me," he went on. "I've been lingering on here,
trying to solve the puzzle. And the more I've seen of you the
less I understand. Why did you do it? How could _you_ do it?"
He was walking up and down the room in a characteristic pose--hands
clasped behind his back as if to keep them quiet, body erect, head
powerfully thrust forward. He halted abruptly and wheeled to face
her. "Do you mean to tell me you didn't get tired of work and
drop it for--" he waved his arm to indicate her luxurious
surroundings--"for this?"
No sign of her agitation showed at the surface. But she felt
she was not concealing herself from him.
He resumed his march, presently to halt and wheel again upon
her. But before he could speak, she stopped him.
"I don't wish to hear any more," said she, the strange look in
her eyes. It was all she could do to hide the wild burst of
emotion that had followed her discovery. Then she had not
been without a chance for a real career! She might have been
free, might have belonged to herself----
"It is not too late," cried he. "That's why I'm here."
"It is too late," she said.
"It is not too late," repeated he, harshly, in his way that
swept aside opposition. "I shall get you back."
Triumphantly, "The puzzle is solved!"
She faced him with a look of defiant negation. "That ocean I
crossed--it's as narrow as the East River into which I thought
of throwing myself many a time--it's as narrow as the East
River beside the ocean between what I am and what I was. And
I'll never go back. Never!"
She repeated the "never" quietly, under her breath. His eyes
looked as if they, without missing an essential detail, had swept
the whole of that to which she would never go back. He said:
"Go back? No, indeed. Who's asking you to go back? Not I.
I'm not _asking_ you to go anywhere. I'm simply saying that
you will--_must_--go forward. If you were in love, perhaps
not. But you aren't in love. I know from experience how men
and women care for each other--how they form these
relationships. They find each other convenient and
comfortable. But they care only for themselves. Especially
young people. One must live quite a while to discover that
thinking about oneself is living in a stuffy little cage with
only a little light, through slats in the top that give no
view. . . . It's an unnatural life for you. It can't last.
You--centering upon yourself--upon comfort and convenience.
Absurd!"
"I have chosen," said she.
"No--you can't do it," he went on, as if she had not spoken.
"_You_ can't spend your life at dresses and millinery, at
chattering about art, at thinking about eating and
drinking--at being passively amused--at attending to your hair
and skin and figure. You may think so, but in reality you are
getting ready for _me_ . . . for your career. You are simply
educating yourself. I shall have you back."
She held the cigarette to her lips, inhaled the smoke deeply,
exhaled it slowly.
"I will tell you why," he went on, as if he were answering a
protest. "Every one of us has an individuality of some sort.
And in spite of everything and anything, except death or
hopeless disease, that individuality will insist upon
expressing itself."
"Mine is expressing itself," said she with a light smile--the
smile of a light woman.
"You can't rest in this present life of yours. Your
individuality is too strong. It will have its way--and for all
your mocking smiling, you know I am right. I understand how
you were tempted into it----"
She opened her lips--changed her mind and stopped her lips
with her cigarette.
"I don't blame you--and it was just as well. This life has
taught you--will teach you--will advance you in your
career. . . . Tell me, what gave you the idea that I was
disappointed?"
She tossed her cigarette into the big ash tray. "As I told
you, it is too late." She rose and looked at him with a
strange, sweet smile. "I've got any quantity of faults," said
she. "But there's one I haven't got. I don't whine."
"You don't whine," assented he, "and you don't lie--and you
don't shirk. Men and women have been canonized for less.
I understand that for some reason you can't talk about----"
"Then why do you continue to press me?" said she, a little coldly.
He accepted the rebuke with a bow. "Nevertheless," said he,
with raillery to carry off his persistence, "I shall get you.
If not sooner, then when the specter of an obscure--perhaps
poor--old age begins to agitate the rich hangings of youth's
banquet hall."
"That'll be a good many years yet," mocked she. And from her
lovely young face flashed the radiant defiance of her perfect
youth and health.
"Years that pass quickly," retorted he, unmoved.
She was still radiant, still smiling, but once more she was
seeing the hideous old women of the tenements. Into her
nostrils stole the stench of the foul den in which she had
slept with Mrs. Tucker and Mrs. Reardon--and she was hearing
the hunchback of the dive playing for the drunken dancing old
cronies, with their tin cups of whiskey.
No danger of that now? How little she was saving of her
salary from Palmer! She could not "work" men--she simply
could not. She would never put by enough to be independent
and every day her tastes for luxury had firmer hold upon her.
No danger? As much danger as ever--a danger postponed but
certain to threaten some day--and then, a fall from a greater
height--a certain fall. She was hearing the battered,
shattered piano of the dive.
"For pity's sake Mrs. Palmer!" cried Brent, in a low voice.
She started. The beautiful room, the environment of luxury
and taste and comfort came back.
Gourdain interrupted and then Palmer.
The four went to the Cafe Anglais for dinner. Brent announced
that he was going to the Riviera soon to join a party of
friends. "I wish you would visit me later," said he, with a
glance that included them all and rested, as courtesy
required, upon Susan. "There's room in my villa--barely room."
"We've not really settled here," said Susan. "And we've taken
up French seriously."
"The weather's frightful," said Palmer, with a meaning glance
at her. "I think we ought to go."
But her expression showed that she had no intention of going,
no sympathy with Palmer's desire to use this excellent, easy
ladder of Brent's offering to make the ascent into secure
respectability.
"Next winter, then," said Brent, who was observing her.
"Or--in the early spring, perhaps."
"Oh, we may change our minds and come," Palmer suggested
eagerly. "I'm going to try to persuade my wife."
"Come if you can," said Brent cordially. "I'll have no one
stopping with me."
When they were alone, Palmer sent his valet away and fussed
about impatiently until Susan's maid had unhooked her dress
and had got her ready for bed. As the maid began the long
process of giving her hair a thorough brushing, he said,
"Please let her go, Susan. I want to tell you something."
"She does not know a word of English."
"But these French are so clever that they understand perfectly
with their eyes."
Susan sent the maid to bed and sat in a dressing gown brushing
her hair. It was long enough to reach to the middle of her
back and to cover her bosom. It was very thick and wavy. Now
that the scarlet was washed from her lips for the night, her
eyes shone soft and clear with no relief for their almost
tragic melancholy. He was looking at her in profile. Her
expression was stern as well as sad--the soul of a woman who
has suffered and has been made strong, if not hard.
"I got a letter from my lawyers today," he began. "It was
about that marriage. I'll read."
At the word "marriage," she halted the regular stroke of the
brush. Her eyes gazed into the mirror of the dressing table
through her reflection deep into her life, deep into the
vistas of memory. As he unfolded the letter, she leaned back
in the low chair, let her hands drop to her lap.
"'As the inclosed documents show,'" he read, "'we have learned
and have legally verified that Jeb--not James--Ferguson
divorced his wife Susan Lenox about a year after their
marriage, on the ground of desertion; and two years later he
fell through the floor of an old bridge near Brooksburg and
was killed.'"
The old bridge--she was feeling its loose flooring sag and
shift under the cautious hoofs of the horse. She was seeing
Rod Spenser on the horse, behind him a girl, hardly more than
a child--under the starry sky exchanging confidences--talking
of their futures.
"So, you see, you are free," said Palmer. "I went round to an
American lawyer's office this afternoon, and borrowed an old
legal form book. And I've copied out this form----"
She was hardly conscious of his laying papers on the table
before her.
"It's valid, as I've fixed things. The lawyer gave me some
paper. It has a watermark five years old. I've dated back
two years--quite enough. So when we've signed, the marriage
never could be contested--not even by ourselves."
He took the papers from the table, laid them in her lap. She
started. "What were you saying?" she asked. "What's this?"
"What were you thinking about?" said he.
"I wasn't thinking," she answered, with her slow sweet smile
of self-concealment. "I was feeling--living--the past. I was
watching the procession."
He nodded understandingly. "That's a kind of time-wasting
that can easily be overdone."
"Easily," she agreed. "Still, there's the lesson. I have to
remind myself of it often--always, when there's anything that
has to be decided."
"I've written out two of the forms," said he. "We sign both.
You keep one, I the other. Why not sign now?"
She read the form--the agreement to take each other as lawful
husband and wife and to regard the contract as in all respects
binding and legal.
"Do you understand it?" laughed he nervously, for her manner
was disquieting.
"Perfectly."
"You stared at the paper as if it were a puzzle."
"It is," said she.
"Come into the library and we'll sign and have it over with."
She laid the papers on the dressing table, took up her brush,
drew it slowly over her hair several times.
"Wake up," cried he, good humoredly. "Come on into the
library." And he went to the threshold.
She continued brushing her hair. "I can't sign," said she.
There was the complete absence of emotion that caused her to
be misunderstood always by those who did not know her
peculiarities. No one could have suspected the vision of the
old women of the dive before her eyes, the sound of the
hunchback's piano in her ears, the smell of foul liquors and
foul bodies and foul breaths in her nostrils. Yet she repeated:
"No--I can't sign."
He returned to his chair, seated himself, a slight cloud on his
brow, a wicked smile on his lips. "Now what the devil!" said he
gently, a jeer in his quiet voice. "What's all this about?"
"I can't marry you," said she. "I wish to live on as we are."
"But if we do that we can't get up where we want to go."
"I don't wish to know anyone but interesting men of the sort
that does things--and women of my own sort. Those people have
no interest in conventionalities."
"That's not the crowd we set out to conquer," said he. "You
seem to have forgotten."
"It's you who have forgotten," replied she.
"Yes--yes--I know," he hastened to say. "I wasn't accusing
you of breaking your agreement. You've lived up to it--and
more. But, Susan, the people you care about don't especially
interest me. Brent--yes. He's a man of the world as well as
one of the artistic chaps. But the others--they're beyond me.
I admit it's all fine, and I'm glad you go in for it. But the
only crowd that's congenial to me is the crowd that we've got
to be married to get in with."
She saw his point--saw it more clearly than did he. To him
the world of fashion and luxurious amusement seemed the only
world worth while. He accepted the scheme of things as he
found it, had the conventional ambitions--to make in
succession the familiar goals of the conventional human
success--power, wealth, social position. It was impossible
for him to get any other idea of a successful life, of
ambitions worthy a man's labor. It was evidence of the
excellence of his mind that he was able to tolerate the idea
of the possibility of there being another mode of success
worth while.
"I'm helping you in your ambitions--in doing what you think is
worth while," said he. "Don't you think you owe it to me to
help me in mine?"
He saw the slight change of expression that told him how
deeply he had touched her.
"If I don't go in for the high society game," he went on,
"I'll have nothing to do. I'll be adrift--gambling, drinking,
yawning about and going to pieces. A man's got to have
something to work for--and he can't work unless it seems to
him worth doing."
She was staring into the mirror, her elbows on the table, her
chin upon her interlaced fingers. It would be difficult to
say how much of his gentleness to her was due to her physical
charm for him, and how much to his respect for her mind and
her character. He himself would have said that his weakness
was altogether the result of the spell her physical charm
cast over him. But it is probable that the other element was
the stronger.
"You'll not be selfish, Susan?" urged he. "You'll give me a
square deal."
"Yes--I see that it does look selfish," said she. "A little
while ago I'd not have been able to see any deeper than the
looks of it. Freddie, there are some things no one has a
right to ask of another, and no one has a right to grant."
The ugliness of his character was becoming less easy to
control. This girl whom he had picked up, practically out of
the gutter, and had heaped generosities upon, was trying his
patience too far. But he said, rather amiably:
"Certainly I'm not asking any such thing of you in asking you
to become a respectable married woman, the wife of a rich man."
"Yes--you are, Freddie," replied she gently. "If I married
you, I'd be signing an agreement to lead your life, to give up
my own--an agreement to become a sort of woman I've no desire
to be and no interest in being; to give up trying to become
the only sort of woman I think is worth while. When we were
discussing my coming with you, you made this same proposal in
another form. I refused it then. And I refuse it now. It's
harder to refuse now, but I'm stronger."
"Stronger, thanks to the money you've got from me--the money
and the rest of it," sneered he.
"Haven't I earned all I've got?" said she, so calmly that he
did not realize how the charge of ingratitude, unjust though
it was, had struck into her.
"You have changed!" said he. "You're getting as hard as the
rest of us. So it's all a matter of money, of give and
take--is it? None of the generosity and sentiment you used to
be full of? You've simply been using me."
"It can be put that way," replied she. "And no doubt you
honestly see it that way. But I've got to see my own interest
and my own right, Freddie. I've learned at last that I
mustn't trust to anyone else to look after them for me."
"Are you riding for a fall--Queenie?"
At "Queenie" she smiled faintly. "I'm riding the way I always
have," answered she. "It has carried me down. But--it has
brought me up again." She looked at him with eyes that
appealed, without yielding. "And I'll ride that way to the
end--up or down," said she. "I can't help it."
"Then you want to break with me?" he asked--and he began to
look dangerous.
"No," replied she. "I want to go on as we are. . . . I'll not
be interfering in your social ambitions, in any way. Over
here it'll help you to have a mistress who--" she saw her
image in the glass, threw him an arch glance--"who isn't
altogether unattractive won't it? And if you found you could
go higher by marrying some woman of the grand world--why,
you'd be free to do it."
He had a way of looking at her that gave her--and himself--the
sense of a delirious embrace. He looked at her so, now. He said:
"You take advantage of my being crazy about you--_damn_ you!"
"Heaven knows," laughed she, "I need every advantage I can find."
He touched her--the lightest kind of touch. It carried the
sense of embrace in his look still more giddily upward.
"Queenie!" he said softly.
She smiled at him through half closed eyes that with a gentle
and shy frankness confessed the secret of his attraction for
her. There was, however, more of strength than of passion in
her face as a whole. Said she:
"We're getting on well--as we are aren't we? I can meet the
most amusing and interesting people--my sort of people. You
can go with the people and to the places you like and you'll
not be bound. If you should take a notion to marry some woman
with a big position--you'd not have to regret being tied
to--Queenie."
"But--I want you--I want you," said he. "I've got to have you."
"As long as you like," said she. "But on terms I can
accept--always on terms I can accept. Never on any
others--never! I can't help it. I can yield everything
but that."
Where she was concerned he was the primitive man only. The
higher his passion rose, the stronger became his desire for
absolute possession. When she spoke of terms--of the
limitations upon his possession of her--she transformed his
passion into fury. He eyed her wickedly, abruptly demanded:
"When did you decide to make this kick-up?"
"I don't know. Simply--when you asked me to sign, I found I
couldn't."
"You don't expect _me_ to believe that."
"It's the truth." She resumed brushing her hair.
"Look at me!"
She turned her face toward him, met his gaze.
"Have you fallen in love with that young Jew?"
"Gourdain? No."
"Have you a crazy notion that your looks'll get you a better
husband? A big fortune or a title?"
"I haven't thought about a husband. Haven't I told you I wish
to be free?"
"But that doesn't mean anything."
"It might," said she absently.
"How?"
"I don't know. If one is always free--one is ready
for--whatever comes. Anyhow, I must be free--no matter what
it costs."
"I see you're bent on dropping back into the dirt I picked you
out of."
"Even that," she said. "I must be free."
"Haven't you any desire to be respectable--decent?"
"I guess not," confessed she. "What is there in that
direction for me?"
"A woman doesn't stay young and good-looking long."
"No." She smiled faintly. "But does she get old and ugly any
slower for being married?"
He rose and stood over her, looked smiling danger down at her.
She leaned back in her chair to meet his eyes without
constraint. "You're trying to play me a trick," said he.
"But you're not going to get away with the goods. I'm
astonished that you are so rotten ungrateful."
"Because I'm not for sale?"
"Queenie balking at selling herself," he jeered. "And what's
the least you ever did sell for?"
"A half-dollar, I think. No--two drinks of whiskey one cold
night. But what I sold was no more myself than--than the coat
I'd pawned and drunk up before I did it."
The plain calm way in which she said this made it so terrible
that he winced and turned away. "We have seen hell--haven't
we?" he muttered. He turned toward her with genuine passion
of feeling. "Susan," he cried, "don't be a fool. Let's push
our luck, now that things are coming our way. We need each
other--we want to stay together--don't we?"
"_I_ want to stay. I'm happy."
"Then--let's put the record straight."
"Let's keep it straight," replied she earnestly. "Don't ask
me to go where I don't belong. For I can't,
Freddie--honestly, I can't."
A pause. Then, "You will!" said he, not in blustering fury,
but in that cool and smiling malevolence which had made him
the terror of his associates from his boyhood days among the
petty thieves and pickpockets of Grand Street. He laid his
hand gently on her shoulder. "You hear me. I say you will."
She looked straight at him. "Not if you kill me," she said.
She rose to face him at his own height. "I've bought my
freedom with my body and with my heart and with my soul. It's
all I've got. I shall keep it."
He measured her strength with an expert eye. He knew that he
was beaten. He laughed lightly and went into his dressing-room.