measuring their love.
"I might go," he said at last, as if to himself; "but in going I
should spoil something very precious. You deny it now, but you would
remember your own sacrifice. And then, of course, you would go back
to your work. I should want you to. But it would never be the same
again, never."
"I won't go back."
He shook his head.
"If you didn't, you would never forgive me. Every day you spent here
alone and idle would break one of those fragile bonds that hold us
so closely. If only you hadn't given up South America!"
"I was wrong," she said drearily.
At last he held out his arms.
"Myra," he said, "you mean more than anything else to me. This offer
pleased me; I admit it. But I can work on just as well here. I have
the Cromwell house, you know, and the Newburghs may build soon.
Don't let's think of it again."
She held back a moment, afraid to yield; but there was no resisting
her longing, and she ran to him with a little sigh, which he softly
echoed as he took her and held her close.
They had vowed to live only for one another. The theme of their love
was sublime enough, but the instruments were fallible. Human beings
can rarely sustain a lofty note beyond the measure of a supreme
moment. Emotional as she was in her gratitude, Myra would have kept
on sounding that note through the days and nights. She would not
allow Oliver to forget what he had given up for her sake.
More than ever she sought to associate herself with his work. He was
forced to recognize her personality there. For when skilfully she
led the talk on his plans, she hunted down elusive problems,
grappled with them, and offered him the solutions of a sure instinct.
She did not reckon with his vanity. She was too eager to make up for
a lost opportunity, as she too often explained. He came gradually to
brood over what he now consented to consider a sacrifice. In passing
moments of irritation he even referred to it. He broke out
occasionally in fits of nerves, certain that he would be humoured
and petted back to the normal. He knew well how a frown dismayed her,
how deep a word could strike, what tiny wounds he could inflict. It
would seem sometimes as if one or the other deliberately created a
short, violent scene over a trivial difference just to relieve
routine. The domestic low-lands stretched beyond the eye. He missed
the broken country, the unexpected dips and curves of the unknown.
Not that his heart went adventuring. He was faithful in body and
spirit, but there was discontent in the looks he turned on her.
One afternoon she read in the papers that David Cannon and Frances
Maury were back from South America after a triumphant series of
recitals. They were to give a concert the following month. Her
indifference to the news, she thought drearily, was an indication of
how far she had travelled away from her old life. She did not even
want to see David Cannon.
It was Oliver who brought up the subject that evening.
"David's back. If you'd been with him, how excited I should have
felt to-day!" he remarked. "Odd, isn't it?"
"You would have been in France," she reminded him.
They sat on in silence for a while.
He laid his book aside with a sudden brisk movement.
"Myra, why don't you sing again?"
"For you, to-night?"
"I mean professionally," he blurted out.
She drifted across the room to a shadowy corner.
"I don't know," she said rather flatly, bending over a bowl of white
roses. "I suppose I don't feel like it any more. It's hard to take
things up again."
He fingered his book; then, as if despite himself, he said;
"I'm afraid, dear, that we're letting ourselves grow old."
She swung sharply about, catching her breath.
"You mean I am?"
"Both of us." He was cautious, tender even, but she was not deceived.
It was almost a relief that he had spoken.
"Tell me, dear," she said from her corner. "You're bored, aren't you?
Oh, not with me"--she forestalled his protest--"but just plain bored.
Isn't it so?" Her voice was deceptively quiet.
He stirred in his chair, fidgeted under the direct attack, and
decided not to evade it.
"I think we've been buried long enough," he finally confessed.
"I love our evenings together, of course; but a little change now
and then might be agreeable. Perhaps it isn't a good thing for two
people to be thrown entirely on each other's company. And I've been
wondering, dear"--he hesitated, carefully picking his words--
"I've been wondering if you would not be happier if you had other
interests--interests of your own."
"Suppose I don't want any?" She did not give this out as a challenge,
but he frowned a trifle impatiently.
"I can't believe it possible," he said. "Have you lost all touch
with the world?"
She came slowly forward into the warm circle of light.
"I don't seem to care for people and things as I used to. Look at me.
I'm not the same Myra."
She stared at him with a deep, searching expression, and what she
saw drew her up with a sudden movement of decision. Her voice, when
next she spoke, was lighter, more animated.
"You're right, dear. We're growing poky. I tell you what we'll do,"
she continued in a playful manner. Her lips smiled, and her eyes
watched as she knelt beside him, her head tilted, her fingers
straying over the rough surface of his coat. He never dressed for
dinner in these days. "We'll give a party, shall we?" she said.
"And then everyone will know that we're still--alive."
If she had wanted to test his state of mind, she could not have
found a better way. Instantly he was all eagerness. Nothing would do
but that they should plan the party at once, set the date, make out
a list of friends to be invited.
She was ready with pad and pencil and her old address-book, which
had lain for many days untouched in her desk.
"Shall we have Frances Maury?" she suggested. "She'll remind you of
me as I was before we married."
"What a gorgeous little devil you were!" he murmured reminiscently.
She wished he had not said that. Yet how absurd it was to be jealous
of oneself!
Well, they would entertain again, since it pleased him. But she had
lost her social instinct. This party seemed a great enterprise. She
had to pretend to an enthusiasm which she did not really feel.
"Am I growing old?" she wondered more than once. She had to confess
to a panic of shyness when she thought of herself as hostess. That
was all she would be this time. Frances Maury held the rôle of prima
donna.
There were no regrets to her invitations. They came, these old
friends and acquaintances, with familiar voices and gestures. They
seemed genuinely glad to see her, but they did not spare her. She
had grown a little stouter, had she not? Ah, well happy people
risked that. And they did not need to be told how happy she was. In
quite an old-fashioned way, too. Myra domesticated--how quaint that
was! Did she sing any more? No? What a pity!
Her rooms had lain quiet too long. So much noise deafened her. She
was suddenly aware that she _had_ grown stouter. Her new gown, made
for the occasion, should have been more cleverly designed. Martigues
as much as told her so. She had, also, lost the power of attraction.
She could not hold people's attention as she used to. She was
sensitively aware of how readily one and the other drifted away
after a few words. Had she not been hostess, she would often have
found herself alone.
David Cannon and Miss Maury came late. Frances was fond of dramatic
entrances; she had the stage sense. Myra hurried forward, aware, as
she did so, that her greeting held a maternal note; that Cannon was
looking through and through her with those small, relentless eyes of
his. Then Oliver came up, and from the corner of her eyes she saw
Frances attach herself to him. She had known that would happen.
Frances Maury was indeed a lovely creature, vivid, electric, swift,
and free of movement, mellow of voice. She was like a bell. Touch
her and she chimed. Oliver on one side, Martigues on the other, she
made her vivacious way through the room, and was soon surrounded.
Very prettily she moved her court toward Myra, drew Myra into the
circle of her warmth with a gracious friendliness.
Martigues, in raptures, explained that it was he who had designed
the very modern jewel she wore, a moonstone set in silver. "Isn't
she adorable!" he kept on repeating.
Oliver had bent over to look at this ornament and was fingering it,
his dark head close to hers. She whispered to him, and he whispered
back. They were already on the best of terms.
David Cannon trod up to Myra.
"What do you think of her?" he asked abruptly. "Her high notes are
not as fine as yours were, but she is improving. If she doesn't fall
in love, I shall make something of her." He frowned at Oliver.
Myra flushed.
"She seems very clever," was all she could manage.
"I'll make her sing," said Cannon, and elbowed a path to her side.
She pouted a little, declared she could never resist him, and moved
to the piano.
Myra drew a short breath. She herself had not intended to sing, but
she had hoped that Oliver or David would give her a chance to refuse.
She did not feel angry or envious of this girl, she was incapable of
pettiness; but she felt old and dull and lonely. Her trained smile
was her only shield. She held it while Frances Maury sang. She did
not look at Oliver, but his delight reached her as if she had caused
it. She felt him hovering close to the piano. She knew how he was
standing, how his eyes were shining. She knew, because as the warm,
rich voice rose up, as Cannon's strange rhythms filled the room with
a wild pagan grace, she withdrew into her memory and found there all
that went on. She herself was singing; she stood free and beautiful
before them all; she met Oliver's eyes.
Frances sang again and again. Oliver led the applause, and Myra sat
on, smiling, her steady gaze turned inward. When it was over, she
took Frances by the hand, and it was as if she were thanking herself
and bidding that self adieu.
Later in the evening David Cannon came up to her and gruffly
suggested that she sing.
She shook her head.
"No, my good friend."
"Why not?" He stood over her, ugly, masterful.
Her smile softened to a sweet, sad flutter of lip.
"You know why."
"Nonsense!"
"You can't bully me any more, David," she told him gently. "That's
the tragic part of it," she added under her breath. She liked David,
but she wished he would go. She wished they would all go. It must be
very late.
It was still later, however, before the last guest departed. That
last guest was Frances Maury, escorted by a glum David. Oliver had
kept her on.
"Myra and I always get to bed so early that it's a relief to stay up
for once," he had said.
"Of course it's much more sensible to go to bed early." Miss Maury's
voice did not sound as if sensible things appealed to her.
"Oliver has to be at his office so early in the morning," Myra put
in almost as an apology.
"She sees to that," came from Oliver, with a humorous inflection.
Frances Maury playfully shuddered.
"Wives have too many duties for me. I shall never marry."
"Don't," said Oliver, and realized his blunder. He glanced quickly
at Myra, and was relieved to observe that she did not seem troubled.
It was David, at last, who insisted on going home. Frances obeyed
him with a laughing apology.
"You've given me such a good time. I forgot the hour. May I come
again?"
"Indeed you must," Myra answered hospitably.
She would not leave, however, until they had promised to come to her
concert. She would send them tickets. And they must have tea with
her soon. Would they chaperon her once in a while? Oliver eagerly
promised to be at her beck and call. He followed her out into the
hall, unmindful of David's vile temper.
Myra turned slowly back into the room, noting with jaded eyes the
empty beer-bottles, crusts of sandwiches, ashes on the rugs, chairs
pulled crazily about. The place still resounded with chatter and song.
It no longer seemed her home.
Presently Oliver joined her.
"Well, I enjoyed that," he said with a boyish ring. "Come, now,
wasn't it jolly to see people again? Everyone had a wonderful time."
He hummed as he walked lightly over to the table and helped himself
to a cigarette.
She dropped on the couch.
"I'm a little tired."
He lit his cigarette, staring at her over the tiny flame of the
match before he blew it out.
"Why, I never noticed. You do look all in."
She straightened with an effort, put a hand to her hair.
"I'm afraid I've lost the habit."
"You'll have to get it again," he said happily. "We're going to give
lots of parties. It's good for my business, too. Walter Mason
brought a man here to-night who is thinking of building a house on
Long Island. Walter tells me he went away quite won over."
She was all interest at once.
"Why didn't you tell me? I might have made a special effort to be
nice to him."
"Oh, he had a good time," he said carelessly. "I say, Myra, your
friend Miss Maury is fascinating. Sings divinely." He moved over to
the couch and sat on the edge of it, absent-mindedly toying with her
hand.
"She's very lovely," Myra agreed.
"Why didn't you sing?" he suddenly asked.
"I didn't need to." The little smile was back, fastened to her lips.
A certain unfamiliar embarrassment fell between them. She made no
effort to dissipate it.
He yawned.
"Well, you should have. Heavens! it's late! Two o'clock. I'm off to
bed." He kissed her lightly on the forehead.
"I'll be along in a moment," she said.
She heard him humming in the next room, heard him moving about,
heard the bump of his shoes on the floor. She lay, her eyes closed.
Presently she got up, went to the piano and let her fingers wander
over the keys. Then she began to sing softly. Her fine critical
faculties were awake. She listened while she sang--listened as if
some one else would rise or fall on her verdict. There was a curious
lack of vibrancy in her notes. They did not come from the heart.
Suddenly she stopped. Oliver was calling "Myra."
She thrilled with a swift hope that brought her to her feet, flushed
and tremulous.
"Aren't you coming to bed soon? It's too late for music," drifted
faintly querulous down the hall.
The light went out of her face.
"I'm coming." A leaden weariness was over her. Slowly she closed the
piano.
He was already asleep when she tiptoed into the room. She stood a
moment staring down at him.
"The worst of it is that I shall sleep, too," she thought.
_BUTTERFLIES_
BY ROSE SIDNEY
From _The Pictorial Review_
The wind rose in a sharp gust, rattling the insecure windows and
sighing forlornly about the corners of the house. The door unlatched
itself, swung inward hesitatingly, and hung wavering for a moment on
its sagging hinges. A formless cloud of gray fog blew into the warm,
steamy room. But whatever ghostly visitant had paused upon the
threshold, he had evidently decided not to enter, for the catch
snapped shut with a quick, passionate vigour. The echo of the
slamming door rang eerily through the house.
Mart Brenner's wife laid down the ladle with which she had been
stirring the contents of a pot that was simmering on the big, black
stove, and, dragging her crippled foot behind her, she hobbled
heavily to the door.
As she opened it a new horde of fog-wraiths blew in. The world was a
gray, wet blanket. Not a light from the village below pierced the
mist, and the lonely army of tall cedars on the black hill back of
the house was hidden completely.
"Who's there?" Mrs. Brenner hailed. But her voice fell flat and
muffled. Far off on the beach she could dimly hear the long wail of
a fog-horn.
The faint throb of hope stilled in her breast. She had not really
expected to find any one at the door unless perhaps it should be a
stranger who had missed his way at the cross-roads. There had been
one earlier in the afternoon when the fog first came. But her
husband had been at home then and his surly manner quickly cut short
the stranger's attempts at friendliness. This ugly way of Mart's had
isolated them from all village intercourse early in their life on
Cedar Hill.
Like a buzzard's nest their home hung over the village on the
unfriendly sides of the bleak slope. Visitors were few and always
reluctant, even strangers, for the village told weird tales of Mart
Brenner and his kin. The village said that he--and all those who
belonged to him as well--were marked for evil and disaster. Disaster
had truly written itself through-out their history. His mother was
mad, a tragic madness of bloody prophecies and dim fears; his only
son a witless creature of eighteen, who, for all his height and bulk,
spent his days catching butterflies in the woods on the hill, and his
nights in laboriously pinning them, wings outspread, upon the bare
walls of the house.
The room where the Brenner family lived its queer, taciturn life was
tapestried in gold, the glowing tapestry of swarms of outspread
yellow butterflies sweeping in gilded tides from the rough floors to
the black rafters overhead.
Olga Brenner herself was no less tragic than her family. On her face,
written in the acid of pain, was the history of the blows and
cruelty that had warped her active body. Because of her crippled foot,
her entire left side sagged hopelessly and her arm swung away, above
it, like a branch from a decayed tree. But more saddening than her
distorted body was the lonely soul that looked out of her tired,
faded eyes.
She was essentially a village woman with a profound love of its
intimacies and gossip, its fence-corner neighbourliness. The horror
with which the village regarded her, as the wife of Mart Brenner,
was an eating sore. It was greater than the tragedy of her poor,
witless son, the hatred of old Mrs. Brenner, and her ever-present
fear of Mart. She had never quite given up her unreasoning hope that
some day some one might come to the house in one of Mart's long,
unexplained absences and sit down and talk with her over a cup of tea.
She put away the feeble hope again as she turned back into the dim
room and closed the door behind her.
"Must have been that bit of wind," she meditated. "It plays queer
tricks sometimes"
She went to the mantel and lighted the dull lamp. By the flicker she
read the face of the clock.
"Tobey's late!" she exclaimed uneasily. Her mind never rested from
its fear for Tobey. His childlike mentality made him always the same
burden as when she had rocked him hour after hour, a scrawny mite of
a baby on her breast.
"It's a fearful night for him to be out!" she muttered.
"Blood! Blood!" said a tragic voice from a dark corner by the stove.
Barely visible in the ruddy half-dark of the room a pair of demoniac
eyes met hers.
Mrs. Brenner threw her shrivelled and wizened mother-in-law an angry
and contemptuous glance.
"Be still!" she commanded. "'Pears to me that's all you ever
say--blood!"
The glittering eyes fell away from hers in a sullen obedience. But
the tragic voice went on intoning stubbornly, "Blood on his hands!
Red! Dripping! I see blood!"
Mrs. Brenner shuddered. "Seems like you could shut up a spell!" she
complained.
The old woman's voice trailed into a broken and fitful whispering.
Olga's commands were the only laws she knew, and she obeyed them.
Mrs. Brenner went back to the stove. But her eyes kept returning to
the clock and thence to the darkening square of window where the fog
pressed heavily into the very room.
Out of the gray silence came a shattering sound that sent the ladle
crashing out of Mrs. Brenner's nerveless hand and brought a moan
from the dozing old woman! It was a scream, a long, piercing scream,
so intense, so agonized that it went echoing about the room as
though a disembodied spirit were shrieking under the rafters! It was
a scream of terror, an innocent, a heart-broken scream!
"Tobey!" cried Mrs. Brenner, her face rigid.
The old woman began to pick at her ragged skirt, mumbling, "Blood!
Blood on his hands! I see it."
"That was on the hill," said Mrs. Brenner slowly, steadying her voice.
She put her calloused hand against her lips and stood listening with
agonized intentness. But now the heavy, foggy silence had fallen
again. At intervals came the long, faint wail of the fog-horn. There
was no other sound. Even the old woman in the shadowy corner had
ceased her mouthing.
Mrs. Brenner stood motionless, with her hand against her trembling
lips, her head bent forward for four of the dull intervals between
the siren-call.
Then there came the sound of steps stumbling around the house.
Mrs. Brenner, with her painful hobble, reached the door before the
steps paused there, and threw it open.
The feeble light fell on the round, vacant face of her son his
inevitable pasteboard box, grimy with much handling, clutched close
to his big breast, and in it the soft beating and thudding of
imprisoned wings.
Mrs. Brenner's voice was scarcely more than a whisper, "Tobey!" but
it rose shrilly as she cried, "Where you been? What was that scream?"
Tobey stumbled past her headlong into the house, muttering,
"I'm cold!"
She shut the door and followed him to the stove, where he stood
shaking himself and beating at his damp clothes with clumsy fingers.
"What was that scream?" she asked him tensely. She knotted her rough
fingers as she waited for his answer.
"I dunno," he grunted sullenly. His thick lower lip shoved itself
forward, baby-fashion.
"Where you been?" she persisted.
As he did not answer she coaxed him, "Aw, come on, Tobey. Tell Ma.
Where you been?"
"I been catching butterflies," he answered. "I got a big one this
time," with an air of triumph.
"Where was you when you heard the scream?" she asked him cunningly.
He gave a slow shake of his head. "I dunno," he answered in his dull
voice.
A big shiver shook him. His teeth chattered and he crouched down on
his knees before the open oven-door.
"I'm cold," he complained. Mrs. Brenner came close to him and laid
her hand on his wet, matted hair. "Tobey's a bad boy," she scolded.
"You mustn't go out in the wet like this. Your hair's soaked."
She got down stiffly on her lame knees. "Sit down," she ordered,
"and I'll take off your shoes. They're as wet as a dish-rag."
"They're full of water, too," Tobey grumbled as he sprawled on the
floor, sticking one big, awkward foot into her lap. "The water in
there makes me cold."
"You spoil all your pa's shoes that a-way," said Mrs. Brenner, her
head bent over her task. "He told you not to go round in the wet
with 'em any more. He'll give you a lashing if he comes in and sees
your shoes. I'll have to try and get 'em dry before he comes home.
Anyways," with a breath of deep relief, "I'm glad it ain't that red
clay from the hill. That never comes off."
The boy paid no attention to her. He was investigating the contents
of his box, poking a fat, dirty forefinger around among its
fluttering contents. There was a flash of yellow wings, and with a
crow of triumph the boy shut the lid.
"The big one's just more than flapping," he chuckled. "I had an
awful hard time to catch him. I had to run and run. Look at him, Ma,"
the boy urged. She shook her head.
"I ain't got the time," she said, almost roughly. "I got to get
these shoes off'n you afore your father gets home, Tobey, or you'll
get a awful hiding. Like as not you'll get it anyways, if he's mad.
Better get into bed."
"Naw!" Tobey protested. "I seen Pa already. I want my supper out here!
I don't want to go to bed!"
Mrs. Brenner paused. "Where was Pa?" she asked.
But Tobey's stretch of coherent thinking was past. "I dunno!" he
muttered.
Mrs. Brenner sighed. She pulled off the sticky shoes and rose stiffly.
"Go get in bed," she said.
"Aw, Ma, I want to stay up with my butterflies," the boy pleaded.
Two big tears rolled down his fat cheeks. In his queer, clouded
world he had learned one certain fact. He could almost always move
his mother with tears.
But this time she was firm. "Do as I told you!" she ordered him.
"Mebbe if you're in bed your father won't be thinking about you. And
I'll try to dry these shoes afore he thinks about them." She took
the grimy box from his resisting fingers, and, holding it in one hand,
pulled him to his feet and pushed him off to his bedroom.
When she had closed the door on his wail she returned and laid the
box on the shelf. Then she hurried to gather up the shoes. Something
on her hand as she put it out for the sodden shoes caught her eye
and she straightened, holding her hand up where the feeble light
from the shelf caught it.
"I've cut myself," she said aloud. "There's blood on my hand. It
must 'a' been on those lacings of Tobeys."