“I fear,” remarked Mrs. Percy-Bartlett, looking at Richard Stoughton
with a pleased expression in her brown eyes, “that you studied the art
of flattery at college and have not yet learned its worthlessness.” She
had been singing a little love-song that she had recently composed, and
the thrilling melody had brought a flush of pleasure to the young man’s
face. Without knowing much about the science of music, he was keenly
sensitive to its influence.
As he stood by the piano, looking down into the smiling face of the
most beautiful woman he had ever met, Richard inwardly blessed the
unexpected telegram that had called Percy-Bartlett away to his club
before the coffee had been served at dinner. At the time of which we
write, the financial affairs of the nation were in a disturbed state;
and Percy-Bartlett, like other millionnaires, felt that a great
opportunity had presented itself to him for combining patriotism and
prudence, by giving aid to an improvident nation at a high rate of
interest. His father had followed such a course during the Civil War.
Percy-Bartlett’s financial patriotism was, as it were, hereditary,
and he had left the house that evening with the firm determination
of offering a tithe of his fortune to his afflicted government, on
gilt-edged security, to be redeemed by posterity.
“You do me an injustice, Mrs. Percy-Bartlett,” answered Richard,
returning her smile. “I know that my opinion regarding your song is
of no great value from a technical standpoint, but I can readily
understand how glad the publishers are to get your work.”
Richard had learned much about the Percy-Bartletts that afternoon
from John Fenton. He had heard of the husband’s prominence in society
and business circles and in club life, and of the wife’s devotion to
music, of her talent as a song-writer. But Fenton had not told him
that Mrs. Percy-Bartlett had brown eyes that had a beseeching, almost
caressing expression at times, that her mouth was rather large, but
wonderfully symmetrical, and especially attractive when she smiled and
showed her white, even teeth. Fenton had been silent also regarding her
brown hair--hair that curled and shimmered and waved with a coquettish
life of its own, and gave to Richard Stoughton an almost irresistible
desire to stroke it with his hand. That she had a white, firm neck,
and rounded, dimpled arms, and long, tapering hands that were worthy a
sculptor’s art, his friend had not informed him. Perhaps Fenton did not
know all this.
“At all events,” thought Richard to himself, “I’m inclined to think
that if Fenton _could_ see her beauty, although he might admire it, he
would find some reason for saying that she had no right to it--that so
much of it as she derived from her handsome ancestors was ill-gotten
gain.” Which thought, the reader will observe, proved that Richard
had been skimming the books Fenton had given to him, and had come,
as he fondly believed, upon certain arguments that seemed to him to
be founded on fallacy. Stoughton never went very deeply into any
subject presented to his attention. He had that faculty of mind which
enabled him to cover a good deal of ground at a glance, and to condense
into showy half-truths the results of his rapid mental processes. It
was this gift--a dangerous one to a man who wishes to make a solid
rather than a glittering success of life--that had suddenly given him
a prominent place on the _Trumpet_ as the spiciest paragrapher the
editorial page had had for years. And it was this faculty applied to
the airy nothings of unimportant conversation that had given him the
reputation of being a wit--a reputation much more to be dreaded than
that of a rake. No woman fears a rake, but she has a deep-seated dread
of a wit.
“But come, Mr. Stoughton,” said Mrs. Percy-Bartlett, standing up and
looking at him with mock commiseration, “I have been very cruel to
inflict my music on you, when I know that you are dying for a cigar.
Come into the library and let me repair my lack of hospitality. Mr.
Percy-Bartlett would feel that he had committed sacrilege if he failed
to smoke a cigar after dinner.”
“It would be something worse than sacrilege in such companionship,”
remarked Stoughton, lighting a “perfecto” and seating himself opposite
his hostess; “it would be folly.”
“There can be no folly, Mr. Stoughton, after marriage, you know. I
mean in our set, of course. A thing is either good form or bad form.
What is good form may seem foolish to the world at large, and what is
bad form may, in reality, be wise. But our motto of _noblesse oblige_
has absolutely nothing to do with folly or wisdom in the abstract. It
simply presupposes an obligation on our part to observe certain canons
of taste and habits of life that have no relation to wisdom or folly,
virtue or vice, progress or retrogression. You know all this, though,
as well as I do.”
“Only in a general way,” answered Richard, somewhat surprised at her
earnestness. He felt that, somehow, she was tempted to treat him in
a more confidential way than the duration of their acquaintanceship
strictly warranted. “I have had little opportunity, as yet, to study
the different phases of New York society.”
“But,” she persisted, her face slightly flushed with eagerness, “there
is no difference in the social cult of the most exclusive set in New
York and that which dominates the inner circle of other cities in what
we might call the eastern belt of civilization. That awful Frankenstein
called ‘Bad Form,’ a monster created by society, and dogging our steps
at all times, is not confined to New York. Haven’t you endured his
threatening glances in your New England cities?”
“Yes,” confessed Richard; “I know the creature--and, in a certain
sense, I suppose I have run away from him. I came here to New York,
against my father’s wishes, that I might be free to live my life as my
tastes and inclinations inspired me, not as a select few in my native
city ordained that I should live it.”
With an impetuous gesture Mrs. Percy-Bartlett placed her hand on his
for an instant and blushed slightly as their eyes met.
“Do you know,” she said, “I feel an almost irresistible inclination to
tell you a secret, a secret that all the world knows, but that I have
not yet confessed to a human soul.” An odd smile played across her
mouth.
“I shall feel more flattered than I can tell you,” exclaimed Richard
with marked emphasis.
“Well, then,” went on Mrs. Percy-Bartlett, “I am a rebel. Remember,
Mr. Stoughton, that this is the first time I have ever said this. I
hardly know why I have said it to you; but, somehow, I feel thoroughly
in touch with you on some points, and you seem more like an old friend
than a new acquaintance.”
Perhaps later on she would analyze this feeling more thoroughly, and
realize that she had reached a crisis in her life when an attractive
man in the first flush of youth, and still possessing a freshness of
view, and the enthusiasm of newly tried powers that had already won
recognition from the world, stimulated that part of her nature that the
atmosphere in which she lived tended to repress. But, for the moment,
she had not stopped to ask herself why Richard Stoughton attracted
her. She had simply given herself up to the fascination he had for her,
and had left to the future the solution of the problem as to how far
she should allow this fascination to influence her.
“As a rebel,” remarked Richard earnestly, “I give you greeting. I think
I understand your revolt.”
“I know you do,” she exclaimed with enthusiasm. “You see, it is
perfectly allowable for me to cultivate music as an accomplishment;
but to take it seriously, to do something with it, to write songs that
people outside of our circle will sing--that, you know, is bad form. I
assure you, Mr. Stoughton, it took some courage to do it.”
“But not to do it would have been a crime,” said Richard, puffing his
cigar thoughtfully.
“But a crime in the interest of the canons of good taste is not only
allowable but imperative,” returned Mrs. Percy-Bartlett, smiling. “You
must understand that there is a vast difference between having your
name in the newspapers as being one of the best-dressed women at the
Patriarchs’, and being referred to as a composer--both popular and
promising.”
“You mean that society would condemn you to die with all your music in
you?”
“Practically, yes; but I refused to obey the sentence. Therefore, I am
a rebel.”
She arose, and he followed her into the music-room.
“Here’s a little thing,” she said, striking a few chords on the
instrument, “that I have never sent to my publisher.”
The chords ran into a weird, almost barbaric prelude. Then she began
to sing. She had used the words of Heine’s little gem of crystallized
unrest:--
“A pine-tree standeth lonely,
On a far Norland height;
It slumbereth, while around it
The snow falls thick and white.
And of a palm it dreameth
That in a Southern land,
Lonely and silent standeth
Amid the drifting sand.”
There was passion, protest, longing in the music, and the refrain died
away and came again like the sobs of a broken heart.
Richard bent over her and looked into her eyes, dark with unshed tears.
His voice trembled as he whispered,--
“I am so sorry for you.”
She arose and stood before him, a peculiar smile on her face.
“Isn’t it hard,” she said, “to distinguish between the real and the
unreal? When we go together into the unknown land, we seem to have
been friends for ages piled on ages. Then we come back to reality,
and I sit down here and we talk about the weather. And that of course
is much better. It is, you know, bad form--oh, how weary I am of the
phrase--for you to tell me that you’re sorry for me.”
Richard leaned against the piano and looked down at her thoughtfully.
“Yes--and absurd. Why should I be sorry for you? Suppose, for
instance--and of course it is not a possibility--that I should tell
my cynical friend Fenton, of whom I want to talk to you sometime,
that I had met a woman young, beautiful, wealthy, courted by society,
wonderfully accomplished, a musician possessing genius, a soul
sensitive to all that is noble and beautiful in life, and that I had
expressed to her my commiseration. What would he say?”
“Probably,” suggested Mrs. Percy-Bartlett, with a note of recklessness
in her voice, “your friend Fenton, if he is a man of the world,--and he
probably is, as you call him cynical,--would ask you if this unhappy
being was married or unmarried. If you told him she was free”--
“Well?”
“Well, he would advise you to check your sympathy and defend your own
freedom.”
“And if I said that she was married?”
“He would say that you must have known her a long time to take such a
liberty.” The words were robbed of their harshness by the smile that
accompanied them.
“Forgive me, please,” he pleaded, bending over her. “How can I help it
if words come unbidden to my lips, if I forget that I have known you
only a few hours? Won’t you absolve me before I go?”
She stood up and gave him her hand.
“I have forgiven you,” she said. “It was my fault. You are too
sensitive to music.”
Then with that charming inconsistency that adds so much to woman’s
fascination and to the sorrows of the world, she continued:--
“Have you an engagement, Mr. Stoughton, for Friday night? No? I should
so much like to have you join us in our box at the Metropolitan that
evening. ‘Sanson et Dalila’ is to be given for the first time in this
country, you know. Would you care to hear it?”
“It is very good of you,” he said, taking her outstretched hand. “How
much pleasure your invitation gives me I dare not tell you--for fear of
taking a liberty.”
She smiled merrily at his little shaft of sarcasm, and he left her with
the roguish light still dancing in her eyes.
She turned and walked across the drawing-room and wandered aimlessly
into the library. Soon she found herself seated at the piano, but there
was no comfort there. For the first time within her recollection her
bosom friend, her confidante, the sharer of her joys and sorrows, had
turned false.
Throwing herself down upon a divan, she buried her head in the pillows
and sobbed bitterly.