At about the time that Wentworth was scrawling his note in Vane's rooms
a slender young woman, dressed in a grey that shimmered like the
winter-sea in sunlight, wearing a hat that had the air of having lit
upon her hair for the moment only,--merely to give the world an
instant's glance at the gracious combination that woman's beauty and
man's millinery could effect--was coming out from one of those huge
bazaars where you can buy almost everything in the world except the
things you want. As she reached the doors, a young man, entering,
brushed her arm; his sleeve caught her portemonnaie. He stooped for it,
offered it hastily, and then--and not until then, gave a little "Oh!"
of--what was it, joy? or mere wonder, or both?
"Oh," he repeated, "I can't go in--now. It's--it's ages since I could
say two words to you. 'Good-morning!' and 'How do you do?' has been the
limit of our talk. Besides, you have a parcel. It weighs, at the very
least, an ounce. I could never think of letting you tire yourself so."
He took the flimsy mite from her, and ranged his steps to hers.
It was true, what he had said about their brief encounters. Do what she
would to forget that morning in the Park, and the weeks before it,
Jeannette Vanlief had not quite succeeded. Not even the calm
dissertations of her father, the arguments pointing to the unfathomable
freakishness of human nature, had altogether ousted her aversion to
Orson Vane. It was an aversion made the more keen because it came on the
heels of a strong liking. She had been prepared to like this young man.
Something about him had drawn her; and then had come the something that
had simply flung her away. Yet, to-day, he seemed to be the Orson Vane
that she had been prepared to like.
She remembered some of the strange things her father had been talking
about. She noted, as Orson spoke, that the false tenor note was gone out
of his voice. But she was still a little fluttered; she could not quite
trust herself, or him.
"But I am only going to the car," she declared. "It will hardly be worth
while. I mustn't take you out of your way."
"I see," he regretted, "you've not forgotten. I can't explain; I was--I
think I was a little mad. Perhaps it is in the family. But--I wish you
would imagine, for to-day, that we had only just known each other a very
little while, that we had been in that little bookshop only a day or so
ago, that you had read the book, and we had met again, and--." He was
looking at her with a glow in his eyes, a tenderness--! Her eyes met his
for only an instant, but they fathomed, in that instant, that there was
only homage, and worship, and--and something that she dared not spell,
even to her soul--in them. That burning greed that she had seen in the
Park was not there.
She smiled, wistfully, hesitatingly. Yet it was enough for him to cling
to; it buoyed his mood to higher courage.
"Let us pretend," he went on, "that there are no streetcars in the town.
Let us be primitive; let us play we are going to take a peep-show from
the top of the Avenue stage! Oh--please! It gets you just as near, you
know; and if you like we can go on, and on, and do it all over again.
Think of the tops of the hats and bonnets one sees from the roof! It's
such a delightful picture of the avenue; you see all the little
marionettes going like beads along the string. And then, think of the
danger of the climb to the roof! It is like the Alps. You never know,
until you are there, whether you will arrive in one piece or in several.
Come," he laughed, for she was now really smiling, openly, sweetly, "let
us be good children, come in from Westchester County, to see the big
city."
"Perhaps," she ventured, "we will make it the fashion. And that would
spoil it for so many of the plainer people."
"Oh," and he waved his hand, "after us--the daily papers! Let us
pretend--I beg your pardon, let me pretend--youth, and high spirits,
and the intention to enjoy to-day."
A rattling and a scraping on the asphalt warned them of an approaching
stage, and after a scramble, that had its shy pleasures for both, they
found themselves on the top of the old relic.
"It is a bit of the Middle Ages," said Orson, "look at those horses!
Aren't they delightfully slender? And the paint! Do you notice the
paint? And the stories those plush seats down below us could tell! Think
of the misers and the millionaires, the dowagers and the drabs, that
have let these old stages bump them over Murray Hill! You can't have
that feeling about a street-car, not one of the electric ones, at any
rate. Do you know the story of the New Yorker who was trying to sleep in
a first-class compartment on a French railway? There was a collision,
and he was pitched ten feet onto a coal-heap. He said he thought he was
at home and he was getting off the stage at Forty-Second street."
They were passing through the most frequented part of the avenue. Noted
singers and famous players passed them; old beaux and fresh belles;
political notabilities and kings of corruption. A famous leader of
cotillions, a beauty whose profile vied with her Boston terriers for
being her chief distinction, and a noted polo-player came upon the scene
and vanished again. Vane and his companion gave, from time to time,
little nods to right and left. Their friends stared at them a little,
but that caused them no sorrow. Automobiles rushed by. They looked down
upon them, lofty in their ruined tower.
"As a show," said Vane, "it is admirably arranged. It moves with a
beautiful precision. There is nothing hurried about it; the illusion of
life is nearly complete. Some of them, I suppose, really are alive?"
"I am not sure," she answered, gravely. "Sometimes I think they merely
move because there is a button being pressed somewhere; a button we
cannot see, and that they spend their lives hiding from us."
"I dare say you are right. In the words of Fay Templeton, 'I've been
there and I know.' I have made my little detours: but the lane had,
thank fortune, a turning."
She saw through his playfulness, and her eyes went up to his in a
sympathy--oh, it made him reel for sweetness.
"I am glad," she said, simply.
"But we are getting serious again," he remonstrated, "that would never
do. Have we not sworn to be children? Let us pretend--let us pretend!"
He looked at the grey roofs, the spires oozing from the hill to the sky.
He looked at the grey dream beside him: so grey, so fair, so crowned
with the hue of the sun before the world had made him so brazen. "Let us
pretend," he went on, after a sigh, "that we are bound for the open
road, and that we are to come to an inn, and that we will order
something to eat. We--"
"Oh," she laughed, "you men, you men! Always something to eat!"
"You see, we are of coarse stuff; we cannot sup on star-dust, and dine
on bubbles. But--this is only to pretend! An imaginary meal is sometimes
so much more fun than a real one. At a real one, you see, I would have
to try to eat, and I could not spend the whole time looking at you, and
watching the sunshine on your hair, and the lilies--" He caught his
breath sharply, with a little clicking noise. "Dear God," he whispered,
"the lilies again! And I had never seen them until now."
"You are going to be absurd," she said, though her voice was hardly a
rebuke.
"And wouldn't I have excuse," he asked, "for all the absurdities in the
world! I want to be as absurd as I can; I want to think that there's
nothing in the world any uglier than--you."
"And will you dine off that thought?"
"Oh, no; that is merely one of the condiments. I keep that in reach,
while the other things come and go. I tell you: how would it be if we
began with a bisque of crab? The tenderest pink, you know, and not the
ghost of any spice that you can distinguish; a beautiful, creamy blend."
"You make it sound delicious," she admitted.
"We take it slowly, you know, religiously. The conversation is mostly
with the eyes. Dinner conversation is so often just as vapid as
dinner-music! The only point in favor of dinner-music is that we are
usually spared the sight of it. There is no truth more abused than the
one that music must be heard and not seen. When I am king I mean to
forbid any singing or playing of instruments within sight of the public;
it spoils all the pleasure of the music when one sees the uglinesses in
its execution."
"But people would not thank you if you kept the sight of Paderewski or
De Pachmann from them."
"They might not thank me at first, but they would learn gratitude in the
end, A contortionist is quite as oppressive a sight as an automaton. No;
I repeat, performers of music should never, never be visible. It is a
blow in the face of the art of music; it puts it on the plane of the
theatre. What persons of culture want to do is to listen, to listen, to
listen; to shut the eyes, and weave fancies about the strains as they
come from an unseen corner. Is there not always a subtle charm about
music floating over a distance? That is a case in point; that same charm
should always be preserved. The pianist, the soloist of any sort, as
well as the orchestra, or the band--except in the case of the regimental
band, in battle or in review, where actual spectacle, and visible
encouragement are the intention--should never be seen. There should
always be a screen, a curtain, between us and the players. It would make
the trick of music criticism harder, but it would still leave us the
real judges. Take out of music criticism the part that covers fingering,
throat manipulation, pedaling, and the like, and what have you left?
These fellows judge what they see more than what they hear. To give a
proper judgment of the music that comes from the unseen; that is the
only test of criticism. There can be no tricks, no paddings."
"But the opera?" wondered the girl.
"The opera? Oh, the opera is, at best, a contradiction in terms. But I
do not waive my theory for the sake of opera. It should be seen as
little as any other form of music. The audience, supplied with the story
of the dramatic action, should follow the incidents by ear, not by eye.
That would be the true test of dramatic writing in music. We would,
moreover, be spared the absurdity of watching singers with beautiful
voices make themselves ridiculous by clumsy actions. As to comic
opera--the music's appeal would suffer no tarnish from the merely
physical fascination of the star or the chorus ... I know the thought is
radical; it seems impossible to imagine a piano recital without long
hair, electric fingers, or visible melancholia; opera with only the
box-holders as appeals to the eye seems too good to be true; but--I
assure you it would emancipate music from all that now makes it the
most vicious of the arts. Painters do not expect us to watch them
painting, nor does the average breed of authors--I except the Manx--like
to be seen writing. Yet the musician--take away the visible part of his
art, and he is shorn of his self-esteem. I assure you I admire actors
much more than musicians; actors are frankly exponents of nothing that
requires genius, while musicians pretend to have an art that is over and
above the art of the composer.... Music--"
"Do you realize," interrupted the girl, with a laugh that was melody
itself, "that you are feasting me upon dinner-music without dinner. It
must be ages since we began that imaginary feast. But now, I am quite
sure we are at the black coffee. And I have been able to notice nothing
except your ardor in debate. You were as eager as if you were being
contradicted."
"You see," he said, "it only proves my point. Dinner-music is an
abomination. It takes the taste of the food away. While I was playing,
you admit, you tasted nothing between the soup and the coffee. Whereas,
in point of fact--"
"Or fancy?"
"As you please. At any rate--the menu was really something out of the
common. There were some delightful wines. A sherry that the innkeeper
had bought of a bankrupt nobleman; so would run his fable for the
occasion, and we would believe it, because, in cases of that sort, it
takes a very bad wine to make one pooh-pooh its pedigree. A Madeira that
had been hidden in a cellar since 1812. We would believe that, every
word of it, because we would know that there was really no Madeira in
all the world; and we must choose between insulting our stomachs or our
intelligence. And then the coffee. It would come in the tiniest, most
transparent, most fragile--"
"Yes," she laughed, "I dare say. As transparent and as fragile as the
entire fabric of our repast, I have no doubt. But--pity me, do!--I shall
have to leave the beautiful banquet about where you have put it, in the
air. I have a ticking conscience here that says--"
"Oh, hide it," he supplicated, "hide it. Watches are nothing but
mechanisms that are jealous of happiness; whenever there is a happy hour
a watch tries to end it. When I am king I shall prohibit the manufacture
and sale of watches. The fact that they may be carried about so easily
is one of their chief vices; one never knows nowadays from what corner a
woman will not bring one; they carry them on their wrists, their
parasols, their waists, their shoulders. Can you be so cruel as to let
that little golden monster spoil me my hour of happiness--"
"But I would have to be cruel one way or the other. You see, my father
will wonder what has become of me. He expects me to dinner."
"Ah, well," he admitted soberly, if a little sadly, "we must not keep
him waiting. You must tell the Professor where we have been, and what we
said, and how silly I was, and--Heigho, I wish I could tell you how the
little hour with you has buoyed me up. Your presence seems to stir my
possibilities for good. I wish I could see you oftener. I feel like the
provincial who says good-bye with a: 'May I come 'round this evening?'
as a rider."
"A doubtful compliment, if I make you rustic," she said. "But I have
something on this evening; an appointment with a man. The most beautiful
man in the world, and the best, and the kindest--"
"His name?" he cried, with elaborate pretense of melodrama, for he saw
that she was full of whimsies.
"Professor Vanlief," she curtsied.
They were walking, by now, in the shade of the afternoon sun. Vane saw a
stage approaching them, one that would take him back to the lower town.
She saw it, too, and his intention. She shook hands with him, and took
time to say, softly:
"Do you never ride in the Park any more?"
"Oh," he said, "tell me when. To-morrow morning? At McGowan's Pass? At
ten? Oh, how I wish that stage was not coming so fast!"
In their confusion, and their joyous sense of having the same absurd
thought in common, they both laughed at the notion of a Fifth avenue
stage ever being too fast. Yet this one, and Time, sped so swiftly that
Vane could only shake hands hastily with his fair companion, look at her
worshipfully, and jump upon the clattering vehicle.
He would never have believed that so ramshackle a conveyance could have
harbored so many dreams as had been his that day.
That thought was his companion all the way home. That, and efforts to
define his feelings toward Miss Vanlief. Was it love? What else could it
be! And if it was, was he ready, for her, to give up those ambitions of
still further sounding hitherto unexplored avenues of the human mind?
Was this fragile bit of grace and glamour to come between him and the
chance of opening a new field to science? Had he not the opportunity to
become famous, or, at the very least, to become omnipotent in reading
the hearts, the souls, of men? Were not the possibilities of the
Professor's discovery unlimited? Was it not easy by means of that mirror
in his rooms, for any chief of police in the world to read the guilt or
innocence of every accused man? Yet, on the other hand, would marriage
interfere? Yes; it would. One could not serve two such goddesses as
woman and science. He would have to make up his mind, to decide.
But, in the meanwhile, there was plenty of time. Surely, for the
present, he could be happy in the thought of the morrow, of the ride
they were to take in the Park, of the cantering, the chattering
together, the chance to see the morning wind spin the twists of gold
about her cheeks and bring the sparkle to her eyes.
He let himself into his house without disturbing any of the servants. He
passed into his room. He lifted the curtain of the doorway with one
hand, and with the other turned the button that lighted the room. As the
globes filled with light they showed him his image in the new mirror.
He reeled against the wall with the surprise of the thing. He noted the
mirror's curtain in a heap at the foot of the frame. Perhaps, after all,
it had been merely the wind.
He summoned Nevins. The curtain he replaced on the staring face of the
mirror. Whence the thought came from, he did not know, but it occurred
to him that the scene was like a scene from a novel.
"Nevins," he asked, "was anyone in my rooms?"
"Mr. Spalding-Wentworth, sir."
Orson Vane laughed,--a loud, gusty, trumpeting laugh.
He understood. But he understood, also, that the accident that had
brought the soul of Spalding-Wentworth into his keeping had decreed,
also, that the dominance should not be, as on a former time, with the
usurper.
He knew that the soul of Spalding-Wentworth, to which he gave the refuge
of his own body, was a small soul.
Yet even little souls have their spheres of influence.