It was barely daylight when Valerie awoke. She lay perfectly still,
listening, remembering, her eyes wandering over the dim, unfamiliar
room. Through thin silk curtains a little of the early light penetrated;
she heard the ceaseless chorus of the birds, cocks crowing near and far
away, the whimpering flight of pigeons around the eaves above her
windows, and their low, incessant cooing.
Suddenly, through the foot-bars of her bed she caught sight of Stephanie
lying sound asleep on the couch, and she sat up--swiftly, noiselessly,
staring at her out of wide eyes from which the last trace of dreams had
fled.
For a long while she remained upright among her pillows, looking at
Stephanie, remembering, considering; then, with decision, she slipped
silently out of bed, and went about her dressing without a sound.
In the connecting bath-room and dressing-room beyond she found her
clothing gathered in a heap, evidently to be taken away and freshened
early in the morning. She dared not brush it for fear of awakening
Stephanie; her toilet was swift and simple; she clothed herself rapidly
and stepped out into the hall, her rubber-soled walking shoes making no
noise.
Below, the side-lights of the door made unbolting and unchaining easy;
it would be hours yet before even the servants were stirring, but she
moved with infinite caution, stepping out onto the veranda and closing
the door behind her without making the slightest noise.
Dew splashed her shoes as she hastened across the lawn. She knew the
Estwich road even if there had been no finger-posts to point out her
way.
The sun had not yet risen; woods were foggy; the cattle in the fields
stood to their shadowy flanks in the thin mist; and everywhere, like the
cheery rush of a stream, sounded the torrent of bird-music from bramble
patch and alder-swale, from hedge and orchard and young woodland.
It was not until she had arrived in sight of Estwich Corners that she
met the first farmer afield; and, as she turned into the drive, the edge
of the sun sent a blinding search-light over a dew-soaked world, and her
long-shadow sprang into view, streaming away behind her across the lawn.
To her surprise the front door was open and a harnessed buck-board stood
at the gate; and suddenly she recollected with a hot blush that the
household must have been amazed and probably alarmed by her
non-appearance the night before.
Hélène's farmer and her maid came out as she entered the front walk,
and, seeing her, stood round-eyed and gaping.
"I got lost and remained over night at Mrs. Collis's," she said,
smiling. "Now, I'd like a bath if you please and some fresh clothing for
travelling, because I am obliged to go to the city, and I wish to catch
the earliest train."
When at last it was plain to them that she was alive and well, Hélène's
maid, still trembling, hastened to draw a bath for her and pack the
small steamer trunk; and the farmer sat down on the porch and waited,
still more or less shaken by the anxiety which had sent him pottering
about the neighbouring woods and fields with a lantern the night before,
and had aroused him to renewed endeavour before sunrise.
Bathed and freshly clothed, Valerie hastened into the pretty library,
seated herself at the desk, pushed up her veil, and wrote rapidly:
"MY DEAR MRS. COLLIS: My gratitude to you, to Mrs. Neville, and to Miss
Swift is none the less real because I am acknowledging it by letter.
Besides, I am very certain that you would prefer it so.
"You and your family have been kindness itself to me in my awkward and
painful dilemma; you have sheltered me and provided medical attendance;
and I am deeply in your debt.
"Had matters been different I need scarcely say that it would have been
a pleasure for me to personally acknowledge to you and your family my
grateful appreciation.
"But I am very sure that I could show my gratitude in no more welcome
manner than by doing what I have done this morning and by expressing
that obligation to you in writing.
"Before I close may I ask you to believe that I had no intention of
seeking shelter at your house? Until I heard Mr. Neville's voice I had
no idea where I was. I merely made my way toward the first lighted
windows that I saw, never dreaming that I had come to Ashuelyn.
"I am sorry that my stupid misadventure has caused you and your family
so much trouble and annoyance. I feel it very keenly--more keenly
because of your kindness in making the best of what must have been to
you and your family a most disagreeable episode.
"May I venture to express to you my thanks to Miss Swift who so
generously remained in my room last night? I am deeply sensible of her
sweetness to an unwelcome stranger--and of Mrs. Neville's gentle manner
toward one who, I am afraid, has caused her much anxiety.
"To the very amiable physician who did so much to calm a foolish and
inexcusable nervousness, I am genuinely grateful. If I knew his name and
address I would write and properly acknowledge my debt.
"There is one thing more before I close: I am sorry that I wrote you so
ungraciously after receiving your last letter. It would have been
perfectly easy to have thanked you courteously, whatever private opinion
I may have entertained concerning a matter about which there may be more
than my own opinion.
"And now, please believe that I will never again voluntarily cause you
and your family the slightest uneasiness or inconvenience; and believe
me, too, if you care to. Very gratefully yours,
"VALERIE WEST."
She directed and sealed the letter, then drew toward her another sheet
of paper:
"DEAREST: I could die of shame for having blundered into your family
circle. I dare not even consider what they must think of me now. _You_
will know how innocently and unsuspiciously it was done--how utterly
impossible it would have been for me to have voluntarily committed such
an act even in the last extremity. But what _they_ will think of my
appearance at your door last night, I don't know and I dare not surmise.
I have done all I could; I have rid them of me, and I have written to
your sister to thank her and your family for their very real kindness to
the last woman in the world whom they would have willingly chosen to
receive and entertain.
"Dear, I didn't know I had nerves; but this experience seems to have
developed them. I am perfectly well, but the country here has become
distasteful to me, and I am going to town in a few minutes. I want to
get away--I want to go back to my work--earn my living again--live in
blessed self-respect where, as a worker, I have the right to live.
"Dearest, I am sorry about not meeting you at the station and going back
to town with you. But I simply cannot endure staying here after last
night. I suppose it is weak and silly of me, but I feel now as though
your family would never be perfectly tranquil again until I am out of
their immediate vicinity. I cannot convey to you or to them how sorry
and how distressed I am that this thing has occurred.
"But I can, perhaps, make you understand that I love you, dearly--love
you enough to give myself to you--love you enough to give you up
forever.
"And it is to consider what is best, what to do, that I am going away
quietly somewhere by myself to think it all out once more--and to come
to a final decision before the first of June.
"I want to search my heart, and let God search it for any secret
selfishness and unworthiness that might sway me in my choice--any
overmastering love for you that might blind me. When I know myself, you
shall know me. Until then I shall not write you; but sometime before the
first of June--or on that day, you shall know and I shall know how I
have decided wherein I may best serve you--whether by giving or
withholding--whether by accepting or refusing forever all that I care
for in the world--you, Louis, and the love you have given me.
"VALERIE WEST."
She sealed and directed this, laid it beside the other, and summoned the
maid:
"Have these sent at once to Ashuelyn," she said; "let Jimmy go on his
bicycle. Are my things ready? Is the buck-board still there? Then I will
leave a note for the Countess."
And she scribbled hastily:
"HÉLÈNE DEAR: I've got to go to town in a hurry on matters of
importance, and so I am taking a very unceremonious leave of you and of
your delightful house.
"They'll tell you I got lost in the woods last night, and I did. It was
too stupid of me; but no harm came of it--only a little embarrassment in
accepting a night's shelter at Ashuelyn among people who were everything
that was hospitable, but who must have been anything but delighted to
entertain me.
"In a few weeks I shall write you again. I have not exactly decided what
to do this summer. I may go abroad for a vacation as I have saved enough
to do so in an economical manner; and I should love to see the French
cathedrals. Perhaps, if I so decide, you might be persuaded to go with
me.
"However, it is too early to plan yet. A matter of utmost importance is
going to keep me busy and secluded for a week or so. After that I shall
come to some definite decision; and then you shall hear from me.
"In the meanwhile--I have enjoyed Estwich and you immensely. It was kind
and dear of you to ask me. I shall never forget my visit.
"Good-bye, Hélène dear.
"VALERIE WEST."
This note she left on Hélène's dresser, then ran downstairs and sprang
into the buck-board.
They had plenty of time to catch the train; and on the train she had
plenty of leisure for reflection. But she could not seem to think; a
confused sensation of excitement invaded her mind and she sat in her
velvet armed chair alternately shivering with the memory of Cardemon's
villainy, and quivering under the recollection of her night at Ashuelyn.
Rita was not at home when she came into their little apartment. The
parrot greeted her, flapping his brilliant wings and shrieking from his
perch; the goldfish goggled his eyes and swam 'round and 'round. She
stood still in the centre of her room looking vacantly about her. An
immense, overwhelming sense of loneliness came over her; she turned as
the rush of tears blinded her and flung herself full length among the
pillows of her bed.
* * * * *
Her first two or three days in town were busy ones; she had her accounts
to balance, her inventories to take, her mending to do, her modest
summer wardrobe to acquire, letters to write and to answer, engagements
to make, to fulfill, to postpone; friends to call on and to receive,
duties in regard to the New Idea Home to attend to.
[Illustration: "The parrot greeted her, flapping his brilliant wings and
shrieking from his perch."]
Also, the morning after her arrival came a special delivery letter from
Neville:
"It was a mistake to go, dear, because, although you could not have
known it, matters have changed most happily for us. You were a welcome
guest in my sister's house; you would have been asked to remain after
your visit at Estwich was over. My family's sentiments are
changing--have changed. It requires only you yourself to convince them.
I wish you had remained, although your going so quietly commanded the
respect of everybody. They all are very silent about it and about you,
yet I can see that they have been affected most favourably by their
brief glimpse of you.
"As for your wishing to remain undisturbed for a few days, I can see no
reason for it now, dear, but of course I shall respect your wishes.
"Only send me a line to say that the month of June will mean our
marriage. Say it, dear, because there is now no reason to refuse."
To which she answered:
"Dearest among all men, no family's sentiments change over night. Your
people were nice to me and I have thanked them. But, dear, I am not
likely to delude myself in regard to their real sentiments concerning
me. Too deeply ingrained, too basic, too essentially part of themselves
and of their lives are the creeds, codes, and beliefs which, in spite of
themselves, must continue to govern their real attitude toward such a
girl as I am.
"It is dear of you to wish for us what cannot be; it is kind of them to
accept your wish with resignation.
"But I have told you many times, my darling, that I would not accept a
status as your wife at any cost to you or to them--and I can read
between the lines, even if I did not know, what it would cost them and
you. And so, very gently, and with a heart full of gratitude and love
for you, I must decline this public honour.
"But, God willing, I shall not decline a lifetime devoted to you when
you are not with them. That is all I can hope for; and it is so much
more than I ever dreamed of having, that, to have you at all--even for a
part of the time--even for a part of my life, is enough. And I say it
humbly, reverently, without ignoble envy or discontent for what might
have been had you and I been born to the same life amid the same
surroundings.
"Don't write to me again, dear, until I have determined what is best for
us. Before the first day of summer, or on that day, you will know. And
so will I.
"My life is such a little thing compared to yours--of such slight value
and worth that sometimes I think I am considering matters too
deeply--that if I simply fling it in the scales the balance will
scarcely be altered--the splendid, even tenor of your career will
scarcely swerve a shade.
"Yet my life is already something to you; and besides it is all I have
to give you; and if I am to give it--if it is adding an iota to your
happiness for me to give it--then I must truly treat it with respect,
and deeply consider the gift, and the giving, and if it shall be better
for you to possess it, or better that you never shall.
"And whatever I do with myself, my darling, be certain that it is of you
I am thinking and not of the girl, who loves you.
"V."
By degrees she cleared up her accounts and set her small house in order.
Rita seemed to divine that something radical was in progress of
evolution, but Valerie offered no confidence, and the girl, already
deeply worried over John Burleson's condition, had not spirit enough to
meddle.
"Sam Ogilvy's brother is a wonder on tubercular cases," she said to
Valerie, "and I'm doing my best to get John to go and see him at
Dartford."
"Won't he?"
"He says he will, but you know how horridly untruthful men are. And now
John is slopping about with his wet clay again as usual--an order for a
tomb in Greenwood--poor boy, he had better think how best to keep away
from tombs."
"Why, Rita!" said Valerie, shocked.
"I can't help it; I'm really frightened, dear. And you know well enough
I'm no flighty alarmist. Besides, somehow, I feel certain that Sam's
brother would tell John to go to Arizona"--she pointed piteously to her
trunk: "It's packed; it has been packed for weeks. I'm all ready to go
with him. Why can't a man mould clay and chip marble and cast bronze as
well in Arizona as in this vile pest-hole?"
Valerie sat with folded hands looking at her.
"How do you think _you_ could stand that desolation?"
"Arizona?"
"Yes."
"There is another desolation I dread more."
"Do you really love him so?"
Rita slowly turned from the window and looked at her.
"Yes," she said.
[Illustration: "'And they--the majority of them--are, after all, just
men.'"]
"Does he know it, Rita?"
"No, dear."
"Do you think--if he did--"
"No.... How could it be--after what has happened to me?"
"You would tell him?"
"Of course. I sometimes wonder whether he has not already
heard--something--from that beast--"
"Does John know him?"
"He has done two fountains for his place at El Naúar. He had several
other things in view--" she shrugged--"but _The Mohave_ sailed suddenly
with its owner for a voyage around the world--so John was
told;--and--Valerie, it's the first clear breath of relief I've drawn
since Penrhyn Cardemon entered John's studio."
"I didn't know he had ever been there."
"Yes; twice."
"Did you see him there?"
"Yes. I nearly dropped. At first he did not recognise me--I was very
young--when--"
"Did he speak to you?"
"Yes. I managed to answer. John was not looking at me, fortunately....
After that he wrote to me--and I burned the letter.... It was horrible;
he said that José Querida was his guest at El Naúar, and he asked me to
get you because you knew Querida, and be his guest for a week end.... I
cried that night; you heard me."
"Was _that_ it!" asked Valerie, very pale.
"Yes; I was too wretched to tell you,"
Valerie sat silent, her teeth fixed in her lower lip. Then:
"José could not have known what kind of a man the--other--is."
"I hope not."
"Oh, he _couldn't_ have known! Rita, he wouldn't have let him ask us--"
"Men seldom deceive one another."
"You _don't_ think José Querida _knew_?"
"I--don't--think.... Valerie, men are very--very unlike women....
Forgive me if I seem to be embittered.... Even you have had your
experience with men--the men that all the world seems to like--kind,
jolly, generous, jovial, amusing men--and clever men; men of attainment,
of distinction. And they--the majority of them--are, after all, just
men, Valerie, just men in a world made for men, a world into which we
come like timid intruders; uncertain through generations of
uncertainty--innocently stupid through ages of stupid innocence, ready
to please though not knowing exactly how; ready to be pleased, God
knows, with pleasures as innocent as the simple minds that dream of
them.
"Valerie, I do not believe any evil first came into this world of men
through any woman."
Valerie looked down at her folded hands--small, smooth, white hands,
pure of skin and innocent as a child's.
"I don't know," she said, troubled, "how much more unhappiness arises
through men than through women, if any more ... I like men. Some are
unruly--like children; some have the sense and the morals of marauding
dogs.
"But, at worst, the unruly and the marauders seem so hopelessly beneath
one, intellectually, that a girl's resentment is really more of
contempt than of anger--and perhaps more of pity than of either."
Rita said: "I cannot feel as charitably.... _You_ still have that
right."
"Rita! Rita!" she said softly, "we both have loved men, you with the
ignorance and courage of a child--I with less ignorance and with my
courage as yet untested. Where is the difference between us--if we love
sincerely?"
Rita leaned forward and looked at her searchingly:
"Do you mean to do--what you said you would?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because he wants me."
Rita sprang to her feet and began pacing the floor.
"I will not have it so!" she said excitedly, "I will not have it so! If
he is a man--a real man--he will not have it so, either. If he will, he
does not love you; mark what I say, Valerie--he does not love you
enough. No man can love a woman enough to accept that from her; it would
be a paradox, I tell you!"
"He loves me enough," said Valerie, very pale. "He could not love me as
I care for him; it is not in a man to do it, nor in any human being to
love as I love him. You don't understand, Rita. I _must_ be a part of
him--not very much, because already there is so much to him--and I am
so--so unimportant."
"You are more important than he is," said Rita fiercely--"with all your
fineness and loyalty and divine sympathy and splendid humility--with
your purity and your loveliness; and in spite of his very lofty
intellect and his rather amazing genius, and his inherited social
respectability--_you_ are the more important to the happiness and
welfare of this world--even to the humblest corner in it!"
"Rita! Rita! What wild, partisan nonsense you are talking!"
[Illustration: "His thoughts were mostly centred on Valerie."]
"Oh, Valerie, Valerie, if you only knew! If you only knew!"
* * * * *
Querida called next day. Rita was at home but flatly refused to see him.
"Tell Mr. Querida," she said to the janitor, "that neither I nor Miss
West are at home to him, and that if he is as nimble at riddles as he is
at mischief he can guess this one before his friend Mr. Cardemon
returns from a voyage around the world."
Which reply slightly disturbed Querida.
All during dinner--and he was dining alone--he considered it; and his
thoughts were mostly centred on Valerie.
Somehow, some way or other he must come to an understanding with Valerie
West. Somehow, some way, she must be brought to listen to him. Because,
while he lived, married or single, poor or wealthy, he would never rest,
never be satisfied, never wring from life the last drop that life must
pay him, until this woman's love was his.
He loved her as such a man loves; he had no idea of letting that love
for her interfere with other ambitions.
Long ago, when very poor and very talented and very confident that the
world, which pretended to ignore him, really knew in its furtive heart
that it owed him fame and fortune and social position, he had determined
to begin the final campaign with a perfectly suitable marriage.
That was all years ago; and he had never swerved in his
determination--not even when Valerie West surprised his life in all the
freshness of her young beauty.
And, as he sat there leisurely over his claret, he reflected, easily,
that the time had come for the marriage, and that the woman he had
picked out was perfectly suitable, and that the suitable evening to
inform her was the present evening.
Mrs. Hind-Willet was prepossessing enough to interest him, clever enough
to stop gaps in a dinner table conversation, wealthy enough to permit
him a liberty of rejecting commissions, which he had never before dared
to exercise, and fashionable enough to carry for him what could not be
carried through his own presentable good looks and manners and fame.
This last winter he had become a frequenter of her house on Sixty-third
Street; and so carelessly assiduous, and so delightfully casual had
become his attentions to that beautifully groomed widow, that his
footing with her was already an intimacy, and his portrait of her, which
he had given her, had been the sensation of the loan exhibition at the
great Interborough Charity Bazaar.
He was neither apprehensive nor excited as he calmly finished his
claret. He was to drop in there after dinner to discuss with her several
candidates as architects for the New Idea Home.
So when he was entirely ready he took his hat and stick and departed in
a taxicab, pleasantly suffused with a gentle glow of anticipation. He
had waited many years for such an evening as this was to be. He was a
patient and unmoral man. He could wait longer for Valerie,--and for the
first secret blow at the happiness and threatened artistic success of
Louis Neville.
So he rolled away in his taxi very comfortably, savouring his cigarette,
indolently assured of his reception in a house which it would suit him
perfectly to inhabit when he cared to.
Only one thing worried him a little--the short note he had received from
his friend Penrhyn Cardemon, saying rather brusquely that he'd made up
his mind not to have his portrait painted for five thousand dollars, and
that he was going off on _The Mohave_ to be gone a year at least.
Which pained Querida, because Cardemon had not only side-stepped what
was almost a commission, but he had, also, apparently forgotten his
invitation to spend the summer on _The Mohave_--with the understanding
that Valerie West was also to be invited.
However, everything comes in its season; and this did not appear to be
the season for ripe commissions and yachting enterprises; but it
certainly seemed to be the season for a judicious matrimonial
enterprise.
And when Mrs. Hind-Willet received him in a rose-tinted reception
corner, audaciously intimate and secluded, he truly felt that he was
really missing something of the pleasures of the chase, and that it was
a little too easy to be acutely enjoyable.
However, when at last he had gently retained her hand and had whispered,
"Alma," and had let his big, dark, velvet eyes rest with respectful
passion upon her smaller and clearer and blacker ones, something
somewhere in the machinery seemed to go wrong--annoyingly wrong.
Because Mrs. Hind-Willet began to laugh--and evidently was trying not
to--trying to remain very serious; but her little black eyes were
glistening with tears of suppressed mirth, and when, amazed and
offended, he would have withdrawn his hand, she retained it almost
convulsively:
"José! I _beg_ your pardon!--I truly do. It is perfectly horrid and
unspeakable of me to behave this way; but listen, child! I am forty; I
am perfectly contented not to marry again; _and_ I don't love you. So,
my poor José, what on earth am I to do if I don't laugh a little. I
_can't_ weep over it you know."
The scarlet flush faded from his olive skin. "Alma," he began
mournfully, but she only shook her head, vigorously.
"Nonsense," she said. "You like me for a sufficient variety of reasons.
And to tell you the truth I suspect that I am quite as madly in love
with you as you actually are with me. No, no, José. There are too
many--discrepancies--of various kinds. I have too little to gain!--to be
horribly frank--and you--alas!--are a very cautious, very clever, and
admirably sophisticated young man.... There, there! I am not really
accusing you--or blaming you--very much.... I'd have tried the same
thing in your place--yes, indeed I would.... But, José dear, if you'll
take the mature advice of fair, plump, and forty, you'll let the lesser
ambition go.
"A clever wealthy woman nearer your age, and on the edge of things--with
you for a husband, ought to carry you and herself far enough to suit
you. And there'd be more amusement in it, believe me.... And now--you
may kiss my hand--very good-humoredly and respectfully, and we'll talk
about those architects. Shall we?"
* * * * *
For twenty-four hours Querida remained a profoundly astonished man.
Examine, in retrospective, as he would, the details of the delicately
adjusted machinery which for so many years had slowly but surely turned
the interlocking cog-wheels of destiny for him, he could not find where
the trouble had been--could discover no friction caused by neglect of
lubricants; no over-oiling, either; no flaw.
Wherein lay the trouble? Based on what error was his theory that the
average man could marry anybody he chose? Just where had he
miscalculated?
He admitted that times changed very fast; that the world was spinning at
a rate that required nimble wits to keep account of its revolutions. But
his own wits were nimble, almost feminine in the rapid delicacy of their
intuition--_almost_ feminine, but not quite. And he felt, vaguely, that
there lay his mistake in engaging a woman with a woman's own weapons;
and that the only chance a man has is to perplex her with his own.
The world was spinning rapidly; times changed very fast, but not as fast
as women were changing in the Western World. For the self-sufficient
woman--the self-confident, self-sustaining individual, not only content
but actually preferring autonomy of mind and body, was a fact in which
José Querida had never really ever believed. No sentimentalist does or
really can. And all creators of things artistic are, basically,
sentimentalists.
Querida's almond-shaped, velvet eyes had done their share for him in his
time; they were merely part of a complex machinery which, included many
exquisitely adjusted parts which could produce at will such phenomena as
temporary but genuine sympathy and emotion: a voice controlled and
modulated to the finest nuances; a grace of body and mind that resembled
inherent delicacy; a nervous receptiveness and intelligence almost
supersensitive in its recognition of complicated ethical problems. It
was a machinery which could make of him any manner of man which the
opportunism of the particular moment required. Yet, with all this, in
every nerve and bone and fibre he adored material and intellectual
beauty, and physical suffering in others actually distressed him.
Now, reviewing matters, deeply interested to find the microscopic
obstruction which had so abruptly stopped the machinery of destiny for
him, he was modest enough and sufficiently liberal-minded to admit to
himself that Alma Hind-Willet was the exception that proved this rule.
There _were_ women so constructed that they had become essentially
unresponsive. Alma was one. But, he concluded that if he lived a
thousand years he was not likely to encounter another.
And the following afternoon he called upon Mrs. Hind-Willet's
understudy, the blue-eyed little Countess d'Enver.
Hélène d'Enver was superintending the definite closing of her beautiful
duplex apartments--the most beautiful in the great château-like,
limestone building. And José Querida knew perfectly well what the rents
were.
"Such a funny time to come to see me," she had said laughingly over the
telephone; "I'm in a dreadful state with skirts pinned up and a
motor-bonnet over my hair, but I will _not_ permit my maids to touch the
porcelains; and if you really wish to see me, come ahead."
He really wished to. Besides he adored her Ming porcelains and her
Celedon, and the idea of any maid touching them almost gave him
heart-failure. He himself possessed one piece of Ming and a broken
fragment of Celedon. Women had been married for less.
She was very charming in her pinned-up skirts and her dainty head-gear,
and she welcomed him and intrusted him with specimens which sent
pleasant shivers down his flexible spine.
And, together, they put away many scores of specimens which were
actually priceless, inasmuch as any rumour of a public sale would have
excited amateurs to the verge of lunacy, and almost any psychopathic
might have established a new record for madness at an auction of this
matchless collection.
They breathed easier when the thrilling task was ended; but emotion
still enchained them as they seated themselves at a tea-table--an
emotion so deep on Hélène's part that she suffered Querida to retain the
tips of her fingers for an appreciable moment when transferring sugar to
his cup. And she listened, with a smile almost tremulous, to the
fascinating music of his voice, charmingly attuned and modulated to a
pitch which, somehow, seemed to harmonise with the very word, Celedon.
"I am so surprised," she said softly--but his dark eyes noted that she
was still busy with her tea paraphernalia--"I scarcely know what to
think, Mr. Querida--"
"Think that I love you--" breathed Querida, his dark and beautiful head
very near to her blond one.
"I--am--thinking of it.... But--"
"Hélène," he whispered musically;--and suddenly stiffened in his chair
as the maid came clattering in over the rugless and polished parquet to
announce Mr. Ogilvy, followed _san façon_ by that young man, swinging a
straw hat and a malacca stick.
"Sam!" said the pretty Countess, changing countenance.
"Hello, Hélène! How-do, Querida! I heard you were temporarily in town,
dear lady--" He kissed a hand that was as faltering and guilty as the
irresolute eyes she lifted to his.
Ten minutes later Querida took his leave. He dismissed the expensive
taxi which had been devouring time outside, and walked thoughtfully away
down the fashionable street.
Because the machinery had chanced to clog twice did not disturb his
theory; but the trouble with him was local; he was intensely and
personally annoyed, nervous, irritated unspeakably. Because, except for
Valerie, these two, Alma Hind-Willet and Hélène d'Enver, were the only
two socially and financially suitable women in whom he took the
slightest physical interest.
There is, in all women, one moment--sometimes repeated--in which a
sudden yielding to caprice sometimes overturns the logical plans laid
out and inexorably followed for half a lifetime. And there was much of
the feminine about Querida.
And it chanced to happen on this day--when no doubt all unsuspected and
unperceived some lurking jettatura had given him the evil eye--that he
passed by hazard through the block where Valerie lived, and saw her
mounting the steps.
"Why, José!" she exclaimed, a trifle confused in her smiling cordiality
as he sprang up the steps behind her--for Rita's bitterness, if it had
not aroused in her suspicions, had troubled her in spite of her
declaration of unbelief.
He asked for a cup of tea, and she invited him. Rita was in the room
when they entered; and she stood up coolly, coolly returned Querida's
steady glance and salutation with a glance as calm, as detached, and as
intelligent as a surgeon's.
Neither he nor she referred to his recent call; he was perfectly
self-possessed, entirely amiable with that serene and level good-humour
which sometimes masks a defiance almost contemptuous.
But Rita's engagements required her to leave very shortly after his
advent; and before she went out she deliberately waited to catch
Valerie's eye; and Valerie coloured deeply under her silent message.
Then Rita went away with a scarcely perceptible nod to Querida; and
when, by the clock, she had been gone twenty minutes, Querida, without
reason, without preparation, and perfectly aware of his moment's
insanity, yielded to a second's flash of caprice--the second that comes
once in the lives of all women--and now, in the ordered symmetry of his
life, had come to him.
"Valerie," he said, "I love you. Will you marry me?"
She had been leaning sideways on the back of her chair, one hand
supporting her cheek, gazing almost listlessly out of the open window.
She did not stir, nor did her face alter, but, very quietly she turned
her head and looked at him.
He spoke, breathlessly, eloquently, persuasively, and well; the perfect
machinery was imitating for him a single-minded, ardent, honourable
young man, intelligent enough to know his own mind, manly enough to
speak it. The facsimile was flawless.
He had finished and was waiting, long fingers gripping the arms of his
chair; and her face had altered only to soften divinely, and her eyes
were very sweet and untroubled.
"I am glad you have spoken this way to me, José. Something has been said
about you--in connection with Mr. Cardemon--which disturbed me and made
me very sad and miserable, although I would not permit myself to believe
it.... And now I know it was a mistake--because you have asked me to be
your wife."
She sat looking at him, the sadness in her eyes emphasised by the
troubled smile curving her lips:
"I couldn't marry you, José, because I am not in love with you. If I
were I would do it.... But I do not care for you that way."
For an instant some inner flare of madness blinded his brain and vision.
There was, in his face, something so terrible that Valerie unconsciously
rose to her feet, bewildered, almost stunned.
"I want you," he said slowly.
"José! What in the world--"
His dry lips moved, but no articulate sound came from them. Suddenly he
sprang to his feet, and out of his twisted, distorted mouth poured a
torrent of passion, of reproach, of half-crazed pleading--incoherency
tumbling over incoherency, deafening her, beating in upon her, till she
swayed where she stood, holding her arms up as though to shield herself.
The next instant she was straining, twisting in his arms, striving to
cry out, to wrench herself free to keep her feet amid the crash of the
overturned table and a falling chair.
"José! Are you insane?" she panted, tearing herself free and springing
toward the door. Suddenly she halted, uttered a cry as he jumped back to
block her way. The low window-ledge caught him under both knees; he
clutched at nothing, reeled backward and outward and fell into space.
For a second she covered her white face with both hands, then turned,
dragged herself to the open window, forced herself to look out.
He lay on his back on the grass in the rear yard, and the janitor was
already bending over him. And when she reached the yard Querida had
opened both eyes.
Later the ambulance came, and with its surgeon came a policeman.
Querida, lying with his head on her lap, opened his eyes again:
"I was--seated--on the window-ledge," he said with difficulty--"and
overbalanced myself.... Caught the table--but it fell over.... That's
all."
The eyes in his ghastly face closed wearily, then fluttered:
"Awfully sorry, Valerie--make such a mess--in your house."
"Oh-h--José," she sobbed.
After that they took him away to the Presbyterian Hospital; and nobody
seemed to find very much the matter with him except that he'd been badly
shocked.
But the next day all sensation ceased in his body from the neck
downward.
And they told Valerie why.
For ten days he lay there, perfectly conscious, patient, good-humored,
and his almond-shaped and hollow eyes rested on Valerie and Rita with a
fatalistic serenity subtly tinged with irony.
John Burleson came to see him, and cried. After he left, Querida said to
Valerie:
"John and I are destined to remain near neighbours; his grief is well
meant, but a trifle premature."
"You are not going to die, José!" she said gently.
But he only smiled.
Ogilvy came, Annan came, the Countess Hélène, and even Mrs.
Hind-Willet. He inspected them all with his shadowy and mysterious
smile, answered them gently deep in his sunken eyes a sombre amusement
seemed to dwell. But there was in it no bitterness.
Then Neville came. Valerie and Rita were absent that day but their roses
filled the private ward-room with a hint of the coming summer.
Querida lay looking at Neville, the half smile resting on his pallid
face like a slight shadow that faintly waxed and waned with every breath
he drew.
"Well," he said quietly, "you are the man I wished to see."
"Querida," he said, deeply affected, "this thing isn't going to be
permanent--"
"No; not permanent. It won't last, Neville. Nothing does last.... unless
you can tell me whether my pictures are going to endure. Are they? I
know that you will be as honest with me as I was--dishonest with you. I
will believe what you say. Is my work destined to be permanent?"
"Don't you know it is?"
"I thought so.... But _you_ know. Because, Neville, you are the man who
is coming into what was mine, and what will be your own;--and you are
coming into more than that, Neville, more than I ever could have
attained. Now answer me; will my work live?"
"Always," said Neville simply.
Querida smiled:
"The rest doesn't matter then.... Even Valerie doesn't matter.... But
you may hand me one of her roses.... No, a bud, if you don't
mind--unopened."
When it was time for Neville to go Querida's smile had faded and the
pink rose-bud lay wilted in his fingers.
"It is just as well, Neville," he said. "I couldn't have endured your
advent. Somebody _has_ to be first; I was--as long as I lived.... It is
curious how acquiescent a man's mind becomes--when he's like this. I
never believed it possible that a man really could die without regret,
without some shadow of a desire to live. Yet it is that way, Neville....
But a man must lie dying before he can understand it."
* * * * *
A highly tinted uncle from Oporto arrived in New York just in time to
see Querida alive. He brought with him a parrot.
"Send it to Mrs. Hind-Willet," whispered Querida with stiffening lips;
"_uno lavanta la caça y otro la nata_."
A few minutes later he died, and his highly coloured uncle from Oporto
sent the bird to Mrs. Hind-Willet and made the thriftiest arrangement
possible to transport what was mortal of a great artist to Oporto--where
a certain kind of parrot comes from.