Paul Goddard, after he had returned from Bayreuth, gave his musical
friends much pain by his indifference to old tastes. His mother, Mrs.
Goddard of Madison Square, was not needlessly alarmed. She told her
friends that Paul always had been a butterfly, sipping at many pretty
arts. She included among these fine arts, girls. Paul's devotion to golf
and a certain rich young woman gave her fine maternal satisfaction. "He
stays away from that odious Bohemian crowd, and as long as he does that
I am satisfied. Paul is too much of a gentleman to make a good
musician."
During the winter she saw little of her son. His bachelor dinners were
pronounced models, but the musical mob he let alone. "Paul must be going
in for something stunning," they said at his club, and when he took off
his moustache there was a protest.
The young man was not pervious to ridicule. He had found something new
and as he was fond of experimenting and put his soul into all he did,
was generally rewarded for his earnestness. He met Mrs. Arthur Vibert at
the reception of a portrait-painter, and her type being new to him,
resolved to study it.
Presently he went to the art galleries with the lady, and to all the
piano recitals he could bid her. He called several times and admired her
husband greatly; but she snubbed this admiration and he consoled himself
by admiring instead the intellect of the wife.
"I suppose," she confided to him one February afternoon at Sherry's, "I
suppose you think I am not a proper wife because I don't sit home at his
feet and worship my young genius?"
Paul looked at her strong, ugly face and deep iron-colored eyes, and
smiled ironically.
"You don't go in for that sort of thing, I suppose. If you did love him
would you acknowledge it to any one, even to yourself--or to me?"
Ellenora flushed slightly and put down her glass.
"My dear man, when you know me better you won't ask such a question. I
always say what I mean."
"And I don't." They fell to fugitive thinking.
"What poet wrote 'the bright disorder of the stars is solved by music'?"
"I never read modern verse."
"Yes, but this is not as modern as that cornet-virtuoso Kipling, or as
ancient as Tennyson, if you must know."
"What has it to do with you? You are all that I am interested in--at the
present." Paul smiled.
"Don't flatter me, Mr. Goddard. I hate it. It's a cheap trick of the
enemy. Flatter a woman, tell her that she is unlike her sex, repeat to
her your wonderment at her masculine intellect, and see how meekly she
lowers her standard and becomes your bondslave."
"Hello! you have been through the mill," said Paul, brightly. "If I
thought that it would do any good, be of any use, I would mentally plump
on my knees and say to you that Ellenora Vibert is unlike any woman I
ever met." Ellenora half rose from the table, looking sarcastically at
him.
"My dear Mr. Goddard, don't make fun. You have hurt me more than I dare
tell you. I fancied that you were a friend, the true sort." She was all
steel and glitter now. Paul openly admired her.
"Mrs. Vibert, I beg your pardon. Please forget what I said. I do enjoy
your companionship, and you know I am not a lady-killer. Tell me that
you forgive me, and we will talk about that lovely line you quoted
from--?"
"Coventry Patmore, a dead poet. He it was that spoke of Wagner as a
musical impostor, and of the grinning woman in every canvas of Leonardo
da Vinci. I enjoy his 'Angel in the House' so much, because it shows me
the sort of a woman I am not and the sort of a woman we modern women are
trying to outlive.... Yes, 'the bright disorder of the stars is solved
by music,' he sings; and I remember reading somewhere in Henry James
that music is a solvent. But it's false--false in my case. Mr. Vibert
is, as you know, a talented young man. Well, his music bores me. He is
said to have genius, yet his music never sounds as if it had any fire in
it; it is as cold as salt. Why should I be solved by his music?"
Ellenora upset her glass and laughed. Paul joined in at a respectful
pace. The woman was beyond him. He gave her a long glance and she
returned it, but not ardently; only curiosity was in her insistent gaze.
"Ah! Youth is an alley ambuscaded by stars," he proclaimed. The phrase
had cost him midnight labor.
"Don't try to be epigrammatic," she retorted, "it doesn't suit your
mental complexion. I'll be glad, then, when my youth has passed. It's a
time of turmoil during which one can't really think clearly. Give me
cool old age."
"And the future?"
"I leave that to the licensed victuallers of eternity." Paul experienced
a thrill. The woman's audacity was boundless. Did she believe in
anything?...
"I wonder why your husband does not give you the love he puts into his
music."
"He has not suffered enough yet. You know what George Moore says about
the 'sadness of life being the joy of art!' ... Besides, Arthur is only
half a man if he can't give it to both. Where is your masculine
objectivity, then?" she retorted.
"Lord, what a woman! 'Masculine objectivity,' and I suppose 'feminine
subjectivity' too. I never met such a blue-stocking. Do you remember how
John Ruskin abused those odious terms 'objective' and 'subjective'?"
Paul asked.
"I can't read Ruskin. He is all landscape decoration; besides, he
believes in the biblical attitude of woman. Put a woman on the
mantelpiece and call her luscious, poetic names and then see how soon
she'll hop down when another man simply cries 'I love you.' If a man
wishes to spoil a woman successfully let him idealize her."
"Poor Ruskin! There are some men in this world too fine for women." Paul
sighed, and slily watched Ellenora as she cracked almonds with her
strong white fingers.
"Fine fiddlesticks!" she ejaculated. "Don't get sentimental, Mr.
Goddard, or else I'll think you have a heart. You are trying to flirt
with me. I know you are. Take me away from this place and let us walk,
walk! Heavens! I'd like to walk to the Battery and smell the sea!"
Paul discreetly stopped, and the pair started up Fifth Avenue. The day
was a brave one; the sky was stuffed with plumy clouds and the rich
colors of a reverberating sunset. The two healthy beings sniffed the
crisp air, talked of themselves as only selfish young people can, and at
Fifty-ninth street, Ellenora becoming tired, waited for a cross-town
car--she expected some people at her house in the evening, and must be
home early. Paul was bidden, but declined; then without savor of
affection they said good-by.
The man went slowly down the avenue thinking: "Of all the women I've
met, this is the most perverse, heartless, daring." He recalled his
Bayreuth experiences, and analyzed Ellenora. Her supple, robust figure
attracted his senses; her face was interesting; she had brains, uncommon
brains. What would she become? Not a poet, not a novelist. Perhaps a
literary critic, like Sainte-Beuve with shining Monday morning reviews.
Perhaps--yes, perhaps a critic, a writer of bizarre prose-poems; she
has personal style, she is herself, and no one else.
"That's it," said Paul, half aloud; "she has style, and I admire style
above everything." He resolved on meeting Ellenora as often as he
could....
The following month he saw much of Arthur Vibert's wife, and found
himself a fool in her strong grasp. The girl had such baffling contrasts
of character, such slippery moods, such abundant fantasy that the young
man--volatility itself--lost his footing, his fine sense of honor and
made love to this sphinx of the ink-pot, was mocked and flouted but
never entirely driven from her presence. More than any other woman,
Ellenora enjoyed the conquest of man. She mastered Paul as she had
mastered Arthur, easily; but there was more of the man of the world,
more of the animal in the amateur, and the silkiness of her husband, at
first an amusement, finally angered her.
Vibert knew that his wife saw Paul much too often for his own
edification, but only protested once, and so feebly that she laughed at
him.
"Arthur," she said, taking him by his slender shoulders, "why don't you
come home some night in a jealous rage and beat me? Perhaps then I might
love you. As it is, Mr. Goddard only amuses me; besides, I read him my
new stories, otherwise I don't care an iota for him."
He lifted his eyebrows, went to the piano and played the last movement
of his new concerto, played it with all the fire he could master, his
face white, muscles angry, a timid man transformed.
"Why don't you beat me instead of the piano, dear?" she cried out
mockingly; "some women, they say, can be subdued in that fashion." He
rushed from the room....
April was closing when Vibert, summoned to Washington, gave a piano
recital there, and Ellenora went down-town to dinner with Goddard. She
was looking well, her spring hat and new gown were very becoming. As
they sat at Martin's eating strawberries, Paul approved of her
exceedingly. He had been drinking, and the burgundy and champagne at
dinner made him reckless.
"See here, Ellenora Vibert, where is all this going to end? I'm not a
bad fellow, but I swear I'm only human, and if you are leading me on to
make a worse ass of myself than usual, why, then, I quit."
She regarded him coolly. "It will end when I choose and where I choose.
It is my own affair, Paul, and if you feel cowardly qualms, go home like
a good boy to your mamma and tell her what a naughty woman I am."
He sobered at once and reaching across the narrow dining-table took her
wrist in both of his hands and forced her to listen.
"You disdainful woman! I'll not be mastered by you any longer--"
"That means," interrupted Ellenora coolly, "do as you wish, and not as I
please."
Paul, his vanity wounded, asked the waiter for his reckoning. His
patience was worn away.
"Paul, don't be silly," she cried, her eyes sparkling. "Now order a
carriage and we'll take a ride in the park and talk the matter over.
I'm afraid the fool's fever is in your blood; the open air may do it
good. Oh! the eternal nonsense of youth. Call a carriage, Paul!--April
Paul!" ...