even while she made application of her little damp pocket-handkerchief,
a stealing sense warmed her in all her woe that she had somehow made a
friend of Miss Cheriton. The exemplary piece of tranquility there felt
drawn to her; something communicated this unimaginable fact directly
to her heart; and it melted her, as the hint of kindness always did,
and inclined her now verily to make no more circumstances about it, but
show her whole heart in abandoned frankness, repeating just once more
the fault she was here to confess. But simultaneously with gratitude
for that liking, rose in Marie-Aimée the need to repay it greatly;
whence a caution to herself to proceed more than ever guardedly with
the truth.
"And after we were come back," she took up again, "we naturally
continued seeing a great deal of each other. I won't say we would not
have done so from choice, but it was inevitable, too. Our profession
threw us together, concerts, rehearsals; he used, besides, to bring
every bit of new music to learn at my house, with me to play it over
for him. And so on, for years; and to me, I tell it frankly, that
light-hearted, unconventional comradeship of ours gave its principal
charm to life. In the last year I have seen less of him, and latterly
very much less. He was not singing much, he was under treatment for
his throat, and often out of town by his doctor's directions. I missed
him, but I am busy from morning until night, the week round, work and a
thousand things. I thought nothing of it. Do old friends need to see
each other constantly to be assured nothing is changed? Then I hear of
his engagement to you. I am thunderstruck! For never, never, never, had
I dreamed of such a possibility. You see my folly? He was not bound to
me by any promise, or by what you would call a moral obligation. There
never had been any question of our marrying, not even at the beginning
when we first got home, not even in my own mind--" Native honesty and
poor human nature would not permit but that she should add, though in
a tone that made little of it--"any definite, immediate, formulated
idea of it. My poor sweet mother was living then, a sufficient reason
against it. And when she was no longer there, all had got into a
groove, and remained as it had been. And it seemed natural. I have
nothing but what I earn. He was having bothers about money. He put all
his in a mine, you know. We called ourselves poor working-people. But
still! There it is! That's where you discover my bird's brain. That's
me! The way I am! I flatly refused to believe it, and when I saw him
again, I did not even ask. But I daresay I looked as he had never seen
me look. Then he himself told me of it, as one tells such a thing to
an old friend. And the past stood suddenly in a new light; and I saw
clearly, in a flash, that just this and nothing else was to have been
expected. And I knew that it was altogether the most fortunate thing
that could happen to him; and, after the first, I acquiesced.
"Only, I followed my nature in making the outcry of one who has
received a wound and is bleeding dreadfully. I have no dignity, Miss
Cheriton. Discretion and I have never so much as been acquainted. I go
around with my heart in my face, I forget my face, you see, in thinking
of what has befallen me. And I run into some sympathetic woman who is
fond of me, and she cries out 'Marie-Aimée, my poor child, what is
the matter with you?' and I bend feebly upon her shoulder, and tell.
And then I suppose she goes off and tells too. Hence, you see, the
ground of Mr. Bronson's remonstrances with me yesterday evening. And
in consequence of them I am here. I didn't know what else to do, Miss
Cheriton. I hope it was best. And you do see, don't you? I have made
the whole thing plain? I have made it all right? You know how he is,
and now you have seen how I am, the inference will be simple! And I
beg both your pardons. Oh, he is right, he is quite right, to feel
put out with me, but not--" she forced a little watery smile, as she
rose to take her leave--"not because it has ever seemed so terribly
to a great singer's discredit that, when the whole world goes after
him, among them should be a silly woman who does not manage to conceal
her _grande passion_. It only makes him like Mario and others; you
must not let it trouble you, Miss Cheriton. You must think of me in a
thought of the same strain you bestow upon the thousands of photographs
of him that have been sold in the course of his career, and are
cherished and given places of honor in young ladies' rooms; and the
sentimental follies school girls have committed in the way of sending
him flowers and notes. Let these tributes to him merely increase your
pride of possession. He is free from all blame, all, that is what I
have wished you to feel assured of, or all--" she put out her hand in
farewell--"except just a little, little bit. You don't mind? A little
bit he certainly was to blame, though I suppose it can be laid to
the account of his modesty, in not taking it home to himself that he
could not be so nice, so consistently, persistently dear and nice to a
person, without her falling to stupidly adoring him."
She stopped, and stood, vaguely shaking her head, prolonging her faint,
watery, bitter-sweet smile; and would have withdrawn her hand, but Miss
Cheriton retained it, by a firmer pressure, in the warm, kind clasp of
hers. Marie-Aimée lifted her eyes, touched and full of thanks, to the
fine calm eyes above her; and in their unclouded light read Anthony
Bronson's unqualified exoneration, and that she herself had been
impartially examined, and now stood classed, past appeal, among those
soft, sweet, idiotic women who will fall into unwarranted love with any
man of whom they see much, and are by their own passion made incapable
of discerning the fact that he is not in love with them. The glance was
full of honest sympathy for a sorrow so real; but it was not untinged
with as much contempt as would be implied in the prayer, "I thank thee,
my God, I am not as these women are!" Under which Marie-Aimée humbly
bowed her head and waited but for the release of her hand to go. But
Miss Cheriton, whom stiffness or delicacy kept from saying a word in
reference to what she had heard, yet found herself utterly unwilling
that her visitor should leave so uncheered. Still holding her hand,
she told her, in a voice full of the suggestion of sincerity, the deep
pleasure she had always had in hearing her; she amplified, tactfully,
understandingly, upon all she had discovered of exquisite in her
playing.
Marie-Aimée's face lightened a little; she had never become callous to
praise. Miss Cheriton spoke of friends they had in common, from whom
she had heard so much of her, of a sort that had long made it one of
her most eager wishes to know her. Whereupon Marie-Aimée, as ever
responsive, gave herself into Miss Cheriton's hands, to be known. And
the two were shortly making acquaintance as they might have done had
they been presented to each other at the house of those mutual friends.
One could not have dreamed, to hear them, what had gone before. They
talked of music mostly, and musicians, wholly forgetful of time.
To illustrate some point, Marie-Aimée went to the piano and played
a bar or two; after which, as she would have risen, Miss Cheriton
entreated against it; and when Marie-Aimée, who never resisted,
asked what she should play, suggested a composition of Miss Nevers'
own, which the latter had imagined so obscure, she said, as to be
almost her only secret. And she found, to her astonishment, that Miss
Cheriton, whether moved by genuine musical congeniality, or a vulgarer
curiosity, had procured everything ever published of Marie-Aimée's.
Afterwards, Miss Cheriton took the place at the piano of Marie-Aimée
urgent. Then Marie-Aimée begged leave, and supplanted her, to show
how a different sequence of chords would be better; and the woman of
talent and the woman of cultivation spent a long hour, delightful to
both; in the course of which Miss Cheriton found the quaint enthusiasm
for Marie-Aimée felt by her innumerable friends accounted for; and
Marie-Aimée came to disdain, as paltry praise, the definition "very
fine girl" which one was accustomed to hear joined to the name of Kate
Cheriton.
Smiting her brow, aghast, at the recollection of an appointment missed,
Marie-Aimée jumped to her feet. By running she might still be in time
to apologize. They shook hands again, warmly; and Marie-Aimée said, all
her heart in her voice, "I hope you will be very happy."
In the street, Marie-Aimée, as she hurried along, could think of
nothing but Miss Cheriton. She would send her as a wedding-gift the
French great-grandmother's rococo cross, the choicest bit of jewelry
she owned.
Her heart might have been so much dusty, worm-eaten wood; remarking
its astonishing lightness and insensibility, she reverted in thought,
almost flippantly, to the horrors besetting her when she left home that
morning. Surely, if it were possible that with Tony's marriage brought
as close as a visit to his intended brought it, she should feel as she
felt, she might still hope to put on a good face about it to the world.
In this mood she went about a good part of that day; and talked to some
with so much of a return to her old spirit that they disguised their
surprise by a greater cheerfulness than really their mystification
allowed them to feel. Meeting an old acquaintance who put on the face
of a sympathizer to say, "My dear, I _did_ feel for you when I heard
of his engagement, you know whose I mean," she looked as if not sure
she understood; and the old aquaintance, after a searching look at
her, dropped her mournfulness, to proceed, "It seems to be a fine
thing for Bronson, this marriage. I hear that Miss Cheriton will be
a millionaire. People exaggerate, you think? But she _has_ bought a
superb place out of town?"
By the late afternoon, that curious, unseasonable, baseless good cheer
was wearing off, like the effects of wine, and the world, through
its fading fumes, was returning to look like the world of yesterday.
Weariness was overtaking her; but her heart had not recommenced its
clamorous aching; it was only a little sick, when she went into a
music-store for a score she needed. She was looking this over, with her
eyes rather than her mind, when her attention became fixed in memory
upon that expression of Miss Cheriton's face from which she had judged
her mission successful--Tony cleared. Suddenly, as in the middle of the
night she had sometimes known that in a letter sent off there was a
word misspelled, she felt that triumph of confidence in Miss Cheriton's
eyes not to have been the work of her own explanations. She herself had
been fully explained to Miss Cheriton before ever she set foot in her
house. How could it have been otherwise?
Marie-Aimée's ghost-seeing eyes became fixed upon nothingness. She sat
so a long time, her chin dropped in dolorous absorption; a figure which
struck discomfort in the beholder. Another woman buying music bent over
the counter and whispered to the clerk, who whispered back, and both
stole glances at the unconscious, rigid, dumpy profile, stamped with
tragedy, of the well-known pianiste, whose most intimate sorrow had
become town-talk.
She went out at last into the hubbub of the streets, which seemed a
cruelty of men, under the gorgeous sunset sky, which seemed a cruelty
of Heaven's, and, as much as a great heaviness would allow, hurried
home and to bed and the dark. It was no use! no use! Though Tony's
conduct to her admitted of the face she had put on it to Miss Cheriton,
and though the world's jury, upon full evidence, might have acquitted
him, he not being the last shade of black, she herself knew, and
something of incorruptible justice in the bottom of her heart would
not let her blink it, that she had been badly, badly treated. But that
was not the most woeful, that she should have been badly treated, or
that she must live her days hereafter without him; but that he, Tony,
should have been capable of doing this thing to her, to her, who would
have shed her blood for him, and he knew it.
In the days following, as she went about her crowded occupations,
she did not, as she had allowed herself to do before, seek relief in
speaking of what weighed upon her heart. But human strength did not
suffice to keep the matter out of her face; her cheek was leaden, her
eyes were in a fog.
But it was useless now, her avoiding Anthony Bronson's name. She had
spoken too much before. Besides, too many remembered the soft, radiant,
enamored face with which she had been used to beam up at him in those
earliest days after their return from touring, and down upon which he
had benignantly beamed, like a big, gratified idol. Furthermore, this
gossip concerning persons so well known had too many of the elements
which ensure a thing being repeated till everyone knows. Reports
of "scenes" made by Marie-Aimée were still spreading after she had
placed the seal upon her lips; and those who got them last did not
know that they were old news; and as it was the least interested in
her personally who last became _au fait_ of her affairs, some among
them took the view that little Nevers was disgracing herself; which
sentiment once in the air, certain of Marie-Aimée's closer friends
saw the matter more nearly in that light, experienced a reaction from
too complete sympathy with her. One heard it said with a touch of
impatience, "Some one ought to talk to Marie-Aimée!" Even those who
loved her most, this, as it seemed, insistent and protracted harping
upon an unfortunate attachment at last came near disgusting. And she
did receive scoldings and lectures, of which she abjectly owned the
justice; and she tried to keep herself more out of sight. Only so far
as the necessity to earn a living made it imperative did she go about.
Wherefore some whose invitations she refused said, "Nevers is moping.
It is a pity she can't behave like the rest who have to suffer from the
fickleness of man!"
A critical, less friendly attitude of the world toward her was
beginning at last, through her dismal preoccupation, to penetrate her
heart with its novel chill, and make the city where she had always
lived seem not like home any more. She looked about, bewildered,
for escape. The day of the Bronson-Cheriton wedding, too, was close
at hand; but before it had arrived, there descended upon her from a
distance a stern older married sister, whom rumors at last had aroused.
No one saw Marie-Aimée after the coming of this sister. To everyone's
astonishment, in the busiest time of the season, Marie-Aimée's rooms
were empty of her. It was thought that the sister had carried her off
to keep her under surveillance: till it became known from Marie-Aimée
herself, writing to her old friends, that she was in a convent of the
Sacred Heart, hundreds of miles removed, and there proposed to remain
until she had become free from the faintest taint of the folly that had
made her a scandal and a laughing-stock,--yes, if she remained there
until she died. Her time was profitably spent in study, and the giving
of piano-lessons to the young girls receiving their education in the
holy house. And she enjoyed the inestimable privilege, accorded to her
by the Mother Superior, of weeping as much as she pleased.
II
To that little portion of the busy world-in-general which concerned
itself with her, one may be sure it seemed very soon after her
disappearance that it began to be said Nevers might be looked for
again. Already? Yet, when one had grumbled that love, after all, does
not last very long, he made calculations, and these told him that three
years and more had slipped past since the tragico-comic retreat of the
poor crossed-in-love. Certainly, something may be expected of three
years.
She was really coming back? There was excitement. She was coming, no
longer any doubt of it; there was glee, there was expanding of the
heart. She was come; there was a rush to see her. Affection accounted
for much of this; for the rest, curiosity to see the result of her
three years. But when she had been seen, delight knew no reserve; each
felt as if he had won a bet.
A movement arose, as a breeze comes up, and gradually gained force,
till it resulted in a concert given for Marie-Aimée, a testimony of
the regard felt for her, and the joy at her return. The occasion was
made a magnificent one; the house was crowded, and contained such a
proportion of personal friends of Marie-Aimée that the affair took the
character of a huge family festivity. But the applause resounding when
Marie-Aimée herself appeared to perform her little task at the piano
was in excess of all the rest. In the sound, in the faces, in the air,
one felt "How she is beloved!"
She came forward in the child-like manner one remembered of her, with
that adorable absence of self-consciousness which touches more than
grace, bowing from side to side with the moved air which infallibly
moves, half in tears, yet smiling. To gratify her faithful, she had
gone into hearty extravagance, and appeared wonderfully encased in a
warm delicious pink, worthy of the event, much of it rustling off far
from her heels, not much of it at all troubling her dimpled arms and
shoulders. She held her sweet little black head on one side, like a
tender bird; it looked as if dragged over by the weight of a big rose
in her hair. And the people could not be satisfied with clapping their
hands. The public was for the occasion become romantic, and, as much as
the artist, was applauding the woman who had loved and, by this token,
triumphed over a villainous deserter. They kept it up _ad absurdum_,
intoxicated by the noise they made, more and more touched by their own
loyalty to the old favorite, wishing to proclaim it still more loudly;
and so expressing at last, it is sad to say, far more than any one
felt. But it had been a goodly demonstration, and all thought better of
themselves when finally those who were eager to hear the playing began
hushing, and silence gradually came about.
Then she played, and it was to many what they were pleased to call
a revelation. It was at all events a fresh, delicate, inspirating,
moving music. There were those who listened with eyes upturned, and
thought of sunrise upon Eden; there were those who nodded surprise and
commendation, and spoke of technique.
Marie-Aimée was one of those persons about whom all who know them talk.
She offered opportunity for it, certainly, by herself talking; her
manner of being and her ways were fertile in food for comment; but her
modest ray of fame was also accountable, being felt to brighten all who
could claim sufficient nearness to her to know her affairs.
Had she changed? was the capital question in the discussions of her
following upon her return. Most said not in the least, except, the
presumption was, toward Bronson. She was open-hearted as ever, merry
once more as she had used to be when her star first rose among them.
She was still the one that so lent herself to be loved and gently,
almost enviously, laughed at. But if she were changed, as some
maintained, it was for the better. She looked younger, rested; her face
was clear and untroubled now. If, after the first, one missed something
in her, she explained that it was her old faults.
"When I began to see glimmering ahead of me in the distance a triumphal
re-entrance among you," she held forth to a little group, "I began
to prepare for it. I tried to fit myself better to please you. For
the _bon Dieu's_ sake, I had tried to obtain a clean soul; but for
the world's sake--your sake, my dears--I tried to become thin! I did
gymnastics, I walked, I dosed myself, I gave up eating everything I
liked, and you see the result? Honor my beautiful shape, will you? and
do not press upon me sponge-cake and plum-cake, as you used to do. Then
I became orderly. Haven't you noticed? All my buttons there, all my
hooks and eyes. And every little spot at once rubbed out with cologne.
When did you know such things of me before? But look at my head! I tell
you I hunt up mirrors expressly to see myself in them; and I set my
bonnet straight, and tuck in my loose ends. Then I became prudent. I
always think before I act, now, and before I speak, and before I spend
my money. And punctual! I catch trains, and I keep appointments. I look
at my watch, like the rest of you, and see that it is time to go, and I
_go_. I no longer, like some one I remember, sit down and play and play
and play, or talk and talk and talk, till it is dinner time, and I have
to be invited. And then I am not a chatter-box now, no, not what you
could call a chatter-box."
Her joy at being again among her old friends softened and won them; and
no less did the humility of her attitude toward the past. In regard to
that she was shame-faced, apologetic, reformed.
So much of the story of her exile filtered through those who received
it at first hand, that a legend of it was before long public property;
and such a character was given the event, Marie-Aimée's own view
perhaps initially tinging it for all, that, without fear of being
thereby unacceptable, the multitude of those who stood with Marie-Aimée
on a footing of good-humored comradeship neglected, even in speaking
to her, to disguise their familiarity with what concerned her. It
was common, on the ground of a perfect understanding with her, and
a supposition of at least some small degree of that enmity which
often succeeds love and takes satisfaction in hearing of Fortune's
disparaging turns on the ex-beloved, to entertain her with late
accounts of Bronson. And though she merely listened, as she would
have done to anything well-intentioned, her unoffended air left a
feeling that encouragement had not been wanting. One irresponsible,
feather-brained youth, of the baritone variety, reached such
recklessness, while regaling her with good stories as they stood
waiting for her cab, as to inquire, "Have you heard the latest joke
about old Bronson?" He brought his lips near her ear, and breathed
through a chuckle: "They say it takes two years and seven months to get
over being in love with Bronson, but if you marry him it doesn't take
so long!" And as he laughed heartily, she let her bright laugh ring out
companionably alongside of his. Having got into her cab, she repeated
the joke carefully over to herself, to apprehend the point of it.
It was not to have been expected that the peculiar extreme enthusiasm
for Marie-Aimée, with the exaggerated form of tribute to her, should
continue long unabated. Still, with discretion on her part, it might
have had the ordinary length of such things. As it was, alas, there
soon seemed occasion to believe that the public mind is ruled by the
law of reaction: By so much as the public had gone beyond rational
appreciation, it seemed now threatening to fall below it.
Those who watched Marie-Aimée's fortunes with most interest, with
a sinking of the spirit began to note a decrease in her social
popularity. As they witnessed this trifling evidence of it and that,
these lifted their eyebrows and pushed out their chins, with the
expression which one interprets, "But what can be done about it?"
Whenever there was reference to her now, it seemed to bring about in
the atmosphere a vague fall of temperature. A just appreciable effect
of disappointment, disapproval, regret, followed the long-loved name.
Those fondest of her could scarcely be brought to speak of it; when
they did speak, it was not frankly and openly, as everyone had used to
discuss her affairs once, shaking the head amusedly. They talked in
dreary undertones, and ended asking each other "Now, can you understand
it?"
Presently, she was by certain ones avoided, because of an awkwardness
they felt in meeting her, with a consciousness of what were best not
mentioned--disagreeable to those accustomed to dealings with her of a
perfect candor. When met, she was at best in these days indifferent
fun, preoccupied, unlike herself, with little to say.
At last, as an increasing coldness takes a definite pattern of frost,
certain persons refrained from calling upon her, explaining privately
that they had heard it said that it was possible to come upon Anthony
Bronson in her little drawing-room. This refraining did not signify by
any means in all a wish to express condemnation; on the part of most it
really expressed a good-humored wish not to be in the way.
It was as winter was waning, that, reversing somewhat the order of
the day, one who had never called on her resolved to do so. With her
clothes and her hair and her eyes full of March, she ascended to Miss
Nevers' little flat. The door was opened by Marie-Aimée herself, who
stood looking up, uncertain, inquiring.
"I fear you do not remember me," the visitor said. "May I come in?"