“IN MANY MOODS.”
EMILY was lunching alone at the Astor House in the innermost of
the upstairs dining-rooms. She had just ordered when a woman
entered--obviously a woman of the stage, although she was quietly
dressed. She had a striking figure, small but lithe, and her gown was
fitted to its every curve. As she passed Emily’s table, to the left of
the door, the air became odorous of one of those heavy, sweet perfumes
whose basis is musk. Her face was round, almost fat, babyish at first
glance. Her eyes were unnaturally sleepy and had many fine wrinkles at
the corners. She seated herself at the far end of the room, so that she
was facing the door and Emily.
She called the waiter in a would-be imperious way, but before she had
finished ordering she was laughing and talking with him as if he were
a friend. Emily noted that she spoke between her shut teeth, like a
morphine-eater. As the waiter left, her face lighted with pleasure and
greeting. Emily was amazed as she saw the man toward whom this look
was directed--Stilson. He did not see Emily when he came in, and, as
he seated himself opposite the woman who was awaiting him, could not
see her. Nor could Emily see his face, only his back and now and then
one of his hands. As she eagerly noted every detail of him and of his
companion, she suddenly discovered that there was a pain at her heart
and that she was criticising the woman as if they were bitter enemies.
“I am jealous of her,” she thought, startled as she grasped all that
was implied in jealousy such as she was now feeling.
When had she come to care especially for Stilson? And why? Above all,
how had she fallen in love without knowing what she was doing? By
what subtle chemistry had sympathy, admiration, trust, been combined
into this new element undoubtedly love, yet wholly unlike any emotion
she had felt before? “Mary must have set me to thinking,” she said to
herself.
The woman talked volubly, always with her teeth together and her eyes
half-closed. But Emily could see that she was watching Stilson’s face
closely, lovingly. Stilson seemed to be saying nothing and looking
absently out of the window. As Emily studied the woman, she was forced
to confess that she was fascinating and that she had the attractive
remnants of beauty. Her manner toward Stilson made her manner toward
the waiter a few minutes before seem like a real self carefully and
habitually hidden from some one whom she knew would disapprove it. “She
tries to live up to him,” thought Emily. “And how interesting she is
to look at--what a beautiful figure, what graceful gestures--and--I
wonder if I shall look as well at--at her age?”
She could not eat. “How I wish I hadn’t seen her with him. Now I shall
imagine--everything, while before this I thought of that side of his
life as if it didn’t exist.” She went as quickly as she could, for she
felt like a spy and feared he would turn his head. In the next room,
which was filled, she met Miss Furnival, the “fashion editor” of the
_Democrat’s_ Sunday magazine. Miss Furnival asked if there were any
tables vacant in the next room and hastened on to get the one which
Emily had left.
An hour later Miss Furnival stopped at her desk. “Didn’t you see
Stilson in that room over at the Astor House?” she said, and Emily knew
that gossip was coming.
“Was he there?” she asked.
“Yes--up at the far end of the room--with Marguerite Feronia. She used
to be his wife, you know--and she divorced him when he went to pieces.
And now they live together--at least, in the same house. Some say that
he refused to re-marry her. But Mr. Gammell told me it was the other
way, that she told a friend of his she wasn’t fit to be Stilson’s wife.
She said she’d ruined him once and would never be a drag on him again.”
“I suppose he’s--tremendously in love with her?” Emily tried in vain to
prevent herself from stooping to this question.
“I don’t know,” replied Miss Furnival. “Mr. Gammell told me he wasn’t.
He says Stilson is a sentimentalist. It seems there is a child--some
say a boy, some say a girl. She first told Stilson it was his, and then
that it wasn’t. Mr. Gammell says Stilson stays on to protect the child
from her. She’s a terror when she goes on one of her sprees--and she
goes oftener and oftener as she grows older. You can always tell when
she’s on the rampage by the way Stilson acts. He goes about, looking as
if somebody had insulted him and he’d been too big a coward to resent
it.”
Instead of being saddened by this recital, Emily was in sudden high
spirits and her eyes were dancing. “I ought to be ashamed of myself,”
she thought, “but I can’t help it. I wish to feel that he loathes her.”
Then she said aloud in a satirical tone, to carry off her cheerful
expression: “I had no idea we had such a hero among us. And Mr.
Stilson, of all men! I’m afraid it’s a piece of Park Row imagination.
Probably the truth is--let us say, less romantic.”
“You don’t know Mr. Gammell,” Miss Furnival sighed. “He’s the last man
on earth to indulge in romance. He thinks Stilson ridiculous. But _I_
think he’s fine. He’s the best of a few good men I’ve known in New
York who weren’t good only because of not having sense enough to be
otherwise.”
“Good,” repeated Emily in a tone that expressed strong aversion to the
word.
“Oh, mercy no! I don’t mean that kind of good,” said Miss Furnival.
“He’s not the kind of good that makes everybody else love and long for
wickedness.”
After this Emily found herself making trips to the news-department on
extremely thin pretexts, and returning cheerful or depressed according
as she had succeeded or failed in her real object. And she began to
think--to hope--that Stilson came to the Sunday department oftener
than formerly. When he did come--and it certainly was oftener--he
merely bowed to her as he passed her desk. But whenever she looked up
suddenly, she found his gaze upon her and she felt that her vanity was
not dictating her interpretation of it. She had an instinct that if he
knew or suspected her secret or suspected that she was guessing his
secret, she would see him no more.
As the months passed, there grew up between them a mutual understanding
about which she saw that he was deceiving himself. She came to know
him so well that she read him at sight. Being large and broad, he was
simple, tricking himself when it would have been impossible for him to
have tricked another. And it made her love him the more to see how he
thought he was hiding himself from her and how unconscious he was of
her love for him.
She had no difficulty in gratifying her longing to hear of him. He
was naturally the most conspicuous figure in the office and often a
subject of conversation. She was delighted by daily evidences of the
power of his personality and by tributes to it. For Park Row liked to
gossip about his eccentricities,--he was called eccentric because
he had the courage of his individuality; or about his sagacity as an
editor, his sardonic wit, his cynicism concealing but never hindering
thoughtfulness for others. Shrinking from prying eyes, he was always
unintentionally provoking curiosity. Hating flattery, he was the idol
and the pattern of a score of the younger men of the profession. His
epigrams were quoted and his walk was copied, his dress, his way
of wearing his hair. Even his stenographer, a girl, unconsciously
and most amusingly imitated his mannerisms. All the indistinct and
inferior personalities about him, in the hope of making themselves
less indistinct and inferior, copied as closely as they could those
characteristics which, to them, seemed the cause of his standing up
and out so vividly. One day Emily was passing through an inside room
of the news-department on her way to the Day Telegraph Editor. Stilson
was at a desk which he sometimes used. He had his back toward her and
was talking into the portable telephone. She glanced at the surface of
his desk. With eyes trained to take in details swiftly, she saw before
she could look away an envelope addressed to Boughton and Wall, the
publishers, a galley proof projecting from it, and on the proof in
large type: “17 In Many Moods.”
“He has written a book,” she thought, “and that is the title.” And she
was filled with loving curiosity. She speculated about it often in the
next six weeks; then she saw it on a table in Brentano’s.
“Yes, it’s been selling fairly well--for poetry,” said the clerk.
“There’s really no demand for new poetry. Ninety-one cents. You’ll find
the verses very pretty.”
Poetry--verses--Stilson a verse-maker! Emily was surprised and somewhat
amused. There was no author’s name on the title-page and it was a small
volume, about twenty poems, the most of them short, each with a mood as
a title--Anger, Parting, Doubt, Jealousy, Courage, Foreboding, Passion,
Hope, Renunciation--at Renunciation she paused and read.
It was a crowded street-car and she bent low over the book to
hide her face. She had the clue to the book. Indeed she presently
discovered that it was to be found in every poem. Stilson had loved
her long--almost from her first appearance in the office. And in these
verses, breathing generosity and self-sacrifice, and well-aimed for
one heart at least, he had poured out his love for her. It was sad,
intense, sincere, a love that made her proud and happy, yet humble and
melancholy, too.
As she read she seemed to see him looking at her, she felt his heart
aching. Now he was holding her tight in his arms, raining kisses
on her face and making her blood race like maddest joy through her
veins. Again, he was standing afar off, teaching her the lesson that
the love that can refrain and renounce is the truest love. It was a
revelation of this strange man even to her who had studied him long
and penetratingly. So absorbed was she in reading and re-reading
that when she glanced up the car was at One hundred and fourteenth
street--miles past her house. She walked down to and through the Park
in an abandon of happiness over these love letters so strangely sent,
thus accidentally received. “I must never let him see that I know,” she
thought--“yet how can I help showing it?”
She met him the very next day--almost ran into him as she left the
elevator at the news-department floor where he was waiting to take it
on its descent. For the first time she betrayed herself, looking at him
with a burning blush and with eyes shining with the emotion she could
not instantly conceal. She passed on swiftly, conscious that he was
gazing after her startled. “I acted like a child,” she said to herself,
“and here I am, trembling all over as if I were seventeen.” And then
she wrought herself up with thinking what he might think of her. “Where
is my courage?” she reassured herself, “What a poor love his would be
if he misunderstood me.” Nevertheless she was afraid that she had shown
too much. “I suppose it’s impossible to be courageous and restrained
when one loves.”
But when she saw him again--two days later, in the vestibule of the
_Democrat_ Building--it was her turn to be self-possessed and his to
betray himself. He was swinging along with his head down and gloom
in his face. He must have recognised her by her feet--distinctive in
their slenderness and in the sort of boots that covered them. For he
suddenly gave her a flash-like glance which said to her as plainly as
words: “I am in the depths. If I only dared to reach out my hand to
you, dear!” Then he recovered himself, reddened slightly, bowed almost
guiltily and passed on without speaking.