IX

The day was set. Marna was to sing. It seemed to the little group of

friends as if the whole city palpitated with the fact. At any rate, the

Caravansary did so. They talked of little else, and Mary Morrison wept

for envy. Not that it was mean envy. Her weeping was a sort of tribute,

and Marna felt it to be so.

"You're going to be wonderful," Mary sobbed. "The rest of us are merely

young, or just women, or men. We can't be anything more no matter how

hard we try, though we keep feeling as if we were something more. But

you're going to SING! Oh, Marna!"

Time wore on, and Marna grew hectic with anticipation. Her lips were too

red, her breath came too quickly; she intensified herself; and she

practiced her quivering, fitful, passionate songs with religious

devotion. So many things centered around the girl that it was no wonder

that she began to feel a disproportionate sense of responsibility. All

of her friends were taking it for granted that she would make a success.

Mrs. Barsaloux was giving a supper at the Blackstone after the

performance. The opera people were coming and a number of other

distinguished ones; and Marna was having a frock made of the color of a

gold-of-Ophir rose satin which was to clothe her like sunshine. Honora

brought out a necklace of yellow opals whimsically fashioned.

"I no longer use such things, child," she said with a touch of emotion.

"And I want you to wear them with your yellow dress."

"Why, they're like drops of water with the sun in them!" cried Marna.

"How good you all are to me! I can't imagine why."

When the great night came, the audience left something to be desired,

both as to numbers and fashion. Although Marna's appearance had been

well advertised, it was evident that the public preferred to listen to

the great stars. But the house was full enough and enthusiastic enough

to awaken in the little Irish girl's breast that form of elation which

masks as self-obliteration, and which is the fuel that feeds the

fires of art.

Kate had gone with the Fulhams and they, with Blue-eyed Mary and Dr. von

Shierbrand, sat together in the box which Mrs. Barsaloux had given them,

and where, from time to time, she joined them. But chiefly she hovered

around Marna in that dim vast world back of the curtain.

They said of Marna afterward that she was like a spirit. She seemed less

and more than a woman, an evanescent essence of feminine delight. Her

laughter, her tears, her swift emotions were all as something held for a

moment before the eye and snatched away, to leave but the wavering

eidolon of their loveliness. She sang with a young Italian who responded

exquisitely to the swift, bright, unsubstantial beauty of her acting,

and whom she seemed fairly to bathe in the amber loveliness of

her voice.

Kate, quivering for her, seeming indefinably to be a part of her,

suffering at the hesitancies of the audience and shaken with their

approval, was glad when it was all over. She hastened out to be with the

crowd and to hear what they were saying. They were warm in their praise,

but Kate was dissatisfied. She longed for something more emphatic--some

excess of acclaim. She wondered if they were waiting for more

authoritative audiences to set the stamp of approval on Marna. It did

not occur to her that they had found the performance too opalescent

and elusive.

Kate wondered if the girl would feel that anything had been missing, but

Marna seemed to be basking in the happiness of the hour. The great

German prima donna had kissed her with tears in her eyes; the French

baritone had spoken his compliments with convincing ardor; dozens had

crowded about her with congratulations; and now, at the head of the

glittering table in an opulent room, the little descendant of minstrels

sat and smiled upon her friends. A gilded crown of laurel leaves rested

on her dark hair; her white neck arose delicately from the yellowed lace

and the shining silk; the sunny opals rested upon her shoulders.

"I drink," cried the French baritone, "to a voice of honey and an ivory

throat."

"To a great career," supplemented David Fulham.

"And happiness," Kate broke in, standing with the others and forgetting

to be abashed by the presence of so many. Then she called to Marna:--

"I was afraid they would leave out happiness."

Kate might have been the belated fairy godmother who brought this gift

in the nick of time. Those at the table smiled at her indulgently,--she

was so eager, so young, so almost fierce. She had dressed herself in

white without frill or decoration, and the clinging folds of her gown

draped her like a slender, chaste statue. She wore no jewels,--she had

none, indeed,--and her dark coiled hair in no way disguised the shape of

her fine head. The elaborate Polish contralto across from her, splendid

as a mediaeval queen, threw Kate's simplicity into sharp contrast. Marna

turned adoring eyes upon her; Mrs. Barsaloux, that inveterate encourager

of genius, grieved that the girl had no specialty for her to foster; the

foreigners paid her frank tribute, and there was no question but that

the appraisement upon her that night was high.

As for Mama's happiness, for which Kate had put in her stipulation, it

was coming post-haste, though by a circuitous road.

Mrs. Dennison, who had received tickets from Marna, and who had begged

her nephew, George Fitzgerald, to act as her escort, was, in her

fashion, too, wondering about the question of happiness for the girl.

She was an old-fashioned creature, mid-Victorian in her sincerity. She

had kissed one man and one only, and him had she married, and sorrowing

over her childless estate she had become, when she laid her husband in

his grave, "a widow indeed." Her abundant affection, disused by this

accident of fate, had spent itself in warm friendships, and in her

devotion to her dead sister's child. She had worked for him till the

silver came into her hair; had sent him through his classical course and

through the medical college, and the day when she saw him win his title

of doctor of medicine was the richest one of her middle life.

He sat beside her now, strangely pale and disturbed. The opera, she was

sorry to note, had not interested him as she had expected it would. He

had, oddly enough, been reluctant to accompany her, and, as she was

accustomed to his quick devotion, this distressed her not a little. Was

he growing tired of her? Was he ashamed to be seen at the opera with a

quiet woman in widow's dress, a touch shabby? Was her much-tired heart

to have a last cruel blow dealt it? Accustomed to rather somber pathways

of thought, she could not escape this one; yet she loyally endeavored to

turn from it, and from time to time she stole a look at the stern, pale

face beside her to discover, if she could, what had robbed him of his

good cheer.

For he had been a happy boy. His high spirits had constituted a large

part of his attraction for her. When he had come to her orphaned, it had

been with warm gratitude in his heart, and with the expectation of being

loved. As he grew older, that policy of life had become accentuated. He

was expectant in all that he did. His temperamental friendliness had

carried him through college, winning for him a warm group of friends and

the genuine regard of his professors. It was helping him to make his way

in the place he had chosen for his field of action. He had not gone into

the more fashionable part of town, but far over on the West Side, where

the slovenliness of the central part of the city shambles into a

community of parks and boulevards, crude among their young trees

surrounded by neat, self-respecting apartment houses. Such communities

are to be found in all American cities; communities which set little

store by fashion, which prize education (always providing it does not

prove exotic and breed genius or any form of disturbing beauty), live

within their incomes and cultivate the manifest virtues. The environment

suited George Fitzgerald. He had an honest soul without a bohemian

impulse in him. He recognized himself as being middle-class, and he was

proud and glad of it. He liked to be among people who kept their feet on

the earth--people whose yea was yea and whose nay was nay. What was

Celtic in him could do no more for him than lend a touch of almost

flaring optimism to the Puritan integrity of his character.

Sundays, as a matter of habit, and occasionally on other days, he was

his aunt's guest at the Caravansary. The intellectual coöperatives there

liked him, as indeed everybody did, everywhere. Invariably Mrs. Dennison

was told after his departure that she was a fortunate woman to have such

an adopted son. Yet Fitzgerald knew very well that he was unable to be

completely himself among his aunt's patrons. Their conversation was too

glancing; they too often said what they did not mean, for mere

conversation's sake; they played with ideas, tossing them about like

juggler's balls; and they attached importance to matters which seemed to

him of little account.

Of late he had been going to his aunt's but seldom, and he had stayed

away because he wanted, above all things in the world, to go. It had

become an agony to go--an anguish to absent himself. Which being

interpreted, means that he was in love. And whom should he love but

Marna? Why should any man trouble himself to love another woman when

this glancing, flashing, singing bird was winging it through the blue?

Were any other lips so tender, so tremulous, so arched, so sweet? The

breath that came between them was perfumed with health; the little rows

of gleaming teeth were indescribably provocative. Actually, the little

red tongue itself seemed to fold itself upward, at the edges, like a

tender leaf. As for her nostrils, they were delicately flaring like

those of some wood creature, and fashioned for the enjoyment of odorous

banquets undreamed of by duller beings. Her eyes, like pools in shade,

breathing mystery and dreams, got between him and his sleep and held him

intoxicated in his bed.

Yes, that was Marna as she looked to the eye of love. She was made for

one man's love and nothing else, yet she was about to become the

well-loved of the great world! She was not for him--was not made for a

man of his mould. She had flashed from obscurity to something rich and

plenteous, obviously the child of Destiny--a little princess waiting for

her crown. He had not even talked to her many times, and she had no

notion that when she entered the room he trembled; and that when she

spoke to him and turned the swimming loveliness of her eyes upon him, he

had trouble to keep his own from filling with tears.

And this was the night of her dedication to the world; the world was

seating her upon her throne, acclaiming her coronation. There was

nothing for him but to go on through an interminably long life, bearing

a brave front and hiding his wound.

He loathed the incoherent music; detested the conductor; despised the

orchestra; felt murderous toward the Italian tenor; and could have slain

the man who wrote the opera, since it made his bright girl a target for

praise and blame. He feared his aunt's scrutiny, for she had sharp

perceptions, and he could have endured anything better than that she

should spy upon his sacred pain. So he sat by her side, passionately

solitary amid a crowd and longing to hide himself from the society

of all men.

But he must be distrait, indeed, if he could forget the claim his good

aunt had upon him. He knew how she loved gayety; and her daily life

offered her little save labor and monotony.

"Supper next," he said with forced cheerfulness as they came out of the

opera-house together. "I'll do the ordering. You'll enjoy a meal for

once which is served independently of you."

He tried to talk about this and that as they made their way on to a

glaring below-stairs restaurant, where after-theater folk gathered. The

showy company jarred hideously on Fitzgerald, yet gave him a chance to

save his face by pretending to watch it. He could tell his aunt who some

of the people were, and she would transfer her curiosity from him

to them.

"They'll be having a glorious time at Miss Cartan's supper," mused Mrs.

Dennison. "How she shines, doesn't she, George? And when you think of

her beginnings there on that Wisconsin farm, isn't it astonishing?"

"Those weren't her beginnings, I fancy," George said, venturing to taste

of discussion concerning her as a brandy-lover may smell a glass he

swears he will not drink. "Her beginnings were very long ago. She's a

Celt, and she has the witchery of the Celts. How I'd love to hear her

recite some of the new Irish poems!"

"She'd do it beautifully, George. She does everything beautifully. If

I'd had a daughter like that, boy, what a different thing my life would

be! Or if you were to give me--"

George clicked his ice sharply in his glass. "See," he said, "there's

Hackett coming in--Hackett the actor. Handsome devil, isn't he?"

"Don't use that tone, George," said his aunt reprovingly. "Handsome

devil, indeed! He's a good-looking man. Can't you say that in a proper

way? I don't want you to be sporty in your talk, George. I always tried

when you were a little boy to keep you from talking foolishly."

"Oh, there's no danger of my being foolish," he said. "I'm as staid and

dull as ever you could wish me to be!"

For the first time in her life she found him bitter, but she had the

sense at last to keep silent. His eyes were full of pain, and as he

looked about the crowded room with its suggestions of indulgent living,

she saw something in his face leap to meet it--something that seemed to

repudiate the ideals she had passed on to him. Involuntarily, Anne

Dennison reached out her firm warm hand and laid it on the quivering one

of her boy.

"A new thought has just come to you!" she said softly. "Before you were

through with your boast, lad, your temptation came. I saw it. Are you

lonely, George? Are you wanting something that Aunt Anne can give you?

Won't you speak out to me?"

He drew his hand away from hers.

"No one in the world can give me what I want," he said painfully.

"Forgive me, auntie; and let's talk of other things."

He had pushed her back into that lonely place where the old often must

stand, and she shivered a little as if a cold wind blew over her. He saw

it and bent toward her contritely.

"You must help me," he said. "I am very unhappy. I suppose almost

everybody has been unhappy like this sometime. Just bear with me, Aunt

Anne, dear, and help me to forget for an hour or two."

Anne Dennison regarded him understandingly.

"Here comes our lobster," she said, "and while we eat it, I'll tell you

the story of the first time I ever ate at a restaurant."

He nodded gratefully. After all, while she lived, he could not be

utterly bereft.

X

He had taken her home and was leaving, when a carriage passed him. He

could hear the voices of the occupants--the brisk accents of Mrs.

Barsaloux, and the slow, honey-rich tones of Marna. He had never dreamed

that he could do such a thing, but he ran forward with an almost frantic

desire to rest his eyes upon the girl's face, and he was beside the curb

when the carriage drew up at the door of the house where Mrs. Barsaloux

and Marna lodged. He flung open the door in spite of the protests of the

driver, who was not sure of his right to offer such a service, and held

out his hand to Mrs. Barsaloux. That lady accepted his politeness

graciously, and, weary and abstracted, moved at once toward the

house-steps, searching meantime for her key. Fitzgerald had fifteen

seconds alone with Marna. She stood half-poised upon the carriage-steps,

her hand in his, their eyes almost on a level. Then he said an

impossible and insane thing. It was wrung out of his misery, out of his

knowledge of her loveliness.

"I've lost you!" he whispered. "Do you know that to-night ended my

happiness?"

Mama's lips parted delicately; her eyes widened; her swift Celtic spirit

encompassed his grief.

"Oh!" she breathed. "Don't speak so! Don't spoil my beautiful time!"

"Not I," he retorted sharply, speaking aloud this time. "Far be it from

me! Good-bye."

Mrs. Barsaloux heard him vaguely above the jangling of coins and keys

and the rushing of a distant train.

"You're not going to leave town, are you, Dr. Fitzgerald?" she inquired

casually. "I thought your good-bye had a final accent to it."

She was laughing in her easy way, quite unconscious of what was taking

place. She had made an art of laughing, and it carried her and others

over many difficult places. But for once it was powerless to lessen the

emotional strain. Mysteriously, Fitzgerald and Marna were experiencing a

sweet torment in their parting. It was not that she loved him or had

thought of him in that way at all. She had seen him often and had liked

his hearty ways, his gay spirits, and his fine upstanding figure, but he

had been as one who passed by with salutations. Now, suddenly, she was

conscious that he was a man to be desired. She saw his wistful eyes, his

avid lips, his great shoulders. The woman in her awoke to a knowledge of

her needs. Upon such a shoulder might a woman weep, from such eyes might

a woman gather dreams; to allay such torment as his might a woman give

all she had to give. It was incoherent, mad, but not unmeaning. It had,

indeed, the ultimate meaning.

He said nothing more; she spoke no word. Each knew they would meet on

the morrow.

The next night, Kate Barrington, making her way swiftly down the Midway

in a misty gloom, saw the little figure of Marna Cartan fluttering

before her. It was too early for dinner, and Kate guessed that Marna was

on her way to pay her a visit--a not rare occurrence these last few

weeks. She called to her, and Marna waited, turning her face for a

moment to the mist-bearing wind.

"I was going to you," she said breathlessly.

"So I imagined, bright one."

"Are you tired, Kate, mavourneen?"

"A little. It's been a hard day. I don't see why my heart isn't broken,

considering the things I see and hear, Marna! I don't so much mind about

the grown-ups. If they succeed in making a mess of things, why, they can

take the consequences. But the kiddies--they're the ones that torment

me. Try as I can to harden myself, and to say that after I've done my

utmost my responsibility ends, I can't get them off my mind. But what's

on _your_ mind, bright one?"

"Oh, Kate, so much! But wait till we get to the house. It's not a thing

to shriek out here on the street."

The wind swept around the corner, buffeting them, and Kate drew Marna's

arm in her own and fairly bore the little creature along with her. They

entered the silent house, groped through the darkened hall and up the

stairs to Kate's own room.

"Honora isn't home, I fancy," she said, in apology for the pervading

desolation. "She stays late at the laboratory these nights. She says

she's on the verge of a wonderful discovery. It's something she and

David have been working out together, but she's been making some

experiments in secret, with which she means to surprise David. Of course

she'll give all the credit to him--that's her policy. She's his

helpmate, she says, nothing more."

"But the babies?" asked Marna with that naïveté characteristic of her.

"Where are they?"

"Up in the nursery at the top of the house. It will be light and warm

there, I think. Honora had a fireplace put in so that it would be

cheerful. I always feel sure it's pleasant up there, however forbidding

the rest of the house may look."

"Mary has made a great difference with it since she came, hasn't she? Of

course Honora couldn't do the wonderful things she's doing and be

fussing around the house all the time. Still, she might train her

servants, mightn't she?"

"Well, there aren't really any to train," said Kate. "There's Mrs. Hays,

the nurse, a very good woman, but as we take our meals out, and are all

so independent, there's no one else required, except occasionally.

Honora wouldn't think of such an extravagance as a parlor maid. We're a

community of working folk, you see."

Marna had been lighting the candles which Kate usually kept for company;

and, moreover, since there was kindling at hand, she laid a fire and

touched a match to it.

"I must have it look homey, Kate--for reasons."

"Do whatever it suits you to do, child."

"But can I tell you what it suits me to do, Kate?"

"How do I know? Are you referring to visible things or talking in

parables? There's something very eerie about you to-night, Marna. Your

eyes look phosphorescent. What's been happening to you? Is it the glory

of last night that's over you yet?"

"No, not that. It's--it's a new glory, Kate."

"A new glory, is it? Since last night? Tell me, then."

Kate flung her long body into a Morris chair and prepared to listen.

Marna looked about her as if seeking a chair to satisfy her whim, and,

finding none, sank upon the floor before the blaze. She leaned back,

resting on one slight arm, and turned her dream-haunted face glowing

amid its dark maze of hair, till her eyes could hold those of

her friend.

"Oh, Kate!" she breathed, and made her great confession in those two

words.

"A man!" cried Kate, alarmed. "Now!"

"Now! Last night. And to-day. It was like lightning out of a clear sky.

I've seen him often, and now I remember it always warmed me to see him,

and made me feel that I wasn't alone. For a long time, I believe, I've

been counting him in, and being happier because he was near. But I

didn't realize it at all--till last night."

"You saw him after the opera?"

"Only for half a minute, at the door of my house. We only said a word or

two. He whispered he had lost me--that I had killed him. Oh, I don't

remember what he said. But we looked straight at each other. I didn't

sleep all night, and when I lay awake I tried to think of the wonderful

fact that I had made my debut, and that it wasn't a failure, at any

rate. But I couldn't think about that, or about my career. I couldn't

hold to anything but the look in his eyes and the fact that I was to see

him to-day. Not that he said so. But we both knew. Why, we couldn't have

lived if we hadn't seen each other to-day."

"And you did?"

"Oh, we did. He called me up on the telephone about two o'clock, and

said he had waited as long as he could, and that he'd been walking the

floor, not daring to ring till he was sure that I'd rested enough after

last night. So I told him to come, and he must have been just around the

corner, for he was there in a minute. I wanted him to come in and sit

down, but he said he didn't believe a house could hold such audacity as

his. So we went out on the street. It was cold and bleak. The Midway was

a long, gray blankness. I felt afraid of it, actually. All the world

looked forbidding to me--except just the little place where I walked

with him. It was as if there were a little warm beautiful radius in

which we could keep together, and live for each other, and comfort each

other, and keep harm away."

"Oh, Marna! And you, with a career before you! What do you mean to do?"

"I don't know what to do. We don't either of us know what to do. He says

he'll go mad with me on the stage, wearing myself out, the object of the

jealousy of other women and of love-making from the men. He--says it's a

profanation. I tried to tell him it couldn't be a profanation to serve

art; but, Kate, he didn't seem to know what I meant. He has such

different standards. He wanted to know what I was going to do when I was

old. He said I'd have no real home, and no haven of love; and that I'd

better be the queen of his home as long as I lived than to rule it a

little while there on the stage and then--be forgotten. Oh, it isn't

what he said that counts. All that sounds flat enough as I repeat it.

It's the wonder of being with some one that loves you like that and of

feeling that there are two of you who belong--"

"How do you know you belong?" asked Kate with sharp good sense. "Why,

bright one, you've been swept off your feet by mere--forgive me--by

mere sex."

That glint of the eyes which Kate called Celtic flashed from Marna.

"Mere sex!" she repeated. "Mere sex! You're not trying to belittle that,

are you? Why, Kate, that's the beginning and the end of things. What

I've always liked about you is that you look big facts in the face and

aren't afraid of truth. Sex! Why, that's home and happiness and all a

woman really cares for, isn't it?"

"No, it isn't all she cares for," declared Kate valiantly. "She cares

for a great many other things. And when I said mere sex I was trying to

put it politely. Is it really home and lifelong devotion that you two

are thinking about, or are you just drunk with youth and--well, with

infatuation?"

Marna turned from her to the fire.

"Kate," she said, "I don't know what you call it, but when I looked in

his eyes I felt as if I had just seen the world for the first time. I

have liked to live, of course, and to study, and it was tremendously

stirring, singing there before all those people. But, honestly, I can

see it would lead nowhere. A few years of faint celebrity, an empty

heart, a homeless life--then weariness. Oh, I know it. I have a trick of

seeing things. Oh, he's the man for me, Kate. I realized it the moment

he pointed it out. We could not be mistaken. I shall love him forever

and he'll love me just as I love him."

"By the way," said Kate, "who is he? Someone from the opera company?"

"Who is he? Why, he's George Fitzgerald, of course."

"Mrs. Dennison's nephew?"

"Certainly. Who else should it be?"

"Why, he's a pleasant enough young man--very cheerful and quite

intelligent--but, Marna--"

Marna leaped to her feet.

"You're not in a position to pass judgment upon him, Kate. How can you

know what a wonderful soul he has? Why, there's no one so brave, or so

humble, or so sweet, or with such a worship for women--"

"For you, you mean."

"Of course I mean for me. You don't suppose I'd endure it to have him

worshiping anybody else, do you? Oh, it's no use protesting. I only hope

that Mrs. Barsaloux won't."

"Yes, doesn't that give you pause? Think of all Mrs. Barsaloux has done

for you; and she did it with the understanding that you were to go on

the stage. She was going to get her reward in the contribution you

made to art."

Marna burst into rippling laughter.

"I'll give her something better than art, Kate Crosspatch. I'll give her

a home--and I'll name my first girl after her."

"Marna!" gasped Kate. "You do go pretty fast for a little thing."

"Oh, I'm Irish," laughed Marna. "We Irish are a very old people. We

always knew that if you loved a man, you had to have him or die, and

that if you had him, you'd love to see the look of him coming out in

your sons and daughters."

Suddenly the look of almost infantile blitheness left her face. The

sadness which is inherent in the Irish countenance spread over it, like

sudden mist over a landscape. The ancient brooding aspect of the Celts

was upon her.

"Yes," she repeated, "we Irish are very old, and there is nothing about

life--or death--that we do not know."

Kate was not quite sure what she meant, but with a sudden impulse she

held out her arms to the girl, who, with a low cry, fled to them. Then

her bright bravery melted in a torrent of tears.