NIGHT AND MORNING
The picture of the night was in three panels,--that of the morning in
one.
According to Nora, Mr. Esterbrook had suffered a shock, that indefinite
something that may mean so many things. He had been in the library and
had evidently fallen in crossing the room. Miss Felton had found him and
had sent for two or three doctors, who were now with him; she was
terribly upset, and so the woman babbled on until the house was reached.
Three coupés were lined up before the door, and the house was lighted
from top to bottom. Poppea judged that the physicians were still in
consultation.
The cook opened the door, explaining that Caleb was wanted upstairs, and
that Nora was to go at once to Miss Felton.
On her way to her room Poppea passed through the sitting room and tapped
at Miss Emmy's door, which stood ajar, but there was no answer; the room
was empty, so she continued on her way.
Turning up the light, she looked about the pretty bedroom, her eyes
lingering on each article it contained. Was it possible that only four
hours had elapsed since she had left it? Yes, the little Dresden clock
was tinkling twelve.
Flowers from a concert of two days before filled the jars on the
mantel-shelf, then she remembered that all the tributes of that evening
had been forgotten and left behind. Philip had brought her a wicker
basket of daffodils such as later in the season starred the bank garden
below the parapet at home. She hoped that he would not know and be hurt;
as for the rest, what did it matter?
The night was warm, yet she closed the window, and crouching before the
hearth, lit the symmetrical pile of small logs put there chiefly for
ornament. Stripping off her gay attire and dropping it in a heap on the
floor of the dressing closet, she threw a wrapper about her and again
kneeled before the fire, as though its upward motion was a spell against
the loneliness of the room. As she looked at the curling flames, her
eyes dilated, and a terror that was an absolute pain swept over her: a
strain of music had penetrated the fog that enveloped her brain; it was
the song of the Knight--the Knight of the Grail.
"Oh, God, what have I done?" she whispered to the fire, "promised to
marry Bradish Winslow, when I have vowed that I would never marry until
_that_ is no longer a mystery. Promised to marry him, not for love, but
to trample on those who were trampling on me. It is true that when I am
with him there is something that makes me wish to stay, but when I am
alone, I want to keep away. There is no one to speak to, no one to ask;
if only I could feel Daddy's hand upon my hair to-night. Ah, little
mother, won't you ask God to help me in some way that I can feel and
understand? To-morrow it will be too late!"
Clasping the locket to her breast, she crouched lower and lower until
her face almost touched the fire guard. The wood snapped and a live coal
fell upon the carpet. Crushing it out with her slipper, her eye fell
upon something white beside the hearthstone. Picking it up she saw that
it was Hugh's weekly letter that she had read and laid by the clock and
that a draught had wafted to her feet. Holding it between her palms, she
gradually grew calm, and as she looked at it the only recourse opened
before her: she must write to Winslow so that he would receive the
letter when he awoke.
Going to the secretary with its litter of invitations and complimentary
social notes, she swept them to the floor with a gesture half contempt
and half full of the regret of renunciation. Then having cleared the
shelf, she began to write, slowly as a child pens its copy, giving each
letter a separate stroke and weighing its value. She had need of this
care, for before she had finished, the sheet was wet with tears.
Quarter of one, tittered the silly little clock. Poppea knew that no
mail would be taken from the pillar at the street corner before six, but
it might be her only chance to get out unobserved. The lights in the
extension, where Mr. Esterbrook's rooms were located, were burning
brightly; now was her chance. Slipping on a long ulster, she went down
without meeting any one, threw off the night latch on the door, and
closed it behind her. Two of the cabs had gone, and the driver of the
one remaining slept upon the box.
It was but a step to the corner and back, the only live thing that she
encountered being a long-bodied cat which seemed to separate itself from
the shadow of one pair of steps only to be swallowed by another shadow
farther on. Gaining her room once more, she put out the light and threw
herself upon the bed without undressing.
In the room beyond, which was Miss Felton's, Miss Emmy was pacing to and
fro. The consulting physicians had gone and their own family stand-by,
Dr. Markam, was now coming from Mr. Esterbrook's quarters ushered by
Caleb, Miss Felton remaining behind.
"Tell me the best and worst," said Miss Emmy, following the doctor down
to the sitting room.
Dr. Markam looked at her keenly as if to gauge the quality of her
emotion, then said tersely, "The best is that he may be quickly released
by another stroke, the worst that he may live for years partly or wholly
helpless and with clouded mental faculties. Go up and try to persuade
Miss Elizabeth that it is unnecessary for her to remain. She is not used
to illness or misery. Caleb will stay to-night, and the nurse that I
shall send will be here by daylight," and after drinking the glass of
wine that Caleb offered him instinctively, he went out, thinking to
himself how little his old friend Esterbrook had, at the end of life, to
show for the elaborate trouble of his living.
Thus bidden, Miss Emmy crept softly into the outer room of Mr.
Esterbrook's suite, then, not finding Elizabeth, she went through the
dressing closet to the inner room where a night lamp burned with the
pale rays of moonlight.
On the bed in the corner she could see the outline of Mr. Esterbrook's
form, still as though he no longer breathed. A second look revealed a
stranger object. Kneeling by the bed in the attitude of passionate
despair, her face buried in the quilt, her hands clasping the rigid one,
was Miss Elizabeth.
Miss Emmy could not at once take in the details; her natural supposition
was that her sister was ill or had fainted and slipped from the near-by
arm-chair. Going to her she touched her on the shoulder, and in a low
tone gave the doctor's message about the nurse and the sufficiency of
Caleb for the night.
Suddenly Miss Felton turned, but without moving from her kneeling
posture, and her sister started back, amazed at the entire change in her
face. Haggard and worn, furrowed under the eyes and pinched at the
nostrils, it was a woman of seventy-five, not sixty-four, that looked
up, while the carefully braided hair, always so exact a coronal to the
unbending head, was loosened in a gray, dishevelled mass. Again Miss
Emmy tried to explain the doctor's words. Pulling herself to her feet
with difficulty, Miss Felton clutched her sister by one shoulder, almost
screaming in her ear.
"I will not go! I will not have a nurse! Caleb will stay with us; Caleb
will be sufficient." Then as Miss Emmy did not move or seem to
understand, she shook her arm.
"I am going to care for him now, because I love him, have always loved
him, and you, or else your shadow, have always stood between. If he
could have stepped out of it for a month, a week, he would have known. I
thought once that you too loved him and you were my frail little sister,
my charge, and so I repulsed him, suppressed my nature, and kept back.
But you, you called him 'Willy' and played kitten and knitting ball with
him until you tired, until it was too late. Now he will never know; but
if he lives, and I can make him comfortable, he may perhaps realize the
comfort, and through it that I love him. Now go--and leave us together
at last! And if the people talk, tell them that Miss Felton does not
care!"
Shaken, nay, almost shattered, Miss Emmy dragged herself from the room,
clinging from chair to table like a child who creeps. Of all the
possibilities of life, this that had happened seemed the most
impossible. Elizabeth, the emotionless woman of perfect balance and
judgment! Like a condemned criminal but half conscious of what he is
accused, she groped her way along the hall. She must speak to some one,
it seemed, or lose her mind.
Poppea had sent a message by Nora that she must be called if needed.
Surely her need was great, so she opened the girl's door and listened
before entering.
"I am not asleep," said Poppea from the white draped bed, and raising
herself on her elbow, she lit the night lamp on the bed stand.
"Is he--is Mr. Esterbrook any worse? Is he very sick?"
"Yes, but being sick is not the worst," and Miss Emmy told Poppea
briefly what her sister now seemed to glory in, willing that the whole
world should know.
Clasping her arms about the fragile creature, scarcely more than a
bundle of ribbon and lace, Poppea held her close, crying, "Poor Aunty,
dear Aunt Emmy, you are not blamable, neither did _you_ know."
After a few minutes the girl's human sympathy relaxed the tension, and
freeing herself, Miss Emmy sat down by the bed.
"What is it, child? You are not yourself to-night, any more than I am.
Were you not well received? Something has happened. What is it?"
Poppea shivered as she tried to frame a sentence that should be truthful
and yet not reveal, then she said:--
"One day you said that I could not keep on for long singing as I had
this winter 'because they will not let you.' Every one was very kind,
but afterward--it chanced to come to me that the women on whom I counted
'will not let me' continue, as you said, so I am going home,
again--to-morrow."
"That is not all, Poppea."
"That is all that I shall ever say," she answered with the fixed intent
that always astonished those who for the first time realized her
capacity for firmness.
"You do not need; I understand. I, too, am going home to the Hill,
Poppea, because they will not let me stay."
"Oh, Aunty! Aunty!" she cried, "lie down beside me. I'm afraid, afraid
of I don't know what, as I used to be when I slept in the little hooded
cradle and Daddy came and put Mack in beside me and sat and held my
hand."
Then peace fell gently on Miss Emmy because this young creature needed
her.
* * * * *
Bradish Winslow left the Hooper's as soon after Poppea as he might
without having the two departures coupled. Not for the first time in his
life had he been repelled and enraged by the absolute lack of social
sincerity on the part of the group of women who, in their day, were the
cohesive element of society. Yet he never realized the responsibility in
the matter of men of his stamp who condone nearly everything in a woman
so long as she is modish and amusing. Lighting a cigar and leaving his
top-coat open that he might feel the vigor of the night air, Winslow
strolled slowly from Gramercy Park westward to the Loiterers' Club.
Contrary to his usual gregarious habits, he made his way to one of the
least brilliantly lighted retiring-rooms, and ordering some club soda
and Scotch, a kind of whiskey that was considered a marked eccentricity
in the era of Rye and Bourbon, stretched himself on a sofa, hands behind
head, and gave himself up wholly to steadying his nerves.
An hour later he entered his own bachelor home, a substantial and
conservative house in one of the wide streets that cross lower Fifth
Avenue, a little north of Washington Square. The house was neither his
birthplace nor the home of his childhood, but a legacy from a
great-aunt, the last of the Bradish name. It was twelve years since a
woman other than a caretaker or housemaid had lived in it; the first six
it had remained virtually closed, while during the second half of the
period, Winslow had developed the two first floors as suited the fancy
of a man who entertained elegantly and conservatively, not choosing to
establish a carousing Bohemia at too close range. If he had some or any
of the vices of his class and position, he chose to pursue them away
from his normal surroundings and at his own pace, where at any moment he
might either outdistance them or drop behind without clamor.
Hence the house, as he entered it with his latch-key, had the subdued
and grave air of any family residence in the same quarter. Turning out
the lights in the lower rooms, he went to his personal suite on the
second floor, lighted some gas-jets in the three rooms, rang for his
man, and gave directions that he was to be wakened at half-past nine,
breakfast in his room, and would under no consideration see any one
before eleven o'clock. Then as the valet, but half awake, stumbled out,
steadying himself by the portières as he drew them to, Winslow gave a
sigh of relief, and flinging himself into a chair before the hearth, as
Poppea had done, he stirred the embers and kindled a fire that was not
for warmth but like summoning a sympathetic yet reticent friend.
Winslow's feeling during the two hours since he had, as he considered,
rushed to Poppea's rescue was dual; he congratulated himself not a
little that for once in his life he had let himself be swayed by a
generous impulse and his own emotion. Also his curiosity was very
expectant as to the stir that would be made by the announcement of his
engagement to Poppea on the morrow and the consternation it would for
various reasons cause. He could see the pallor come to the unprotected
portion of his cousin Hortense's cheeks as she wondered if "Brad" would
ever tell that baby-faced girl how desperately she had worked to enmesh
him, and how deliberately and cleverly he had forced her to show a
trumpless hand. Then there were others, and the thoughts of them were
here and there tinged with regret. He had never been unscrupulous in his
pleasures; he had simply lived life to the full as he saw it. As he was
in a somewhat exalted and generous mood, why do things by halves?
Going to a large mahogany secretary in the corner, he unlocked a deep
drawer that was hidden by a panel and took therefrom several bundles of
letters and some photographs; to these he added a picture from a silver
frame on the mantle, of a very charming dark woman, well-groomed and
poised, but with an air of not belonging exactly to his world. He held
the bundle to his chest a moment as he stood looking into the fire;
opening a pit in the middle of the molten coals, he cast the letters
into it, not even glancing at the superscriptions, and only separating
them sufficiently to be sure that they would ignite, sat and watched
them until they were consumed.
From their ashes came a more natural mood. The house was at best rather
gloomy; how Poppea's coming would brighten it, and her voice echo up and
down those great rooms when she laughed; for he meant that she should
laugh and have no time for tears. The idea was very soothing; he
wondered why he had never seriously contemplated marrying before.
Jove! but she was beautiful and unusual; he would have a miniature
painted of her in the green muslin with the poppies in her hair. Then he
would take her everywhere that people might envy him her loveliness.
No, he would not! Formulating the thought brought a sharp revulsion. He
would take her abroad, away from the carpers and fawners alike, where
they two should be alone; for, after all contributing motives, what he
had said was true, he had loved Poppea at first sight, and as far as the
better side of his nature was concerned, he loved her finally.
What a splendid ring he would buy her to-morrow, no to-day! a ruby held
in a setting of poppy leaves to form the flower. Ah! but she already
held the spell of oblivion over him. He liked to feel this. Of course
they would be married in a month; there was no reason for delay. The old
man Gilbert? That was easily fixed: an annuity as a parting gift from
Poppea and some tears, of course. It would be strange if she did not
show some feeling, and besides, ingratitude was one of the traits he
most detested in a woman.
So when Winslow at last settled himself in his bed, severe almost as a
hospital cot, that stood in an alcove curtained from the luxurious room
to which it formed a sharp contrast, there was a smile on his lips, and
closing his eyes, he brought his finger-tips together, touched them
fervently, and flung a message into the dark. He well knew how to play
the lover, but it was only this night that he realized what it was to be
entirely in love with some one other than himself.
* * * * *
The morning, like the night, was mild, but with the chilly undercurrent
suggestive of sudden rain that divides April from May. The city, always
early to awake in some quarter, now wore its widespread spring
alertness, and the venders of plants in a cheerful burst of bloom added
their cries to the street sounds.
Looking toward the square for a sign of color in the tree-tops, Poppea
saw a jet of water rising from the fountain that filled the air with
spray through which some birds were flitting. That the fountain was
being set in order showed that the same spring impulse was moving the
city wheels that sent all the little hillside springs rushing madly to
swell the tide of Moosatuck. How she hungered and thirsted for a sight
of it!
* * * * *
At half-past nine, precisely to the moment, the time that he had been
directed, Winslow's valet came in, closed the windows, drew the curtains
across the alcove, and after arranging the toilet articles in the ample
bathroom, which was also used as a dressing-closet, went out until the
bell should say that his master wished his breakfast. For accustomed to
luxury as Winslow was in externals, his primitive tastes were direct and
simple and he detested the fuss and servility of bodily service.
When in half an hour's time, clad in a comfortable bath-gown, he lounged
into the library and rang for his coffee, picking up the letters that
were neatly piled on the desk, so quickly does the mind of man travel to
direct issues, that he was already considering the coming change of
breakfasting in one of the smaller rooms below stairs, and picturing
Poppea, gowned in some filmy draperies, flitting in like one of the
streaks of morning sunshine. As he glanced carelessly at the writing
upon the various envelopes that he might receive a clew as to which, if
any, were worth the trouble of opening on this particular morning,
Poppea's characters fixed his eye. It is true that he had previously
received but two or three brief notes from her, acknowledging flowers or
an invitation, but the writing, full of decision and so opposite from
the girl's almost poetic appearance, was of the type that is called
characteristic and became fixed in the memory.
So she was moved to write immediately upon getting home, was his first
thought; but instead of hastily tearing the note open, he turned it
slowly and reflectively in one hand as he poured himself a cup of
coffee, then drank it deliberately, and seated himself, before releasing
the letter with a careful stroke of the paper-knife.
He had vainly tried the whimsical experiment of judging of the contents
by the sense of touch. Everything about his connection with Poppea had
been unusual, hence its added piquancy. Why should he not expect that
its completion should be on the same plane? He almost dreaded the
finding of a gushing and honeyed first love-letter of the newly engaged
girl in her early twenties.
He read the letter through, then rubbed his eyes, turned the paper to
the light, and read anew. In it was expressed gratitude to him coupled
with self-reproach for allowing a bitter hurt to be revenged even in
thought by the idea of marriage. There was a request for forgiveness,
not for the retracting of a promise so much as for the sense of injury
that had made the promise possible, and then the final statement that
she would never take another's name until she had one of her own to
yield. Piteous as was her agony of mind expressed, not so much in the
words used as in their haste and almost incoherence, Winslow felt
forcibly that the nature that lay beneath had its depths and measures of
pride that his world could not fathom, because it was based upon a
frankness, a fundamental _noblesse oblige_, that could neither be denied
or argued away. A princess Poppea was, though wandering from her
kingdom.
One thing was evident through it all. She had been doubtless attracted
to him in a way, but she did not love him; her suffering, therefore, was
complicated, but not keenly direct, as more and more every moment he
felt his disappointment to be. Also the wind was taken out of any
fanciful balloon of his self-sacrifice, and it fell collapsed.
No, she did not love him,--"By God, but she shall!" he cried, bringing
his clenched hand down on the stand with a fervor that dashed the
delicate porcelain cup and saucer to the floor in shivering fragments.
"Life's been getting a sleepy nuisance these two years. What better to
wake me up than to track her origin and find her name? Time, money, and
grip I've got, if luck will only come in and take the fourth hand!
"What a conquest to remove her fantastic fortress and make her desire my
love at one bound!"
This was the second time that a man had made this wish; a different man
pitched in a different key.
This man, like the other, having made a resolution, went on his
accustomed way, which in Winslow's case was to dress with unusual care,
a dark red carnation, the prevailing flower for morning wear, in his
buttonhole. His business affairs calling him down town but three days a
week, he took a leisurely morning walk to the club, where he read the
papers and listened to other news that would never appear in print. On
some one's remarking upon the success that Miss Gilbert had achieved the
previous night, that she had left early on account of Mr. Esterbrook's
sudden illness before all the deserved congratulations had reached her,
and that those who knew her best said that not less than two men of
wealth were ready to back her for the study necessary to an operatic
career, Winslow merely looked up, apparently only mildly interested, and
observed in neutral tones:--
"Her voice has operatic capacity doubtless, but I should judge she
lacked the physique. By the way, what is the news of poor old
Esterbrook? A nice outlook ahead of us who grow old as bachelor
dandies, I must say."
But what he _thought_ was, "The cats have begun to weave their cradle
for Poppea's undoing, and when they find she has gone, they will lay it
to their strategy. Damn them!"