THE FETTERED RELEASE
She, when all her maids were gone,
With her cheek upon her hand,
Gazed across a terraced lawn
Down a twilit valley-land
Where a white road twined and curled
Through the hills that barred the west,
Where some unknown outland world
Filled her with a strange unrest.
JOHN HARTLEY, "The Valley Princess."
It is the under crust of motive that is the test of the moral
pie.--"The Silver Poppy."
Cordelia turned the letter over and over in her hands. Something of late
always depressed her when she received these letters from home, in her
father's stiff, ungainly hand and his none too perfect spelling.
"Poor old dad, he won't come, after all!" Cordelia found it hard to look
as miserable as she ought.
"I told you he wouldn't, my dear," said Mrs. Spaulding, with rigid
retrospective conviction of mind.
"But I've leased the flat."
"And I told you not to do that, too."
"Yes; but he promised."
"Only because he thought you wanted him to."
"But I _did_ want him to."
"Then you don't now?"
Cordelia looked up at her companion quickly.
"Yes, yes; I do. But for some reason, you see, he's changed his mind."
"My dear, that was all a big, soft-hearted, foolish idea of yours. What
would your poor old father at his age do in New York? How could he be
happy or contented in a four-roomed flat after forty acres of hills? How
long would he leave his own country for a howling wilderness of brick
and mortar like this?"
"He would be near me," said Cordelia valiantly.
"Which probably wouldn't be so pleasant, after all, for either of you.
Do you ever stop to think, my dear, just how much you've changed in the
last year or so?"
For a few moments Cordelia was thoughtfully silent. She felt and knew
that she had changed.
"But what shall I do with it?" she asked.
"Has it never occurred to you?" Mrs. Spaulding at that precise moment
sincerely wished that she possessed the psychic power of mind-reading.
She half suspected that Cordelia might be concealing more than she had
need to.
"Let John Hartley have it," the older woman said bluntly. And she had
the inward satisfaction of seeing Cordelia color under her direct gaze.
But she recovered herself at a stroke.
"He would never take it," Cordelia said.
"Then you should make him."
"That's something I couldn't do," murmured the other, shaking her head.
"Well, _somebody_ ought to haul him out of that hole down in--in
Chinatown, or the Bowery, or wherever it is."
"I know it," agreed Cordelia.
"Then we shall do it ourselves, my dear," said Mrs. Spaulding with a
note of finality that was born of a touch of impatience. And Cordelia
tried to see the futility of saying anything further.
In fact, before the day was over even her nominal hesitation had
vanished, and the two women had decided on many of their plans for the
redemption of Hartley. From the hour of that decision both Mrs.
Spaulding and Cordelia made numerous excursions to the little apartment
on lower Riverside Drive, and during the next few days the portly
footman of the former enthusiastic lady was directed to carry up sundry
parcels of hangings and knickknacks and small furniture.
It was a novel experience for both of them, in a way, and both of them
were wringing out of it their own secret enjoyment--one retrospective,
one anticipatory. Cordelia, once openly wedded to the idea, fluttered
about the apartment as proudly as an April robin building a nest. The
lighter touches were not overlooked; a desk was not forgotten, nor were
prints and books and those many little things which were reputed to
appeal to the student. Mrs. Spaulding, indeed, had given Cordelia an
open order on her furniture dealer, and the fruits of her shopping tours
had added much to the solid comfort of the place. She herself
contributed a silver chafing-dish and a little set of Dresden china,
matching her own, which had taken her fancy.
Then, when everything had been made comfortable and home-like, even to
the addition of many clusters of carnations and roses about the rooms, a
change suddenly came over Cordelia. An unaccountable mood of bashfulness
took possession of her, a fear as to just how the intended and all
unconscious guest would accept such boldly proffered hospitality, a
haunting dread that perhaps he would refuse everything, and fail to
understand the balm which she had so artfully made ready to take the
sting from the gratuity--that he might leave her humiliated and
misunderstood.
At the last moment she disappeared, and hid with a sort of bird-like
timidity; and it was Mrs. Spaulding who had to take the somewhat
astounded Hartley by the hand and lead him from one room to the other
and introduce him to what she prettily called his new home.
Hartley took it all much more genially than they had expected. There was
no scene, and but a moment's remonstrance and hesitation. It is true
that at first he flushed hotly, and would have said something, but the
eager light on Mrs. Spaulding's face kept him silent while he listened
to her half-laughing explanation of how a useless flat had fallen into
their hands.
"And it's so ridiculously cheap--only sixty dollars a month!"
Something in Hartley's face, a fleeting shadow of embarrassment, made
her ask quickly: "That--that wouldn't be too much for you to pay?"
"Oh, no; of course not," he said, with ill-assumed indifference.
"Then you're not going to be stupid about it?" she demanded, with mock
sternness. He was still standing ill at ease, scarcely knowing what to
say.
"Oh, no, no; but still I don't quite understand why you should do this
for me."
"There's nothing very puzzling about it. We both know very well it
wasn't any too comfortable--was it?--down where you've been living. And
artists have to have the right kind of place to work in. So we're simply
going to chain you down, and _make_ you stay."
She looked at him with a smile he had seldom seen on her lips. Her face
that afternoon seemed sadly golden with the afterglow of an almost
girlish tenderness that had long dropped beyond the horizon of the
years, dignified with a light that seldom dwelt on it.
"And I want you to be happy and enjoy it," she added.
"How could you, Mrs. Spaulding! How could you!" he cried impetuously,
taking her hand. It was not often that his Anglican coldness crept away
from him, but when it did he was delightfully boyish.
"Is there anything so dreadful in it?"
"Only because it is all so dreadfully undeserved."
"Dear me, it's been the greatest fun for us. And then it's going to be
so jolly to drop in every now and then and see you. And poor, dear
Cordelia has tried so hard to fix things to please you. So if you
shatter our faith in you, sir," she added, going to the window and
gazing out where the great silver bosom of the Hudson glimmered and
shone in the autumnal sunlight, "or if you fail to write a great book
here, then--well, we'll never forgive you, that's all."
He had no answer to make, for he too was looking out over the wide river
and already thinking his own great thoughts of the future. Rung by rung
he saw the ladder of success before him, and now that he had his foot on
it--now he would show them. He would be, he told himself, none the less
active; he would allow himself to lose none of his old aggressive
discontent. Hereafter, though, he would do only that work which lay
nearest his heart. There should be no yielding to transient interests,
no bending to the voice of the moment. There was, of course, still his
book to finish for Cordelia; that was but a matter of a few weeks. Then
he would be free. Then the artist and his opportunity would be face to
face.
One small cloud hovered over the clear horizon of his happiness. On the
very threshold of his freedom he was finding the lightest of golden
chains clinking thinly at his wrists. It was the disquieting sense of
obligation toward Cordelia. His liberty had not come to him unqualified.
Hartley could not leave his humble East Side room without a pang or two
of regret. One can never turn over such a page in life, he knew, without
a touch of sorrow for the chapter that is closed. He felt that he was
losing the companionship of those whom a common poverty had drawn
closely about him. He felt, too, that it was the death of the democrat
in him. He had grown to take an unworded pride in classing himself as
one of the People. There could be no more of the "glad confident morning
again." And if, at times, he had rebelled against the squalor and
discomfort of that older life, yet now, when the hour for stepping out
of and above it had arrived, he hesitated still again before taking the
upper path into that new and untried world. The heat and dust and
clangor of the busy streets, the cries and odors where men and women
hived closely together, the wailing of young and neglected children, the
sense of feverish movement and stir, the hum of the ceaseless
machines--all these in the old days had entered into his life and had
brought with them a riddle which he had not quite read, a lesson which
he had not quite learned. And life there, too, had known its shreds and
patches of color. With all its poverty there was a Southern air of
gaiety and lightness about this New World East Side. It had none of the
dismal and monotonous hideousness and the hopelessness of a Bethnal
Green and a Whitechapel. He felt that he was stepping out to light and
to liberty, yet taking with him a heavy heart--a heart that had almost
grown to love its very cell. And after all, was it liberty? The softer
side of life had not been unknown to him, and had not brought him
happiness in the old days. A touch of the flagellant in him still
turned his eyes toward the more buffeting existence, while at the same
time the artist, the apostle for form, cried out in him for its leisured
contemplation. Yet better to be the crystal and be broken, he felt, than
the tile upon the housetop.
And John Hartley was not altogether and unrestrictedly happy during that
first hour in his new apartment.
While these thoughts were running tumultuously through his mind Mrs.
Spaulding, the embodiment, he felt, of the spirit of his newer
existence, looked wonderingly out over her pearl-gray boa at him and
waited for him to speak. He had taken it all very quietly. She did not
know whether to be pleased or annoyed; Cordelia had accustomed her to
gratitude in its more demonstrative form. She had expected, perhaps, a
little more effusion on the part of her new _protégé_. He, on his part,
did not see that more remained to be said.
Mrs. Spaulding continued to look at him with musing eyes. He had always
seemed to her to have the manners of another century. There were times
when his stiffness irritated her.
"Are all Englishmen alike?" she asked.
"Why?"
"Because sometimes I feel that I'd like to give you a good shaking, just
to joggle you out of your shell for a few minutes."
He laughed. "I only wish you would."
"Really? Then why do you let so many good times crawl under your
Juggernaut of solemnity?"
"Because the Vishnu of the land of the glassy stare demands it, I
suppose. I'm not altogether Americanized yet." And again he laughed.
"Does that mean you're saying anything against my country?" demanded
Mrs. Spaulding.
"On the contrary, that I am looking to your country for my reformation.
I'd really like to be shaken out of that shell you speak of."
"Well, New York ought to do that for you."
"I think it is doing it."
"But it's like your accent; it goes slowly." Mrs. Spaulding had seated
herself, and was looking at him with her elbows on the table and a
meditative chin buried in her thick boa.
"I think you ought to fall in love."
She repeated it, with conviction, and then suddenly, asked him: "Haven't
you ever been that way?"
He looked at her with a face both serious and, she thought,
unnecessarily chilling.
"There, I told you--the shell!" she cried warningly. "Tell me, now,
weren't you ever in love?"
A barrier, impregnable as steel, a barrier beaten out by all the years
of an existence uncomprehended and a secrecy unrespected, fell between
them. A sense of his isolation, a touch of the sorrow of the alien,
crept over him. And as he looked at the woman who thus questioned him it
seemed very long ago, and very far away, that old life, and those old
days amid the soft Oxfordshire hills.
Mrs. Spaulding put out her hand to him, unexpectedly.
"I'm afraid you're going to be very lonely here at first," she said.
"I have my work," he answered wearily--though the thought of it came
almost with joy.
"But you can't live by work alone. And if you'll let us, I thought we
might give you a little house-warming. Won't you let Cordelia and me
join you in your first dinner here?"
Mrs. Spaulding had made a discovery. She had found that her scholar
responded only to sincerity, but then, inevitably; and here she had been
assailing him with her levity. She mentioned the many little details of
how they should have their dinner prepared. Then she turned to him, and
added, as an after-thought:
"Cordelia is a beautiful character, isn't she?" Whereupon, as though
fearing his reply, she suddenly looked at her little jeweled watch, and
cried with horror: "Good heavens, I'm late for my sitting!" and rustled
out to her waiting carriage, not altogether unhappy to get away.