McClure's Magazine/Volume 38/Number 5/Alexander's Masquerade
Alexander's Masquerade
by Willa Sibert Cather
Author of “The Troll-Garden,” “On the Gulls' Road,” etc.
Illustrations by F. Graham Cootes
CHAPTER IV
ON Sunday afternoon Alexander remembered Miss Burgoyne's invitation and called at her apartment. He found it a delightful little place and he met charming people there. Hilda lived alone, attended by a very pretty and competent French servant who answered the door and brought in the tea. Alexander arrived early, and some twenty-odd people dropped in during the course of the afternoon. Hugh MacConnell came with his sister, and stood about, managing his tea-cup awkwardly and watching every one out of his deep-set, faded eves. He seemed to have made a resolute effort at tidiness in his attire, and his sister, a robust, florid woman with a splendid joviality about her, kept eyeing his newly pressed clothes apprehensively. It was not very long, indeed, before his coat hung with a discouraged sag from his gaunt shoulders and his hair and beard were rumpled as if he had been out in a gale. His dry humor went under a cloud of absent-minded kindliness which, Mainhall explained, always overtook him here. He was never so witty or so sharp here as elsewhere, and Alexander thought he behaved as if he were an elderly relative come in to a young girl's party.
The editor of a monthly review came with his wife, and Lady Kildare, the Irish philanthropist, brought her young nephew, Robert Owen, who had come up from Oxford, and who was visibly excited and gratified by his first introduction to Miss Burgoyne. Hilda was very nice to him, and he sat on the edge of his chair, flushed with his conversational efforts and moving his chin about nervously over his high collar. Sarah Frost, the novelist, came with her husband, a very genial and placid old scholar who had become slightly deranged upon the subject of the fourth dimension. On other matters he was perfectly rational and he was easy and pleasing in conversation. He looked very much like Agassiz, and his wife, in her old-fashioned black silk dress, overskirted and tight-sleeved, reminded Alexander of the early pictures of Mrs. Browning. Hilda seemed particularly fond of this quaint couple, and Bartley himself was so pleased with their mild and thoughtful converse that he took his leave when they did, and walked with them over to Oxford Street, where they waited for their bus. They asked him to come to see them in Chelsea, and they spoke very tenderly of Hilda. “She's a dear, unworldly little thing,” said the philosopher absently, “more like the stage people of my young days—folk of simple manners. There aren't many such left. American tours have spoiled them, I'm afraid. They have all grown very smart. Lamb wouldn't care a great deal about many of them, I fancy.”
Alexander went back to Bedford Square a second Sunday afternoon. He had a long talk with MacConnell, but he got no word with Hilda alone, and he left in a discontented state of mind. For the rest of the week he was nervous and unsettled, and kept rushing his work as if he were preparing for immediate departure. On Thursday afternoon he cut short a committee meeting, jumped into a hansom, and drove to Bedford Square. He sent up his card, but it came back to him with a message scribbled across the front:
- So sorry I can't see you. Will you come and dine with me Sunday evening at half past seven?
“BARTLEY LOOKED AT HILDA ACROSS THE YELLOW LIGHT OF THE CANDLES AND BROKE INTO A LOW, HAPPY LAUGH. 'HOW JOLLY IT WAS BEING YOUNG, HILDA! DO YOU REMEMBER THAT FIRST WALK WE TOOK TOGETHER IN PARIS?'”
When Alexander arrived at Bedford Square Sunday evening, Marie, the pretty little French girl, met him at the door and conducted him upstairs. Hilda was writing in her little living-room, under the light of a tall lamp. Bartley recognized the primrose satin gown she had worn that first evening at Lady Walford's.
“I'm so pleased that you think me worth that yellow dress, you know,” he said, taking her hand and looking her over admiringly from the toes of her canary slippers to the part of her brown hair. “Yes, it's very, very pretty. Every one at Lady Walford's was looking at it.”
Hilda curtsied. “Is that why you think it pretty? I've no need for fine clothes in Mac's play this time, so I can afford a few duddies for myself. It's owing to that same chance, by the way, that I am able to ask you to dinner. I don't need Marie to dress me this season, so she keeps house for me, and my little Galway girl has gone home for a visit. I should never have asked you if Molly had been here, for I remember you don't like English cookery.”
Alexander walked about the room, looking at everything.
“I haven't had a chance,yet to tell you what a jolly little place I think this is. Where did you get those etchings? They're quite unusual, aren't they?”
“Lady Westmere sent them to me from Rome last Christmas. She is very much interested in the American artist who did them. They are all sketches made about the Villa d'Este, you see. He painted that group of cypresses for the Salon, and the Luxembourg bought it.”
Alexander walked over to the bookcases. “It's the air of the whole place here that I like. You haven't got anything that doesn't belong. Seems to me it looks particularly well to-night. And you have so many flowers. I like these little yellow irises.”
“Rooms always look better by lamplight—in London, at least. Though Marie is clean—really clean, as the French are. Why do you look at the flowers so critically? Marie got them all fresh in Covent Garden market yesterday morning.”
“I'm glad,” said Alexander simply. “I can't tell you how glad I am to have you so pretty and comfortable here, and to hear every one saying such nice things about you. You've got awfully nice friends,” he added humbly, picking up a little jade elephant from her desk. “Those fellows are all very loyal, even Mainhall. They don't talk of any one else as they do of you.”
Hilda sat down on the couch and said seriously: “I've a neat little sum in the bank, too, now, and I own a mite of a hut in Galway. It's not worth much, but I love it. I've managed to save something every year, and that with helping my three sisters now and then, and tiding poor cousin Mike over bad seasons. He's that gifted, you know, but he will drink, and loses more good engagements than other fellows ever get. And I've traveled a bit, too.”
Marie opened the door and smilingly announced that dinner was served.
“My dining-room,” Hilda explained, as she led the way, “is the tiniest place you have ever seen.”
It was a tiny room, hung all round with French prints, above which ran a shelf full of china. Hilda saw Alexander look up at it.
“It's not particularly rare,” she said, “but some of it was my mother's. Heaven knows how she managed to keep it whole, through all our wanderings, or in what baskets and bundles and theater-trunks it hasn't been stowed away. We always had our tea out of those blue cups when I was a little girl, sometimes in the queerest lodgings and sometimes on a trunk at the theater—queer theaters, for that matter.”
It was a wonderful little dinner. There was watercress soup, and sole, and a delightful omelette stuffed with mushrooms and truffles, and two small rare ducklings, and artichokes, and a dry yellow Rhône wine of which Bartley had always been very fond. He drank it appreciatively and remarked that there was still no other he liked so well.
“I have some champagne for you, too. I don't drink it myself, but I like to see it behave when it is poured. There is nothing else that looks so jolly.”
“Thank you. But I don't like it so well as this.” Bartley held the yellow wine against the light and squinted into it as he turned the glass slowly about. “You have traveled, you say. Have you been in Paris much these late years?”
Hilda lowered one of the candle-shades carefully. “Oh, yes, I go over to Paris often. There are few changes in the old quarter. Dear Old Madame Anger is dead—but perhaps you don't remember her?”
“Don't I, though! I'm so sorry to hear it. How did her son turn out? I remember how she saved and scraped for him, and how he always lay abed till ten o'clock. He was the laziest fellow at the Beaux Arts; and that's saying a good deal.”
“Well, he is still clever and lazy. They say he is a good architect when he will work. He's a big, handsome creature, and he hates Americans as much as ever. But Angel—do you remember Angel?”
“'ARE YOU GOING TO LET ME LOVE YOU A LITTLE BARTLEY?'”
“Perfectly. Did she ever get back to Brittany and her bains de mer?”
“Ah, no. Poor Angel! She got tired of cooking and scouring the coppers in Madame Anger's little kitchen, so she ran away with a soldier, and then with another soldier. Too bad! She still lives about the quarter, and, though there is always a soldat, she does laundry work. She did mine beautifully the last time I was there, and was so delighted to see me again. I gave her all my old clothes, even my old hats, though she always wears her Breton head-dress. Her hair is still yellow, and her blue eyes are just like a baby's, and she has the same three freckles on her little nose, and talks about going back to her bains de mer.”
Bartley looked at Hilda across the yellow light of the candles and broke into a low, happy laugh. “How jolly it was being young, Hilda! Do you remember that first walk we took together in Paris? We walked down to the Place St. Michel to buy some lilacs. Do you remember how sweet they smelled?”
“Indeed I do. Come, we'll have our coffee in the other room, and you can smoke.” Hilda rose quickly, as if she wished to change the drift of their talk, but Bartley found it pleasant to remember.
“What a warm, soft spring evening that was,” he went on, as they sat down in the study, with the coffee on a little table between them; “and the sky, over the bridges, was just the color of the lilacs. We walked on down by the river, didn't we?”
Hilda laughed and looked at him questioningly. He saw a gleam in her eyes that he remembered even better than the episode he was recalling. “I think we did,” she answered demurely. “It was on the Quai we met that woman who was crying so bitterly. I gave her a spray of lilac, I remember, and you gave her a franc. I was frightened at your prodigality.”
“I expect it was the last franc I had. What a strong brown face she had, and very tragic. She looked at us with such despair and longing, out from under her black shawl. What she wanted from us was neither our flowers nor our francs but just our youth. I remember it touched me so. I would have given her some of mine off my back, if I could. I had enough and to spare then,” Bartley mused, and looked thoughtfully at his cigar.
They were both remembering what the woman had said when she took the money. “God give you a happy love!” It was not in the ingratiating tone of the habitual beggar: it had come out of the depths of the poor creature's sorrow, vibrating with pity for their youth, and despair at the terribleness of human life; it had the anguish of a voice of prophecy. Until she spoke Bartley had not realized that he was in love. The strange woman, and her passionate sentence that rang out so sharply, had frightened them both. They went home sadly with the lilacs, back to the Rue St. Jacques, walking very slowly, arm in arm. When they reached the house where Hilda lodged, Bartley went across the court with her, and up the dark old stairs to the third landing; and there, on the bare worn stairway, he had kissed her for the first time. He had shut his eyes to give him the courage, he remembered, and she had trembled so
Bartley started when Hilda rang the little silver bell beside her. “Dear me, why did you do that? I had quite forgotten—I was back there. It was very jolly,” he murmured lazily, as Marie came in to take away the coffee.
Hilda laughed and went over to the piano. “Well, we are neither of us twenty now, you know. Have I told you about my new play? Mac is writing one; really for me this time. You see, I'm coming on.”
“I've seen nothing else. What kind of a part is it? Shall you wear yellow gowns? I hope so.” He was looking admiringly at her round, slender figure, with such energy in every line of it, as she stood by the piano, turning over a pile of music.
“No, it isn't a dress-up part. He doesn't seem to fancy me dressed up. He says I ought to be minding the pigs at home, and I suppose I ought. But he's given me some good Irish songs. Listen.” She sat down at the piano and sang. When she finished, Alexander shook himself out of a revery.
“Sing 'The Harp that Once,' Hilda. You used to sing it so well.”
“Nonsense. Of course I can't really sing, except the way my mother and grandmother did before me. Most actresses nowadays really learn how to sing, so I tried a master; but he confused me, just!”
Alexander laughed. “All the same, sing it, Hilda.”
Hilda started up from the stool and moved restlessly toward the window. “It's really too warm in here to sing. Don't you feel it?”
Alexander went over and opened the window for her. “Aren't you afraid to let the wind blow like that on your neck? Can't I get a scarf or something?”
“Ask a theater lydy if she's afraid of drafts!” Hilda laughed. “But perhaps, as I'm so warm—give me your handkerchief. There, just in front.” He slipped the corners carefully under her shoulder-straps. “There, that will do. It looks like a bib.” She pushed his hand away quickly and stood looking out into the deserted square. “Isn't London a tomb on Sunday night?”
Alexander caught the agitation in her voice. He stood a little behind her, and tried to steady himself as he said: “It's soft and misty. See how white the stars are.” For a long time neither Hilda nor Bartley spoke. They stood close together, looking out into the wan, watery sky, breathing always more quickly and lightly, and it seemed as if all the clocks in the world had stopped. Suddenly he moved the clenched hand he held behind him and dropped it violently at his side. He felt a tremor run through the slender yellow figure in front of him. She caught his handkerchief from her throat and thrust it at him without turning round. “Here, take it. You must go now, Bartley. Good night.”
Bartley leaned over her shoulder without touching her and whispered in her ear: “You are giving me a chance?”
“Yes. Take it and go. This isn't fair, you know. Good night.”
Alexander unclenched the two hands at his sides. With one he threw down the window and with the other—still standing behind her—he drew her back against him. She uttered a little cry, threw her arms over her head, and drew his face down to hers. “Are you going to let me love you a little, Bartley?” she whispered.
CHAPTER V
It was the afternoon of the day before Christmas. Mrs. Alexander had been driving about all morning, leaving presents at the houses of her friends. She lunched alone, and as she rose from the table she spoke to the butler: “Thomas, I am going down to the kitchen now to see Norah. In half an hour you are to bring the greens up from the cellar and put them in the library. Mr. Alexander will be home at three to hang them himself. Don't forget the step-ladder and plenty of tacks and string. You may bring the azaleas up from the cellar. lake the white one up to Mr. Alexander's study. Put the two pink ones in this room, and the red one in the drawing-room.”
A little before three o'clock Mrs. Alexander went into the library to see that everything was ready. She pulled the window-shades high, for the weather was dark and stormy, and there was little light, even in the streets, A foot of snow had fallen during the morning, and the wide space over the river was thick with flying flakes that fell and wreathed the masses of floating ice. Winifred was standing by the window when she heard the front door open. She hurried to the hall as Alexander came stamping in, covered with snow. He kissed her joyfully and brushed away the drops of melting snow that fell on her hair.
“I wish I had asked you to meet me at the office and walk home with me, Winifred. The Common is beautiful. The boys have swept the snow off the pond and are skating furiously. Did the cyclamens come?”
“An hour ago. What splendid ones! But aren't you frightfully extravagant?”
“Not for Christmas-time. I'll go upstairs now and change my coat. I shall be down in a moment. Tell Thomas to get everything ready.”
When Alexander reappeared, he took his wife's arm and went with her into the library. “When did the azaleas get here? Thomas has got the white one in my room.”
“I told him to put it there.”
“But, I say, it's much the finest of the lot!”
“That's why I had it put there. There is too much color in that room for a red one, you know.”
Bartley began to sort the greens. “It looks very splendid there, but I feel piggish to have it. However, we really spend more time together there than we do anywhere else in the house. Will you hand me the holly?” He climbed up the step-ladder, which creaked under his weight, and began to twist the tough stems of the holly into the framework of the chandelier.
“I forgot to tell you that I had a letter from Wilson, this morning, explaining his telegram. He is coming on because an old uncle up in Vermont has conveniently died and left Wilson a little money—something like ten thousand. He's coming on to settle up the estate. Won't it be jolly to have him?”
“And how fine that he's come into a little money. I can see him posting down State Street to the steamship offices. He will get a good many trips out of that ten thousand. What can have detained him? I expected him here for luncheon.”
“Those trains from Albany are always late. He'll be along some time this afternoon. And now don't you want to go upstairs and lie down for an hour? You've had a busy morning and I don't want you to be tired to-night.”
After his wife went upstairs Alexander worked energetically at the greens for a few moments. Then, as he was cutting off a length of string, he sighed suddenly and sat down, staring out of the window at the snow. The animation died out of of his face, but in his eyes there was a restless light, a look of apprehension and suspense. He kept clasping and unclasping his big hands as if he were trying to realize something. The clock ticked through the minutes of a half hour and the afternoon outside began to thicken and darken turbidly. Alexander, since he first sat down, had not changed his position. He leaned forward, his hands between his knees, scarcely breathing, as if he were holding himself away from his surroundings, from the room and from the very chair in which he sat, from everything except the wild eddies of snow above the river on which his eyes were fixed with such feverish intentness, as if he were trying to project himself thither. It was not until Lucius Wilson arrived that Alexander roused himself, but then he seemed glad of distraction and he fairly fell upon his old instructor.
“Hello, Wilson. Welcome home! Come into the library, We are to have a lot of people to dinner to-night, and Winifred's lying down. You will excuse her, won't you? And now what about yourself? It's the greatest luck that we should have you for Christmas. Sit down and tell me everything.”
“I think I'd rather move about, if you don't mind. I've been sitting in the train for a week, it seems to me.” Wilson stood before the fire with his hands behind him and looked about the room. “You have been busy. Bartley, if I'd had my choice of all possible places in the world to spend Christmas, your house would certainly be the place I'd have chosen. Happy people perform a great service to their fellows simply by being happy. A house like this throws its warmth out. I felt it distinctly as I was coming through the Berkshires. I could scarcely believe that I was to see Mrs. Bartley again so soon.”
“Thank you, Wilson. She'll be as glad to see you. Shall we have tea now? I'll ring for Thomas to clear away this litter. Winifred says I always wreck the house when I try to do anything. Do you know, I am quite tired. Looks as if I were not used to work, doesn't it?” Alexander laughed and dropped into a chair. “You know, I'm sailing the day after New Year's.”
“Again? Why, you've been over twice since I was here in the spring, haven't you?”
“Oh, I was in London about ten days this summer. Went to escape the hot weather more than anything else. I sha'n't be gone for a month this time. Winifred and I have been up in Canada for most of the autumn. That Moorlock Bridge is on my back all the time. I never had so much trouble with a job before.” Alexander moved about restlessly and fell to poking the fire.
“Haven't I seen in the papers that there is some trouble about a tidewater bridge of yours in New Jersey?”
“Oh, that doesn't amount to anything. It's held up by a steel strike. A bother, of course, but the sort of thing one is always having to put up with. But the Moorlock Bridge is a continual anxiety. You see, the truth is, we are having to build pretty well up to the strain limit up there. They've crowded me too much on the cost. It's all very well if everything goes right, but these estimates have never been used for anything of such length before. However, there's nothing to be done. They hold me to the scale I've used in shorter bridges. The last thing a bridge commission cares about is the kind of bridge you build.”
When Bartley had finished dressing for dinner he went into his study, where he found his wife arranging flowers on his writing-table.
“These pink roses just came from Mrs. Hastings,” she said, smiling, “and I am sure she meant them for you.”
Bartley looked about with an air of satisfaction at the greens and the wreaths in the windows. “Have you a moment, Winifred? I have just now been thinking that this is our twelfth Christmas. Can you realize it?” He went up to the table and took her hands away from the flowers, drying them with his pocket handkerchief. “They've been awfully happy ones, all of them, haven't they?” he whispered. He took her in his arms and bent back, lifting her a little and giving her along kiss. “You are happy, aren't you, Winifred? More than anything else in the world, I want you to be happy. Sometimes, of late, I've thought you looked as if something were troubling you.”
“No; it's only when you are troubled and harassed that I feel worried, Bartley. I wish you always looked as you do to-night. But you don't always.” She looked earnestly and inquiringly into his eyes.
Alexander took her two hands from his shoulders and swung them back and forth in his own, laughing his big blond laugh.
“I'm growing older, my dear; that's what you feel. Now may I show you something? I meant to save them until to-morrow, but I want you to wear them at dinner to-night.” He took a little leather box out of his pocket and opened it. On the white velvet lay two long pendants of curiously worked old gold, each with a large pearl and a dozen small ones. Winifred uttered an exclamation and looked from the box to Bartley.
“Where did you ever find such gold work, Bartley?”
“It's old Flemish. Isn't it fine?”
“They are the most beautiful things, dear. But, you know, I never wear ear-rings.”
“Yes, yes, I know. But I want you to wear them. I have always wanted you to. So few women can. There must be a good ear, to begin with, a good chin, and a nose”—he waved his hand—“above reproach. Most women look silly in them. They go only with faces like yours—very, very proud, and just a little hard.”
Winifred laughed as she went over to the mirror and fitted the delicate springs to the lobes of her ears. “Oh, Bartley, that old foolishness about my being hard. It really hurts my feelings. But I must go down now. People are beginning to come.”
Bartley drew her arm about his neck and went to the door with her. “Not hard to me, Winifred,” he whispered. “Never, never hard to me.”
Left alone, he paced up and down his study. He was at home again, among all the dear familiar things that spoke to him of so many happy years. His house to-night would be full of charming people, and they all liked and admired him. Yet all the time, underneath his pleasure and hopefulness and satisfaction, he was conscious of the vibration of an unnatural excitement. Amid all this light and warmth and friendliness, he sometimes started and shuddered, as if some one had stepped on his grave. Something had broken loose in him of which he knew nothing except that it was sullen and powerful, and that it wrung and tortured him. Sometimes it came upon him softly, in enervating reveries. Sometimes it battered him like the cannon rolling in the hold of the vessel. Always, now, it brought with it a sense of quickened life, of stimulating danger. To-night it came upon him suddenly, as he was walking the floor after his wife left him. It seemed impossible; he could not believe it. He glanced entreatingly at the door, as if to call her back. He heard voices in the hall below and knew that he must go down. Going over to the window, he looked out at the lights across the river. How could this happen here, in his own house, among the things he loved? What was it that reached in out of the darkness and thrilled him? As he stood there he had a feeling that he would never escape. He shut his eyes and pressed his forehead against the cold window-glass, breathing in the chill that came through it. “That this,” he groaned, “that this should have happened to me!”
On New Year's day a thaw set in, and during the night torrents of rain fell. In the morning, the morning of Alexander's departure for England, the river was streaked with fog and the rain drove hard against the windows of the breakfast-room. Alexander had finished his coffee and was pacing up and down. His wife sat at the table, watching him. She was pale and unnaturally calm. When Thomas brought the letters, Bartley sank into his chair and ran them over.
“Here's a note from old Wilson. He's safe back at his grind, and says he had a bully time. 'The memory of Mrs. Bartley will make my whole winter fragrant.' Just like him. He will go on getting measureless satisfaction out of you ; by his study fire. What a man he is for looking on at life!” Bartley sighed, pushed the letters back impatiently, and went over to the window. “This is a nasty sort of day to sail. I've a notion to call it off. Next week would be time enough.”
“That would only mean starting twice. It wouldn't really help you out at all,” Mrs. Alexander spoke soothingly. “And you'd come back late for all your engagements.”
Bartley began jingling some loose coins in his pocket. “I wish things would let me rest. I'm tired of work, tired of people, tired of trailing about.” He looked out at the storm-beaten river.
Winifred came up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder.
“That's what you always say, poor Bartley! At bottom you really like all these things. Can't you remember that?”
He put his arm about her. “All the same, life runs smoothly enough with some people, and with me it's always a messy sort of patchwork. It's like the song; peace is where I am not. How can you face it all with so much fortitude?”
She looked at him with that warm, clear gaze which Wilson had so admired, which he had felt implied such high confidence and fearless pride. “Oh, I faced that long ago, when you were on your first bridge up at old Allway. I knew then that your paths were not to be paths of peace, but I decided that I wanted to follow them.”
Bartley and his wife stood silent for a long time; the fire crackled in the grate, the rain beat insistently upon the windows, and the sleepy Angora looked up at them curiously.
Presently the butler made a discreet sound at the door. “Shall Edward bring down your trunks, sir?”
“Yes; they are ready. Tell him not to forget the big portfolio on the study table.”
Thomas withdrew, closing the door softly. Bartley turned away from his wife, still holding her hand. “It never gets any easier to leave you, Winifred.”
They both started at the sound of the carriage on the pavement outside. Alexander sat down and leaned his head on his hand. His wife bent over him. “Courage,” she whispered softly. In a moment he rose sharply and rang the bell. Thomas brought his hat and stick and ulster. At the sight of these the supercilious Angora moved restlessly, quitted her red cushion by the fire, and came up, waving her tail in vexation at these ominous indications of change. Alexander hurriedly stooped to stroke her, and then plunged into his coat and drew on his gloves. His wife held his stick, smiling. He smiled too, and his eyes brightened. “I'll work like the devil, Winifred, and I'll be home again before you realize that I've gone.” He kissed her quickly three times, hurried into the hall and out of the front door, and waved from the carriage as the driver was starting his melancholy, dripping black horses. Alexander snapped the door, and the clumsy vehicle lumbered away. He sat with his hands clenched on his knees. As the carriage turned up the hill, he lifted one hand and brought it down violently. “This time”—he spoke aloud and through his set teeth—“this time I'm going to end it!”
On the afternoon of the third day out, Alexander was sitting well to the stern, on the windward side where the chairs were few, two rugs over him and the collar of his fur-lined coat turned up about his ears. The weather had been dark and raw so far. For two hours he had been watching the low, dirty sky and the beating of the heavy rain upon the iron-colored sea. There was a long, oily swell that made exercise laborious. The decks smelled of damp woolens, and the air was so humid that drops of moisture kept gathering upon his hair and mustache. He seldom moved except to brush them away. The great open spaces made him passive and the restlessness of the water quieted him. He intended during the voyage to decide upon a course of action, but he held all this away from him for the present and lay in a blessed gray oblivion. Deep down in him somewhere his resolution was weakening and strengthening, ebbing and flowing. The thing that perturbed him went on as steadily as his pulse, but he was almost unconscious of it. He was submerged in the vast impersonal grayness about him, and at intervals the sidelong roll of the boat measured off time like the ticking of a clock. He felt released from everything that troubled and perplexed him. It was as if he had tricked and outwitted torturing memories, had actually managed to get on board without them. He thought of nothing at all. If his mind now and again picked a face out of the grayness, it was Lucius Wilson's, or the face of an old school-mate forgotten for years, or it Was the slim outline of a favorite greyhound he used to hunt jack-rabbits with when he was a boy.
Toward six o'clock the wind rose and tugged at the tarpaulin and brought the swell higher. After dinner Alexander came back to the wet deck, piled his damp rugs over him again, and sat smoking, resting his mind against the obliterating blackness and drowsing in the rush of the gale. Before he went below a few bright stars were pricked off between heavily moving masses of cloud.
The next morning was bright and mild, with a fresh breeze. Alexander felt the need of exercise even before he came out of his cabin. When he went on deck the sky was blue and blinding, with heavy whiffs of white cloud, smoke-colored at the edges, moving rapidly across it. The water was roughish, a cold, clear indigo breaking into whitecaps. Bartley walked for two hours, and then stretched himself in the sun until lunch-time.
In the afternoon he wrote a long letter to Winifred. Later, as he walked the deck through a splendid golden sunset, his spirits rose continually. It was agreeable to come to himself again after several days of numbness and torpor. He stayed out until the last tinge of violet had faded from the water. There was literally a taste of life on his lips as he sat down to dinner and ordered a bottle of champagne. He was late in finishing his dinner, and drank rather more wine than he had meant to. When he went above, the wind had risen and the deck was almost deserted. As he stepped out of the door a gale lifted his heavy fur coat about his shoulders, and, buttoning it as he went, he fought his way up the deck with a keen exhilaration. The moment he stepped, almost out of breath, behind the shelter of the stern, the wind was cut off, and he felt, like a rush of warm air, a sense of close and intimate companionship. He started back and tore open his coat as if something warm were actually clinging to him beneath it. He hurried up the deck and went into the saloon parlor, full of women who had retreated thither from the sharp wind. He threw himself upon them. He talked delightfully to the older ones and played accompaniments for the younger ones until the last sleepy girl had followed her mother below. Then he went into the smoking-room. He played bridge until two o'clock in the morning, and managed to lose a considerable sum of money without particularly noticing that he was losing.
After the break of one fine day the weather was pretty consistently dull. When the low sky thinned a trifle, the pale white spot of a sun did no more than throw a bluish luminousness over the water, giving it the dark brightness of newly cut lead. Through one after another of those gray days Alexander drowsed and mused, drinking in the grateful moisture. But the complete peace of the first days of the voyage was over. Sometimes he rose suddenly from his chair as if driven out, and paced the deck for hours. People noticed his propensity for walking in rough weather, and watched him curiously as he did his rounds, tramping heavily in his long coat and soft gray hat, his hands in his pockets, his hard head erect. From his abstraction and the determined set of his jaw, they fancied he must be thinking about his bridge. Every one had heard of the new cantilever bridge in Canada.
But Alexander was not thinking about his work. After the fourth night out, when his will suddenly softened under his hands, he. was continually hammering away at himself. There was a persistent strain of doubt in him, a strain of opposition to his own will. Some treacherous current in the midwaters of the Atlantic had caught him and was dragging him with it. [here were moments, when he first wakened in the morning or when he stepped into a warm place after being chilled on the deck, when he felt a sudden painful delight at being nearer another shore.
CHAPTER VI
The last two days of the voyage Bartley found almost intolerable. The slow steaming along the soft, somber Irish coast, the hungry cries of the sea-gulls that swooped about the vessel, the rise of white spray against the gray cliffs, the stop at Queenstown, the tedious passage up the Mersey, were things that he noted dimly through his growing impatience. He had business to attend to in Liverpool, and had planned to stop over there for several days; but, instead, he took the boat train for London.
Emerging at Euston at half past three o'clock in the afternoon, Alexander had his luggage sent to the Savoy and drove at once to Bedford Square. When Marie met him at the door, even her strong sense of the proprieties could not restrain her surprise and delight. She blushed and smiled and fumbled his card in her confusion before she ran upstairs. Alexander paced up and down the hallway, buttoning and unbuttoning his overcoat, until she returned and took him up to Hilda's living-room. The room was empty when he entered. A coal fire was crackling in the grate and the lamps were lit, for it was already beginning to grow dark outside. Alexander did not sit down. He stood his ground over by the windows until Hilda came in. She called his name on the threshold, but in her swift flight across the room she felt a change in him and caught herself up so deftly that he could not tell just when she did it. She merely brushed his cheek with her lips and put a hand lightly and joyously on either shoulder.
“Oh, what a grand thing to happen on a raw day! I felt it in my bones when I wakened up this morning that something splendid was going to turn up. I thought it might be sister Kate or cousin Mike would be happening along. I never dreamed it would be you, Bartley. But why do you let me chatter on like this? Come over to the fire; you're chilled through.”
She took his hand and, drawing him over to the big chair by the fire, she sat down on a little stool at the opposite side of the hearth, her knees drawn up to her chin, laughing like a glad little girl. “When did you come, Bartley, and how did it happen? You haven't spoken a word.”
“I got in about ten minutes ago. I landed at Liverpool this morning and came down on the boat train.” Alexander leaned forward and warmed his hands before the blaze. Hilda watched him with perplexity, her chin propped on her hand.
“There's something troubling you, Bartley. What is it?”
Bartley bent lower over the fire. “It's the whole thing that troubles me, Hilda. You and I.”
Hilda took a quick, soft breath. She looked at his heavy shoulders and big, determined head, thrust forward like a catapult in leash. “What about us, Bartley?” she asked in a thin voice.
He locked and unlocked his hands over the grate and spread his fingers close to the bluish flame, while the coals crackled and the clock ticked and a street vendor began to call under the window. At last Alexander brought out one word:
“Everything!”
Hilda was pale by this time, and her eyes were wide with fright. She looked about desperately from Bartley to the door, then to the windows, and back again to Bartley. She rose softly, touched his hair with her hand, then sank back upon her stool, where she huddled as if trying to obliterate herself.
“I'll do anything you wish me to, Bartley,” she said tremulously. “I can't stand seeing you miserable.”
“1 can't live with myself any longer,” he answered roughly. He rose and pushed the chair behind him and began to walk miserably about the room, seeming to find it too small for him. He pulled up a window as if the air were heavy. Hilda watched him from her corner, trembling and scarcely breathing, dark shadows growing about her eyes.
“It—it hasn't always made you miserable, has it?” Her eyelids fell and her lips quivered.
“Always. But it's worse now. It's unbearable. It tortures me every minute.”
“But why now?” she asked piteously, wringing her hands.
He ignored her question. “I am not a man who can live two lives,” he went on feverishly. “Each life spoils the other. I get nothing but misery out of either. The world is all there, just as it used to be, but I can't get at it any more. There is this deception between me and everything.”
At that word “deception,” spoken with such scorn and self-contempt, the color flashed back into Hilda's face as suddenly as if she had been struck by a lash. She bit her lip and looked down at her hands, which were clasped tightly in front of her. “Could you—could you sit down and talk about it quietly, Bartley, as if I were a friend, and not some one who had to be defied?”
He dropped back heavily into his chair by the fire. “It was myself I was defying, Hilda. I have thought about it until I am worn out.” He looked at her and his haggard face softened. He put out his hand toward her absently as he looked away again into the fire. She crept noiselessly across to him, drawing her little stool after her, and looked up at him timidly. “When did you first begin to feel like this, Bartley?”
“After the very first. The first was—sort of in play, wasn't it?”
Hilda's face quivered, but she whispered: “Yes. I think it must have been. But why didn't you tell me when you were here in the summer?”
Alexander groaned. “I meant to, but somehow I couldn't. We had only a few days, and your new play was just on, and you were so happy.”
“Yes, I was happy, wasn't I?” She pressed his hand gently in gratitude. “Weren't you happy then at all?” She closed her eyes and drew in her breath, as if to snatch again at the fragrance of those days. Something of their troubling sweetness came back to Alexander, too. He moved uneasily and his chair creaked.
“Yes, I was then. You know. But afterward...”
“Yes, yes,” she hurried, pulling her hand gently away from him. Presently it stole back to his coat sleeve. “Please tell me one thing, Bartley. At least, tell me that you believe I thought I was making you happy.”
His hand shut down quickly upon the questioning fingers on his sleeve. “Yes, Hilda; I know that,” he said simply.
She leaned her head against his arm and spoke softly:
“You see, my mistake was in wanting you to have everything. I wanted you to eat all the cakes and have them, too. I somehow believed that I could take all the bad consequences for you. I wanted you always to be happy and handsome and successful—to have all the things that a great man ought to have, and, once in a way, the careless holidays that great men are not permitted.”
Bartley gave a sharp, bitter little laugh, and Hilda looked up at his face and saw, in the deepening lines and the brooding droop of his brows, the warning of the oncoming middle years.
“I understand, Bartley. I was wrong. But I didn't know. You've only to tell me now. What must I do that I've not done, or what must I not do?'” She listened intently, but she heard nothing but the creaking of his chair. “You want me to say it?” she whispered. “You want to tell me that you can only see me like this, as old friends do, or out in the world among people? I can do that.”
“I can't,” he said heavily.
Hilda shivered and sat still. Bartley leaned his head in his hands and spoke through his teeth. “It's got to be a clean break, Hilda. I can't see you at all, anywhere. What I mean is that I want you to promise never to see me again, no matter how often I come, no matter how hard I beg.”
Hilda sprang up like aflame. She stood over him with her hands clenched at her side, her body rigid. “No!” she gasped. “It's too late to ask that. Do you hear me, Bartley? It's too late. I won't promise. It's abominable of you to ask me. Keep away if you wish; when have I ever followed you? But, if you come to me, I'll do as I see fit. The shamefulness of your asking me to do that! If you come to me, I'll do as I see fit. Do you understand? Bartley, you're cowardly!”
Alexander rose and shook himself angrily. “Yes, I know I'm cowardly. I'm afraid of myself. I don't trust myself any more. I carried it all lightly enough at first, but now I don't dare trifle with it. It's getting the better of me. It's different now. I'm growing older, and you've got my young self here with you. It's through him that I've come to wish for you all, and all the time.” He took her roughly in his arms. “Do you know what I mean?”
Hilda held her face back from him and began to cry bitterly. “Oh, Bartley, what am I to do? Why didn't you let me be angry with you? You ask me to stay away from you because you want me! And I've got nobody but you. I will do anything you say—but that! I will ask the least imaginable, but I must have something!”
Bartley turned away and sank down in his chair again. Hilda sat on the arm of it and put her hands lightly on his shoulders. “Just something, Bartley. I must have you to think of through the months and months of loneliness. I must see you. I must know about you. The sight of you, Bartley, to see you living and happy and successful—can I never make you understand what that means to me?” She pressed his shoulders gently. “You see, loving some one as I love you makes the whole world different. If I'd met you later, if I hadn't loved you so well—but that's all over, long ago. Then came all those years without you, lonely and hurt and discouraged; those decent young fellows and poor Mac, and me never heeding—hard as a steel spring. And then you came back, not caring very much, but it made no difference.”
She slid to the floor beside him, as if she were too tired to sit up any longer. Bartley bent over and took her in his arms, kissing her mouth and her wet, tired eyes. “Don't cry, don't cry,” he whispered. “We've tortured each other enough for to-night. Forget everything except that I am here.”
“I think I have forgotten everything but that already,” she murmured. “Ah, your dear arms!”
CHAPTER VII
During the fortnight that Alexander was in London he drove himself hard. He got through a great deal of personal business and saw a great many men. He disliked to think of his visits to London as holidays, and when he was there he worked even harder than he did at home.
The day before his departure for Liverpool was a singularly fine one. The thick air had cleared overnight in a strong wind which brought in a golden dawn and then fell off to a fresh breeze. When Bartley looked out of his windows from the Savoy, the river was flashing silver and the gray stone along the Embankment was bathed in bright, clear sunshine. London had wakened to life after three weeks of cold and sodden rain. Bartley breakfasted hurriedly and went over his mail while the hotel valet packed his trunks. Then he paid his account and walked rapidly down the Strand past Charing Cross Station. His spirits rose with every step, and when he reached Trafalgar Square, blazing in the sun, with its fountains playing and its column reaching up into the bright air, he signaled to a hansom, and, before he knew what he was about, told the driver to go to Bedford Square by way of the British Museum.
When he reached Hilda's apartment she met him, fresh as the morning itself. Her rooms were flooded with sunshine and full of the flowers he had been sending her. She would never let him give her anything else.
“Are you busy this morning, Hilda?” he asked as he sat down, his hat and gloves in his hand.
“Very. I've been up and about three hours, working at my part. We open in February, you know.”
“Well, then you've worked enough. And so have I. I've seen all my men, my packing is done, and I go up to Liverpool this evening. But this morning we are going to have a holiday. What do you say to a drive out to Kew and Richmond? You may not get another day like this all winter. It's like a fine October day at home. May I use your telephone? I want to order the carriage.”
“Oh, delightful! There, sit down at the desk. And while you are telephoning I'll change my dress. I'll be very quick. All the morning papers are on the table.”
Hilda was back in a few moments, wearing a gray street-dress and a long gray squirrel coat and a broad fur hat.
Bartley rose and inspected her. “Why don't you wear some of those pink roses?” he asked.
“But they came only this morning and they have not even begun to open. I was saving them. I am so unconsciously thrifty!” She laughed as she looked about the room. “You've been sending me far too many flowers, Bartley. New ones every day. That's too often; though I do love to open the boxes, and I take good care of them.”
“Why won't you let me send you any of those jade or ivory things you are so fond of? Or pictures? I know a good deal about pictures.”
Hilda shook her large hat as she drew the roses out of the tall glass. “No, there are some things you can't do. There's the carriage. Will you button my gloves for me?”
Bartley took her wrist and buttoned the long gray suède glove slowly, looking down at her face. “How gay your eyes are this morning, Hilda.”
“That's because I've been studying. It always stirs me up a little.”
He pushed the top of the glove up slowly. “When did you learn to take hold of your parts like that?”
“When I had nothing else to think of. Come, the carriage is waiting. What a shocking while you take.”
“I'm in no hurry. We've plenty of time.”
They found all London abroad. Piccadilly was a stream of rapidly moving carriages, from which flashed furs and flowers and bright winter costumes. The metal trappings of the harnesses shone dazzlingly, and the wheels were bright revolving disks that threw off rays of light. The parks were full of children and nursemaids and joyful dogs that leaped and yelped and scratched up the brown earth with their paws.
“I'm not going until to-morrow, you know,” Bartley announced suddenly. “I'll cut off a day in Liverpool. I haven't felt so jolly this long while.”
Hilda looked up with a smile which she tried not to make too glad. “I think people were meant to be happy, a little,” she said.
They had lunch at Richmond and then walked to Twickenham, where they had left the carriage. They drove back, with a glorious sunset behind them, toward the distant gold-washed city. It was one of those rare afternoons when all the thickness and shadow of London are changed to a kind of shining, pulsing, special atmosphere; when the smoky vapors become fluttering golden clouds, nacreous veils of pink and amber; when all that bleakness of gray stone and dulness of dirty brick trembles in aureate light, and all the roofs and spires, and one great dome, are floated in golden haze. On such rare afternoons the ugliest of cities becomes the most beautiful, the most prosaic becomes the most poetic, and months of sodden days are offset by a moment of miracle.
“It's like that with us Londoners, too,” Hilda was saying. “Everything is awfully grim and cheerless, our weather and our houses and our ways of amusing ourselves. But we can be happier than anybody. We can go mad with joy, as the people do out in the fields on a fine Whitsunday. We make the most of our moment.” She thrust her little chin out defiantly over her gray fur collar, and Bartley looked down at her and laughed.
“You are a plucky one, you.” He patted her glove with his hand. “Yes, you are a plucky one.”
Hilda sighed. “No, I'm not. Not about some things, at any rate. It doesn't take pluck to fight for one's moment, but it takes it to go without—a lot. More than I have. I can't help it,” she added fiercely.
After miles of outlying streets and little gloomy houses, they reached London itself, red and roaring and murky, with a thick dampness coming up from the river, that betokened fog again to-morrow. The streets were full of people who had worked indoors all through the priceless day and had now come hungrily out to drink the muddy lees of it. They stood in long black lines, waiting before the pit entrances of the theaters—short-coated boys, and girls in sailor hats, all shivering and chatting gaily. There was a blurred rhythm in all the dull city noises—in the clatter of the cab horses and the rumbling of the 'buses, in the street calls, and in the undulating tramp, tramp of the crowd. It was like the deep vibration of some vast underground machinery, and like the muffled pulsations of millions of human hearts.
“Seems good to get back, doesn't it?” Bartley whispered as they drove from Bayswater Road into Oxford Street. “London always makes me want to live more than any other city in the world. You remember our priestess mummy over in the mummy-room, and how we used to long to go and bring her out on nights like this? Three thousand years! Ugh!”
“All the same, I believe she used to feel it when we stood there and watched her and wished her well. I believe she used to remember,” Hilda said thoughtfully.
“I hope so. Now let's go to some awfully jolly place for dinner before we go home. I could eat all the dinners there are in London to-night. Where shall I tell the driver? The Piccadilly restaurant? The music's good there.”
“There are too many people there whom one knows. Why not that little French place in Soho, where we went so often when you were here in the summer? I love it, and I've never been there with any one but you. Sometimes I go by myself, when I am particularly lonely.”
“Very well, the sole's good there. How many street-pianos there are about to-night! The fine weather must have thawed them out. We've had five miles of 'Il Trovatore' now. They always make me feel jaunty. Are you comfy, and not too tired?”
“I'm not tired at all. 1 was just wondering how people can ever die. Why did you remind me of the mummy? Life seems the strongest and most indestructible thing in the world. Do you really believe that all those people rushing about down there, going to good dinners and clubs and theaters, will be dead some day, and not care about anything? I don't believe it, and I know I sha'n't die; ever! You see, I feel too—too powerful!”
The carriage stopped. Bartley sprang out and swung her quickly to the pavement. As he lifted her in his two hands he whispered: “You are—powerful!”