of a sudden life became glorious—more glorious than he had ever believed possible. it commenced on the morning after he had written his letter to hal.
he was seated in the white mirrored room of the brevoort which looks out on fifth avenue. from the kitchen came the mutter of bass voices, passing orders along in french, and the cheerful smell of roasting coffee. scattered between tables, meditative waiters were dreaming that they were artists’ models, each with a graceful hand resting on the back of a chair in readiness to flick it out invitingly at the first sight of an uncaptured guest. from the left arm of each dangled a napkin, betraying that he had served his appenticeship in boulevard caf茅s of paris.
outside, at irregular intervals, green buses raced smoothly with a whirr-whirr, which effaced during the moment of their passage the clippity-clap of horses. past the window, from thinning trees, leaves drifted. when they had reached the pavement, the breeze stirred them and they struggled weakly to rise like crippled moths. there was an invigorating chill in the october air as though the sunshine had been placed on ice. pedestrians moved briskly with their shoulders flung back. they seemed to be smiling over the great discovery that life was worth living, after all.
a boy halted under the archway and threw about him a searching glance. catching sight of teddy, he hurried over and whispered. teddy rose. in the hall the telephone-clerk was watching. “booth number three, mr. gurney.”
as he lifted the receiver he was still discussing with himself whether or no he should send hal that letter.
“yes. it’s mr. gurney.”
a faint and unfamiliar voice answered—a woman’s voice, exceedingly pleasant, with a soft slurring accent. it was a voice that, whatever it said, seemed to be saying, “i do want you to like me.”
“i didn’t quite catch. would you mind speaking a little louder?” he asked.
there was a laughing dispute at the other end; then the voice which he had heard at first spoke again:
“this is janice audrey, desire’s friend—fluffy. desire’s too shy to phone herself, so i—— she’s here at my elbow. she says that she’s not shy any longer and she’ll speak with you herself.”
it was as though he could feel her gray eyes watching.
a pause. then, without preliminaries: “you can’t guess where i am. for all you know, i might be dead and this might be my ghost.—no. let me do the talking. it’s long distance from boston and expensive; i don’t know how many cents per second. if you were here, i’d let you do the paying; but since you’re not—— here’s what i called up to tell you: we’re coming in on the bay state limited at three o’clock.—i thought you’d be interested. ta-ta.”
he commenced a hurried question; she had rung off.
adorably casual! adorably because she contradicted herself. by calling him up all the way from boston she had said, “see how much i care.” by not allowing him to speak, she had tried to say, “i don’t care at all.” it amused him; the odd thing was that he loved her the more for her languid struggles to escape him. he agreed with her entirely that the woman who said “no” bewitchingly increased her value. as he finished his breakfast he reflected: she was dearer to him now than a week ago, and much dearer than on the drive from glastonbury. instead of blaming her for making herself elusive, he ought to thank her. he’d been too headlong at the start. he fell to making plans to take vashti’s advice: he wouldn’t speak to her of love any more—he’d try to hide from her how much he was in earnest.
in his eagerness not to disappoint her, he had reached the grand central a quarter of an hour too early. he was standing before the board on which the arriving trains are chalked up, when from behind some one touched him.
“seen you before. how are you? i expect we’re here on the same errand.”
he found himself gazing into the humorous blue eyes which had discovered him playing tricks with his engine before the house in regent’s park.
“you’re mr. horace overbridge, i think.”
“yes. i’m here to see october put on; that’s my new play in which miss audrey is acting. what are you doing?” then, because teddy hesitated, “perhaps i oughtn’t to ask.”
at that moment the arrival-platform of the bay state limited was announced; they drifted away at the tail of the crowd towards the barrier. teddy wanted to hurry; his companion saw it. “heaps of time,” he laughed. “if i know anything about them, they’ll be out last.”
his prophecy proved correct. the excited welcomes were over; the stream of travelers had thinned down to a narrow trickle of the feeble or heavily laden, when desire, walking arm-in-arm with a woman much more beautiful than her portraits, drew into sight behind the gates. after hats had been raised and they knew that they had been recognized, they did not quicken their pace. they approached still leisurely and talking, as much as to say: “let’s make the most of our opportunity before we sink to the level of these male-creatures.”
horace overbridge, leaning on his cane, watched them with tolerant amusement. “take their time, don’t they?” he remarked. “one wouldn’t think we’d both come three thousand miles to meet them. what fools men are!”
“hulloa,” said desire, holding out her hand gladly, “it’s good to see you. so you two men have introduced yourselves! fluffy, this is mr. gurney.”
it was arranged that the maid should be seen into a taxi to take care of the luggage. when she had been disposed of, they crossed the street for tea at the belmont. fluffy and desire still walked arm-in-arm as though it was they who had been so long separated. at the table teddy found himself left to talk to fluffy; desire and the man with the amused blue eyes were engaged in bantering reminiscences of the summer. the game seemed to be to pretend that you were not in love; or, if you were, that it was with some one for whom actually you didn’t care a rap.
“did it go well?” asked teddy.
“wonderfully.”
“i wish you’d tell me. of course desire wrote me; but i don’t know much.”
while she told him, he kept stealing glances at the others. he wondered at what they were laughing; then he came to the conclusion that it wasn’t at what was being said, but at the knowledge each had of the game that was in the playing. he began to take notice of fluffy. she had pale-gold hair—quantities of it—a drooping mouth and eyes of a child’s clearness. she had a way of employing her eyes as magnets. she would fix them on the person to whom she talked so that presently what she said counted for nothing; questions would begin to rise in the mind as to whether she was lonely, why she should be lonely and how her loneliness might be dispelled. then her glance would fall away and she would seem to say: “i shall have to bear my burden; you won’t help me.” after that all the impulse of the onlooker was to carry her over rough places in his arms. her voice sounded as though all her life she had been petted; her face made you feel that, however good people had been, she deserved far more. why had desire been so positive that he wouldn’t like her? he did; or rather he would, if she would let him. but he had the feeling that, while she was kind, she was distrustful and had fenced herself off so that he could not get near her. he had an idea that he had met her before; he recognized that grave assured air of being worthy to be loved without the obligation of taking notice of the loving. then he spotted the resemblance, and had difficulty to refrain from laughing. in her quiet sense of beautiful importance she was like twinkles.
“it’s wonderful,” she was saying; “i never had such a part. ‘little girl,’ simon freelevy said when he saw me, ‘little girl, you’ll take new york by storm.’ and i shall.” she nodded seriously. “simon freelevy ought to know; he’s the cleverest producer in america; i believe he was so pleased with himself that he’d have kissed me if i hadn’t had my make-up on. and then, you see, it’s called october, and we open in october. the idea’s subtle; it may catch on.”
she spoke as though the play was a negligible quantity and any success it might have would be due to her acting. teddy caught the amused eyes of the playwright opposite. he turned back to janice audrey. “what’s the plot?” he asked.
“the plot! i’m the plot. you may smile, but i am.—i am the plot of october—isn’t that so, horace?”
“oh, yes, miss audrey is the plot,” the playwright said gravely. “i have nothing to do with it, except to draw my royalties.” he picked up the thread of his conversation with desire.
a puzzled look crept into fluffy’s clear child’s eyes—a wounding suspicion that she was being mocked. she put it from her as incredible.
“when i say i’m the plot, i mean i gave him the story. i told it to him in a punt at pangbourne this summer. it’s about a woman called october, who’s come to the october of her beauty, but has spring hidden in her heart. she’d loved a man excessively once, when she was young and generous; and he hadn’t valued her love. after that she determined to wear armor, to keep her dreams locked away in her heart and to leave it to the men to do the loving. she becomes an actress, like me. almost autobiography! at last, when she realizes that her popularity depends on her beauty and she hears the feet of the younger generation climbing after her—at last he comes, the one wearing a smoke-blue corded velvet, trimmed with gray-squirrel fur at the sleeves and collar. her hat was the gray breast of a bird and sat at a slant across her forehead. there was a flush of color in her cheeks. again the beauty-patch had wandered; it was on the left of her chin now. as he watched, he felt the lack of something; then he knew what it was.
“why, what’s happened to your curl?”
she put her hand up to her neck and opened her eyes widely. “h’i sye, old sort, yer don’t mean ter tell me as i’ve lost it?”
while he was laughing at this sudden change of personality, she commenced searching her vanity-case with sham feverishness; to his amazement she drew out the missing decoration.
“oh, ’ere it is. you’re learnin’ h’all me secrets, dearie. it ain’t wise. but, lawd, ‘cause yer likes it and ter show yer ‘ow glad i am ter be wiv yer——”
she deliberately pinned it into place behind her ear; it hung there trembling, looking entirely natural.
dropping her cockney characterization, she bowed to him with bewitching archness: “do i look like nell gywnn now? i expect, if she were here for an inquisitive person like you to ask, she’d tell you that hers were false.”
he loved her for her honesty; if any one had told him a month ago that so slight and foolish an action could have made him love her better, he would have laughed them to scorn.
it was intoxicating—transforming. it was as though these stone-palaces of fifth avenue fell back, disclosing magic woodlands—woodlands such as his father painted through whose shadows pale figures glided. people on the pavement were lovers, going to meetings which memory would make sacred. like arcady springing out to meet him, the park swam into sight, tree-tufted, lagooned, embowered, canopied with the peacock-blue and saffron of the sunset.
“it’s a pity,” desire murmured, as though continuing a conversation, “that they couldn’t have remained happy.”
“who?”
“those two. they were such good companions, till he began to speak of love. i was with them all summer, wherever they went we used to talk philosophy, and life, and—oh, everything. then one day i wasn’t with them; after that our happiness stopped.”
“but she must have known that he loved her before he told her.”
“of course. that was what made us all so glad, because there was something left unsaid—something secret and throbbing. it was all gone when once it had been uttered.”
“it oughtn’t to have gone. it ought to have become bigger and better.” he spoke urgently, hoping to hear her agree, “yes. it ought.”
they were fencing with their problem, discussing it in parables of other people’s lives.
“why doesn’t she marry him?” he asked. “i expect i’ve been brought up to a different set of standards, so i’m not criticizing; i’m trying to see things from her angle. i’ve been brought up to believe that marriage is what we were all made for; that it’s something gloriously natural and to be hoped for; that to grow old unmarried is to be maimed, especially if you’re a woman. all poetry and religion springs from motherhood; it’s the inspiration of all the biggest painters. i never dreamed that there were people who wilfully kept themselves from loving. i don’t know quite how to express myself. but to see yourself growing up in little children has always seemed to me to be a kind of immortality. there was a thing my mother once said: that marriage is the rampart which the soul flings up to guard itself against calamity. don’t you think that’s true?”
“you put it beautifully. that’s the man’s view of it.” she smiled broodingly; the plodding of the horse’s steps filled the pause. “when a man asks a woman to marry him, he asks her to give up her freedom. before she’s married, she has the power; but afterwards—— when a man tells her that he loves her, he really means that he wants to be her master.”
“not her master.” he had forgotten now that it was fluffy they were supposed to be discussing; he spoke desperately and his voice trembled. “women aren’t strong like men. they can’t stand alone and, unless they’re loved, they lose half their world when their beauty’s gone. you say a woman gives up her freedom, but so does a man. they both lose one kind of freedom to get another. what he wants is to be allowed to protect her, to——”
“and what fluffy wants is the right to fulfill herself,” she interrupted, bringing the argument back to the point from which it started. “my beautiful mother——” there she stopped. their glances met and dropped. he hadn’t thought of her mother. everything that he had been saying had been an accusation. “my beautiful mother——” she had said it without anger, as though gently reminding him of the reason for her defense. he felt ashamed; in uttering things that were sacred he had been guilty of brutality. would the shadow of vashti always lie between them when he spoke to her of love?
she came to the rescue. “you’ll think i haven’t any ideals; but i have.” she laughed softly. “you men are like boys who make cages. some one’s told you that if you can put salt on a bird’s tail, you can catch it. away you go with your cages and the first bird you see, you start saying pretty things to it and trying to creep nearer. it hops away and away through the bushes and you follow, still calling it nice names. presently it spreads its wings and then, because you can’t reach it, you throw stones at it that’s what horace is doing to poor little fluffy. he never ought to have made his cage; if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have got angry.—but we’ve not struck a happy subject, meester deek. tell me, did you miss me much?”
it took one and a half times round the park to tell her. that she cared to listen was a proof to him that she wasn’t quite as interested in preserving her freedom as she pretended. as he described his anxiety in waiting for her letters, she made her eyes wide and sympathetic. once or twice she let her hands flutter out to touch him. he didn’t touch hers; it was so important to hide from her how much he was in earnest. he mustn’t do a thing that would startle her.
as darkness fell and her face grew indistinct, he found that he had less difficulty in talking. horsemen had disappeared. the procession of cars and carriages was gone. they jingled through a no-man’s-land of whispering leaves and shadows; lamps buoyed their passage like low-hanging stars.
behind trees on a knoll, lights flashed. she pushed up the trap and spoke to the driver: “well stop here for dinner.” she turned to teddy: “shall we? it’s mcgown’s.”
he helped her out as they passed up the steps to the bungalow, he took her arm and felt its shy answering pressure. in the hall she drew away from him.
“where are you going? don’t go.”
“only for a minute. please, meester deek, i want to make myself beautiful for you.”
“but i can’t spare a minute of you. i’ve lost you for so long.”
“only one little minute,” she pleaded, “but if you don’t want me to be beautiful——”
while she was gone he played tricks to make the time pass quickly. he would see her returning by the time he had counted fifty; no, sixty; no, a hundred. if he walked to the door and looked out into the park, by the time he turned round she would be waiting for him. at last she came—ten minutes had elapsed; her eyes were shining. he guessed that she had purposely delayed in order to spur her need of him. they seated themselves by a window through which they could watch the goblin-eyes of automobiles darting through the blackness, and the white moon climbing slowly above tattered tree-tops.
she sat with her hand against her throat, gazing at him smilingly.
“what are you thinking, princess?”
“thoughts.”
“won’t you tell me?”
“i was thinking that i say some very foolish things. i pretend to know so much about life, and i don’t know anything. i borrow other people’s disappointments—fluffy’s, for instance. and then i talk to poor you, as though you had disappointed me. i wish i were a little girl again, asking you what it was like to have a father. d’you remember?—i always wanted to have a father. tell me about my father, please, won’t you?”
his eyes had grown blurred. the witch-girl was gone. they had traveled mysteriously back across the years to the old untested faiths and loyalties. she had become his child-companion of the lumber-room days. on her submissive lips, like parted petals, hovered the unspoken words: “i love you. i love you.”
“i didn’t mean to make you sad,” she said gently, “so, if it’ll make you sad to tell me——” two fingers were spread against the comers of her mouth to prevent it from widening into smiling.
“that’s what mrs. sheerug does when she doesn’t want to smile.”
when she asked him “what?” he showed her.
“funny! the only time i saw her was when she fished me out of the pond with her umbrella. she seemed a strict old lady. and there was a boy named ruddy; he was my cousin, wasn’t he? it’s a kind of romance to have a father whom you don’t know. i sometimes think i’m to be envied. d’you think i am, meester deek?—ahl you don’t never mind; tell me about him.”
then they fell to talking of eden row. he had to describe orchid lodge to her and how he had first met her mother there, and had thought that she had really meant to marry him. they got quite excited in building up their reminiscences.
“yes, and you came to our house when my father, whom i didn’t know was my father, was playing lions with me. and i ran to you for protection. when pauline took me away, i fought to get back to you and got slapped for it you didn’t know that? didn’t you hear me crying? go on with what you were saying. it’s fine to be able to remember. don’t let’s stop.”
they were picking up the threads of each other’s lives and winding them together. she told him about herself—how for long stretches, while her mother had been on tour singing, she had been left in the care of maids, and her favorite game had been to play that she was a great actress. “and you’ll never guess why it was my favorite. i used to pretend that my father was in the audience and came afterwards to tell me he was proud of me. that’s why——— do you think he would be proud of me?”
“he’d be proud of you without that, wild bird.”
“why do you call me wild bird, meester deek? but i know: because i’m always struggling and flying beyond my strength. you think that, if i became an actress, i wouldn’t succeed. you don’t believe in me very much. i’ll have to show you—have to show you all. everybody discourages me.”
his heart was beating furiously. where was the good of hiding things? she knew he was in earnest “my dear,” he said, and a kind disapproval came into her eyes, “i believe in you so much—more than in any woman. it isn’t that; but i’m afraid that you’ll lose so many things that you’ll some day want.”
“you mean that an actress oughtn’t to marry? that’s what fluffy says—she must be like a man and live for her art. if you married, you’d still go on sketching and writing; but men expect their wives to drop everything. it’s selfish of them and hard.”
“but it’s always been like that and you’re not an actress yet, and—and, if you were, it would be terrible to think of you going through love-scenes every night with some one else.”
she laughed into his eyes; he almost believed that her talk had been an ambush to lead him on. “you could be very jealous.”
she rose from the table. when they were settled in the hansom, she whispered: “let me be little again, meester deek. tell me abouts knights and faeries, the way you did when you were only teddy.”
“there was once a knight,” he began, “who dreamt always of a princess whom he would marry. at last he found her, and she pretended that she didn’t want him.”
“and did she?”
“she did at last the title of the story is the princess who didn’t know her heart.”
“go on.”
“that’s all.”
“it’s very short.—that’s miss self-reliance you’re holding, meester deek. i don’t know whether she likes it.” and again she said in a drowsy whisper, “i don’t know whether she likes it.”
they both fell silent, staring straight before them into the darkness.
“you don’t mind if i close my eyes, meester deek? i’m really tired.”
he answered her with a pressure of the hand. she drooped nearer. “you are good to me.”
in a husky contented little voice, she began to sing to herself. it was a darkie song about a pickaninny who had discovered that she was different from the rest of the world because the white children refused to play with her. to teddy it seemed desire’s pathetic way of explaining to him the loneliness of her childhood. at the end of each verse the colored mammy crooned comfortingly:
“so, honey, jest play in your own backyard,
don’t mind what dem white chiles say.”
he stooped lower over her closed eyes and murmuring lips. she seemed aware of him; she turned her face aside. he brushed her cool cheek and thrilled to the touch of it.
he waited. she still sang softly with her eyes fast shut, as though advising him:
“so, honey, jest play in your own backyard.”
over and over she hummed the line. he crept back into his place in the darkness.
when they had drawn up before the apartment and he had jumped to the pavement to help her out, she whispered reproachfully, “meester deek, you did get out quickly.” then, as they said good-by, “it’s been the nicest time we’ve ever had.”
it was only after she had vanished that he asked himself what she had meant, “you did get out quickly.” at the last moment was she going to have kissed him, or to have given him her lips to kiss? and, “the nicest time we’ve ever had”—did she know that he had been trembling to ask her to marry him?
when he got back to the brevoort he destroyed the letter he had written to hal. his optimism was aflame; soon he would have something better to write him. he fell asleep that night with the coolness of her cheek upon his lips.
