Part 25

How could she go on? (She paused in her thoughts to survey and follow her maid, who was calling for the second time.) Though he hung upon her least word or wish and was content to see her at her pleasure, to run her errands and be ever deferential and worshipful, still she could not like him, could barely tolerate him. Before her always now was Vivian with his brooding eyes and elusive, sensitive smile; Vivian, who had never a penny to bless himself with. She could see him now striding to and fro in his bare studio, a brush in one hand, or sitting in his crippled chair meditating before a picture or talking to her of ways and means which might be employed to better their state. The pathos!

“_I cannot endure that perfume, Olga!_”

In part she could understand her acceptance of Harry after Vivian (only it did not seem understandable always, even to her), for in her extreme youth her parents had been so very poor. Perhaps because of her longings and childish fears in those days she had been marked in some strange way that had eventually led her to the conviction that wealth was so essential. For her parents were certainly harassed from her sixth to her thirteenth years, when they recovered themselves in part. Some bank or concern had failed and they had been thrown on inadequate resources and made to shift along in strange ways. She could remember an old brick house with a funereal air and a weedy garden into which they had moved and where for a long time they were almost without food. Her mother had cried more than once as she sat by the open window looking desolately out, while Ulrica, not quite comprehending what it was all about, had stared at her from an adjacent corner.

“_Will madame have the iris or the Japanese lilac in the water?_”

She recalled going downtown once on an errand and slipping along shyly because her clothes were not good. And when she saw some schoolgirls approaching, hid behind a tree so they should not see her. Another time, passing the Pilkington at dinner-time, the windows being open and the diners visible, she had wondered what great persons they must be to be able to bask in so great a world. It was then perhaps that she had developed the obsession for wealth which had led to this. If only she could have seen herself as she now was she would not have longed so. (She paused, looking gloomily back into the past.) And then had come the recovery of her father in some way or other. He had managed to get an interest in a small stove factory and they were no longer so poor—but that was after her youth had been spoiled, her mind marked in this way.

And to crown it all, at seventeen had come Byram the inefficient. And because he was “cute” and had a suggestion of a lisp; was of good family and really insane over her, as nearly every youth was once she had turned fourteen, she had married him, against her parents’ wishes, running away with him and lying about her age, as did he about his. And then had come trying times. Byram was no money-maker, as she might have known. He was inexperienced, and being in disfavor with his parents for ignoring them in his hasty choice of a wife, he was left to his own devices. For two whole years what had she not endured—petty wants which she had concealed from her mother, furniture bought on time and dunned for, collectors with whom she had to plead not to take the stove or the lamp or the parlor table, and grocery stores and laundries and meat-markets which had to be avoided because of unpaid bills. There had even been an ejectment for non-payment of rent, and job after job lost for one reason and another, until the whole experiment had been discolored and made impossible even after comfort had been restored.

“_I cannot endure the cries of the children, Olga. You will have to close that window._”

No; Byram was no money-maker, not even after his parents in far-distant St. Paul had begun to help him to do better. And anyhow by then, because she had had time to sense how weak he was, what a child, she was weary of him, although he was not entirely to blame. It was life. And besides, during all that time there had been the most urgent pursuit of her by other men, men of the world and of means, who had tried to influence her with the thought of how easily her life could be made more agreeable. Why remain faithful to so young and poor a man when so much could be done for her. But she had refused. Despite Byram’s lacks she had small interest in them, although their money and skill had succeeded in debasing Byram in her young and untrained imagination, making him seem even weaker and more ridiculous than he was. But that was all so long ago now and Vivian had proved so much more important in her life. While even now she was sorry for Harry and for Byram she could only think of Vivian, who was irretrievably gone. Byram was successful now and out of her life, but maybe if life had not been so unkind and they so foolish——

“_You may have Henry serve breakfast and call the car!_”

And then after Byram had come Newton, big, successful, important, a quondam employer of Byram, who had met her on the street one day when she was looking for work, just when she had begun to sense how inefficient Byram really was, and he had proved kind without becoming obnoxious or demanding. While declaring, and actually proving, that he wished nothing more of her than her good-will, he had aided her with work, an opportunity to make her own way. All men were not selfish. He had been the vice-president of the Dickerson Company and had made a place for her in his office, saying that what she did not know he would teach her since he needed a little sunshine there. And all the while her interest in Byram was waning, so much so that she had persuaded him to seek work elsewhere so that she might be rid of him, and then she had gone home to live with her mother. And Newton would have married her if she had cared, but so grieved was she by the outcome of her first love and marriage that she would not.

“_The sedan, yes. And I will take my furs._”

And then, living with her mother and making her own way, she had been sought by others. But there had been taking root and growing in her an ideal which somehow in the course of time had completely mastered her and would not even let her think of anything else, save in moments of loneliness and the natural human yearning for life. This somehow concerned some one man, not any one she knew, not any one she was sure she would ever meet, but one so wonderful and ideal that for her there could be no other like him. He was not to be as young or unsophisticated as Byram, nor as old and practical as Newton, though possibly as able (though somehow this did not matter), but wise and delicate, a spirit-mate, some such wondrous thing as a great musician or artist might be, yet to whom in spite of his greatness she was to be all in all. She could not have told herself then how she was to have appealed to him, unless somehow surely, because of her great desire for him, her beauty and his understanding of her need. He was to have a fineness of mind and body, a breadth, a grasp, a tenderness of soul such as she had not seen except in pictures and dreams. And such as would need her.

“_To Thorne and Company’s first, Fred._”

Somewhere she had seen pictures of Lord Byron, of Shelley, Liszt and Keats, and her soul had yearned over each, the beauty of their faces, the record of their dreams and seekings, their something above the common seeking and clayiness (she understood that now). They were of a world so far above hers. But before Vivian appeared, how long a journey! Life had never been in any hurry for her. She had gone on working and seeking and dreaming, the while other men had come and gone. There had been, for instance, Joyce with whom, had she been able to tolerate him, she might have found a life of comfort in so far as material things went. He was, however, too thin or limited spiritually to interest a stirring mind such as hers, a material man, and yet he had along with his financial capacity more humanity than most, a kind of spiritual tenderness and generosity at times towards some temperaments. But no art, no true romance. He was a plunger in real estate, a developer of tracts. And he lacked that stability and worth of temperament which even then she was beginning to sense as needful to her, whether art was present or not. He was handsomer than Byram, a gallant of sorts, active and ebullient, and always he seemed to sense, as might a homing pigeon, the direction in which lay his own best financial opportunities and to be able to wing in that direction. But beyond that, what? He was not brilliant mentally, merely a clever “mixer” and maker of money, and she was a little weary of men who could think only in terms of money. How thin some clever men really were!

“_I rather like that. I’ll try it on._”

And so it had been with him as it had been with Byram and Newton, although he sought her eagerly enough! and so it was afterward with Edward and Young. They were all worthy men in their way. No doubt some women would be or already had been drawn to them and now thought them wonderful. Even if she could have married any one of them it would only have been to have endured a variation of what she had endured with Byram; with them it would have been of the mind instead of the purse, which would have been worse. For poor Byram, inefficient and inexperienced as he was, had had some little imagination and longings above the commonplace. But these, as contrasted with her new ideal——

“_Yes, the lines of this side are not bad._”

Yes, in those days there had come to her this nameless unrest, this seeking for something better than anything she had yet known and which later, without rhyme or reason, had caused her to be so violently drawn to Vivian. Why had Vivian always grieved so over her earlier affairs? They were nothing, and she regretted them once she knew him.

“_Yes, you may send me this one, and the little one with the jade pins._”

And then after Young had come Karel, the son of rich parents and well-placed socially in Braleigh. He was young, well-informed, a snob of sorts, although a gentle one. The only world he knew was that in which his parents had been reared. Their ways had been and always would be his, conservatism run mad. At thirty the only place to go in summer was Macomber Beach, and in winter the only place to be was in Braleigh. There he could meet his equals twenty times a day. They went to the same homes, the same hotels, the same parties the year round. It was all the life he wanted, and it was all the life she would have been expected to want. But by then she was being hopelessly held by this greater vision and something within had said: “No, no, no!”

“_You were making over my ermine cape. Is it finished?_”

And Loring! He, for a change, was a physician there in Braleigh and lived with his sister in Lankester Way, near her home, only hers was in a cheaper street. He was young and good-looking but seemed to think only of his practice, how it was to make him and achieve her perhaps, although it had all seemed so commonplace and practical to her. He was so keen as to his standing with the best people, always so careful of his ways and appearance, as though his life depended upon it. He might have married more to his social and financial advantage but he had wanted her. And she had never been able to endure him—never seriously tolerate his pursuit.

“_Yes, if you would alter these sleeves I might like it._”

Whenever he saw her he would come hustling up. “My, but it’s nice to see you again, Ulrica. You are always the same, always charming, always beautiful—now don’t frown. Have you changed your mind yet, Ulrica? You don’t want to forget that I’m going to be one of the successful men here some day. Please do smile a little for me. I’ll be just as successful as Joyce or any of them.”

“And is it just success you think I want?” she had asked.

“Oh, I know it isn’t just that, but I’ve had a hard time and so have you. I know it wouldn’t do any good to offer you only success, but what I mean is that it makes everything so much easier. With you I could do anything—” and so he would ramble on.

“_To McCafferey’s, the Post Street entrance._”

But the shrewd hard eyes and dapper figure and unvaried attention to _his interests_ had all bored and after a time alienated her, since her ideal seemed to dwarf and discolor every one and everything. Was there not something somewhere much bigger than all this, these various and unending men, she had asked herself, some man not necessarily so successful financially but different? She had felt that she would find him somewhere, must indeed if her life was to mean anything to her. Always her great asset, her beauty, had been looked upon as the one thing she must keep for this other. And so it had gone, man after man and flirtation after flirtation. It had seemed as though it would never end. Even after she had transferred her life to the great city, to work, to go upon the stage if need be, there were more of these endless approaches and recessions; but, like the others, they had come and gone, leaving only a faint impression. Not until that day at Althea’s party in the rooming-house in which they both lived had she found the one who touched her.

And then—

“_And now to the Willoughby._”

It was late afternoon and just as she was returning from her task of seeking work in connection with the stage that they met. There he was in Althea’s room, tall, spare, angular, slightly sallow and cloisterish, his heavy eyebrows low above his sunken eyes as though he sought to shut himself in to himself, and with those large dark eyes fixed ruminatively and yet somewhat uncertainly upon all, even her when she came. And from Althea she gathered that he was a painter of strange dark landscapes and decorations which many of those who knew seemed to think were wonderful but which as yet had achieved no recognition at all. Worse, he was from the Rockies, a sheep-rancher’s son, but had not been able to endure ranching. His future was still very far before him, and, as one could sense, he was so innocent of any desire to be put forward; he seemed half the time to be a—dream. By some strange freak of luck he was still there when she entered, sitting in a corner not entirely at ease, because, as he told her later, he was strange to such affairs and did not know when to go.

_The brightness of the buildings in the spring sun!_

And she had looked at his hands, at his commonplace clothes, and then, a little troubled by his gaze, had withdrawn hers. Again and again her eyes sought his or his hers, as though they were furtively surveying each other; as though each was unable to keep his eyes off the other. And by degrees there was set up in her a tremendous something that was like music and fear combined, as though all at once she had awakened and comprehended. She was no longer the complete master of herself, as she had always imagined, but was now seized upon and possessed by this stranger! In brief, here he was, her dream, and now she could do nothing save gaze nervously and appealingly—for what? Those dark, sombre eyes, the coarse black hair and sallow skin! Yes, it was he indeed, her love, her star, the one by whose mystic light she had been steering her course these many years. She sensed it. Knew it. He was here before her now as though saying: “Come.” And she could only smile foolishly without speaking. Her hands trembled and her throat tightened until she almost choked. “I never saw any one more beautiful than you,” he had said afterwards when they talked, and she had thrilled so that it was an effort not to cry out. And then he had sighed like a child and said: “Talk to me, about anything—but don’t go, will you?”

_The air—the air—this day!_

And so, realizing that he valued her for this one gift at least, her beauty, she had sought now to make him understand that she was his without, however, throwing herself beggingly before him. With her eyes, her smile, her every gesture, she had said: “I am yours! I am yours! Can’t you see?” At last, in his shy way, he had seemed to comprehend, but even then, as he afterwards confessed, he could not believe that anything so wonderful could follow so speedily upon contact, that one could love, adore, at sight. She had asked where he lived and if she might come and see his work, and with repressed intensity he had said: “I wish you would! I wish you could come to-day!” It had made her sad and yet laugh, too, for joy.

_That single tree blooming in this long, hard block!_

There and then, with only the necessary little interludes which propriety seemed to demand, and with longing and seeking on the part of each, had begun that wondrous thing, their love. Only it seemed to have had no fixed beginning,—to have been always—just been. For the day she had called him up his voice had so thrilled her that she could scarcely speak. She had still felt she had known him for so long. How could that have been?

“I was afraid you might not call,” he had said tremulously, and she had replied: “And I was wondering if you really wanted me to.”

And when she sought him out in his studio she had found it to be such a poor mean room over a stable, in a mean street among a maze of mean streets, and yet had thought it heaven. It was so like him, so bare and yet wonderful—a lovely spiritual mood set over against tawdry materials and surroundings.

“_Drive me through the East Side, Fred._”

Better, she had found him painting or perhaps merely pretending to. He had on that old long gray linen duster which later became so familiar a thing to her. And to one side of him and his easel on a table were some of the colors of his palette, greens and purples and browns and blues. He had said so softly as he opened the door to her: “My painting is all bluffing to-day. I haven’t been able to think of anything but you, how you might not come, how you would look—” And then, without further introduction or explanation, under the north light of his roof window filtering down dustily upon them, he had put his arms about her and she her lips to his, and they had clung together, thinking only of each other, their joy and their love. And he had sighed, a tired sigh, or one of great relief after a strain, such a strain as she herself had been under.

_That one little cloud in the sky!_

And then after a time, he had shown her the picture he was painting, a green lush sea-marsh with a ribbon of dark enamel-like water laving the mucky strand, and overhead heavy, sombre, smoky clouds, those of a sultry summer day over a marsh. And in the distance, along the horizon, a fringe of trees showing as a filigree. But what a mood! Now it hung in the Wakefield Gallery—and— (Harry had helped to place it there for her!) But then he had said, putting his brushes aside: “But what is the use of trying to paint now that you are here?” And she had sighed for joy, so wonderful was it all.

_The crowds in these East Side streets!_

Yet what had impressed her most was that he made no apology for the bareness and cheapness of his surroundings. Outside were swarming push carts and crowds, the babble of the great foreign section, but it was all as though he did not hear. Over a rack at the back of the large bare room he had hung a strip of faded burnt orange silk and another of clear light green, which vivified what otherwise would have been dusty and gray. Behind this, as she later discovered, were his culinary and sleeping worlds.

And then, of course, had come other days.

_But how like that first day was this one, so fresh and bright!_

There was no question here of what was right or wrong, conventional or otherwise. This was love, and this her beloved. Had she not sought him in the highways and the byways? At the close of one afternoon, as she was insisting that she must continue her search for work, now more than ever since neither he nor she had anything, he had said sadly: “Don’t go. We need so little, Ulrica. Don’t. I can’t stand it now.” And she had come back. “No,” she had replied, “I won’t—I can’t—not any more, if you want me.”

And she had stayed.

And that wondrous, beautiful love-life! The only love-life she had ever known.

But just the same she had seen that she must redouble her efforts to make her way, and had. Six hundred dollars she had brought to the city was nearly all gone, and as for Vivian, his allotment was what he could earn, a beggar’s dole. During the days that followed, each bringing them closer, he had confessed more and more of the difficulties that confronted him, how hard it was to sell his wares. And she—it was needful for her to reopen the pages of her past. She had not been happy or prosperous, she told him; fortune might have been hers for the taking but she could not endure those who came with it. Now that she had the misery of her soul’s ache removed she must find something to do. The stage was her great opportunity. And plainly his life was one which had always been and must be based on the grudged dole that life offers to those who love its beauty and lift their eyes. So few, as yet, knew of his work or had been arrested by it. Yet if he persisted, as she felt,—if that wondrous something in his work which had attracted the sensitive and selective did not fail—

_The hot, bare redness of the walls of these streets, so flowerless, so bleak, and yet so alive and human!_

But all too well she understood that his life, unless changed by her, would ever be the meagre thing it had been. Beauty was his, but no more,—a beauty of mind and of dreams and of the streets and the night and the sea and the movements of life itself, but of that which was material he had nothing. That was for those whom she had been unable to endure. Only by a deft synthesis of those wondrous faculties which concern beauty was he able to perceive, respond to, translate the things which he saw and felt, and these were not of matter. Rather, they were epitomes, his pictures, of lands and skies and seas and strange valleys of dreams, worlds in miniature. But what transmutations and transferences! She was never weary of the pictures he made. Nor was she ever weary of the picture he made before his easel, tenuous and pale and concerned, his graceful hands at work with the colors he synthetized. The patience, the stability, the indifference to all but that which was his to do!

“_Into Bartow Street, Fred._”

And in him, too, was no impatience with life for anything it might have failed to provide. Instead, he seemed ever to be thinking of its beauties and harmonies, the wonder of its dawns and sunsets, the colors and harmonies of its streets, buildings, crowds, silences. Often of a morning when it was yet dark he would arise and open a door that gave out onto a balcony and from there gaze upon the sky and city. And at any time it was always an instinct with him to pause before anything that appealed to either of them as beautiful or interesting. And in his eye was never the estimating glint of one who seeks to capture for profit that which is elemental and hence evanescent, but only the gaze of the lover of beauty, the worshiper of that which is profitable to the soul only.

_The very street! The very studio!_

Although she was ignorant of the spirit or the technique of art she had been able to comprehend it and him, all that he represented as a portion of beauty itself, the vast and supernal beauty toward which the creative forces of life in their harsh and yet tender ways seem impelled at times.