Part 15

“That’s not as bad as this fall, in at the Knickerbocker,” said Harry reminiscently. “I had the waiter sure I was the Prince of Wales and Steve here an escaped nobleman from Russia, conferring together about starting royalty over here, when up blows Dick Lindley and another poor egg, calling us by name and requesting the loan of some cash to get back to Princeton!”

The blithe youths left them at the Belmont. “We’ve been lowbrow this afternoon; we’ll be highbrow to-night,” said Steve. “We’ve wangled Harry’s mother’s box at the opera.”

“Can Félicie Durant and Greg Stevens come along?” Jerry asked. “Félicie’s over with us, and I said we’d do something to-night with them.”

“Félicie Durant can come anywhere with me where I can look at her,” said Harry; “if she’ll keep her mouth shut. Still going around with Greg Stevens, is she?”

“Greg Stevens—” Steve repeated; “not Princeton?”

“Nope—Yale—managed most of the teams there, and all that sort of flutter. He’s all right, though. Don’t take more than an hour now, you two!”

They found Félicie still sleeping in a breathlessly stuffy room, as she had not even turned off the heat.

“Well, Joy, what do you think of our Princeton specialties?” Jerry asked, turning on the lights and pulling the covers from Félicie’s face.

“Lovely. I can’t tell which one is talking when I close my eyes. But of all places I’ve been to around Boston—why did I have to come to New York to run into some home-towners!”

“That is one thing about New York—you’re always running into people you know, in the wrong places. Wake up, Félicie! You’ve only got an hour to get dressed, and we’ve a box at the opera!”

Félicie, after a struggle with herself, arose with an injured expression. “I was awake all the time—you needn’t have spoken so loud. I haven’t slept hardly a wink. Just as I was falling asleep someone called Joy on the phone—Madame Somebody’s maid, or something, who said Joy was to come at four to-morrow, she would send her car.”

It was characteristic of Félicie that she had not even recognised the great name that brought Joy to a standstill and drew a whistle from Jerry.

“Perhaps we’ll hear her to-night,” said Jerry. “Don’t lose your nerve, Joy; you’ll sing circles around her some day. Go and run a tub and do some scales—they won’t be heard over the tub if you close the door.”

“I hope you’re not running a tub for _me_,” Félicie objected; “too many baths are bad for me, I’m funny that way.”

Strange anomaly—the Félicie who had everything about her as neat as a bee-hive, but slept in sealed rooms and disagreed with baths!

An hour later they admitted they were fit to sit in anyone’s box at the opera. Félicie was almost bewilderingly lovely in pale green velvet; Jerry was audacious and stunning in low-cut purple with cerise ostrich feathers; Joy wore a cloth-of-gold that Jerry had ripped from an old model of hers and put together in a few simple lines.

“With your hair,” said Jerry, looking her over in professional pride, “that get-up’s a knock out.”

Joy found herself wishing that Jim was going to see her, instead of the Princeton youths.

“Wait till we hit the diamond horseshoe!” Jerry was saying. “Although we’re probably higher up than that.”

“I wish I had some diamonds to wear,” Félicie sighed. “I do love diamonds so.”

“If you’d give in to Greg, you might have one,” Jerry suggested.

“One about the size of a pin-point! I couldn’t stand that. Men don’t half appreciate what it means to a girl to have a ring that she won’t have to be ashamed of. When I get one, I want a good one, as long as it’s a thing I’ll have to wear all my life.”

“Oh, so you’ve thought up another argument now for not getting married for four years,” said Jerry.

“Now you’re picking on me again!”

The ring of the telephone announcing that their escorts awaited them downstairs interrupted here, and they sailed down after a mere ten minutes for last rites of re-powdering, going over one’s hair, and general touching up.

Gregory Stevens was as dark as Félicie, scarcely more than an eager boy, and very much in love, as Joy saw and could have seen if she had not been told. They ate at the Belmont, and throughout dinner Félicie and Greg carried on a low-toned conversation, refusing to be drawn into the general chatter. They reached the opera late, and Joy lost herself in a heaven of sound oblivious to the whispering all about her. The first grand opera she had ever heard; small wonder that she could not come out of her trance between the acts, to enjoy the sensation of being a beautiful girl sitting in a box at the Opera. A little before the end Harry pulled her back to the world of Excitement-Eaters by whispering: “Come on, we don’t want to be caught in this mob; we’re going somewhere to dance.”

Surprised dumb that they could leave the greatest of music quivering in mid-air, she followed them as they streaked out and lost the time they had gained in debate of where to go. Steve voted for the “Bré Cat;” Jerry downed that with a sniff; “Princeton’s playground!” “Weisenrebber’s,” Harry’s suggestion, was voted down as “too rough;” Jerry declared she positively would not go to any of the hotels, she could get the same thing in Boston. Steve groaned, and said he supposed they’d have to fork out fifty dollars or so for a table at the Frolic; Félicie and Greg cried out in swift protest that they wanted to go somewhere quiet.

“I tell you what,” said Harry: “let’s slum uptown. There’s a place up around Columbia with good music—Fennelly’s, or something. Come on, we’re off!”

No one knowing enough about the place to object, they piled into a taxi and worked their way uptown, Félicie and Greg following alone in another. The first four were well established at the uptown dancing palace before Félicie and Greg joined them. Félicie’s colour was heightened almost to a dark purple flush; Greg was pale, his features standing out sharply. They sat down at the table without a word, and stared vaguely at the dancers.

“You two ought never to go to the opera,” said Harry sweetly. “It’s got you all—wrought—up.”

“Not the opera,” said Greg, each word sheared off almost before it came. “We’ve been discussing the modern girl.”

“I don’t want to talk about it any more,” Félicie’s pouting lips twitched out. “I’m so nervous now I could just scream!”

“We’ve ordered for you,” said Steve as the waiter brought up some soft drinks. “Do you think opera is as crazy as I do? Come on, Harry; let’s do our favourite scene from Madame Butterfly. Ladies and gentlemen, this is an actual transition from part of this famous opera.” He rose, pouring some gingerale into a glass, singing solemnly: “Will you have some more whiskey?”

“Thank you!” sang Harry in response, taking the glass and draining it. They sat down looking for appreciation; but Joy and Jerry were regarding the two who still sat without a flicker of attention to anything.

“Well, what is there about the modern girl that brings on this run-over attitude?” Harry inquired, ignoring Steve’s warning eyebrows.

“The modern girl,” said Greg, “is selfish to cruelty. I think that—carries the situation in a nutshell.”

“Is the modern girl any more selfish than the modern man?” said Joy quickly, anxious to alleviate the mauve tints of Félicie’s face. “I haven’t noticed it, if it’s so.”

“Oh, now we’re in for deep discussion!” Harry proclaimed joyously. “I do love deep discussions in frivolous places!”

“From my point of view, the man as he is to-day is the result of the modern girl,” said Greg, turning to Joy.

“If she is selfish, so selfish that she wishes to have everything, while giving nothing in return, so selfish that she looks upon the world as her debtor—she must mold the man’s attitude toward her. And men can no longer regard her with the chivalry and reverence in which men held women when women made the sacrifices that made the name of woman something to be worshipped.”

“But we’re sick of being worshipped!” cried Félicie, whose silence had been fading to lavender. “The viewpoint you have is the viewpoint of the last century and so on—men dividing women into two classes—” She stopped, and Jerry took up the sentence:

“Félicie wants to say—two classes—good and bad; good to be worshipped and do all the work and have a generally poky time; bad to be despised, but taken around and having the whirl their good little sisters missed.”

“And why boast that the old-fashioned distinction has disappeared?” Greg thrust forth. “Nowadays the line has vanished. Good and bad comport themselves alike. The ‘good’ girl—so-called—refuses to undertake any of the responsibilities that for centuries have made her sheltered and protected. She paints her face more recklessly than her sister on the street. She aims to out-demi the demi-mondaine in her dress. She does not disdain to use any weapon, no matter how blood-stained, to bring men to her feet; and then she leaves them there. The old-fashioned girl gave a man the mitten. This new girl never kills them off; she must have strings to her bow; she keeps them dangling around her as long as is humanly possible. And then she turns around and says: ‘Men aren’t as chivalrous as they used to be!’” He looked around at them, with almost a sneer. “No wonder things are happening nowadays that a few years ago you couldn’t have believed possible!”

Joy, clutching at her throat, was conscious that her nails were biting into the skin. She was back at her first Prom—last spring. She saw herself standing in front of a mirror gazing in fascination at her white shoulders, her blazing cheeks, her painted lips. Again she beard Jim Dalton telling her what he thought of her appearance. Had she been in some way responsible for what had happened? “You’re ripping me all to pieces.” . . . The words leaped up at her from the stagnant channels of that memory. She drew in her breath so sharply that it caught in her lungs.

“That’s a very fluent argument, Greg,” Harry was saying: “I’m surprised and pleased to see an Eli whose brains weren’t lost under the training table. All the same, I think you’re on the wrong tack. As Jerry says, the old-fashioned girl was poky. I couldn’t stand her alone for five minutes; she’d drive me to drink.”

“Maybe, but she wouldn’t drink with you,” grinned Steve.

“That’s just it, Harry!” said Joy. “An old-fashioned girl bores men nowadays. So what stimulus have we for being old-fashioned?”

“It’s one of those vicious circles,” said Greg. “But the girls are responsible in the first place—they can’t get away from it. They have fooled the men into thinking they’re more attractive this way.”

“Well, they are,” Harry persisted. “I wouldn’t go back to the Clinging-Vine Age for marbles. When I go to see a girl, I want to have a good time with her—and as far as I can see, if the gallants in other times ever did get to see a girl, all they did was sit and twiddle their thumbs.”

“You didn’t hear any complaints from anybody,” said Greg undaunted. “Nobody realized they were having what we could now term a dull time. I tell you things are getting too complicated. There are too many new inventions for having good times. We just dash from one new sensation to the next. When a man goes to see a girl nowadays, what do they do? Do they sit in the parlor and talk, do they go out into the kitchen and make fudge? They do not. They duck the family, and step into his or her father’s Rolls-Royce or Ford and ride seven or seventy miles to the nearest place that has the best dance music or they go to the movies, during which they laugh and talk and say: ‘Why did we come? We could have done this at home and not be bored by a rotten show;’ but they go next time just the same; or if they stay home for once, they gather a large bunch around them and turn on the home jazz variety. Is this true or isn’t it?”

“Well, I fail to see how you can slide all that off on the girl,” said Jerry. “What’s the use of all this moralizing stuff? You know you like a good time as well as the rest of us. To crab at people who are enjoying themselves is a sign of the aged.”

“Look at us to-night,” said Greg. “Here we are paying I-don’t-know-what per couvert to sit in an uninteresting place and watch the world’s most ordinary potpourri, the personnel of a public dance hall, canter around on a bum floor——”

“And listen to you crab. I admit it’s awful,” said Jerry, rising. “Come on, Harry. Greg probably won’t dance after his oration, but I intend to see if it _is_ a bum floor.”

They slid away, and Greg looked at Félicie. The lines in his face quivered into softness until he looked like a hungry, wistful child. Félicie’s colour had died to a brilliant flash in either cheek; her loveliness was almost aching in its intensity. “I’m sorry, Félicie,” he said gently. “Shall we dance?”

Steve and Joy looked after them as they joined “the world’s most ordinary-looking potpourri.” “He seems like a fine fellow,” said Steve; “but what’s eating him, anyway? Won’t she marry him? He ought to be glad.”

“Well, he doesn’t seem to be,” said Joy rather shortly.

“All this haste to get married while you’re young is idiotic,” said Steve, with an air of settling the subject. “If he says the modern girl is selfish because she doesn’t want to let herself in for the cares and risks of marriage until she has an everlasting good time out of her youth, he’s talking rot. The modern girl’s got a sane argument, and it’s the same one I’d use for myself. Marriage clips your wings, whether you’re a man or a girl, and there’s no use getting into it before you’ve had enough of high-flying!”

Joy said nothing. It was the same argument she had used for herself. Marriage was not for her, until the wings of her power had grown so that she could soar with that impediment. But Félicie’s case was different. She was in love—supposedly. And Greg’s face——

“Come on and twirl a measure,” said Steve, “if you’re not above mingling with the Too-Much-Perfumed.”

“Too-Much-Perfumed?” she echoed as they went out on the floor.

“Yes—I always think of that in these places—don’t you get the scent on different couples as they whiff by us? I always think of the common herd as perfuming themselves heavily. So, instead of calling ’em the Great Unwashed, I call ’em the Too-Much-Perfumed.”

It was about two when they returned to the Belmont. The girls undressed quickly, saying little. No one brought up the subject of Greg’s harangue. Jerry said that she would sleep with Félicie, so that Joy could have the single room and sleep as late as possible into the day.

“I know you’ve got to have sleep back of your voice,” she said, “so go to it, old girl. I’ll make Félicie open one window.”

If only Jerry were not such an Excitement-Eater——

By four the next afternoon, Joy had nearly scared herself into a chill. Félicie had gone down to Princeton for a party, but Jerry had remained with her. First, her costume offered trouble. After three changes, she was almost ready to start, when there was a heartsick moment of losing her short gloves. Then a worse moment when she found a rip in them that Jerry repaired with lightning skill. Hesitation over her music which Pa had told her to take indiscriminately, since the great one would select what she pleased to hear. It seemed such a lot to take in one music roll. Finally Jerry bundled her off, going down with her to the door of the waiting car, a dark green Cadillac, such as anyone,—well most anyone—might have. She was driven to the door of a Park Avenue apartment house, where the chauffeur instructed her to go to the top floor. A little maid admitted her to a room beautifully appointed in grey, relieved by sharp touches of black and the inevitable grand piano. Music was piled on the piano in indeterminate heaps; some of it was even trickling off to the floor. Another sheet fell as Joy came into the room, and she went over to pick it up, restoring the others to place as she did so.

“Ah, so we have a neat little housewife’s soul, in a singer!”

A full, perfectly poised voice, each word as flawless as if it had been engraved on a cameo. Joy turned, crimson with embarrassment and excitement, and straightway forgot both. The queen of music had a most understanding smile. Moreover, she did not look like a diva. She was not even large, as singers went, and certainly not of terrifying aspect. She was dainty as a little wren, standing by the doorway in a grey teagown, her head tipped to one side, her eyes—the eyes that looked so awe-inspiring in her pictures—surrounded by a network of little smile-wrinkles.

“Well,” she said, and came to take Joy’s hands; “have you nothing at all to say to me—or must all be sung, as in op-era? Never mind—” and she drew Joy to a sofa—“I once remember when I was younger than you, and they sent me to sing for Patti. Oh, how I died! It was after a performance, and Patti was in no charm to hear me. She was weary of child-wonders. How well I remember that long time ago! She was in her room at the hotel; there was a wood fire; she always had one go ahead of her, turn off the steam, and have a fire built ready for her coming. I sat in a tremble; and what I had brought to sing—at sixteen? The waltz song from Romeo and Juliet! But no matter. She came in all wrapped around with cloaks and hoods and shawls. How poisonous is the night air to a singer, and all other things that lend joy and romance! Her table was spread with her supper. I was to sing while she ate. She sat down, giving me a look with those black eyes, while her maid unwound her from the shawls. I was so unhappy! She pointed to the piano. ‘I do not know why they want me to hear them sing,’ she said. ‘I know nothing, just what I like or do not like, and how it sounds to me—I will listen not for the things the critics discuss. But sing! And I will tell you what I think.’”

She looked at Joy, her eyes twinkling up again. “I was in a horror! I shook, how I shook! And the noble Adelina saw that I could not do anything, although the young man was waiting for me at the piano. She arose from her clear soup, did Adelina, and went to look at what I had brought. ‘Ah, it is the waltz!’ she said. ‘Have you heard Nellie Melba sing this, child?’

“Nellie Melba was then dazzling the world. I had heard and rejoiced, as had everyone. I could only nod. But Adelina went on. ‘In my time,’ she said, ‘Nellie Melba’s voice would have been termed a light-opera voice. You gasp? But listen how we were taught to run the descent of the chromatic in this waltz.’”

She closed her eyes, her features sinking into a repose of prayer. “Oh, those notes that came floating from that supreme woman! Golden, perfectly matched, each one a pearl on the perfect string! She stopped on the B flat, and laughed a little at my face. ‘Now I will show you,’ said she, ‘how Nellie Melba pours it forth!’ And that Adelina ran it up and down in just the way I had heard Melba sing it many times. I cannot tell you the difference. Still beautiful, but—it was as if she had taken the bottom away from everything, that second time!”

“What did she say when you sang?” Joy asked eagerly, as she came to a pause.

The little wren tossed her hands and shoulders, laughing lightly. “The story ends there! I have gotten you to speak! Come—let us see what you have brought. I hope a variety, for I like to choose!” She ran her fingers lightly through the music-roll, pulling out “The Messiah,” to Joy’s horror. She had not dreamed that the heroine of thirty operas, and mistress of the concert stage, would even glance at oratorio.

“Behold what is complete in one,” she was saying. “We have everything here, from the dramatics to the dynamics. Come, let us be off!”

“I didn’t suppose—this is the hardest thing I ever tried to do—” Joy faltered, following her to the piano.

“No matter! You have saved yourself already, in saying ‘tried to do,’ instead of—‘done’!” She modulated into the pastoral symphony, still talking: “This is so cruel! Nearly eighty pages while the soprano sits like a rock! Many have no voice left when their time comes!”

She played for Joy to sing through the four first recitatives, then without comment plunged into the “Come Unto Him,” followed by “Rejoice Greatly,” and ending with “I Know That My Redeemer Liveth.”

Then she turned on the bench. “We all have fads, which we call convictions,” she said quietly; “and mine is that this music we have just done can show plainly as nothing else, what one has and what one has learned. Now let us have some fun and do some op-era. What can you do?”

“Pa hasn’t given me anything but Faust——”

“He wouldn’t; I am glad; for I know you have other airs, and I shall wish to see what you have done without Pa, with your own brain and soul-fire. Come, shall we do something so banal you shall have to lend it your own self, lest we remember the hurdy-gurdy?”

Joy hesitated, as she had been about to suggest her beloved Louise.

“But-terfly!” cried the little wren, and tore a wail of beauty from the keys.

So Joy sang Madame Butterfly . . . with a pulse beating in her voice that made the great one turn on the last note and kiss her exultantly.

“When I have a new sensation with that song, I am won!” she cried. “And you gave it—why, you little girl—with years before your maiden voice grows into your woman’s voice—you had not only the longing of Butterfly but the longing of all! Do you see what I mean? It is so that the American shop girl could hear you sing it in Italian and weep!”

She became quiet, judicial. “Pa Graham is right. The greatest of teachers are not always right—when the pupil has beauty which dazzles and deafens the beholder—but Pa is right with you. You have everything, everything and to spare, in equipment. Now it is the question of the years of preparation. Many young girls start out as you, with high hopes and encouragement. Many do not finish—of their own fault and choosing. Are you of a steadfast mind?”

“I will let nothing come in my way,” said Joy breathlessly, “not even love——”

“That is the thing that may end all. . . . And perhaps you may be glad that all is over, if you love greatly.” She looked down at the gorgeous rings on her fingers, and there was a little silence before she continued. “But most loves are not the great loves of which we sing and act; they are not the blazing altar-fires of which we dream; love comes down to a hearth-fire, after marriage. And we who sing are not content with hearth-fires. Remember that always, little one; _we who sing are not content with hearth-fires_.”

The maid came into the far end of the room, spraying the air with water from an atomizer. “My substitute for Adelina’s wood-fires,” the wren said with a smile. “Steam dries you up in your throat—oh, it is terrible! Bring the tea, will you, Aimée?” A pause, while she played rippling cadenzas and frowned at the keys. Joy longed to ask her to sing, but would not, when suddenly without apparent preparation or setting, her voice floated out in a great, full note that swelled to the power of the room until the very windows sang, and then quivered itself into silence. Under the little white hands the keys wove a melody above which the voice rang out, first dazzling with its fireworks, then charming with its beauty. Joy, listening, thought it the most perfect voice in the world, as it came close to being. It ended on a long high note as small and clear as a thread of silver, that hung in the air and charmed the echoes.

“It is an old Italian air,” she said, before Joy could speak. “I have not sung it for a long time; no one sings it any more; the new music is all different.”

“Thank you,” said Joy, reverently; “the memory of that will always spur me on. And thank you for not singing before I did!”