Part 9

She came forward in the child-like manner one remembered of her, with that adorable absence of self-consciousness which touches more than grace, bowing from side to side with the moved air which infallibly moves, half in tears, yet smiling. To gratify her faithful, she had gone into hearty extravagance, and appeared wonderfully encased in a warm delicious pink, worthy of the event, much of it rustling off far from her heels, not much of it at all troubling her dimpled arms and shoulders. She held her sweet little black head on one side, like a tender bird; it looked as if dragged over by the weight of a big rose in her hair. And the people could not be satisfied with clapping their hands. The public was for the occasion become romantic, and, as much as the artist, was applauding the woman who had loved and, by this token, triumphed over a villainous deserter. They kept it up _ad absurdum_, intoxicated by the noise they made, more and more touched by their own loyalty to the old favorite, wishing to proclaim it still more loudly; and so expressing at last, it is sad to say, far more than any one felt. But it had been a goodly demonstration, and all thought better of themselves when finally those who were eager to hear the playing began hushing, and silence gradually came about.

Then she played, and it was to many what they were pleased to call a revelation. It was at all events a fresh, delicate, inspirating, moving music. There were those who listened with eyes upturned, and thought of sunrise upon Eden; there were those who nodded surprise and commendation, and spoke of technique.

Marie-Aimée was one of those persons about whom all who know them talk. She offered opportunity for it, certainly, by herself talking; her manner of being and her ways were fertile in food for comment; but her modest ray of fame was also accountable, being felt to brighten all who could claim sufficient nearness to her to know her affairs.

Had she changed? was the capital question in the discussions of her following upon her return. Most said not in the least, except, the presumption was, toward Bronson. She was open-hearted as ever, merry once more as she had used to be when her star first rose among them. She was still the one that so lent herself to be loved and gently, almost enviously, laughed at. But if she were changed, as some maintained, it was for the better. She looked younger, rested; her face was clear and untroubled now. If, after the first, one missed something in her, she explained that it was her old faults.

"When I began to see glimmering ahead of me in the distance a triumphal re-entrance among you," she held forth to a little group, "I began to prepare for it. I tried to fit myself better to please you. For the _bon Dieu's_ sake, I had tried to obtain a clean soul; but for the world's sake--your sake, my dears--I tried to become thin! I did gymnastics, I walked, I dosed myself, I gave up eating everything I liked, and you see the result? Honor my beautiful shape, will you? and do not press upon me sponge-cake and plum-cake, as you used to do. Then I became orderly. Haven't you noticed? All my buttons there, all my hooks and eyes. And every little spot at once rubbed out with cologne. When did you know such things of me before? But look at my head! I tell you I hunt up mirrors expressly to see myself in them; and I set my bonnet straight, and tuck in my loose ends. Then I became prudent. I always think before I act, now, and before I speak, and before I spend my money. And punctual! I catch trains, and I keep appointments. I look at my watch, like the rest of you, and see that it is time to go, and I _go_. I no longer, like some one I remember, sit down and play and play and play, or talk and talk and talk, till it is dinner time, and I have to be invited. And then I am not a chatter-box now, no, not what you could call a chatter-box."

Her joy at being again among her old friends softened and won them; and no less did the humility of her attitude toward the past. In regard to that she was shame-faced, apologetic, reformed.

So much of the story of her exile filtered through those who received it at first hand, that a legend of it was before long public property; and such a character was given the event, Marie-Aimée's own view perhaps initially tinging it for all, that, without fear of being thereby unacceptable, the multitude of those who stood with Marie-Aimée on a footing of good-humored comradeship neglected, even in speaking to her, to disguise their familiarity with what concerned her. It was common, on the ground of a perfect understanding with her, and a supposition of at least some small degree of that enmity which often succeeds love and takes satisfaction in hearing of Fortune's disparaging turns on the ex-beloved, to entertain her with late accounts of Bronson. And though she merely listened, as she would have done to anything well-intentioned, her unoffended air left a feeling that encouragement had not been wanting. One irresponsible, feather-brained youth, of the baritone variety, reached such recklessness, while regaling her with good stories as they stood waiting for her cab, as to inquire, "Have you heard the latest joke about old Bronson?" He brought his lips near her ear, and breathed through a chuckle: "They say it takes two years and seven months to get over being in love with Bronson, but if you marry him it doesn't take so long!" And as he laughed heartily, she let her bright laugh ring out companionably alongside of his. Having got into her cab, she repeated the joke carefully over to herself, to apprehend the point of it.

It was not to have been expected that the peculiar extreme enthusiasm for Marie-Aimée, with the exaggerated form of tribute to her, should continue long unabated. Still, with discretion on her part, it might have had the ordinary length of such things. As it was, alas, there soon seemed occasion to believe that the public mind is ruled by the law of reaction: By so much as the public had gone beyond rational appreciation, it seemed now threatening to fall below it.

Those who watched Marie-Aimée's fortunes with most interest, with a sinking of the spirit began to note a decrease in her social popularity. As they witnessed this trifling evidence of it and that, these lifted their eyebrows and pushed out their chins, with the expression which one interprets, "But what can be done about it?" Whenever there was reference to her now, it seemed to bring about in the atmosphere a vague fall of temperature. A just appreciable effect of disappointment, disapproval, regret, followed the long-loved name.

Those fondest of her could scarcely be brought to speak of it; when they did speak, it was not frankly and openly, as everyone had used to discuss her affairs once, shaking the head amusedly. They talked in dreary undertones, and ended asking each other "Now, can you understand it?"

Presently, she was by certain ones avoided, because of an awkwardness they felt in meeting her, with a consciousness of what were best not mentioned--disagreeable to those accustomed to dealings with her of a perfect candor. When met, she was at best in these days indifferent fun, preoccupied, unlike herself, with little to say.

At last, as an increasing coldness takes a definite pattern of frost, certain persons refrained from calling upon her, explaining privately that they had heard it said that it was possible to come upon Anthony Bronson in her little drawing-room. This refraining did not signify by any means in all a wish to express condemnation; on the part of most it really expressed a good-humored wish not to be in the way.

It was as winter was waning, that, reversing somewhat the order of the day, one who had never called on her resolved to do so. With her clothes and her hair and her eyes full of March, she ascended to Miss Nevers' little flat. The door was opened by Marie-Aimée herself, who stood looking up, uncertain, inquiring.

"I fear you do not remember me," the visitor said. "May I come in?"

"Your voice," Marie-Aimée faltered, "is familiar--but the light--the light is behind you. Do, I pray, come in."

She hurried ahead into the drawing-room, which was unexpectedly light, from the reflection upon its ceiling of the snow on lower neighboring roofs. She turned and looked at the visitor who was entering; she uttered an exclamation, unfollowed by any word.

"I see you have recalled me," said the visitor. "Mrs. Bronson? Kate Cheriton that was?"

"Take a seat, I pray!" said Marie-Aimée faintly.

Mrs. Bronson looked around her for once. Though her eye confessed no more scrutiny than accords with good breeding, it missed little in the tiny room, warm-colored, crowded, a bit untidy, but genially so, as where a pair of evening gloves and a crumpled play-bill lay on a chair, and a lace bonnet saddled a green bronze lion. The walls were covered with gimcracks and pictures, among which in profusion photographs of the celebrated, overscrawled with their various calligraphies. The piano stood open, littered with music; a tea-table, ready for service, the kettle steaming, was drawn close to the fire; a faint smell of macaroons mingled in the air with the smell of violets, whereof a big double handful was fading in a bowl. A well-worn leather chair, deep and wide, patriarchal, was on one side of the fire-place; and, suggestively at its elbow, matches and an ash-tray.

In this seat, after her casual circular glance, Mrs. Bronson quietly arranged herself; and Marie-Aimée took the rocker on the opposite side of the fire. She dropped back in it, leaning, and loosely folded her hands; which no sooner had she done, than she sat upright, and moved forward to the edge of her chair.

There was a longer silence than is often suffered by persons of the world. To attempt "carrying off" anything whatsoever was not in Marie-Aimée's _moyens_.

"Do you know why I have come, Miss Nevers?" Mrs. Bronson asked.

Marie-Aimée regarded her with eyes as steady as they were inwardly frightened. Her whole face expressed what one had never expected to see in it, something very near hostility; its like could be imagined in the look of a tame animal uncertain whether harm is meant to its young.

"I judge you have come here to find Mr. Bronson," she answered, "I expect him at any moment."

It was plain there would be no delicate fencing this afternoon.

Mrs. Bronson shook her head, and laughed in spite of herself at this unheard-of directness. "Oh, no! I scarcely think he will come to-day, I mentioned at lunch that I should call on you."

This was spoken without the hint of a sneer, yet Marie-Aimée flushed.

"You are quite mistaken if you think he makes love to me," she blurted out, her breath coming quick.

Mrs. Bronson lifted her hand in deprecation. "And you are mistaken, my dear Miss Nevers, if you think I have come to make a vulgar scene about him. I am here, and solely, because I like you!"

Marie-Aimée stared, doubt in her eyes; then, expressing wonder by the faintest possible effect of a shrug, looked down in her lap, all her face slowly relaxing to a plaintive look of trouble. Her lips composed themselves to lines of such stiff stillness, it might be guessed that if she tried to speak they would tremble; she picked at the folds of her tea-gown, readjusting them, smoothing the fabric across her knees.

"I don't believe you have any idea how much I felt myself attracted to you that single time we met, Miss Nevers. You made my conquest completely, and I am not one who takes fancies. Though you are so contrary to all I am, it seemed to me I understood you better than all the others did, just as I had always felt that I appreciated your work more truly at its worth. I don't know what I would not have given to have you for a friend."

Marie-Aimée put out her hands, to stop her, her kindness at that moment hurt so much. But Mrs. Bronson went on eagerly. "You are not made right for this low world. Your very virtues have the effect of faults, and bring calamity upon you. There you are, one piece of honesty, lovingness, unselfishness; and the consequence,--you have no chance among us who are nothing of the sort. Being as you are would be all right in a world peopled with angels, but here----!"

Marie-Aimée, with a deepening look of dejection and a vast returning softness, slowly shook her head; rather as if she were trying to make these notions of herself fit into place, than in denial of what she heard.

"And now I find you doing something dreadfully foolish," Mrs. Bronson continued, with a remonstrative mother's persuasive inflections, "something, I am afraid, which will prove the deadliest mistake. I cannot resist the impulse to come and warn you of it, to try to drag you back into the safe path--all, I do assure you, because I so sincerely like and respect and admire you. Of those in question, believe me, it is you, you, who are the one I care about."

There was a pause. Marie-Aimée sat as if considering a proposition; but in reality she was only groping after thoughts among emotions. She made a gesture of resignation, casting up her hands and letting them drop again. "Well? I am listening, but is it not likely that I know already all you are intending to say?"

"No, no, it is not possible!" Mrs. Bronson said emphatically. "You cannot see clearly for yourself, else you would have turned back long ago. Mind you, I know how easy it will be for you to misunderstand me in this. Almost necessarily, you will imagine that it is myself I have principally in view, that I am jealous, perhaps, or anxious about appearances, concerned in the figure I myself cut in all this. But you would be wrong. To all that I am highly indifferent. Jealous! For jealousy there must be some remnant of the folly of fondness. And, for the rest, I refuse to grant that anything Mr. Bronson does can either lift or lower me. No, what he chooses to do affects me not at all. But for you, I tell you, I am sorry."

"If it is as you say," said Marie-Aimée, regaining a little life, "you need be troubled about nothing. It is all so much simpler than one thinks, than, I find, one is willing to think. Because once or twice a caller has found him here, a caller likewise, it has been taken for granted that he spends I don't know how much of his time with me, which is particularly false and unfair. He comes from time to time; I will be quite honest, perhaps once or twice in the week, when he happens to be in town. Then we try over music, and I tell him the gossip of the world which used to be his as well as mine, and we laugh together as we used to do. You know that I always had a knack of cheering him. And I give him tea, and let him smoke, and that is all. And is it not truly innocent enough?"

"I believe you perfectly, Miss Nevers. And for that you are willing to give up all that I know you are losing?"

Marie-Aimée repeated her little French gesture of resignation. "When it comes to contending with the evil mind of the world, how can one hope to do it? I used to believe in the world, I loved it. I have lately discovered it to be such that I care very little what I lose with it. Its good opinion? I don't want it any more!"

"Quite right, Miss Nevers. You are as right as possible in valuing the opinion of the world lightly. Still, the loss of all that comes to make life pleasant, from being on good terms with it, is serious. There should be something to counterbalance it, in that for the sake of which one renounces it. And you, will you tell me what you are getting? You are ruining your life, Miss Nevers, no other word serves, for a man who is perfectly willing to let you do it, for the satisfaction he derives from his occasional afternoons here of gossip and tea, music and smoke."

Marie-Aimée kept her eyes unflinchingly upon Mrs. Bronson's, eyes full of resentment and denial, but she was too moved now to speak.

"He spoiled the best years of your life," Mrs. Bronson went on, her nostrils sharpening till their edges were white, a cold fire in her eyes. "Oh, how well I see now, now that I know him better, what his conduct would be with you. But when the moment came in which it was convenient, he set you aside without one second's hesitation. You patiently take the broken pieces of your life out of sight, you manage to put them together again, you reappear bravely patched up, poor child; oh, I saw you. To me, you were pathetic--and again, because it is convenient, just a little bit convenient, he takes you up, calmly, to break you into pieces a second time."

"You don't understand him!" burst forth Marie-Aimée, in her tone the deepest hopelessness that the other ever could understand.

"I don't understand him? I don't?"

"No, no, no!"

"Then you think three years of marriage not instructive?" Mrs. Bronson asked rapidly. "Or do you think him complicated? The truth is, he is as simple as simplicity. Suppose a man with one instinct, one motive, heretofore and forever: to do that which is at the moment easiest and pleasantest and most profitable for himself, and you have him. But you must, to have him exact, accommodate this tendency with a brain the most elementary; and must suppose his objects always of the lowest and most ordinary: little common satisfactions, material or mental, good wine and cigars, or the flattery of some woman's silly admiration. And, for I will do him justice, you must accommodate it with a constitution completely healthy, like a prize animal's, without any more viciousness than he has imagination. For the rest, ideas?" continued the coldly indignant woman, reaching a fearful fluency, "he has none. All the fine things which his singing brings to our minds have no existence in himself. Talent? I do you the credit, Miss Nevers, to suppose you with me in the secret of his musical talent. Talent he has none, nor ever had any, nor the least real love or appreciation of music. But a God-given voice he had, and an instinct for using it to perfection which he shares with nightingales and mocking-birds; and, besides these, what you call _a presence_, combined with an enormous vanity and an equal hatred of hard work!"

"Why do you say all this to me?" gasped Marie-Aimée, choking.

"Because I cannot conceive but that you misrepresent him to yourself, but that you still have illusions about him. If I were removed to-morrow, do you imagine he would by any chance marry you? If my removal left him wealthy, he would not marry at all; if it left him poor, you can be sure he would not marry you."

After another gesture of warding off, Marie-Aimée, shuddering, buried her face in her hands, as if blinding herself might deaden hearing too.

Mrs. Bronson at once accorded the respite for which this action seemed to entreat. She sat in silence, critically regarding the top of Marie-Aimée's bent head, as if one could hope to see through it into her brain.

"Can you tell me that all this is not so?" she asked at last, heat and anger conspicuously absent from her voice, speaking in that reasonable tone of debate which seems to lay a compulsion of reasonableness upon others. The question sounded genuine, as if, for plain human curiosity's sake, she would like to know if there could be two points of view about Anthony.

Marie-Aimée raised her face, all sickened protest and repudiation. "Everything you have said, and have made to sound so heinous, might, differently worded, fit perfectly into one's description of a nice normal boy. And is a boy unworthy of one's love? Say that Anthony Bronson remained all his life a boy, and who will contradict you? It is the same nature, that reaches out so simply toward what pleases him, that wants what it wants without thought of afterwards. But you must add to this, in his case, that sort of native kingliness of the great, who have never a doubt but theirs is the first right, and that others will be glad to yield for them. He has never meant to hurt anyone, one could not be further from cruel. He merely, in order to go where he would be, must drive steadily onward. He would be sorry if his wheels crushed anything, but that it should stop him could never enter his brain. Call it an incapacity, it is that of most strong, healthy big boys."

"It must have likewise characterized arboreal man."

"Don't, Mrs. Bronson!" Marie-Aimée cried, and rose whole-heartedly at last to the encounter, bringing to bear the most piercing of her arguments, "He is not happy now! He wants things as much as ever, but he no longer can get what he wants. He can't sing any more. His voice is gone. You think he doesn't care, but he does, indeed, he does! He feels so dreadfully out of it. The public is ungrateful. His friends are not yours, they scarcely any longer seem his own; your friends are not his; Everything has turned out wrong. Don't sneer at him. Nothing can brighten his life to what it was before. And he feels helpless against it, just as the boy we were speaking of would feel. Oh, he is blue--blue! You have not made him happy!"

"Has he made me happy?"

"He has meant to!" Marie-Aimée said earnestly. "Your quarrel is with his whole manner of being. One must take him as he is."

"Yes! And whatever he is is to be enough, so he thinks in his calm Jovian babyhood. How could he but satisfy any woman? How should any but feel honored to be his servant and worshipper? the great, heavy, self-pleased, all-sufficient Male!"

"You married him!"

"You are right. My stupidity deserves exactly what I have got. But I didn't come here to speak of myself, or to complain of him. It has been vulgar enough, as it is. I beg your pardon and I beg you to believe, Miss Nevers, that I speak to no one--no one, I assure you--as I have spoken to you. I go my way, with my chin high, my eyes well above the heads of the scandal-mongering crowd. It was by accident I discovered his renewed visits to you; and the brazenness, the heartlessness of it, revolted even me, prepared for anything, God knows, in the way of calm, colossal selfishness. My first thought was the most common one--that he acted from pique, that his vanity could not quite stand having it blazed abroad that you had recovered. But I know him better than that, after all. I am just. It was simpler. It was nothing more than a big dog wanting to be petted. He felt in need of consolation, sympathy, condolence, some one to talk to about me--oh, I know it--and never stopping a moment to think of you, poor woman, he turned to the quarter where he felt surest of getting it. But what puzzles me beyond everything is that he should have guessed right. Pardon me, Marie-Aimée, but in those three years at the convent, what were you doing? You seem to have wasted your time. What was that far-spread anecdote that you had come out because it was all over, lived down, you were cured, immune? Did others make up this fable, or did you?"

"Ah, don't speak of it! I was in good faith."

"You really thought it was all done with? You honestly felt sure of yourself?"

"But certainly! More than sure! How otherwise would I have come back?"

"And then?"

"Then at the rehearsal for Mrs. MacDougal's charity concert I met him again. He had consented to sing, you remember, but afterwards withdrew. And I had scarcely more than seen him, when the three years might as well not have been. But to whom--dear me, to whom am I saying this?"

Mrs. Bronson leaned forward till she could touch Marie-Aimée's knee. "It's all right," she said gently. "Don't mind because it's I. I can understand," and as she saw tears springing into Marie-Aimée's eyes, she patted the knee, and murmured in her most soothing note, "You poor darling!"