CHAPTER X

THE BIRD IN THE BOX

It was mid-winter, season of the early-lighted lamp. The mortal part of old David had lain in the grave for a twelvemonth. It was as if Heaven itself sought to do honour to his innocence. Contributing flake after flake of snow with the aid of that great artisan the wind, it had built up a gleaming monument to his memory.

But in the city the office of the angels was performed with greater difficulty. Patiently they flung a mantle of snow over the island. They spread it smoothly in the streets, festooned it over the arches of the bridges, tucked it cunningly away in the bell towers of the churches. They mounted to the tops of the tallest buildings, laying delicate ridges at the window ledges; stooped to the dingiest basement doorways, carpeting them with white. Constantly the mantle was displaced, shovelled aside, melted away; and the city, despite her glitter of lights, was revealed. About every chimney-pot appeared a circle of dampness, along every roof edge hung a row of tears; from end to end of the city was the sound of dull dripping. Manhattan, like a woman of pleasure, wept her sins, and the angels, the angels tried in vain to render her seemly in the eyes of the good God.

The clock on the Grand Central tower was hard on five when the train bearing Simon Hart and his bride drew in at the station. They were returning from their prolonged wedding journey. Rachel adjusted her veil. Though her lips were steady, her eyes were full of tears. Within the hour they had whirled past the cemetery where her grandfather was buried.

Simon assisted her from the train; then, with his heavy and dignified gait, he led the way through the waiting-room.

"I wired my man to meet us. Ah, there he is!" he exclaimed, as they reached the drifted pavement, and he expanded his chest with complacency.

Peter with difficulty brought the horses to the curb and Simon, after Rachel had taken her place in the carriage, climbed in himself. Then he thrust his head through the door and ordered the man to drive home, but Rachel plucked his sleeve.

"No, no," she coaxed, "tell him to drive to the shop first."

Simon, though he altered the direction, when he settled himself at her side, looked at her with a slightly mocking expression.

"I want to get that fiddle from Mr. Mudge," she explained. "In his last letter he said he'd found one and I want Nora to take it to André when she goes. She's starting for Old Harbour at once and will call for the fiddle as soon as I let her know we're here. Then, too," with a side glance, "I'm anxious, if you must know, to learn from Mr. Mudge how that heat-measurer turned out."

"That is, you wish to learn whether he has heard anything from your enterprising inventor?"

"Well yes," she admitted; and they both laughed.

A few days before their marriage, Simon had chanced to remark that an instrument for measuring heat in the furnace in which metals were melted would be an important acquisition to the manufacturing jeweller. Thereupon Rachel had begged him to submit the problem to Emil St. Ives. To please her he had carried out her wish. Bearing a note from her to the inventor (a note in which she incidentally announced her matrimonial plans) Simon had sought out Emil whom he located readily through the lithographing firm of Just and Lawless. Emil without hesitation had promised the instrument within a week. Now three months had elapsed without a word from him and at any mention of the subject, Simon was wont to adopt a tone of raillery.

"Better give up your expectations along that line, my dear," he advised now; "that instrument will never materialize; St. Ives, judging by his look, is no more to be depended upon than the wild man from Borneo. Besides, if we stop at the shop, we'll miss the overture of the opera, and in Faust the overture is a consideration. Can't you restrain your eagerness until morning?"

But Rachel was not to be swayed: "Tell the man to drive faster."

Since her marriage her restlessness had disappeared; she was calmer, happier, and whenever she looked at her husband, whenever she surprised in his eyes an expression of doubt and longing, affection rose in her heart. The fact that he did not seek to interfere with her strange friendships filled her with gratitude.

The carriage stopped before the jewellery establishment and the door was opened to them by a boy in uniform. In the shop the electric bulbs were shedding a soft radiance on the glass cases filled with gems. Rachel had been there several times, but this was her first visit since her marriage. Now she experienced a thrill of pleasure as she gazed about her with the curiosity that animates a woman in such a place. The quiet and subdued elegance of the accessories charmed her, and she cast a glance at her husband. The star sapphires, the black opals, the diamonds, arranged on squares of black velvet, lent him something of their own lustre.

A clerk took the news of their arrival to Victor Mudge and a moment later they were ushered into the workshop in the rear of the elaborate showrooms. Here were machines for drilling holes through pearls, a sink for washing the finished jewellery, a little forge where gold was melted in crucibles. All the workmen had gone home except Victor who often remained until late. Now he hobbled forward with a string of seed pearls and a needle in his hands.

One of Victor's legs was shorter than the other by reason of a fall, and as he walked he swayed like a little dry tree creaking in a breeze; one felt he had no leaves. He was secretly well-pleased by his employer's marriage, but it was a peculiarity of his seldom to address him and to observe toward him a critical manner. Now, after greeting the couple, he looked at Rachel exclusively.

The old goldsmith, besides being something of a musician was an excellent judge of a violin, and at Simon's request he had obtained for Rachel the instrument she wished to give André.

"It's not just what I wanted," he explained, "but neither is it bad." And thereupon he drew the bow across the violin.

"Oh, how well you play!" she murmured, and then fell silent. She regretted that she had withheld from André news of her marriage; she should have told him at once. Now she planned to send him the violin as a sign of her unalterable affection. When Victor handed the instrument to Simon she aroused herself.

"And how is the _pyrometer_ coming on, Mr. Mudge?" she demanded with animation. "Have you heard anything yet from Mr. St. Ives?"

Victor shrugging his shoulders, once more took into his fingers the string of seed pearls and the needle. "He was in here about a week ago and left a drawing; and yesterday I received a letter from him saying he'd be in this evening to test something at the furnace. I'm waiting his pleasure now."

Rachel suddenly laughed.

When she and Simon left the shop, when they were once more in the carriage, she leaned to him impulsively and pressed her lips to his cheek.

That evening she heard her first opera. In order to justify Simon's pride in her and also to gratify her own innate sense of coquetry, she had arrayed herself to great advantage. Whence came this knowledge of the requirements of her new position, whence the pretty dignity of her bearing? Perhaps from her Canadian great-grandfather and his English wife; or this manner of hers may have been a free gift of the gods.

Excited by the strains of music that ascended from the orchestra, she deepened and increased in beauty and in the immediate neighbourhood of her husband's box became the centre of attention. But of this she was only imperfectly aware. If, by chance, she did intercept an admiring glance, she took it as a tribute to her dress of white satin, cunningly embroidered in a design of gold flowers, to her coiffure, her fan, her bouquet, to everything and anything but her own youthful countenance to which the force of her emotions was adding an indefinable attraction. She made a charming picture; her eyes half hidden by their lashes; her face, her shoulders, even her round arms and her hands radiant with a childlike happiness like sunshine.

Julia Burgdorf, who sat beside her, turning her head, looked at the girl with a half-curious, half-wistful smile in her magnificent eyes; while a man who was leaning on the back of her chair, an architect with a pointed beard and ridiculously small hands and feet, watched Rachel far more than he watched the stage. Simon Hart alone of those near her, seemed unaware of her triumph. Holding his opera glass in his gloved hands, he stared straight ahead of him with his weary, unreadable gaze; and whenever his young wife addressed a word to him, he leaned toward her sidewise without turning his head.

On the stage Farrar, as Marguerite, had just appeared at the window of her cottage after her farewell to Faust. Then as the light faded rapidly over the canvas trees, the spinning-wheel, the garden seat,--Faust in doublet and cloak, with a long feather in his cap, approached the casement, and there followed the poetic and sensuous fever of the inimitable duet, in which two voices, a man's and a woman's, sigh together those phrases of adoration, rapture supplication, of surprise, terror, yielding. When finally Marguerite's blond head sank on Faust's shoulder, the breath of their kiss seemed to pass over the entire house.

Rachel's hand, incased in its long glove, closed nervously on the edge of the box. She wore a look of troubled amazement; presently she began plucking at the flowers of her bouquet. After the "garden" scene, however, ashamed of her emotion and desiring to escape it, she ceased following closely what went on upon the stage and gave herself up to inspecting the audience.

The sight of the jewels on the heads and breasts of some ladies near her, chained her shy glances. She remembered Victor Mudge and the scene before the glowing forge. It was his cunning workmanship and the workmanship of others like him that made such marvels possible. And she rejoiced in the thought that her husband had an intimate knowledge of such treasures and had even written a book about them.

A sense of that which is artificial in life was diffused everywhere, and by and by, in that atmosphere of unreality she grew calmer. But when at the conclusion of the performance, she found herself emerging from the crowded auditorium, a part of a variegated stream of jewelled heads, bare shoulders and black coats, she was conscious once more that the irresistible mystery of the music had kindled in her nerves a poetic fever. Suddenly she experienced a fresh impulse of affection for Simon. "I owe all this to him," she thought; and from under the hood of her opera cloak she glanced at his pale profile as he guided her through the richly-dressed crowd.

In the foyer she discovered that she had dropped a little gold pin from her hair and Simon retraced his steps to search for it. They had parted some moments before from Julia Burgdorf and her companion. Now Rachel strove to remain where Simon had left her inside the great doors, but the surge of the crowd rendered this impossible. Jostled and carried forward by the moving throng, she presently found herself outside where the confusion was even greater.

From the sky the snow still drifted imperturbably. It glistened on the shining backs of the horses, on the black tops of the carriages, on the oilskin coats of the drivers, as, with a flourish of whips, they brought their carriages opposite the brilliantly-lighted entrance and received their precious loads.

Constantly the mellow stillness of the snowy night was disturbed by the ringing voices of the porters as they cried out the numbers of the carriages: "Two hundred and thirty-three!" "Three hundred and forty-eight!" (The voices were urgent, brutal, quarrelsome.) "Four hundred and forty-five!" All at once Rachel was startled by the call: "Mr. Hart's carriage!" And simultaneously a tall figure approached her. Lifting a cap from his rough locks the man looked closely into her face.

There was snow in his beard, on his hair, on his shoulders. He was smiling in a questioning fashion, and in his eyes, beneath their overhanging brows, was an inconceivable life and vitality.

A look of joy flashed into Rachel's face and she extended a hand which he took in both his. For a space, overwhelmed as two children, they could do nothing but look each at the other.

Then the harsh cry of a porter broke the spell. "Here, drive on, you," he cried angrily to the Harts' coachman.

But Emil St. Ives raised his voice. "Wait a moment!" he called out; then to Rachel,--"I'll keep a lookout for Mr. Hart;" and offering her his arm he conducted her to the carriage.

When she had taken her place in it, the coachman left the line of waiting vehicles and drove a few paces down the street. Emil followed. As he approached, Rachel succeeded in letting down the glass of the carriage door. She leaned with both arms on the ledge. Her cheeks showed a heightened colour, and her lips, parting in smiles, displayed her little teeth.

"I never expected--" she began unsteadily, "I didn't know that you cared for the opera."

Emil looked at her boldly and joyously, though at the same time with a hint of submission in his eyes. He had waited for her to speak, and at her words he drew a deep breath.

"The opera?" he repeated a little hoarsely. Then he shrugged his shoulders. "That old fellow in your--your husband's establishment, Mr. Mudge, told me that you were to be here to-night, and when I found after testing the heat-measuring device that it worked all right, I thought I'd just stroll round here."

"Then you have been successful?"

He smiled with a touch of the egotism she remembered. "You must see it to judge. You _will_ come and see it?" he demanded quickly.

She looked at him for some time without replying; she could not keep the delight out of her eyes. Suddenly she plucked her gaze away. "There's my husband; he doesn't see us. Signal to him, please," she cried.

When Simon Hart saw Emil St. Ives standing in the snow beside his wife's carriage, he approached, looking straight at Rachel. At Emil he scarcely glanced, though when the inventor opened the carriage door for him, he thanked him with a slight inclination of the head. When he was seated, Rachel put a hand on his arm.

"Simon, you know Mr. St. Ives, I believe?" she said. Her voice was unusually soft and she had gone a little pale. "He has come to tell us that the heat-measurer--the _pyrometer_, I should say," she corrected herself, "works perfectly."

"Ah it works, does it?" Simon repeated, and he looked coldly at Emil St. Ives. "I'm delighted to hear it," he added after a moment. "But I'll see you to-morrow at the factory and will talk over the matter then."

Rachel leaned in front of her husband impulsively. "I'll come too," she said, "for I'm going to claim half the credit of the invention. And then," she went on, "I want to hear all about your other work--everything. You know I met your wife one day. Please remember me to her," she called as the horses started.

"Well I found your pin," Simon said to her, and he handed her the tiny jewelled ornament.

"I'm glad of that;" then, while she replaced it in her hair, "why didn't you show more interest in that heat-measuring instrument?" she asked, looking at him from under her raised arms.

"Why his coming to notify us of the fact that he has succeeded with the device--if you'll excuse my saying so," with an ironical smile, "struck me as lacking in dignity, as a childish action, in fact."

"Of course it was childish," she cried, "but he's an inventor. And just think how hard he's worked to please you," she continued. "He's been weeks and weeks and rejected ever so many attempts; and when he told you--you were so lukewarm. 'I'll see you at the factory to-morrow'--that's what you said to him, just as if he were a little boy to be pushed aside. It wasn't kind of you," she finished.

A shadow passed over Simon Hart's face. "I think you exaggerate," he began, speaking in the slow distinct manner that was habitual with him. "However," he continued, "I'll endeavour to make up for my _lukewarmness_ to-morrow." He tried to pronounce the word in a jesting tone, but his whole aspect was serious. In a moment he leaned forward and taking one of her reluctant hands, breathing heavily, he held it against his lips.

The principal gift which he had intended for Rachel, he had ordered from Geneva, and it had arrived during their absence on the wedding journey. Now immediately on reaching the house, without giving her time to lay aside her wraps and stopping only to remove his own fur coat, he conducted her through the sombre hallway to the more lugubrious drawing-room.

"There, my dear," he said, pointing to a small object on the table, "that is for you." For he was anxious to bestow the gift as a peace-offering.

Rachel approached the table, which was constructed of solid mahogany in a heavy ugly pattern, and took the leather case in her hands.

"Open it, my love," he urged.

She sank down in a chair and opened the case.

It contained a Swiss watch set in the front of a small onyx box ornamented with garlands of wrought gold. Anything frailer, daintier, more coquettish than this little time-piece, fit property for a princess it would be difficult to imagine. It was a triumph of frivolity, a little bit of elegance in inlaid work and jewels. For wind the charming plaything and immediately, from beneath a gold shell on the cover, up sprang a tiny, buoyant bird, with ruby eyes and mother-of-pearl bill. Turning this way and that with flutterings of its variegated plumage, it trilled forth a song,--silver, clear, crystalline.

Grasping Simon's hand, Rachel dropped her head on his arm. And for some reason she clung to him vehemently and he felt that her whole body was trembling.

Congratulating himself that their reconciliation was complete, he caressed her hair. "It's a Swiss novelty," he explained when she looked up.

He had been leaning over the back of her chair, now he straightened his shoulders and took the morocco case in his hands.

"I used to know this Gellaine of Geneva," he marked. "He is one of the cleverest watchmakers in the world. And now, my dear," he added, "if you'll excuse me, I'll go and prepare myself a toddy; those boxes are such draughty places."

As he moved to the door Rachel followed him with a glance which seemed to beseech him not to leave her. Then, when the door had closed on him, as if she would rid herself of some importunate thought, she examined the little timepiece. The bird had disappeared from view beneath the golden shell. Turning the key twice she replaced the box on the table, and leaning on her elbows, stared at it. But her sight was turned inward.

The unexpected meeting with Emil had plunged her once more into chaos. One glance of his eyes and the curtains of her mind rolled upward. One intense, burning pressure of his hand laid to hers, and she knew life again in its fulness.

Like a lost thing, from out a prison-house, her soul reviewed its past. Across the deep, tragic abyss that yawned between Then and Now, she saw Emil as in the old blissful time at Pemoquod Point. In the effulgence of his courage, his ardour, his genius, he had been the sun and the light of her world. Her heart had called him "Master." And she had matched him for bravery as steel matches steel that has been tempered by the same heat in the forming.

"Together!" her heart had sung, pointing its flight to the farthest star of bliss.

And now.

She leaned forward, her head sunk between her outspread fingers, her gaze riveted on Simon's gift. Intently she watched the wee songster and listened to its tinkling song.

"The--bird--in--the--box!" She said the words slowly. Then repeated them; "_The bird in the box_!"

She lifted clenched hands to her throat.

Suddenly, as if crushed by something she had tried to evade, she put her head down on her arms.

Outside the snow continued to fall. It fell steadily, monotonously, as if seeking to cover with a white mantle something it were better to hide.