Part 4

I looked up number five--Liza Bonaventura.

I murmured it, testing the sound. Miss Harris eyed me with attention, rapping gently on her teeth with the pen handle.

“Is it too long?”

I wasn’t sure.

“Of course when I got to be famous it would be just Bonaventura. And that’s a good word--might bring me luck.”

“Why don’t you use your own name?”

She laughed, throwing back her head so that I could see the inside of her mouth, pink and fresh like a healthy kitten’s.

“Lizzie Harris on a program--never!” Then suddenly serious, “I like Bonaventura--‘Did you _hear_ Bonaventura last night in _Tannhäuser_’--strong accent on the hear. ‘How superb Bonaventura was in _Carmen_.’ It has a good ring. And then I’ve got a little dribble of Spanish blood in me.”

“You look Spanish.”

She nodded:

“My grandmother. She was a Spanish Californian--Estradilla. They owned the Santa Caterina Rancho near San Luis Obispo. My grandfather was a sailor on a Yankee ship that used to touch there and get hides and tallow. He deserted and married her and got with her a strip of the rancho as big as Long Island. And their illustrious descendant lives in two rooms and a kitchenette.”

She laughed and jumped up.

“I’m going to sing for you and you’ll see if Bonaventura doesn’t go well with my style.”

She swept the hat off the piano stool and seated herself. The walls of the room are covered with an umber brown burlap which made an admirable background for her long body clothed in the rich sinuous crêpe and her pale profile uplifted on an outstretched white neck.

“I’ll sing you something that I do rather well--Elizabeth’s going to be one of my great rôles,” she said, and struck a chord.

It was _Dich Theure Halle_ and she sang it badly. I don’t mean that she flatted or breathed in the wrong place, but she sang without feeling, or even intelligence. Also her voice was not especially remarkable. It was full, but coarse and hard, and rolled round in the small room with the effect of some large unwieldly thing, trying to find its way out. What struck me as most curious was that the rich and noble quality one felt in her was completely lacking in her performance. It was commonplace, undistinguished. No matter how objectionable Mr. Masters might be I could not but feel he was right.

When she had finished she wheeled suddenly round on the stool and said quickly:

“Let me see your face.”

“It’s--it’s a fine voice,” I faltered, “so full and--er--rich.”

She paid no attention to my words, but sent a piercing look over my embarrassed countenance. Her own clouded and she drew back as if I had hurt her.

“You don’t like it,” she said in a low voice.

“Why do you say that--what nonsense. Haven’t I just said--”

“Oh, keep quiet,” she interrupted roughly, and giving the piano stool a jerk was twirled away from me into a profile position. She looked so gloomy that I was afraid to speak.

There was a moment’s pause, during which I felt exceedingly uncomfortable and she sat with her head bowed, staring at the floor. Then she gave a deep sigh and murmured.

“It’s so crushing--you all look the same.”

“Who?”

“Everybody who knows. And I’ve worked so hard and I’m eaten up,” she struck her breast with her clenched fist, “eaten up in here with the longing to succeed.”

The gesture was magnificent, and with the frowning brows and somber expression she was the Tragic Muse. If she could only get _that_ into her voice!

“I’ve been at it two years, with Vignorol--you know him? I’ve learnt Italian and German, and nearly all the great mezzo rôles. And the polite ones say what you say, and the ones who don’t care about your feelings say ‘A good enough voice, but no temperament.’” She gave her body a vicious jerk and the stool twirled her round to me. “How in heaven’s name can I get temperament?”

“Well--er--time--and--er--experience and sorrow--” I had come up-stairs to give advice, but not on the best manner of acquiring temperament.

She cut me short.

“I’ve had experience, barrels of it. And time? I’m twenty-six now--am I to wait till I’m seventy? And sorrow? All my relations are dead--not that I care much, most of them I didn’t know and those I did I didn’t like. Shall I go and stand on the corner of Forty-second Street and Broadway and clamor for sorrow?”

“It’ll come without clamoring,” I said. Upon that subject I can speak with some authority.

“I wish it would hurry up. I want to arrive, I want to be a great prima donna. I _will_ be a great prima donna. I _will_ sing into that big dark auditorium and see those thousands of faces staring up at me and make those thousands of dull fat pigs of people sit up and come to life.”

She rose and walked to the window, pushed it up and picking up one of the oranges, threw it out.

“I hope that’ll hit some one on the head,” she said, banging the window down.

“Have you had the public’s opinion on your singing?” I asked, feeling it best to ignore her eccentricities of temper.

“Yes. I was in a concert in Philadelphia a year ago, with some others.”

“And what was the verdict?”

She gave a bitter smile.

“The critics who knew something and took themselves seriously, said ‘A large coarse voice and no temperament.’ The critics who were just men said nothing about the singing and a good deal about the singer’s looks--” She paused, then added with sulky passion, “Damn my looks.”

She was going to the window again and I hastily interposed.

“Don’t throw out any more oranges. You might hit a baby lying in its carriage and break its nose.”

Though she did not give any evidence of having heard, she wheeled from the window and turned back to me.

“It’s been nothing but disappointments--sickening disappointments. I wish I’d been left where I was. Three years ago in California I was living in a little town on the line between Los Angeles and San Francisco. I sang in the church and got ambitious and went up to San Francisco. They made a good deal of fuss over me--said another big singer was going to come out of California. I was just beginning to wonder if I really _was_ some one, when one of those scratch little opera companies that tour South America and Mexico came up. Masters, Jack--the man you met here the other night--was managing it. I got an introduction and sang for him, and you ought to have heard him go up in the air. Bang--pouf!--like dynamite! Not the way he is now--oh, no--”

She stopped. The memory of those days of encouragement and promise seemed to shut off her voice. She stared out of the window as if she were looking back at them, her face set in an expression of brooding pain. I thought she was going to cry, but when she spoke her voice showed an angry petulance far from the mood of tears.

“I’d never have got such big ideas if he hadn’t given them to me. I must come on here and study, not waste myself on little towns and little people. Go for the big prize--that was what _I_ was made for.” She suddenly turned on me and flung out what seemed the bitterest of her grievance, “He made me do it. _He_ insisted on my coming--got Vignorol to take me, paid for my lessons. It’s his doing, all this.”

So _that_ was the situation. That explained it all. I was immensely relieved. She might be in love with him, but if he was not in love with her (and he certainly gave no evidences of it), it would be easy to get rid of him. He was frankly discouraged about her, would probably hail with relief any means of escaping the continued expense of her lessons. The instinct that had brought me up-stairs _was_ a good one after all.

“Couldn’t you”--I felt my way carefully for the ground was delicate--“couldn’t you put yourself in some one else’s hands. Get some one else to--I don’t know what the word is--”

She eyed me with an intent watching look that was disconcerting.

“Be my backer?” she suggested.

I nodded.

“No, I could not,” she said, in a loud violent tone. “Go back on the man who tried to make me, dragged me out of obscurity and gave me my chance? Umph!” She turned away with a scornful movement: “That would be a great thing to do.”

The change was so quick that it bewildered me. The cudgel with which she had been beating Masters was now wielded in his defense. The ground was even more delicate than I had thought, and silence was wisdom till I saw what was coming next. I rose from the rocky cushions and moved to the window.

The light in the little room had grown dim, the keys of the piano gleaming whitely from their dusky corner. With a deep sigh Miss Harris walked to the sofa, threw herself full length on it and lay still, a tall dark shape looking up at the ceiling.

I did not know what to say and yet I did not like to leave her so obviously wretched.

“Shall I light the gas?” I asked.

“No,” came the answer, “I like the dark.”

“Do you mind if I water the cyclamen? They’re dying.”

“I do. I want them to die.”

She clasped her hands under her head and continued to gaze at the ceiling. I moved to the door and then paused.

“Can I do anything for you?”

“Yes--” she shifted her glance and looked at me from beneath lowered lids. I again received the impression I had had the evening when I hooked her dress--that I was suddenly removed to an illimitable distance from her, had diminished to an undecipherable speck on her horizon. Never before had I met anybody who could so suddenly and so effectively strike from me my sense of value and importance.

“You can do something I’d like very much--go,” the voice was like a breath from the arctic.

I went, more amazed than angry. On the landing I stood wondering. What had I done to her? If I hadn’t been so filled up with astonishment I might have laughed at the contrast between my recent satisfaction in my mission and my inglorious dismissal.

My thoughts were dispersed by voices from below, resounding up through the cleft of the stairs. From a background of concerted sound, a series of short staccato phrases detached themselves:--

“My ’at! Look at it! Ruined! Smashed!”

I looked over the banister. On the floor below stood the count addressing Miss Bliss, Mr. Hamilton, Mr. Hazard and Mr. Weatherby, who stood ranged in their hallway in a single line, staring up at him. In one extended arm he held out a silk hat in a condition of collapse. Their four upturned faces were solemn and intent. Miss Bliss’ mouth was slightly open, Mr. Hamilton’s glasses glittered.

“What’s the matter?” I called, beginning to descend.

The count lifted a wrathful visage and shook the hat at me.

“Look at my ’at.”

A chorus rose from the floor below:

“Some one smashed his hat.”

“Threw an orange on it.”

“He says it came from here.”

“I think he’s wrong. It must have been the next house.”

“It was not,” cried the count, furious. “It was ’ere--_this_ ’ouse. I am about to enter and crash--it falls on me! From there--above,” he waved the hat menacingly at the top floor.

The quartet below chorused with rising hope.

“Who’s up there, Mrs. Drake?”

“Did any one throw an orange?”

“Is Miss Harris at home?”

I approached the count, alarmed at his hysterical Latin rage.

“Who has throw the orange?” he demanded, forgetting his English in his excitement.

“You can have it reblocked,” I said comfortingly.

The count looked as if I had insulted him.

“’Ere?” he cried, pointing to the ground at his feet as if a hatter and his block were sitting there. “Never. I brought it from Italy.”

From below the voices persisted:

“Were you with Miss Harris?” This from Mr. Hamilton.

“Yes, I was.”

“Did she throw an orange?” This from Mr. Hazard.

“Why should any one throw an orange out of a front window?”

Miss Bliss answered that.

“She might. She’s a singer and they do queer things. I knew a singer once and she threw a clock that wouldn’t go into a bathtub full of water.”

This seemed to convince the count of Miss Harris’ guilt.

“She did it. I must see ’er,” he cried, and tried to get past me. I spread my arms across the passage. If he and Miss Harris met in their several fiery states of mind, there would be a riot on the top floor.

I don’t like to tell lies, but I remembered Roger had said that a gentleman could lie to shield another. Why not a lady? Besides, in this case, I would shield two others, for I had no doubt if Count Delcati intruded on Miss Harris he would be worsted. She was quite capable of throwing the other oranges at him and the three-legged stool.

“Don’t be silly,” I said. “She didn’t throw it.”

The male portion of the lower floor chorused:

“I knew she didn’t.”

“She couldn’t have.”

“Why should she?”

The count, with maledictions on the country, the city, the street and the house, entered his room, the Westerners entered theirs and Mr. Hamilton ascended to his. He puffed by me on the stairs:--

“Ridiculous to accuse a lovely woman like Miss Harris of such a thing. We ought to deport these Italians. They’re a menace to the country.”

Miss Bliss alone lingered. She is a pretty, frowsy little thing who looks cold and half fed, and always wears a kimono jacket fastened at the neck with a safety pin. She waited till all the doors had banged, then looking up, hissed softly:

“She did it. I was looking out of my window and saw it coming down and it couldn’t have come from anywhere but her room.”

“Hush,” I said, leaning over the banister. “She did. It’s the artistic temperament.”

Miss Bliss, as a model--artist not cloak--needed no further explanation. With a low comprehending murmur she stole into her room.

VI

THE count and Miss Harris have met and all fear of battle is over. At the first encounter, which took place in my sitting-room, it was obvious that the young man was stricken. Since then he has seen her twice and has fallen in love--at least he says he has.

As soon as he felt sure of it he came in to tell me. So he said the other evening, sitting in the steamer chair Betty gave me to replace the one Mrs. Bushey took.

“You are a woman of sympathy,” he said, lighting his third cigarette, “and I knew you would understand.”

Numberless young men have told me of their love-affairs and always were sure I would understand. I think it’s because I listen so well.

I have a fire now. It was easier to buy coal than argue with Mrs. Bushey. The count stretched his legs toward it and smoked dreamily and I counted the cigarettes in the box. He smokes ten in an evening.

“She is most beautiful. I can find only one defect,” he murmured, “she is not thin enough.”

“Isn’t she?” I said, in my character of sympathetic woman, “I thought she was rather too thin.”

“Not for me,” answered the lover pensively; “no one could be too thin for me.”

He resumed his cigarette. It was nine and there were seven left. I calculated that they would last him till eleven.

“There was a lady in Rome I once knew,” he began in a tone of reminiscence, “thin like a match and so beautiful,” he extended his hand in the air, the first finger and thumb pressed together as if he might have been holding the match-like lady between them, “a blonde with brown eyes, immense eyes. Oh, _Dio mio!_” His voice trailed away into silence, swamped by a flood of memory.

“Were you in love with her, too?” I have noticed that the confiding young men expect the sympathetic woman to ask leading questions.

“Yes,” said the count gravely, “four years ago.”

“You must have been very young.”

Such remarks as this are out of character. They take me unawares and come from the American part of me--not the human universal part, but that which is individual and local.

“Oh, no, I was nineteen.” He went back to his memories. “She was all bones, but such beautiful bones. One winter she had a dress made of fur and she looked like an umbrella in it. This way,” he extended his hands and described two straight perpendicular lines in the air, “the same size all the way up. Wonderful!”

“Our young men don’t fall in love so early,” I said.

“They don’t fall in love at all,” replied the count, “neither do the women. They only flirt, all of them, except Miss Harris.”

“Doesn’t she flirt?”

I was stretching my sympathetic privileges a little too far. My excuse is curiosity, vulgar but natural. I had never before seen any one like Miss Harris and I wanted to get at the heart of her mystery.

“Flirt!” exclaimed the count. “Does a goddess flirt? That’s what she is. Think of it--in this new shiny country, in this city with telephones and policemen, in this sad street with the houses all built the same.” He sat upright and shook his cigarette at me. “She belongs where it is all sunshine and joy, and they dance and laugh and there is no business and nobody has a conscience.”

“Do you mean Ancient Greece or Modern Naples?”

The count made a vague sweeping gesture that left a little trail of smoke in the air.

“_N’importe!_ But not here. She is a pagan, a natural being, a nymph, a dryad. I don’t know what in your language--but oh, something beautiful that isn’t bothered with a soul.”

I started, Masters and the count, raw America and sophisticated Italy, converging toward the same point.

Before I could answer her voice sounded startlingly loud through the register. For the first moment I didn’t recognize the strain, then I knew it--“_Vissi d’arte, vissi d’amore_”--I have lived for art, I have lived for love. We looked at each other in surprised question as the impassioned song poured from the grating. It was as if she had heard us and this was her answer.

My knowledge of nymphs and dryads is small, but I feel confident if one of them had ever sung a modern Italian aria through a modern American register she could not have rendered it with less heart and soul than Miss Harris did.

Yesterday morning Betty telephoned me to come and lunch with her. Betty’s summons are not casual outbreaks of hospitality. There is always an underlying purpose in them, what a man I know who writes plays would call “a basic idea”. She is one of the few people who never troubles about meaningless formalities or superfluous small talk. It’s her way, and then she hasn’t time. That’s not just a phrase but a fact. Every hour of her day has its work, good work, well done. Only the poor know Betty’s private charities, only her friends the number of her businesslike benefactions.

Walking briskly down the avenue I wondered what was her basic idea this time. Sometimes it’s clothes: “There are some dresses on the bed. Look them over and take what you like. The gray’s rather good, but I think the pink would be more becoming. I can have it done over for you by my woman.” Sometimes it’s a reinvestment of part of my little capital suggested by Harry, a high interest and very safe. Once it was an attempt to marry me off. That was last autumn when I had just got back from Europe, to a man with mines from Idaho. When I grew tearful and reluctant she gave it up and shifted him--for he was too valuable to lose--to a poor relation of Harry’s.

We were at lunch when the basic idea began to rise to the surface, Betty at the head of the table, very tight and upright in purple cloth and chiffon, and little Constance, her eldest born, opposite me. Little Constance is an adorable child with a face like a flower and the manner of a timid mouse. She loves clothes and when I come leans against me looking me over and gently fingering my jewelry. She won’t speak until she has examined it to her satisfaction. At the table her steadfast gaze was diverted from me to a dish of glazed cherries just in front of her.

The entrée was being passed when Betty, helping herself, said:

“Harry’s just met a man from Georgia who is in cotton--not done up in it, his business.” She looked into the dish then accusingly up at the butler: “I said fried, not boiled, and I didn’t want cream sauce.”

The butler muttered explanations.

“Tell her it mustn’t happen again, no more cream sauce for lunch.” She helped herself, murmuring, “Really the most fattening thing one can eat.”

“Why do you eat it?” said little Constance, withdrawing her eyes from the cherries.

“Because I like to. Keep quiet, Constance. Mr. Albertson, that’s his name, is well-off, perfectly presentable and a widower.”

So it was matrimonial again.

“That’s very nice,” I replied meekly.

“We’ll have him to dinner some night next week and you to meet him.”

“Why do you ask me? He’d surely rather have some one younger and prettier.”

“It doesn’t matter what he’d rather have. I’ll telephone you when the day’s fixed.”

“Betty,” I murmured, looking at her pleadingly.

“Evie,” she returned firmly, “don’t be silly. The present situation’s got to come to an end some time.”

“It’ll never end.”

“Rubbish. There’s no sense in you scraping along this way in two rooms--”

“Remember the kitchenette.”

“In two rooms,” she went on, ignoring the kitchenette. “Of course I don’t want you to live in Georgia, but--”

Little Constance showed a dismayed face.

“Is Evie going to live in Georgia?”

Betty turned a stern glance on her.

“Constance, you’ll lunch up-stairs if you keep on interrupting.”

Constance was unaffected by the threat.

“When is she going?” she asked.

“Never,” I answered.

“I’m glad,” said little Constance, and seeing her mother’s glance averted, stole a cherry from the dish and hid it in her lap.

“From what Harry says, and he’s heard all about Mr. Albertson, he seems a perfectly fitting person, forty-five, of very good family and connections, and with an income of thirty thousand a year.”

“He’ll probably not like me,” I said hopefully.

“Oh, he will,” answered Betty with grim meaning, “I’ll see to that.”

I could hear her retailing my perfections to Mr. Albertson and my heart sank. Masterful, managing people crush me. If the man from Georgia liked me, as the man from Idaho did, I foresaw a struggle and I seem to have exhausted all my combative force in the year before my husband died. I looked at little Constance and caught her in the act of popping the cherry into her mouth. It was large and she had to force it into her cheek and keep it there like a squirrel with a nut. An expression of alarm was in her face, there was evidently less room for it than she had expected.

Betty went ruthlessly on.

“Your present way of living is absurd--you, made for marriage.”

I saw little Constance’s eyes grow round with curiosity, but she did not dare to speak.

“Made for companionship. If you were a suffragette or a writer, or trimmed hats or ran a tea-room, it would be different, but you’re a thoroughly domestic woman and ought to have a home.”

Little Constance bit the cherry with a sharp crunching sound. Betty looked at her.

“Constance, are you eating your lunch?”

Little Constance lifted her bib, held it to her mouth, and nodded over it.

The danger was averted. Betty turned to me.

“Marriage is the only life for a normal woman. Judkins, I’ll have some more of those sweetbreads.”

She helped herself, and under the rattle of the spoon and fork, little Constance crunched again, very carefully.

“And what is the good of living in the past. That’s over, thank heaven.”

“I’m not living in the past any more. Betty, I’m--I’m--raising my head.”

Betty looked sharply up from the sweetbreads, and I flinched under her glance. She cast an eye on Judkins, who was receding into the pantry, waited till he was gone, then said, in an eager hushed voice:

“Evie, don’t tell me there’s some one?”

Never have I been more discomfited by the directness of my Betty. I felt myself growing red to my new rat and was painfully aware that little Constance, now crunching rapidly, had fixed upon me the deadly stare of an interested child.

“Of course there isn’t. What nonsense. But time has passed and one doesn’t stay broken-hearted forever. I’m not _old_ exactly, and I’m--that is--it’s just as I said, I’m beginning to come alive again.”