Chapter 8

Kate flung her long body into a Morris chair and prepared to listen. Marna looked about her as if seeking a chair to satisfy her whim, and, finding none, sank upon the floor before the blaze. She leaned back, resting on one slight arm, and turned her dream-haunted face glowing amid its dark maze of hair, till her eyes could hold those of her friend.

"Oh, Kate!" she breathed, and made her great confession in those two words.

"A man!" cried Kate, alarmed. "Now!"

"Now! Last night. And to-day. It was like lightning out of a clear sky. I've seen him often, and now I remember it always warmed me to see him, and made me feel that I wasn't alone. For a long time, I believe, I've been counting him in, and being happier because he was near. But I didn't realize it at all--till last night."

"You saw him after the opera?"

"Only for half a minute, at the door of my house. We only said a word or two. He whispered he had lost me--that I had killed him. Oh, I don't remember what he said. But we looked straight at each other. I didn't sleep all night, and when I lay awake I tried to think of the wonderful fact that I had made my debut, and that it wasn't a failure, at any rate. But I couldn't think about that, or about my career. I couldn't hold to anything but the look in his eyes and the fact that I was to see him to-day. Not that he said so. But we both knew. Why, we couldn't have lived if we hadn't seen each other to-day."

"And you did?"

"Oh, we did. He called me up on the telephone about two o'clock, and said he had waited as long as he could, and that he'd been walking the floor, not daring to ring till he was sure that I'd rested enough after last night. So I told him to come, and he must have been just around the corner, for he was there in a minute. I wanted him to come in and sit down, but he said he didn't believe a house could hold such audacity as his. So we went out on the street. It was cold and bleak. The Midway was a long, gray blankness. I felt afraid of it, actually. All the world looked forbidding to me--except just the little place where I walked with him. It was as if there were a little warm beautiful radius in which we could keep together, and live for each other, and comfort each other, and keep harm away."

"Oh, Marna! And you, with a career before you! What do you mean to do?"

"I don't know what to do. We don't either of us know what to do. He says he'll go mad with me on the stage, wearing myself out, the object of the jealousy of other women and of love-making from the men. He--says it's a profanation. I tried to tell him it couldn't be a profanation to serve art; but, Kate, he didn't seem to know what I meant. He has such different standards. He wanted to know what I was going to do when I was old. He said I'd have no real home, and no haven of love; and that I'd better be the queen of his home as long as I lived than to rule it a little while there on the stage and then--be forgotten. Oh, it isn't what he said that counts. All that sounds flat enough as I repeat it. It's the wonder of being with some one that loves you like that and of feeling that there are two of you who belong--"

"How do you know you belong?" asked Kate with sharp good sense. "Why, bright one, you've been swept off your feet by mere--forgive me--by mere sex."

That glint of the eyes which Kate called Celtic flashed from Marna.

"Mere sex!" she repeated. "Mere sex! You're not trying to belittle that, are you? Why, Kate, that's the beginning and the end of things. What I've always liked about you is that you look big facts in the face and aren't afraid of truth. Sex! Why, that's home and happiness and all a woman really cares for, isn't it?"

"No, it isn't all she cares for," declared Kate valiantly. "She cares for a great many other things. And when I said mere sex I was trying to put it politely. Is it really home and lifelong devotion that you two are thinking about, or are you just drunk with youth and--well, with infatuation?"

Marna turned from her to the fire.

"Kate," she said, "I don't know what you call it, but when I looked in his eyes I felt as if I had just seen the world for the first time. I have liked to live, of course, and to study, and it was tremendously stirring, singing there before all those people. But, honestly, I can see it would lead nowhere. A few years of faint celebrity, an empty heart, a homeless life--then weariness. Oh, I know it. I have a trick of seeing things. Oh, he's the man for me, Kate. I realized it the moment he pointed it out. We could not be mistaken. I shall love him forever and he'll love me just as I love him."

"By the way," said Kate, "who is he? Someone from the opera company?"

"Who is he? Why, he's George Fitzgerald, of course."

"Mrs. Dennison's nephew?"

"Certainly. Who else should it be?"

"Why, he's a pleasant enough young man--very cheerful and quite intelligent--but, Marna--"

Marna leaped to her feet.

"You're not in a position to pass judgment upon him, Kate. How can you know what a wonderful soul he has? Why, there's no one so brave, or so humble, or so sweet, or with such a worship for women--"

"For you, you mean."

"Of course I mean for me. You don't suppose I'd endure it to have him worshiping anybody else, do you? Oh, it's no use protesting. I only hope that Mrs. Barsaloux won't."

"Yes, doesn't that give you pause? Think of all Mrs. Barsaloux has done for you; and she did it with the understanding that you were to go on the stage. She was going to get her reward in the contribution you made to art."

Marna burst into rippling laughter.

"I'll give her something better than art, Kate Crosspatch. I'll give her a home--and I'll name my first girl after her."

"Marna!" gasped Kate. "You do go pretty fast for a little thing."

"Oh, I'm Irish," laughed Marna. "We Irish are a very old people. We always knew that if you loved a man, you had to have him or die, and that if you had him, you'd love to see the look of him coming out in your sons and daughters."

Suddenly the look of almost infantile blitheness left her face. The sadness which is inherent in the Irish countenance spread over it, like sudden mist over a landscape. The ancient brooding aspect of the Celts was upon her.

"Yes," she repeated, "we Irish are very old, and there is nothing about life--or death--that we do not know."

Kate was not quite sure what she meant, but with a sudden impulse she held out her arms to the girl, who, with a low cry, fled to them. Then her bright bravery melted in a torrent of tears.

XI

They had met like flame and wind. It was irrational and wonderful and conclusive. But after all, it might not have come to quite so swift a climax if Marna, following Kate's advice, had not confided the whole thing to Mrs. Barsaloux.

Now, Mrs. Barsaloux was a kind woman, and one with plenty of sentiment in her composition. But she believed that there were times when Love should not be given the lead. Naturally, it seemed to her that this was one of them. She had spent much money upon the education of this girl whom she had "assumed," as Marna sometimes playfully put it. Nothing but her large, active, and perhaps interfering benevolence and Mama's winning and inexplicable charm held the two together, and the very slightness of their relationship placed them under peculiar obligations to each other.

"It's ungrateful of you," Mrs. Barsaloux explained, "manifestly ungrateful! It's your rôle to love nothing but your career." She was not stern, merely argumentative.

"But didn't you expect me ever to love any one?" queried Marna.

Mrs. Barsaloux contemplated a face and figure made for love from the beginning, and delicately ripened for it, like a peach in the sun.

"But you could have waited, my dear girl. There's time for both the love and the career."

Marna shook her head slowly.

"George says there isn't," she answered with an irritating sweetness. "He says I'm not to go on the stage at all. He says--"

"Don't 'he says' me like that, Marna," cried her friend. "It sounds too unutterably silly. Here you are with a beautiful talent--every one agrees about that--and a chance to develop it. I've made many sacrifices to give you that chance. Very well; you've had your trial before the public. You've made good. You could repay yourself and me for all that has been involved in your development, and you meet a man and come smiling to me and say that we're to throw the whole thing over because 'he says' to."

Marna made no answer at all, but Mrs. Barsaloux saw her settle down in the deep chair in which she was sitting as if to huddle away from the storm about to break over her.

"She isn't going to offer any resistance," thought the distressed patron with dismay. "Her mind is completely made up and she's just crouching down to wait till I'm through with my private little hurricane."

So, indeed, it proved. Mrs. Barsaloux felt she had the right to say much, and she said it. Marna may or may not have listened. She sat shivering and smiling in her chair, and when it was fit for her to excuse herself, she did, and walked out bravely; but Mrs. Barsaloux noticed that she tottered a little as she reached the door. She did not go to her aid, however.

"It's an infatuation," she concluded. "I must treat her as if she had a violent disease and take care of her. When people are delirious they must be protected against themselves. It's a delirium with her, and the best thing I can do is to run off to New York with her. She can make her next appearance when the opera company gets there. I'll arrange it this afternoon."

She refrained from telling Marna of her plans, but she went straight to the city and talked over the situation with her friend the impresario. He seemed anything but depressed. On the contrary, he was excited--even exalted.

"Spirit her away, madam," he advised. "Of course she will miss her lover horribly, and that will be the best thing that can happen to her. Why did not the public rise to her the other night? Not because she could not sing: far from it. If a nightingale sings, then Miss Cartan does. But she left her audience a little cold. Let us face the facts. You saw it. We all saw it. And why? Because she was too happy, madam; too complaisant; too uninstructed in the emotions. Now it will be different. We will take her away; we will be patient with her while she suffers; afterward she will bless us, for she will have discovered the secret of the artist, and then when she opens her little silver throat we shall have SONG."

Mrs. Barsaloux, with many compunctions, and with some pangs of pure motherly sympathy, nevertheless agreed.

"If only he had been a man above the average," she said, as she tearfully parted from the great man, "perhaps it would not have mattered so much."

The impresario lifted his eyebrows and his mustaches at the same time and assumed the aspect of a benevolent Mephistopheles.

"The variety of man, madam," he said sententiously, "makes no manner of difference. It is the tumult in Miss Marna's soul which I hope we shall be able to utilize"--he interrupted himself with a smile and a bow as he opened the door for his departing friend--"for the purposes of art."

Mrs. Barsaloux sat in the middle of her taxi seat all the way home, and saw neither street, edifice, nor human being. She was looking back into her own busy, confused, and frustrated life, and was remembering certain things which she had believed were buried deep. Her heart misgave her horribly. Yet to hand over this bright singing bird, so exquisite, so rare, so fitted for purposes of exposition, to the keeping of a mere male being of unfortunate contiguity, to permit him to carry her into the seclusion of an ordinary home to wait on him and regulate her life according to his whim, was really too fantastic for consideration. So she put her memories and her tendernesses out of sight and walked up the stairs with purpose in her tread.

* * * * *

She meant to "have it out" with the girl, who was, she believed, reasonable enough after all.

"She's been without her mother for so long," she mused, "that it's no wonder she's lacking in self-control. I must have the firmness that a mother would have toward her. It would be the height of cruelty to let her have her own way in this."

If the two could have met at that moment, it would have changed the course of both their lives. But a trifle had intervened. Marna Cartan had gone walking; and she never came back. Only, the next day, radiantly beautiful, with fresh flowers in her hands, Marna Fitzgerald came running in begging to be forgiven. She tried to carry the situation with her impetuosity. She was laughing, crying, pleading. She got close to her old friend as if she would enwrap her in her influence. She had the veritable aspect of the bride. Whatever others might think regarding her lost career, it was evident that she believed the great hour had just struck for her. Her husband was with her.

"Haven't you any apology to make, sir?" poor Mrs. Barsaloux cried to him. He looked matter-of-fact, she thought, and as if he ought to be able to take a reasonable view of things. But she had misjudged. Perhaps it was his plain, everyday, commercial garments which deceived her and made her think him open to week-day arguments; for at that moment he was really a knight of romance, and at Mrs. Barsaloux's question his eyes gleamed with unsuspected fires.

"Who could be so foolish as to apologize for happiness like ours?" he demanded.

"Aren't you going to forgive us, dear?" pleaded Marna.

But Mrs. Barsaloux couldn't quite stand that.

"You sound like an old English comedy, Marna," she said impatiently. "You're of age; I'm no relation to you; you've a perfect right to be married. Better take advantage of being here to pack your things. You'll need them."

"You mean that I'm not expected to come here again, _tante_?"

"I shall sail for France in a week," said Mrs. Barsaloux wearily.

"For France, _tante_? When did you decide?"

"This minute," said the lady, and gave the married lovers to understand that the interview was at an end.

Marna went weeping down the street, holding on to her George's arm.

"If she'd been Irish, she'd have cursed me," she sobbed, "and then I'd have had something to go on, so to speak. Perhaps I could have got her to take it off me in time. But what are you going to do with a snubbing like that?"

"Oh, leave it for the Arctic explorers to explain. They're used to being in below-zero temperature," George said with a troubled laugh. "I'm sure I can't waste any time thinking about a woman who could stand out against you, Marna, the way you are this day, and the way you're looking."

"But, George, she thinks I'm a monster."

"Then there's something wrong with her zoology. You're an--"

"Don't call me an angel, dear, whatever you do! There are some things I hate to be called--they're so insipid. If any one called me an angel I'd know he didn't appreciate me. Come, let's go to Kate's. She's my court of last appeal. If Kate can't forgive me, I'll know I've done wrong."

* * * * *

Kate was never to forget that night. She had come in from a day of difficult and sordid work. For once, the purpose back of all her toil among the people there in the great mill town was lost sight of in the sheer repulsiveness of the tasks she had had to perform. The pathos of their temptations, the terrific disadvantages under which they labored, their gray tragedies, had some way lost their import. She was merely a dreadfully fagged woman, disgusted with evil, with dirt and poverty. She was at outs with her world and impatient with the suffering involved in the mere living of life.

Moreover, when she had come into the house, she had found it dark as usual. The furnace was down, and her own room was cold. But she had set her teeth together, determined not to give way to depression, and had made her rather severe toilet for dinner when word was brought to her by the children's nurse that Dr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald desired to see her. For a moment she could not comprehend what that might mean; then the truth assailed her, took her by the hand, and ran her down the stairs into Mama's arms.

"But it's outrageous," she cried, hugging Marna to her. "How could you be so willful?"

"It's glorious," retorted Marna. "And if I ever was going to be willful, now's the time."

"Right you are," broke in George. "What does Stevenson say about that? 'Youth is the time to be up and doing.' You're not going to be severe with us, Miss Barrington? We've been counting on you."

"Have you?" inquired Kate, putting Marna aside and taking her husband by the hand. "Well, you are your own justification, you two. But haven't you been ungrateful?"

Marna startled her by a bit of Dionysian philosophy.

"Is it ungrateful to be happy?" she demanded. "Would anybody have been in the right who asked us to be unhappy? Why don't you call us brave? Do you imagine it isn't difficult to have people we love disapproving of us? But you know yourself, Kate, if we'd waited forty-eight hours, I'd have been dragged off to live with my career."

She laughed brightly, sinking back in her chair and throwing wide her coat. Kate looked at her appraisingly, and warmed in the doing of it.

"You don't look as if you were devoted to a career, she admitted.

"Oh," sighed Fitzgerald, "I only just barely got her in time!"

"And now what do you propose doing?"

"Why, to-morrow we shall look for a place to live--for a home."

"Do you mean a flat?" asked Kate with a flick of satire.

"A flat, or anything. It doesn't matter much what."

"Or where?"

"It will be on the West Side," said the matter-of-fact Fitzgerald.

"And who'll keep house for you? Must you find servants?"

"Why, Kate, we're dreadfully poor," cried Marna excitedly, as if poverty were a mere adventure. "Didn't you know that? I shall do my own work."

"Oh, we've both got to work," added Fitzgerald.

He didn't say he was sorry Marna had to slave with her little white hands, or that he realized that he was doing a bold--perhaps an impious--thing in snatching a woman from her service to art to go into service for him. Evidently he didn't think that way. Neither minded any sacrifice apparently. The whole of it was, they were together. Suddenly, they seemed to forget Kate. They stood gazing at each other as if their sense of possession overwhelmed them. Kate felt something like angry resentment stir in her. How dared they, when she was so alone, so weary, so homeless?

"Will you stay to dinner with me?" she asked with something like asperity.

"To dinner?" they murmured in vague chorus. "No, thanks."

"But where do you intend to have dinner?"

"We--we haven't thought," confessed Marna.

"Oh, anywhere," declared Fitzgerald.

Marna rose and her husband buttoned her coat about her.

They smiled at Kate seraphically, and she saw that they wanted to be alone, and that it made little difference to them whether they were sitting in a warm room or walking the windy streets. She kissed them both, with tears, and said:--

"God bless you."

That seemed to be what they wanted. They longed to be blessed.

"That's what Aunt Dennison said," smiled Fitzgerald.

Then Kate realized that now the exotic Marna would be calling the completely domesticated Mrs. Dennison "aunt." But Marna looked as if she liked that, too. It was their hour for liking everything. As Kate opened the outer door for them, the blast struck through her, but the lovers, laughing, ran down the stairs together. They were, in their way, outcasts; they were poor; the future might hold bitter disillusion. But now, borne by the sharp wind, their laughter drifted back like a song.

Kate wrapped her old coat about her and made her solitary way to Mrs. Dennison's depressed Caravansary.

XII

There was no question about it. Life was supplying Kate Barrington with a valuable amount of "data." On every hand the emergent or the reactionary woman offered herself for observation, although to say that Kate was able to take a detached and objective view of it would be going altogether too far. The truth was, she threw herself into every friend's trouble, and she counted as friends all who turned to her, or all whom she was called upon to serve.

A fortnight after Mama's marriage, an interesting episode came Kate's way. Mrs. Barsaloux had introduced to the Caravansary a Mrs. Leger whom she had once met on the steamer on her way to Brindisi, and she had invited her to join her during a stay in Chicago. Mrs. Barsaloux, however, having gone off to France in a hot fit of indignation, Mrs. Leger presented herself with a letter from Mrs. Barsaloux to Mrs. Dennison. That hospitable woman consented to take in the somewhat enigmatic stranger.

That she was enigmatic all were quick to perceive. She was beautiful, with a delicate, high-bred grace, and she had the manner of a woman who had been courted and flattered. As consciously beautiful as Mary Morrison, she bore herself with more discretion. Taste governed all that she said and did. Her gowns, her jewels, her speech were distinguished. She seemed by all tokens an accomplished worldling; yet it was not long before Kate discovered that it was anything but worldly matters which were consuming her attention.

She had come to Chicago for the purpose of adjusting her fortune,--a large one, it appeared,--and of concluding her relations with the world. She had decided to go into a convent, and had chosen one of those numerous sisterhoods which pass their devotional days upon the bright hill-slopes without Naples. She refrained from designating the particular sisterhood, and she permitted no discussion of her motives. She only said that she had not been born a Catholic, but had turned to Mother Church when the other details of life ceased to interest her. She was a widow, but she seemed to regard her estate with quiet regret merely. If tragedy had entered her life, it must have been subsequent to widowhood. She had a son, but it appeared that he had no great need of her. He was in the care of his paternal grandparents, who were giving him an education. He was soon to enter Oxford, and she felt confident that his life would be happy. She was leaving him an abundance; she had halved her fortune and was giving her share to the convent.

If she had not been so exquisite, so skilled in the nuances of life, so swift and elusive in conversation, so well fitted for the finest forms of enjoyment, her renunciation of liberty would not have proved so exasperating to Kate. A youthful enthusiasm for religion might have made her step understandable. But enthusiasm and she seemed far apart. Intelligent as she unquestionably was, she nevertheless seemed to have given herself over supinely to a current of emotions which was sweeping her along. She looked both pious and piteous, for all of her sophisticated manner and her accomplishments and graces, and Kate felt like throwing a rope to her. But Mrs. Leger was not in a mood to seize the rope. She had her curiously gentle mind quite made up. Though she was still young,--not quite eighteen years older than her son,--she appeared to have no further concern for life. To the last, she was indulging in her delicate vanities--wore her pearls, walked in charming foot-gear, trailed after her the fascinating gowns of the initiate, and viewed with delight the portfolios of etchings which Dr. von Shierbrand chanced to be purchasing.