Chapter 19

When she went in to dinner, she saw instantly that Cyrilla too had been crying. Cyrilla did not look old, anything but that, indeed was not old and would not begin to be for many a year. Still, after thirty-five or forty a woman cannot indulge a good cry without its leaving serious traces that will show hours afterward. At sight of the evidences of Cyrilla's grief Mildred straightway forgot her resentment. There must have been some other cause for Cyrilla's peculiar conduct. No matter what, since it was not hardness of heart.

It was a sad, even a gloomy dinner. But the two women were once more in perfect sympathy. And afterward Mildred brought the Keith paper and asked Cyrilla's opinion. Cyrilla read slowly and without comment. At last she said:

"He got this from his mother, Lucia Rivi. Have you read her life?"

"No. I've heard almost nothing about her, except that she was famous."

"She was more than that," said Mrs. Brindley. "She was great, a great personality. She was an almost sickly child and girl. Her first attempts on the stage were humiliating failures. She had no health, no endurance, nothing but a small voice of rare quality." Cyrilla held up the paper. "This tells how she became one of the surest and most powerful dramatic sopranos that ever lived."

"She must have been a dull person to have been able to lead the kind of life that's described there," said Mildred.

"Only two kinds of persons could do it," replied Cyrilla--"a dull person--a plodder--and a genius. Middling people--they're the kind that fill the world, they're you and I, my dear--middling people have to fuss with the trifles that must be sacrificed if one is to do anything big. You call those trifles your freedom, but they're your slavery. And by sacrificing them the Lucia Rivis buy their freedom." Cyrilla looked at the paper with a heavy sigh. "Ah, I wish I had seen this when I was your age. Now, it's too late."

Said Mildred: "Would you seriously advise me to try that?"

Cyrilla came and sat beside her and put an arm around her. "Mildred," she said, "I've never thrust advice on you. I only dare do it now because you ask me, and because I love you. You must try it. It's your one chance. If you do not, you will fail. You don't believe me?"

In a tone that was admission, Mildred said: "I don't know."

"Keith has given you there the secret of a successful career. You'll never read it in any book, or get it from any teacher, or from any singer or manager or doctor. You must live like that, you must do those things or you will fail even in musical comedy. You would fail even as an actress, if you tried that, when you found out that the singing was out of the question."

Mildred was impressed. Perhaps she would have been more impressed had she not seen Keith and Mrs. Brindley in the taxi, Keith talking earnestly and Mrs. Brindley listening as if to an oracle. Said she: "Perhaps I'll adopt some of the suggestions."

Cyrilla shook her head. "It's a route to success. You must go the whole route or not at all."

"Don't forget that there have been other singers besides Rivi."

"Not any that I recall who weren't naturally powerful in every way. And how many of them break down? Mildred, please do put the silly nonsense about nerves and temperament and inspiration and overwork and weather and climate--put all that out of your head. Build your temple of a career as high and graceful and delicate as you like, but build it on the coarse, hard, solid rock, dear!"

Mildred tried to laugh lightly. "How Mr. Keith does hypnotize people!" cried she.

Mrs. Brindley's cheeks burned, and her eyes lowered in acute embarrassment. "He has a way of being splendidly and sensibly right," said she. "And the truth is wonderfully convincing--once one sees it." She changed the subject, and it did not come up--or, perhaps, come OUT again--before they went to bed. The next day Mildred began the depressing, hopeless search for a place to live that would be clean, comfortable, and cheap. Those three adjectives describe the ideal lodging; but it will be noted that all these are relative. In fact, none of the three means exactly the same thing to any two members of the human family. Mildred's notion of clean--like her notion of comfortable--on account of her bringing up implied a large element of luxury. As for the word "cheap," it really meant nothing at all to her. From one standpoint everything seemed cheap; from another, everything seemed dear; that is, too dear for a young woman with less than five hundred dollars in the world and no substantial prospect of getting a single dollar more--unless by hook and crook, both of which means she was resolved not to employ.

Never having earned so much as a single penny, the idea of anyone's giving her anything for what she might be able to do was disturbingly vague and unreal. On the other hand, looking about her, she saw scores of men and women, personally known to her to be dull of conversation, and not well mannered or well dressed or well anything, who were making livings without overwhelming difficulty. Why not Mildred Gower? In this view the outlook was not discouraging. "I'll no doubt go through some discomfort, getting myself placed. But somewhere and somehow I shall be placed--and how I shall revenge myself on Donald Keith!" His fascination for her had not been destroyed by his humiliating lack of belief in her, nor by his cold-hearted desertion at just the critical moment. But his conduct had given her the incentive of rage, of stung vanity--or wounded pride, if you prefer. She would get him back; she would force him to admit; she would win him, if she could--and that ought not to be difficult when she should be successful. Having won him, then-- What then? Something superb in the way of revenge; she would decide what, when the hour of triumph came. Meanwhile she must search for lodgings.

In her journeyings under the guidance of attractive advertisements and "carefully selected" agents' lists, she found herself in front of her first lodgings in New York--the house of Mrs. Belloc. She had often thought of the New England school-teacher, arrived by such strange paths at such a strange position in New York. She had started to call on her many times, but each time had been turned aside; New York makes it more than difficult to find time to do anything that does not have to be done at a definite time and for a definite reason. She was worn out with her futile trampings up and down streets, up and down stairs. Up the stone steps she went and rang the bell.

Yes, Mrs. Belloc was in, and would be glad to see her, if Miss Stevens would wait in the drawing-room a few minutes. She had not seated herself when down the stairs came the fresh, pleasantly countrified voice of Mrs. Belloc, inviting her to ascend. As Mildred started up, she saw at the head of the stairs the frank and cheerful face of the lady herself. She was holding together at the neck a thin silk wrapper whose lines strongly suggested that it was the only garment she had on.

"Why should old friends stand on ceremony?" said Mrs. Belloc. "Come right up. I've been taking a bath. My masseuse has just gone." Mrs. Belloc enclosed her in a delightfully perfumed embrace, and they kissed with enthusiasm.

"I AM glad to see you," said Mildred, feeling all at once a thrilling sense of at-homeness. "I didn't realize how glad I'd be till I saw you."

"It'd be a pretty stiff sort that wouldn't feel at home with me," observed Mrs. Belloc. "New York usually stiffens people up. It's had the opposite effect on me. Though I must say, I have learned to stiffen with people I don't like--and I'll have to admit that I like fewer and fewer. People don't wear well, do they? What IS the matter with them? Why can't they be natural and not make themselves into rubbishy, old scrap-bags full of fakes and pretenses? You're looking at my hair."

They were in Mrs. Belloc's comfortable sitting-room now, and she was smoking a cigarette and regarding Mildred with an expression of delight that was most flattering. Said Mildred:

"Your hair does look well. It's thicker--isn't it?"

"Think so?" said Mrs. Belloc. "It ought to be, with all the time and money I've spent on it. My, how New York does set a woman to repairing and fixing up. Nothing artificial goes here. It mustn't be paint and plumpers and pads, but the real teeth. Why, I've had four real teeth set in as if they were rooted--and my hips toned down. You may remember what heavy legs I had--piano-legs. Look at 'em now." Mrs. Belloc drew the wrapper to her knee and exposed in a pale-blue silk stocking a thin and comely calf.

"You HAVE been busy!" said Mildred.

"That's only a little part. I started to tell you about the hair. It was getting gray--not in a nice, pretty way, all over, but in spots and streaks. Nothing else makes a woman look so ragged and dingy and old as spotted, streaky gray hair. So I had the hair-woman touch it up. She vows it won't make my face hard. That's the trouble with dyed or touched hair, you know. But this is a new process."

"It's certainly a success," said Mildred. And in fact it was, and thanks to it and the other improvements Mrs. Belloc was an attractive and even a pretty woman, years younger than when Mildred saw her.

"Yes, I think I've improved," said Mrs. Belloc. "Nothing to scream about--but worth while. That's what we're alive for--to improve--isn't it? I've no patience with people who slide back, or don't get on--people who get less and less as they grow older. The trouble with them is they're vain, satisfied with themselves as they are, and lazy. Most women are too lazy to live. They'll only fix up to catch a man."

Mildred had grown sober and thoughtful.

"To catch a man," continued Mrs. Belloc. "And not much even for that. I'll warrant YOU'RE getting on. Tell me about it."

"Tell me about yourself, first," said Mildred.

"WHY all this excitement about improving?" And she smiled significantly.

"No, you'll have to guess again," said Mrs. Belloc. "Not a man. You remember, I used to be crazy about gay life in New York--going out, and men, theaters, and lobster-palaces--everything I didn't get in my home town, everything the city means to the jays. Well, I've gotten over all that. I'm improving, mind and body, just to keep myself interested in life, to keep myself young and cheerful. I'm interested in myself, in my house and in woman's suffrage. Not that the women are fit to vote. They aren't, any more than the men. But what MAKES people? Why, responsibility. That old scamp I married--he's dead. And I've got the money, and everything's very comfortable with me. Just think, I didn't have any luck till I was an old maid far gone. I'm not telling my age. All my life it had rained bad luck--pitchforks, tines down. And why?"

"Yes, why?" said Mildred. She did not understand how it was, but Mrs. Belloc seemed to be saying the exact things she needed to hear.

"I'll tell you why. Because I didn't work. Drudging along isn't work any more than dawdling along. Work means purpose, means head. And my luck began just as anybody's does--when I rose up and got busy. You may say it wasn't very creditable, the way I began; but it was the best _I_ could do. I know it isn't good morals, but I'm willing to bet that many a man has laid the foundations of a big fine career by doing something that wasn't at all nice or right. He had to do it, to 'get through.' If he hadn't done it, he'd never have 'got through.' Anyhow, whether that's so or not, everyone's got to make a fight to break into the part of the world where living's really worth living. But I needn't tell YOU that. You're doing it."

"No, I'm not," replied Mildred. "I'm ashamed to say so, but I'm not. I've been bluffing--and wasting time."

"That's bad, that's bad," said Mrs. Belloc. "Especially, as you've got it in you to get there. What's been the trouble? The wrong kind of associations?"

"Partly," said Mildred.

Mrs. Belloc, watching her interestedly, suddenly lighted up. "Why not come back here to live?" said she. "Now, please don't refuse till I explain. You remember what kind of people I had here?"

Mildred smiled. "Rather--unconventional?"

"That's polite. Well, I've cleared 'em out. Not that I minded their unconventionality; I liked it. It was so different from the straight-jackets and the hypocrisy I'd been living among and hating. But I soon found out that--well, Miss Stevens, the average human being ought to be pretty conventional in his morals of a certain kind. If he--or SHE--isn't, they begin to get unconventional in every way--about paying their bills, for instance, and about drinking. I got sick and tired of those people. So, I put 'em all out--made a sweep. And now I've become quite as respectable as I care to be--or as is necessary. The couples in the house are married, and they're nice people of good families. It was Mrs. Dyckman--she's got the whole second floor front, she and her husband and the daughter--it was Mrs. Dyckman who interested me in the suffrage movement. You must hear her speak. And the daughter does well at it, too--and keeps a fashionable millinery-shop--and she's only twenty-four. Then there's Nora Blond."

"The actress?"

"The actress. She's the quietest, hardest-working person here. She's got the whole first floor front. Nobody ever comes to see her, except on Sunday afternoon. She leads the queerest life."

"Tell me about that," said Mildred.

"I don't know much about it," confessed Mrs. Belloc. "She's regular as a clock--does everything on time, and at the same time. Two meals a day--one of them a dry little breakfast she gets herself. Walks, fencing, athletics, study."

"What slavery!"

"She's the happiest person I ever saw," retorted Mrs. Belloc. "Why, she's got her work, her career. You don't look at it right, Miss Stevens. You don't look happy. What's the matter? Isn't it because you haven't been working right--because you've been doing these alleged pleasant things that leave a bad taste in your mouth and weaken you? I'll bet, if you had been working hard, you'd not be unhappy now. Better come here to live."

"Will you let me tell you about myself?"

"Go right ahead. May I ask questions, where I want to know more? I do hate to get things halfway."

Mildred freely gave her leave, then proceeded to tell her whole story, omitting nothing that was essential to an understanding. In conclusion she said: "I'd like to come. You see, I've very little money. When it's gone, I'll go, unless I make some more."

"Yes, you must come. That Mrs. Brindley seems to be a nice woman, a mighty nice woman. But her house, and the people that come there--they aren't the right sort for a girl that's making a start. I can give you a room on the top floor--in front. The young lady next to you is a clerk in an architect's office, and a fine girl she is."

"How much does she pay?" said Mildred.

"Your room won't be quite as nice as hers. I put you at the top because you can sing up there, part of the mornings and part of the afternoons, without disturbing anybody. I don't have a general table any more. You can take your meals in your room or at the restaurant in the apartment-house next door. It's good and quite reasonable."

"How much for the room?" persisted Mildred, laughing.

"Seven dollars a week, and the use of the bath."

Mildred finally wrung from her that the right price was twelve dollars a week, and insisted on paying that--"until my money gets low."

"Don't worry about that," said Mrs. Belloc.

"You mustn't weaken me," cried Mildred. "You mustn't encourage me to be a coward and to shirk. That's why I'm coming here."

"I understand," said Mrs. Belloc. "I've got the New England streak of hardness in me, though I believe that masseuse has almost ironed it out of my face. Do I look like a New England schoolmarm?"

Mildred could truthfully answer that there wasn't a trace of it.

When she returned to Mrs. Brindley's--already she had ceased to think of it as home--she announced her new plans. Mrs. Brindley said nothing, but Mildred understood the quick tightening of the lines round her mouth and the shifting of the eyes. She hastened to explain that Mrs. Belloc was no longer the sort of woman or the sort of landlady she had been a few months before. Mrs. Brindley of the older New York, could neither understand nor believe in the people of the new and real New York whom it molds for better or for worse so rapidly--and even remolds again and again. But Mildred was able to satisfy her that the house was at least not suspicious.

"It doesn't matter where you're going," said Mrs. Brindley. "It's that you are going. I can't bear giving you up. I had hoped that our lives would flow on and on together." She was with difficulty controlling her emotions. "It's these separations that age one, that take one's life. I almost wish I hadn't met you."

Mildred was moved, herself. Not so much as Mrs. Brindley because she had the necessities of her career gripping her and claiming the strongest feelings there were in her. Also, she was much the younger, not merely in years but in experience. And separations have no real poignancy in them for youth.

"Yes, I know you love me," said Cyrilla, "but love doesn't mean to you what it means to me. I'm in that middle period of life where everything has its fullest meaning. In youth we're easily consoled and distracted because life seems so full of possibilities, and we can't believe friendship and love are rare, and still more rarely worth while. In old age, when the arteries harden and the blood flows slow and cold, we become indifferent. But between thirty-five and fifty-five how the heart can ache!" She smiled, with trembling lips. "And how it can rejoice!" she cried bravely. "I must not forget to mention that. Ah, my dear, you must learn to live intensely. If I had had your chance!"

"Ridiculous!" laughed Mildred. "You talk like an old woman. And I never think of you as older than myself."

"I AM an old woman," said Cyrilla. And, with a tightening at the heart Mildred saw, deep in the depths of her eyes, the look of old age. "I've found that I'm too old for love--for man-and-woman love--and that means I'm an old woman."

Mildred felt that there was only a thin barrier of reserve between her and some sad secret of this strange, shy, loving woman's--a barrier so thin that she could almost hear the stifled moan of a broken heart. But the barrier remained; it would have been impossible for Cyrilla Brindley to talk frankly about herself.

When Mildred came out of her room the next morning, Cyrilla had gone, leaving a note:

I can't bear good-bys. Besides, we'll see each other very soon. Forgive me for shrinking, but really I can't.

Before night Mildred was settled in the new place and the new room, with no sense of strangeness. She was reproaching herself for hardness, for not caring about Cyrilla, the best and truest friend she had ever had. But the truth lay in quite a different direction. The house, the surroundings, where she had lived luxuriously, dreaming her foolish and fatuous dreams, was not the place for such a struggle as was now upon her. And for that struggle she preferred, to sensitive, sober, refined, impractical Cyrilla Brindley, the companionship and the sympathy, the practical sympathy, of Agnes Belloc. No one need be ashamed or nervous before Agnes Belloc about being poor or unsuccessful or having to resort to shabby makeshifts or having to endure coarse contacts. Cyrilla represented refinement, appreciation of the finished work--luxurious and sterile appreciation and enjoyment. Agnes represented the workshop--where all the doers of all that is done live and work. Mildred was descending from the heights where live those who have graduated from the lot of the human race and have lost all that superficial or casual resemblance to that race. She was going down to live with the race, to share in its lot. She was glad Agnes Belloc was to be there.

Generalizing about such a haphazard conglomerate as human nature is highly unsatisfactory, but it may be cautiously ventured that in New England, as in old England, there is a curiously contradictory way of dealing with conventionality. Nowhere is conventionality more in reverence; yet when a New-Englander, man or woman, happens to elect to break with it, nowhere is the break so utter and so defiant. If Agnes Belloc, cut loose from the conventions that had bound her from childhood to well into middle life, had remained at home, no doubt she would have spent a large part of her nights in thinking out ways of employing her days in outraging the conventionalities before her horrified and infuriated neighbors. But of what use in New York to cuff and spit upon deities revered by only an insignificant class--and only officially revered by that class? Agnes had soon seen that there was no amusement or interest whatever in an enterprise which in her New England home would have filled her life to the brim with excitement. Also, she saw that she was well into that time of life where the absence of reputation in a woman endangers her comfort, makes her liable to be left alone--not despised and denounced, but simply avoided and ignored. So she was telling Mildred the exact truth. She had laid down the arms she had taken up against the social system, and had come in--and was fighting it from the safer and wiser inside. She still insisted that a woman had the same rights as a man; but she took care to make it clear that she claimed those rights only for others, that she neither exercised them nor cared for them for herself. And to make her propaganda the more effective, she was not only circumspect herself, but was exceedingly careful to be surrounded by circumspect people. No one could cite her case as proof that woman would expand liberty into license. In theory there was nothing lively that she did not look upon at least with tolerance; in practice, more and more she disliked seeing one of her sex do anything that might cause the world to say "woman would abuse liberty if she had it." "Sensible people," she now said, "do as they like. But they don't give fools a chance to titter and chatter."

Agnes Belloc was typical--certainly of a large and growing class in this day--of the decay of ancient temples and the decline of the old-fashioned idealism that made men fancy they lived nobly because they professed and believed nobly. She had no ethical standards. She simply met each situation as it arose and dealt with it as common sense seemed in that particular instance to dictate. For a thousand years genius has been striving with the human race to induce it to abandon its superstitions and hypocrisies and to defy common sense, so adaptable, so tolerant, so conducive to long and healthy and happy life. Grossly materialistic, but alluringly comfortable. Whether for good or for evil or for both good and evil, the geniuses seem in a fair way at last to prevail over the idealists, religious and political. And Mrs. Belloc, without in the least realizing it, was a most significant sign of the times.

"Your throat seems to be better to-day," said she to Mildred at breakfast. "Those simple house-remedies I tried on you last night seem to have done some good. Nothing like heat--hot water--and no eating. The main thing was doing without dinner last night."

"My nerves are quieter," advanced Mildred as the likelier explanation of the return of the soul of music to its seat. "And my mind's at rest."