Chapter I: HAVE seen her--and I don’t wonder! (1)

It was on Tuesday evening just as the dusk was falling. I had come home from a walk, and as I climbed the first narrow stair I saw in the hall above me, a woman standing under the gas, reading a letter. I caught her in silhouette, a black form, very tall and broadening out into a wide hat, but even that way, without feature or detail, arresting. Then, as she heard me, she stepped back so that the light fell on her. I knew at once it was Miss Harris, tried not to stare, and couldn’t help it.

She is really remarkably good-looking--an oval-faced, dark-eyed woman, with black hair growing low on her forehead and waving backward over her ears. Either the size of the hat, or her earrings (they were long and green), or a collarless effect about the neck, gave her a picturesque, unconventional air. The stage was written large all over her. When I got close I saw details, that she had beautifully curly lips--most people’s come together in a straight line like a box and its lid--and a fine nose, just in the right proportion to the rest of her face. Also she wore a gray fur coat, unfastened, and something in her appearance suggested a hurried dressing, things flung on.

She looked up from the letter and eyed me with frank interest. I approached embarrassed. A secret desire to have all people like me is one of my besetting weaknesses. I am slavish to servants and feel grateful when salesladies condescend to address me while waiting for change. The fear that Betty would find it out could not make me pass Miss Harris without a word. So I timidly smiled--a deprecating, apologetic smile, a smile held in bondage by the memory of Mrs. Ferguson.

Miss Harris returned it brilliantly. Her face suddenly bore the expression of one who greets a cherished friend. She moved toward me radiating welcome.

“You’re on the third floor,” she said in a rich voice, “Mrs. Harmon Drake.”

I saw a hand extended and felt mine enclosed in a grasp that matched the smile and manner. Miss Harris towered over me--she must be nearly six feet high--and I felt myself growing smaller and paler than the Lord intended me to be before that exuberantly beaming presence. My hand was like a little bundle of cold sticks in her enfolding grip. I backed against the banisters and tried to pull it away, but Miss Harris held it and beamed.

“I’ve read your name on your door every time I’ve passed,” she said, “and I’ve hoped you’d some day open the door and find me standing there and ask me to come in.”

I could see Betty’s head nodding at me, I could hear her grim “I told you so.”

I made polite murmurs and pressed closer to the banister.

“But the door was never opened,” said Miss Harris, bending to look into my face with an almost tender reproach. I felt I was visibly shrinking, and that the upward gaze I fastened on her was one of pleading. Unless she let go my hand and ceased to be so oppressively gracious I would diminish to a heap upon the floor.

“Never mind,” she went on, “now I know you I’ll not stand outside any more.”

I jerked my hand away and made a flank movement for the stairs. Five minutes more and she would be coming up and taking supper with me. She did not appear to notice my desire for flight, but continued talking to me as I ascended.

“We’re the only two women in the upper part of this house. Do I chaperon you, or do you chaperon me?”

I spoke over the banisters and my tone was cold.

“Being a married woman, I suppose I’m the natural chaperon.”

The coldness glanced off her imperturbable good humor:

“You never can tell. These little quiet married women--”

I frowned. The changed expression stopped her and then she laughed.

“Don’t be offended. You must never mind what I say. I’m not half so interesting if I stop and think.”

I looked down at her and was weak enough to smile. Her face was so unlike her words, so serenely fine, almost noble.

“That’s right, smile,” she cried gaily. “You’ll get used to me when you know me better. And you’re going to do that, Mrs. Drake, for I warn you now, we’ll soon be friends.”

Before I could answer she had turned and run down the stairs to the street.

I let myself into the sitting-room and took off my things. I have neat old-maidish ways, cultivated by years of small quarters. Before I can sit with an easy conscience I have to put away wraps, take off shoes, pull down blinds and light lamps. When I had done this I sat before the register and thought of Miss Harris.

There was something very unusual about her--something more than her looks. She has a challenging quality; maybe it’s magnetism, but whatever it is that’s what makes people notice her and speak of her. Nevertheless, she was not _de notre monde_--I apologize for the phrase which has always seemed to me the summit of snobbery, but I can’t think of a better one. It was not that she was common--that didn’t fit her at all--unsensitive would be a fairer word. I felt that very strongly, and I felt that it might be a concomitant of a sort of crude power. She didn’t notice my reluctance at all, or I had a fancy that she might have noticed it and didn’t care.

I was sitting thus when Mrs. Bushey came bounding ebulliently in. Mrs. Bushey bounds in quite often, after physical culture, or when the evenings in the other house pall. She wore a red dress under a long fur-lined coat and stopped in pained amaze when she saw me crouched over the register.

“Cold!” she cried aghast, “don’t tell me you haven’t enough heat?”

It was just what I intended telling her, but when I saw her consternation I weakened.

“It _is_ a little chilly this evening,” I faltered, “but perhaps--”

Mrs. Bushey cut me short by falling into the Morris chair as one become limp from an unexpected blow.

“What am I to do?” she wailed, looking up at the chandelier as though she expected an answer to drop on her from the globes. “I’ve just got four tons of the best coal and a new furnace man. I pay him double what any one else on the block pays--_double_--and here you are _cold_.”

I felt as if I was doing Mrs. Bushey a personal wrong--insulting her as a landlady and a woman--and exclaimed earnestly, quite forgetting the night Roger and I had frozen in concert.

“Only this evening, Mrs. Bushey, I assure you.”

But she was too perturbed to listen:

“And I try so hard--I don’t make a cent and don’t expect to. I want you all to be comfortable, no matter how far behind I get. That’s my way--but I’ve always been a fool. Oh, dear!” She let her troubled gaze wander over the room-- “Isn’t that a beautiful mirror? It came from the Trianon, belonged to Marie Antoinette. I took it out of my room and put it in here for you. What _shall_ I do with that furnace man?”

I found myself telling her that an arctic temperature was exactly to my taste, and making a mental resolution that next time Roger came he could keep on his overcoat, and after all, spring was only six months off.

“No,” said Mrs. Bushey firmly, “I’ll have it right if I go to the poorhouse, and that’s where I’m headed. I had a carpenter’s bill to-day--twenty-six dollars and fourteen cents--and I’ve only eleven in the bank. It was for your floor”--she looked over it--“I really didn’t need to have it fixed, it’s not customary, but I was determined I’d give you a good floor no matter what it cost.”

I was just about suggesting that the carpenter’s bill be added to my next month’s rent when she brightened up and said an Italian count had taken the front room on the floor above.

“Count Mario Delcati, one of the very finest families of Milan. A charming young fellow, charming, with those gallant foreign manners. He’s coming here to learn business, American methods. I’m asking him nothing--a young man in a strange country. How could I? And though his family’s wealthy they’re giving him a mere pittance to live on. Of course I won’t make anything by it, I don’t expect to. His room’s got hardly any chairs in it, and I can’t buy any new ones with that carpenter’s bill hanging over me.” She smoothed the arm of the Morris chair and then looked at the floor. “It’s really made your floor look like parquet.”

I agreed, though I hadn’t thought of it before.

“You have a good many chairs in this room,” she went on, “more than usually go in a furnished apartment, even in the most expensive hotels.”

I had two chairs and a sofa. Mrs. Bushey rose and drew together her fur-lined coat.

“It’s horrible to think of that boy with only one chair,” she murmured, “far from his home, too. Of course I’d give him any I had, but mine are all gone. I’d give the teeth out of my head if anybody wanted them. It’s not in my nature to keep things for myself when other people ought to have them.”

I gave up the Morris chair. Mrs. Bushey was gushingly grateful.

“I’ll tell him it was yours and how willingly you gave it up,” she said, moving toward the door. Then she stopped suddenly and looked at the center-table lamp. “He’s a great reader, he tells me--French fiction. He ought to have a lamp and there’s not one to spare in either house.”

She looked encouragingly at me. I wanted the lamp.

“Can’t he read by the gas?” I pleaded.

“My dear,” said Mrs. Bushey, with a reproving look, “can _you_ read by the gas?”

Conquered by her irrefutable argument, I surrendered the lamp. She was again grateful.

“It’s so agreeable, dealing with the right sort of people,” she said, fastening the last button of her coat. “All the others in the house are so selfish--wouldn’t give up anything. But one doesn’t have to ask you. You offer it at once.”

The count arrived yesterday afternoon, and we are now fast friends. Our meeting fell out thus:-- I was reading and heard a sound of footsteps on the stairs, footsteps going up and down, prowling restless footsteps to which I paid no attention, as they go on most of the time. Presently there was a knock at my door and that, too, was a common happening, as most things and people destined for our house find refuge at my portal--intending lodgers for Mrs. Bushey, the seedy man who has a bill for Mr. Hamilton, the laundress with Mr. Hazard’s wash, the artist who is searching for Miss Bliss and has forgotten the address, the telegraph boy with everybody’s telegrams, the postman with the special deliveries, and Miss Harris’ purchases at the department stores.

I called, “Come in,” and the door opened, displaying a thin, brown, dapper young man in a fur-lined overcoat and a silk hat worn back from his forehead. He had a smooth dark skin, a dash of hair on his upper lip, and eyes so black in the pupil and white in the eyeball that they looked as if made of enamel.

At the sight of a lady the young man took off his hat and made a deep bow. When he rose from this obeisance he was smiling pleasantly.

“I am Count Delcati,” he said.

“How do you do?” I responded, rising.

“Very well,” said the count in careful English with an accent. “I come to live here.”

“It’s a very nice place,” I answered.

“That is why I took the room,” said the count. “But now I am here I can’t get into it or find any one who will open the door.”

He was locked out. Mrs. Bushey was absent imparting the mysteries of physical culture and Emma, the maid, was not to be found. In the lower hall was a pile of luggage that might have belonged to an actress touring in repertoire, and the count could think of nothing better to do than sit on it till some one came by and rescued him. Not at all sure that he might not be a novel form of burglar, I invited him into my parlor and set him by the register to thaw out. He accepted my hospitality serenely, pushing an armchair to the heat, and asking me if I objected to his wrapping himself in my Navajo blanket.

“How fortunate that I knocked at your door,” he said, arranging the blanket. “Otherwise I should surely be froze.”

I had an engagement at the dentist’s and disappeared to put on my things. When I came back he rose quickly to his feet, the blanket draped around his shoulders.

“I am going out,” I said. “I have to--it’s the dentist’s.”

“Poor lady,” he murmured politely.

“But--but you,” I stammered; “what will you do while I’m gone?”

Holding the blanket together with one hand he made a sweeping gesture round the room with the other.

“Stay here till you come back.”

I thought of Roger or Betty chancing to drop in and looked on the ground hesitant. There was a slight pause; I raised my eyes. The count, clasping the two ends of the blanket together over his breast, was regarding me with mild attention.

“But if any of my friends come in to see me?”

“I will receive them--_varri_ nicely,” said the count.

We looked at each other for a solemn second and then burst out laughing.

“All right,” I said. “There are the books and magazines, there are the cigarettes, the matches are in that Japanese box and that cut glass bowl is full of chocolates.”

I left him and was gone till dark. At six I came back to find the room illuminated by every gas-jet and lamp and the count still there. He had quite a glad welcoming air, as if I might have been his mother or his maiden aunt.

“You here still,” I cried in the open doorway.

He gave one of his deep deliberate bows.

“I have been varri comfortable and warm,” he designated the center table with an expressive gesture, “I read magazines, I eat candy and I smoke--yes”--he looked with a proud air into the empty box--“yes, I smoke _all_ the cigarettes.”

Then we went into the next house to find Mrs. Bushey.

My supper--eggs and cocoa--is cooked by me in the kitchenette. It is eaten in the dining-room or bedroom (the name of the apartment varies with the hour of the day) on one end of the table. The effect is prim and spinsterly--a tray cloth set with china and silver, a student lamp, and in the middle of the table, a small bunch of flowers. People send them sometimes and in the gaps when no one “bunches” me I buy them. To keep human every woman should have one extravagance.

I was breaking the first egg when a knock came on the door, and Miss Harris entered. She came in quickly, the gray fur coat over her arm, a bare hand clasping gloves, purse and a theater bag, all of which she cast on the divan-bed, revealing herself gowned in black velvet.

“Good evening, dearie,” she said, patting at her skirt with a preoccupied air, “would you mind doing me a service?”

I rose uneasily expectant. I should not have been surprised if she had asked for anything from one of my eggs to all my savings.

“Don’t look so frightened,” she said, and wheeled round disclosing the back of her dress gaping over lingerie effects: “Hook me up, that’s all.”

As I began the service Miss Harris stood gracefully at ease, throwing remarks over her shoulder:

“It’s a great blessing having you here, not alone for your sweet little self,” she turned her head and tried to look at me, pulling the dress out of my hands, “but because before you came I had such a tragic time with the three middle hooks.”

“What did you do?”

“Went unhooked sometimes and at others walked up and down the stairs hoping I’d find one of the inhabitants here, or a tramp, or the postman. He’s done it twice for me--a very obliging man.”

I did not approve, but did not like to say so.

“There’s an eye gone here.”

“Only one,” said Miss Harris in a tone of surprise, “I thought there were two.”

“Shall I pin it?”

“Please don’t. How could I get out a pin by myself, and I won’t wake you up at midnight.”

“But it gaps and shows your neck.”

“Then if the play’s dull, the person behind me will have something interesting to look at.”

“But really, Miss Harris--”

“My dear, good, kind friend, don’t be so proper, or do be proper about yourself if it’s your nature and you can’t help it, but don’t be about me. When I’m on the stage I’ll have to show much more than my neck, so I may as well get used to it.”

“Miss Harris!” I said in a firm cold tone, and stopped the hooking.

I caught the gleam of a humorous gray eye.

“Mrs. Drake!” She whirled round and put her hands on my shoulders and looked into my face with a sweetness that was quite bewitching. “You dear little mouse, don’t you know you’re one kind and I’m another. Both are nice kinds in their way, so don’t let’s try to mix them up.”

There is something disarmingly winning about this woman. I think for the first time in my life I have met a siren. I pulled my shoulders from the grasp of her hands, as I felt myself pulling my spirit from the grasp of her attraction.

“I’ve not finished your dress,” I said.

She turned her back to me and gave a sigh.

“Go on, Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi,” she said, and then added: “Are you the mother of anything?”

“No,” I answered.

“Too bad,” she murmured, “you ought to be.”

I didn’t reply to that. In the moment of silence the sound of feet on the stairs was audible. They came up the passage and began the ascent of the next flight. Miss Harris started.

“That’s my man, I guess,” she said quickly and tore herself from my hands.

She ran to the door and flung it open. I could see the man’s feet and legs half-way up the stairs.

“Jack,” she cried in a joyous voice, “I’m here, in Mrs. Drake’s room. Come down;” then to me: “It’s Mr. Masters. I’m going to the theater with him.”

The feet descended and Mr. Masters came into view. He was the man Roger and I had seen in the passage.

He took Miss Harris’ proffered hand, then sent a look at me and my room that contained a subtle suggestion of rudeness, of bold and insolent intrusion. Before she could introduce us he bowed and said easily:

“Good evening, Mrs. Drake. Saw you the other night in the hall.”

I inclined my head very slightly. His manner and voice increased my original dislike. I felt that I could not talk to him and turned to Miss Harris. Something in her face struck me unpleasantly. Her look was bent upon him and her air of beaming upon the world in general was intensified by a sort of special beam--an enveloping, deeply glowing beam, such as mothers direct upon beloved children and women upon their lovers.

The door was open and Mr. Masters leaned upon the door-post.

“Nice little place you’ve got here,” he said. “Better than yours, Lizzie.”

Miss Harris withdrew her glance from him, it seemed to me with an effort, as if it clung upon him and she had to pluck it away.

“Finish me,” she said, turning abruptly to me, “I must go.”

All the especial glow for me was gone. Her eyes lit on mine vacant and unseeing. I suddenly seemed to have receded to a point on her horizon where I had no more personality than a dot on a map. I was not even a servant, simply a pair of hands that prepared her for her flight into the night with the vulgar and repulsive man. This made me hesitate, also I didn’t want to go on with the hooking while Mr. Masters leaned against the door-post with that impudently familiar air.

“If Mr. Masters will go into the passage,” I said.

He laughed good-humoredly, but did not budge. Miss Harris made a movement that might easily have degenerated into an angry stamp.

“Oh, don’t be such an old maid,” she said petulantly. “Do the collar and let me go.”

I couldn’t refuse, but I went on with the hooking with a flushed face. What a fool I had been not to take Betty’s advice. Charming as she could be when she wanted, Miss Harris was evidently not a person whose manners remained at an even level.

“Have you heard Miss Harris sing?” asked Mr. Masters.

“Yes, through the register.”

“That’s a bad conductor. You must come up and hear her in her own rooms some evening.”

“If Miss Harris wants me to.”

“Mrs. Drake will some day hear me sing in the Metropolitan,” said the lady.

“Some day,” responded Mr. Masters.

There was something in his enunciation of this single word, so acid, so impregnated with a sneering quality that I stopped my work and cast a surprised glance at him.

He met it with a slight smile.

“Our friend Lizzie here,” he said, “has dreams--what I’m beginning to think are pipe dreams.”

“Jack,” she cried with a sudden note of pleading, “you know that’s not true. You _know_ I’ll some day sing there.”

“I know you want to,” he replied, then with the air of ignoring her and addressing himself exclusively to me: “Miss Harris has a good voice, I might say a fine voice. But--all here,” he spread his fingers fan-wise across his forehead and tapped on that broad expanse, “the soul, the thing that sees and feels--absent, nil,” he fluttered the spread fingers in the air.

I was astounded at his cruel frankness--all the more so as I saw it had completely dashed her spirits.

“Rubbish, I don’t believe a word of it,” I answered hotly, entirely forgetting that I was angry with her.

“Not a bit,” he returned coolly, “I’ve told her so often. A great presence, a fine mechanism,” he swept her with a gesture as if she had been a statue, “but the big thing, the heart of it all--not there. No imagination, no temperament, just a well regulated, handsomely decorated musical box. Isn’t that so, Lizzie?”

He turned from me and directly addressed her, his eyes narrowed, his face showing a faint sardonic amusement. I wondered what she was going to say--whether she would fly at him, or whether, like the woman I knew, she would hide her mortification and refuse him the satisfaction of seeing how he hurt her.

She did neither. Moving to the divan, she picked up her coat, showing me a face as dejected as that of a disappointed child. His words seemed to have stricken all the buoyancy out of her and she shrugged herself into the coat with slow fatigued movements. Bending to pick up her gloves and glasses she said somberly:

“I’ll get a soul some day.”

“We hope so,” he returned.

“He doesn’t know anything about it,” I said in an effort to console.

“Oh, doesn’t he!” she answered bitterly. “It’s his business.”

“I’m a speculator in voices,” he said, “and our handsome friend Lizzie here has been an investment that, I’m beginning to fear, won’t pay any dividends.”

He laughed and looked at her with what seemed to me a quite satanic pleasure in his tormenting.

I could think of nothing to say, bewildered by the strange pair. Miss Harris had gathered up her belongings and moved to the door with a spiritless step.

“Good night,” she said, glancing at me as if I was a chair that had temporarily supported her weight in a trying moment.

“Good night,” said Mr. Masters cheerfully. “Some day go up and hear Lizzie sing and see if you can find the soul in the sound.”

He gave a wave with his hat and followed her down the hall.

I shut the door, and am not ashamed to confess, leaned upon it listening. I wanted to hear her attack him on the lower flight. But their footsteps died away in silence.

I cleared away my supper, sunk in deep reflections. What an extraordinary woman! One moment treating you like her bosom friend, the next oblivious of your existence, and most extraordinary of all, meekly enduring the taunts of that unspeakable man. I couldn’t account for it in any way except that she must be going to marry him--and that was a hateful thought. For if she _was_ rude, and had the manners of a spoiled child, there was something about her that drew you close, as if her hands had hold of yours and were pulling you softly and surely into her embrace.

V

ROGER and I went out to dinner last night, down-town to our favorite haunt in University Place.

I put on my best, a brown velveteen princesse gown (one of Betty’s made over), my brown hat with the gold rose and my amber beads. I even powdered my nose, which I was brought up to think an act of depravity only perpetrated by the lost and fallen. When I am dressed up I really do not look thirty-three. But I’ll have to buy two little rats to puff out my hair at the sides. It’s too flat under that hat. Roger was pleased when he saw me--that’s why I did it. What’s the fun of dressing for yourself? Some one must look at you admiringly and say, well, whatever it’s his nature to say. I suppose Mr. Masters would exclaim, “Gee, you’re a peach!” Roger said, “I like you in brown.”

I love going down Fifth Avenue in the dark of a winter evening. The traffic of business is over. Motors and carriages go spinning by, carrying people to dinners. The big glistening street is like an artery with the joyous blood of the city racing through it, coursing along with the throb, throb, throb of a deathless vitality. And the lights--the wonderful, glowing, golden lights! Two long lines of them on either side that go undulating away into the distance, and broken ones that flash by in a yellow streak, and round glaring ones like the alarmed eyes of animals rushing toward you in terror.

And I love the noise, the near-by rumble and clatter, and outside it the low continuous roar, the voice of the city booming out into the quiet of the fields and up into the silence of the skies. One great, unbroken sound made up of millions of little separate sounds, one great consolidated life made up of millions of little separate life, each of such vital importance to the one who’s living it.

We had lots to talk about, Roger and I. We always do. We might be wrecked on a desert island and go on talking for ten years without coming to the end. There are endless subjects--the books we read, the plays we see, pictures over which we argue, music of which I know nothing, and people, the most absorbing of all, probably because gossiping is a reprehensible practise. There is nothing I enjoy more. If I hadn’t been so well brought up I would be like the women in the first act of _The School for Scandal_. Sometimes we make little retrospective journeys into the past. But we do this cautiously. There are five years we neither of us care to touch on, so we talk forward by preference.

Of course I had to tell Roger of Miss Harris and Mr. Masters. It lasted through two courses.

“What a dog!” was Roger’s comment.

“Roger,” I said earnestly, “do you think she could be in love with such a man?”

Roger shrugged.

“How can _I_ tell?”

“But could any woman--any possible kind of a woman? And she’s a very possible kind. Something comes from her and finds your heart and draws it right out toward her. She couldn’t.”

“Perhaps you don’t understand this enigmatical lady.”

“Maybe I don’t understand everything about her, I’ve only known her a few days. But I can feel--it’s an instinct--that underneath where the real things are she’s true and sound.”

I can see into Roger more clearly than he knows, and I saw that he wasn’t at all interested in Miss Harris. He looked round the room and said indifferently:

“Why does she have a cad like that hanging about?”

“Perhaps underneath there’s something fine in him.”

“Very far underneath, buried so deep nobody but Miss Harris can find it.”

“Roger, don’t be disagreeable. You’ve never seen either of them.”

“Evie, dear, your descriptions are very graphic. Do you know what I think?” He looked at me, smiling a little, but with grave eyes. “I think that you’re seeing Miss Harris through yourself. You’re putting your brain into her head and your heart into her body and then trying to explain her. That’s what’s making her such a puzzle.”

The waiter here produced a casserole with two squabs in it and presented it to Roger’s gaze as if it were a gift he was humbly offering. Roger looked at it and waved him away as if the gift was not satisfactory.

“They look lovely,” I called, and Roger smiled.

The squabs occupied him and my thoughts occupied me finally to find expression in a question:

“Roger, what is a gentleman?”

He looked surprised.

“A gentleman? What do you mean?”

“Just what I say--what is it?”

“You know.”

“No, I don’t. That’s just the point. There are lots of things that everybody--young people and fools--seem to understand and I don’t. One is the theory of vicarious atonement, one is why girls are educated to know nothing about marriage and children, which are the things that most concern them, and one is what makes a man a gentleman.”

Roger considered:

“Let’s see--at a blow. A gentleman is a man who observes certain rules of behavior founded on consideration for the welfare and comfort of others.”

“It sounds like the polite letter writer. Can a gentleman tell lies?”

“To benefit himself, no. To shield others, yes.”

“If he was noble inside--in his character--and uncouth outside, would he be a gentleman?”

“What do you mean by uncouth?”

“Well--wore a watch chain made of nuggets like a man I met in Dresden, and ate peas with his knife?”

“No.”

“Then, if he had beautiful manners and a bad heart, would he be one?”

“If his bad heart didn’t obtrude too much on his dealings with society, he might.”

“Is it all a question of clothes and manners?”

“No.”

“You’ve got to have besides the clothes and manners an inner instinct?”

“That’s it.”

I mused for a moment, then, looking up, caught Roger’s eye fixed on me with a quizzical gleam.

“Why this catechism?”

“I was thinking of Mr. Masters.”

“Good heavens!” said Roger crossly, his gleam suddenly extinguished. “Can’t you get away from the riff-raff in that house? I wish you’d never gone there.”

“No, I can’t. I was wondering if Mr. Masters, under that awful exterior had a fine nature, could he possibly be a gentleman?”

“Evie,” said Roger, putting down his knife and fork and looking serious, “if under that awful exterior Mr. Masters had the noble qualities of George Washington, Sir Philip Sidney and the Chevalier Bayard he could no more be a gentleman than I could be king of Spain.”

“I was afraid that’s what you’d say.” I sighed and returned to my squab.

I said no more about it, but when I got home my thoughts went back to it. I hated to think of Lizzie Harris in the company of such a man. If she was lacking in judgment and worldly knowledge some one ought to supply them for her. She was alone and a stranger. Mrs. Bushey had told me she came from California, and from what I’d heard, California’s golden lads and lassies scorned the craven deference to public opinion that obtains in the effete East. But she was in the effete East, and she must conform to its standards. She probably had never given them a thought and had no initiated guide to draw them to her attention. Whatever Betty might say, I was free to be friendly with whomever I pleased. That was one of the few advantages of being a widow, _déracinée_ by four years in Europe. By the morning I had decided to put my age and experience at her service and this afternoon went up-stairs to begin doing it.

She was in her front room, sitting at a desk writing. A kimono of a bright blue crêpe enwrapped her, her dark hair, cloudy about the brows, was knotted loosely on the nape of her neck. She rose impulsively when she saw me, kissed me as if I was her dearest friend, then motioned me to the sofa, and went back to her place at the desk.

The room is like mine, only being in the mansard, the windows are smaller and have shelf-like sills. It was an odd place, handsome things and tawdry things side by side. In one corner stood a really beautiful cabinet of red Japanese lacquer, and beside it a three-legged wooden stool, painted white with bows of ribbon tied round each leg as if it was some kind of deformed household pet. Portions of Miss Harris’ wardrobe lay over the chairs, and the big black hat crowned the piano tool. On the window-sill, drooping and withered, stood a clump of cyclamen in a pot, wrapped in crimped green paper. Beside it was a plate of crackers and a paper bag, from whose yawning mouth a stream of oranges had run out, lodging in corners. The upright piano, its top covered with stacked music, the wintry light gleaming on its keys, stood across a rear angle of the room and gave the unkempt place an air of purpose, lent it a meaning.

It must be confessed Miss Harris did not look as if she needed assistance or advice. She was serene and debonair and the blue kimono was extravagantly becoming. I sat down upon the sofa against a pile of cushions. The bottom ones were of an astonishing hardness which obtruded through the softness of the top ones as if an eider-down quilt had been spread over a pile of bricks. I tried to look as if I hadn’t felt the bricks and smiled at Miss Harris.

“See what I’ve been doing,” she said, and handed me a sheet of note paper upon which were inscribed a list of names.

I looked over them and they recalled to my mind the heroines of G. P. R. James’ novels of which, in my teens, I had been fond.

“Suggestions for my stage name,” she explained. “How does number three strike you?”

Number three was Leonora Bronzino.

“That’s an Italian painter,” I answered.

“Is it? What a bother. Would he make a fuss?”

“He’s been dead for several hundred years.”

“Then he doesn’t matter. What do you think of number five?”

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.