True to her assertion, Billy went down to the Greggorys' the next day. This time she did not take Rosa with her. Even Aunt Hannah conceded that it would not be necessary. She had not been gone ten minutes, however, when the telephone bell rang, and Rosa came to say that Mr. Bertram Henshaw wanted to speak with Mrs. Stetson.
“Rosa says that Billy's not there,” called Bertram's aggrieved voice, when Aunt Hannah had said, “Good morning, my boy.”
“Dear me, no, Bertram. She's in a fever of excitement this morning. She'll probably tell you all about it when you come out here to-night. You are coming out to-night, aren't you?”
“Yes; oh, yes! But what is it? Where's she gone?”
Aunt Hannah laughed softly.
“Well, she's gone down to the Greggorys'.”
“The Greggorys'! What—again?”
“Oh, you might as well get used to it, Bertram,” bantered Aunt Hannah, “for there'll be a good many 'agains,' I fancy.”
“Why, Aunt Hannah, what do you mean?” Bertram's voice was not quite pleased.
“Oh, she'll tell you. It's only that the Greggorys have turned out to be old friends of Mr. Arkwright's.”
“Friends of Arkwright's!” Bertram's voice was decidedly displeased now.
“Yes; and there's quite a story to it all, as well. Billy is wildly excited, as you'd know she would be. You'll hear all about it to-night, of course.”
“Yes, of course,” echoed Bertram. But there was no ring of enthusiasm in his voice, neither then, nor when he said good-by a moment later.
Billy, meanwhile, on her way to the Greggory home, was, as Aunt Hannah had said, “wildly excited.” It seemed so strange and wonderful and delightful—the whole affair: that she should have found them because of a Lowestoft teapot, that Arkwright should know them, and that there should be the chance now that she might help them—in some way; though this last, she knew, could be accomplished only through the exercise of the greatest tact and delicacy. She had not forgotten that Arkwright had told her of their hatred of pity.
In the sober second thought of the morning, Billy was not sure now of a possible romance in connection with Arkwright and the daughter, Alice; but she had by no means abandoned the idea, and she meant to keep her eyes open—and if there should be a chance to bring such a thing about—! Meanwhile, of course, she should not mention the matter, even to Bertram.
Just what would be her method of procedure this first morning, Billy had not determined. The pretty potted azalea in her hand would be excuse for her entrance into the room. After that, circumstances must decide for themselves.
Mrs. Greggory was found to be alone at home as before, and Billy was glad. She would rather begin with one than two, she thought. The little woman greeted her cordially, gave misty-eyed thanks for the beautiful plant, and also for Billy's kind thoughtfulness Friday afternoon. From that she was very skilfully led to talk more of the daughter; and soon Billy was getting just the information she wanted—information concerning the character, aims, and daily life of Alice Greggory.
“You see, we have some money—a very little,” explained Mrs. Greggory, after a time; “though to get it we have had to sell all our treasures—but the Lowestoft,” with a quick glance into Billy's eyes. “We need not, perhaps, live in quite so poor a place; but we prefer—just now—to spend the little money we have for something other than imitation comfort—lessons, for instance, and an occasional concert. My daughter is studying even while she is teaching. She hopes to train herself for an accompanist, and for a teacher. She does not aspire to concert solo work. She understands her limitations.”
“But she is probably—very good—at teaching.” Billy hesitated a little.
“She is; very good. She has the best of recommendations.” A little proudly Mrs. Greggory gave the names of two Boston pianists—names that would carry weight anywhere.
Unconsciously Billy relaxed. She did not know until that moment how she had worried for fear she could not, conscientiously, recommend this Alice Greggory.
“Of course,” resumed the mother, “Alice's pupils are few, and they pay low prices; but she is gaining. She goes to the houses, of course. She herself practises two hours a day at a house up on Pinckney Street. She gives lessons to a little girl in return.”
“I see,” nodded Billy, brightly; “and I've been thinking, Mrs. Greggory—maybe I know of some pupils she could get. I have a friend who has just given hers up, owing to her marriage. Sometime, soon, I'm going to talk to your daughter, if I may, and—”
“And here she is right now,” interposed Mrs. Greggory, as the door opened under a hurried hand.
Billy flushed and bit her lip. She was disturbed and disappointed. She did not particularly wish to see Alice Greggory just then. She wished even less to see her when she noted the swift change that came to the girl's face at sight of herself.
“Oh! Why-good morning, Miss Neilson,” murmured Miss Greggory with a smile so forced that her mother hurriedly looked to the azalea in search of a possible peacemaker.
“My dear, see,” she stammered, “what Miss Neilson has brought me. And it's so full of blossoms, too! And she says it'll remain so for a long, long time—if we'll only keep it wet.”
Alice Greggory murmured a low something—a something that she tried, evidently, very hard to make politely appropriate and appreciative. Yet her manner, as she took off her hat and coat and sat down, so plainly said: “You are very kind, of course, but I wish you would keep yourself and your plants at home!” that Mrs. Greggory began a hurried apology, much as if the words had indeed been spoken.
“My daughter is really ill this morning. You mustn't mind—that is, I'm afraid you'll think—you see, she took cold last week; a bad cold—and she isn't over it, yet,” finished the little woman in painful embarrassment.
“Of course she took cold—standing all those hours in that horrid wind, Friday!” cried Billy, indignantly.
A quick red flew to Alice Greggory's face. Billy saw it at once and fervently wished she had spoken of anything but that Friday afternoon. It looked almost as if she were reminding them of what she had done that day. In her confusion, and in her anxiety to say something—anything that would get their minds off that idea—she uttered now the first words that came into her head. As it happened, they were the last words that sober second thought would have told her to say.
“Never mind, Mrs. Greggory. We'll have her all well and strong soon; never fear! Just wait till I send Peggy and Mary Jane to take her out for a drive one of these mild, sunny days. You have no idea how much good it will do her!”
Alice Greggory got suddenly to her feet. Her face was very white now. Her eyes had the steely coldness that Billy knew so well. Her voice, when she spoke, was low and sternly controlled.
“Miss Neilson, you will think me rude, of course, especially after your great kindness to me the other day; but I can't help it. It seems to me best to speak now before it goes any further.”
“Alice, dear,” remonstrated Mrs. Greggory, extending a frightened hand.
The girl did not turn her head nor hesitate; but she caught the extended hand and held it warmly in both her own, with gentle little pats, while she went on speaking.
“I'm sure mother agrees with me that it is best, for the present, that we keep quite to ourselves. I cannot question your kindness, of course, after your somewhat unusual favor the other day; but I am very sure that your friends, Miss Peggy, and Miss Mary Jane, have no real desire to make my acquaintance, nor—if you'll pardon me—have I, under the circumstances, any wish to make theirs.”
“Oh, Alice, Alice,” began the little mother, in dismay; but a rippling laugh from their visitor brought an angry flush even to her gentle face.
Billy understood the flush, and struggled for self-control.
“Please—please, forgive me!” she choked. “But you see—you couldn't, of course, know that Mary Jane and Peggy aren't girls. They're just a man and an automobile!”
An unwilling smile trembled on Alice Greggory's lips; but she still stood her ground.
“After all, girls, or men and automobiles, Miss Neilson—it makes little difference. They're—charity. And it's not so long that we've been objects of charity that we quite really enjoy it—yet.”
There was a moment's hush. Billy's eyes had filled with tears.
“I never even thought—charity,” said Billy, so gently that a faint red stole into the white cheeks opposite.
For a tense minute Alice Greggory held herself erect; then, with a complete change of manner and voice, she released her mother's hand, dropped into her own chair again, and said wearily:
“I know you didn't, Miss Neilson. It's all my foolish pride, of course. It's only that I was thinking how dearly I would love to meet girls again—just as girls! But—I no longer have any business with pride, of course. I shall be pleased, I'm sure,” she went on dully, “to accept anything you may do for us, from automobile rides to—to red flannel petticoats.”
Billy almost—but not quite—laughed. Still, the laugh would have been near to a sob, had it been given. Surprising as was the quick transition in the girl's manner, and absurd as was the juxtaposition of automobiles and red flannel petticoats, the white misery of Alice Greggory's face and the weary despair of her attitude were tragic—specially to one who knew her story as did Billy Neilson. And it was because Billy did know her story that she did not make the mistake now of offering pity. Instead, she said with a bright smile, and a casual manner that gave no hint of studied labor:
“Well, as it happens, Miss Greggory, what I want to-day has nothing whatever to do with automobiles or red flannel petticoats. It's a matter of straight business.” (How Billy blessed the thought that had so suddenly come to her!) “Your mother tells me you play accompaniments. Now a girls' club, of which I am a member, is getting up an operetta for charity, and we need an accompanist. There is no one in the club who is able, and at the same time willing, to spend the amount of time necessary for practice and rehearsals. So we had decided to hire one outside, and I have been given the task of finding one. It has occurred to me that perhaps you would be willing to undertake it for us. Would you?”
Billy knew, at once, from the quick change in the other's face and manner, that she had taken exactly the right course to relieve the strain of the situation. Despair and lassitude fell away from Alice Greggory almost like a garment. Her countenance became alert and interested.
“Indeed I would! I should be glad to do it.”
“Good! Then can you come out to my home sometime to-morrow, and go over the music with me? Rehearsals will not begin until next week; but I can give you the music, and tell you something of what we are planning to do.”
“Yes. I could come at ten in the morning for an hour, or at three in the afternoon for two hours or more,” replied Miss Greggory, after a moment's hesitation.
“Suppose we call it in the afternoon, then,” smiled Billy, as she rose to her feet. “And now I must go—and here's my address,” she finished, taking out her card and laying it on the table near her.
For reasons of her own Billy went away that morning without saying anything more about the proposed new pupils. New pupils were not automobile rides nor petticoats, to be sure—but she did not care to risk disturbing the present interested happiness of Alice Greggory's face by mentioning anything that might be construed as too officious an assistance.
On the whole, Billy felt well pleased with her morning's work. To Aunt Hannah, upon her return, she expressed herself thus:
“It's splendid—even better than I hoped. I shall have a chance to-morrow, of course, to see for myself just how well she plays, and all that. I'm pretty sure, though, from what I hear, that that part will be all right. Then the operetta will give us a chance to see a good deal of her, and to bring about a natural meeting between her and Mary Jane. Oh, Aunt Hannah, I couldn't have planned it better—and there the whole thing just tumbled into my hands! I knew it had the minute I remembered about the operetta. You know I'm chairman, and they left me to get the accompanist; and like a flash it came to me, when I was wondering what to say or do to get her out of that awful state she was in—'Ask her to be your accompanist.' And I did. And I'm so glad I did! Oh, Aunt Hannah, it's coming out lovely!—I know it is.”
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《Miss Billy比利小姐》
To Billy, Alice Greggory's first visit to Hillside was in every way a delight and a satisfaction. To Alice, it was even more than that. For the first time in years she found herself welcomed into a home of wealth, culture, and refinement as an equal; and the frank cordiality and naturalness of her hostess's evident expectation of meeting a congenial companion was like balm to a sensitive soul rendered morbid by long years of superciliousness and snubbing.
No wonder that under the cheery friendliness of it all, Alice Greggory's cold reserve vanished, and that in its place came something very like her old ease and charm of manner. By the time Aunt Hannah—according to previous agreement—came into the room, the two girls were laughing and chatting over the operetta as if they had known each other for years.
Much to Billy's delight, Alice Greggory, as a musician, proved to be eminently satisfactory. She was quick at sight reading, and accurate. She played easily, and with good expression. Particularly was she a good accompanist, possessing to a marked degree that happy faculty of accompanying a singer: which means that she neither led the way nor lagged behind, being always exactly in sympathetic step—than which nothing is more soul-satisfying to the singer.
It was after the music for the operetta had been well-practised and discussed that Alice Greggory chanced to see one of Billy's own songs lying near her. With a pleased smile she picked it up.
“Oh, you know this, too!” she cried. “I played it for a lady only the other day. It's so pretty, I think—all of hers are, that I have seen. Billy Neilson is a girl, you know, they say, in spite of—” She stopped abruptly. Her eyes grew wide and questioning. “Miss Neilson—it can't be—you don't mean—is your name—it is—you!” she finished joyously, as the telltale color dyed Billy's face. The next moment her own cheeks burned scarlet. “And to think of my letting you stand in line for a twenty-five-cent admission!” she scorned.
“Nonsense!” laughed Billy. “It didn't hurt me any more than it did you. Come!”—in looking about for a quick something to take her guest's attention, Billy's eyes fell on the manuscript copy of her new song, bearing Arkwright's name. Yielding to a daring impulse, she drew it hastily forward. “Here's a new one—a brand-new one, not even printed yet. Don't you think the words are pretty?” she asked.
As she had hoped, Alice Greggory's eyes, after they had glanced half-way through the first page, sought the name at the left side below the title.
“'Words by M. J.—'”—there was a visible start, and a pause before the “'Arkwright'” was uttered in a slightly different tone.
Billy noted both the start and the pause—and gloried in them.
“Yes; the words are by M. J. Arkwright,” she said with smooth unconcern, but with a covert glance at the other's face. “Ever hear of him?”
Alice Greggory gave a short little laugh.
“Probably not—this one. I used to know an M. J. Arkwright, long ago; but he wasn't—a poet, so far as I know,” she finished, with a little catch in her breath that made Billy long to take her into a warm embrace.
Alice Greggory turned then to the music. She had much to say of this—very much; but she had nothing more whatever to say of Mr. M. J. Arkwright in spite of the tempting conversation bait that Billy dropped so freely. After that, Rosa brought in tea and toast, and the little frosted cakes that were always such a favorite with Billy's guests. Then Alice Greggory said good-by—her eyes full of tears that Billy pretended not to see.
“There!” breathed Billy, as soon as she had Aunt Hannah to herself again. “What did I tell you? Did you see Miss Greggory's start and blush and hear her sigh just over the name of M. J. Arkwright? Just as if—! Now I want them to meet; only it must be casual, Aunt Hannah—casual! And I'd rather wait till Mary Jane hears from his mother, if possible, so if there is anything good to tell the poor girl, he can tell it.”
“Yes, of course. Dear child!—I hope he can,” murmured Aunt Hannah. (Aunt Hannah had ceased now trying to make Billy refrain from the reprehensible “Mary Jane.” In fact, if the truth were known, Aunt Hannah herself in her thoughts—and sometimes in her words—called him “Mary Jane.”) “But, indeed, my dear, I didn't see anything stiff, or—or repelling about Miss Greggory, as you said there was.”
“There wasn't—to-day,” smiled Billy. “Honestly, Aunt Hannah, I should never have known her for the same girl—who showed me the door that first morning,” she finished merrily, as she turned to go up-stairs.
It was the next day that Cyril and Marie came home from their honeymoon. They went directly to their pretty little apartment on Beacon Street, Brookline, within easy walking distance of Billy's own cozy home.
Cyril intended to build in a year or two. Meanwhile they had a very pretty, convenient home which was, according to Bertram, “electrified to within an inch of its life, and equipped with everything that was fireless, smokeless, dustless, and laborless.” In it Marie had a spotlessly white kitchen where she might make puddings to her heart's content.
Marie had—again according to Bertram—“a visiting acquaintance with a maid.” In other words, a stout woman was engaged to come two days in the week to wash, iron, and scrub; also to come in each night to wash the dinner dishes, thus leaving Marie's evenings free—“for the shaded lamp,” Billy said.
Marie had not arrived at this—to her, delightful—arrangement of a “visiting acquaintance” without some opposition from her friends. Even Billy had stood somewhat aghast.
“But, my dear, won't it be hard for you, to do so much?” she argued one day. “You know you aren't very strong.”
“I know; but it won't be hard, as I've planned it,” replied Marie, “specially when I've been longing for years to do this very thing. Why, Billy, if I had to stand by and watch a maid do all these things I want to do myself, I should feel just like—like a hungry man who sees another man eating up his dinner! Oh, of course,” she added plaintively, after Billy's laughter had subsided, “I sha'n't do it always. I don't expect to. Of course, when we have a house—I'm not sure, then, though, that I sha'n't dress up the maid and order her to receive the calls and go to the pink teas, while I make her puddings,” she finished saucily, as Billy began to laugh again.
The bride and groom, as was proper, were, soon after their arrival, invited to dine at both William's and Billy's. Then, until Marie's “At Homes” should begin, the devoted couple settled down to quiet days by themselves, with only occasional visits from the family to interrupt—“interrupt” was Bertram's word, not Marie's. Though it is safe to say it was not far different from the one Cyril used—in his thoughts.
Bertram himself, these days, was more than busy. Besides working on Miss Winthrop's portrait, and on two or three other commissions, he was putting the finishing touches to four pictures which he was to show in the exhibition soon to be held by a prominent Art Club of which he was the acknowledged “star” member. Naturally, therefore, his time was well occupied. Naturally, too, Billy, knowing this, lashed herself more sternly than ever into a daily reminder of Kate's assertion that he belonged first to his Art.
In pursuance of this idea, Billy was careful to see that no engagement with herself should in any way interfere with the artist's work, and that no word of hers should attempt to keep him at her side when ART called. (Billy always spelled that word now in her mind with tall, black letters—the way it had sounded when it fell from Kate's lips.) That these tactics on her part were beginning to fill her lover with vague alarm and a very definite unrest, she did not once suspect. Eagerly, therefore,—even with conscientious delight—she welcomed the new song-words that Arkwright brought—they would give her something else to take up her time and attention. She welcomed them, also, for another reason: they would bring Arkwright more often to the house, and this would, of course, lead to that “casual meeting” between him and Alice Greggory when the rehearsals for the operetta should commence—which would be very soon now. And Billy did so long to bring about that meeting!
To Billy, all this was but “occupying her mind,” and playing Cupid's assistant to a worthy young couple torn cruelly apart by an unfeeling fate. To Bertram—to Bertram it was terror, and woe, and all manner of torture; for in it Bertram saw only a growing fondness on the part of Billy for Arkwright, Arkwright's music, Arkwright's words, and Arkwright's friends.
The first rehearsal for the operetta came on Wednesday evening. There would be another on Thursday afternoon. Billy had told Alice Greggory to arrange her pupils so that she could stay Wednesday night at Hillside, if the crippled mother could get along alone—and she could, Alice had said. Thursday forenoon, therefore, Alice Greggory would, in all probability, be at Hillside, specially as there would doubtless be an appointment or two for private rehearsal with some nervous soloist whose part was not progressing well. Such being the case, Billy had a plan she meant to carry out. She was highly pleased, therefore, when Thursday morning came, and everything, apparently, was working exactly to her mind.
Alice was there. She had an appointment at quarter of eleven with the leading tenor, and another later with the alto. After breakfast, therefore, Billy said decisively:
“Now, if you please, Miss Greggory, I'm going to put you up-stairs on the couch in the sewing-room for a nap.”
“But I've just got up,” remonstrated Miss Greggory.
“I know you have,” smiled Billy; “but you were very late to bed last night, and you've got a hard day before you. I insist upon your resting. You will be absolutely undisturbed there, and you must shut the door and not come down-stairs till I send for you. Mr. Johnson isn't due till quarter of eleven, is he?”
“N-no.”
“Then come with me,” directed Billy, leading the way up-stairs. “There, now, don't come down till I call you,” she went on, when they had reached the little room at the end of the hall. “I'm going to leave Aunt Hannah's door open, so you'll have good air—she isn't in there. She's writing letters in my room, Now here's a book, and you may read, but I should prefer you to sleep,” she nodded brightly as she went out and shut the door quietly. Then, like the guilty conspirator she was, she went down-stairs to wait for Arkwright.
It was a fine plan. Arkwright was due at ten o'clock—Billy had specially asked him to come at that hour. He would not know, of course, that Alice Greggory was in the house; but soon after his arrival Billy meant to excuse herself for a moment, slip up-stairs and send Alice Greggory down for a book, a pair of scissors, a shawl for Aunt Hannah—anything would do for a pretext, anything so that the girl might walk into the living-room and find Arkwright waiting for her alone. And then—What happened next was, in Billy's mind, very vague, but very attractive as a nucleus for one's thoughts, nevertheless.
All this was, indeed, a fine plan; but—(If only fine plans would not so often have a “but”!) In Billy's case the “but” had to do with things so apparently unrelated as were Aunt Hannah's clock and a negro's coal wagon. The clock struck eleven at half-past ten, and the wagon dumped itself to destruction directly in front of a trolley car in which sat Mr. M. J. Arkwright, hurrying to keep his appointment with Miss Billy Neilson. It was almost half-past ten when Arkwright finally rang the bell at Hillside. Billy greeted him so eagerly, and at the same time with such evident disappointment at his late arrival, that Arkwright's heart sang with joy.
“But there's a rehearsal at quarter of eleven,” exclaimed Billy, in answer to his hurried explanation of the delay; “and this gives so little time for—for—so little time, you know,” she finished in confusion, casting frantically about in her mind for an excuse to hurry up-stairs and send Alice Greggory down before it should be quite too late.
No wonder that Arkwright, noting the sparkle in her eye, the agitation in her manner, and the embarrassed red in her cheek, took new courage. For so long had this girl held him at the end of a major third or a diminished seventh; for so long had she blithely accepted his every word and act as devotion to music, not herself—for so long had she done all this that he had come to fear that never would she do anything else. No wonder then, that now, in the soft radiance of the strange, new light on her face, his own face glowed ardently, and that he leaned forward with an impetuous rush of eager words.
“But there is time, Miss Billy—if you'd give me leave—to say—”
“I'm afraid I kept you waiting,” interrupted the hurried voice of Alice Greggory from the hall doorway. “I was asleep, I think, when a clock somewhere, striking eleven—Why, Mr.—Arkwright!”
Not until Alice Greggory had nearly crossed the room did she see that the man standing by her hostess was—not the tenor she had expected to find—but an old acquaintance. Then it was that the tremulous “Mr.-Arkwright!” fell from her lips.
Billy and Arkwright had turned at her first words. At her last, Arkwright, with a half-despairing, half-reproachful glance at Billy, stepped forward.
“Miss Greggory!—you are Miss Alice Greggory, I am sure,” he said pleasantly.
At the first opportunity Billy murmured a hasty excuse and left the room. To Aunt Hannah she flew with a woebegone face.
“Oh, Aunt Hannah, Aunt Hannah,” she wailed, half laughing, half crying; “that wretched little fib-teller of a clock of yours spoiled it all!”
“Spoiled it! Spoiled what, child?”
“My first meeting between Mary Jane and Miss Greggory. I had it all arranged that they were to have it alone; but that miserable little fibber up-stairs struck eleven at half-past ten, and Miss Greggory heard it and thought she was fifteen minutes late. So down she hurried, half awake, and spoiled all my plans. Now she's sitting in there with him, in chairs the length of the room apart, discussing the snowstorm last night or the moonrise this morning—or some other such silly thing. And I had it so beautifully planned!”
“Well, well, dear, I'm sorry, I'm sure,” smiled Aunt Hannah; “but I can't think any real harm is done. Did Mary Jane have anything to tell her—about her father, I mean?”
Only the faintest flicker of Billy's eyelid testified that the everyday accustomedness of that “Mary Jane” on Aunt Hannah's lips had not escaped her.
“No, nothing definite. Yet there was a little. Friends are still trying to clear his name, and I believe are meeting with increasing success. I don't know, of course, whether he'll say anything about it to-day—now. To think I had to be right round under foot like that when they met!” went on Billy, indignantly. “I shouldn't have been, in a minute more, though. I was just trying to think up an excuse to come up and send down Miss Greggory, when Mary Jane began to tell me something—I haven't the faintest idea what—then she appeared, and it was all over. And there's the doorbell, and the tenor, I suppose; so of course it's all over now,” she sighed, rising to go down-stairs.
As it chanced, however, it was not the tenor, but a message from him—a message that brought dire consternation to the Chairman of the Committee of Arrangements. The tenor had thrown up his part. He could not take it; it was too difficult. He felt that this should be told—at once rather than to worry along for another week or two, and then give up. So he had told it.
“But what shall we do, Miss Greggory?” appealed Billy. “It is a hard part, you know; but if Mr. Tobey can't take it, I don't know who can. We don't want to hire a singer for it, if we can help it. The profits are to go to the Home for Crippled Children, you know,” she explained, turning to Arkwright, “and we decided to hire only the accompanist.”
An odd expression flitted across Miss Greggory's face.
“Mr. Arkwright used to sing—tenor,” she observed quietly.
“As if he didn't now—a perfectly glorious tenor,” retorted Billy. “But as if he would take this!”
For only a brief moment did Arkwright hesitate; then blandly he suggested:
“Suppose you try him, and see.”
Billy sat suddenly erect.
“Would you, really? Could you—take the time, and all?” she cried.
“Yes, I think I would—under the circumstances,” he smiled. “I think I could, too, though I might not be able to attend all the rehearsals. Still, if I find I have to ask permission, I'll endeavor to convince the powers-that-be that singing in this operetta will be just the stepping-stone I need to success in Grand Opera.”
“Oh, if you only would take it,” breathed Billy, “we'd be so glad!”
“Well,” said Arkwright, his eyes on Billy's frankly delighted face, “as I said before—under the circumstances I think I would.”
“Thank you! Then it's all beautifully settled,” rejoiced Billy, with a happy sigh; and unconsciously she gave Alice Greggory's hand near her a little pat.
In Billy's mind the “circumstances” of Arkwright's acceptance of the part were Alice Greggory and her position as accompanist, of course. Billy would have been surprised indeed—and dismayed—had she known that in Arkwright's mind the “circumstances” were herself, and the fact that she, too, had a part in the operetta, necessitating her presence at rehearsals, and hinting at a delightful comradeship impossible, perhaps, otherwise.
February came The operetta, for which Billy was working so hard, was to be given the twentieth. The Art Exhibition, for which Bertram was preparing his four pictures, was to open the sixteenth, with a private view for specially invited friends the evening before.
On the eleventh day of February Mrs. Greggory and her daughter arrived at Hillside for a ten-days' visit. Not until after a great deal of pleading and argument, however, had Billy been able to bring this about.
“But, my dears, both of you,” Billy had at last said to them; “just listen. We shall have numberless rehearsals during those last ten days before the thing comes off. They will be at all hours, and of all lengths. You, Miss Greggory, will have to be on hand for them all, of course, and will have to stay all night several times, probably. You, Mrs. Greggory, ought not to be alone down here. There is no sensible, valid reason why you should not both come out to the house for those ten days; and I shall feel seriously hurt and offended if you do not consent to do it.”
“But—my pupils,” Alice Greggory had demurred.
“You can go in town from my home at any time to give your lessons, and a little shifting about and arranging for those ten days will enable you to set the hours conveniently one after another, I am sure, so you can attend to several on one trip. Meanwhile your mother will be having a lovely time teaching Aunt Hannah how to knit a new shawl; so you won't have to be worrying about her.”
After all, it had been the great good and pleasure which the visit would bring to Mrs. Greggory that had been the final straw to tip the scales. On the eleventh of February, therefore, in the company of the once scorned “Peggy and Mary Jane,” Alice Greggory and her mother had arrived at Hillside.
Ever since the first meeting of Alice Greggory and Arkwright, Billy had been sorely troubled by the conduct of the two young people. She had, as she mournfully told herself, been able to make nothing of it. The two were civility itself to each other, but very plainly they were not at ease in each other's company; and Billy, much to her surprise, had to admit that Arkwright did not appear to appreciate the “circumstances” now that he had them. The pair called each other, ceremoniously, “Mr. Arkwright,” and “Miss Greggory”—but then, that, of course, did not “signify,” Billy declared to herself.
“I suppose you don't ever call him 'Mary Jane,'” she said to the girl, a little mischievously, one day.
“'Mary Jane'? Mr. Arkwright? No, I don't,” rejoined Miss Greggory, with an odd smile. Then, after a moment, she added: “I believe his brothers and sisters used to, however.”
“Yes, I know,” laughed Billy. “We thought he was a real Mary Jane, once.” And she told the story of his arrival. “So you see,” she finished, when Alice Greggory had done laughing over the tale, “he always will be 'Mary Jane' to us. By the way, what is his name?”
Miss Greggory looked up in surprise.
“Why, it's—” She stopped short, her eyes questioning. “Why, hasn't he ever told you?” she queried.
Billy lifted her chin.
“No. He told us to guess it, and we have guessed everything we can think of, even up to 'Methuselah John'; but he says we haven't hit it yet.”
“'Methuselah John,' indeed!” laughed the other, merrily.
“Well, I'm sure that's a nice, solid name,” defended Billy, her chin still at a challenging tilt. “If it isn't 'Methuselah John,' what is it, then?”
But Alice Greggory shook her head. She, too, it seemed, could be firm, on occasion. And though she smiled brightly, all she would say, was:
“If he hasn't told you, I sha'n't. You'll have to go to him.”
“Oh, well, I can still call him 'Mary Jane,'” retorted Billy, with airy disdain.
All this, however, so far as Billy could see, was not in the least helping along the cause that had become so dear to her—the reuniting of a pair of lovers. It occurred to her then, one day, that perhaps, after all, they were not lovers, and did not wish to be reunited. At this disquieting thought Billy decided, suddenly, to go almost to headquarters. She would speak to Mrs. Greggory if ever the opportunity offered. Great was her joy, therefore, when, a day or two after the Greggorys arrived at the house, Mrs. Greggory's chance reference to Arkwright and her daughter gave Billy the opportunity she sought.
“They used to know each other long ago, Mr. Arkwright tells me,” Billy began warily.
“Yes.”
The quietly polite monosyllable was not very encouraging, to be sure; but Billy, secure in her conviction that her cause was a righteous one, refused to be daunted.
“I think it was so romantic—their running across each other like this, Mrs. Greggory,” she murmured. “And there was a romance, wasn't there? I have just felt in my bones that there was—a romance!”
Billy held her breath. It was what she had meant to say, but now that she had said it, the words seemed very fearsome indeed—to say to Mrs. Greggory. Then Billy remembered her Cause, and took heart—Billy was spelling it now with a capital C.
For a long minute Mrs. Greggory did not answer—for so long a minute that Billy's breath dropped into a fluttering sigh, and her Cause became suddenly “IMPERTINENCE” spelled in black capitals. Then Mrs. Greggory spoke slowly, a little sadly.
“I don't mind saying to you that I did hope, once, that there would be a romance there. They were the best of friends, and they were well-suited to each other in tastes and temperament. I think, indeed, that the romance was well under way (though there was never an engagement) when—” Mrs. Greggory paused and wet her lips. Her voice, when she resumed, carried the stern note so familiar to Billy in her first acquaintance with this woman and her daughter. “As I presume Mr. Arkwright has told you, we have met with many changes in our life—changes which necessitated a new home and a new mode of living. Naturally, under those circumstances, old friends—and old romances—must change, too.”
“But, Mrs. Greggory,” stammered Billy, “I'm sure Mr. Arkwright would want—” An up-lifted hand silenced her peremptorily.
“Mr. Arkwright was very kind, and a gentleman, always,” interposed the lady, coldly; “but Judge Greggory's daughter would not allow herself to be placed where apologies for her father would be necessary—ever! There, please, dear Miss Neilson, let us not talk of it any more,” begged Mrs. Greggory, brokenly.
“No, indeed, of course not!” cried Billy; but her heart rejoiced.
She understood it all now. Arkwright and Alice Greggory had been almost lovers when the charges against the Judge's honor had plunged the family into despairing humiliation. Then had come the time when, according to Arkwright's own story, the two women had shut themselves indoors, refused to see their friends, and left town as soon as possible. Thus had come the breaking of whatever tie there was between Alice Greggory and Arkwright. Not to have broken it would have meant, for Alice, the placing of herself in a position where, sometime, apologies must be made for her father. This was what Mrs. Greggory had meant—and again, as Billy thought of it, Billy's heart rejoiced.
Was not her way clear now before her? Did she not have it in her power, possibly—even probably—to bring happiness where only sadness was before? As if it would not be a simple thing to rekindle the old flame—to make these two estranged hearts beat as one again!
Not now was the Cause an IMPERTINENCE in tall black letters. It was, instead, a shining beacon in letters of flame guiding straight to victory.
Billy went to sleep that night making plans for Alice Greggory and Arkwright to be thrown together naturally—“just as a matter of course, you know,” she said drowsily to herself, all in the dark.
Some three or four miles away down Beacon Street at that moment Bertram Henshaw, in the Strata, was, as it happened, not falling asleep. He was lying broadly and unhappily awake Bertram very frequently lay broadly and unhappily awake these days—or rather nights. He told himself, on these occasions, that it was perfectly natural—indeed it was!—that Billy should be with Arkwright and his friends, the Greggorys, so much. There were the new songs, and the operetta with its rehearsals as a cause for it all. At the same time, deep within his fearful soul was the consciousness that Arkwright, the Greggorys, and the operetta were but Music—Music, the spectre that from the first had dogged his footsteps.
With Billy's behavior toward himself, Bertram could find no fault. She was always her sweet, loyal, lovable self, eager to hear of his work, earnestly solicitous that it should be a success. She even—as he sometimes half-irritably remembered—had once told him that she realized he belonged to Art before he did to himself; and when he had indignantly denied this, she had only laughed and thrown a kiss at him, with the remark that he ought to hear his sister Kate's opinion of that matter. As if he wanted Kate's opinion on that or anything else that concerned him and Billy!
Once, torn by jealousy, and exasperated at the frequent interruptions of their quiet hours together, he had complained openly.
“Actually, Billy, it's worse than Marie's wedding,” he declared, “Then it was tablecloths and napkins that could be dumped in a chair. Now it's a girl who wants to rehearse, or a woman that wants a different wig, or a telephone message that the sopranos have quarrelled again. I loathe that operetta!”
Billy laughed, but she frowned, too.
“I know, dear; I don't like that part. I wish they would let me alone when I'm with you! But as for the operetta, it is really a good thing, dear, and you'll say so when you see it. It's going to be a great success—I can say that because my part is only a small one, you know. We shall make lots of money for the Home, too, I'm sure.”
“But you're wearing yourself all out with it, dear,” scowled Bertram.
“Nonsense! I like it; besides, when I'm doing this I'm not telephoning you to come and amuse me. Just think what a lot of extra time you have for your work!”
“Don't want it,” avowed Bertram.
“But the work may,” retorted Billy, showing all her dimples. “Never mind, though; it'll all be over after the twentieth. This isn't an understudy like Marie's wedding, you know,” she finished demurely.
“Thank heaven for that!” Bertram had breathed fervently. But even as he said the words he grew sick with fear. What if, after all, this were an understudy to what was to come later when Music, his rival, had really conquered?
Bertram knew that however secure might seem Billy's affection for himself, there was still in his own mind a horrid fear lest underneath that security were an unconscious, growing fondness for something he could not give, for some one that he was not—a fondness that would one day cause Billy to awake. As Bertram, in his morbid fancy pictured it, he realized only too well what that awakening would mean to himself.
The private view of the paintings and drawings of the Brush and Pencil Club on the evening of the fifteenth was a great success. Society sent its fairest women in frocks that were pictures in themselves. Art sent its severest critics and its most ardent devotees. The Press sent reporters that the World might know what Art and Society were doing, and how they did it.
Before the canvases signed with Bertram Henshaw's name there was always to be found an admiring group representing both Art and Society with the Press on the outskirts to report. William Henshaw, coming unobserved upon one such group, paused a moment to smile at the various more or less disconnected comments.
“What a lovely blue!”
“Marvellous color sense!”
“Now those shadows are—”
“He gets his high lights so—”
“I declare, she looks just like Blanche Payton!”
“Every line there is full of meaning.”
“I suppose it's very fine, but—”
“Now, I say, Henshaw is—”
“Is this by the man that's painting Margy Winthrop's portrait?”
“It's idealism, man, idealism!”
“I'm going to have a dress just that shade of blue.”
“Isn't that just too sweet!”
“Now for realism, I consider Henshaw—”
“There aren't many with his sensitive, brilliant touch.”
“Oh, what a pretty picture!”
William moved on then.
Billy was rapturously proud of Bertram that evening. He was, of course, the centre of congratulations and hearty praise. At his side, Billy, with sparkling eyes, welcomed each smiling congratulation and gloried in every commendatory word she heard.
“Oh, Bertram, isn't it splendid! I'm so proud of you,” she whispered softly, when a moment's lull gave her opportunity.
“They're all words, words, idle words,” he laughed; but his eyes shone.
“Just as if they weren't all true!” she bridled, turning to greet William, who came up at that moment. “Isn't it fine, Uncle William?” she beamed. “And aren't we proud of him?”
“We are, indeed,” smiled the man. “But if you and Bertram want to get the real opinion of this crowd, you should go and stand near one of his pictures five minutes. As a sort of crazy—quilt criticism it can't be beat.”
“I know,” laughed Bertram. “I've done it, in days long gone.”
“Bertram, not really?” cried Billy.
“Sure! As if every young artist at the first didn't don goggles or a false mustache and study the pictures on either side of his own till he could paint them with his eyes shut!”
“And what did you hear?” demanded the girl.
“What didn't I hear?” laughed her lover. “But I didn't do it but once or twice. I lost my head one day and began to argue the question of perspective with a couple of old codgers who were criticizing a bit of foreshortening that was my special pet. I forgot my goggles and sailed in. The game was up then, of course; and I never put them on again. But it was worth a farm to see their faces when I stood 'discovered' as the stage-folk say.”
“Serves you right, sir—listening like that,” scolded Billy.
Bertram laughed and shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, it cured me, anyhow. I haven't done it since,” he declared.
It was some time later, on the way home, that Bertram said:
“It was gratifying, of course, Billy, and I liked it. It would be absurd to say I didn't like the many pleasant words of apparently sincere appreciation I heard to-night. But I couldn't help thinking of the next time—always the next time.”
“The next time?” Billy's eyes were slightly puzzled.
“That I exhibit, I mean. The Bohemian Ten hold their exhibition next month, you know. I shall show just one picture—the portrait of Miss Winthrop.”
“Oh, Bertram!”
“It'll be 'Oh, Bertram!' then, dear, if it isn't a success,” he sighed. “I don't believe you realize yet what that thing is going to mean for me.”
“Well, I should think I might,” retorted Billy, a little tremulously, “after all I've heard about it. I should think everybody knew you were doing it, Bertram. Actually, I'm not sure Marie's scrub-lady won't ask me some day how Mr. Bertram's picture is coming on!”
“That's the dickens of it, in a way,” sighed Bertram, with a faint smile. “I am amazed—and a little frightened, I'll admit—at the universality of the interest. You see, the Winthrops have been pleased to spread it, for one reason or another, and of course many already know of the failures of Anderson and Fullam. That's why, if I should fail—”
“But you aren't going to fail,” interposed the girl, resolutely.
“No, I know I'm not. I only said 'if,'” fenced the man, his voice not quite steady.
“There isn't going to be any 'if,'” settled Billy. “Now tell me, when is the exhibition?”
“March twentieth—the private view. Mr. Winthrop is not only willing, but anxious, that I show it. I wasn't sure that he'd want me to—in an exhibition. But it seems he does. His daughter says he has every confidence in the portrait and wants everybody to see it.”
“That's where he shows his good sense,” declared Billy. Then, with just a touch of constraint, she asked: “And how is the new, latest pose coming on?”
“Very well, I think,” answered Bertram, a little hesitatingly. “We've had so many, many interruptions, though, that it is surprising how slow it is moving. In the first place, Miss Winthrop is gone more than half the time (she goes again to-morrow for a week!), and in this portrait I'm not painting a stroke without my model before me. I mean to take no chances, you see; and Miss Winthrop is perfectly willing to give me all the sittings I wish for. Of course, if she hadn't changed the pose and costume so many times, it would have been done long ago—and she knows it.”
“Of course—she knows it,” murmured Billy, a little faintly, but with a peculiar intonation in her voice.
“And so you see,” sighed Bertram, “what the twentieth of March is going to mean for me.”
“It's going to mean a splendid triumph!” asserted Billy; and this time her voice was not faint, and it carried only a ring of loyal confidence.
“You blessed comforter!” murmured Bertram, giving with his eyes the caress that his lips would so much have preferred to give—under more propitious circumstances.
The sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth of February were, for Billy, and for all concerned in the success of the operetta, days of hurry, worry, and feverish excitement, as was to be expected, of course. Each afternoon and every evening saw rehearsals in whole, or in parts. A friend of the Club-president's sister-in-law-a woman whose husband was stage manager of a Boston theatre—had consented to come and “coach” the performers. At her appearance the performers—promptly thrown into nervous spasms by this fearsome nearness to the “real thing”—forgot half their cues, and conducted themselves generally like frightened school children on “piece day,” much to their own and every one else's despair. Then, on the evening of the nineteenth, came the final dress rehearsal on the stage of the pretty little hall that had been engaged for the performance of the operetta.
The dress rehearsal, like most of its kind, was, for every one, nothing but a nightmare of discord, discouragement, and disaster. Everybody's nerves were on edge, everybody was sure the thing would be a “flat failure.” The soprano sang off the key, the alto forgot to shriek “Beware, beware!” until it was so late there was nothing to beware of; the basso stepped on Billy's trailing frock and tore it; even the tenor, Arkwright himself, seemed to have lost every bit of vim from his acting. The chorus sang “Oh, be joyful!” with dirge-like solemnity, and danced as if legs and feet were made of wood. The lovers, after the fashion of amateur actors from time immemorial, “made love like sticks.”
Billy, when the dismal thing had dragged its way through the final note, sat “down front,” crying softly in the semi-darkness while she was waiting for Alice Greggory to “run it through just once more” with a pair of tired-faced, fluffy-skirted fairies who could not learn that a duet meant a duet—not two solos, independently hurried or retarded as one's fancy for the moment dictated.
To Billy, just then, life did not look to be even half worth the living. Her head ached, her throat was going-to-be-sore, her shoe hurt, and her dress—the trailing frock that had been under the basso's foot—could not possibly be decently repaired before to-morrow night, she was sure.
Bad as these things were, however, they were only the intimate, immediate woes. Beyond and around them lay others many others. To be sure, Bertram and happiness were supposed to be somewhere in the dim and uncertain future; but between her and them lay all these other woes, chief of which was the unutterable tragedy of to-morrow night.
It was to be a failure, of course. Billy had calmly made up her mind to that, now. But then, she was used to failures, she told herself. Was she not plainly failing every day of her life to bring about even friendship between Alice Greggory and Arkwright? Did they not emphatically and systematically refuse to be “thrown together,” either naturally, or unnaturally? And yet—whenever again could she expect such opportunities to further her Cause as had been hers the past few weeks, through the operetta and its rehearsals? Certainly, never again! It had been a failure like all the rest; like the operetta, in particular.
Billy did not mean that any one should know she was crying. She supposed that all the performers except herself and the two earth-bound fairies by the piano with Alice Greggory were gone. She knew that John with Peggy was probably waiting at the door outside, and she hoped that soon the fairies would decide to go home and go to bed, and let other people do the same. For her part, she did not see why they were struggling so hard, anyway. Why needn't they go ahead and sing their duet like two solos if they wanted to? As if a little thing like that could make a feather's weight of difference in the grand total of to-morrow night's wretchedness when the final curtain should have been rung down on their shame!
“Miss Neilson, you aren't—crying!” exclaimed a low voice; and Billy turned to find Arkwright standing by her side in the dim light.
“Oh, no—yes—well, maybe I was, a little,” stammered Billy, trying to speak very unconcernedly. “How warm it is in here! Do you think it's going to rain?—that is, outdoors, of course, I mean.”
Arkwright dropped into the seat behind Billy and leaned forward, his eyes striving to read the girl's half-averted face. If Billy had turned, she would have seen that Arkwright's own face showed white and a little drawn-looking in the feeble rays from the light by the piano. But Billy did not turn. She kept her eyes steadily averted; and she went on speaking—airy, inconsequential words.
“Dear me, if those girls would only pull together! But then, what's the difference? I supposed you had gone home long ago, Mr. Arkwright.”
“Miss Neilson, you are crying!” Arkwright's voice was low and vibrant. “As if anything or anybody in the world could make you cry! Please—you have only to command me, and I will sally forth at once to slay the offender.” His words were light, but his voice still shook with emotion.
Billy gave an hysterical little giggle. Angrily she brushed the persistent tears from her eyes.
“All right, then; I'll dub you my Sir Knight,” she faltered. “But I'll warn you—you'll have your hands full. You'll have to slay my headache, and my throat-ache, and my shoe that hurts, and the man who stepped on my dress, and—and everybody in the operetta, including myself.”
“Everybody—in the operetta!” Arkwright did look a little startled, at this wholesale slaughter.
“Yes. Did you ever see such an awful, awful thing as that was to-night?” moaned the girl.
Arkwright's face relaxed.
“Oh, so that's what it is!” he laughed lightly. “Then it's only a bogy of fear that I've got to slay, after all; and I'll despatch that right now with a single blow. Dress rehearsals always go like that to-night. I've been in a dozen, and I never yet saw one go half decent. Don't you worry. The worse the rehearsal, the better the performance, every time!”
Billy blinked off the tears and essayed a smile as she retorted:
“Well, if that's so, then ours to-morrow night ought to be a—a—”
“A corker,” helped out Arkwright, promptly; “and it will be, too. You poor child, you're worn out; and no wonder! But don't worry another bit about the operetta. Now is there anything else I can do for you? Anything else I can slay?”
Billy laughed tremulously.
“N-no, thank you; not that you can—slay, I fancy,” she sighed. “That is—not that you will,” she amended wistfully, with a sudden remembrance of the Cause, for which he might do so much—if he only would.
Arkwright bent a little nearer. His breath stirred the loose, curling hair behind Billy's ear. His eyes had flashed into sudden fire.
“But you don't know what I'd do if I could,” he murmured unsteadily. “If you'd let me tell you—if you only knew the wish that has lain closest to my heart for—”
“Miss Neilson, please,” called the despairing voice of one of the earth-bound fairies; “Miss Neilson, you are there, aren't you?”
“Yes, I'm right here,” answered Billy, wearily. Arkwright answered, too, but not aloud—which was wise.
“Oh dear! you're tired, I know,” wailed the fairy, “but if you would please come and help us just a minute! Could you?”
“Why, yes, of course.” Billy rose to her feet, still wearily.
Arkwright touched her arm. She turned and saw his face. It was very white—so white that her eyes widened in surprised questioning.
As if answering the unspoken words, the man shook his head.
“I can't, now, of course,” he said. “But there is something I want to say—a story I want to tell you—after to-morrow, perhaps. May I?”
To Billy, the tremor of his voice, the suffering in his eyes, and the “story” he was begging to tell could have but one interpretation: Alice Greggory. Her face, therefore, was a glory of tender sympathy as she reached out her hand in farewell.
“Of course you may,” she cried. “Come any time after to-morrow night, please,” she smiled encouragingly, as she turned toward the stage.
Behind her, Arkwright stumbled twice as he walked up the incline toward the outer door—stumbled, not because of the semi-darkness of the little theatre, but because of the blinding radiance of a girl's illumined face which he had, a moment before, read all unknowingly exactly wrong.
A little more than twenty-four hours later, Billy Neilson, in her own room, drew a long breath of relief. It was twelve o'clock on the night of the twentieth, and the operetta was over.
To Billy, life was eminently worth living to-night. Her head did not ache, her throat was not sore, her shoe did not hurt, her dress had been mended so successfully by Aunt Hannah, and with such comforting celerity, that long before night one would never have suspected the filmy thing had known the devastating tread of any man's foot. Better yet, the soprano had sung exactly to key, the alto had shrieked “Beware!” to thrilling purpose, Arkwright had shown all his old charm and vim, and the chorus had been prodigies of joyousness and marvels of lightness. Even the lovers had lost their stiffness, while the two earth-bound fairies of the night before had found so amiable a meeting point that their solos sounded, to the uninitiated, very like, indeed, a duet. The operetta was, in short, a glorious and gratifying success, both artistically and financially. Nor was this all that, to Billy, made life worth the living: Arkwright had begged permission that evening to come up the following afternoon to tell her his “story”; and Billy, who was so joyously confident that this story meant the final crowning of her Cause with victory, had given happy consent.
Bertram was to come up in the evening, and Billy was anticipating that, too, particularly: it had been so long since they had known a really free, comfortable evening together, with nothing to interrupt. Doubtless, too, after Arkwright's visit of the afternoon, she would be in a position to tell Bertram the story of the suspended romance between Arkwright and Miss Greggory, and perhaps something, also, of her own efforts to bring the couple together again. On the whole, life did, indeed, look decidedly worth the living as Billy, with a contented sigh, turned over to go to sleep.
Promptly at the suggested hour on the day after the operetta, Arkwright rang Billy Neilson's doorbell. Promptly, too, Billy herself came into the living-room to greet him.
Billy was in white to-day—a soft, creamy white wool with a touch of black velvet at her throat and in her hair. The man thought she had never looked so lovely: Arkwright was still under the spell wrought by the soft radiance of Billy's face the two times he had mentioned his “story.”
Until the night before the operetta Arkwright had been more than doubtful of the way that story would be received, should he ever summon the courage to tell it. Since then his fears had been changed to rapturous hopes. It was very eagerly, therefore, that he turned now to greet Billy as she came into the room.
“Suppose we don't have any music to-day. Suppose we give the whole time up to the story,” she smiled brightly, as she held out her hand.
Arkwright's heart leaped; but almost at once it throbbed with a vague uneasiness. He would have preferred to see her blush and be a little shy over that story. Still—there was a chance, of course, that she did not know what the story was. But if that were the case, what of the radiance in her face? What of—Finding himself in a tangled labyrinth that led apparently only to disappointment and disaster, Arkwright pulled himself up with a firm hand.
“You are very kind,” he murmured, as he relinquished her fingers and seated himself near her. “You are sure, then, that you wish to hear the story?”
“Very sure,” smiled Billy.
Arkwright hesitated. Again he longed to see a little embarrassment in the bright face opposite. Suddenly it came to him, however, that if Billy knew what he was about to say, it would manifestly not be her part to act as if she knew! With a lighter heart, then, he began his story.
“You want it from the beginning?”
“By all means! I never dip into books, nor peek at the ending. I don't think it's fair to the author.”
“Then I will, indeed, begin at the beginning,” smiled Arkwright, “for I'm specially anxious that you shall be—even more than 'fair' to me.” His voice shook a little, but he hurried on. “There's a—girl—in it; a very dear, lovely girl.”
“Of course—if it's a nice story,” twinkled Billy.
“And—there's a man, too. It's a love story, you see.”
“Again of course—if it's interesting.” Billy laughed mischievously, but she flushed a little.
“Still, the man doesn't amount to much, after all, perhaps. I might as well own up at the beginning—I'm the man.”
“That will do for you to say, as long as you're telling the story,” smiled Billy. “We'll let it pass for proper modesty on your part. But I shall say—the personal touch only adds to the interest.”
Arkwright drew in his breath.
“We'll hope—it'll really be so,” he murmured.
There was a moment's silence. Arkwright seemed to be hesitating what to say.
“Well?” prompted Billy, with a smile. “We have the hero and the heroine; now what happens next? Do you know,” she added, “I have always thought that part must bother the story-writers—to get the couple to doing interesting things, after they'd got them introduced.”
Arkwright sighed.
“Perhaps—on paper; but, you see, my story has been lived, so far. So it's quite different.”
“Very well, then—what did happen?” smiled Billy.
“I was trying to think—of the first thing. You see it began with a picture, a photograph of the girl. Mother had it. I saw it, and wanted it, and—” Arkwright had started to say “and took it.” But he stopped with the last two words unsaid. It was not time, yet, he deemed, to tell this girl how much that picture had been to him for so many months past. He hurried on a little precipitately. “You see, I had heard about this girl a lot; and I liked—what I heard.”
“You mean—you didn't know her—at the first?” Billy's eyes were surprised. Billy had supposed that Arkwright had always known Alice Greggory.
“No, I didn't know the girl—till afterwards. Before that I was always dreaming and wondering what she would be like.”
“Oh!” Billy subsided into her chair, still with the puzzled questioning in her eyes.
“Then I met her.”
“Yes?”
“And she was everything and more than I had pictured her.”
“And you fell in love at once?” Billy's voice had grown confident again.
“Oh, I was already in love,” sighed Arkwright. “I simply sank deeper.”
“Oh-h!” breathed Billy, sympathetically. “And the girl?”
“She didn't care—or know—for a long time. I'm not really sure she cares—or knows—even now.” Arkwright's eyes were wistfully fixed on Billy's face.
“Oh, but you can't tell, always, about girls,” murmured Billy, hurriedly. A faint pink had stolen to her forehead. She was thinking of Alice Greggory, and wondering if, indeed, Alice did care; and if she, Billy, might dare to assure this man—what she believed to be true—that his sweetheart was only waiting for him to come to her and tell her that he loved her.
Arkwright saw the color sweep to Billy's forehead, and took sudden courage. He leaned forward eagerly. A tender light came to his eyes. The expression on his face was unmistakable.
“Billy, do you mean, really, that there is—hope for me?” he begged brokenly.
Billy gave a visible start. A quick something like shocked terror came to her eyes. She drew back and would have risen to her feet had the thought not come to her that twice before she had supposed a man was making love to her, when subsequent events proved that she had been mortifyingly mistaken: once when Cyril had told her of his love for Marie; and again when William had asked her to come back as a daughter to the house she had left desolate.
Telling herself sternly now not to be for the third time a “foolish little simpleton,” she summoned all her wits, forced a cheery smile to her lips, and said:
“Well, really, Mr. Arkwright, of course I can't answer for the girl, so I'm not the one to give hope; and—”
“But you are the one,” interrupted the man, passionately. “You're the only one! As if from the very first I hadn't loved you, and—”
“No, no, not that—not that! I'm mistaken! I'm not understanding what you mean,” pleaded a horror-stricken voice. Billy was on her feet now, holding up two protesting hands, palms outward.
“Miss Neilson, you don't mean—that you haven't known—all this time—that it was you?” The man, now, was on his feet, his eyes hurt and unbelieving, looking into hers.
Billy paled. She began slowly to back away. Her eyes, still fixed on his, carried the shrinking terror of one who sees a horrid vision.
“But you know—you must know that I am not yours to win!” she reproached him sharply. “I'm to be Bertram Henshaw's—wife.” From Billy's shocked young lips the word dropped with a ringing force that was at once accusatory and prohibitive. It was as if, by the mere utterance of the word, wife, she had drawn a sacred circle about her and placed herself in sanctuary.
From the blazing accusation in her eyes Arkwright fell back.
“Wife! You are to be Bertram Henshaw's wife!” he exclaimed. There was no mistaking the amazed incredulity on his face.
Billy caught her breath. The righteous indignation in her eyes fled, and a terrified appeal took its place.
“You don't mean that you didn't—know?” she faltered.
There was a moment's silence. A power quite outside herself kept Billy's eyes on Arkwright's face, and forced her to watch the change there from unbelief to belief, and from belief to set misery.
“No, I did not know,” said the man then, dully, as he turned, rested his arm on the mantel behind him, and half shielded his face with his hand.
Billy sank into a low chair. Her fingers fluttered nervously to her throat. Her piteous, beseeching eyes were on the broad back and bent head of the man before her.
“But I—I don't see how you could have helped—knowing,” she stammered at last. “I don't see how such a thing could have happened that you shouldn't know!”
“I've been trying to think, myself,” returned the man, still in a dull, emotionless voice.
“It's been so—so much a matter of course. I supposed everybody knew it,” maintained Billy.
“Perhaps that's just it—that it was—so much a matter of course,” rejoined the man. “You see, I know very few of your friends, anyway—who would be apt to mention it to me.”
“But the announcements—oh, you weren't here then,” moaned Billy. “But you must have known that—that he came here a good deal—that we were together so much!”
“To a certain extent, yes,” sighed Arkwright. “But I took your friendship with him and his brothers as—as a matter of course. That was my 'matter of course,' you see,” he went on bitterly. “I knew you were Mr. William Henshaw's namesake, and Calderwell had told me the story of your coming to them when you were left alone in the world. Calderwell had said, too, that—” Arkwright paused, then hurried on a little constrainedly—“well, he said something that led me to think Mr. Bertram Henshaw was not a marrying man, anyway.”
Billy winced and changed color. She had noticed the pause, and she knew very well what it was that Calderwell had said to occasion that pause. Must always she be reminded that no one expected Bertram Henshaw to love any girl—except to paint?
“But—but Mr. Calderwell must know about the engagement—now,” she stammered.
“Very likely, but I have not happened to hear from him since my arrival in Boston. We do not correspond.”
There was a long silence, then Arkwright spoke again.
“I think I understand now—many things. I wonder I did not see them before; but I never thought of Bertram Henshaw's being—If Calderwell hadn't said—” Again Arkwright stopped with his sentence half complete, and again Billy winced. “I've been a blind fool. I was so intent on my own—I've been a blind fool; that's all,” repeated Arkwright, with a break in his voice.
Billy tried to speak, but instead of words, there came only a choking sob.
Arkwright turned sharply.
“Miss Neilson, don't—please,” he begged. “There is no need that you should suffer—too.”
“But I am so ashamed that such a thing could happen,” she faltered. “I'm sure, some way, I must be to blame. But I never thought. I was blind, too. I was wrapped up in my own affairs. I never suspected. I never even thought to suspect! I thought of course you knew. It was just the music that brought us together, I supposed; and you were just like one of the family, anyway. I always thought of you as Aunt Hannah's—” She stopped with a vivid blush.
“As Aunt Hannah's niece, Mary Jane, of course,” supplied Arkwright, bitterly, turning back to his old position. “And that was my own fault, too. My name, Miss Neilson, is Michael Jeremiah,” he went on wearily, after a moment's hesitation, his voice showing his utter abandonment to despair. “When a boy at school I got heartily sick of the 'Mike' and the 'Jerry' and the even worse 'Tom and Jerry' that my young friends delighted in; so as soon as possible I sought obscurity and peace in 'M. J.' Much to my surprise and annoyance the initials proved to be little better, for they became at once the biggest sort of whet to people's curiosity. Naturally, the more determined persistent inquirers were to know the name, the more determined I became that they shouldn't. All very silly and very foolish, of course. Certainly it seems so now,” he finished.
Billy was silent. She was trying to find something, anything, to say, when Arkwright began speaking again, still in that dull, hopeless voice that Billy thought would break her heart.
“As for the 'Mary Jane'—that was another foolishness, of course. My small brothers and sisters originated it; others followed, on occasion, even Calderwell. Perhaps you did not know, but he was the friend who, by his laughing question, 'Why don't you, Mary Jane?' put into my head the crazy scheme of writing to Aunt Hannah and letting her think I was a real Mary Jane. You see what I stooped to do, Miss Neilson, for the chance of meeting and knowing you.”
Billy gave a low cry. She had suddenly remembered the beginning of Arkwright's story. For the first time she realized that he had been talking then about herself, not Alice Greggory.
“But you don't mean that you—cared—that I was the—” She could not finish.
Arkwright turned from the mantel with a gesture of utter despair.
“Yes, I cared then. I had heard of you. I had sung your songs. I was determined to meet you. So I came—and met you. After that I was more determined than ever to win you. Perhaps you see, now, why I was so blind to—to any other possibility. But it doesn't do any good—to talk like this. I understand now. Only, please, don't blame yourself,” he begged as he saw her eyes fill with tears. The next moment he was gone.
Billy had turned away and was crying softly, so she did not see him go.
Bertram called that evening. Billy had no story now to tell—nothing of the interrupted romance between Alice Greggory and Arkwright. Billy carefully, indeed, avoided mentioning Arkwright's name.
Ever since the man's departure that afternoon, Billy had been frantically trying to assure herself that she was not to blame; that she would not be supposed to know he cared for her; that it had all been as he said it was—his foolish blindness. But even when she had partially comforted herself by these assertions, she could not by any means escape the haunting vision of the man's stern-set, suffering face as she had seen it that afternoon; nor could she keep from weeping at the memory of the words he had said, and at the thought that never again could their pleasant friendship be quite the same—if, indeed, there could be any friendship at all between them.
But if Billy expected that her red eyes, pale cheeks, and generally troubled appearance and unquiet manner were to be passed unnoticed by her lover's keen eyes that evening, she found herself much mistaken.
“Sweetheart, what is the matter?” demanded Bertram resolutely, at last, when his more indirect questions had been evasively turned aside. “You can't make me think there isn't something the trouble, because I know there is!”
“Well, then, there is, dear,” smiled Billy, tearfully; “but please just don't let us talk of it. I—I want to forget it. Truly I do.”
“But I want to know so I can forget it,” persisted Bertram. “What is it? Maybe I could help.”
She shook her head with a little frightened cry.
“No, no—you can't help—really.”
“But, sweetheart, you don't know. Perhaps I could. Won't you tell me about it?”
Billy looked distressed.
“I can't, dear—truly. You see, it isn't quite mine—to tell.”
“Not yours!”
“Not—entirely.”
“But it makes you feel bad?”
“Yes—very.”
“Then can't I know that part?”
“Oh, no—no, indeed, no! You see—it wouldn't be fair—to the other.”
Bertram stared a little. Then his mouth set into stern lines.
“Billy, what are you talking about? Seems to me I have a right to know.”
Billy hesitated. To her mind, a girl who would tell of the unrequited love of a man for herself, was unspeakably base. To tell Bertram Arkwright's love story was therefore impossible. Yet, in some way, she must set Bertram's mind at rest.
“Dearest,” she began slowly, her eyes wistfully pleading, “just what it is, I can't tell you. In a way it's another's secret, and I don't feel that I have the right to tell it. It's just something that I learned this afternoon.”
“But it has made you cry!”
“Yes. It made me feel very unhappy.”
“Then—it was something you couldn't help?”
To Bertram's surprise, the face he was watching so intently flushed scarlet.
“No, I couldn't help it—now; though I might have—once.” Billy spoke this last just above her breath. Then she went on, beseechingly: “Bertram, please, please don't talk of it any more. It—it's just spoiling our happy evening together!”
Bertram bit his lip, and drew a long sigh.
“All right, dear; you know best, of course—since I don't know anything about it,” he finished a little stiffly.
Billy began to talk then very brightly of Aunt Hannah and her shawls, and of a visit she had made to Cyril and Marie that morning.
“And, do you know? Aunt Hannah's clock has done a good turn, at last, and justified its existence. Listen,” she cried gayly. “Marie had a letter from her mother's Cousin Jane. Cousin Jane couldn't sleep nights, because she was always lying awake to find out just what time it was; so Marie had written her about Aunt Hannah's clock. And now this Cousin Jane has fixed her clock, and she sleeps like a top, just because she knows there'll never be but half an hour that she doesn't know what time it is!”
Bertram smiled, and murmured a polite “Well, I'm sure that's fine!”; but the words were plainly abstracted, and the frown had not left his brow. Nor did it quite leave till some time later, when Billy, in answer to a question of his about another operetta, cried, with a shudder:
“Mercy, I hope not, dear! I don't want to hear the word 'operetta' again for a year!”
Bertram smiled, then, broadly. He, too, would be quite satisfied not to hear the word “operetta” for a year. Operetta, to Bertram, meant interruptions, interferences, and the constant presence of Arkwright, the Greggorys, and innumerable creatures who wished to rehearse or to change wigs—all of which Bertram abhorred. No wonder, therefore, that he smiled, and that the frown disappeared from his brow. He thought he saw, ahead, serene, blissful days for Billy and himself.
As the days, however, began to pass, one by one, Bertram Henshaw found them to be anything but serene and blissful. The operetta, with its rehearsals and its interruptions, was gone, certainly; but he was becoming seriously troubled about Billy.
Billy did not act natural. Sometimes she seemed like her old self; and he breathed more freely, telling himself that his fears were groundless. Then would come the haunting shadow to her eyes, the droop to her mouth, and the nervousness to her manner that he so dreaded. Worse yet, all this seemed to be connected in some strange way with Arkwright. He found this out by accident one day. She had been talking and laughing brightly about something, when he chanced to introduce Arkwright's name.
“By the way, where is Mary Jane these days?” he asked then.
“I don't know, I'm sure. He hasn't been here lately,” murmured Billy, reaching for a book on the table.
At a peculiar something in her voice, he had looked up quickly, only to find, to his great surprise, that her face showed a painful flush as she bent over the book in her hand.
He had said nothing more at the time, but he had not forgotten. Several times, after that, he had introduced the man's name, and never had it failed to bring a rush of color, a biting of the lip, or a quick change of position followed always by the troubled eyes and nervous manner that he had learned to dread. He noticed then that never, of her own free will, did she herself mention the man; never did she speak of him with the old frank lightness as “Mary Jane.”
By casual questions asked from time to time, Bertram had learned that Arkwright never came there now, and that the song-writing together had been given up. Curiously enough, this discovery, which would once have filled Bertram with joy, served now only to deepen his distress. That there was anything inconsistent in the fact that he was more frightened now at the man's absence than he had been before at his presence, did not occur to him. He knew only that he was frightened, and badly frightened.
Bertram had not forgotten the evening after the operetta, and Billy's tear-stained face on that occasion. He dated the whole thing, in fact, from that evening. He fell to wondering one day if that, too, had anything to do with Arkwright. He determined then to find out. Shamelessly—for the good of the cause—he set a trap for Billy's unwary feet.
Very adroitly one day he led the talk straight to Arkwright; then he asked abruptly:
“Where is the chap, I wonder! Why, he hasn't shown up once since the operetta, has he?”
Billy, always truthful,—and just now always embarrassed when Arkwright's name was mentioned,—walked straight into the trap.
“Oh, yes; well, he was here once—the day after the operetta. I haven't seen him since.”
Bertram answered a light something, but his face grew a little white. Now that the trap had been sprung and the victim caught, he almost wished that he had not set any trap at all.
He knew now it was true. Arkwright had been with Billy the day after the operetta, and her tears and her distress that evening had been caused by something Arkwright had said. It was Arkwright's secret that she could not tell. It was Arkwright to whom she must be fair. It was Arkwright's sorrow that she “could not help—now.”
Naturally, with these tools in his hands, and aided by days of brooding and nights of sleeplessness, it did not take Bertram long to fashion The Thing that finally loomed before him as The Truth.
He understood it all now. Music had conquered. Billy and Arkwright had found that they loved each other. On the day after the operetta, they had met, and had had some sort of scene together—doubtless Arkwright had declared his love. That was the “secret” that Billy could not tell and be “fair.” Billy, of course,—loyal little soul that she was,—had sent him away at once. Was her hand not already pledged? That was why she could not “help it-now.” (Bertram writhed in agony at the thought.) Since that meeting Arkwright had not been near the house. Billy had found, however, that her heart had gone with Arkwright; hence the shadow in her eyes, the nervousness in her manner, and the embarrassment that she always showed at the mention of his name.
That Billy was still outwardly loyal to himself, and that she still kept to her engagement, did not surprise Bertram in the least. That was like Billy. Bertram had not forgotten how, less than a year before, this same Billy had held herself loyal and true to an engagement with William, because a wretched mistake all around had caused her to give her promise to be William's wife under the impression that she was carrying out William's dearest wish. Bertram remembered her face as it had looked all those long summer days while her heart was being slowly broken; and he thought he could see that same look in her eyes now. All of which only goes to prove with what woeful skill Bertram had fashioned this Thing that was looming before him as The Truth.
The exhibition of “The Bohemian Ten” was to open with a private view on the evening of the twentieth of March. Bertram Henshaw's one contribution was to be his portrait of Miss Marguerite Winthrop—the piece of work that had come to mean so much to him; the piece of work upon which already he felt the focus of multitudes of eyes.
Miss Winthrop was in Boston now, and it was during these early March days that Bertram was supposed to be putting in his best work on the portrait; but, unfortunately, it was during these same early March days that he was engaged, also, in fashioning The Thing—and the two did not harmonize.
The Thing, indeed, was a jealous creature, and would brook no rival. She filled his eyes with horrid visions, and his brain with sickening thoughts. Between him and his model she flung a veil of fear; and she set his hand to trembling, and his brush to making blunders with the paints on his palette.
Bertram saw The Thing, and saw, too, the grievous result of her presence. Despairingly he fought against her and her work; but The Thing had become full grown now, and was The Truth. Hence she was not to be banished. She even, in a taunting way, seemed sometimes to be justifying her presence, for she reminded him:
“After all, what's the difference? What do you care for this, or anything again if Billy is lost to you?”
But the artist told himself fiercely that he did care—that he must care—for his work; and he struggled—how he struggled!—to ignore the horrid visions and the sickening thoughts, and to pierce the veil of fear so that his hand might be steady and his brush regain its skill.
And so he worked. Sometimes he let his work remain. Sometimes one hour saw only the erasing of what the hour before had wrought. Sometimes the elusive something in Marguerite Winthrop's face seemed right at the tip of his brush—on the canvas, even. He saw success then so plainly that for a moment it almost—but not quite—blotted out The Thing. At other times that elusive something on the high-bred face of his model was a veritable will-o'-the-wisp, refusing to be caught and held, even in his eye. The artist knew then that his picture would be hung with Anderson's and Fullam's.
But the portrait was, irrefutably, nearing completion, and it was to be exhibited the twentieth of the month. Bertram knew these for facts.
If for Billy those first twenty days of March did not carry quite the tragedy they contained for Bertram, they were, nevertheless, not really happy ones. She was vaguely troubled by a curious something in Bertram's behavior that she could not name; she was grieved over Arkwright's sorrow, and she was constantly probing her own past conduct to see if anywhere she could find that she was to blame for that sorrow. She missed, too, undeniably, Arkwright's cheery presence, and the charm and inspiration of his music. Nor was she finding it easy to give satisfactory answers to the questions Aunt Hannah, William, and Bertram so often asked her as to where Mary Jane was.
Even her music was little comfort to her these days. She was not writing anything. There was no song in her heart to tempt her to write. Arkwright's new words that he had brought her were out of the question, of course. They had been put away with the manuscript of the completed song, which had not, fortunately, gone to the publishers. Billy had waited, intending to send them together. She was so glad, now, that she had waited. Just once, since Arkwright's last call, she had tried to sing that song. But she had stopped at the end of the first two lines. The full meaning of those words, as coming from Arkwright, had swept over her then, and she had snatched up the manuscript and hidden it under the bottom pile of music in her cabinet ... And she had presumed to sing that love song to Bertram!
Arkwright had written Billy once—a kind, courteous, manly note that had made her cry. He had begged her again not to blame herself, and he had said that he hoped he should be strong enough sometime to wish to call occasionally—if she were willing—and renew their pleasant hours with their music; but, for the present, he knew there was nothing for him to do but to stay away. He had signed himself “Michael Jeremiah Arkwright”; and to Billy that was the most pathetic thing in the letter—it sounded so hopeless and dreary to one who knew the jaunty “M. J.”
Alice Greggory, Billy saw frequently. Billy and Aunt Hannah were great friends with the Greggorys now, and had been ever since the Greggorys' ten-days' visit at Hillside. The cheery little cripple, with the gentle tap, tap, tap of her crutches, had won everybody's heart the very first day; and Alice was scarcely less of a favorite, after the sunny friendliness of Hillside had thawed her stiff reserve into naturalness.
Billy had little to say to Alice Greggory of Arkwright. Billy was no longer trying to play Cupid's assistant. The Cause, for which she had so valiantly worked, had been felled by Arkwright's own hand—but that there were still some faint stirrings of life in it was evidenced by Billy's secret delight when one day Alice Greggory chanced to mention that Arkwright had called the night before upon her and her mother.
“He brought us news of our old home,” she explained a little hurriedly, to Billy. “He had heard from his mother, and he thought some things she said would be interesting to us.”
“Of course,” murmured Billy, carefully excluding from her voice any hint of the delight she felt, but hoping, all the while, that Alice would continue the subject.
Alice, however, had nothing more to say; and Billy was left in entire ignorance of what the news was that Arkwright had brought. She suspected, though, that it had something to do with Alice's father—certainly she hoped that it had; for if Arkwright had called to tell it, it must be good.
Billy had found a new home for the Greggorys; although at first they had drawn sensitively back, and had said that they preferred to remain where they were, they had later gratefully accepted it. A little couple from South Boston, to whom Billy had given a two weeks' outing the summer before, had moved into town and taken a flat in the South End. They had two extra rooms which they had told Billy they would like to let for light house-keeping, if only they knew just the right people to take into such close quarters with themselves. Billy at once thought of the Greggorys, and spoke of them. The little couple were delighted, and the Greggorys were scarcely less so when they at last became convinced that only a very little more money than they were already paying would give themselves a much pleasanter home, and would at the same time be a real boon to two young people who were trying to meet expenses. So the change was made, and general happiness all round had resulted—so much so, that Bertram had said to Billy, when he heard of it:
“It looks as if this was a case where your cake is frosted on both sides.”
“Nonsense! This isn't frosting—it's business,” Billy had laughed.
“And the new pupils you have found for Miss Alice—they're business, too, I suppose?”
“Certainly,” retorted Billy, with decision. Then she had given a low laugh and said: “Mercy! If Alice Greggory thought it was anything but business, I verily believe she would refuse every one of the new pupils, and begin to-night to carry back the tables and chairs herself to those wretched rooms she left last month!”
Bertram had smiled, but the smile had been a fleeting one, and the brooding look of gloom that Billy had noticed so frequently, of late, had come back to his eyes.
Billy was not a little disturbed over Bertram these days. He did not seem to be his natural, cheery self at all. He talked little, and what he did say seldom showed a trace of his usually whimsical way of putting things. He was kindness itself to her, and seemed particularly anxious to please her in every way; but she frequently found his eyes fixed on her with a sombre questioning that almost frightened her. The more she thought of it, the more she wondered what the question was, that he did not dare to ask; and whether it was of herself or himself that he would ask it—if he did dare. Then, with benumbing force, one day, a possible solution of the mystery came to her, he had found out that it was true (what all his friends had declared of him)—he did not really love any girl, except to paint!
The minute this thought came to her, Billy thrust it indignantly away. It was disloyal to Bertram and unworthy of herself, even to think such a thing. She told herself then that it was only the portrait of Miss Winthrop that was troubling him. She knew that he was worried over that. He had confessed to her that actually sometimes he was beginning to fear his hand had lost its cunning. As if that were not enough to bring the gloom to any man's face—to any artist's!
No sooner, however, had Billy arrived at this point in her mental argument, than a new element entered—her old lurking jealousy, of which she was heartily ashamed, but which she had never yet been able quite to subdue; her jealousy of the beautiful girl with the beautiful name (not Billy), whose portrait had needed so much time and so many sittings to finish. What if Bertram had found that he loved her? What if that were why his hand had lost its cunning—because, though loving her, he realized that he was bound to another, Billy herself?
This thought, too, Billy cast from her at once as again disloyal and unworthy. But both thoughts, having once entered her brain, had made for themselves roads over which the second passing was much easier than the first—as Billy found to her sorrow. Certainly, as the days went by, and as Bertram's face and manner became more and more a tragedy of suffering, Billy found it increasingly difficult to keep those thoughts from wearing their roads of suspicion into horrid deep ruts of certainty.
Only with William and Marie, now, could Billy escape from it all. With William she sought new curios and catalogued the old. With Marie she beat eggs and whipped cream in the shining kitchen, and tried to think that nothing in the world mattered except that the cake in the oven should not fall.
Bertram feared that he knew, before the portrait was hung, that it was a failure. He was sure that he knew it on the evening of the twentieth when he encountered the swiftly averted eyes of some of his artist friends, and saw the perplexed frown on the faces of others. But he knew, afterwards, that he did not really know it—till he read the newspapers during the next few days.
There was praise—oh, yes; the faint praise that kills. There was some adverse criticism, too; but it was of the light, insincere variety that is given to mediocre work by unimportant artists. Then, here and there, appeared the signed critiques of the men whose opinion counted—and Bertram knew that he had failed. Neither as a work of art, nor as a likeness, was the portrait the success that Henshaw's former work would seem to indicate that it should have been. Indeed, as one caustic pen put it, if this were to be taken as a sample of what was to follow—then the famous originator of “The Face of a Girl” had “a most distinguished future behind him.”
Seldom, if ever before, had an exhibited portrait attracted so much attention. As Bertram had said, uncounted eyes were watching for it before it was hung, because it was a portrait of the noted beauty, Marguerite Winthrop, and because two other well-known artists had failed where he, Bertram Henshaw, was hoping to succeed. After it was hung, and the uncounted eyes had seen it—either literally, or through the eyes of the critics—interest seemed rather to grow than to lessen, for other uncounted eyes wanted to see what all the fuss was about, anyway. And when these eyes had seen, their owners talked. Nor did they, by any means, all talk against the portrait. Some were as loud in its praise as were others in its condemnation; all of which, of course, but helped to attract more eyes to the cause of it all.
For Bertram and his friends these days were, naturally, trying ones. William finally dreaded to open his newspaper. (It had become the fashion, when murders and divorces were scarce, occasionally to “feature” somebody's opinion of the Henshaw portrait, on the first page—something that had almost never been known to happen before.) Cyril, according to Marie, played “perfectly awful things on his piano every day, now.” Aunt Hannah had said “Oh, my grief and conscience!” so many times that it melted now into a wordless groan whenever a new unfriendly criticism of the portrait met her indignant eyes.
Of all Bertram's friends, Billy, perhaps not unnaturally, was the angriest. Not only did she, after a time, refuse to read the papers, but she refused even to allow certain ones to be brought into the house, foolish and unreasonable as she knew this to be.
As to the artist himself, Bertram's face showed drawn lines and his eyes sombre shadows, but his words and manner carried a stolid indifference that to Billy was at once heartbreaking and maddening.
“But, Bertram, why don't you do something? Why don't you say something? Why don't you act something?” she burst out one day.
The artist shrugged his shoulders.
“But, my dear, what can I say, or do, or act?” he asked.
“I don't know, of course,” sighed Billy. “But I know what I'd like to do. I should like to go out and—fight somebody!”
So fierce were words and manner, coupled as they were with a pair of gentle eyes ablaze and two soft little hands doubled into menacing fists, that Bertram laughed.
“What a fiery little champion it is, to be sure,” he said tenderly. “But as if fighting could do any good—in this case!”
Billy's tense muscles relaxed. Her eyes filled with tears.
“No, I don't suppose it would,” she choked, beginning to cry, so that Bertram had to turn comforter.
“Come, come, dear,” he begged; “don't take it so to heart. It's not so bad, after all. I've still my good right hand left, and we'll hope there's something in it yet—that'll be worth while.”
“But this one isn't bad,” stormed Billy. “It's splendid! I'm sure, I think it's a b-beautiful portrait, and I don't see what people mean by talking so about it!”
Bertram shook his head. His eyes grew sombre again.
“Thank you, dear. But I know—and you know, really—that it isn't a splendid portrait. I've done lots better work than that.”
“Then why don't they look at those, and let this alone?” wailed Billy, with indignation.
“Because I deliberately put up this for them to see,” smiled the artist, wearily.
Billy sighed, and twisted in her chair.
“What does—Mr. Winthrop say?” she asked at last, in a faint voice.
Bertram lifted his head.
“Mr. Winthrop's been a trump all through, dear. He's already insisted on paying for this—and he's ordered another.”
“Another!”
“Yes. The old fellow never minces his words, as you may know. He came to me one day, put his hand on my shoulder, and said tersely: 'Will you give me another, same terms? Go in, boy, and win. Show 'em! I lost the first ten thousand I made. I didn't the next!' That's all he said. Before I could even choke out an answer he was gone. Gorry! talk about his having a 'heart of stone'! I don't believe another man in the country would have done that—and done it in the way he did—in the face of all this talk,” finished Bertram, his eyes luminous with feeling.
Billy hesitated.
“Perhaps—his daughter—influenced him—some.”
“Perhaps,” nodded Bertram. “She, too, has been very kind, all the way through.”
Billy hesitated again.
“But I thought—it was going so splendidly,” she faltered, in a half-stifled voice.
“So it was—at the first.”
“Then what—ailed it, at the last, do you suppose?” Billy was holding her breath till he should answer.
The man got to his feet.
“Billy, don't—don't ask me,” he begged. “Please don't let's talk of it any more. It can't do any good! I just flunked—that's all. My hand failed me. Maybe I tried too hard. Maybe I was tired. Maybe something—troubled me. Never mind, dear, what it was. It can do no good even to think of that—now. So just let's—drop it, please, dear,” he finished, his face working with emotion.
And Billy dropped it—so far as words were concerned; but she could not drop it from her thoughts—specially after Kate's letter came.
Kate's letter was addressed to Billy, and it said, after speaking of various other matters:
“And now about poor Bertram's failure.” (Billy frowned. In Billy's presence no one was allowed to say “Bertram's failure”; but a letter has a most annoying privilege of saying what it pleases without let or hindrance, unless one tears it up—and a letter destroyed unread remains always such a tantalizing mystery of possibilities! So Billy let the letter talk.) “Of course we have heard of it away out here. I do wish if Bertram must paint such famous people, he would manage to flatter them up—in the painting, I mean, of course—enough so that it might pass for a success!
“The technical part of all this criticism I don't pretend to understand in the least; but from what I hear and read, he must, indeed, have made a terrible mess of it, and of course I'm very sorry—and some surprised, too, for usually he paints such pretty pictures!
“Still, on the other hand, Billy, I'm not surprised. William says that Bertram has been completely out of fix over something, and as gloomy as an owl, for weeks past; and of course, under those circumstances, the poor boy could not be expected to do good work. Now William, being a man, is not supposed to understand what the trouble is. But I, being a woman, can see through a pane of glass when it's held right up before me; and I can guess, of course, that a woman is at the bottom of it—she always is!—and that you, being his special fancy at the moment” (Billy almost did tear the letter now—but not quite), “are that woman.
“Now, Billy, you don't like such frank talk, of course; but, on the other hand, I know you do not want to ruin the dear boy's career. So, for heaven's sake, if you two have been having one of those quarrels that lovers so delight in—do, please, for the good of the cause, make up quick, or else quarrel harder and break it off entirely—which, honestly, would be the better way, I think, all around.
“There, there, my dear child, don't bristle up! I am very fond of you, and would dearly love to have you for a sister—if you'd only take William, as you should! But, as you very well know, I never did approve of this last match at all, for either of your sakes.
“He can't make you happy, my dear, and you can't make him happy. Bertram never was—and never will be—a marrying man. He's too temperamental—too thoroughly wrapped up in his Art. Girls have never meant anything to him but a beautiful picture to paint. And they never will. They can't. He's made that way. Listen! I can prove it to you. Up to this winter he's always been a care-free, happy, jolly fellow, and you know what beautiful work he has done. Never before has he tied himself to any one girl till last fall. Then you two entered into this absurd engagement.
“Now what has it been since? William wrote me himself not a fortnight ago that he'd been worried to death over Bertram for weeks past, he's been so moody, so irritable, so fretted over his work, so unlike himself. And his picture has failed dismally. Of course William doesn't understand; but I do. I know you've probably quarrelled, or something. You know how flighty and unreliable you can be sometimes, Billy, and I don't say that to mean anything against you, either—that's your way. You're just as temperamental in your art, music, as Bertram is in his. You're utterly unsuited to him. If Bertram is to marry anybody, it should be some quiet, staid, sensible girl who would be a help to him. But when I think of you two flyaway flutterbudgets marrying—!
“Now, for heaven's sake, Billy, do make up or something—and do it now. Don't, for pity's sake, let Bertram ever put out another such a piece of work to shame us all like this. Do you want to ruin his career?
“Faithfully yours,
“KATE HARTWELL.
“P. S. I think William's the one for you. He's devoted to you, and his quiet, sensible affection is just what your temperament needs. I always thought William was the one for you. Think it over.
“P. S. No. 2. You can see by the above that it isn't you I'm objecting to, my dear. It's just you-and-Bertram.
“K.”
Billy was shaking with anger and terror by the time she had finished reading Kate's letter. Anger was uppermost at the moment, and with one sweeping wrench of her trembling fingers she tore the closely written sheets straight through the middle, and flung them into the little wicker basket by her desk. Then she went down-stairs and played her noisiest, merriest Tarantella, and tried to see how fast she could make her fingers fly.
But Billy could not, of course, play tarantellas all day; and even while she did play them she could not forget that waste-basket up-stairs, and the horror it contained. The anger was still uppermost, but the terror was prodding her at every turn, and demanding to know just what it was that Kate had written in that letter, anyway. It is not strange then, perhaps, that before two hours passed, Billy went up-stairs, took the letter from the basket, matched together the torn half-sheets and forced her shrinking eyes to read every word again-just to satisfy that terror which would not be silenced.
At the end of the second reading, Billy reminded herself with stern calmness that it was only Kate, after all; that nobody ought to mind what Kate said; that certainly she, Billy, ought not—after the experience she had already had with her unpleasant interference! Kate did not know what she was talking about, anyway. This was only another case of her trying “to manage.” She did so love to manage—everything!
At this point Billy got out her pen and paper and wrote to Kate.
It was a formal, cold little letter, not at all the sort that Billy's friends usually received. It thanked Kate for her advice, and for her “kind willingness” to have Billy for a sister; but it hinted that perhaps Kate did not realize that as long as Billy was the one who would have to live with the chosen man, it would be pleasanter to take the one Billy loved, which happened in this case to be Bertram—not William. As for any “quarrel” being the cause of whatever fancied trouble there was with the new picture—the letter scouted that idea in no uncertain terms. There had been no suggestion of a quarrel even once since the engagement.
Then Billy signed her name and took the letter out to post immediately.
For the first few minutes after the letter had been dropped into the green box at the corner, Billy held her head high, and told herself that the matter was now closed. She had sent Kate a courteous, dignified, conclusive, effectual answer, and she thought with much satisfaction of the things she had said.
Very soon, however, she began to think—not so much of what she had said—but of what Kate had said. Many of Kate's sentences were unpleasantly vivid in her mind. They seemed, indeed, to stand out in letters of flame, and they began to burn, and burn, and burn. These were some of them:
“William says that Bertram has been completely out of fix over something, and as gloomy as an owl for weeks past.”
“A woman is at the bottom of it—... you are that woman.”
“You can't make him happy.”
“Bertram never was—and never will be—a marrying man.”
“Girls have never meant anything to him but a beautiful picture to paint. And they never will.”
“Up to this winter he's always been a carefree, happy, jolly fellow, and you know what beautiful work he has done. Never before has he tied himself to any one girl until last fall.”
“Now what has it been since?”
“He's been so moody, so irritable, so fretted over his work, so unlike himself; and his picture has failed, dismally.”
“Do you want to ruin his career?”
Billy began to see now that she had not really answered Kate's letter at all. The matter was not closed. Her reply had been, perhaps, courteous and dignified—but it had not been conclusive nor effectual.
Billy had reached home now, and she was crying. Bertram had acted strangely, of late. Bertram had seemed troubled over something. His picture had—With a little shudder Billy tossed aside these thoughts, and dug at her teary eyes with a determined hand. Fiercely she told herself that the matter was settled. Very scornfully she declared that it was “only Kate,” after all, and that she would not let Kate make her unhappy again! Forthwith she picked up a current magazine and began to read.
As it chanced, however, even here Billy found no peace; for the first article she opened to was headed in huge black type:
“MARRIAGE AND THE ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT.”
With a little cry Billy flung the magazine far from her, and picked up another. But even “The Elusiveness of Chopin,” which she found here, could not keep her thoughts nor her eyes from wandering to the discarded thing in the corner, lying ignominiously face down with crumpled, out-flung leaves.
Billy knew that in the end she should go over and pick that magazine up, and read that article from beginning to end. She was not surprised, therefore, when she did it—but she was not any the happier for having done it.
The writer of the article did not approve of marriage and the artistic temperament. He said the artist belonged to his Art, and to posterity through his Art. The essay fairly bristled with many-lettered words and high-sounding phrases, few of which Billy really understood. She did understand enough, however, to feel, guiltily, when the thing was finished, that already she had married Bertram, and by so doing had committed a Crime. She had slain Art, stifled Ambition, destroyed Inspiration, and been a nuisance generally. In consequence of which Bertram would henceforth and forevermore be doomed to Littleness.
Naturally, in this state of mind, and with this vision before her, Billy was anything but her bright, easy self when she met Bertram an hour or two later. Naturally, too, Bertram, still the tormented victim of the bugaboo his jealous fears had fashioned, was just in the mood to place the worst possible construction on his sweetheart's very evident unhappiness. With sighs, unspoken questions, and frequently averted eyes, therefore, the wretched evening passed, a pitiful misery to them both.
During the days that followed, Billy thought that the world itself must be in league with Kate, so often did she encounter Kate's letter masquerading under some thin disguise. She did not stop to realize that because she was so afraid she would find it, she did find it. In the books she read, in the plays she saw, in the chance words she heard spoken by friend or stranger—always there was something to feed her fears in one way or another. Even in a yellowed newspaper that had covered the top shelf in her closet she found one day a symposium on whether or not an artist's wife should be an artist; and she shuddered—but she read every opinion given.
Some writers said no, and some, yes; and some said it all depended—on the artist and his wife. Billy found much food for thought, some for amusement, and a little that made for peace of mind. On the whole it opened up a new phase of the matter, perhaps. At all events, upon finishing it she almost sobbed:
“One would think that just because I write a song now and then, I was going to let Bertram starve, and go with holes in his socks and no buttons on his clothes!”
It was that afternoon that Billy went to see Marie; but even there she did not escape, for the gentle Marie all unknowingly added her mite to the woeful whole.
Billy found Marie in tears.
“Why, Marie!” she cried in dismay.
“Sh-h!” warned Marie, turning agonized eyes toward the closed door of Cyril's den.
“But, dear, what is it?” begged Billy, with no less dismay, but with greater caution.
“Sh-h!” admonished Marie again.
On tiptoe, then, she led the way to a room at the other end of the tiny apartment. Once there; she explained in a more natural tone of voice:
“Cyril's at work on a new piece for the piano.”
“Well, what if he is?” demanded Billy. “That needn't make you cry, need it?”
“Oh, no—no, indeed,” demurred Marie, in a shocked voice.
“Well, then, what is it?”
Marie hesitated; then, with the abandon of a hurt child that longs for sympathy, she sobbed:
“It—it's just that I'm afraid, after all, that I'm not good enough for Cyril.”
Billy stared frankly.
“Not good enough, Marie Henshaw! Whatever in the world do you mean?”
“Well, not good for him, then. Listen! To-day, I know, in lots of ways I must have disappointed him. First, he put on some socks that I'd darned. They were the first since our marriage that I'd found to darn, and I'd been so proud and—and happy while I was darning them. But—but he took 'em off right after breakfast and threw 'em in a corner. Then he put on a new pair, and said that I—I needn't darn any more; that it made—bunches. Billy, my darns—bunches!” Marie's face and voice were tragic.
“Nonsense, dear! Don't let that fret you,” comforted Billy, promptly, trying not to laugh too hard. “It wasn't your darns; it was just darns—anybody's darns. Cyril won't wear darned socks. Aunt Hannah told me so long ago, and I said then there'd be a tragedy when you found it out. So don't worry over that.”
“Oh, but that isn't all,” moaned Marie. “Listen! You know how quiet he must have everything when he's composing—and he ought to have it, too! But I forgot, this morning, and put on some old shoes that didn't have any rubber heels, and I ran the carpet sweeper, and I rattled tins in the kitchen. But I never thought a thing until he opened his door and asked me please to change my shoes and let the—the confounded dirt go, and didn't I have any dishes in the house but what were made of that abominable tin s-stuff,” she finished in a wail of misery.
Billy burst into a ringing laugh, but Marie's aghast face and upraised hand speedily reduced it to a convulsive giggle.
“You dear child! Cyril's always like that when he's composing,” soothed Billy. “I supposed you knew it, dear. Don't you fret! Run along and make him his favorite pudding, and by night both of you will have forgotten there ever were such things in the world as tins and shoes and carpet sweepers that clatter.”
Marie shook her head. Her dismal face did not relax.
“You don't understand,” she moaned. “It's myself. I've hindered him!” She brought out the word with an agony of slow horror. “And only to-day I read-here, look!” she faltered, going to the table and picking up with shaking hands a magazine.
Billy recognized it by the cover at once—another like it had been flung not so long ago by her own hand into the corner. She was not surprised, therefore, to see very soon at the end of Marie's trembling finger:
“Marriage and the Artistic Temperament.”
Billy did not give a ringing laugh this time. She gave an involuntary little shudder, though she tried valiantly to turn it all off with a light word of scorn, and a cheery pat on Marie's heaving shoulders. But she went home very soon; and it was plain to be seen that her visit to Marie had not brought her peace.
Billy knew Kate's letter, by heart, now, both in the original, and in its different versions, and she knew that, despite her struggles, she was being forced straight toward Kate's own verdict: that she, Billy, was the cause, in some way, of the deplorable change in Bertram's appearance, manner, and work. Before she would quite surrender to this heart-sickening belief, however, she determined to ask Bertram himself. Falteringly, but resolutely, therefore, one day, she questioned him.
“Bertram, once you hinted that the picture did not go right because you were troubled over something; and I've been wondering—was it about—me, in any way, that you were troubled?”
Billy had her answer before the man spoke. She had it in the quick terror that sprang to his eyes, and the dull red that swept from his neck to his forehead. His reply, so far as words went did not count, for it evaded everything and told nothing. But Billy knew without words. She knew, too, what she must do. For the time being she took Bertram's evasive answer as he so evidently wished it to be taken; but that evening, after he had gone, she wrote him a little note and broke the engagement. So heartbroken was she—and so fearful was she that he should suspect this—that her note, when completed, was a cold little thing of few words, which carried no hint that its very coldness was but the heart-break in the disguise of pride.
This was like Billy in all ways. Billy, had she lived in the days of the Christian martyrs, would have been the first to walk with head erect into the Arena of Sacrifice. The arena now was just everyday living, the lions were her own devouring misery, and the cause was Bertram's best good.
From Bertram's own self she had it now—that she had been the cause of his being troubled; so she could doubt no longer. The only part that was uncertain was the reason why he had been troubled. Whether his bond to her had become irksome because of his love for another, or because of his love for no girl—except to paint, Billy did not know. But that it was irksome she did not doubt now. Besides, as if she were going to slay his Art, stifle his Ambition, destroy his Inspiration, and be a nuisance generally just so that she might be happy! Indeed, no! Hence she broke the engagement.
This was the letter:
“DEAR BERTRAM:—You won't make the
move, so I must. I knew, from the way you spoke
to-day, that it was about me that you were
troubled, even though you generously tried to
make me think it was not. And so the picture did
not go well.
“Now, dear, we have not been happy together
lately. You have seen it; so have I. I fear our
engagement was a mistake, so I'm going to send
back your ring to-morrow, and I'm writing this
letter to-night. Please don't try to see me just
yet. You know what I am doing is best—all
round.
“Always your friend,
“BILLY.”