A Top-Floor Idyl Part 32

GORDON RETURNS

And then, after a very short time, the parting came. I was the first to advise it. She could no longer remain in the little, decrepit boarding house. People would come to see her; she had to have a decent home, a place in which she could receive some of the members of this new world she had taken by storm. We had looked together over the accounts in the papers; it was nothing less than a triumph. Richetti was making all sorts of arrangements for her.

After a long dispute she consented to take my piano with her.

"I'm afraid she won't do it," Frieda had told me, when I broached the subject to her.

"I--I should be so glad to think it had belonged to--to the only two women I have--have ever----"

"Poor darling David," said the sweet old painter, wiping her gla.s.ses, "Why--why don't you speak?"

"Because--just because," I answered.

"I know, she is moving into another world now. I am glad she is taking Eulalie with her. But she can never forget you, Dave. You will always be the best and dearest of friends to her. You must go and see her often."

"I'm afraid it will never be quite the same, Frieda. She will have a little parlor now, and it won't be like the room she trusted me to enter, the place where Baby Paul first saw the light, the dingy quarters in which her new voice was born. Oh! Frieda! Have we ever fully realized how patient she was, how resigned? We surely never did because we could not know how great her loss had been. We merely had an idea that she had been deprived of a few golden notes, and all the time she knew that she had lost a treasure beyond compare. And yet how brave she was through it all! With what courage she went to work in that poor little shop to gain the pittance that might keep her and Baby Paul farther from want! We have never once heard her whimper, nor has she ever seemed really discouraged. Sometimes she showed great sadness, of course, but it was born of her misfortune and of her fears for the little one, because of the love for him that surged in her heart. G.o.d! Frieda, but you women are brave and strong!"

"Yes, David dear, especially when we find a good man to lean upon," she answered.

And so, as I have said, Frances went away to a very decent little apartment Frieda found for her, and Eulalie was installed in a kitchen of her own, and the latchstring was always out for us. I enjoyed some pleasant days of tacking a few photos on the walls and hanging portieres. Some of the time I had to work alone, for she was much taken up. Three weeks after the concert she went away on a tour, having joined forces with Tsheretshewski, the great cellist, an obese and long haired artist with a wife and seven children, who became a thing of poetry and beauty when he played. I heard them in Carnegie Hall, and then they went off on a tour that took them as far as Chicago and St. Louis, and my agency for newspaper cuttings kept on sending me articles by real or alleged critics. Eulalie traveled with her, and the baby also went from town to town. Frances sent me many postals and, often, letters. The latter always began with "Dearest Dave."

Then came the spring again and a meeting that was positively dreadful, during which Frances pulled out little rags of paper full of her scribbling and covered over with numbers which represented her indebtedness to me. We fought like cats and dogs over the items, till, finally, she proudly pulled out a checkbook from a little desk and wrote out the amount, signing the thing boldly and declaring that she would never speak to me again unless I took it.

"You see, David dear," she explained, "everything is all right now and I am making lots of money, and you can't refuse, because you know I only accepted in the hope that I would be able to pay it all back some day, and it will leave me a debtor to you for a million things, and Baby Paul too!"

During the summer she went to Newport, where Richetti gave another concert and where he made her a flattering offer to help in his teaching of the infinitely rich and sometimes voiceless. Thank goodness that a press of work came to me, for Ceballo, the great manager, actually sought me out and insisted on collaborating with me in a dramatization of "Land o' Love," which had pa.s.sed its second hundred thousand. He nearly drove me to insanity, while we toiled at it, and I would have cried mercy before the end, but for the furious energy with which he kept me a prisoner of his wiles.

Then I spent a few weeks in the Adirondacks, having found a small hotel where people never put on war-paint for dinner and no one was ashamed to wear flannel s.h.i.+rts, and I rowed and pretended to fish and lost myself in the woods to my heart's content, finally returning to my old typewriter with a ma.s.s of notes for a further novel. I took up once more my lonely vigils, when I could, because I began to feel the grasp of many cogwheels that were the penalty of success. Some magazines actually requested stories of me.

About the first of October I received a cablegram from Gordon, which appalled me with its suddenness.

"Home by _Rochambeau_. Get old girl to clean up. Can't drive ambulance any more.

"GORDON."

It was simply maddening. Why couldn't he drive? Of course he had been hurt. Why didn't he tell me what was the matter? Poor old chap, in spite of some of his ways there is no man on earth I have ever been so fond of, because, at bottom, there is something very manly and genuine in him. When things got too hot for him he didn't go off somewhere and mope; no, he naturally went and gave the best that was in him to a service of n.o.ble charity and virile endeavor.

I ascertained over the phone the date of the _Rochambeau's_ probable arrival and walked up the Avenue to a meeting with Ceballo, who was worrying me to death over the ending of the fourth act. He's a most obstinate man. At a busy corner I stopped to allow the pa.s.sage of a flood of autos. The crowd behind me pressed me forward, nearly against a powerful gray roadster.

"Jump in quick, Mr. Cole," came a woman's voice.

I looked up. It was Miss Sophia Van Rossum who had spoken. The chauffeur was in a little seat behind her and I swiftly obeyed, glad indeed to see her again.

"Are you in a hurry to go anywhere, Mr. Cole, because I'll be glad to take you wherever you want to go?"

"No," I replied, "I was killing time for about an hour. After that I have an appointment."

"Then we can take a little turn in the Park," she said, approvingly.

The carriages and motors were so numerous that for some time we said very little. I watched her self-reliant, skilful driving, and took an occasional glance at her profile. It was beautiful as ever, perhaps more so than ever, colored with health and a fair coat of tan. Once in the Park, however, we found more room and she drove with less preoccupation.

"I--I've heard from you but twice this summer, Mr. Cole. Thank you for letting me know that Gordon was still well. Have you any further news of him?"

"Yes, I have just heard," I replied. "He is on his way back and I wrote you this morning at Southampton."

I watched her closely. For a moment she drove on, looking neither to the right or left, but I saw that her lower lip was being pressed on by her teeth.

"He--he never let me know," she finally said. "I--I hope he will return well and happy."

"Pardon me. I am afraid that something has happened to him," I said, again. "Gordon is the sort of fellow who would see the thing through. He would go on to the end, you know, and--and he didn't write, this time. I have the cable here. You might stop a moment under these trees."

She brought the machine to a standstill, gently, with no undue pressure of brake, losing none of her expertness, and put her hand out for the paper I held.

"I see," she said, very simply and quietly, though the paper shook a little in her grasp. "He has been very badly hurt, Mr. Cole. Otherwise he would have remained, until he was well again, to take up the work once more. I--I would give anything on earth to meet that steamer!"

"The easiest thing in the world, Miss Van Rossum."

"No, the hardest, the most impossible," she retorted, quickly. "He--he might not be glad to see me, else he would have cabled me also, I think.

You will be there, of course! Be very sure you meet him, Mr. Cole, and then, please--please let me know what has happened, and find out for me whether there is anything I can do. You promise, don't you?"

I put out my hand and she crushed it, nervously, with wonderful strength, and let it go at once.

"We will go on now, I think," she said, and pressed the selfstarter.

Soon we were in the main driveway again, among a flooding and ebbing tide of carriages and motors. Some women bowed to her and she returned the salutations with a graceful move of her head. She drove as easily as usual, and the turn was completed. Finally, she dropped me off at the club and went on, after brief but very genuine thanks.

"Good Lord! David," said Ceballo, a moment later. "Just caught sight of you with Diana at the wheel. Splendid young lady, isn't she? I know her father quite well."

"Yes," I answered, "she is a very fine young woman."

"Doesn't much care for literature, does she?"

"I don't know, but she has a heart of gold, and that's what counts."

So we retired to a small private table and disputed and argued for a couple of hours, at the end of which my brains were addled and I told him to do as he pleased, whereat he beamed and I parted from him.

Then I began counting the days till the _Rochambeau_ should arrive, and Frances came back to town and sent me word at once. She received me joyfully and told me how much good the sea-air on the Newport cliffs had done Baby Paul, who was beginning to talk like a little man and to say "G.o.d bless David" in the prayer he babbled after her each evening.

"I'm only back for a short time," she said, "because I'm to sing at a concert in Boston next week, and then we are going to Buffalo for a day, after which I shall return. And what do you think, David? I am to sign an engagement for the Metropolitan! Tsheretshewski is going abroad this winter to play in Spain and England, and so I shall be, for the whole winter, here in New York, and--and I hope you won't neglect me."

I a.s.sured her that I would call every day, and left her, after I had inspected Baby Paul, who deigned to let me kiss him and favored my moustache with a powerful tug. He is a stunning infant. She was standing at the outer door of her apartment, her dear sweet smile speaking of her friends.h.i.+p and regard. The temptation came on me again, the awful longing for a touch of those lips, but I held myself within bounds, as bravely as I could, and touched the elevator signal. She waited until the cage had shot up and waved her hand at me. Her "Good-by, Dave" held all the charm of her song and the tenderness of her heart, I thought, and I answered it with a catch in my throat.

"You will never be anything but a big over-grown kid, David," Frieda had told me, a few days before. Ay! I realized it! I would never cease crying for that radiant moon. Sometimes, in silly dreams, I have seen myself standing before her, with her two hands in mine, with her lips near, with her heart ready to come into my keeping. But, when I waken, I remember the words she said last year, when Gordon made her so unhappy.

How could love be left in her heart? she had asked. Was there ever a night when she didn't kneel and pray for the poor soul of the man buried somewhere in France, in those dreadful fields, with, perhaps, never a cross over him nor a flower to bear to him a little of the love she had given? Let well enough alone, David, my boy! You can have her song whenever you care to beg for it, and her friends.h.i.+p and her smiles.

Would you forfeit these things because you must come forth and beg for more, ay, for more than she can give you? Would you force her dear eyes to shed tears of sorrow for you, and hear her soft voice breaking with the pain it would give her to refuse?

A few days later she met me at her door, excitedly, and told me that Baby Paul had a slight cold and that Dr. Porter had advised her not to take him away with her.