The Price She Paid Part 24

"Extravagant?" laughed he. "You are afraid to borrow! Why, three or four nights of singing will pay back all you've borrowed."

"I suppose I WILL make a lot of money," said she. "They all tell me so.

But it doesn't seem real to me." She hastily added: "I don't mean the career. That seems real enough. I can hardly wait to begin at the roles. I mean the money part. You see, I never earned any money and never really had any money of my own."

"Well, you'll have plenty of it in two or three years," said Stanley, confidently. "And you mustn't try to live like girls who've been brought up to hards.h.i.+p. It isn't necessary, and it would only unfit you for your work."

"I think that's true," said she. "But I've enough--more than enough."

She gave him a nervous, shy, almost agonized look. "Please don't try to put me under any heavier obligations than I have to be."

"Please don't talk nonsense about obligation," retorted he. "Let's get away from this subject. You don't seem to realize that you're doing me a favor, that it's a privilege to be allowed to help develop such a marvelous voice as yours. Scores of people would jump at the chance."

"That doesn't lessen my obligation," said she. And she thought she meant it, though, in fact, his generous and plausible statement of the case had immediately lessened not a little her sense of obligation.

On the whole, however, she was not sorry she had this chance to talk of obligation. Slowly, as they saw each other from time to time, often alone, Stanley had begun--perhaps in spite of himself and unconsciously--to show his feeling for her. Sometimes his hand accidentally touched hers, and he did not draw it away as quickly as he might. And she--it was impossible for her to make any gesture, much less say anything, that suggested sensitiveness on her part. It would put him in an awkward position, would humiliate him most unjustly. He fell into the habit of holding her hand longer than was necessary at greeting or parting, of touching her caressingly, of looking at her with the eyes of a lover instead of a friend. She did not like these things. For some mysterious reason--from sheer perversity, she thought--she had taken a strong physical dislike to him. Perfectly absurd, for there was nothing intrinsically repellent about this handsome, clean, most attractively dressed man, of the best type of American and New-Yorker. No, only perversity could explain such a silly notion. She was always afraid he would try to take advantage of her delicate position--always afraid she would have to yield something, some trifle; yet the idea of giving anything from a sense of obligation was galling to her. His very refraining made her more nervous, the more shrinking. If he would only commit some overt act--seize her, kiss her, make outrageous demands--but this refraining, these touches that might be accidental and again might be stealthy approach-- She hated to have him shake hands with her, would have liked to draw away when his clothing chanced to brush against hers.

So she was glad of the talk about obligation. It set him at a distance, immediately. He ceased to look lovingly, to indulge in the nerve-rasping little caresses. He became carefully formal. He was evidently eager to prove the sincerity of his protestations--too eager perhaps, her perverse mind suggested. Still, sincere or not, he held to all the forms of sincerity.

Some friends of Mrs. Brindley's who were going abroad offered her their cottage on the New Jersey coast near Seabright, and a big new touring-car and chauffeur. She and Mildred at once gave up the plan for a summer in the Adirondacks, the more readily as several of the men and women they saw the most of lived within easy distance of them at Deal Beach and Elberon. When Mildred went shopping she was lured into buying a lot of summer things she would not have needed in the Adirondacks--a mere matter of two hundred and fifty dollars or thereabouts. A little additional economy in the fall would soon make up for such a trifle, and if there is one time more than another when a woman wishes to look well and must look well, that time is summer--especially by the sea.

When her monthly statement from the bank came on the first of July she found that five thousand dollars had been deposited to her credit. She was moved by this discovery to devote several hours--very depressed hours they were--to her finances. She had spent a great deal more money than she had thought; indeed, since March she had been living at the rate of fifteen thousand a year. She tried to account for this amazing extravagance. But she could recall no expenditure that was not really almost, if not quite, necessary. It took a frightful lot of money to live in New York. How DID people with small incomes manage to get along? Whatever would have become of her if she had not had the good luck to be able to borrow from Stanley? What would become of her if, before she was succeeding on the stage, Stanley should die or lose faith in her or interest in her? What would become of her! She had been living these last few months among people who had wide-open eyes and knew everything that was going on--and did some "going-on"

themselves, as she was now more than suspecting. There were many women, thousands of them--among the attractive, costily dressed throngs she saw in the carriages and autos and cabs--who would not like to have it published how they contrived to live so luxuriously. No, they would not like to have it published, though they cared not a fig for its being whispered; New York too thoroughly understood how necessary luxurious living was, and was too completely divested of the follies of the old-fas.h.i.+oned, straight-laced morality, to mind little shabby details of queer conduct in striving to keep up with the procession.

Even the married women, using their husbands--and letting their husbands use them--did not frown on the irregularities of their sisters less fortunately married or not able to find a permanent "leg to pull."

As for the girls--Mildred had observed strange things in the lives of the girls she knew more or less well nowadays. In fact, all the women, of all cla.s.ses and conditions, were engaged in the same mad struggle to get hold of money to spend upon fun and finery--a struggle matching in recklessness and resoluteness the struggle of the men down-town for money for the same purposes. It was curious, this double mania of the men and the women--the mania to get money, no matter how; the instantly succeeding mania to get rid of it, no matter how. Looking about her, Mildred felt that she was peculiar and apart from nearly all the women she knew. SHE got her money honorably. SHE did not degrade herself, did not sell herself, did not wheedle or cajole or pretend in the least degree. She had grown more liberal as her outlook on life had widened with contact with the New York mind--no, with the mind of the whole easy-going, luxury-mad, morality-scorning modern world. She still kept her standard for herself high, and believed in a purity for herself which she did not exact or expect in her friends. In this respect she and Cyrilla Brindley were sympathetically alike. No, Mildred was confident that in no circ.u.mstances, in NO circ.u.mstances, would she relax her ideas of what she personally could do and could not do. Not that she blamed, or judged at all, women who did as she would not; but she could not, simply could not, however hard she might be driven, do those things--though she could easily understand how other women did them in preference to sinking down into the working cla.s.s or eking out a frowsy existence in some poor boarding-house. The temptation would be great. Thank Heaven, it was not teasing her. She would resist it, of course. But--

What if Stanley Baird should lose interest? What if, after he lost interest, she should find herself without money, worse of than she had been when she sold herself into slavery--highly moral and conventionally correct slavery, but still slavery--to the little general with the peaked pink-silk nightcap hiding the absence of the removed toupee--and with the wonderful pink-silk pajamas, gorgeously monogramed in violet--and the tiny feet and ugly hands--and those loathsome needle-pointed mustaches and the hideous habit of mumbling his tongue and smacking his lips? What if, moneyless, she should not be able to find another Stanley or a man of the cla.s.s gentleman willing to help her generously even on ANY terms? What then?

She was looking out over the sea, her bank-book and statements and canceled checks in her lap. Their cottage was at the very edge of the strand; its veranda was often damp from spray after a storm. It was not storming as she sat there, "taking stock"; under a blue sky an almost tranquil sea was crooning softly in the sunlight, innocent and happy and playful as a child. She, dressed in a charming negligee and looking forward to a merry day in the auto, with lunch and dinner at attractive, luxurious places farther down the coast--she was stricken with a horrible sadness, with a terror that made her heart beat wildly.

"I must be crazy!" she said, half aloud. "I've never earned a dollar with my voice. And for two months it has been unreliable. I'm acting like a crazy person. What WILL become of me?"

Just then Stanley Baird came through the pretty little house, seeking her. "There you are!" he cried. "Do go get dressed."

Hastily she flung a scarf over the book and papers in her lap. She had intended to speak to him about that fresh deposit of five thousand dollars--to refuse it, to rebuke him. Now she did not dare.

"What's the matter?" he went on. "Headache?"

"It was the wine at dinner last night," explained she. "I ought never to touch red wine. It disagrees with me horribly."

"That was filthy stuff," said he. "You must take some champagne at lunch. That'll set you right."

She stealthily wound the scarf about the papers. When she felt that all were secure she rose. She was looking sweet and sad and peculiarly beautiful. There was an exquisite sheen on her skin. She had washed her hair that morning, and it was straying fascinatingly about her brow and ears and neck. Baird looked at her, lowered his eyes and colored.

"I'll not be long," she said hurriedly.

She had to pa.s.s him in the rather narrow doorway. From her garments shook a delicious perfume. He caught her in his arms. The blood had flushed into his face in a torrent, swelling out the veins, giving him a distorted and wild expression.

"Mildred!" he cried. "Say that you love me a little! I'm so lonely for you--so hungry for you!"

She grew cold with fear and with repulsion. She neither yielded to his embrace nor shook it off. She simply stood, her round smooth body hard though corsetless. He kissed her on the throat, kissed the lace over her bosom, crying out inarticulately. In the frenzy of his pa.s.sion he did not for a while realize her lack of response. As he felt it, his arms relaxed, dropped away from her, fell at his side. He hung his head. He was breathing so heavily that she glanced into the house apprehensively, fearing someone else might hear.

"I beg pardon," he muttered. "You were too much for me this morning.

It was your fault. You are maddening!"

She moved on into the house.

"Wait a minute!" he called after her.

She halted, hesitating.

"Come back," he said. "I've got something to say to you."

She turned and went back to the veranda, he retreating before her and his eyes sinking before the cold, clear blue of hers.

"You're going up, not to come down again," he said. "You think I've insulted you--think I've acted outrageously."

How glad she was that he had so misread her thoughts--had not discovered the fear, the weakness, the sudden collapse of all her boasted confidence in her strength of character.

"You'll never feel the same toward me again," he went fatuously on.

"You think I'm a fraud. Well, I'll admit that I am in love with you--have been ever since the steamer--always was crazy about that mouth of yours--and your figure, and the sound of your voice. I'll admit I'm an utter fool about you--respect you and trust you as I never used to think any woman deserved to be respected and trusted. I'll even admit that I've been hoping--all sorts of things. I knew a woman like you wouldn't let a man help her unless she loved him."

At this her heart beat wildly and a blush of shame poured over her face and neck. He did not see. He had not the courage to look at her--to face that expression of the violated G.o.ddess he felt confident her face was wearing. In love, he reasoned and felt about her like an inexperienced boy, all his experience going for nothing. He went on:

"I understand we can never be anything to each other until you're on the stage and arrived. I'd not have it otherwise, if I could. For I want YOU, and I'd never believe I had you unless you were free."

The color was fading from her cheeks. At this it flushed deeper than before. She must speak. Not to speak was to lie, was to play the hypocrite. Yet speak she dared not. At least Stanley Baird was better than Siddall. Anyhow, who was she, that had been the wife of Siddall, to be so finicky?

"You don't believe me?" he said miserably. "You think I'll forget myself sometime again?"

"I hope not," she said gently. "I believe not. I trust you, Stanley."

And she went into the house. He looked after her, in admiration of the sweet and pure calm of this quiet rebuke. She tried to take the same exalted view of it herself, but she could not fool herself just then with the familiar "good woman" fake. She knew that she had struck the flag of self-respect. She knew what she would really have done had he been less delicate, less in love, and more "practical." And she found a small and poor consolation in reflecting, "I wonder how many women there are who take high ground because it costs nothing." We are p.r.o.ne to suspect everybody of any weakness we find in ourselves--and perhaps we are not so far wrong as are those who accept without question the noisy protestations of a world of self-deceivers.

Thenceforth she and Stanley got on better than ever--apparently. But though she ignored it, she knew the truth--knew her new and deep content was due to her not having challenged his a.s.sertion that she loved him. He, believing her honest and high minded, a.s.sumed that the failure to challenge was a good woman's way of admitting. But with the day of reckoning--not only with him but also with her own self-respect--put off until that vague and remote time when she should be a successful prima donna, she gave herself up to enjoyment. That was a summer of rarely fine weather, particularly fine along the Jersey coast. They--always in gay parties--motored up and down the coast and inland. Several of the "musical" men--notably Richardson of Elberon--had plenty of money; Stanley, stopping with his cousins, the Frasers, on the Rumson Road, brought several of his friends, all rich and more or less free. As every moment of Mildred's day was full and as it was impossible not to sleep and sleep well in that ocean air, with the surf soothing the nerves as the lullaby of a nurse soothes a baby, she was able to put everything unpleasant out of mind. She was resting her voice, was building up her health; therefore the career was being steadily advanced and no time was being wasted. She felt sorry for those who had to do unpleasant or disagreeable things in making their careers. She told herself that she did not deserve her good fortune in being able to advance to a brilliant career not through hards.h.i.+p but over the most delightful road imaginable--amusing herself, wearing charming and satisfactory clothes, swimming and dancing, motoring and feasting. Without realizing it, she was strongly under the delusion that she was herself already rich--the inevitable delusion with a woman when she moves easily and freely and luxuriously about, never bothered for money, always in the company of rich people. The rich are fated to demoralize those around them. The stingy rich fill their satellites with envy and hatred. The generous rich fill them with the feeling that the light by which they s.h.i.+ne and the heat with which they are warm are not reflected light and heat but their own.

Never had she been so happy. She even did not especially mind Donald Keith, a friend of Stanley's and of Mrs. Brindley's, who, much too often to suit her, made one of the party. She had tried in vain to discover what there was in Keith that inspired such intense liking in two people so widely different as expansive and emotional Stanley Baird and reserved and distinctly cold Cyrilla Brindley. Keith talked little, not only seemed not to listen well, but showed plainly, even in tete-a-tete conversations, that his thoughts had been elsewhere. He made no pretense of being other than he was--an indifferent man who came because it did not especially matter to him where he was.

Sometimes his silence and his indifference annoyed Mildred; again--thanks to her profound and reckless contentment--she was able to forget that he was along. He seemed to be and probably was about forty years old. His head was beautifully shaped, the line of its profile--front, top, and back--being perfect in intellectuality, strength and symmetry. He was rather under the medium height, about the same height as Mildred herself. He was extremely thin and loosely built, and his clothes seemed to hang awry, giving him an air of slovenliness which became surprising when one noted how scrupulously neat and clean he was. His brown hair, considerably tinged with rusty gray, grew thinly upon that beautiful head. His skin was dry and smooth and dead white. This, taken with the cla.s.sic regularity of his features, gave him an air of lifelessness, of one burnt out by the fire of too much living; but whether the living had been done by Keith himself or by his immediate ancestors appearances did not disclose.

This look of pa.s.sionless, motionless repose, like cla.s.sic sculpture, was sharply and startlingly belied by a pair of really wonderful eyes--deeply and intensely blue, brilliant, all seeing, all comprehending, eyes that seemed never to sleep, seemed the ceaselessly industrious servants of a brain that busied itself without pause. The contrast between the dead white calm of his face, the listlessness of his relaxed figure, and these vivid eyes, so intensely alive, gave to Donald Keith's personality an uncanniness that was most disagreeable to Mildred.

"That's what fascinates me," said Cyrilla, when they were discussing him one day.

"Fascinates!" exclaimed Mildred. "He's tiresome--when he isn't rude."

"Rude?"

"Not actively rude but, worse still, pa.s.sively rude."

"He is the only man I've ever seen with whom I could imagine myself falling in love," said Mrs. Brindley.

Mildred laughed in derision. "Why, he's a dead man!" cried she.