The Price She Paid Part 38

"Very little," said Mrs. Brindley. "But--"

"Don't try to soften it," interrupted Mildred. "The truth, the plain truth."

"You've no right to draw me into this," cried Cyrilla indignantly, and she started to leave the room.

"I want him to know," said Mildred. "And he wants to know."

"I refuse to be drawn into it," Cyrilla said, and disappeared.

But Mildred saw that Stanley had been shaken. She proceeded to explain to him at length what a singer's career meant--the hards.h.i.+ps, the drafts on health and strength, the absolute necessity of being reliable, of singing true, of not disappointing audiences--what a delicate throat meant--how delicate her throat was--how deficient she was in the kind of physical strength needed--muscular power with endurance back of it. When she finished he understood.

"I'd always thought of it as an art," he said ruefully. "Why, it's mostly health and muscles and things that have nothing to do with music." He was dazed and offended by this uncovering of the mechanism of the art--by the discovery of the coa.r.s.e and painful toil, the grossly physical basis, of what had seemed to him all idealism. He had been full of the delusions of spontaneity and inspiration, like all laymen, and all artists, too, except those of the higher ranks--those who have fought their way up to the heights and, so, have learned that one does not achieve them by being caught up to them gloriously in a fiery cloud, but by doggedly and dirtily and sweatily toiling over every inch of the cruel climb.

He sat silent when she had finished. She waited, then said:

"Now, you see. I release you, and I'll take no more money to waste."

He looked at her with dumb misery that smote her heart. Then his expression changed--to the s.h.i.+ning, hungry eyes, the swollen veins, the reddened countenance, the watering lips of desire. He seized her in his arms, and in a voice trembling with pa.s.sion, he cried: "You must marry me, anyhow! I've GOT to have you, Mildred."

If she had loved him, his expression, his impa.s.sioned voice would have thrilled her. But she did not love him. It took all her liking for him, and the memory of all she owed him--that unpaid debt!--to enable her to push him away gently and to say without any show of the repulsion she felt:

"Stanley, you mustn't do that. And it's useless to talk of marriage.

You're generous, so you are taking pity on me. But believe me, I'll get along somehow."

"Pity? I tell you I love you," he cried, catching desperately at her hands and holding them in a grip she could not break. "You've no right to treat me like this."

It was one of those veiled and stealthy reminders of obligation habitually indulged in by delicate people seeking repayment of the debt, but shunning the coa.r.s.eness of direct demand. Mildred saw her opportunity. Said she quietly:

"You mean you want me to give myself to you in payment, or part payment, for the money you've loaned me?"

He released her hands and sprang up. He had meant just that, but he had not had the courage, or the meanness, or both, to admit boldly his own secret wish. She had calculated on this--had calculated well.

"Mildred!" he cried in a shocked voice. "YOU so lacking in delicacy as to say such a thing!"

"If you didn't mean that, Stanley, what DID you mean?"

"I was appealing to our friends.h.i.+p--our--our love for each other."

"Then you should have waited until I was free."

"Good G.o.d!" he cried, "don't you see that's hopeless? Mildred, be sensible--be merciful."

"I shall never marry a man when he could justly suspect I did it to live off him."

"What an idea! It's a man's place to support a woman!"

"I was speaking only of myself. _I_ can't do it. And it's absurd for you and me to be talking about love and marriage when anyone can see I'd be marrying you only because I was afraid to face poverty and a struggle."

Her manner calmed him somewhat. "Of course it's obvious that you've got to have money," said he, "and that the only way you can get it is by marriage. But there's something else, too, and in my opinion it's the princ.i.p.al thing--we care for each other. Why not be sensible, Mildred? Why not thank G.o.d that as long as you have to marry, you can marry someone you care for."

"Could you feel that I cared for you, if I married you now?" inquired she.

"Why not? I'm not so entirely lacking in self-esteem. I feel that I must count for something."

Mildred sat silently wondering at this phenomenon so astounding, yet a commonplace of masculine egotism. She had no conception of this vanity which causes the man, at whom the street woman smiles, to feel flattered, though he knows full well what she is and her dire necessity. She could not doubt that he was speaking the truth, yet she could not believe that conceit could so befog common sense in a man who, for all his slowness and shallowness, was more than ordinarily shrewd.

"Even if I thought I loved you," said she, "I couldn't be sure in these circ.u.mstances that I wasn't after your money."

"Don't worry about that," replied he. "I understand you better than you understand yourself."

"Let's stop talking about it," said she impatiently. "I want to explain to you the business side of this." She took her purse from the table.

"Here are the papers." She handed him a check and a note. "I made them out at the bank this morning. The note is for what I owe you--and draws interest at four per cent. The check is for all the money I have left except about four hundred dollars. I've some bills I must pay, and also I didn't dare quite strip myself. The note may not be worth the paper it's written on, but I hope--"

Before she could prevent him he took the two papers, and, holding them out of her reach, tore them to bits.

Her eyes gleamed angrily. "I see you despise me--as much as I've invited. But, I'll make them out again and mail them to you."

"You're a silly child," said he gruffly. "We're going to be married."

She eyed him with amused exasperation. "It's too absurd!" she cried.

"And if I yielded, you'd be trying to get out of it." She hesitated whether to tell him frankly just how she felt toward him. She decided against it, not through consideration--for a woman feels no consideration for a man she does not love, if he has irritated her--but through being ashamed to say harsh things to one whom she owed so much.

"It's useless for you to pretend and to plead," she went on. "I shall not yield. You'll have to wait until I'm free and independent."

"You'll marry me then?"

"No," replied she, laughing. "But I'll be able to refuse you in such a way that you'll believe."

"But you've got to marry, Mildred, and right away." A suspicion entered his mind and instantly gleamed in his eyes. "Are you in love with someone else?"

She smiled mockingly.

"It looks as if you were," he went on, arguing with himself aloud. "For if you weren't you'd marry me, even though you didn't like me. A woman in your fix simply couldn't keep herself from it. Is THAT why you're so calm?"

"I'm not marrying anybody," said she.

"Then what are you going to do?"

"You'll see."

Once more the pa.s.sionate side of his nature showed--not merely grotesque, unattractive, repellent, as in the mood of longing, but hideous. Among men Stanley Baird pa.s.sed for a man of rather arrogant and violent temper, but that man who had seen him at his most violent would have been amazed. The temper men show toward men bears small resemblance either in kind or in degree to the temper of jealous pa.s.sion they show toward the woman who baffles them or arouses their suspicions; and no man would recognize his most intimate man friend--or himself--when in that paroxysm. Mildred had seen this mood, gleaming at her through a mask, in General Siddall. It had made her sick with fear and repulsion. In Stanley Baird it first astounded her, then filled her with hate.

"Stanley!" she gasped.

"WHO is it?" he ground out between his teeth. And he seized her savagely.

"If you don't release me at once," said she calmly, "I shall call Mrs.

Brindley, and have you put out of the house. No matter if I do owe you all that money."

"Stop!" he cried, releasing her. "You're very clever, aren't you?--turning that against me and making me powerless."