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Book 1Sixteen
Saturday was a windy, bright April day. There were boys on the streets selling violets and daffodils, and all the barrel-organs were out playing O Sole Mio! Lucy was in high spirits and felt sure of a happy ending--Harry was leaving tomorrow.
It chanced that Lucy had never heard even the prelude to Lohengrin played by an orchestra; the first measures caught her unaware. Before the first act was half over she was longing to be alone; this wasn`t the kind of opera to be hearing with Harry. She found herself leaning away from him as far as possible. The music kept bringing back things she used to feel in Sebastian`s studio; belief in an invisible, inviolable world. When the act closed and the lights were turned on, her eyes were still shining with tears. If Harry had begun to tease, it wouldn`t have mattered then. But he didn`t. He glanced sidewise at her and then read his program. Presently he ventured a remark.
"That tenor`s fine, now isn`t he? He`s a good actor, too."
"Yes, he believes in it." She spoke quietly. She was beginning to feel hostile toward him, though he was behaving so well. Harry understood that she was deeply moved. He would have thought that sort of thing ridiculous in a man, but in a girl it was rather attractive.
When the curtain fell on the second act Lucy turned in her seat and looked restlessly about her. In the same row, far to the left, a man was leaning forward, looking at her; a red face, a very white shirt-front, an excited, perspiring smile. She caught her breath and cried aloud: "Giuseppe!" though he was not near enough to hear her. She leaned forward and waved her hand. He bowed again and again, in a way that was not familiar, not servile, but wholly devoted and respectful.
The sight of him had brought a rush of delight over her whole body. She shivered and her hands grew cold. That he should have been there all the while, he who was such a part of her other life! She sat through the rest of the opera feeling that nothing had really vanished, everything would come back. When the singers came out to take their curtain calls, she looked not at them but at Giuseppe, who stood applauding with his hands far out in front of him. The ends of his black-and-white silk muffler hung almost to his knees. As the steel curtain descended, he snatched his hat and overcoat and ran off through the crowd. Lucy slipped her arms into the cloak Harry had been patiently holding.
"Who`s your enthusiastic friend?" he asked good-naturedly as he steered her toward the back of the house.
"He`s an Italian who works about the studio where I go to play accompaniments."
"Music student, you mean?"
"Oh, no! He`s just a--workman. But he`s very musical."
Harry laughed. "He looks it!"
As they made their way slowly through the crowded foyer, Harry kept trying to hum Lohengrin`s farewell to the swan. Lucy began talking rapidly to divert his attention. But Harry had liked that song, and he kept trying! When they stepped outside into the treacherous mildness of the April afternoon, he hailed a cab.
"How about a little drive to get some air? It`s too early for dinner. Take us out through the parks, driver, for an hour or so. There`s no place anybody can make a call on you, except in a cab, Lucy." He sat down beside her, stretched his long legs, and began to laugh softly. "You know there was something cute about that little dago. I like to see people have a good time. But how the mischief can he afford a seat like that?" He spoke with concern, seemed worried about it.
"Oh, when they admire anything very much, they don`t count the cost!" She tried to say this carelessly.
He shook his head. "All the same, the day of counting costs comes along in the end, Lucy mio"
Lucy bit her lip. Wasn`t that Harry Gordon in two words! He had been hearing Italian operas all week, and felt acclimated. Lucy mio! And a moment ago he thought he was humming the tenor`s aria. She looked out of the window and tried to fix her attention on the misty blue spring sky and the dove-coloured water. Distant lighthouses were faintly shining.
Harry didn`t mind her silence. He was thinking he would bring Lucy on for the opera every year. But they might just as well go through to New York; then they could go in mid-winter, when business was dull at home. He was full of his own plans, and the future looked bright to him. There was a part of himself that Harry was ashamed to live out in the open (he hated a sentimental man), but he could live it through Lucy. She would be his excuse for doing a great many pleasant things he wouldn`t do on his own account. He pressed her arm as he lounged back in the cab, and began humming the swan song again.
Lucy stirred. "No, it goes like this, Harry."
He ducked his head and laughed. "Right you are! Now suppose we turn and drive back for dinner."
The dining-room at the Auditorium hotel was filling up when they entered. A great many people were dining there before the evening performance. Harry found a table to his taste and ordered champagne to be brought with the soup, remarking that it was never too early for a good thing. "When I have a place of my own, I shall keep plenty of it on hand--for special occasions."
He talked a good deal through dinner, said he hated going home tomorrow, but he had to relieve his father in the bank. His father wanted to get down to Hot Springs for his rheumatism. He thanked Lucy for having given him so much of her time. "Music doesn`t mean much to me without you, except to remind me of you."
She threw him a smile. She had less colour than usual. She was dreadfully tired. Thank God tonight was the end of it! She had gone her limit, and now she wanted to be left alone with her own life.
The dinner seemed to be dragging on, even the dessert didn`t end it. Harry ordered liqueurs and lit a cigar. He leaned across the table and took up Lucy`s gloves, which were lying by her plate.
"And now, Lucy--" Something affectionate and masterful in his voice made her dread what was coming. "And now isn`t it about time we got down to business? We know each other pretty well. You`ve had your little fling. You want to see the world, but you`ll see it a lot better with me. Why waste any more time? This is April; I should think we might be married in May. Oh, June if you like! But we mustn`t let another summer slip by."
Lucy frowned and avoided his eyes. "Nonsense, Harry. I`m not ready to marry anyone. I won`t be, for a long while."
He put his open palm down heavily on the table. "But I am! Just ready. And we`ve always known we would do it some day, both of us."
She gave a dry laugh. "Have we? Why, you haven`t been sure of yourself half the time!"
Harry chuckled guiltily. "Most of the time I`ve been sure." Then he looked at her with a singular straightforwardness, looked quite through the professional geniality which usually gleamed over his eyes like a pair of spectacles. "All the time I`ve been sure at bottom. I have never been able to believe in any sort of happy life except with you. That`s the truth."
Lucy felt it was the truth. She could find nothing to say.
"Everything will be just as you wish it. You shall have the kind of house you like, and the kind of friends. I want the life you`d naturally make for yourself,--and it`s the only life I do want."
She was trapped. He was looking straight and talking straight. When he was like this she was afraid of him. It seemed unfair to sit there and let him take off all his jocular masks and show her a naked man who had perhaps never been exposed to any eye before. She must stop him before he went any further. She thrust out her hands across the table.
"Don`t, Harry, please! It`s no use. Everything has changed this winter. My life is tied up with somebody else. It`s done. I have no choice. I love another man."
Gordon seemed not to understand her at first.
"But--what`s all this? Another man? And he lets you play about with me all week? You`re trying to fool me, Lucy!" He looked at her with a threat in his eyes.
She had fallen into this; she must get out of it, get it over. "No, I`m not. He`s away. It`s the man I work for, play accompaniments for. I`m not the same person I used to be. I didn`t mean to tell anyone, but I can`t let you go on making plans."
While she was speaking, the harshness on Gordon`s face slowly melted. A twinkle came in his eyes, as if he had found the catch in the puzzle. He so far forgot himself that he put his hand down over Lucy`s and held it firmly when she tried to draw it away.
"Now, Lucy! Every girl falls in love with her singing teacher, but I thought you, for one, had escaped!"
She felt her cheeks burn with anger. "He`s not my singing teacher! He`s a great artist," she muttered, angrier still because this sounded so childish.
"Very well, I`ve no objection; the greater the better! But you`ll soon recover, my dear." He refused to be annoyed. He was glowing with tolerance. She gave him a defiant look and managed to get her hand away. He considered a moment, then leaned forward and spoke softly, in a confident, teasing tone. "Now see here, Lucy, how far has this nonsense gone?"
The dining-room swam and tilted before Lucy`s eyes. "How far?" she broke out in a flash of scorn. "How far? All the way; all the way! There`s no going back. Can`t you understand ANYTHING?" She did not see his face, her eyes were blind as if she were looking into a furnace. But she knew that he got up and left the table.
When she had recovered herself a little, she saw him at the other end of the room, talking to the head waiter. He put something in the waiter`s hand and walked out of the dining-room.
Lucy drank some ice-water slowly. She was ashamed that she had lied. She had tried to tell him the truth about a feeling; but a feeling meant nothing to him, he had to be clubbed by a situation. She supposed it was just his coarse good-nature, his readiness to accept as a negligible truancy anything not actually compromising, that had driven her beyond herself. It was as if he had brought all his physical force, his big well-kept body, to ridicule something that had no body, that was a faith, an ardour.--Why had she ever tried to be nice to him, when she knew all the while he was like that? Well, it was over now, and she hoped she had cut through his stupidity and conceit. It seemed that she had, since he did not come back.
After about a quarter of an hour the head waiter came to her table and, bending down, spoke to her in a way which made an awkward situation seem quite usual and in order.
Mr. Gordon said, miss, that if he were not back from the telephone in ten minutes, you should not wait for him. He said you would understand."
"Yes, thank you." Lucy caught up her gloves, and her bag, in which there was no money at all. "The check?" she stammered.
"The check is paid, miss. Shall I call a cab for you?"
"Yes, please."
He gave an order to one of the service boys, and held her cloak for her. "You will find it very warm outside, miss, like a summer evening. We have had good weather for the opera season; and last year it was so bad!" He spoke without an accent, but his voice and intonation were unmistakably Italian. He took Lucy through the long dining-room with an air of authority, as if he were conducting some important personage, and at the door motioned one of his subordinates to put her into her carriage. She had not even a quarter to give the boy who brought the cab. Harry Gordon had walked off like that, leaving her to get home as best she could. What a coward, what a boor! She had some money at home, in her bureau drawer; but suppose she didn`t have? She might walk home for all he cared.
When the cab stopped before the bakery, she asked the cabman whether he could come upstairs for his fare. "I`m too tired to bring it down, driver."
"Sure, miss. I got a weight. Just sit still while I fasten my hitch-strap." He helped her up the two flights and thanked her for his tip.
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