Pages: 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 [1-41] [41-72] |
forth in the air, fluttering her fingers,--"the feeling of
starting out, early in the morning, to take my lesson."
"And you've had everything out with him?"
"No, I haven't."
"Haven't?" He looked up in consternation.
"No, I haven't!" Thea spoke excitedly, moving about
over the sunny patches on the grimy carpet. "I've lied
to him, just as you said I had always lied to him, and
that's why I'm so happy. I've let him think what he
likes to think. Oh, I couldn't do anything else, Fred,"--
she shook her head emphatically. "If you'd seen him
when he came in, so pleased and excited! You see this is
a great adventure for him. From the moment I began to
talk to him, he entreated me not to say too much, not to
spoil his notion of me. Not in so many words, of course.
But if you'd seen his eyes, his face, his kind hands! Oh,
no! I couldn't." She took a deep breath, as if with a
renewed sense of her narrow escape.
"Then, what did you tell him?" Fred demanded.
Thea sat down on the edge of the sofa and began shutting
and opening her hands nervously. "Well, I told him
enough, and not too much. I told him all about how good
you were to me last winter, getting me engagements and
things, and how you had helped me with my work more
than anybody. Then I told him about how you sent me
down to the ranch when I had no money or anything."
She paused and wrinkled her forehead. "And I told him
that I wanted to marry you and ran away to Mexico with
you, and that I was awfully happy until you told me that
you couldn't marry me because--well, I told him why."
Thea dropped her eyes and moved the toe of her shoe
about restlessly on the carpet.
"And he took it from you, like that?" Fred asked,
almost with awe.
"Yes, just like that, and asked no questions. He was
hurt; he had some wretched moments. I could see him
squirming and squirming and trying to get past it. He
kept shutting his eyes and rubbing his forehead. But when
I told him that I absolutely knew you wanted to marry me,
that you would whenever you could, that seemed to help
him a good deal."
"And that satisfied him?" Fred asked wonderingly.
He could not quite imagine what kind of person Dr. Archie
might be.
"He took me by the shoulders once and asked, oh, in
such a frightened way, `Thea, was he GOOD to you, this
young man?' When I told him you were, he looked at me
again: `And you care for him a great deal, you believe in
him?' Then he seemed satisfied." Thea paused. "You
see, he's just tremendously good, and tremendously afraid
of things--of some things. Otherwise he would have got
rid of Mrs. Archie." She looked up suddenly: "You were
right, though; one can't tell people about things they don't
know already."
Fred stood in the window, his back to the sunlight,
fingering the jonquils. "Yes, you can, my dear. But
you must tell it in such a way that they don't know
you're telling it, and that they don't know they're hear-
ing it."
Thea smiled past him, out into the air. "I see. It's a
secret. Like the sound in the shell."
"What's that?" Fred was watching her and thinking
how moving that faraway expression, in her, happened to
be. "What did you say?"
She came back. "Oh, something old and Moonstony!
I have almost forgotten it myself. But I feel better than I
thought I ever could again. I can't wait to be off. Oh,
Fred," she sprang up, "I want to get at it!"
As she broke out with this, she threw up her head and
lifted herself a little on her toes. Fred colored and looked
at her fearfully, hesitatingly. Her eyes, which looked out
through the window, were bright--they had no memories.
No, she did not remember. That momentary elevation had
no associations for her. It was unconscious.
He looked her up and down and laughed and shook his
head. "You are just all I want you to be--and that is,--
not for me! Don't worry, you'll get at it. You are at it.
My God! have you ever, for one moment, been at anything
else?"
Thea did not answer him, and clearly she had not heard
him. She was watching something out in the thin light of
the false spring and its treacherously soft air.
Fred waited a moment. "Are you going to dine with
your friend to-night?"
"Yes. He has never been in New York before. He
wants to go about. Where shall I tell him to go?"
"Wouldn't it be a better plan, since you wish me to
meet him, for you both to dine with me? It would seem
only natural and friendly. You'll have to live up a little to
his notion of us." Thea seemed to consider the suggestion
favorably. "If you wish him to be easy in his mind,"
Fred went on, "that would help. I think, myself, that we
are rather nice together. Put on one of the new dresses
you got down there, and let him see how lovely you can
be. You owe him some pleasure, after all the trouble he
has taken."
Thea laughed, and seemed to find the idea exciting and
pleasant. "Oh, very well! I'll do my best. Only don't
wear a dress coat, please. He hasn't one, and he's nervous
about it."
Fred looked at his watch. "Your monument up there
is fast. I'll be here with a cab at eight. I'm anxious to
meet him. You've given me the strangest idea of his callow
innocence and aged indifference."
She shook her head. "No, he's none of that. He's very
good, and he won't admit things. I love him for it. Now,
as I look back on it, I see that I've always, even when I was
little, shielded him."
As she laughed, Fred caught the bright spark in her
eye that he knew so well, and held it for a happy in-
stant. Then he blew her a kiss with his finger-tips and
fled.
IV
AT nine o'clock that evening our three friends were
seated in the balcony of a French restaurant, much
gayer and more intimate than any that exists in New York
to-day. This old restaurant was built by a lover of plea-
sure, who knew that to dine gayly human beings must
have the reassurance of certain limitations of space and
of a certain definite style; that the walls must be near
enough to suggest shelter, the ceiling high enough to give
the chandeliers a setting. The place was crowded with the
kind of people who dine late and well, and Dr. Archie, as
he watched the animated groups in the long room below
the balcony, found this much the most festive scene he had
ever looked out upon. He said to himself, in a jovial mood
somewhat sustained by the cheer of the board, that this
evening alone was worth his long journey. He followed
attentively the orchestra, ensconced at the farther end of
the balcony, and told Thea it made him feel "quite musi-
cal" to recognize "The Invitation to the Dance" or "The
Blue Danube," and that he could remember just what kind
of day it was when he heard her practicing them at home,
and lingered at the gate to listen.
For the first few moments, when he was introduced to
young Ottenburg in the parlor of the Everett House, the
doctor had been awkward and unbending. But Fred, as
his father had often observed, "was not a good mixer for
nothing." He had brought Dr. Archie around during the
short cab ride, and in an hour they had become old friends.
From the moment when the doctor lifted his glass and,
looking consciously at Thea, said, "To your success," Fred
liked him. He felt his quality; understood his courage in
some directions and what Thea called his timidity in others,
his unspent and miraculously preserved youthfulness.
Men could never impose upon the doctor, he guessed,
but women always could. Fred liked, too, the doctor's
manner with Thea, his bashful admiration and the little
hesitancy by which he betrayed his consciousness of the
change in her. It was just this change that, at present,
interested Fred more than anything else. That, he felt,
was his "created value," and it was his best chance for any
peace of mind. If that were not real, obvious to an old
friend like Archie, then he cut a very poor figure, indeed.
Fred got a good deal, too, out of their talk about Moon-
stone. From her questions and the doctor's answers he was
able to form some conception of the little world that
was almost the measure of Thea's experience, the one bit
of the human drama that she had followed with sympathy
and understanding. As the two ran over the list of
their friends, the mere sound of a name seemed to recall
volumes to each of them, to indicate mines of knowledge
and observation they had in common. At some names they
laughed delightedly, at some indulgently and even ten-
derly.
"You two young people must come out to Moonstone
when Thea gets back," the doctor said hospitably.
"Oh, we shall!" Fred caught it up. "I'm keen to know
all these people. It is very tantalizing to hear only their
names."
"Would they interest an outsider very much, do you
think, Dr. Archie?" Thea leaned toward him. "Isn't it
only because we've known them since I was little?"
The doctor glanced at her deferentially. Fred had noticed
that he seemed a little afraid to look at her squarely--per-
haps a trifle embarrassed by a mode of dress to which he
was unaccustomed. "Well, you are practically an outsider
yourself, Thea, now," he observed smiling. "Oh, I know,"
he went on quickly in response to her gesture of protest,--
"I know you don't change toward your old friends, but
you can see us all from a distance now. It's all to your
advantage that you can still take your old interest, isn't
it, Mr. Ottenburg?"
"That's exactly one of her advantages, Dr. Archie.
Nobody can ever take that away from her, and none of us
who came later can ever hope to rival Moonstone in the
impression we make. Her scale of values will always be
the Moonstone scale. And, with an artist, that IS an
advantage." Fred nodded.
Dr. Archie looked at him seriously. "You mean it keeps
them from getting affected?"
"Yes; keeps them from getting off the track generally."
While the waiter filled the glasses, Fred pointed out to
Thea a big black French barytone who was eating ancho-
vies by their tails at one of the tables below, and the doctor
looked about and studied his fellow diners.
"Do you know, Mr. Ottenburg," he said deeply, "these
people all look happier to me than our Western people do.
Is it simply good manners on their part, or do they get
more out of life?"
Fred laughed to Thea above the glass he had just lifted.
"Some of them are getting a good deal out of it now,
doctor. This is the hour when bench-joy brightens."
Thea chuckled and darted him a quick glance. "Bench-
joy! Where did you get that slang?"
"That happens to be very old slang, my dear. Older
than Moonstone or the sovereign State of Colorado. Our
old friend Mr. Nathanmeyer could tell us why it happens
to hit you." He leaned forward and touched Thea's wrist,
"See that fur coat just coming ...
[Next page]