So the lot of our strollers was but the common lot of all, visitors as well as resident New Yorkers.
While mutually absorbed, the one in reciting the tale, the other in listening to it; while diverted and interested by the thousand sparks that radiate from the batteries of youthful energy and enthusiasm and tingle the sensibilities of a congenial comrade; while speculating on the unknown vista from peep-holes that show only fragments, but realizing all the vastness and richness of the world force and universal sympathy possessed by each of them--it is not strange that in four blocks on the Avenue they were pa.s.sed by two ladies in an automobile, who took more than an ordinary interest in their movements, and by a dark-eyed, dark-haired man in another car, whose eyes gleamed and whose cheeks blanched at the sight of their absorption in each other.
But the things garnered on the Avenue are never placed in cold storage, and soon enough both of them were to hear about this stroll.
When Dr. Earl called that evening to take Mrs. and Miss Kimball to the theatre he discovered that his reception in the morning had been tropical compared to this one. He was compelled to wait fully fifteen minutes before Miss Kimball appeared in house gown and slippers, indicating her purpose to remain at home, and the bearer of a message that her mother begged to be excused, as she had retired with a sick headache.
In vain he sought for a reason for his frigid reception, and feeling that his presence was an affliction he arose to go.
"I hope you had a pleasant stroll this afternoon," came in icicle tones.
This shed all the light necessary upon the character of his greeting.
The eyes of Fifth Avenue had not grown dim.
"Yes," he replied, looking at her steadily, "it was a most delightful stroll."
She could stand the strain no longer; she came close to him and he stooped and tenderly kissed her.
"Oh, Jack, why do you persist in having anything to do with her when you know how unhappy it makes me!" she said in her gentlest tone.
They sat down and he related the entire story of the occurrences of the afternoon to her. It pacified her to a degree.
"But Jack, dear, you will promise me never to see her again, will you not?" and her tone was pleading now.
"I promised to go with my brother to a suffrage meeting she is holding Thursday night. Of course _you_ would not wish to go, and I am certain you do not want me to break my promise."
"I am certain," she said, emphasizing each word, "that I do not want you to see her again."
"Let me understand you, Leonora, dear. There are many prominent New York women in this suffrage movement. Some of my very best old-time friends, I am informed, are partic.i.p.ating in it. Is it your desire that I shall cut their acquaintance also, or is it just Miss Holland you want me never to see again?"
"Now, don"t think I am jealous of her, for I am not. She is the most conspicuous one in this suffrage movement on account of the awful things she does, but I don"t care to a.s.sociate with any person who is identified with this crusade. Neither does my mother, nor any of our social set, and of course I would like you to feel the same way."
"But suppose I do not feel that way. Suppose my sympathies are with them and my profession as well as my political predilections should carry me among them?" he asked earnestly.
"Oh, Jack, what has come over you that you are so plebeian! Can"t you see how these women are cheapening New York society, a.s.sociating with workingmen and shop girls!"
"But that is what they should do in a democracy, and I am sure I never saw better-looking women in my life than these same busy suffragists.
They have something to do, and are not dying of _ennui_ or listlessness," he answered.
"Their stock argument," she answered, "but whoever heard of an aristocracy based on such things as these women engage in. Promise me, Jack, that you will have nothing to do with any of them."
"You are unduly wrought up to-night," he answered, "but I will promise you that I shall do nothing to cause you unnecessary annoyance. You must not be too captious, dear, and remember that I go Thursday night."
She started to protest, but he drowned the effort in a shower of caresses and bade her goodnight. Each of them, in the silence of their own apartments, thought long and earnestly of this interview. Leonora Kimball had been taught to believe that the chief badges of an aristocracy were complete idleness of the women, and the possession of enough wealth to support such idleness. It mattered not how mentally insipid or morally opaque or physically inane such women might be, the true test of being fitted for the purple was whether or not they had ever done any useful work, and whether or not they had money enough so that the other members of their set might feel a.s.sured that they never would do any useful work. An aristocracy of trained brains or unselfish culture were meaningless terms to her.
But this night she was greatly disturbed over the att.i.tude of the man she was to marry. She had been quite honest with him when she a.s.serted that jealousy was foreign to her nature; affection did not run deep enough with her to strike its eternal renewing fountain--jealousy. The practical character with which she had been endowed easily enough conducted affairs of the heart along paths directed by the head, and while her professions of love were quite sincere and her loyalty beyond question, yet she had not the remotest idea of the grand pa.s.sion. She knew that she was very fond of John Earl; that he was worthy of her; that he could sustain her manner of life and that his social standing was all that either she or her mother could desire. She also knew that she did not wish to lose him, and much as she abhorred the suffragists, she determined to be lenient with his present mood, certain she could change it ere long, else of what avail was the all-powerful "silent influence" upon which the Anti-Suffragists laid so much stress?
Earl was more than disturbed by her att.i.tude, for he discovered traits of character and a shallowness of sympathy that shocked him. His dream of married bliss was the absolute _camaraderie_ he expected it to bring.
He feared now that she would not enter into his life or ambitions, and, like too many of his married acquaintances, they would be seeking happiness along diverse paths.
"However, it"s all very new to her," he said to himself after an hour"s reverie, "and she is quite young. A few weeks will properly adjust our relations."
The dominant characteristic of this young man was a deep sense of justice, and while other feelings were all too manifest in his subconscious being, he permitted himself only to try to solve the problem of what was the right thing along the lines where he had cast his future.
CHAPTER IX
LOVE, JEALOUSY AND MUSIC
The telephone bell in her apartment was ringing as Miss Holland entered from her stroll, radiantly happy and at peace with all the world. She took the receiver from the maid.
"Dr. Morris? Yes, I shall be home this evening, and glad to see you, of course. Bring your violin and come by eight-thirty. Yes--yes. I meant to have called you and apologized for my somewhat cavalier desertion of you last night. I am sorry I was rude, I didn"t mean to be, but come and let me ask you to forgive me." Her tone was adorable and melted the sullen mood of the man at the other end of the wire.
Having sworn that he would not see her again, having "phoned to make an appointment at which he meant to utter as bitter reproaches as he dared, he appeared promptly at the hour set, ready to implore her grace and accept with grat.i.tude any smallest favor, any ray of hope she might see fit to bestow upon him.
Like many another professional man in New York, in order to cater to the cla.s.s in society in which he hoped to establish his reputation and clientele, Morris had found it necessary to live in a style which far exceeded his income, although that was a good one for a man still young in his profession. He was not popular with men, who regarded him as rather theatrical and a _poseur_, but his music, a certain deference of manner, a more romantic quality than is to be generally found among American business men, gave him a great vogue with women, and he cultivated them, especially the older ones, and they made life very pleasant for him, introduced him to the right people, and gave him much good advice now and then.
One of the smartest of these social leaders said practically one day: "My dear boy, why do you let all these rich girls marry those silly foreigners, without an idea to bless themselves with--dukes, debts and diseases seem synonymous; you are not only clever, but you have the one gift, saving the t.i.tle, that commends these creatures to our girls."
He smiled his inscrutable smile and bowed. "And that is?"
"You seem to have found the lost art of making pretty speeches, and paying a woman the small attentions that we all like so well. If I were a man," went on this dreadful dame, "I should never forget to kiss my wife and send her flowers and remember all the family anniversaries. It is by attention to such small details as this that a man may purchase immunity in larger and more important matters. I know this is most immoral, but it makes the wife happy, the husband comfortable, and would go far to decimate the divorce rate, so what more could you ask?"
"Perhaps I owe this to the fact that my father was a Hungarian n.o.bleman--oh, just a trumpery little t.i.tle, with nothing to pay for the necessary gold lace, so when he came to America he decided, like so many of the revolutionists of that period, to be ultra-American, and dropped even the foreign spelling of the name, changing the "itz" to plain "r-i-s,"" he answered. "I"m sure my music belongs to the other side of the Atlantic."
"That accounts for it all," she said. "There is absolutely no reason why you shouldn"t marry almost any woman you want to. Why not find one who can give you millions in money and the social position you need without taking a generation to create one? I hope you haven"t any foolish entanglements," she added.
He flushed, but did not answer, and when a few weeks later he and Silvia Holland had played together for some charitable entertainment, his venerable mentor had sought him out, ready to bestow her blessing at the earliest possible moment, approving his practical judgment and his good taste. That was a long time ago.
He had resented the implication at the time; to do him justice, had Silvia been penniless she would still have attracted him as no other woman ever had. It was partly her personal charm, partly her music. It may be true that the world of art is still the world, but it is a very different world from that in which most of us live and move and have our being, and Morris was conscious when her fingers touched the keys, and he took up his bow and drew it across the strings of his violin, that they entered upon a new and boundless universe in which sound superseded all other mediums of communication, and seemed to take the place of mere mundane sensation. Whether his pa.s.sion for Silvia grew out of their music, or the wonder of the music was a result of the perfect accord of their natures, he could not tell. They had become one in his mind.
He fervently hated her various public activities. Here again the ancestral traits dominated. He thought of her as a great lady, and being that, she should have been content without anything more. Rushing madly about doing things for other people implied a certain loss of caste. But until the previous evening his discontent had been free from the bitter draught of jealousy. There had been safety in the number of Miss Holland"s admirers, and when he was surest that she did not in any way return his feeling for her, there had been balm in the thought that she was too busy elevating the condition of her own s.e.x to have much time to waste upon any member of his. Instinctively he knew, when he intercepted the first look between the lady of his dreams and his erstwhile college a.s.sociate, that the hour had come that he had dreaded. Silvia Holland had at last met a man whom, consciously or unconsciously, she acknowledged king. His rival was there, upon the threshold of her life, and he was a rival to be feared. That he might also be a rival in his profession, that he was so rich that he was far above the straits in which Morris found himself more and more frequently involved, only added to the flame that consumed him; life without Silvia herself would be dull, colorless, objectless; life without her music would be but "wind along the waste."
He had no patience with the theories of the newer medical pract.i.tioners who refuse to be frightened by the cry of "professional ethics" or by the demand that practice shall be "regular" whether the patient survives or not; and yet while he denounced all forms of mental therapeutics, he was conscious of a strain of superst.i.tion which he could in no wise overcome. Weird folk-lore and uncanny rites kept up by some of the primitive people of Hungary had had a strange fascination for him when he was abroad. In himself, he found a singular mixture of the primeval savage, and the ultra refined that approaches decadence. Of one thing alone he was certain. To lose Silvia was to lose his soul; without her there was neither here nor hereafter. Ruthlessly as he had brushed aside the one woman in his life who came between them, he was prepared to thrust out of his way any man who sought to become a part of her life.
It was in this mood that he entered her presence, and in this mood he accepted her _amende honorable_, which she made with charming humility, but when she would have led him to the music-room, for once he hesitated.
"In a few minutes," he said, "but just now there is something I must say to you. It is true that I was deeply hurt last night, but your regret, so graciously expressed, emboldens me to think that you would not willingly hurt me." He stopped, and she looked at him with a rather puzzled air. "We have been friends for a great while," he said irrelevantly.
"Yes," she said cordially, and somewhat relieved. "Haven"t we? And what a friendship it has been! A triangular affair, like a loving cup--you and I and some one of the great masters of melody. Shall it be Chopin to-night, or shall we begin with something lighter and finish with the Twelfth Nocturne, as usual?"
She led the way, and stood by the piano, rippling her fingers over the keys, and he stood before her, his face white and intense with feeling.
He laid his strong, brown fingers over the white ones, and raised them to his lips, and Silvia laughed a trifle nervously. It was one of his old-world ways that she liked, but disapproved with all proper democratic fervor.
"Has it indeed been a loving cup from which we have drunk?" he said, with pa.s.sionate sadness. "I dare not think so, I dare not even hope so much grace! And yet how is it possible that a man should feel what I feel for you unless there is a response, little as he may deserve it----"