That night in my studio I did not rejoice over my bachelorhood, for I felt genuinely sad at the absence of agreeable modulations in the married life of my two friends.
I thought about the thing for the next month, with the conclusion that people had to work out their own salvation, and resolved not to visit the Viberts again. It was too painful an experience; and yet I could see that Vibert cared for his wife in a weak sort of a way. But she was too overpowering for him and her robust, intellectual nature needed Nietzsche"s whip--a stronger, more pa.s.sionate will than her own. It was simply a case of mismating, and no good would result from the union.
Later I felt as if I had been selfish and priggish, and resolved to visit the home in Harlem and try to arrange matters. I am not sure whether it was curiosity rather than a laudable benevolence that prompted this resolve. However, one hot afternoon in May, Arthur Vibert entered my room and throwing himself in an easy-chair gave me the news.
"She"s left me, old man, she"s gone off with Paul G.o.ddard." ...
I came dangerously near swearing.
"Oh, it"s no use of your trying to say consoling things. She"s gone for good. I was never strong enough to hold her, and so it"s come to this disgraceful smash."
I looked eagerly at Arthur to discover over-mastering sorrow; there was little. Indeed he looked relieved; his life for nearly a year must have been a trial and yet I mentally confessed to some disappointment at his want of deep feeling. I saw that he was chagrined, angry, but not really heart-hurt. Lucky chap! he was only twenty-two and had all his life before him. I asked for explanations.
"Oh, Ellenora always said that I never understood her; that I never could help her to reach the rim of finer issues. I suppose this fellow G.o.ddard will. At least she thinks so, else she wouldn"t have left me.
She said no family could stand two prima-donnas at the same time: as if I ever posed, or pretended to be as brilliant as she! No, she stifled me, and I feel now as if I might compose that romanza for my concerto."
I consoled the young pianist; told him that this blow was intended as a lesson in self-control; that he must not be downcast, but turn to his music as a consolation; and a whole string of such plat.i.tudes. When he left me I asked myself if Ellenora was not right, after all. Could she have reached that visionary rim of finer issues--of which she always prated--with this man, talented though he was, yet a slender reed shaken by the wind of her will? Besides, his chin was too small.
He could not master her nature. Would she be happy with Paul G.o.ddard, that bright-winged b.u.t.terfly of aestheticism? I doubted it. Perhaps the feminine, receptive composer was intended to be her saving complement in life. Perhaps she unconsciously cared for Arthur Vibert; and arguing the question as dispa.s.sionately as I could my eyes fell upon "Thus Spake Zarathustra," and opening the fat unwieldy volume I read:
"Is it not better to fall into the hands of a murderer than into the dreams of an ardent woman?"
"Pooh!" I sneered. "Nietzsche was a rank woman-hater;" then I began my work on Mrs. Beacon"s portrait, the fashionable Mrs. Beacon, and tried to forget all about the finer issues and the satisfied sterility of its ideals.
AN IBSEN GIRL
I
As Ellenora Vibert quietly descended the stairs of the apartment house in Harlem where she had lived with her husband until this hot morning in May, she wondered at her courage. She was taking a tremendous step, and one that she hoped would not be a backward one. She was leaving Arthur Vibert after a brief year of marriage for another man. Yet her pulse fluttered not, and before she reached the open doorway a mocking humor possessed her.
Her active brain pictured herself in the person of Ibsen"s Nora Helmer.
But Nora left children behind, and deserted them in hot blood; no woman could be cold after such a night in the Doll"s House--the champagne, the tarantella, the letter and the scene with Torvald! No, she was not quite Nora Helmer; and Paul, her young husband, was hardly a Scandinavian bureaucrat. When Ellenora faced the cutting sunshine and saw Mount Morris Park, green and sweet, she stopped and pressed a hand to her hip.
It was a characteristic pose, and the first inspiration of the soft air gave her peace and hardihood.
"I"ve been penned behind the bars too long," she thought. Arthur"s selfish, artistic absorption in his musical work and needless indifference to the development of her own gifts must count no longer.
She was free, and she meant to remain so as long as she lived.
Then she went to the elevated railroad and entered a down-town train, left it at Cortlandt Street, reached the Pennsylvania depot before midday, and in the waiting-room met Paul G.o.ddard. A few minutes later they were on the Philadelphia train. The second chapter of Ellenora Vibert"s life began--and most happily.
II
Paul G.o.ddard, after he had returned from Bayreuth, gave his musical friends much pain by his indifference to old tastes. His mother, Mrs.
G.o.ddard of Madison Square, was not needlessly alarmed. She told her friends that Paul always had been a b.u.t.terfly, sipping at many pretty arts. She included among these fine arts, girls. Paul"s devotion to golf and a certain rich young woman gave her fine maternal satisfaction. "He stays away from that odious Bohemian crowd, and as long as he does that I am satisfied. Paul is too much of a gentleman to make a good musician."
During the winter she saw little of her son. His bachelor dinners were p.r.o.nounced models, but the musical mob he let alone. "Paul must be going in for something stunning," they said at his club, and when he took off his moustache there was a protest.
The young man was not pervious to ridicule. He had found something new and as he was fond of experimenting and put his soul into all he did, was generally rewarded for his earnestness. He met Mrs. Arthur Vibert at the reception of a portrait-painter, and her type being new to him, resolved to study it.
Presently he went to the art galleries with the lady, and to all the piano recitals he could bid her. He called several times and admired her husband greatly; but she snubbed this admiration and he consoled himself by admiring instead the intellect of the wife.
"I suppose," she confided to him one February afternoon at Sherry"s, "I suppose you think I am not a proper wife because I don"t sit home at his feet and worship my young genius?"
Paul looked at her strong, ugly face and deep iron-colored eyes, and smiled ironically.
"You don"t go in for that sort of thing, I suppose. If you did love him would you acknowledge it to any one, even to yourself--or to me?"
Ellenora flushed slightly and put down her gla.s.s.
"My dear man, when you know me better you won"t ask such a question. I always say what I mean."
"And I don"t." They fell to fugitive thinking.
"What poet wrote "the bright disorder of the stars is solved by music"?"
"I never read modern verse."
"Yes, but this is not as modern as that cornet-virtuoso Kipling, or as ancient as Tennyson, if you must know."
"What has it to do with you? You are all that I am interested in--at the present." Paul smiled.
"Don"t flatter me, Mr. G.o.ddard. I hate it. It"s a cheap trick of the enemy. Flatter a woman, tell her that she is unlike her s.e.x, repeat to her your wonderment at her masculine intellect, and see how meekly she lowers her standard and becomes your bondslave."
"h.e.l.lo! you have been through the mill," said Paul, brightly. "If I thought that it would do any good, be of any use, I would mentally plump on my knees and say to you that Ellenora Vibert is unlike any woman I ever met." Ellenora half rose from the table, looking sarcastically at him.
"My dear Mr. G.o.ddard, don"t make fun. You have hurt me more than I dare tell you. I fancied that you were a friend, the true sort." She was all steel and glitter now. Paul openly admired her.
"Mrs. Vibert, I beg your pardon. Please forget what I said. I do enjoy your companionship, and you know I am not a lady-killer. Tell me that you forgive me, and we will talk about that lovely line you quoted from--?"
"Coventry Patmore, a dead poet. He it was that spoke of Wagner as a musical impostor, and of the grinning woman in every canvas of Leonardo da Vinci. I enjoy his "Angel in the House" so much, because it shows me the sort of a woman I am not and the sort of a woman we modern women are trying to outlive.... Yes, "the bright disorder of the stars is solved by music," he sings; and I remember reading somewhere in Henry James that music is a solvent. But it"s false--false in my case. Mr. Vibert is, as you know, a talented young man. Well, his music bores me. He is said to have genius, yet his music never sounds as if it had any fire in it; it is as cold as salt. Why should I be solved by his music?"
Ellenora upset her gla.s.s and laughed. Paul joined in at a respectful pace. The woman was beyond him. He gave her a long glance and she returned it, but not ardently; only curiosity was in her insistent gaze.
"Ah! Youth is an alley ambuscaded by stars," he proclaimed. The phrase had cost him midnight labor.
"Don"t try to be epigrammatic," she retorted, "it doesn"t suit your mental complexion. I"ll be glad, then, when my youth has pa.s.sed. It"s a time of turmoil during which one can"t really think clearly. Give me cool old age."
"And the future?"
"I leave that to the licensed victuallers of eternity." Paul experienced a thrill. The woman"s audacity was boundless. Did she believe in anything?...
"I wonder why your husband does not give you the love he puts into his music."
"He has not suffered enough yet. You know what George Moore says about the "sadness of life being the joy of art!" ... Besides, Arthur is only half a man if he can"t give it to both. Where is your masculine objectivity, then?" she retorted.