Isabel said:
"Come and see us tomorrow at six--a "pow-wow.""
The music which came after could not hold Rose"s attention. How could it, in the face of the tremendous changes which were in progress in her brain? What had she done? To an almost perfect stranger she had promised to burn all the work of her pen thus far.
And an hour before she had almost hated, certainly she had feared, that man. While the music throbbed and wailed and clashed, she sat with blood throbbing in her ears and at her throat, longing to cry out, to sing and to weep. She had said little of late to any one, but she had finally settled upon one ambition--to write, to be a great poetess. After vicissitudes and false enthusiasm she had come back to the first great ambition which she had confessed to Thatcher years before, in the little coule school-house. And now, at the bidding of a stranger, she had made a promise to burn her work and start again.
But had not the music and the splendid spectacle before her almost determined her before he had spoken?
Then she came back to the wondrous gentleness which was in his voice, to the amazing change in his eyes. The man who had held her hand was not the worn, cynical man she had feared. He was younger and handsomer, too.
She shuddered again, with some powerful emotion at the thought of his calm, compelling, down-thrusting glance into her eyes. His mind appeared to her to have a sh.o.r.eless sweep.
The music rose to a pounding, blaring climax, and the audience, applauding, began to rise to go home, breaking into streams and pools and whirling ma.s.ses of color.
"Well, my dear, how have you enjoyed the evening?" asked Mrs. Harvey, cordially.
"Very much, indeed. I never can thank you enough."
"It has been a pleasure to feel your enthusiasm. It makes us all young again. I"ve asked Dr. Herrick to bring you to see us; I hope you will come."
The hearty clasp of her hand moved the motherless girl deeply, and her voice trembled with emotion as she replied:
"It will be a great pleasure to me, Mrs. Harvey."
Mrs. Harvey clutched her in her arms and kissed her.
"You splendid girl! I wish you were mine," she said, and thereafter Rose felt no fear in her presence.
"I don"t care whether she"s a genius or not," Mrs. Harvey said to Isabel, as they walked out to the carriage. "She"s a good girl, and I like her, and I"ll help her. You figure out anything I can properly do and I"ll do it. I don"t know another girl who could have carried off that cheap little dress the way she did. She made it look like a work of art. She"s a wonder! Think of her coming from a Wisconsin farm!"
Isabel rejoiced.
"I knew you"d like her." She leaned over and said in a low voice: "I"d like Elbert to see her."
Mrs. Harvey turned a quick eye upon her.
"Well, if you aren"t a matchmaker!"
As they came out in the throng it seemed as if everybody knew the Harveys and Isabel. Out in the street the cabs had gathered, like huge beetles, standing in patient rows in the gaslight.
The bellowing of numbers, the slam of carriage doors, the grind of wheels, the shouts of drivers, made a pandemonium to Rose, but Mr.
Harvey, with the same gentle smile on his face, presented his ticket to the gigantic negro, who roared enormously:
"Ninety-two! Ninety-two!"
"Here we are!" Mr. Harvey called finally, and handed the women in with the same unhurried action, and the homeward ride began. There was little chance for talk, though Mrs. Harvey did talk.
Rose sat in silence. This had been another great period of growth. She could still feel the heat and turmoil in her brain. It was as if upon a seed-bed of quick-shooting plants a bright, warm light had been turned, resulting in instant, magical activity. At her door they put her down, and once more she thanked them.
"It"s nothing at all, my dear; we hope to do more for you," said Mrs.
Harvey. "I want you to come to dinner soon. You"ll come?"
"With pleasure," Rose responded, quite as a man might have done.
CHAPTER XX
ROSE SETS FACE TOWARD THE OPEN ROAD
When Rose reached her room, she found the packet of poems lying on her desk. It had come in the afternoon mail.
She sat down by the toilet table with a burning flush on her face. A world seemed some way to lie between her present self and the writer of those imitative verses. She wished to see, yet feared to see what he had written, and taking up the packet she fingered the string while she meditated. She had not absolutely promised not to read the letter, though she had pledged herself to burn the poems.
Her life was so suddenly filled with new emotions and impulses, that she was bewildered by them. The music, the audience-room, the splendid a.s.semblage, and some compelling power in Mason--all of these (or he alone) had changed her point of view. It was a little thing to the great city, a little thing to him probably, but to her it was like unto the war of life and death.
What, indeed, was the use of being an echo of pa.s.sion, a copy? She had always hated conformity; she hated to dress like other girls; why should she be without individuality in her verse, the very part where, as Mason had intimated, she should be most herself?
She had the chance to succeed. The people seemed ready to listen to her if she had something to say; and she had something to say--why not say it?
She arose, tense and white with resolution, and opened the stove door and dropped the packet in, and closed the door and held it as if she feared the packet might explode in her face, or cry out at her. In her poems she would have had the heroine fling it in the grate and s.n.a.t.c.h it out again, but having no grate the stove must serve, and there could be no s.n.a.t.c.hing at the packet, no remorseful kisses of the charred body. It was gone in a dull roar.
She sat down and waited till the flame died out, and then drew up to her desk and wrote swiftly for an hour. She grew sleepy at last, as the tumult of her brain grew quieter. Just before she went to sleep all her lovers came before her: Carl, in the strawberry-scented glade; William de Lisle, shining of limb, courtesying under the lifting canvas roof; Dr. Thatcher, as he looked that afternoon in the school-room; then Forest Darnlee, with the physical beauty of William De Lisle, but vain and careless; then Professor Ellis, seated at his desk in the chalk-laden air, or perched on the ladder beneath the great telescope, a man who lived in abstract regions far from sense and sound; then Tom Harris, lithe, graceful, always smiling--Tom, who had the songs of birds, the smell of flowers, the gleam of sunset-water leagued with him--who almost conquered, but who pa.s.sed on like a dapple of purple shadow over the lake.
And now she faced two others, for she could see that Owen was turning to her from Mary, and he had great charm. He was one of the cleanest-souled men she had ever known; he had, also, a strange touch of paganism, of mystery, as of free s.p.a.ces and savage, unstained wildernesses, and he could give her a home, and he would allow her freedom. He would be her subject, not her master.
Then there was Mason--of him what? She did not know. He was outside her knowledge of men. She could neither read his face nor understand his voice. He scared her with a look or a phrase. Sometimes he looked old and cynical, but tonight how tenderly and sympathetically he had spoken!
How considerately silent he had been!
When she awoke, Mary was standing looking down at her.
"If you"re going to have any breakfast, Rose, you"d better be stirring.
It"s nine o"clock, and everything"s ready to clear away. What kind of time did you have?"
Rose resented her question, but forced herself to answer:
"Beautiful!"
"I saw you in the box. Owen and I were in the second balcony. You were just scrumptious! I wanted to throw a kiss at you." She fell upon Rose and squeezed her, quilt and all, in her long arms. "My stars! I wish I was lovely and a poet."
She had nothing but joy over her idol"s good fortune, and it made Rose feel guilty to think how resentful and secretive she had become. There was coming into her friendship with Mary a feeling which prevented further confidence--a feeling that Mary was not a suitable confidant, and could not understand the subtleties of her position, in which Rose was quite correct.
With Mary, procedure was always plain sailing. Either she was in love and wanted to marry, or she wasn"t. Her ideals changed comparatively little, and were healthily commonplace. Her friendships were quick, warm and stable. She was the country girl in the city, and would be so until death. If she felt disposed, she chewed gum or ate an apple on the street like a boy, and she walked on the Lake Sh.o.r.e Sunday evening with Owen, unconscious (and uncaring) of the servant-girls and their lovers seated on every bench.
So Rose had grown away from her friend. She felt it dimly the first week. She felt it vividly on the morning after the concert, and it troubled her. Her life was too subtle, too complicated and too problematic for honest, freckle-faced, broad-cheeked Mary to a.n.a.lyze.