"And I have paid you!" the wife flashed. "G.o.d, I have paid!"
The man stumbled off to bed.
Vickers, on leaving the hotel, walked home in the chill night, a sickening sensation in his heart. If he had been a shrewd young man, he might have foreseen the somewhat boozy Mr. Conry, the vulgar setting of the woman he loved. If there had been the least thing base in him, he might have welcomed it, for his own uses. But being a sentimentalist and simple in nature, the few moments of intercourse with Mr. Conry had come like a revelation to him. This was what she had sold herself to for her education.
This was what she was tied to! And this what she sought to escape from by her music, to place herself and her child beyond the touch of that man!
Vickers in his disgust overlooked the fact that little Delia seemed to love her father, and that though Conry might not be to his taste, he might also be a perfectly worthy citizen, given occasionally to liquor. But love and youth and the idealizing temperament make few allowances. To give her that freedom which her beauty and her nature craved, he would do what he could, and he searched his memory for names and persons of influence in the professional world of music. He had the fragments of a score for an opera that he had scarce looked at since he had begun "to sell nails"; but to-night he took it from the drawer and ran it over,--"Love Among the Ruins,"--and as he went to sleep he saw Stacia Conry singing as she had sung that last night in Rome, singing the music of his opera, success and fame at her feet....
The something that Mrs. Conry hoped for did come from that introduction at the Lawtons". The wife of one of those men she had charmed called on her and invited her to sing "those pleasant little songs Mr. Price wrote for you" (with Mr. Price"s appearance, of course!). And several women, who were anxious to be counted as of the Lawton set, hastened to engage Mrs. Conry to sing at their houses, with the same condition. Vickers understood the meaning of this condition and disliked the position, but consented in his desire to give Mrs. Conry every chance in his power. Others understood the situation, and disliked it,--among them Isabelle. Nannie Lawton threw at her across a dinner-table the remark: "When is Vick going to offer his "Love Among the Ruins"? Mrs. Conry is the "ruins," I suppose!"
And the musicales, in spite of all that Vickers could do, were only moderately successful. In any community, the people who hunt the latest novelty are limited in number, and that spring there arrived a Swedish portrait painter and an Antarctic traveller to push the beautiful singer from the centre of attention. So after the first weeks the engagements became farther s.p.a.ced and less desirable, less influential. Mrs. Conry still stayed at the hotel, though her husband had been called to another city on a contract he had undertaken. She realized that her debut had not been brilliant, but she clung to the opportunity, in the hope that something would come of it. And naturally enough Vickers saw a good deal of her; not merely the days they appeared together, but almost every day he found an excuse for dropping in at the hotel, to play over some music, to take her to ride in his new motor, which he ran himself, or to dine with her. Mrs. Conry was lonely. After Isabelle went to California for her health, she saw almost no one. The women she met at her engagements found her "not our kind," and Nan Lawton"s witticism about "the ruins" and Vickers did not help matters. Vickers saw the situation and resented it.
This loneliness and disappointment were bad for her. She worked at her music in a desultory fashion, dawdled over novels, and smoked too many cigarettes for the good of her voice. She seemed listless and discouraged.
Vickers redoubled his efforts to have her sing before a celebrated manager, who was coming presently to the city with an opera company.
"She sees no way, no escape," he said to himself. "One ray of hope, and she would wake to what she was in Europe!"
In his blind, sentimental devotion, he blamed the accidents of life for her disappointment, not the woman herself. When he came, she awoke, and it was an unconscious joy to him, this power he had to rouse her from her apathy, to make her become for the time the woman he always saw just beneath the surface, eager to emerge if life would but grant her the chance.
His own situation had changed with the growing year. The Colonel, closely watching "the boy," was coming gradually to comprehend the sacrifice that he had accepted, all the more as Vickers never murmured but kept steadily at his work. Before Isabelle left for California, she spoke plainly to her father:--
"What"s the use, Colonel! No matter how he tries, Vick can never be like you,--and why should he be any way?"
"It won"t have done any harm," the old man replied dubiously. "We"ll see!"
First he made his son independent of salary or allowance by giving him a small fortune in stocks and bonds. Then one day, while Mrs. Conry was still in the city, he suggested that Vickers might expect a considerable vacation in the summer. "You can go to Europe and write something," he remarked, in his simple faith that art could be laid down or resumed at will. Vickers smiled, but did not grasp the opportunity eagerly. When he told Mrs. Conry that afternoon of the proposed "vacation," she exclaimed enviously:--
"I knew you would go back!"
"I am not sure that I shall go."
She said perfunctorily: "Of course you must go--will you go back to Rome? I shall be so glad to think you are doing what you want to do."
He turned the matter off with a laugh:--
"The dear old boy thinks two months out of a year is long enough to give to composing an opera. It"s like fishing,--a few weeks now and then if you can afford it!"
"But you wouldn"t have to stay here at all, if you made up your mind not to," she remarked with a touch of hardness. "They"ll give you what you want."
"I am not sure that I want it," he replied slowly, "at the price."
She looked at him uncomprehendingly, then perceiving another meaning in his words, lowered her eyes. She was thinking swiftly, "If we could both go!"
But he was reflecting rather bitterly on that new wealth which his father had given him, the dollars piling up to his credit, not one of which he might use as he most dearly desired to use them--for her! With all this power within his easy reach he could not stretch forth his hand to save a human soul. For thus he conceived the woman"s need.
It came to Mrs. Conry"s last engagement,--the last possible excuse for her lingering in the city. It was a suburban affair, and the place was difficult to reach. Vickers had invited the Falkners to go with them, to prevent gossip, and Bessie willingly accepted as a spree, though she had confided to Isabelle that "Mrs. Conry was dreadful ordinary," "not half good enough for our adorable Vickers to _afficher_ himself with."
Nevertheless, she was very sweet to the beautiful Mrs. Conry, as was Bessie"s wont to be with pretty nearly all the world. It was late on their return, and the Falkners left them at the station. With the sense that to-night they must part, they walked slowly towards the hotel, then stopped at a little German restaurant for supper. They looked at each other across the marble-top table without speaking. The evening had been a depressing conclusion to the concert season they had had together. And that morning Vickers had found it impossible to arrange a meeting for Mrs. Conry with the director of a famous orchestra, who happened to be in the city.
"You must go to-morrow?" Vickers asked at last. "I may get a reply from Moller any day."
Mrs. Conry looked at him out of her gray eyes, as if she were thinking many things that a woman might think but could not say, before she replied slowly:--
"My husband"s coming back to-morrow--to get me." As Vickers said nothing, she continued, slowly shaking the yellow wine in her gla.s.s until it circled,--"And it"s no use--I"m not good enough for Moller--and you know it. I must have more training, more experience."
Vickers did know it, but had not let himself believe it.
"My little struggle does not matter,--I"m only a woman--and must do as most women do.... Perhaps, who knows! the combination may change some day, and--" she glanced fearlessly at him--"we shall all do as we want in another world!"
Then she looked at her watch. It was very late, and the tired waiters stood leaning listlessly against their tables.
"I am tired," she said at last. "Will you call a cab, please?"
They drove silently down the empty boulevard. A mist came through the cab window, touching her hair with fine points. Her hand lay close to his.
"How happy we were in Rome! Rome!" she looked out into the dark night, and there were tears in her eyes. "You have been very good to me, dear friend.
Sometime I shall sing to you again, to you alone. Now good-by." ...
His hand held hers, while his heart beat and words rose clamorously to his lips,--the words of rebellion, of protest and love, the words of youth. But he said nothing,--it was better that they should part without a spoken word,--better for her and better for him. His feeling for her, compact of tenderness, pity, and belief, had never been tested by any clear light. She was not his; and beyond that fact he had never looked.
So the carriage rolled on while the two sat silent with beating hearts, and as it approached the hotel he quickly bent his head and kissed the hand that was in his.
"Come to-morrow," she whispered, "in the morning,--once more."
"No," he said simply; "I can"t. You know why."
As Vickers stepped out of the cab he recognized Conry. The contractor had been looking up and down the street, and had started to walk away, but turned at the sound of the carriage wheels and came over towards them.
Something in his appearance, the slouch hat pulled forward over his face, the quick jerky step, suggested that he had been drinking. Vickers with a sensation of disgust foresaw a scene there on the pavement, and he could feel the shrinking of the woman by his side.
"Good evening, Mr. Conry," Vickers said coolly, turning to give Mrs. Conry his hand. A glance into Conry"s eyes had convinced him that the man was in a drunken temper, and his one thought was to save her from a public brawl.
Already a couple of people sauntering past had paused to look at them.
Conry grasped the young man by the arm and flung him to one side, and thrusting his other hand into the cab jerked his wife out of it.
"Come here!" he roared. "I"ll show you--you--"
Mrs. Conry, trembling and white, tried to free her arm and cross the pavement. The driver, arranging himself on the seat, looked down at Vickers, winked, and waited. Conry still dragged his wife by the arm, and as she tried to free herself he raised his other hand and slapped her across the face as he would cuff a struggling dog, then struck her again.
She groaned and half sank to the pavement. The curious bystanders said nothing, made no move to interfere. Here was a domestic difference, about a woman apparently; and the husband was exerting his ancient, impregnable rights of domination over the woman, who was his....
All these months Vickers had never even in imagination crossed the barrier of Fact. Now without a moment"s wavering he raised his hand and struck Conry full in the face, and as the man staggered from the unexpected blow he struck him again, knocking him to the ground. Then, swiftly disentangling the woman"s hand from her husband"s grasp, he motioned to the cab driver to pull up at the curb and carried her into the cab. When Vickers closed the door, the driver without further orders whipped up his horse and drove into a side street, leaving the group on the pavement staring at them and at Conry, who was staggering to his feet....
Within the cab Mrs. Conry moaned inarticulately. Vickers held her in his arms, and slowly bending his head to hers he kissed her upon the lips. Her lips were cold, but after a time to the touch of his lips hers responded with a trembling, yielding kiss.
Thus they drove on, without words, away from the city.
CHAPTER XVII