A Singer from the Sea Part 25

They left New York in September and went slowly West. Denasia had a fine physique, but it was not a physique trained to the special labour it had to endure: long days in hot railway cars; hurry and worry at every performance; no seclusion, no time for study; no time to acknowledge headache or weariness; a score of little humiliations and wrongs; a constant irritability at Roland's apparent indifference to her wretchedness and apparent satisfaction with the company and life into which he was thrown. The men, indeed, all seemed satisfied. They had cigars to smoke, and they told stories and played cards, and so beguiled the weary hours of travel. The women were headachy and tired; they soon threw aside their paper novels and confidential talks. Some of the very young ones--pretty, wilful, inexperienced girls, not yet disillusioned, not yet weary--added flirtation to their amus.e.m.e.nts. It pained Denasia to see Roland a willing aid to their foolish pastime.

She had no fear that her husband would wrong her, but the pretence pained and humbled her.

It was a wearisome seven months, a nightmare kind of life, unrelieved by even a phantom show of success. Men in the Sierras, out on the great Western plains, knew not the sea. They could not be roused to enthusiasm. Fisher-folk and fisher-life were outside their sympathies.

They preferred a comic song--a song that hit a famous person, or a political principle, or a Western foible. Miners liked to hear about "Leadville Jim." It touched their sensibilities when the "Three Fishers who Went Sailing out into the West" made no picture in their minds. Without being a failure, Denasia could not be said to be a success. She was out of her place, and consequently out of sympathy with all that touched her life.

Coming back eastward, while they were at Denver Denasia was stricken with typhoid fever. It was the result of months of unsatisfactory, unhappy labour, of worry and fret and disappointment. Nostalgia also of the worst kind had attacked her. She shut her eyes against the great mountains and endless plains. She wanted the sea. She wanted her home. Above all, she wanted to hide herself in her mother's breast.

Roland had been frequently unkind to her lately. She had been utterly unable to respond to his moods, so different from her own, and she had been more and more pained by the silly attentions he bestowed on others.

At last she could endure it no longer. She had come to a point of indifference. "Leave me and let me die." This was all she said when Roland was at length forced to believe that her sickness was not temper, or disappointment, or jealousy. The company were compelled to leave her; Roland saw his favourites on the train and then he returned to nurse his sick wife. He found her insensible, and she remained so for many days. Doctors were called, and Roland conscientiously remained by her side; but yet it was all alone that she fought her battle with death. No one went with her into the dark valley of his shadow. She was deaf to all human voices; far beyond all human help or comfort. Through the long nights Roland heard her moaning and muttering, but it was the voice of one at an inconceivable distance--of one at the very shoal of being.

She came back from the strife weak as a baby. Her clear, shrill voice was a whisper. She could not lift a finger. It was an exhausting effort to open her eyes. A new-born child was in every respect more alive and more self-helpful, for Denasia could not by look or whisper make a complaint or a request. She was only not dead. The convalescence from such a sickness was necessarily long and tiresome. The fondest heart, the most unselfish nature must at times have felt the strain too great to be borne. Roland changed completely under it. His love for Denasia had always been dependent upon accessories pleasant and profitable to himself, as, indeed, his love for any human being would have been. While Denasia's beauty and talent gave him _eclat_ and brought him money, he admired Denasia; and while her personality made sweet his private and enviable his public hours, he loved her.

But a wife smitten by deathly sickness into breathing clay--a wife who could give him no delight and make him no money--a wife who compelled him to waste his days in darkness and solitude and unpleasant duties and his money in medicines and doctor's fees--was not the kind of wife he had given his heart and name to. It was evident to him that Denasia had failed. "She has failed in everything I hoped from her," he said to himself bitterly one day, as he sat beside the still, death-like figure; "and there must be an end of this some way, Roland Tresham."

Financial difficulties were quickly upon him, and though he had written to Elizabeth a most pitiful description of his position, a whole month had pa.s.sed and there was no letter to answer his appeal.

He had momentary impulses to run away from a situation so painful and so nearly beyond his control. But it was fortunately much easier for Roland to be a scoundrel in intent than in reality. His selfish instincts had some n.o.bler ones to combat, and as yet the n.o.bler ones had kept the man within the pale of human affections. There had been one hour when the temptation was very nearly too much for him; and that very hour there came to him two hundred dollars from Elizabeth.

It turned him back. Ah, how many a time two hundred dollars would prevent a tragedy! How many a time financial salvation means also moral salvation!

It was midsummer before Denasia was strong enough to return to New York, though she was pa.s.sionately anxious to do so. "We are so far out of the right way," she pleaded. "So far! In New York we are nearer home. In New York I shall get well."

And by this time Roland had fully realised how unfit he was for the vivid, rapid life of the West. The cultivated, gentlemanly drawl of his speech was of itself an offence; his slow, unruffled movements and att.i.tudes, his "ancient" ways of thinking, his conservatism and gentility and ultra-superficial refinement were the very qualities not valued and not needed in a community full of new life, ardent, impulsive, rapid, looking forward, and determined not to look backward.

So with hopes much dashed and hearts much dismayed they re-entered New York. The question of the future was a serious one. They were nearly dollarless again, and even Roland felt that Elizabeth could not be appealed to for some months at least. Denasia was facing the sorrowful hopes of motherhood. For three or four months she could not sing. They restricted themselves to a small back room in a Second Avenue boarding-house, and Roland searched the agencies and the papers daily for something suitable to his peculiar characteristics and capabilities, and found nothing. There was a great city full of people, but not one of them wanting the services of a young gentleman like Roland.

As for Denasia, she was still very weak. July and August tried her severely. Some few little garments had to be made, and this pitiful sewing was all she could manage. She did not lose her courage, however, and if anything touched Roland's best feelings at this time, it was her unfailing hope, her smiling welcome no matter how frequently he brought disappointment, her brave a.s.surances that she would be quite well before the winter season, and then all would be put right.

In the last days of August the baby was born. Denasia recovered rapidly, but the little lad was a sickly, puny child. He had been wasted by fever, and fretted by anxious cares and by many fears, even before they were his birthright. All the more he appealed to his mother's love, and Denasia began now to comprehend something of the sin against mother-love which she herself had committed.

Perhaps she permitted her joy in her child to dominate her life too visibly; at any rate it soon began to annoy her husband. He had been so accustomed to all of Denasia's time and attention that he could not endure to be put off until baby was asleep, or until some trifling want of baby's had been attended to. He fancied that her attention was divided; that even when she appeared to be listening to his complaints or his intentions, her heart was with the child and her ears listening for its crying. The transient pleasure he had experienced in the little one's birth soon pa.s.sed away, and an abiding sense of petty jealousy and wrong took its place.

"You are for ever nursing that crying little creature, Denasia," he said one day when he returned to their small, warm room in a fever of annoyance at some unappreciative manager. "No one can get your attention for five minutes. You hear nothing I say. You take no interest in anything I do. And the little torment is for ever and for ever crying."

"Baby is sick, Roland. And who is there to care for him but me?"

"We ought to be doing something. Winter is coming on. Companies are already on the road; you will find it hard to get a position of any kind, soon."

"I will go out to-morrow. I am strong enough now, I think."

"I can find nothing suitable. People seem to take an instant dislike to me."

"That is nonsense! You were always a favourite."

"I have had to sell most of my jewelry in order to provide for your sickness, Denasia. Of course I was glad to do it, you know that, but----"

"But it is my duty now, Roland. I will begin to-morrow."

So the next day Denasia went to the agencies, and Roland promised to take care of baby. A two weeks of exhausting waiting and seeking, of delayed hope and destroyed hope, followed; and Denasia was forced to admit that she had made no impression on the managerial mind. No one had heard of her singing and dancing, and those who condescended to listen were not enthusiastic.

"You see," said one of the kindest of these caterers for the public's pleasure--"you see, New Yorkers have no ideas about fisher men and women. If their fish is fresh, that is all that troubles them. If they think about the men who catch it, they very likely think of them as living comfortably in flats with all the modern improvements. A good topical song, a spirited dance--they are the things that fetch."

In different forms this was the general verdict, and every day she found it harder and harder to return home and meet Roland's eager face as she opened the door. Pretty soon the anxiety became tinctured with complaint and unreasonable ill-temper, and with all the domestic miseries which accompany resentful poverty.

The poor little baby in Roland's opinion was to blame for every disappointment. Its arrival had belated Denasia's application, or if he wanted to be particularly irritating, he accused Denasia of being in such a hurry to return to her child that she did not attend to her most necessary duties. So instead of being a loving tie between them, the poor wailing little morsel of humanity separated very love, while Roland's complaints of it soon really produced in his heart the impatient dislike which at first he only pretended.

He grumbled when left in charge of the cradle. As soon as Denasia was out of sight he frequently deserted his duty, and the disputes that followed hardened his heart continually against the cause of them. And when it came to naming the child, he averred that it was a matter of no importance to him, only he would not have it called Roland. "There had been," he said, "one too many of the Treshams called Roland. The name was unlucky; and besides, the child did not resemble his family.

It looked just like the St. Penfer fisher children."

Denasia coloured furiously, but she answered with the moderation of accepted punishment, "Very well, then! I will call him 'John' after my father. I hope he may be as good a man."

Matters went on in this unhappy fashion until the end of October--nay, they continually grew worse, for poverty deepened and hope lessened.

Denasia had lost the freshness of her beauty, and she was too simple and ignorant to make art replace nature. Indeed, it is doubtful whether any persuasion could have made her imitate the "painted Jezebel" who had always been one of the most pointed examples of her religious education. In her first experience of public life her radiant health and colouring shamed all meaner aids and had been amply sufficient for the brightest lights and the longest hours. But that fierce ordeal of acclimating under conditions of constant travel and hard work had drained even the magnificent vitality that had been her heritage from generations of seamen, and typhoid and unhappy maternity had robbed her of much of her almost defiant youth, with its indomitable spirit and invincible hope.

She had become by the close of October pale, fragile-looking, and woefully depressed. Roland no longer found her always smiling and hoping, and he called the change bad temper when he ought to have called it hunger. Not indeed hunger in its baldest form for mere bread, but hunger just as killing--hunger for the nourishing delicate food and proper tonics that were just as necessary as bread; hunger for hope, for work, and, above all, hunger for affection.

For Roland had begun privately--yea, and sometimes openly--to call himself a fool. And the devil, who never chooses a wrong hour, sent him at this time an important letter from Elizabeth. In it she told him that Mr. Burrell had died suddenly from apoplexy, and that she had resolved to sell Burrell Court and make her residence in London and Lucerne. She deplored his absence, and said how much she had needed some one of her own family in the removal from Cornwall and in the settlement of her husband's estate; and she sent her brother a much smaller sum of money than she had ever sent before.

When Roland had finished reading this epistle he looked at Denasia.

She was walking about the room trying to soothe and quiet the child.

It was very ill, and she had not dared to speak about a doctor.

Therefore she was feeling hurt and sorrowful, and when Roland said, "Elizabeth's husband is dead," she did not answer him.

"I said that Elizabeth's husband is dead," he angrily reiterated.

"Very well. I am not sorry. I should think the poor man would be glad to escape from her."

"You are speaking of my sister, Denasia--of my sister, who is a lady."

"I care nothing about her. She could always take good care of herself.

I am heart-broken for my child, who is ill and suffering, and I can do nothing for his relief--no, not even get a doctor."

Words still more bitter followed. Roland dressed himself and went out.

He was not in a mood to do business or to look for business; indeed, there was no need that he should trouble himself for one day when he had Elizabeth's order in his pocket. He turned it into cash, bought the daily newspapers, and, the morning being exquisite, he took the cars to Central Park. But it was not until he was comfortably seated in the most retired arbour that he permitted himself to think.

Then he frankly said over and over: "What a fool I have been! Here am I at thirty-three years of age tied to a plain-looking fisher-girl and her cross, sickly baby. All I hoped for in her has proved a deception.

Her beauty has not stood the test of climate. Motherhood, that improves and perfects most women, has personally wrecked her. Her voice is now commonplace. Her songs are become tiresome. She has grown fretful, and all her brightness and hopefulness have vanished. I do not know how to make a living. I may as well admit that my dramatic views are a failure--that is, they are in advance of the times. I can do nothing for myself. But if I had not been married, what a jolly time I might now be having with Elizabeth! London, Paris, Switzerland, and no care or trouble of any kind. Oh, what a fool I have been! How terribly I have been deceived!"

He did not take into consideration Denasia's disappointment. He had no doubt Denasia was telling all her own sorrows to herself and weeping over them and her miserable little baby. After a while he lit a fresh cigar and opened the newspapers. For an hour or two he let his thoughts drift as they led him, and then, as he was folding up one, the following notice met his vision:

"Wanted, a private secretary. A young man who has had a cla.s.sical education preferred. Call upon Mr. Edward Lanhearne, 9 Fifth Avenue."

The name struck Roland. He had heard it before. It had a happy memory, an air of prosperity about it. Lanhearne! It was a Cornish name! That circ.u.mstance gave him the clew. When he was a boy at Eton, he remembered a Mr. Lanhearne who stayed with his father. "By Jove!" he cried, starting to his feet, "he was an American. What a piece of luck it would be if it should be the same man!" He fixed the address in his mind and went to it immediately.

The house pleased him. It was a large dwelling fronting on the avenue.

A handsome carriage was just leaving the door, and in the carriage was a very lovely young woman. The entrance, the reception parlour, the servant who admitted him, all the apparent accessories of the house and household indicated wealth and refinement. What a heaven in comparison with that back room on Second Avenue! For the first time in many a month Roland had a sense of success in what he was going to do, and the feeling gave him a portion of the elements necessary to success.

Mr. Lanhearne received him at once. He was a kindly looking old gentleman, with fine manners and an intelligent face.

"Mr. Tresham," he said, "I was attracted by your name. I once had a friend--a very pleasant friend indeed, called Tresham."