Melomaniacs Part 9

"Lord, what a woman! 'Masculine objectivity,' and I suppose 'feminine subjectivity' too. I never met such a blue-stocking. Do you remember how John Ruskin abused those odious terms 'objective' and 'subjective'?"

Paul asked.

"I can't read Ruskin. He is all landscape decoration; besides, he believes in the biblical att.i.tude of woman. Put a woman on the mantelpiece and call her luscious, poetic names and then see how soon she'll hop down when another man simply cries 'I love you.' If a man wishes to spoil a woman successfully let him idealize her."

"Poor Ruskin! There are some men in this world too fine for women." Paul sighed, and slily watched Ellenora as she cracked almonds with her strong white fingers.

"Fine fiddlesticks!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "Don't get sentimental, Mr.

G.o.ddard, or else I'll think you have a heart. You are trying to flirt with me. I know you are. Take me away from this place and let us walk, walk! Heavens! I'd like to walk to the Battery and smell the sea!"

Paul discreetly stopped, and the pair started up Fifth Avenue. The day was a brave one; the sky was stuffed with plumy clouds and the rich colors of a reverberating sunset. The two healthy beings sniffed the crisp air, talked of themselves as only selfish young people can, and at Fifty-ninth street, Ellenora becoming tired, waited for a cross-town car--she expected some people at her house in the evening, and must be home early. Paul was bidden, but declined; then without savor of affection they said good-by.

The man went slowly down the avenue thinking: "Of all the women I've met, this is the most perverse, heartless, daring." He recalled his Bayreuth experiences, and a.n.a.lyzed Ellenora. Her supple, robust figure attracted his senses; her face was interesting; she had brains, uncommon brains. What would she become? Not a poet, not a novelist. Perhaps a literary critic, like Sainte-Beuve with shining Monday morning reviews.

Perhaps--yes, perhaps a critic, a writer of bizarre prose-poems; she has personal style, she is herself, and no one else.

"That's it," said Paul, half aloud; "she has style, and I admire style above everything." He resolved on meeting Ellenora as often as he could....

The following month he saw much of Arthur Vibert's wife, and found himself a fool in her strong grasp. The girl had such baffling contrasts of character, such slippery moods, such abundant fantasy that the young man--volatility itself--lost his footing, his fine sense of honor and made love to this sphinx of the ink-pot, was mocked and flouted but never entirely driven from her presence. More than any other woman, Ellenora enjoyed the conquest of man. She mastered Paul as she had mastered Arthur, easily; but there was more of the man of the world, more of the animal in the amateur, and the silkiness of her husband, at first an amus.e.m.e.nt, finally angered her.

Vibert knew that his wife saw Paul much too often for his own edification, but only protested once, and so feebly that she laughed at him.

"Arthur," she said, taking him by his slender shoulders, "why don't you come home some night in a jealous rage and beat me? Perhaps then I might love you. As it is, Mr. G.o.ddard only amuses me; besides, I read him my new stories, otherwise I don't care an iota for him."

He lifted his eyebrows, went to the piano and played the last movement of his new concerto, played it with all the fire he could master, his face white, muscles angry, a timid man transformed.

"Why don't you beat me instead of the piano, dear?" she cried out mockingly; "some women, they say, can be subdued in that fashion." He rushed from the room....

April was closing when Vibert, summoned to Washington, gave a piano recital there, and Ellenora went down-town to dinner with G.o.ddard. She was looking well, her spring hat and new gown were very becoming. As they sat at Martin's eating strawberries, Paul approved of her exceedingly. He had been drinking, and the burgundy and champagne at dinner made him reckless.

"See here, Ellenora Vibert, where is all this going to end? I'm not a bad fellow, but I swear I'm only human, and if you are leading me on to make a worse a.s.s of myself than usual, why, then, I quit."

She regarded him coolly. "It will end when I choose and where I choose.

It is my own affair, Paul, and if you feel cowardly qualms, go home like a good boy to your mamma and tell her what a naughty woman I am."

He sobered at once and reaching across the narrow dining-table took her wrist in both of his hands and forced her to listen.

"You disdainful woman! I'll not be mastered by you any longer--"

"That means," interrupted Ellenora coolly, "do as you wish, and not as I please."

Paul, his vanity wounded, asked the waiter for his reckoning. His patience was worn away.

"Paul, don't be silly," she cried, her eyes sparkling. "Now order a carriage and we'll take a ride in the park and talk the matter over.

I'm afraid the fool's fever is in your blood; the open air may do it good. Oh! the eternal nonsense of youth. Call a carriage, Paul!--April Paul!" ...

III

Life in Philadelphia runs on oiled wheels. After the huge clatter of New York, there is something mellow and human about the drowsy hum of Chestnut Street, the genteel reaches of Walnut, and the neat frontage of Spruce Street. Ellenora, so quick to notice her surroundings, was at first bored, then amused, at last lulled by the intimate life of her new home. She had never been abroad, but declared that London, out-of-the-way London, must be something like this. The fine, disdainful air of Locust Street, the curiously constrained att.i.tude of the brick houses on the side streets--as if deferentially listening to the back-view remarks of their statelier neighbors, the brown-stone fronts--all these things she amused herself telling Paul, playfully begging him not to confront her with the oft-quoted pathetic fallacy of Ruskin. Hadn't d.i.c.kens, she asked, discerned human expression in door-knockers, and on the faces of lean, lonely, twilight-haunted warehouses?

She was gay for the first time in her restless dissatisfied life. By some strange alchemy she and Paul were able to precipitate and blend the sum total of their content, and the summer was pa.s.sed in peace. At first they went to a hotel, but fearing the publicity, rented under an a.s.sumed name a suite in the second storey of a pretty little house near South Rittenhouse Square. Here in the cheerful morning-room Ellenora wrote, and Paul smoked or trifled at the keyboard. They were perfectly self-possessed as to the situation. When tired of the bond it should be severed. This young woman and this young man had no illusion about love--the word did not enter into their life scheme. Theirs was a pact which depended for continuance entirely upon its agreeable quality. And there was nothing cynical in all this; rather the ready acceptance of the tie's fallibility mingled with a little curiosity how the affair would turn out.

It was not yet November when Paul stopped in the middle of a Chopin mazurka:

"Ellenora, have you heard from Vibert?"

She looked up from the writing-desk.

"How could I? He doesn't know where we are."

"And I fancy he doesn't care." Paul whistled a lively lilt. His manner seemed offensive. She flushed and scowled. He moved about the room still whistling and made much noise. Ellenora regarded him intently.

"Getting bored, Paul? Better go to New York and your club," she amiably suggested.

"If you don't care," and straightway he began making preparations for the journey. In a quarter of an hour he was ready, and with joy upon his handsome face kissed Ellenora fervently and went away to the Broad Street station. Then she did something surprising. She threw herself upon a couch and wept until she was hysterical.

"I'm a nice sort of a fool, after all," she reflected, as she wiped her face with a cool handkerchief and proceeded to let her hair down for a good, comfortable brushing. "I'm a fool, a fool, to cry about this vain, selfish fellow. Paul has no heart. Poor little Arthur! If he had been more of a man, less of a conceited boy. Yet conceit may fetch him through, after all. Dear me, I wonder what the poor boy did when he got the news."

Ellenora laughed riotously. The silliness of the situation burned her sense of the incongruous. There she stood opposite the mirror with her tears hardly dry, and yet she was thinking of the man she had deserted!

It was absurd after all, this hurly-burly of men and women. Then she began to wonder when Paul would return. The day seemed very long; in the evening she walked in Rittenhouse Square and watched Trinity Church until its brown facade faded in the dusk. She expected Paul back at midnight, and sat up reading. She didn't love him, she told herself, but felt lonely and wished he would come. To be sure, she recalled with her morbidly keen memory that Howells had said: "There is no happy life for woman--the advantage that the world offers her is her choice in self-sacrifice." At two hours past the usual time, she went to bed and slept uneasily until dawn, when she reached out her hand and awoke with a start....

The next night he came back slightly the worse for a pleasant time. He was too tired to answer questions. In the morning he told her that Vibert announced a concert in Carnegie Hall, the programme made up of his own compositions.

"His own compositions?" Ellenora indignantly queried. "He has nothing but the piano concerto, an overture he wrote in Germany, and some songs." She was very much disturbed. Paul noticed it and teased her.

"Oh, yes, he has; read this:"

"Mr. Arthur Vibert, a talented young composer, pupil of Saint-Saens and Brahms, will give an instrumental concert at Carnegie Hall, November 10th, the programme of which will be devoted entirely to his own compositions. Mr. Vibert, who is an excellent pianist, will play his new piano concerto; a group of his charming songs will be heard; an overture, one of his first works, and a new symphonic poem will comprise this unusually interesting musical scheme. Mr. Vibert will have the valuable a.s.sistance of Herr Anton Seidl and his famous orchestra."

"I will go to New York and hear that symphonic poem." She spoke in her most aggressive manner.

"Well, why not?" replied Paul flippantly. "Only you will see a lot of people you know, and would that be pleasant?"

"You needn't go to the concert, you can meet me afterward, and we'll go home together."

Paul yawned, and went out for his afternoon stroll.... Ellenora pa.s.sed the intervening days in a flame of expectancy. She conjectured all sorts of reasons for the concert. Why should Arthur give it so early in the season? Where did he get the money for the orchestra? Perhaps that old, stupid, busybody, portrait-painting friend of his had advanced it. But when did he compose the symphonic poem? He had said absolutely nothing about it to her; and she was surprised, irritated, a little proud that he had finished something of symphonic proportions. She knew Arthur too well to suppose that he would offer a metropolitan audience scamped workmanship. Anyhow, she would go over even if she had to face an army of questioning friends.

Vibert! How singularly that name looked now. It was a prettier, more compact name than G.o.ddard. But of course she wasn't Mrs. G.o.ddard, she was Mrs. Vibert, and would be until her husband saw fit to divorce her.

Would he do that soon? Then she walked about furiously, drank tea, and groaned--she was ennuied beyond description....

Paul had the habit of going to New York every other week, and she raised no objection as his frivolous manner was very trying during sultry days; when he was away she could abandon herself to her day-dreams without fear of interruption. She thought hard, and her strong head often was puzzled by the cloud of contradictory witnesses her memory raised. But she cried no more at his absence....

It was quite gaily that she took her seat beside him in the drawing-room car of the train and impatiently awaited the first sight of the salt meadows before Jersey City is reached.

"Ah! the sea," she cried enthusiastically, and Paul smiled indulgently.

"You are lyrical, after all, Ellenora," he remarked in his most critical manner. "Presently you will be calling aloud 'Thalatta, Thalatta!' like some dithyrambic Greek of old."

"Smell the ocean, Paul," urged Ellenora, who looked years younger and almost handsome. Paul's comment was not original but it was sound: "You are a born New York girl and no mistake." He took her to luncheon when they reached the city and in the afternoon she went to a few old familiar shops, felt buoyant, and told herself that she would never consent to live in Philadelphia, as inelastic as bra.s.s. Alone she had a hasty dinner at the hotel--Paul had gone to dine with his mother--and noted in the paper that there was no postponement of the Vibert concert.