CHAPTER XI
Shortly after the first of the year Claire received her initial summons from Lily Condor—they were to appear at a concert in the Colonial Ballroom of the St. Francis for the Belgian relief. Mrs. Condor had intimated that the affair was to be smart, and so it proved. It was set at a very late and very fashionable hour, and all through the program groups of torpid, though rather audible, diners kept drifting in. Claire was not slow to discover that Lily Condor was first on the bill, and she remembered reading somewhere in a newspaper that among professionals the first and last place were always loathsome positions. Judging from the noise and confusion that accompanied their efforts, Claire could well understand why this was so, and she expected to find Lily Condor resentful. But to her surprise Mrs. Condor merely shrugged her shoulders and said:
"What difference does it make? They don't come to listen, anyway. Besides, I always open the bill. I like to get it over quickly."
But Claire had reason to suspect, as she followed the remainder of a very excellent program, that the choice of position did not rest with Mrs. Condor. Claire began to wonder how much money Mrs. Condor received for an effort like this. And she became more puzzled as she gathered from the conversation of the other artists about her that the talent had been furnished gratuitously.
"I understand," she heard a woman in front of her whisper to her companion, "that Devincenzi, the 'cellist, is the only one in the crowd who is getting a red cent. But he has a rule, you know—or is it a contract? I'm sure I don't know. At any rate, they say that the Ffinch-Browns donated his fee.... The Ffinch-Browns? Don't you know them?... See, there they are ... over there by the Tom Forsythes. She has on turquoise pendant earrings.... Oh, they're ever so charitable! But they do say that she is something of a...."
Claire lost the remainder of this stage whisper in a rather tremulous anxiety to catch a glimpse of her aunt before she moved. Claire had to acknowledge that at a distance her aunt gave a wonderful illusion of arrested youth as she stood with one hand grasping the collar of her gorgeous mandarin coat. But Claire was more interested in the turquoise pendants than in her aunt. She had never seen the jewels before, but she had heard about them almost from the time she was able to lisp.
"They're mine," Mrs. Robson had repeated to Claire again and again. "My father bought them for me when I was sixteen years old. I remember the day distinctly, and how my mother said: 'Don't you think, John, that Emily is a little young for anything like this? I'll keep them for her until she is twenty.' I nearly cried myself sick, but of course mother was right, then.... But like everything else, I never got my hands on them again. And what is more, Julia Carrol Ffinch-Brown knows that they are mine as well as anybody, because she stood right alongside of me when I handed them over to mother. Not that I care.... It's the principle of the thing!"
Claire felt disappointed in the pendants. They seemed so insignificant—to fall very far short of her mother's passionate description of them, and she began to wonder which was the more pathetic, Mrs. Robson's exaggerated notion of their worth or the pettiness that gave Aunt Julia the tenacity to hold fast to such trivial baubles.
Ned Stillman was in the audience, also. Claire saw him sitting off at the side. Indeed, she spotted him on the very moment of her entrance upon the stage. She had been nervous until his friendly smile warmed her into easy confidence; and though, while she played, her back had been toward him, she felt the glow of his sympathy. As Lily Condor and she swept back upon the stage for their rather perfunctory applause, and still more perfunctory bouquets provided by the committee, Claire could see him gently tapping his hands in her direction, and she was surprised when the usher handed her a bouquet of dazzling orchids.
"They must be for you," Claire said, innocently enough, to Mrs. Condor. "I don't find any name on them."
"That shows that you've got a discreet admirer, at any rate," Lily Condor returned with that bantering sneer which Claire was just beginning to notice. And the thought struck her at once that Stillman had sent the flowers. She was pleased, but also a little annoyed to think he had so deliberately ignored Mrs. Condor.
The Flints were there, too; Flint looked uncomfortable and warm in his scant full-dress suit and his wife frankly ridiculous in a low-cut gown that exhibited every angle of a hopelessly scrawny neck. Claire did not see them until she was leaving the stage, and she smiled as she saw Flint lean over and pick up the opera-glasses from his wife's lap. But this was not all. In a far corner sat Miss Munch and her cousin, Mrs. Richards, their ferret eyes darting busily about and their tongues clicking even more rapidly. Doubtless Flint had invested in a number of tickets at the office for business reasons and passed them around for any of the office force who felt a desire to see society at close range.
Claire had not meant to stay beyond one or two numbers following her own appearance, but she kept yielding to Mrs. Condor's insistent suggestions that she "stay for just one more," until she discovered, to her dismay, that it was past midnight. The last artists were taking their places upon the stage. Claire resigned herself to the inevitable and sat out the remainder of the performance. She was making a quick exit into the dressing-room when she came face to face with her aunt. Mrs. Ffinch-Brown betrayed her confusion by the merest lift of the eyebrows, and she stepped back as if to get a clearer view of her niece, as she said with an air of polite surprise:
"You—here?"
Claire carried her head confidently. "I was on the program," she returned, consciously eying the turquoise pendants.
Mrs. Ffinch-Brown rested a closed fan against her left ear as if to screen at least one of the earrings from Claire's frank stare. "Oh, how interesting! I must have missed you—I came in late. It's rather odd. I thought I knew everybody on the program.... I helped arrange it."
"Well," Claire smiled, "I wasn't what you would call one of the head-liners. I played Mrs. Condor's accompaniments."
"That accounts for it ... my not knowing, I mean. I dare say your mother is better, otherwise you wouldn't be here."
Claire met her aunt's thrust calmly. "No, mother is worse, if anything. As a matter of fact, I'm here...."
She broke off abruptly, realizing suddenly that she had left her orchids behind. She turned to discover Stillman making his leisurely way toward her. He had the orchids in his hand.
"My dear Miss Robson," he said, gently, "Mrs. Condor came very near appropriating your flowers."
She could feel the color rising to her forehead. "I see you came to my rescue again," she said, simply, taking them from him. "I think you know Mr. Stillman, Aunt Julia."
Mrs. Ffinch-Brown forced a too-sweet smile as she gave Stillman a nod of recognition. "Fancy any girl forgetting so much gorgeousness!" she exclaimed with an attempt at lightness, but Claire caught the covert rancor in her voice, and as her aunt made a movement of escape she put out a restraining hand and said:
"I wanted you to know, Aunt Julia, that I'm here merely as a matter of business. Mrs. Condor has hired me to play her accompaniments."
Mrs. Ffinch-Brown shook off Claire impatiently. "Hired you!" she sneered. "How extraordinary!"
And with that she swept past, giving Stillman a glance of farewell.
Claire turned to Stillman. "What must you think of me? Leaving my flowers behind. Confess—it was you who sent them.... I was in such a rush to get away, though. I shouldn't have stayed so long. My mother is alone.... Of course there are neighbors just below and they will look in on her, but just the same...."
His smile reassured her. "Are you forgetting about to-morrow?" he asked. "Remember we are to begin business promptly at two o'clock. I hired a typewriting-machine yesterday. I'm really thrilled at the idea of—of going into business."
She looked at him steadily as she gave him her hand: "My dear Mr. Stillman," she said, quite frankly, "you are very kind."
He answered by pressing her hand warmly and she covered her face with the purple orchids. They were interrupted by Lily Condor sweeping rather arrogantly toward them.
"Haven't you gone yet?" she asked Claire. "I thought you were in a hurry! I hope you've persuaded Ned to get us a taxi. I hate street-cars at this hour." And in answer to Claire's embarrassed protest that she had never given such a thing a thought, Mrs. Condor finished: "Well, I've given it a thought, and don't you forget it. Come, Ned, is it a go?"
Claire fancied that a flicker of annoyance passed over Stillman's face as he answered, with a dry laugh:
"You might at least have given me time to prove my gallantry."
"I'm not taking any chances," was the prompt reply.
Claire turned away. What had contrived to give Mrs. Condor this disagreeable air of assurance toward Ned Stillman, she found herself wondering. It had not been apparent at the Condor-Stillman musicale....
She arrived home dismayed to find the front room illuminated, but the rattle of the departing taxi brought Mrs. Finnegan to the top of the stairs with a laughing apology.
"I just looked in to see how your mother was, Miss Claire, and I found a book on the front-room table"—Mrs. Finnegan held up Ouida's Moths—"and I got so interested in it that I just naturally forgot to go home. Finnegan's out, anyway. I was telling him about your good fortune. And all he said was: 'Well, it beats me how an old crow like Mrs. Condor gets paid for singing. I remember five years ago, when she wasn't so uppish, we had her for a benefit performance of the Native Sons, and she didn't get paid then. Her singing may be over my head. Anyway, it didn't get to my ears.' But Finnegan is always like that. He just likes to contradict. I got back at him. I said, 'Well, if she can afford to pay Miss Claire forty a month for playing the piano, she must get a good piece of money every time she opens her mouth.' ...Mercy, look at the orchids! Well, you must have had a swell time. I'll bet you wouldn't like to tell who sent them.... There wasn't any card? That's not saying you don't know, Miss Claire.... I hope you won't think I'm a meddler, but I'm an older woman and.... Well, just you keep a sharp eye on the feller that sends you orchids, Miss Claire."
She went down-stairs without further ado. Claire put the orchids in water and set them on a sill near an open window. She did not feel in the least resentful of Mrs. Finnegan's warnings. She was too confident to be anything but faintly amused at her neighbor's middle-class anxiety. But Finnegan's skepticism concerning Mrs. Condor annoyed her and she remembered the disagreeable words of her aunt:
"Hired you? How extraordinary!"
"Two o'clock sharp!" The memory of Stillman's air of delicate banter as he emphasized the hour for beginning his business venture struck Claire ironically the more she pondered his words. She had a feeling that there was something farcical in the prospect, and yet there seemed nothing to do but to go through with the preliminaries. She presented herself, therefore, at the appointed time at the Stanford Court apartments.
She found Stillman quite alone, his hands blue-black with the smudge from a refractory typewriter ribbon which he was vainly endeavoring to adjust. It took some time for him to get his hands clean again, and Claire sharpened her pencils while she waited. But there really proved to be nothing to do.
"I'm all up in the air over this bean business," Stillman confessed, nonchalantly. "The government, you know ... they're taking over all that sort of thing ... regulating food and prices. Of course, in that case...."
Claire felt an enormous and illogical relief. "Then you really won't need me," she ventured.
"Oh, quite the contrary.... I have a certain amount of business, of a sort. And I'm tired of dropping checks along the trail of public stenographers.... Suppose we talk terms. We haven't fixed on any salary, yet."
Claire felt a rising impatience. His subterfuge seemed too childish and obvious. "That will depend on how much of my time you expect, Mr. Stillman."
"Well, three times a week, anyway ... to start with. Say Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from two to five.... I was thinking that something in the neighborhood of fifteen dollars a week would be fair."
He turned a very frank gaze in her direction and she quizzically returned his glance.
"That's rather ridiculous, don't you think?" she said, trying to disguise her furtive annoyance. "You can hire a substitute through any typewriting agency on the basis of three dollars a day."
"Yes, and I can buy two cigars for a nickel, but I shouldn't want to smoke them."
She clicked the keys of her machine idly. "That is hardly a fair comparison. You can get any number of competent girls for three dollars."
He rested his chin on his upturned palm. "But, my dear Miss Robson, I happen to want you."
She thought of any number of cheap, obvious retorts that might have been flung back at his straightforward admission, but instead she said, with equal frankness:
"That's just what I don't understand."
He threw her a puzzled look and the usual placid light in his eyes quickened to resentful impatience.
"Is that a necessary part of the contract, Miss Robson?"
She caught her breath. His tone of annoyance was sharp and unexpected. There was a suggestion of Flint's masculine arrogance in his voice. She felt how absurd was her cross-examination of him, of how absurd, under the circumstances, would have been her cross-examination of anybody ready and willing to give her work to do and an ample wage in the bargain, and yet, for all the force of his reply, she knew it to be a well-bred if not a deliberate evasion.
"You mean it is none of my business, don't you?" she contrived to laugh back at him.
His reply was a further surprise. "Yes, precisely," he said, with an ominous thinning of the lips.
She rose instinctively to meet this thrust and she was conscious that even Flint had never managed so to disturb her. She glanced about hastily as if measuring the room in a swift impulse toward escape. Stillman had chosen the dining-room for a temporary office, and upon the polished surface of the antique walnut table the typewriter struck an incongruous note; indeed, it was all incongruous, particularly Stillman and his assumed business airs. Yes, it was absurd for her to either cross-examine or protest, but it was equally absurd for him to pay her such an outlandish sum for nine hours a week.
"He's doing it for me," she thought, not without a sense of triumph. Then, turning to him, she said, a bit awkwardly:
"I guess there isn't any use to dissuade you, Mr. Stillman. If you say fifteen dollars a week, I sha'n't argue with you."
He smiled back at her, all his former suavity regained. She slid into her seat again. Her mind was recalling vividly the one other time in her life when she had grappled vigorously with the masculine spirit of domination, and come away victorious. This time she had been defeated and she had impulses toward relief and fear. She looked up suddenly and trapped a solicitous glance from Stillman that rather annoyed her. And it struck her, as she mentally compared Stillman with most of the men of her acquaintance, how far he could have loomed above them if he had had the will for such a performance. As it was he fell somewhat beneath them in a curious, indefinable way. Had he been too finely tempered by circumstances or had the flame of life lacked the proper heat for fusing his virtues effectively? For the moment she found Flint's forthright insolence more tolerable than Stillman's sterile deference. Suddenly she began to think of home, not with any sense of security, but as something unpleasant, dark, disquieting....