The book of Evelyn

by Geraldine Bonner

V

Roger and I went out to dinner last night, down-town to our favorite haunt in University Place.

I put on my best, a brown velveteen princesse gown (one of Betty’s made over), my brown hat with the gold rose and my amber beads. I even powdered my nose, which I was brought up to think an act of depravity only perpetrated by the lost and fallen. When I am dressed up I really do not look thirty-three. But I’ll have to buy two little rats to puff out my hair at the sides. It’s too flat under that hat. Roger was pleased when he saw me—that’s why I did it. What’s the fun of dressing for yourself? Some one must look at you admiringly and say, well, whatever it’s his nature to say. I suppose Mr. Masters would exclaim, “Gee, you’re a peach!” Roger said, “I like you in brown.”

I love going down Fifth Avenue in the dark of a winter evening. The traffic of business is over. Motors and carriages go spinning by, carrying people to dinners. The big glistening street is like an artery with the joyous blood of the city racing through it, coursing along with the throb, throb, throb of a deathless vitality. And the lights—the wonderful, glowing, golden lights! Two long lines of them on either side that go undulating away into the distance, and broken ones that flash by in a yellow streak, and round glaring ones like the alarmed eyes of animals rushing toward you in terror.

And I love the noise, the near-by rumble and clatter, and outside it the low continuous roar, the voice of the city booming out into the quiet of the fields and up into the silence of the skies. One great, unbroken sound made up of millions of little separate sounds, one great consolidated life made up of millions of little separate life, each of such vital importance to the one who’s living it.

We had lots to talk about, Roger and I. We always do. We might be wrecked on a desert island and go on talking for ten years without coming to the end. There are endless subjects—the books we read, the plays we see, pictures over which we argue, music of which I know nothing, and people, the most absorbing of all, probably because gossiping is a reprehensible practise. There is nothing I enjoy more. If I hadn’t been so well brought up I would be like the women in the first act of The School for Scandal. Sometimes we make little retrospective journeys into the past. But we do this cautiously. There are five years we neither of us care to touch on, so we talk forward by preference.

Of course I had to tell Roger of Miss Harris and Mr. Masters. It lasted through two courses.

“What a dog!” was Roger’s comment.

“Roger,” I said earnestly, “do you think she could be in love with such a man?”

Roger shrugged.

“How can I tell?”

“But could any woman—any possible kind of a woman? And she’s a very possible kind. Something comes from her and finds your heart and draws it right out toward her. She couldn’t.”

“Perhaps you don’t understand this enigmatical lady.”

“Maybe I don’t understand everything about her, I’ve only known her a few days. But I can feel—it’s an instinct—that underneath where the real things are she’s true and sound.”

I can see into Roger more clearly than he knows, and I saw that he wasn’t at all interested in Miss Harris. He looked round the room and said indifferently:

“Why does she have a cad like that hanging about?”

“Perhaps underneath there’s something fine in him.”

“Very far underneath, buried so deep nobody but Miss Harris can find it.”

“Roger, don’t be disagreeable. You’ve never seen either of them.”

“Evie, dear, your descriptions are very graphic. Do you know what I think?” He looked at me, smiling a little, but with grave eyes. “I think that you’re seeing Miss Harris through yourself. You’re putting your brain into her head and your heart into her body and then trying to explain her. That’s what’s making her such a puzzle.”

The waiter here produced a casserole with two squabs in it and presented it to Roger’s gaze as if it were a gift he was humbly offering. Roger looked at it and waved him away as if the gift was not satisfactory.

“They look lovely,” I called, and Roger smiled.

The squabs occupied him and my thoughts occupied me finally to find expression in a question:

“Roger, what is a gentleman?”

He looked surprised.

“A gentleman? What do you mean?”

“Just what I say—what is it?”

“You know.”

“No, I don’t. That’s just the point. There are lots of things that everybody—young people and fools—seem to understand and I don’t. One is the theory of vicarious atonement, one is why girls are educated to know nothing about marriage and children, which are the things that most concern them, and one is what makes a man a gentleman.”

Roger considered:

“Let’s see—at a blow. A gentleman is a man who observes certain rules of behavior founded on consideration for the welfare and comfort of others.”

“It sounds like the polite letter writer. Can a gentleman tell lies?”

“To benefit himself, no. To shield others, yes.”

“If he was noble inside—in his character—and uncouth outside, would he be a gentleman?”

“What do you mean by uncouth?”

“Well—wore a watch chain made of nuggets like a man I met in Dresden, and ate peas with his knife?”

“No.”

“Then, if he had beautiful manners and a bad heart, would he be one?”

“If his bad heart didn’t obtrude too much on his dealings with society, he might.”

“Is it all a question of clothes and manners?”

“No.”

“You’ve got to have besides the clothes and manners an inner instinct?”

“That’s it.”

I mused for a moment, then, looking up, caught Roger’s eye fixed on me with a quizzical gleam.

“Why this catechism?”

“I was thinking of Mr. Masters.”

“Good heavens!” said Roger crossly, his gleam suddenly extinguished. “Can’t you get away from the riff-raff in that house? I wish you’d never gone there.”

“No, I can’t. I was wondering if Mr. Masters, under that awful exterior had a fine nature, could he possibly be a gentleman?”

“Evie,” said Roger, putting down his knife and fork and looking serious, “if under that awful exterior Mr. Masters had the noble qualities of George Washington, Sir Philip Sidney and the Chevalier Bayard he could no more be a gentleman than I could be king of Spain.”

“I was afraid that’s what you’d say.” I sighed and returned to my squab.

I said no more about it, but when I got home my thoughts went back to it. I hated to think of Lizzie Harris in the company of such a man. If she was lacking in judgment and worldly knowledge some one ought to supply them for her. She was alone and a stranger. Mrs. Bushey had told me she came from California, and from what I’d heard, California’s golden lads and lassies scorned the craven deference to public opinion that obtains in the effete East. But she was in the effete East, and she must conform to its standards. She probably had never given them a thought and had no initiated guide to draw them to her attention. Whatever Betty might say, I was free to be friendly with whomever I pleased. That was one of the few advantages of being a widow, déracinée by four years in Europe. By the morning I had decided to put my age and experience at her service and this afternoon went up-stairs to begin doing it.

She was in her front room, sitting at a desk writing. A kimono of a bright blue crêpe enwrapped her, her dark hair, cloudy about the brows, was knotted loosely on the nape of her neck. She rose impulsively when she saw me, kissed me as if I was her dearest friend, then motioned me to the sofa, and went back to her place at the desk.

The room is like mine, only being in the mansard, the windows are smaller and have shelf-like sills. It was an odd place, handsome things and tawdry things side by side. In one corner stood a really beautiful cabinet of red Japanese lacquer, and beside it a three-legged wooden stool, painted white with bows of ribbon tied round each leg as if it was some kind of deformed household pet. Portions of Miss Harris’ wardrobe lay over the chairs, and the big black hat crowned the piano tool. On the window-sill, drooping and withered, stood a clump of cyclamen in a pot, wrapped in crimped green paper. Beside it was a plate of crackers and a paper bag, from whose yawning mouth a stream of oranges had run out, lodging in corners. The upright piano, its top covered with stacked music, the wintry light gleaming on its keys, stood across a rear angle of the room and gave the unkempt place an air of purpose, lent it a meaning.

It must be confessed Miss Harris did not look as if she needed assistance or advice. She was serene and debonair and the blue kimono was extravagantly becoming. I sat down upon the sofa against a pile of cushions. The bottom ones were of an astonishing hardness which obtruded through the softness of the top ones as if an eider-down quilt had been spread over a pile of bricks. I tried to look as if I hadn’t felt the bricks and smiled at Miss Harris.

“See what I’ve been doing,” she said, and handed me a sheet of note paper upon which were inscribed a list of names.

I looked over them and they recalled to my mind the heroines of G. P. R. James’ novels of which, in my teens, I had been fond.

“Suggestions for my stage name,” she explained. “How does number three strike you?”

Number three was Leonora Bronzino.

“That’s an Italian painter,” I answered.

“Is it? What a bother. Would he make a fuss?”

“He’s been dead for several hundred years.”

“Then he doesn’t matter. What do you think of number five?”

I looked up number five—Liza Bonaventura.

I murmured it, testing the sound. Miss Harris eyed me with attention, rapping gently on her teeth with the pen handle.

“Is it too long?”

I wasn’t sure.

“Of course when I got to be famous it would be just Bonaventura. And that’s a good word—might bring me luck.”

“Why don’t you use your own name?”

She laughed, throwing back her head so that I could see the inside of her mouth, pink and fresh like a healthy kitten’s.

“Lizzie Harris on a program—never!” Then suddenly serious, “I like Bonaventura—‘Did you hear Bonaventura last night in Tannhäuser’—strong accent on the hear. ‘How superb Bonaventura was in Carmen.’ It has a good ring. And then I’ve got a little dribble of Spanish blood in me.”

“You look Spanish.”

She nodded:

“My grandmother. She was a Spanish Californian—Estradilla. They owned the Santa Caterina Rancho near San Luis Obispo. My grandfather was a sailor on a Yankee ship that used to touch there and get hides and tallow. He deserted and married her and got with her a strip of the rancho as big as Long Island. And their illustrious descendant lives in two rooms and a kitchenette.”

She laughed and jumped up.

“I’m going to sing for you and you’ll see if Bonaventura doesn’t go well with my style.”

She swept the hat off the piano stool and seated herself. The walls of the room are covered with an umber brown burlap which made an admirable background for her long body clothed in the rich sinuous crêpe and her pale profile uplifted on an outstretched white neck.

“I’ll sing you something that I do rather well—Elizabeth’s going to be one of my great rôles,” she said, and struck a chord.

It was Dich Theure Halle and she sang it badly. I don’t mean that she flatted or breathed in the wrong place, but she sang without feeling, or even intelligence. Also her voice was not especially remarkable. It was full, but coarse and hard, and rolled round in the small room with the effect of some large unwieldly thing, trying to find its way out. What struck me as most curious was that the rich and noble quality one felt in her was completely lacking in her performance. It was commonplace, undistinguished. No matter how objectionable Mr. Masters might be I could not but feel he was right.

When she had finished she wheeled suddenly round on the stool and said quickly:

“Let me see your face.”

“It’s—it’s a fine voice,” I faltered, “so full and—er—rich.”

She paid no attention to my words, but sent a piercing look over my embarrassed countenance. Her own clouded and she drew back as if I had hurt her.

“You don’t like it,” she said in a low voice.

“Why do you say that—what nonsense. Haven’t I just said—”

“Oh, keep quiet,” she interrupted roughly, and giving the piano stool a jerk was twirled away from me into a profile position. She looked so gloomy that I was afraid to speak.

There was a moment’s pause, during which I felt exceedingly uncomfortable and she sat with her head bowed, staring at the floor. Then she gave a deep sigh and murmured.

“It’s so crushing—you all look the same.”

“Who?”

“Everybody who knows. And I’ve worked so hard and I’m eaten up,” she struck her breast with her clenched fist, “eaten up in here with the longing to succeed.”

The gesture was magnificent, and with the frowning brows and somber expression she was the Tragic Muse. If she could only get that into her voice!

“I’ve been at it two years, with Vignorol—you know him? I’ve learnt Italian and German, and nearly all the great mezzo rôles. And the polite ones say what you say, and the ones who don’t care about your feelings say ‘A good enough voice, but no temperament.’” She gave her body a vicious jerk and the stool twirled her round to me. “How in heaven’s name can I get temperament?”

“Well—er—time—and—er—experience and sorrow—” I had come up-stairs to give advice, but not on the best manner of acquiring temperament.

She cut me short.

“I’ve had experience, barrels of it. And time? I’m twenty-six now—am I to wait till I’m seventy? And sorrow? All my relations are dead—not that I care much, most of them I didn’t know and those I did I didn’t like. Shall I go and stand on the corner of Forty-second Street and Broadway and clamor for sorrow?”

“How in heaven’s name can I get temperament?”

“It’ll come without clamoring,” I said. Upon that subject I can speak with some authority.

“I wish it would hurry up. I want to arrive, I want to be a great prima donna. I will be a great prima donna. I will sing into that big dark auditorium and see those thousands of faces staring up at me and make those thousands of dull fat pigs of people sit up and come to life.”

She rose and walked to the window, pushed it up and picking up one of the oranges, threw it out.

“I hope that’ll hit some one on the head,” she said, banging the window down.

“Have you had the public’s opinion on your singing?” I asked, feeling it best to ignore her eccentricities of temper.

“Yes. I was in a concert in Philadelphia a year ago, with some others.”

“And what was the verdict?”

She gave a bitter smile.

“The critics who knew something and took themselves seriously, said ‘A large coarse voice and no temperament.’ The critics who were just men said nothing about the singing and a good deal about the singer’s looks—” She paused, then added with sulky passion, “Damn my looks.”

She was going to the window again and I hastily interposed.

“Don’t throw out any more oranges. You might hit a baby lying in its carriage and break its nose.”

Though she did not give any evidence of having heard, she wheeled from the window and turned back to me.

“It’s been nothing but disappointments—sickening disappointments. I wish I’d been left where I was. Three years ago in California I was living in a little town on the line between Los Angeles and San Francisco. I sang in the church and got ambitious and went up to San Francisco. They made a good deal of fuss over me—said another big singer was going to come out of California. I was just beginning to wonder if I really was some one, when one of those scratch little opera companies that tour South America and Mexico came up. Masters, Jack—the man you met here the other night—was managing it. I got an introduction and sang for him, and you ought to have heard him go up in the air. Bang—pouf!—like dynamite! Not the way he is now—oh, no—”

She stopped. The memory of those days of encouragement and promise seemed to shut off her voice. She stared out of the window as if she were looking back at them, her face set in an expression of brooding pain. I thought she was going to cry, but when she spoke her voice showed an angry petulance far from the mood of tears.

“I’d never have got such big ideas if he hadn’t given them to me. I must come on here and study, not waste myself on little towns and little people. Go for the big prize—that was what I was made for.” She suddenly turned on me and flung out what seemed the bitterest of her grievance, “He made me do it. He insisted on my coming—got Vignorol to take me, paid for my lessons. It’s his doing, all this.”

So that was the situation. That explained it all. I was immensely relieved. She might be in love with him, but if he was not in love with her (and he certainly gave no evidences of it), it would be easy to get rid of him. He was frankly discouraged about her, would probably hail with relief any means of escaping the continued expense of her lessons. The instinct that had brought me up-stairs was a good one after all.

“Couldn’t you”—I felt my way carefully for the ground was delicate—“couldn’t you put yourself in some one else’s hands. Get some one else to—I don’t know what the word is—”

She eyed me with an intent watching look that was disconcerting.

“Be my backer?” she suggested.

I nodded.

“No, I could not,” she said, in a loud violent tone. “Go back on the man who tried to make me, dragged me out of obscurity and gave me my chance? Umph!” She turned away with a scornful movement: “That would be a great thing to do.”

The change was so quick that it bewildered me. The cudgel with which she had been beating Masters was now wielded in his defense. The ground was even more delicate than I had thought, and silence was wisdom till I saw what was coming next. I rose from the rocky cushions and moved to the window.

The light in the little room had grown dim, the keys of the piano gleaming whitely from their dusky corner. With a deep sigh Miss Harris walked to the sofa, threw herself full length on it and lay still, a tall dark shape looking up at the ceiling.

I did not know what to say and yet I did not like to leave her so obviously wretched.

“Shall I light the gas?” I asked.

“No,” came the answer, “I like the dark.”

“Do you mind if I water the cyclamen? They’re dying.”

“I do. I want them to die.”

She clasped her hands under her head and continued to gaze at the ceiling. I moved to the door and then paused.

“Can I do anything for you?”

“Yes—” she shifted her glance and looked at me from beneath lowered lids. I again received the impression I had had the evening when I hooked her dress—that I was suddenly removed to an illimitable distance from her, had diminished to an undecipherable speck on her horizon. Never before had I met anybody who could so suddenly and so effectively strike from me my sense of value and importance.

“You can do something I’d like very much—go,” the voice was like a breath from the arctic.

I went, more amazed than angry. On the landing I stood wondering. What had I done to her? If I hadn’t been so filled up with astonishment I might have laughed at the contrast between my recent satisfaction in my mission and my inglorious dismissal.

My thoughts were dispersed by voices from below, resounding up through the cleft of the stairs. From a background of concerted sound, a series of short staccato phrases detached themselves:—

“My ’at! Look at it! Ruined! Smashed!”

I looked over the banister. On the floor below stood the count addressing Miss Bliss, Mr. Hamilton, Mr. Hazard and Mr. Weatherby, who stood ranged in their hallway in a single line, staring up at him. In one extended arm he held out a silk hat in a condition of collapse. Their four upturned faces were solemn and intent. Miss Bliss’ mouth was slightly open, Mr. Hamilton’s glasses glittered.

“What’s the matter?” I called, beginning to descend.

The count lifted a wrathful visage and shook the hat at me.

“Look at my ’at.”

A chorus rose from the floor below:

“Some one smashed his hat.”

“Threw an orange on it.”

“He says it came from here.”

“I think he’s wrong. It must have been the next house.”

“It was not,” cried the count, furious. “It was ’ere—this ’ouse. I am about to enter and crash—it falls on me! From there—above,” he waved the hat menacingly at the top floor.

The quartet below chorused with rising hope.

“Who’s up there, Mrs. Drake?”

“Did any one throw an orange?”

“Is Miss Harris at home?”

I approached the count, alarmed at his hysterical Latin rage.

“Who has throw the orange?” he demanded, forgetting his English in his excitement.

“You can have it reblocked,” I said comfortingly.

The count looked as if I had insulted him.

“’Ere?” he cried, pointing to the ground at his feet as if a hatter and his block were sitting there. “Never. I brought it from Italy.”

From below the voices persisted:

“Were you with Miss Harris?” This from Mr. Hamilton.

“Yes, I was.”

“Did she throw an orange?” This from Mr. Hazard.

“Why should any one throw an orange out of a front window?”

Miss Bliss answered that.

“She might. She’s a singer and they do queer things. I knew a singer once and she threw a clock that wouldn’t go into a bathtub full of water.”

This seemed to convince the count of Miss Harris’ guilt.

“She did it. I must see ’er,” he cried, and tried to get past me. I spread my arms across the passage. If he and Miss Harris met in their several fiery states of mind, there would be a riot on the top floor.

I don’t like to tell lies, but I remembered Roger had said that a gentleman could lie to shield another. Why not a lady? Besides, in this case, I would shield two others, for I had no doubt if Count Delcati intruded on Miss Harris he would be worsted. She was quite capable of throwing the other oranges at him and the three-legged stool.

“Don’t be silly,” I said. “She didn’t throw it.”

The male portion of the lower floor chorused:

“I knew she didn’t.”

“She couldn’t have.”

“Why should she?”

The count, with maledictions on the country, the city, the street and the house, entered his room, the Westerners entered theirs and Mr. Hamilton ascended to his. He puffed by me on the stairs:—

“Ridiculous to accuse a lovely woman like Miss Harris of such a thing. We ought to deport these Italians. They’re a menace to the country.”

Miss Bliss alone lingered. She is a pretty, frowsy little thing who looks cold and half fed, and always wears a kimono jacket fastened at the neck with a safety pin. She waited till all the doors had banged, then looking up, hissed softly:

“She did it. I was looking out of my window and saw it coming down and it couldn’t have come from anywhere but her room.”

“Hush,” I said, leaning over the banister. “She did. It’s the artistic temperament.”

Miss Bliss, as a model—artist not cloak—needed no further explanation. With a low comprehending murmur she stole into her room.