ROSE SITS IN THE BLAZE OF A THOUSAND EYES
Life quickened for the coulé girl. She accommodated herself to the pace of the daily papers with instant facility. She studied the amusement columns, and read the book reviews, and frequented the beautiful reading room of the Newberry library. She went to all the matinees, taking gallery tickets, of course, ever mindful of her slender resources—studying as truly, as intently, as if she were still at college.
She had told her father that three hundred dollars would carry her through till June, and she was determined it should do so. She had not begun to think of any work to do beyond her writing. Her mind was still in unrest—here life's problem was seemingly more difficult of solution than ever.
She took hold upon the city with the power of a fresh mind capable of enormous feeling and digesting. She seemed to be in the world at last, plunged in it, enveloped by it, and she came to delight in the roar and tumult of it all, as if it were the sound of winds and waters; and each day she entered upon a little wider circle of adventure. Once the first confusion was past, the movement and faces of the crowds were of endless interest to her. She walked down into the city every day, returning to her little nook in the noisy flat building, as the young eagle to its eerie above the lashing tree-tops. She was sitting above the tumult, as Mr. Mason had advised her to do.
She came soon to know that the west side of State street was tabooed by wealthy shoppers, who bought only on the east side; that Wabash avenue was yet more select, and that no one who owned a carriage ever traded in the bargain stores. She did all her shopping there because it was cheaper, but deep in her heart she felt no kinship with the cross, hurrying, pushing, perspiring crowds in the bargain stores. Her place was among the graceful, leisurely, beautifully attired groups of people on the east side of State street. She was not troubled at this stage of her development by any idea of being faithful to the people of her own material condition and origin. She had always loved the graces and cleanlinesses of life, and her father, she knew to be a man of innate refinement. The idea of caste, of arbitrary classes of people, had only come to her newly or obscurely through newspapers or novels. She did not like dirty people, nor surly people, nor boorish people. In fact, she did not class people at all; they were individuals with her yet. She was allured by the conditions of life on the Lake Shore Drive because the people lived such quiet, clean and joyous lives apparently, with time to think and be kind.
She met few people outside of the little circle at the boarding house, and an occasional visiting friend of Miss Fletcher or Mr. Taylor. Owen she saw much of, and he pleased her greatly. He was a man she could have married under some circumstances. He had means a plenty; he was an unusual character, clean-souled, almost elemental in his simple sincerity, but she considered him committed to Mary, and, besides, Mason had become a deterring cause, though she hardly realized that.
Through all the days which followed that evening at Dr. Herrick's she saw his face with growing distinctness. It was not a genial face, but it was one to remember, a face of power. The line of the lips, the half-averted chin, marked Mason's attitude to be one of disgust or weariness. He was the most powerful man she had ever known, a man of critical insight, and for that reason especially she had sought in her last reading to please him. She had failed, and so she was afraid to see him again. When Isabel said to her:
"Mason is a man you should know. He can do a great deal for you in the city," Rose replied in her blunt fashion:
"I don't want him to do anything for me."
"O yes, you do! He's really a kind-hearted man. He puts on a manner which scares people sometimes, but he's a man of the highest character. He's the greatest thinker I ever met—O I'm not disloyal to Dr. Sanborn, he's the best man I ever met." There was a story in that tender inflection. "So you must let me send in something to Warren, and let him advise you."
Rose finally consented, but it seemed to her like laying an only child upon the rack. She had come almost to fear, certainly to dread, that strange, imperturbable man. His abiding-place and his office were alike so far removed from any manner of living she had knowledge of. He concealed his own likes and dislikes so effectually that not even Isabel (as she confessed) could learn them.
A few days after putting her packet of poems into Isabel's hands Rose received a note from her asking her to come over and see her—that she had an invitation for her.
"We are invited, you and Dr. Sanborn and I, to sit in a box at the symphony concert Saturday night, with Mr. and Mrs. Harvey. Mrs. Harvey is one of my dearest friends, and I've talked about you so much she is eager to see you."
Rose took the matter very quietly. She was mightily pleased, but she was not accustomed to gushing her thanks; besides, she had recovered her equilibrium.
Isabel was a little surprised at her coolness, but was keen enough to see that she did not mean to be ungrateful.
"I thought perhaps you'd like to advise about dress," she said. "The boxes are very brilliant, but you'll look well in anything. You won't need a bonnet, your hair is so pretty, and that little grey dress will do, with a little change."
"You know I'm a farmer's daughter," Rose explained; "I can't afford new dresses in order to go to the opera."
"I understand, my dear. I have my own limitations in that way. I keep one or two nice gowns and the rest of the time I wear a uniform. I told Mrs. Harvey you were poor like myself, and that we'd need to be the background for her, and she said she'd trust me."
What Mrs. Harvey had said was this: "My dear Isabel, you've got judgment, and if you say the girl's worth knowing I want to know her. And if you say the girl will be presentable I'd like to have her come. The boys are both in New York, anyway, and we've got three unoccupied seats."
"Now you come over to dinner with me Saturday; come at five. I want you to help me dress. Doctor will be over, and we'll have a nice time before the carriage comes."
Rose was much more elated than she cared to show. Once as she sat in the gallery of the theatre and looked at the boxes she had shut her teeth in a vow: "I'll sit there where you do, one of these days!" and now it had come in a few weeks instead of years—like a fairy gift. She told Mary nothing about her invitation for several days. She dreaded her outcry, which was inescapable.
"Oh! isn't that fine! How you do get ahead—what will you wear?"
"I haven't a bewildering choice," Rose said. "I thought I'd wear my grey dress."
"Oh, this is a wonderful chance for you! Can't you afford a new dress?"
"No, I'm afraid not. There isn't time now, anyway. I'll keep close to the wall. Fortunately I have a new cloak that will do."
"Well, that grey dress is lovely—when it's on you."
Rose hated the bother about the dress.
"I wish I could wear a dress suit like a man," she said to Isabel when they were in the midst of the final stress of it.
"So do I, but we can't. There's a law against it, I believe. Now I'm going to dress your hair for you. That is, I'm going to superintend it and Etta's deft little fingers shall do the work."
After dinner, Isabel ordered things cleared and said to Sanborn:
"Doctor, you go and smoke while we put on our frills."
Sanborn acquiesced readily enough.
"Very well—if you find me gone when you come forth, don't worry. I've gone ahead with my friend Yerkes. Your carriage will be full anyhow."
"All right." She went over and gave him a hug. "You're a good, obedient boy—that's what you are!"
He spoke (with his chin over her wrist) addressing Rose:
"The study of chemicals and nerve tissues has not left us utterly desolate, you perceive."
When they were in their dressing room, Rose asked what the Doctor meant by that speech.
Isabel laughed and colored a little:
"Oh, he meant that a study of bones and muscles and diseased bodies had not made us prosaic and—and old. I think it has made me still more in love with healthy human flesh—but never mind that now; we must hurry."
Rose looked at Isabel in silent worship as she stood before her ready for the carriage. Her, ordinarily, cold little face glowed with color, and her eyes were full of mirthful gleams like a child's. It seemed impossible that she had written a treatise on "Nervous Diseases," and was ranked among the best alienists in the city.
Etta made no secret of her adoration. She fairly bowed down before her sister and before Rose also. She was so little and so commonplace before these beings of light.
Down at the carriage it was too dark to see any one distinctly, but Rose liked the cordial, hearty voice of Mrs. Harvey. Mr. Harvey's hand was small and firm, Mrs. Harvey's plump and warm. Mr. Harvey spoke only once or twice during the ride.
As the carriage rumbled and rolled southward at a swift pace, Rose kept watch out of the window. The street had not lost a particle of its power over her.
As they plunged deeper into the city, and the roll of other carriages thickened around them, the importance of this event grew upon Rose. She was bewildered when they alighted, but concealed it by impassivity, as usual. The carriages stood in long rows waiting to unload. Others were rolling swiftly away; doors slammed; voices called, "All right!" A mighty stream of people was entering the vast arched entrance, with rustle of garments and low murmur of laughing comment. Rose caught the flash of beautiful eyes and the elusive gleam of jewels on every side, as the ladies bowed to their acquaintances.
Everything was massive, and spacious and enduring. The entrance way was magnificent, and Rose followed Mr. Harvey as if in a dream. They took a mysterious short cut somewhere, and came out into a narrow balcony, which was divided into stalls. Through arched openings Rose caught glimpses of the mighty hall, immense as a mountain cave, and radiant as a flower.
As they moved along, Mrs. Harvey turned to Isabel.
"She'll do; don't worry!"
At their box Mr. Harvey paused and said, with a pleasant smile:
"Here we are."
Dr. Sanborn met them, and there was a bustle getting wraps laid away.
"You sit here, my dear," said Mrs. Harvey. She was a plump, plain, pleasant-voiced person, and put Rose at ease at once. She gave Rose the outside seat, and before she realized it the coulé girl was seated in plain view of a thousand people, under a soft but penetrating light.
She shrank like some nocturnal insect suddenly brought into sunlight. She turned white, and then the blood flamed to her face and neck. She sprang up.
"O, Mrs. Harvey, I can't sit here," she gasped out.
"You must!—that is the place for you," said Mrs. Harvey. "Do you suppose an old housewife like me would occupy a front seat with such a beauty in the background? Not a bit of it! The public welfare demands that you sit there." She smiled into the scared girl's face with kindly humor.
Isabel leaned over and said; "Sit there; you're magnificent."
Rose sank back into her seat, and stared straight ahead. She felt as if something hot and withering were blowing on that side of her face which was exposed to the audience. She wished she had not allowed the neck of her dress to be widened an inch. She vowed never again to get into such a trap.
Mr. Harvey talked to her from behind her chair. He was very kindly and thoughtful, and said just enough to let her feel his presence, and not enough to weary her.
Gradually the beauty and grandeur of the scene robbed her of her absurd self-consciousness. She did not need to be told that this was the heart and brain of Chicago. This was the Chicago she had dreamed about. A perfumed rustling rose from below her. Around her the boxes filled with women in gowns of pink and rose and blue, and faint green. Human flowers they were, dewed with diamonds. All about was the movement of orderly, leisurely, happy-toned and dignified men and women. All was health, pleasure, sanity, kindliness. Wealth here displayed its wondrous charm, its peace, its poetry.
Her romantic conception of these people had done them an injustice. She had clothed them with the attributes of the men and women of English society novels and New York imitations of these novels. This Mr. Harvey did not know, but he helped her to rectify her mistaken estimate of the people around her by saying:
"We business men can't get out to the Friday rehearsals, but Saturday night finds us ready to enjoy an evening of art."
He looked very handsome in his dress suit, and his face was very pleasant to see, yet Isabel had told her that not only was he a hard-working business man, but a man of wide interests, a great railway director, in fact.
"I suppose you know many of the people here," she said at last.
"Oh, yes," he replied, "I know most of them. Chicago is large, but some way we still keep track of people here."
As he talked, she got courage to raise her eyes to the roof, soaring far up above, glowing with color. Balcony after balcony circled at the back, and Rose thought with a little flush that perhaps Owen and Mary were sitting up in one of those balconies and could see her in the box.
The hall was buff and light-blue to her eyes, and the procession of figures over the arch, the immense stage, the ceiling, the lights, all were of great beauty and interest.
But the people! the beautiful dresses! the dainty bonnets! the flow of perfumed drapery! the movement of strong, clean, supple limbs!—these were the most glorious sights of all. She had no room for envy in her heart. She was very happy, for she seemed to have reached a share in ultimate magnificence.
She longed for gowns and bonnets like these, but there was no bitterness in her longing.
She herself was a beautiful picture as she sat there. From her bust, proud and maternal, rose her strong smooth neck, and young, graceful reflective head. If the head had been thrown back she would have seemed arrogant; with that reflective, forward droop, she produced upon the gazer an effect both sweet and sad. In the proud bust was prophecy of matronly beauty, and also of the freshness of youth.
Mason, seated below among a group of musical critics, looked at her with brooding eyes. At that moment she seemed to be the woman he had long sought. Certainly the glamour was around her then. She sat above him and her brown hair and rich coloring stood out from the drapery like a painting. A chill came over him as he thought of the letter he had sent to her that very morning. It was brutal; he could see it now. He might have put the criticism in softer phrases.
Isabel leaned over and spoke to Rose and then Rose began searching for him. He was amazed to feel a thrill of excitement as he saw that strong, dark face turned toward him; and when his eyes met her's he started a little, as if a ray of light had fallen suddenly upon him. She colored a little, he thought, and bowed. Where did the girl acquire that regal, indifferent inclination of the head? It was like a princess dropping a favor to a faithful subject, but it pleased him. "The girl has imagination!" he said. "She claims her own."
Then he meditated: "What an absurdity! Why should I fix upon that girl, when here, all about me are other women more beautiful, and rich and accomplished, besides. That confounded farmer's girl has a raft of stupid and vulgar relatives, no doubt, and her refinement is a mere appearance."
He solaced himself with a general reflection.
"Furthermore, why should any man select any woman, when they are all dots and dashes in a web of human life, anyhow? Their differences are about like the imperceptible differences of a flock of wrens. Why not go out and marry the first one that offers, and so end it all?"
The mystery of human genius came also to Rose as Mr. Harvey pointed out to her the city's most noted men and women. They were mere dabs of color—sober color, for the most part—upon this flood of humankind. She was to Mason, probably, only a neutral spot in the glorious band of color, which swept in a graceful curve back from the footlights. It was wonderful, also, to think that these smiling men were the millionaire directors of vast interests—they seemed without a care in the world.
At last the stage chairs were all filled by a crowd of twanging, booming, sawing, squeaking instrumentalists. Then the leader, a large man of military erectness, came down to the leader's desk and bowed, amidst thunderous applause. Then rapping sharply on his desk he brought orderly silence out of the tumult, and the concert began.
The music did not mean much to Rose during the first half-hour, for the splendor of the whole spectacle dominated the appeal of the instruments. Such music and such audiences were possible only in the largest cities, and that consideration moved her deeply. It seemed too good to be true that she sat here securely, ready to enjoy all that came. It had come to her, too, almost without effort, almost without deserving, she felt.
But there came at last a number on the programme which dimmed the splendor of the spectacle. The voice of Wagner came to her for the first time, and shook her and thrilled her and lifted her into wonderful regions where the green trees dripped golden moss, and the grasses were jeweled in very truth. Wistful young voices rose above the lazy lap of waves, sad with love and burdened with beauty which destroyed. Like a deep-purple cloud death came, slowly, resistlessly, closing down on those who sang, clasped in each other's arms.
They lay dead at last, and up through the purple cloud their spirits soared like gold and silver flame, woven together, and the harsh thunder of the gray sea died to a sullen boom.
When she rose to her feet the girl from the coulé staggered, and the brilliant, moving, murmuring house blurred into fluid color like a wheel of roses.
The real world was gone, the world of imagined things lay all about her. She felt the power to reach out her hand to take fame and fortune.
In that one reeling instant the life of the little coulé, the lonely, gentle old father, and the days of her youth—all her past—were pushed into immeasurable distance. The pulling of weeds in the corn, the driving of cattle to pasture were as the doings of ants in a dirt-heap.
A vast pity for herself sprang up in her brain. She wanted to do some gigantic thing which should enrich the human race. She felt the power to do this, too, and there was a wonderful look on her face as she turned to Isabel. She seemed to be listening to some inner sound throbbing away into silence, and then her comprehension of things at hand came back to her, and Isabel was speaking to her.
"Here's Mr. Mason coming to speak to us," interrupted Mr. Harvey.
She turned to watch him as he came along the aisle behind the boxes; her head still throbbed with the dying pulsations of the music. Everybody seemed to know and greet him with cordial readiness of hand. He came along easily, his handsome blonde face showing little more expression at meeting her than the others, yet when he saw her rapt and flushed face he was touched.
"I came to see how Miss Dutcher was enjoying the evening."
Rose felt a sudden disgust with her name; it sounded vulgarly of the world of weeds and cattle.
In some way she found herself a few moments later walking out through the iron gate into the throng of promenaders back of the seats. It was the most splendid moment of her life. She forgot her fear of Mason in the excitement of the moment. She walked with hands clenched tightly and head lifted. The look on her face, and the burning color in her face made scores of people turn to look at her.
Mason perceived but misinterpreted her excitement. He mistook her entire self-forgetfulness for a sort of vain personal exaltation or rapture of social success.
She saw only dimly the mighty pillars, the massive arches, lit by stars of flame. She felt the carpet under her feet only as a grateful thing which hushed the sound of feet.
They made one circuit with the promenaders, Mason bowing right and left, and talking disjointedly upon indifferent subjects. He felt the tormenting interest of his friends in Rose, and drew her out of the crowd.
"Let us stand here and see them go by," he said. "You liked the music, did you?"
His commonplace question fell upon her like the scream of a peacock amid songs of thrushes. It showed her in a flash of reasoning of which he could not know, that it was possible to be ennuied with glorious harmonies. Her mind asked, "Shall I, too, sometimes wish to talk commonplaces in the midst of such glories?"
"O, it was beyond words!" she said. And then Mason was silent for a little space. He divined her mood at last, but he had something to say which should be said before she returned to her box.
He began at once:
"Let me say, Miss Dutcher, that while the main criticism of your work, which I made in my note this morning, must hold, still I feel the phraseology could be much more amiable. The fact is, I was irritated over other matters, and that irritation undesignedly crept into my note to you."
"I haven't received it," she said looking directly at him for the first time.
"Well then, don't read it. I will tell you what I think you ought to do."
"O, don't talk of it," she said, and her voice was tense with feeling. "All I have written is tonight trash! I can see that. It was all somebody else's thought. Don't let's talk of that now."
He looked down at her face, luminous, quivering with excitement—and understood.
"I forgot," he said gently, "that this was your first concert at the Auditorium. It is beautiful and splendid, even to an habitué like me. I like to come here and forget that work or care exists in the world. I shall enjoy it all the more deeply now by reason of your enthusiasm."
In the wide space back of the seats a great throng of young people were promenading to the left, round and round the massive pillars, in leisurely rustling swing, the men mainly in dress suits, the ladies in soft luminous colors; the heavy carpet beneath their feet gave out no sound, and only the throb of laughter, the murmur of speech and the soft whisper of drapery was to be heard.
It was all glorious beyond words, to the imaginative girl. It flooded her with color, beauty, youth, poetry, music. Every gleaming neck or flashing eye, every lithe man's body, every lover's deferential droop of head, every woman's worshipful upturned glance, came to her with power to arouse and transform. The like of this she had not dreamed of seeing.
Nobody had told her of this Chicago. Nobody could tell her of it, indeed, for no one else saw it as she did. When Mason spoke again his voice was very low and gentle. He began to comprehend the soul of the girl.
"I've no business to advise you. I've come to the conclusion that advice well followed is ruinous. Genius seldom takes advice, and nobody else is worth advising. I took advice and went into a newspaper office twenty years ago. I've been trying ever since to rectify my mistake. I would be a literary if I were not forced to be a newspaper man, just when my powers are freshest. I want to write of today. I want to deal with the city and its life, but I am forced to advise people upon the tariff. I come home at night worn out and the work I do then is only a poor starveling. Now, see this audience tonight! There are themes for you. See these lovers walking before and behind us. He may be a clerk in a bank; she the banker's daughter. That man Harvey, in whose box you sit tonight, was a farmer's boy, and his wife the daughter of a Methodist preacher in a cross-roads town. How did they get where they are, rich, influential, kindly, polished in manner? What an epic!"
"Are you advising me now?" she asked with a smile.
Her penetration delighted him.
"Yes, I am saying now in another way the things I wrote. I hope, Miss Dutcher, you will burn that packet without reading. I would not write it at all now."
They were facing each other a little out of the stream of people. She looked into his face with a bright smile, though her eyes were timorous.
"Do you mean manuscript and all?"
His face was kind, but he answered firmly:
"Yes, burn it all. Will you do it?"
"If you mean it."
"I mean it. You're too strong and young and creative to imitate anybody. Burn it, and all like it. Start anew tonight."
His voice compelled her to a swift resolution.
"I will do it."
He held out his hand with a sudden gesture, and she took it. His eyes and the clasp of his hand made her shudder and grow cold, with some swift, ominous foreknowledge of distant toil and sorrow and joy.
The lights were dimmed mysteriously, and Mason said:
"They are ready to begin again; we had better return."
He led her back to the box, and Mrs. Harvey flashed a significant look upon him, and said in a theatrical aside:
"Aha! at last."
Isabel said:
"Come and see us tomorrow at six—a 'pow-wow.'"
The music which came after could not hold Rose's attention. How could it, in the face of the tremendous changes which were in progress in her brain? What had she done? To an almost perfect stranger she had promised to burn all the work of her pen thus far.
And an hour before she had almost hated, certainly she had feared, that man. While the music throbbed and wailed and clashed, she sat with blood throbbing in her ears and at her throat, longing to cry out, to sing and to weep. She had said little of late to any one, but she had finally settled upon one ambition—to write, to be a great poetess. After vicissitudes and false enthusiasm she had come back to the first great ambition which she had confessed to Thatcher years before, in the little coulé school-house. And now, at the bidding of a stranger, she had made a promise to burn her work and start again.
But had not the music and the splendid spectacle before her almost determined her before he had spoken?
Then she came back to the wondrous gentleness which was in his voice, to the amazing change in his eyes. The man who had held her hand was not the worn, cynical man she had feared. He was younger and handsomer, too. She shuddered again, with some powerful emotion at the thought of his calm, compelling, down-thrusting glance into her eyes. His mind appeared to her to have a shoreless sweep.
The music rose to a pounding, blaring climax, and the audience, applauding, began to rise to go home, breaking into streams and pools and whirling masses of color.
"Well, my dear, how have you enjoyed the evening?" asked Mrs. Harvey, cordially.
"Very much, indeed. I never can thank you enough."
"It has been a pleasure to feel your enthusiasm. It makes us all young again. I've asked Dr. Herrick to bring you to see us; I hope you will come."
The hearty clasp of her hand moved the motherless girl deeply, and her voice trembled with emotion as she replied:
"It will be a great pleasure to me, Mrs. Harvey."
Mrs. Harvey clutched her in her arms and kissed her.
"You splendid girl! I wish you were mine," she said, and thereafter Rose felt no fear in her presence.
"I don't care whether she's a genius or not," Mrs. Harvey said to Isabel, as they walked out to the carriage. "She's a good girl, and I like her, and I'll help her. You figure out anything I can properly do and I'll do it. I don't know another girl who could have carried off that cheap little dress the way she did. She made it look like a work of art. She's a wonder! Think of her coming from a Wisconsin farm!"
Isabel rejoiced.
"I knew you'd like her." She leaned over and said in a low voice: "I'd like Elbert to see her."
Mrs. Harvey turned a quick eye upon her.
"Well, if you aren't a matchmaker!"
As they came out in the throng it seemed as if everybody knew the Harveys and Isabel. Out in the street the cabs had gathered, like huge beetles, standing in patient rows in the gaslight.
The bellowing of numbers, the slam of carriage doors, the grind of wheels, the shouts of drivers, made a pandemonium to Rose, but Mr. Harvey, with the same gentle smile on his face, presented his ticket to the gigantic negro, who roared enormously:
"Ninety-two! Ninety-two!"
"Here we are!" Mr. Harvey called finally, and handed the women in with the same unhurried action, and the homeward ride began. There was little chance for talk, though Mrs. Harvey did talk.
Rose sat in silence. This had been another great period of growth. She could still feel the heat and turmoil in her brain. It was as if upon a seed-bed of quick-shooting plants a bright, warm light had been turned, resulting in instant, magical activity. At her door they put her down, and once more she thanked them.
"It's nothing at all, my dear; we hope to do more for you," said Mrs. Harvey. "I want you to come to dinner soon. You'll come?"
"With pleasure," Rose responded, quite as a man might have done.