The Price She Paid Part 51

"And I was right," said she. "It explains why marriages go to pieces and affairs come to grief. Those lovers mistook love's promise to come for fulfillment. Love doesn't die. It simply fails to come--doesn't redeem its promise."

"That's the way it might be with us," said he. "That's the way it would be with us," rejoined she.

He did not answer. When they spoke again it was of indifferent matters. An hour and a half after they started, they were at Mrs.

Belloc's again. She asked him to have tea in the restaurant next door.

He declined. He went up the steps with her, said:

"Well, I wish you luck. Moldini is the best teacher in America."

"How did you know Moldini was to teach me?" exclaimed she.

He smiled, put out his hand in farewell. "Crossley told me. Good-by."

"He told Crossley! I wonder why." She was so interested in this new phase that she did not see his outstretched hand, or the look of bitter irony that came into his eyes at this proof of the subordinate place love and he had in her thoughts.

"I'm nervous and anxious," she said apologetically. "Moldini told me he had some scheme about getting the money. If he only could! But no such luck for me," she added sadly.

Keith hesitated, debated with himself, said: "You needn't worry.

Moldini got it--from Crossley. Fifty dollars a week for a year."

"You got Crossley to do it?"

"No. He had done it before I saw him. He had just promised Moldini and was cursing himself as 'weak and soft.' But that means nothing.

You may be sure he did it because Moldini convinced him it was a good speculation."

She was radiant. She had not vanity enough where he was concerned to believe that he deeply cared, that her joy would give him pain because it meant forgetfulness of him. Nor was she much impressed by the expression of his eyes. And even as she hurt him, she made him love her the more; for he appreciated how rare was the woman who, in such circ.u.mstances, does not feed her vanity with pity for the poor man suffering so horribly because he is not to get her precious self.

It flashed upon her why he had not offered to help her. "There isn't anybody like you," said she, with no explanation of her apparent irrelevancy.

"Don't let Moldini see that you know," said he, with characteristic fine thoughtfulness for others in the midst of his own unhappiness. "It would deprive him of a great pleasure."

He was about to go. Suddenly her eyes filled and, opening the outer door, she drew him in. "Donald," she said, "I love you. Take me in your arms and make me behave."

He looked past her; his arms hung at his sides. Said he: "And to-night I'd get a note by messenger saying that you had taken it all back. No, the girl in the photograph--that was you. She wasn't made to be MY wife. Or I to be her husband. I love you because you are what you are. I should not love you if you were the ordinary woman, the sort who marries and merges. But I'm old enough to spare myself--and you--the consequences of what it would mean if we were anything but strangers to each other."

"Yes, you must keep away--altogether. If you didn't, I'd be neither the one thing nor the other, but just a poor failure."

"You'll not fail," said he. "I know it. It's written in your face."

He looked at her. She was not looking at him, but with eyes gazing straight ahead was revealing that latent, inexplicable power which, when it appeared at the surface, so strongly dominated and subordinated her beauty and her s.e.x. He shut his teeth together hard and glanced away.

"You will not fail," he repeated bitterly. "And that's the worst of it."

Without another word, without a handshake, he went. And she knew that, except by chance, he would never see her again--or she him.

Moldini, disheveled and hysterical with delight and suspense, was in the drawing-room--had been there half an hour. At first she could hardly force her mind to listen; but as he talked on and on, he captured her attention and held it.

The next day she began with Moldini, and put the Lucia Rivi system into force in all its more than conventual rigors. And for about a month she worked like a devouring flame. Never had there been such energy, such enthusiasm. Mrs. Belloc was alarmed for her health, but the Rivi system took care of that; and presently Mrs. Belloc was moved to say, "Well, I've often heard that hard work never harmed anyone, but I never believed it. Now I know the truth."

Then Mildred went to Hanging Rock to spend Sat.u.r.day to Monday with her mother. Presbury, reduced now by various infirmities--by absolute deafness, by dimness of sight, by difficulty in walking--to where eating was his sole remaining pleasure, or, indeed, distraction, spent all his time in concocting dishes for himself. Mildred could not resist--and who can when seated at table with the dish before one's eyes and under one's nose. The Rivi regimen was suspended for the visit. Mildred, back in New York and at work again, found that she was apparently none the worse for her holiday, was in fact better. So she drifted into the way of suspending the regimen for an evening now and then--when she dined with Mrs. Brindley, or when Agnes Belloc had something particularly good. All went well for a time. Then--a cold.

She neglected it, feeling sure it could not stay with one so soundly healthy through and through. But it did stay; it grew worse. She decided that she ought to take medicine for it. True, starvation was the cure prescribed by the regimen, but Mildred could not bring herself to two or three days of discomfort. Also, many people told her that such a cure was foolish and even dangerous. The cold got better, got worse, got better. But her throat became queer, and at last her voice left her. She was ashamed to go to Moldini in such a condition. She dropped in upon Hicks, the throat specialist. He "fixed her up"

beautifully with a few sprayings. A week--and her voice left her again, and Hicks could not bring it back. As she left his office, it was raining--an icy, dreary drizzle. She splashed her way home, in about the lowest spirits she had ever known. She locked her door and seated herself at the window and stared out, while the storm raged within her. After an hour or two she wrote and sent Moldini a note: "I have been making a fool of myself. I'll not come again until I am all right. Be patient with me. I don't think this will occur again." She first wrote "happen." She scratched it out and put "occur" in its place. Not that Moldini would have noted the slip; simply that she would not permit herself the satisfaction of the false and self-excusing "happen." It had not been a "happen." It had been a deliberate folly, a lapse to the Mildred she had buried the day she sent Donald Keith away. When the note was on its way, she threw out all her medicines, and broke the new spraying apparatus Hicks had instructed her to buy.

She went back to the Rivi regime. A week pa.s.sed, and she was little better. Two weeks, and she began to mend. But it was six weeks before the last traces of her folly disappeared. Moldini said not a word, gave no sign. Once more her life went on in uneventful, unbroken routine--diet, exercise, singing--singing, exercise, diet--no distractions except an occasional visit to the opera with Moldini, and she was hating opera now. All her enthusiasm was gone. She simply worked doggedly, drudged, slaved.

When the days began to grow warm, Mrs. Belloc said: "I suppose you'll soon be off to the country? Are you going to visit Mrs. Brindley?"

"No," said Mildred.

"Then come with me."

"Thank you, but I can't do it."

"But you've got to rest somewhere."

"Rest?" said Mildred. "Why should I rest?"

Mrs. Belloc started to protest, then abruptly changed. "Come to think of it, why should you? You're in perfect health, and it'll be time enough to rest when you 'get there.'"

"I'm tired through and through," said Mildred, "but it isn't the kind of tired that could be rested except by throwing up this frightful nightmare of a career."

"And you can't do that."

"I won't," said Mildred, her lips compressed and her eyes narrowed.

She and Moldini--and fat, funny little Mrs. Moldini--went to the mountains. And she worked on. She would listen to none of the suggestions about the dangers of keeping too steadily at it, about working oneself into a state of staleness, about the imperative demands of the artistic temperament for rest, change, variety. "It may be so,"

she said to Mrs. Brindley. "But I've gone mad. I can no more drop this routine than--than you could take it up and keep to it for a week."

"I'll admit I couldn't," said Cyrilla. "And Mildred, you're making a mistake."

"Then I'll have to suffer for it. I must do what seems best to me."

"But I'm sure you're wrong. I never knew anyone to act as you're acting. Everyone rests and freshens up."

Mildred lost patience, almost lost her temper. "You're trying to tempt me to ruin myself," she said. "Please stop it. You say you never knew anyone to do as I'm doing. Very well. But how many girls have you known who have succeeded?"

Cyrilla hesitatingly confessed that she had known none.

"Yet you've known scores who've tried."

"But they didn't fail because they didn't work enough. Many of them worked too much."

Mildred laughed. "How do you know why they failed?" said she. "You haven't thought about it as I have. You haven't LIVED it. Cyrilla, I served my apprentices.h.i.+p at listening to nonsense about careers. I want to have nothing to do with inspiration, and artistic temperament, and spontaneous genius, and all the rest of the lies. Moldini and I know what we are about. So I'm living as those who have succeeded lived and not as those who have failed."

Cyrilla was silenced, but not convinced. The amazing improvement in Mildred's health, the splendid slim strength and suppleness of her body, the new and stable glories of her voice--all these she knew about, but they did not convince her. She believed in work, in hard work, but to her work meant the music itself. She felt that the Rivi system and the dirty, obscure little Moldini between them were destroying Mildred by destroying all "temperament" in her.

It was the old, old criticism of talent upon genius. Genius has always won in its own time and generation all the world except talent. To talent contemporaneous genius, genius seen at its patient, plodding toil, seems coa.r.s.e and obvious and lacking altogether in inspiration.

Talent cannot comprehend that creation is necessarily in travail and in all manner of unloveliness.