Collected Stories (24 page)

She was always afraid of being disillusioned. She wished to believe that everything for sale in Vanity Fair was worth the advertised price. When she ceased to believe in these delights, she told herself, her pulling power would decline and she would go to pieces. In some way the chill of her disillusionment would quiver through the long, black line which reached from the box-office down to Seventh Avenue on nights when she sang. They shivered there in the rain and cold, all those people, because they loved to believe in her inextinguishable zest. She was no prouder of what she drew in the boxes than she was of that long, oscillating tail; little fellows in thin coats, Italians, Frenchmen, South-Americans, Japanese.

When she had been cloistered like a Trappist for six weeks, with nothing from the outside world but notes and flowers and disquieting morning papers, Kitty told Miles Creedon that she could not endure complete isolation any longer.

“I simply cannot live through the evenings. They have become horrors to me. Every night is the last night of a condemned man. I do nothing but cry, and that makes my throat worse.”

Miles Creedon, handsomest of his profession, was better looking with some invalids than with others. His athletic figure, his red cheeks, and splendid teeth always had a cheering effect upon this particular patient, who hated anything weak or broken.

“What can I do, my dear? What do you wish? Shall I come and hold your lovely hand from eight to ten? You have only to suggest it.”

“Would you do that, even? No,
caro mio,
I take far too much of your time as it is. For an age now you have been the only man in the world to me, and you have been charming! But the world is big, and I am missing it. Let some one come tonight, some one interesting, but not too interesting. Pierce Tevis, for instance. He is just back from Paris. Tell the nurse I may see him for an hour tonight,” Kitty finished pleadingly, and put her fingers on the doctor’s sleeve. He looked down at them and smiled whimsically.

Like other people, he was weak to Kitty Ayrshire. He would do for her things that he would do for no one else; would break any engagement, desert a dinner-table, leaving an empty place and an offended hostess, to sit all evening in Kitty’s dressing-room, spraying her throat and calming her nerves, using every expedient to get her through a performance. He had studied her voice like a singing master; knew all of its idiosyncracies and the emotional and nervous perturbations which affected it. When it was permissible, sometimes when it was not permissible, he indulged her caprices. On this sunny morning her wan, disconsolate face moved him.

“Yes, you may see Tevis this evening if you will assure me that you will not shed one tear for twenty-four hours. I may depend on your word?” He rose, and stood before the deep couch on which his patient reclined. Her arch look seemed to say, “On what could you depend more?” Creedon smiled, and shook his head. “If I find you worse tomorrow—”

He crossed to the writing-table and began to separate a bunch of tiny flame-coloured rosebuds. “May I?” Selecting one, he sat down on the chair from which he had lately risen, and leaned forward while Kitty pinched the thorns from the stem and arranged the flower in his buttonhole.

“Thank you. I like to wear one of yours. Now I must be off to the hospital. I’ve a nasty little operation to do this morning. I’m glad it’s not you. Shall I telephone Tevis about this evening?”

Kitty hesitated. Her eyes ran rapidly about, seeking a likely pretext. Creedon laughed.

“Oh, I see. You’ve already asked him to come. You were so sure of me! Two hours in bed after lunch, with all the windows open, remember. Read something diverting, but not exciting; some homely British author; nothing
abandonné.
And don’t make faces at me. Until tomorrow!”

When her charming doctor had disappeared through the doorway, Kitty fell back on her cushions and closed her eyes. Her mockingbird, excited by the sunlight, was singing in his big gilt cage, and a white lilac-tree that had come that morning was giving out its faint sweetness in the warm room. But Kitty looked paler and wearier than when the doctor was with her. Even with him she rose to her part just a little; couldn’t help it. And he took his share of her vivacity and sparkle, like every one else. He believed that his presence was soothing to her. But he admired; and whoever admired, blew on the flame, however lightly.

The mocking-bird was in great form this morning. He had the best bird-voice she had ever heard, and Kitty wished there were some way to note down his improvisations; but his intervals were not expressible in any scale she knew. Parker White had brought him to her, from Ojo Caliente, in New Mexico, where he had been trained in the pine forests by an old Mexican and an ill-tempered, lame master-bird, half thrush, that taught young birds to sing. This morning, in his song there were flashes of silvery Southern springtime; they opened inviting roads of memory. In half an hour he had sung his disconsolate mistress to sleep.

That evening Kitty sat curled up on the deep couch before the fire, awaiting Pierce Tevis. Her costume was folds upon folds of diaphanous white over equally diaphanous rose, with a line of white fur about her neck. Her beautiful arms were bare. Her tiny Chinese slippers were embroidered so richly that they resembled the painted porcelain of old vases. She looked like a sultan’s youngest, newest bride; a beautiful little toy-woman, sitting at one end of the long
room which composed about her,—which, in the soft light, seemed happily arranged for her. There were flowers everywhere: rose-trees; camellia-bushes, red and white; the first forced hyacinths of the season; a feathery mimosa-tree, tall enough to stand under.

The long front of Kitty’s study was all windows. At one end was the fireplace, before which she sat. At the other end, back in a lighted alcove, hung a big, warm, sympathetic interior by Lucien Simon,—a group of Kitty’s friends having tea in the painter’s salon in Paris. The room in the picture was flooded with early lamplight, and one could feel the grey, chill winter twilight in the Paris streets outside. There stood the cavalier-like old composer, who had done much for Kitty, in his most characteristic attitude, before the hearth. Mme. Simon sat at the tea-table, B—–, the historian, and H—–, the philologist, stood in animated discussion behind the piano, while Mme. H—–was tying on the bonnet of her lovely little daughter. Marcel Durand, the physicist, sat alone in a corner, his startling black-and-white profile lowered broodingly, his cold hands locked over his sharp knee. A genial, red-bearded sculptor stood over him, about to touch him on the shoulder and waken him from his dream.

This painting made, as it were, another room; so that Kitty’s study on Central Park West seemed to open into that charming French interor, into one of the most highly harmonized and richly associated rooms in Paris. There her friends sat or stood about, men distinguished, women at once plain and beautiful, with their furs and bonnets, their clothes that were so distinctly not smart—all held together by the warm lamp-light, by an indescribable atmosphere of graceful and gracious human living.

Pierce Tevis, after he had entered noiselessly and greeted Kitty, stood before her fire and looked over her shoulder at this picture.

“It’s nice that you have them there together, now that they are scattered, God knows where, fighting to preserve just that. But your own room, too, is charming,” he added at last, taking his eyes from the canvas.

Kitty shrugged her shoulders.

“Bah! I can help to feed the lamp, but I can’t supply the dear things it shines upon.”

“Well, tonight it shines upon you and me, and we aren’t so bad.”
Tevis stepped forward and took her hand affectionately. “You’ve been over a rough bit of road. I’m so sorry. It’s left you looking very lovely, though. Has it been very hard to get on?”

She brushed his hand gratefully against her cheek and nodded.

“Awfully dismal. Everything has been shut out from me but—gossip. That always get in. Often I don’t mind, but this time I have. People do tell such lies about me.”

“Of course we do. That’s part of our fun, one of the many pleasures you give us. It only shows how hard up we are for interesting public personages; for a royal family, for romantic fiction, if you will. But I never hear any stories that wound me, and I’m very sensitive about you.”

“I’m gossiped about rather more than the others, am I not?”

“I believe! Heaven send that the day when you are not gossiped about is far distant! Do you want to bite off your nose to spite your pretty face? You are the sort of person who makes myths. You can’t turn around without making one. That’s your singular good luck. A whole staff of publicity men, working day and night, couldn’t do for you what you do for yourself. There is an affinity between you and the popular imagination.”

“I suppose so,” said Kitty, and sighed. “All the same, I’m getting almost as tired of the person I’m supposed to be as of the person I really am. I wish you would invent a new Kitty Ayrshire for me, Pierce. Can’t I do something revolutionary? Marry, for instance?”

Tevis rose in alarm.

“Whatever you do, don’t try to change your legend. You have now the one that gives the greatest satisfaction to the greatest number of people. Don’t disappoint your public. The popular imagination, to which you make such a direct appeal, for some reason wished you to have a son, so it has given you one. I’ve heard a dozen versions of the story, but it is always a son, never by any chance a daughter. Your public gives you what is best for you. Let well enough alone.”

Kitty yawned and dropped back on her cushions.

“He still persists, does he, in spite of never being visible?”

“Oh, but he has been seen by ever so many people. Let me think a moment.” He sank into an attitude of meditative ease. “The best description I ever had of him was from a friend of my mother, an
elderly woman, thoroughly truthful and matter-of-fact. She has seen him often. He is kept in Russia, in St. Petersburg, that was. He is about eight years old and of marvellous beauty. He is always that in every version. My old friend has seen him being driven in his sledge on the Nevskii Prospekt on winter afternoons; black horses with silver bells and a giant in uniform on the seat beside the driver. He is always attended by this giant, who is responsible to the Grand Duke Paul for the boy. This lady can produce no evidence beyond his beauty and his splendid furs and the fact that all the Americans in Petrograd know he is your son.”

Kitty laughed mournfully.

“If the Grand Duke Paul had a son, any old rag of a son, the province of Moscow couldn’t contain him! He may, for aught I know, actually pretend to have a son. It would be very like him.” She looked at her finger-tips and her rings disapprovingly for a moment. “Do you know, I’ve been thinking that I would rather like to lay hands on that youngster. I believe he’d be interesting, I’m bored with the world.”

Tevis looked up and said quickly:

“Would you like him, really?”

“Of course I should,” she said indignantly. “But, then, I like other things, too; and one has to choose. When one has only two or three things to choose from, life is hard; when one has many, it is harder still. No, on the whole, I don’t mind that story. It’s rather pretty, except for the Grand Duke. But not all of them are pretty.”

“Well, none of them are very ugly; at least I never heard but one that troubled me, and that was long ago.”

She looked interested.

“That is what I want to know; how do the ugly ones get started? How did that one get going and what was it about? Is it too dreadful to repeat?”

“No, it’s not especially dreadful; merely rather shabby. If you really wish to know, and won’t be vexed, I can tell you exactly how it got going, for I took the trouble to find out. But it’s a long story, and you really had nothing whatever to do with it.”

“Then who did have to do with it? Tell me; I should like to know exactly how even one of them originated.”

“Will you be comfortable and quiet and not get into a rage, and let me look at you as much as I please?”

Kitty nodded, and Tevis sat watching her indolently while he debated how much of his story he ought not to tell her. Kitty liked being looked at by intelligent persons. She knew exactly how good looking she was; and she knew, too, that, pretty as she was, some of those rather sallow women in the Simon painting had a kind of beauty which she would never have. This knowledge, Tevis was thinking, this important realization, contributed more to her loveliness than any other thing about her; more than her smooth, ivory skin or her changing grey eyes, the delicate forehead above them, or even the dazzling smile, which was gradually becoming too bright and too intentional,—out in the world, at least. Here by her own fire she still had for her friends a smile less electric than the one she flashed from stages. She could still be, in short,
intime,
a quality which few artists keep, which few ever had.

Kitty broke in on her friend’s meditations.

“You may smoke. I had rather you did. I hate to deprive people of things they like.”

“No, thanks. May I have those chocolates on the tea-table? They are quite as bad for me. May you? No, I suppose not.” He settled himself by the fire, with the candy beside him, and began in the agreeable voice which always soothed his listener.

“As I said, it was a long while ago, when you first came back to this country and were singing at the Manhattan. I dropped in at the Metropolitan one evening to hear something new they were trying out. It was an off night, no pullers in the cast, and nobody in the boxes but governesses and poor relations. At the end of the first act two people entered one of the boxes in the second tier. The man was Siegmund Stein, the department-store millionaire, and the girl, so the men about me in the omnibus box began to whisper, was Kitty Ayrshire. I didn’t know you then, but I was unwilling to believe that you were with Stein. I could not contradict them at that time, however, for the resemblance, if it was merely a resemblance, was absolute, and all the world knew that you were not singing at the Manhattan that night. The girl’s hair was dressed just as you then wore yours. Moreover, her head was small and restless like yours,
and she had your colouring, your eyes, your chin. She carried herself with the critical indifference one might expect in an artist who had come for a look at a new production that was clearly doomed to failure. She applauded lightly. She made comments to Stein when comments were natural enough. I thought, as I studied her face with the glass, that her nose was a trifle thinner than yours, a prettier nose, my dear Kitty, but stupider and more inflexible. All the same, I was troubled until I saw her laugh,—and then I knew she was a counterfeit. I had never seen you laugh, but I knew that you would not laugh like that. It was not boisterous; indeed, it was consciously refined,—mirthless, meaningless. In short, it was not the laugh of one whom our friends in there”—pointing to the Simon painting—“would honour with their affection and admiration.”