CHAPTER VI—DESIRE’S MOTHER

The address which Desire had given him was on Riverside Drive. Shortly after seven he left the Brevoort and climbed to the roof of a passing bus. The polished asphalt of Fifth Avenue gleamed like a waterway. Round and unwinking, like tethered moons, arc-lights shone in endless lines. As he passed through Madison Square, he had a glimpse of carnival—trolleys streaming like comets, and Broadway seething in a blaze of light. Then, as though velvet curtains had fallen, again the quiet.

With the secret magic and passivity of night, the city had undergone a change. It had lost its haste. It went on tiptoe now. Tall buildings stood silent as tombs, quarried from the granite of the dusk. Streets had become orientalized. A spirit of poetry was abroad. Over the turrets of this Babylon of a day the wings of Time brooded, shadowing its modern glare with the pomp of a sombre and mysterious austerity. It had become a metropolis of dreamers, as fitting a stage as Florence for any tale that love might choose to tell.

Vashti! It was a far cry from this September night to the spare-bedroom at Orchid Lodge, with the red winking eye of the winter’s fire, the tapestry of Absalom swinging by his hair and the little boy sitting up in bed, spellbound by the enchantment of a woman’s voice. A far cry to the marriage-box, to the wistful consultations with Harriet and to that same ecstasy of love, unfulfillable then, that he was dreaming now! He wondered how much of his passion for Desire was the outcome of that ghostly passion for her mother. It was like a faery-story which, with pauses and diversions, had been telling itself throughout his life. Vashti had been the enchantress who, by lifting her voice, had created his hopes and his despairs. Her voice had lured Desire from him in the darkened silence of the farmhouse. And now, with starry eyes, he was going to her that she might give him back Desire.

The coolness and rustling of trees! To his left a river black and silent To his right a rampart of houses, honey-combed with fire. Flitting on speedy errands, cars darted through the shadows with staring eyes. He caught glimpses of women, and of men who sat beside them. Men and women always and everywhere together! Where were they going? What did they talk about? With them lovers’ ways were an old story, but with him——

The conductor called from the top of the steps and pointed to an apartment-house. While his name was being telephoned up, he took in his surroundings. All this was familiar to her. He compared it with Eden Row, and was filled with hesitations. Everywhere his eye detected luxury. She might be wealthy. He had never thought of that; he had only thought of what he could give her. Their ways of life must be utterly divergent. What had he to offer? And he had come to America to marry her!

He was told he was expected. The elevator shot up and halted; the boy directed him to a door in the passage. As he stood waiting, he heard the sound of a piano played softly. The moment he was admitted, the playing stopped.

In a luxurious room illumined by a solitary shaded lamp, a woman was seated with her hands upon the keyboard. The window was open and a breeze rustled the curtains. Distant across the river in the abyss of night lights twinkled like stars in an inverted firmament. The air was filled with a summer fragrance: it drifted from a bowl of lilies of the valley which had been placed on the piano beneath the lamp.

The woman turned her head slightly; he could just begin to see her profile. Her voice reached him softly:

“Don’t speak. I was remembering. It pains, and yet it’s good to remember—sometimes, Teddy.”

Her hands commenced to wander, picking out chords, starting little airs, leaving them abruptly and starting them afresh.

“I wonder what you look like, and I’m afraid to find out. I’ve always thought of you as still a little chap, and I don’t want to undeceive myself. You used to be the faery-tale I told my little girl. ’Tell me more about Teddy,’ she used to say. And then I’d invent such wonderful stories. You were our dream-person.—She wouldn’t let you know that for worlds; you mustn’t let her guess that you know. She’s like that—an odd girl: she feels far more than she’ll ever express—goes out of her way to make people misunderstand, to make them think she’s cold and careless. It’s because—— Can you guess? It’s because she’s afraid to love too much. Her mother let love have power over her and—she got hurt. Oh, well!” She shrugged her white shoulders. “No use regretting. Ah, this brings memories!”

In a half-voice, like a lark beating up into the clouds, she commenced to hum to the accompaniment; then took up the words. In the dim-lit room, with the blackness of night peering in at the window and the lilies breathing out their exotic fragrance, all the wistful past came trooping back. He forgot New York, forgot his anxiety and loneliness. Pictures formed and melted under the spell of her singing. He remembered his childish elation, when she had carried him back to the tapestried bedroom, making him believe that she preferred him to Hal. He saw again the tenderness in her face as she had bent over him by the firelight, listening expectantly for Hal’s footstep in the passage. He felt again the despair of his first disillusion, when the great day had been spoilt and she had driven home with him through the lamp-smirched London night, begging him to believe that she was good—that she was good whatever happened. After all these years the memory of that childish tragedy burnt again intensely.

Had love hurt her? A strange complaint to hear from Vashti! Hadn’t she rather hurt herself? Her fatal sweetness must have proved cruel to many men.

His mother, Mrs. Sheerug, every one had doubted her. Even Hal doubted her now—Hal who had promised to follow her through the dark wood that few women had dared to tread. What had happened to her in the dark wood? Teddy could only guess; but because she was Desire’s mother, and still more at this moment because she was singing, he could not help but think that she was good. At last, after all these years of following, he had come up with her. Did she need his help? Was she trying to tell him?

She swung round with a rippling laugh which had tears in it. “Have you forgiven me, Teddy? A sentimental question! Of all the big sins I’ve done, that’s the one that I’ve most regretted.—Ah, you’ll not say that you havel Boys don’t forget things like that.”

He was filled with an immense compassion for her. Beneath her forced gayety he suspected heart-hunger. She looked a proud woman, with just that touch of distinction and mystery that makes for lurement. Her smile was a mask, rather than a means of self-expression. She would impress a stranger as being courteously on the defensive, yet anxiously ready for the excitement of attack. “A woman of experience!” one would say. “A proficient man-tamer! She fears nothing.”

Her face was made up; her lips too scarlet. Teddy could see that even in the half-light. Her figure was finer than in the old days—more rounded and gracious, but still sinuous in its lines. She possessed to an even greater extent her dangerous power to fascinate. By a trick of kindness, which might mean nothing, by a hint of restrained tenderness, she could quicken the blood and set a man dreaming of goddesses in a riot of blue seas, and the throb of Pan’s pipes heard distantly in sun-smitten woodlands. Her eyes spoke of other things to Teddy. They had lost their old contentment. He recognized in them the questing melancholy that he had seen in Hal’s.

She was beautiful—in some ways more beautiful: haunting and unsatisfying: an instrument for romance; a shuttered house from behind whose windows there was a continual sense of watching.

Her forehead was intensely cold and white, contradicting the eagerness of the rest of her expression. Her brows were like spread wings, hovering and poised; her eyes vague as sea-clouds till they smiled, when they flashed with gleams of blue-gray sunlight. Again he wondered whether his love for Desire was an outcome of this earlier ghostly passion. They were more than ordinarily alike, even to their gestures. The hair of both was the color of ancient bronze, dark in the hollows and burnished at the edges. The mouth of each gave the key to her character, becoming any shape that an emotion made it: petulant and unreasonable; kind and gracious and adoring. But there was this great difference: Desire’s beauty had youth’s conscious certainty of conquest; in Vashti’s there was the pathetic appeal to be allowed to conquer. Her throat was still her glory, throbbing like a bird’s and slender as a flower. Rising from her low-cut gown, it showed in its full perfection.

She clapped her hands, as Desire would have done, and laughed softly at the impression she had created. “Nearly old enough to be your mother; but still vain and pleased because you like me. I dressed especially for you, my littlest lover. And now—now that I’ve seen you, I’m not sorry that you’ve grown up.” She stretched out both her hands and drew him to her. “You’re nice. You’re even nicer. So tall! So brave-looking! And you’re still a dreamer, Teddy—a little god Love, peering in through the gate.”

Suddenly she reached up her arms. “There! Why, you’re blushing, you dear boy. We’re going to be great friends, you and I and Desire.”

He wanted to ask about Desire, but he couldn’t bring himself to frame the question. He listened intently to catch the rustle of her approach. He expected every minute to see her through the darkness, across the threshold. Why didn’t Vashti tell him? Was her kindness a subtle way of apologizing foe Desire’s absence? He had found hidden meanings in everything that had been said: “She feels far more than she’ll ever express—goes out of her way to make people misunderstand.” And then: “We’re going to be great friends, you and I and Desire.”

Vashti touched his hand gently. “You’ve something on your mind.”

Would she never be frank with him?

“On my mind! No, really. It’s only seeing you and finding myself a man. Last time,” he laughed into her eyes, “it was you that I thought I was going to marry.”

“And wouldn’t you now? No, you wouldn’t. I can see that.”

A gong tinkled faintly. She slipped an arm through his. On the right-hand side of the passage doors led off. He watched for one of them to open. When they reached the small paneled dining-room at the far end, his heart sank: only two places had been set.

“Let’s make it our day—the day that I promised you. Now tell me everything. What brought you over?”

He glanced sharply across the table. Was she poking sly fun at him? “Brought me over?”

“Yes. That’s not such an unreasonable question. You can’t persuade me that you came just to see me, Teddy.”

“And yet,” he said, “it was partly that.”

“And the rest?”

“Work. I’m a writer. I’ve had a little success. Don’t you remember how I always said I was going to be famous? But aren’t you playing with me? D’you really mean that you didn’t expect me?”

Vashti met his eyes quietly. “My baby-girl told me something. But how did you discover our address?”

While he answered, he watched her narrowly to catch the flicker of any tell-tale expression. “When she was in London this summer, she visited Madame Josephine’s Beauty Parlors. Madame Josephine’s my friend. I’ve told her a good many things about myself; amongst others—— You spoke about dream-persons. I’ve had my dream-person for years—ever since I was at the farmhouse. So there——! She spotted Desire directly.”

Vashti raised her glass: “To our dream-persons; and may they not disappoint us when they become realities.” There was a pause. He trembled on the brink of a confession. The maid entered to change the dishes. When she had gone, he leant towards Vashti. His voice was husky. “When shall I see her?”

Vashti closed her eyes and caught her breath in a quick laugh. “That depends—depends on how late you stay. Desire’s out at Long Island, taking part in some amateur theatricals. She may ’phone me up presently to say she’s stopping the night If she comes back, she’ll have to get some man to drive her, She won’t arrive till after twelve.”

He had a curious feeling of impropriety in discussing Desire with her mother. It was a stupid feeling to have just because, long ago, he had given Vashti his boyish affection. Yet instinctively he felt that he might rouse her jealousy if he laid too much stress on his change of homage. Was that why she was evading him? How much did she know of what had happened? He began to skirmish for information.

Speaking carelessly, he said, “So she’s not gone on the stage yet?”

Vashti betrayed surprise. “She wants to—but, how did you know?” Then, finding her own explanation: “Madame Josephine again, I suppose. Desire talks about her ambitions to every one.”

“You don’t want her to be an actress?”

“She’ll do what she likes. I shan’t thwart her. I’d much rather—— It’s funny that I should tell you, Teddy. I’d much rather that she should marry some nice boy, and have heaps of children. I’d like her to have all the wholesome things that her mother hasn’t had—the really good things—not the shams. It’s lonely to be forty and to have no one to protect you. Unfortunately we don’t find that out till we’re forty, and we can’t hand on our experience. She’s very young.—Tell me about yourself. How’s that big father with the bushy head?”

While they talked of the past a closer sense of comradeship grew up between them. He told her about Madame Josephine and Duke Nineveh, and how the wonderful change in their fortunes had occurred.

“And Mrs. Sheerug,” she asked, “does she still wear green plush and yellow feathers?”

“She still wears green plush and yellow feathers. But she does a bit of splashing now—drives about in a carriage-and-pair. I don’t think she likes it; she wants to please her Alonzo.—It is good to be able to speak of Eden Row. Why, I don’t feel a bit homesick now.”

“Homesick!” She pushed back her chair and rose languidly. Her hand went slowly to her heart. “My home’s hidden here; it’s an imagined place, Teddy. I’ve lived always swinging on a perch. How I envy your being able to feel homesick!—It’s seeing you that’s done it. I want to be young, young, young again to-night.”

With the reflected light from the table drifting up across her breast and her eyes brooding on him through the shadows, she looked both gorgeous and tragic. He couldn’t think of anything to say; he had always pictured her as wandering from happiness to happiness. While he struggled with his silence, a sob escaped her; she hurried from him.

He followed her into the other room, where the shaded lamp shone softly on the lilies. Ever since he had entered the apartment, he had had the sense of a thinness of atmosphere, a temporary quality, a consciousness of something lacking. He knew what it was that he had missed now; these rooms were tenanted only by women.

She was beside the window, with one knee upon the couch, staring out to where night yawned above the river and lights twinkled, like stars in an inverted firmament.

“Come.” She slipped her arm about his shoulder. “Wouldn’t you have loved me once for doing that? Am I terribly older—not quite what you expected? No, don’t tell me. Don’t lie to me. Life! It goes from us. When a woman’s lived merely to be beautiful, she’s reached the fag-end at forty. Seeing you so brave and tall, has brought that home to me. I’ll have to live whatever life I have left, through the beauty of Desire now. A little hard for a selfish woman! I trusted to my beauty to do everything. And I was beautiful when first you knew me.”

“And you’re still beautiful.”

“Dear of you to say so! Still beautiful! In a way, yes. But,” she laughed scornfully, “with an effort—with such an effort. How I’d love to see myself the way I was when your father painted me. A garden enclosed, he called me, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. You see, I remember. It was my remoteness that attracted then. All the men were at my feet, even your father. Oh, yes, he was; your mother knew it. Common men in the street, and little boys like you, and—and poor old Hal—they’d do anything for me if I raised an eyelash.”

The maid brought in coffee.

“Let’s sit down. No, not so far away—quite near to me, for old times’ sake, my littlest lover. D’you mind if I smoke a cigarette? Mrs. Sheerug, dear old Mrs. Sheerug, she wouldn’t approve of it. I always loved her and wanted her to think well of me. She’d never believe that. You’re a bit shocked yourself. I don’t often do it before my baby-girl. But tell me,” she sank her voice, “what about Hal?”

He tried to think of things to tell her. What was there to tell? Good fortune had worked no change in Hal. Money hadn’t made him happier. He was a man thrust forward by the years, but always with his face turned back.

“Ah,” she whispered, “I know. Don’t go any further. He would be like that. He lives remembering.” Her grip on Teddy’s hands tightened. “Learn a lesson. Don’t be kind to women, Teddy. You’ll get no thanks. A woman’s mean-hearted. If a man’s too good to her, she doesn’t try to be nobly good in return; she takes advantage. She plays pranks with him—wants to see how much he’ll forgive her; if he’s still magnanimous, she despises him. It takes a good woman to appreciate a good man; few women are both good and beautiful. It wasn’t till Mary Magdalene had lost her looks that she broke the alabaster box of ointment. What I mean is that beautiful women are cruel; God gives them too much power. Oh, yes, it’s true. Desire’s like that—sweetly ungrateful. I can see myself in her. A man’ll have to be a brute to make her love him.—Ah, you almost hate me! I wish she could make you hate her so that you’d go home to Eden Row, and—oh, do big work and marry another Dearie. I’m fond of you, Teddy.” She let go his hands. “When we’re forty, we beautiful women learn to be gentle, and—and you thank us, don’t you?”

She got up and buried her face in the lilies. “Sent them to her, eh? Hoped you’d find her wearing them.”

She seated herself at the piano, looking back across her shoulder and playing while she spoke, as though her hands were a separate personality.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you. There was a garden enclosed—the gates all locked, and Love gazed in at it! But there came a time when Love grew tired. While he had waited, the garden had taken no notice. But when he had gone, all the lilies, and sunflowers, and roses rushed to the gates and clamored to follow him. But the locks had grown rusty. The garden which had enclosed itself against Love, found itself shut out from Love. Tra-la-la! Yea, verily.”

Her hands lay idle in her lap for a moment. “You mustn’t mind me. It’s a luxury to indulge in self-pity. I shall be so gay to-morrow you won’t know me. But just at present I’m wishing,” she mocked her own melancholy, slanting her eyes at him, “rather wishing I were Mrs. Hal Sheerug—wishing I were any good domestic woman instead of Vashti, the singer. And if I were Mrs. Hal, I’d be as much of a curiosity as Eden Row set down on Broadway.”

Again she took up her playing. “And yet—and yet life would be tedious without love. We’re so afraid that love will never come to us, aren’t we, Teddy? Afraid that our latest chance will be our last. You see, I’m like that, too; I know all about it. You’re asleep. Perhaps we’re both asleep—both dreaming of something more splendid than reality. Don’t let’s wake up—we’ll be unhappy. Let’s go on dreaming together.”

She ceased speaking, but her hands wandered from melody to melody. She played very softly. From far below in the darkness the hum of speeding cars was like the drowsy trumpeting of gnats in an English garden. Through half-closed eyes he watched her, trying to make himself believe she was Desire.

Why had she so deliberately filled his mind with doubts? And Desire—why had she gone away without mentioning him on the very day that he had landed? Was it carelessness, or a young girl’s way of impressing him with her value? “She feels far more than she’ll ever express.” It might be that—a paradoxical way of showing affection.

Vashti gazed towards him and nodded, as much as to say, “I know what thoughts are passing.” She struck three chords.

What happened next was like arms spread under him, carrying him away and away from every trouble. “Oh, rest in the Lord, wait patiently for Him.” Her voice sprang up like a strong white bird; at every beat of its wings the accompaniment fluttered like the weak wings of small birds following. “Oh; rest in the Lord”—the white bird rose higher with a braver confidence and the little birds took courage, plunging deeper into the grave and gentle stillness. “Oh, rest in the Lord”—it was like a sigh of contentment traveling back from prepared places. The room grew silent.

She was kneeling beside him—kneeling the way his mother would have knelt, with her arms about him and her face almost touching.

“I’m really religious, Teddy. Won’t you trust me? Don’t you think that there must be some good in me when I can sing like that?” It was like a little child pleading with him. “I’ve tried to turn you back. Desire’s too young and I don’t think—— But you won’t be turned back; so let me help you. I don’t know much of what’s happened between you, but——”

In the hall a key grated. The sound of the door opening. A gust of laughter—a man’s and a girl’s.

“Shish! It’s tee-rrifically late.—My goodness, Tom, but you were reckless! I thought every moment we’d upset.”

“Some driving, wasn’t it? You oughtn’t to complain. You liked it.”

“Liked it! I should say so. But Twinkles didn’t like it Poor Twinkles was mos’ awf’lly scared. Wasn’t ’oo, Twinkles?—Wonder if mother’s in bed.”

“Coming. I have a visitor.”

After Vashti had left him, their voices sank to a whisper.

So she’d been out with another man! While he had been waiting, almost counting the seconds, she’d been out with another man! They’d been driving through the darkness together. Perhaps they’d been making love. No wonder she hadn’t answered his letters or cables. “Come to America if you really care.” She had said it lightly and forgotten. It had meant nothing to her. And here he’d been finding delicate excuses to explain what was no more than indifference.

A Pekinese lap-dog waddled in; catching sight of him, it sniffed contemptuously. It was followed by a boy who had the perky air of an impudent fox-terrier. He stared at Teddy with an amused gleam of challenge.

“Here, all this evening! Oh, what a shame and me out!” It was Desire’s piping voice. “Get out of the way, Tom, you’re blocking up everything.”

He saw her—her piquant face alight with welcome. She tripped across the room, extending both her hands. Her eyes begged him to keep their secret “It is good of you to visit us so promptly,” she said. “Fancy your remembering! I didn’t think we’d see you till to-morrow at earliest.”

She waited for him to help her. Then: “Mother says you’re over on business. Are you going to be here long?” His sense of injury died down. He saw only the small penitent face, with its gray eyes and quivering childish mouth.

“That depends.”

“Well, we’ll see heaps of you, won’t we?”

He couldn’t endure this pretending. He pushed aside her question. “What are you doing to-morrow?” he asked abruptly.

“To-morrow! To-morrow!”

She gazed vaguely round. Her mother came to her rescue. “My baby-girl never knows what she’s doing tomorrow. She never plans ahead. Better call her up, Teddy.”

“Not too early,” Desire smiled poutingly. “I’m awfully tired. And Twinkles is tired. Isn’t ’oo, Twinkles darling?” She stooped down and touched the dog’s nose with the tip of her finger. “We shan’t get up till——”

“Call up at eleven,” said Vashti. “Before you go, I may as well introduce you two men. If I don’t, you’ll glower at each other all the way down in the elevator.”

He was passing out; Desire touched him on the arm possessingly. “I couldn’t help it,” she whispered. “We’ll have all to-morrow to ourselves. You’re not angry?” Angry! As though he’d come all the way to America to be angry.

“Couldn’t ever be angry with you,” he whispered back.