Of course, they admitted, Caroline was musical--well, sheought to be!--but in that, as in everything, she was paramountlycool-headed, slow of impulse, and disgustingly practical; inthat, as in everything else, she had herself so provokingly wellin hand. Of course, it would be she, always mistress of herselfin any situation, she, who would never be lifted one inch fromthe ground by it, and who would go on superintending hergardeners and workmen as usual--it would be she who got him.Perhaps some of them suspected that this was exactly whyshe did get him, and it but nettled them the more.
Caroline's coolness, her capableness, her general success,especially exasperated people because they felt that, for themost part, she had made herself what she was; that she had cold-bloodedly set about complying with the demands of life and makingher position comfortable and masterful. That was why, everyonesaid, she had married Howard Noble. Women who did not getthrough life so well as Caroline, who could not make such goodterms either with fortune or their husbands, who did not findtheir health so unfailingly good, or hold their looks so well, ormanage their children so easily, or give such distinction to allthey did, were fond of stamping Caroline as a materialist, andcalled her hard.
The impression of cold calculation, of having a definitepolicy, which Caroline gave, was far from a false one; but therewas this to be said for her--that there were extenuatingcircumstances which her friends could not know.
If Caroline held determinedly to the middle course, if shewas apt to regard with distrust everything which inclined towardextravagance, it was not because she was unacquainted with otherstandards than her own, or had never seen another side of life.She had grown up in Brooklyn, in a shabby little house under thevacillating administration of her father, a music teacher whousually neglected his duties to write orchestral compositions forwhich the world seemed to have no especial need. His spirit waswarped by bitter vindictiveness and puerile self-commiseration,and he spent his days in scorn of the labor that brought himbread and in pitiful devotion to the labor that brought him onlydisappointment, writing interminable scores which demanded of theorchestra everything under heaven except melody.
It was not a cheerful home for a girl to grow up in. Themother, who idolized her husband as the music lord of the future,was left to a lifelong battle with broom and dustpan, toneverending conciliatory overtures to the butcher and grocer, tothe making of her own gowns and of Caroline's, and to the delicatetask of mollifying Auguste's neglected pupils.
The son, Heinrich, a painter, Caroline's only brother, hadinherited all his father's vindictive sensitiveness without hiscapacity for slavish application. His little studio on the thirdfloor had been much frequented by young men as unsuccessful ashimself, who met there to give themselves over to contemptuousderision of this or that artist whose industry and stupidity hadwon him recognition. Heinrich, when he worked at all, didnewspaper sketches at twenty-five dollars a week. He was tooindolent and vacillating to set himself seriously to his art, tooirascible and poignantly self-conscious to make a living, toomuch addicted to lying late in bed, to the incontinent reading ofpoetry, and to the use of chloral to be anything very positiveexcept painful. At twenty-six he shot himself in a frenzy, andthe whole wretched affair had effectually shattered his mother'shealth and brought on the decline of which she died. Carolinehad been fond of him, but she felt a certain relief when he nolonger wandered about the little house, commenting ironicallyupon its shabbiness, a Turkish cap on his head and a cigarettehanging from between his long, tremulous fingers.
After her mother's death Caroline assumed the management ofthat bankrupt establishment. The funeral expenses were unpaid,and Auguste's pupils had been frightened away by the shock ofsuccessive disasters and the general atmosphere of wretchednessthat pervaded the house. Auguste himself was writing a symphonicpoem, Icarus, dedicated to the memory of his son. Caroline wasbarely twenty when she was called upon to face this tangle ofdifficulties, but she reviewed the situation candidly. The househad served its time at the shrine of idealism; vague, distressing,unsatisfied yearnings had brought it low enough. Her mother,thirty years before, had eloped and left Germany with her musicteacher, to give herself over to lifelong, drudging bondage at thekitchen range. Ever since Caroline could remember, the law in thehouse had been a sort of mystic worship of things distant,intangible and unattainable. The family had lived in successiveebullitions of generous enthusiasm, in talk of masters andmasterpieces, only to come down to the cold facts in the case; toboiled mutton and to the necessity of turning the dining-roomcarpet. All these emotional pyrotechnics had ended in pettyjealousies, in neglected duties, and in cowardly fear of the littlegrocer on the corner.
From her childhood she had hated it, that humiliating anduncertain existence, with its glib tongue and empty pockets, itspoetic ideals and sordid realities, its indolence and povertytricked out in paper roses. Even as a little girl, when vaguedreams beset her, when she wanted to lie late in bed and communewith visions, or to leap and sing because the sooty little treesalong the street were putting out their first pale leaves in thesunshine, she would clench her hands and go to help her mothersponge the spots from her father's waistcoat or press Heinrich'strousers. Her mother never permitted the slightest questionconcerning anything Auguste or Heinrich saw fit to do, but fromthe time Caroline could reason at all she could not help thinkingthat many things went wrong at home. She knew, for example, thather father's pupils ought not to be kept waiting half an hourwhile he discussed Schopenhauer with some bearded socialist overa dish of herrings and a spotted tablecloth. She knew thatHeinrich ought not to give a dinner on Heine's birthday, when thelaundress had not been paid for a month and when he frequentlyhad to ask his mother for carfare. Certainly Caroline had servedher apprenticeship to idealism and to all the embarrassinginconsistencies which it sometimes entails, and she decided todeny herself this diffuse, ineffectual answer to the sharpquestions of life.
When she came into the control of herself and the house sherefused to proceed any further with her musical education. Herfather, who had intended to make a concert pianist of her, setthis down as another item in his long list of disappointments andhis grievances against the world. She was young and pretty, andshe had worn turned gowns and soiled gloves and improvised hatsall her life. She wanted the luxury of being like other people,of being honest from her hat to her boots, of having nothing tohide, not even in the matter of stockings, and she was willing towork for it. She rented a little studio away from that house ofmisfortune and began to give lessons. She managed well and wasthe sort of girl people liked to help. The bills werepaid and Auguste went on composing, growing indignant only whenshe refused to insist that her pupils should study his compositionsfor the piano. She began to get engagements in New York to playaccompaniments at song recitals. She dressed well, made herselfagreeable, and gave herself a chance. She never permitted herselfto look further than a step ahead, and set herself with all thestrength of her will to see things as they are and meet themsquarely in the broad day. There were two things she feared evenmore than poverty: the part of one that sets up an idol and thepart of one that bows down and worships it.
When Caroline was twenty-four she married Howard Noble, thena widower of forty, who had been for ten years a power in WallStreet. Then, for the first time, she had paused to take breath.It took a substantialness as unquestionable as his; his money,his position, his energy, the big vigor of his robust person, tosatisfy her that she was entirely safe. Then she relaxed alittle, feeling that there was a barrier to be counted uponbetween her and that world of visions and quagmires and failure.
Caroline had been married for six years when Raymondd'Esquerre came to stay with them. He came chiefly becauseCaroline was what she was; because he, too, felt occasionally theneed of getting out of Klingsor's garden, of dropping downsomewhere for a time near a quiet nature, a cool head, a stronghand. The hours he had spent in the garden lodge were hours ofsuch concentrated study as, in his fevered life, he seldom got inanywhere. She had, as he told Noble, a fine appreciation of theseriousness of work.
One evening two weeks after d'Esquerre had sailed, Carolinewas in the library giving her husband an account of the work shehad laid out for the gardeners. She superintended the care ofthe grounds herself. Her garden, indeed, had become quite a partof her; a sort of beautiful adjunct, like gowns or jewels. Itwas a famous spot, and Noble was very proud of it.
"What do you think, Caroline, of having the garden lodge torn downand putting a new summer house there at the end of the arbor; a bigrustic affair where you could have tea served in midsummer?" heasked.
"The lodge?" repeated Caroline looking at him quickly. "Why, thatseems almost a shame, doesn't it, after d'Esquerre has used it?"
Noble put down his book with a smile of amusement.
"Are you going to be sentimental about it? Why, I'd sacrifice thewhole place to see that come to pass. But I don't believe youcould do it for an hour together."
"I don't believe so, either," said his wife, smiling.
Noble took up his book again and Caroline went into themusic room to practice. She was not ready to have the lodge torndown. She had gone there for a quiet hour every day during thetwo weeks since d'Esquerre had left them. It was the sheerestsentiment she had ever permitted herself. She was ashamed of it,but she was childishly unwilling to let it go.
Caroline went to bed soon after her husband, but she was notable to sleep. The night was close and warm, presaging storm.The wind had fallen, and the water slept, fixed and motionless asthe sand. She rose and thrust her feet into slippers and,putting a dressing gown over her shoulders, opened the door ofher husband's room; he was sleeping soundly. She went into thehall and down the stairs; then, leaving the house through a sidedoor, stepped into the vine-covered arbor that led to the gardenlodge. The scent of the June roses was heavy in the still air,and the stones that paved the path felt pleasantly cool throughthe thin soles of her slippers. Heat-lightning flashedcontinuously from the bank of clouds that had gathered over thesea, but the shore was flooded with moonlight and, beyond, therim of the Sound lay smooth and shining. Caroline had the key ofthe lodge, and the door creaked as she opened it. She steppedinto the long, low room radiant with the moonlight which streamedthrough the bow window and lay in a silvery pool along the waxedfloor. Even that part of the room which lay in the shadow wasvaguely illuminated; the piano, the tall candlesticks, thepicture frames and white casts standing out as clearly in thehalf-light as did the sycamores and black poplars of the gardenagainst the still, expectant night sky. Caroline satdown to think it all over. She had come here to do just thatevery day of the two weeks since d'Esquerre's departure, but,far from ever having reached a conclusion, she had succeededonly in losing her way in a maze of memories--sometimesbewilderingly confused, sometimes too acutely distinct--wherethere was neither path, nor clue, nor any hope of finality. Shehad, she realized, defeated a lifelong regimen; completelyconfounded herself by falling unaware and incontinently intothat luxury of reverie which, even as a little girl, she had sodeterminedly denied herself, she had been developing withalarming celerity that part of one which sets up an idol andthat part of one which bows down and worships it.
It was a mistake, she felt, ever to have asked d'Esquerre to comeat all. She had an angry feeling that she had done it rather inself-defiance, to rid herself finally of that instinctive fear ofhim which had always troubled and perplexed her. She knew that shehad reckoned with herself before he came; but she had been equal toso much that she had never really doubted she would be equal tothis. She had come to believe, indeed, almost arrogantly in herown malleability and endurance; she had done so much with herselfthat she had come to think that there was nothing which she couldnot do; like swimmers, overbold, who reckon upon their strength andtheir power to hoard it, forgetting the ever-changing moods oftheir adversary, the sea.
And d'Esquerre was a man to reckon with. Caroline did notdeceive herself now upon that score. She admitted it humblyenough, and since she had said good-by to him she had not beenfree for a moment from the sense of his formidable power. Itformed the undercurrent of her consciousness; whatever she mightbe doing or thinking, it went on, involuntarily, like herbreathing, sometimes welling up until suddenly she found herselfsuffocating. There was a moment of this tonight, and Carolinerose and stood shuddering, looking about her in the blueduskiness of the silent room. She had not been here at nightbefore, and the spirit of the place seemed more troubled andinsistent than ever it had in the quiet of the afternoons.Caroline brushed her hair back from her damp foreheadand went over to the bow window. After raising it she sat downupon the low seat. Leaning her head against the sill, andloosening her nightgown at the throat, she half-closed her eyesand looked off into the troubled night, watching the play ofthe heat-lightning upon the massing clouds between the pointedtops of the poplars.
Yes, she knew, she knew well enough, of what absurditiesthis spell was woven; she mocked, even while she winced. Hispower, she knew, lay not so much in anything that he actuallyhad--though he had so much--or in anything that he actually was,but in what he suggested, in what he seemed picturesque enough tohave or be and that was just anything that one chose to believeor to desire. His appeal was all the more persuasive and alluringin that it was to the imagination alone, in that it was asindefinite and impersonal as those cults of idealism which sohave their way with women. What he had was that, in his merepersonality, he quickened and in a measure gratified thatsomething without which--to women--life is no better thansawdust, and to the desire for which most of their mistakes andtragedies and astonishingly poor bargains are due.
D'Esquerre had become the center of a movement, and theMetropolitan had become the temple of a cult. When he could beinduced to cross the Atlantic, the opera season in New York wassuccessful; when he could not, the management lost money; so mucheveryone knew. It was understood, too, that his superb art haddisproportionately little to do with his peculiar position.Women swayed the balance this way or that; the opera, theorchestra, even his own glorious art, achieved at such a cost, werebut the accessories of himself; like the scenery and costumes andeven the soprano, they all went to produce atmosphere, were themere mechanics of the beautiful illusion.
Caroline understood all this; tonight was not the first timethat she had put it to herself so. She had seen the same feelingin other people, watched for it in her friends, studied it in thehouse night after night when he sang, candidly putting herselfamong a thousand others.
D'Esquerre's arrival in the early winter was the signal fora feminine hegira toward New York. On the nights when he sangwomen flocked to the Metropolitan from mansions and hotels, fromtypewriter desks, schoolrooms, shops, and fitting rooms. Theywere of all conditions and complexions. Women of the world whoaccepted him knowingly as they sometimes took champagne for itsagreeable effect; sisters of charity and overworked shopgirls,who received him devoutly; withered women who had taken doctoratedegrees and who worshipped furtively through prism spectacles;business women and women of affairs, the Amazons who dwelt afarfrom men in the stony fastnesses of apartment houses. They allentered into the same romance; dreamed, in terms as various asthe hues of fantasy, the same dream; drew the same quick breathwhen he stepped upon the stage, and, at his exit, felt the samedull pain of shouldering the pack again.
There were the maimed, even; those who came on crutches, whowere pitted by smallpox or grotesquely painted by cruel birthstains. These, too, entered with him into enchantment. Stoutmatrons became slender girls again; worn spinsters felt theircheeks flush with the tenderness of their lost youth. Young andold, however hideous, however fair, they yielded up their heat--whether quick or latent--sat hungering for the mystic breadwherewith he fed them at this eucharist of sentiment.
Sometimes, when the house was crowded from the orchestra tothe last row of the gallery, when the air was charged with thisecstasy of fancy, he himself was the victim of the burningreflection of his power. They acted upon him in turn; he felttheir fervent and despairing appeal to him; it stirred him as thespring drives the sap up into an old tree; he, too, burst intobloom. For the moment he, too, believed again, desired again, heknew not what, but something.
But it was not in these exalted moments that Caroline hadlearned to fear him most. It was in the quiet, tired reserve,the dullness, even, that kept him company between these outburststhat she found that exhausting drain upon her sympathies whichwas the very pith and substance of their alliance. It was thetacit admission of disappointment under all this glamourof success--the helplessness of the enchanter to at all enchanthimself--that awoke in her an illogical, womanish desire to insome way compensate, to make it up to him.
She had observed drastically to herself that it was hereighteenth year he awoke in her--those hard years she had spentin turning gowns and placating tradesmen, and which she had neverhad time to live. After all, she reflected, it was better toallow one's self a little youth--to dance a little at thecarnival and to live these things when they are natural andlovely, not to have them coming back on one and demanding arrearswhen they are humiliating and impossible. She went over tonightall the catalogue of her self-deprivations; recalled how, in thelight of her father's example, she had even refused to humor herinnocent taste for improvising at the piano; how, when she beganto teach, after her mother's death, she had struck out one littleindulgence after another, reducing her life to a relentlessroutine, unvarying as clockwork. It seemed to her that eversince d'Esquerre first came into the house she had been hauntedby an imploring little girlish ghost that followed her about,wringing its hands and entreating for an hour of life.
The storm had held off unconscionably long; the air withinthe lodge was stifling, and without the garden waited,breathless. Everything seemed pervaded by a poignant distress;the hush of feverish, intolerable expectation. The still earth,the heavy flowers, even the growing darkness, breathed theexhaustion of protracted waiting. Caroline felt that she oughtto go; that it was wrong to stay; that the hour and the placewere as treacherous as her own reflections. She rose and beganto pace the floor, stepping softly, as though in fear ofawakening someone, her figure, in its thin drapery, diaphanouslyvague and white. Still unable to shake off the obsession of theintense stillness, she sat down at the piano and began to runover the first act of the Walkure, the last of his rolesthey had practiced together; playing listlessly and absently atfirst, but with gradually increasing seriousness. Perhaps it wasthe still heat of the summer night, perhaps it was the heavy odorsfrom the garden that came in through the open windows; but as sheplayed there grew and grew the feeling that he was there, besideher, standing in his accustomed place. In the duet at the end ofthe first act she heard him clearly: "Thou art the Spring forwhich I sighed in Winter's cold embraces." Once as he sangit, he had put his arm about her, his one hand under her heart,while with the other he took her right from the keyboard, holdingher as he always held Sieglinde when he drew her toward thewindow. She had been wonderfully the mistress of herself at thetime; neither repellent nor acquiescent. She remembered that shehad rather exulted, then, in her self-control--which he had seemedto take for granted, though there was perhaps the whisper of aquestion from the hand under her heart. "Thou art the Springfor which I sighed in Winter's cold embraces." Caroline liftedher hands quickly from the keyboard, and she bowed her head inthem, sobbing.
The storm broke and the rain beat in, spattering hernightdress until she rose and lowered the windows. She droppedupon the couch and began fighting over again the battles of otherdays, while the ghosts of the slain rose as from a sowing ofdragon's teeth, The shadows of things, always so scorned andflouted, bore down upon her merciless and triumphant. It was notenough; this happy, useful, well-ordered life was not enough. Itdid not satisfy, it was not even real. No, the other things, theshadows-they were the realities. Her father, poor Heinrich, evenher mother, who had been able to sustain her poor romance andkeep her little illusions amid the tasks of a scullion, werenearer happiness than she. Her sure foundation was but madeground, after all, and the people in Klingsor's garden were morefortunate, however barren the sands from which they conjuredtheir paradise.
The lodge was still and silent; her fit of weeping over,Caroline made no sound, and within the room, as without in thegarden, was the blackness of storm. Only now and then a flash oflightning showed a woman's slender figure rigid on the couch, herface buried in her hands.
Toward morning, when the occasional rumbling of thunder washeard no more and the beat of the raindrops upon the orchardleaves was steadier, she fell asleep and did not wakenuntil the first red streaks of dawn shone through the twistedboughs of the apple trees. There was a moment between world andworld, when, neither asleep nor awake, she felt her dream growthin, melting away from her, felt the warmth under her heartgrowing cold. Something seemed to slip from the clinging holdof her arms, and she groaned protestingly through her parted lips,following it a little way with fluttering hands. Then her eyesopened wide and she sprang up and sat holding dizzily to thecushions of the couch, staring down at her bare, cold feet, ather laboring breast, rising and falling under her open nightdress.
The dream was gone, but the feverish reality of it stillpervaded her and she held it as the vibrating string holds atone. In the last hour the shadows had had their way withCaroline. They had shown her the nothingness of time and space,of system and discipline, of closed doors and broad waters.Shuddering, she thought of the Arabian fairy tale in which thegenie brought the princess of China to the sleeping prince ofDamascus and carried her through the air back to her palace atdawn. Caroline closed her eyes and dropped her elbows weaklyupon her knees, her shoulders sinking together. The horror wasthat it had not come from without, but from within. The dreamwas no blind chance; it was the expression of something she hadkept so close a prisoner that she had never seen it herself, itwas the wail from the donjon deeps when the watch slept. Only asthe outcome of such a night of sorcery could the thing have beenloosed to straighten its limbs and measure itself with her; soheavy were the chains upon it, so many a fathom deep, it wascrushed down into darkness. The fact that d'Esquerre happened tobe on the other side of the world meant nothing; had he beenhere, beside her, it could scarcely have hurt her self-respectso much. As it was, she was without even the extenuation of anouter impulse, and she could scarcely have despised herself morehad she come to him here in the night three weeks ago and thrownherself down upon the stone slab at the door there.
Caroline rose unsteadily and crept guiltily from the lodgeand along the path under the arbor, terrified lest theservants should be stirring, trembling with the chill air, whilethe wet shrubbery, brushing against her, drenched her nightdressuntil it clung about her limbs.
At breakfast her husband looked across the table at her withconcern. "It seems to me that you are looking rather fagged,Caroline. It was a beastly night to sleep. Why don't you go upto the mountains until this hot weather is over? By the way, wereyou in earnest about letting the lodge stand?"
Caroline laughed quietly. "No, I find I was not very serious. Ihaven't sentiment enough to forego a summer house. Will you tellBaker to come tomorrow to talk it over with me? If we are to havea house party, I should like to put him to work on it at once."
Noble gave her a glance, half-humorous, half-vexed. "Do youknow I am rather disappointed?" he said. "I had almost hopedthat, just for once, you know, you would be a little bit foolish."
"Not now that I've slept over it," replied Caroline, andthey both rose from the table, laughing.
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