Part 10 (2/2)

You said to me graciously, when we separated at your door, ”I shall be very happy, Dr. Hartzmann, if you will come to see me.”

I flushed with pleasure, for I felt it was not a privilege you gave to many. But even as I hesitated for words with which to express my grat.i.tude, I realized that I had no moral right to gain your hospitality by means of my false name; and when I spoke it was to respond, ”I thank you for the favor most deeply, Miss Walton, but I am too busy a man for social calls.”

Oh, my darling, if you had known what those few words cost me, and the struggle it was to keep my voice steady as I spoke them! For I knew you could only take them to mean that I declined your friends.h.i.+p. Hide my shame as I might try to do, I could not escape its pains. G.o.d keep you from such suffering, Maizie, and good-night.

XIV

_March 5._ Though I committed the rudeness of refusing to call, you never in our subsequent intercourse varied your manner by the slightest shade, treating me always with a courtesy I ill deserved. After such a rebuff, it is true, you were too self-respecting to offer me again any favor tending to a better acquaintance, but otherwise you bore yourself towards me as you did towards the thousand other men whom you were obliged to meet.

Your life as a social favorite, and mine as a literary hack, gave little opportunity for our seeing each other, yet we met far more frequently than would have seemed possible. Occasionally I found you at the Blodgetts', though not as often as our informal footing in that household had led me to hope; for you were in such social demand that your morning hours were the time you usually took to run in upon them.

But now and then we lunched or dined there, and Mrs. Blodgett little dreamed how willingly I obeyed her positive command that I was to come to every one of her afternoons when Agnes told me that you were to receive or pour tea. Little I had of your attention, for you were a magnet to many, but I could stand near you and could watch and listen, and that was happiness.

A cause of meeting more discordant to me was furnished by my employer. I wrote for him an editorial on the folk-leid basis of the Wagner trilogy, which I suppose he sent or read to you; for it resulted in a box-party to attend the series, and I was asked to be one of the guests. ”Nothing like having your books of reference under your arm,” was Mr. Whitely's way of telling me for what purpose I was wanted; and I presume that was, in truth, the light in which he viewed me. Though I scorned such service, the mere fact that you were to be there was enough to make me accept. How low love can bring a man if his spirit is once mastered by it!

I would have sunk far deeper, I believe, to obtain what I earned, for there were delightful moments of mutually absorbing discussions, only too quickly interrupted by Mr. Whitely or others of the party breaking in on our conversation. What was equal happiness to me was the a.s.sociation of you in my mind with the n.o.blest of music. I can never hear certain movements of those operas without your image coming before me as clearly as if I saw your reflection in a mirror. And from that time one of my keenest pleasures has been to beg tickets from the musical critic of our staff, whenever one of the trilogy is to be given, and sit through the opera dreaming of those hours. I could write here every word you uttered, but what especially impressed itself upon my memory was something called out by the fate of Brunhilde. As we stood in the lobby waiting for the carriages, at the end of Die Walkure, you withdrew a little, as if still feeling the beauty and tragedy of the last act too deeply to take part in the chit-chat with which the rest of the party beguiled the time. I stood near you, but, respecting your mood, was silent too, until you finally broke the pause by saying, ”I do not know whether it is Wagner's music or because Brunhilde appeals to me, but I always feel that I have suffered as she does. It almost makes me believe in the theory of metempsychosis.”

”Is it so much consciousness of a past, Miss Walton,” I suggested, ”as prescience of the future? Woman's story is so unvaryingly that of self-sacrifice for love that I should suppose Brunhilde's fate would appeal to the s.e.x as a prophecy rather than as a memory.”

”Her punishment could have been far worse.”

”Left a defenseless prey to the first comer?”

”But surrounded by fire, so that the first comer must be a brave man.”

”Do you value courage so highly?”

”Yes. The truly brave, I think, cannot be mean, and without meanness there must be honor. I almost envy Brunhilde her walls of fire, which put to absolute proof any man who sought her. The most successful of men; the most intellectually brilliant, may be--By what can we to-day test courage and honor?”

”There is as much as ever, Miss Walton. Is it no gain that courage has become moral rather than physical?”

”Is it no loss that of all the men I know, there is not one of whom I can say with certainty, 'He is a brave man'?”

Our numbers were called at this point, and the conversation was never continued. Every word you had said recalled to me my former friend, and I understood your repugnance for anything cowardly.

At the last of these operas, by another perverse joke of Dame Fortune, who seems to have so many laughs at my expense, I was introduced to the chaperon, ”Mrs. Polhemus.” Looking up, I found myself facing my mother.

I cannot tell you how strangely I felt in making my bow. She was as handsome as ever, it appeared to me, and the smooth rich olive complexion seemed to have given her an undying youth. For a moment I feared recognition, but the difference was too great between the pallid stooping boy of fifteen she had last seen in Paris and the straight bronzed man of twenty-seven. As of old she was magnificently dressed and fairly glittered with diamonds, which curiously enough instantly brought to my mind the face of my father as I kissed him last. Was it the strong connection of contrast, or was it a quirk of my brain?

This chance meeting had a sequel that pains me to this day. Dining the next evening at the Blodgetts' with you and your uncle, the latter spoke of my mother's diamonds. Mrs. Blodgett said, with a laugh, ”One would think, after her rich marriage, that she might pay up the money her first husband stole from Maizie.”

”She could have done that years ago if she had cared to,” sneered Mr.

Walton.

Your eyes were lowered, and you still kept them so as you replied, ”I would not accept the money from Mrs. Polhemus.”

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