Part 15 (1/2)
”I'm not so sure of that. I was merely about to say that I don't know whether you can be so very sure of being able to take life in such a leisurely way as you hope to.”
”Don't you worry, old man,” he answered. ”I know what's best for me and how to go to work to obtain it.”
”I trust you do,” I replied. ”Well, I'll be going now. See you next Sunday.”
”Why next Sunday?” he asked sharply.
”Simply because you've lately acquired the excellent habit of calling on that day.”
”I'll not be there,” he declared. ”I have other fish to fry.”
I took my leave, somewhat surprised. But three days later, as we were taking our habitual Sabbatical refection of tea and biscuits, he appeared again, bearing a box of what he calls the only chocolates in New York fit to eat. But he came in a taxi, for he wouldn't be seen carrying anything but his cane and gloves. For a second, as I looked at him, he seemed slightly embarra.s.sed, although I may have erred in so thinking.
Frieda seized upon the chocolates, greedily. She is one of those dear stout people, who a.s.sure you that they hardly ever eat anything and whom one always finds endowed with a fine appet.i.te.
”It's too bad about Baby Paul,” she said. ”He is yet too young to be stuffed with sweets or amused with toys.”
”I presume that a nursling is the only really normal human being,”
remarked Gordon. ”He possesses but the most natural desires, has no ambitions unconnected with feeding and sleeping, and expresses his emotions without concealment. Affectation is foreign to him, and his virtues and vices are still in abeyance.”
”Paul,” declared Frances, indignantly, ”is extremely intelligent and has no vices at all.”
”I stand corrected, Mrs. Dupont. He is the exception, of course, and I only spoke in general. Frieda, my dear, won't you be so obliging as to open the piano and play something for us? I don't suppose it will awaken the baby, will it?”
”He just loves music,” a.s.serted his mother. ”When I play, he often opens his eyes and listens quietly, ever so long. I know that it pleases him, ever so much. His--oh! He must have music in his soul! How--how could it be otherwise?”
Frieda hurried to the piano and opened it, after giving the stool a couple of turns. She began with some Mendelssohn. Frances was holding her baby in her arms, her wonderful head bent towards the little one, with a curve of her neck so graceful that it fascinated me. Gordon was also looking at her with a queer, eager look upon his features. He knew as well as I that she had heard again some vibrant music of former days, had felt the sound-waves that trembled in her own soul, and that, to her, the child represented something issued from wondrous melodies, a swan's song uplifted to the heavens and bearing with it the plaint of a lost happiness.
”Oh! Frieda, some--something else,” she cried. ”I--I--Just play some Chopin.”
At once Frieda complied. Where on earth does the woman find the ability to play as she does? She tells me that she hardly ever practises, and, in my many visits to her, I have never chanced to find her at the piano, though she possesses a very fair instrument. But I think I understand; what I mistake for technique must chiefly be her wonderful sentiment and the appreciation of beauty that overshadows some faults of execution.
Frieda's real dwelling place is in a heaven of her own making, that is all beauty and color and harmony. From there come her painting and her music, which evidently enter her being and flow out at the finger-tips.
I have always thought that if her color-tubes had not possessed such an overwhelming attraction for her, she might have become one of the most wonderful musicians of the world.
Gradually, Frances raised her head again, until it finally rested on the back of the armchair, with the eyes half-closed under the spell of Frieda's playing. By this time she had perhaps forgotten the memories evoked by the ”Songs Without Words,” that had for a moment brought back to her the masterful bow that had made her heart vibrate, for the first time, with the tremulousness of a love being born. Chopin did not affect her in the same way, and she was calm again. Frieda came to the end of the ”_Valse Brillante_” and took up the ”_Berceuse_.” Then the young mother closed her eyes altogether. The melody brought rest to her, and sweetness with a blessed peace of soul.
When I looked at Gordon, he was still staring, and by this time I thought I knew the reason of his visits. Beyond a peradventure Frances was the lodestone that attracted him. Did her wonderful features suggest to him a new and greater picture? Was he ruminating over the plan of some masterpiece and seeking inspiration from her? It seemed probable indeed. When the idea comes to me for a novel, I am apt to moon about, searching the recesses of my mind, digging in the depths of my experience, staring into a vacancy peopled only by faint shadows that begin to gather form and strength and, finally, I hope, some attributes of humanity. At such times I often fail to recognize friends on the street or, even, I may attempt to read books upside down. Is it possible that Gordon suffers from similar limitations and needs to muse and toil and delve before he can bring out the art that is in him?
Only yesterday I saw in the paper that he led a cotillon at the Van Rossums. Moreover, at the Winter Exhibition I had the shock of my life.
I hurried there to see again the ”Mother and Child,” instead of which I found his signature on the portrait of a railroad president. The papers spoke of it as a wonderful painting, and one of them reproduced it. I freely acknowledge that it deserves all the encomiums lavished upon it, for it is a bold and earnest piece of work. But he has never done anything like the picture of Frances.
I met him there and looked at him, questioningly. He understood me at once.
”I'll get half the financial big guns now,” he told me coolly, and left me to greet a millionaire's bride.
I am not so foolish as to think he can be in love with Frances, and I doubt very much whether he is in love with any one else, in spite of the gossip that has reached me. No, he must simply be thinking of some great composition with which he expects, in his own good time, to take the world by storm. And yet, what if I should be mistaken? The mere idea makes me feel very cold and uncomfortable, for no reason that I know of.
When he finally took his leave, he thanked Frieda for playing to us, and said good-by to Frances as perfunctorily as he does everything else. We began to clean up the teacups, and Frieda folded the frivolous little tablecloth she has contributed to my outfit and put it away, while Frances and I quarreled.
”I am not going,” she said firmly.