was beginning to show gray about the ears, and his bronzed face was
heavily lined. His square brown hands were locked behind him, and
he held his shoulders like a man conscious of responsibilities;
yet, as he turned to greet Everett, there was an incongruous
diffidence in his address.
"Good morning, Mr. Hilgarde," he said, extending his hand;
"I found your name on the hotel register. My name is Gaylord.
I'm afraid my sister startled you at the station last night, Mr.
Hilgarde, and I've come around to apologize."
"Ah! The young lady in the phaeton? I'm sure I didn't know
whether I had anything to do with her alarm or not. If I did, it
is I who owe the apology."
The man colored a little under the dark brown of his face.
"Oh, it's nothing you could help, sir, I fully understand
that. You see, my sister used to be a pupil of your brother's,
and it seems you favor him; and when the switch engine threw a
light on your face it startled her."
Everett wheeled about in his chair. "Oh! Katharine Gaylord!
Is it possible! Now it's you who have given me a turn. Why, I
used to know her when I was a boy. What on earth--"
"Is she doing here?" said Gaylord, grimly filling out the
pause. "You've got at the heart of the matter. You knew my
sister had been in bad health for a long time?"
"No, I had never heard a word of that. The last I knew of
her she was singing in London. My brother and I correspond
infrequently and seldom get beyond family matters. I am deeply
sorry to hear this. There are more reasons why I am concerned
than I can tell you."
The lines in Charley Gaylord's brow relaxed a little.
"What I'm trying to say, Mr. Hilgarde, is that she wants to see
you. I hate to ask you, but she's so set on it. We live several
miles out of town, but my rig's below, and I can take you out
anytime you can go."
"I can go now, and it will give me real pleasure to do so," said
Everett, quickly. "I'll get my hat and be with you in a moment."
When he came downstairs Everett found a cart at the door,
and Charley Gaylord drew a long sigh of relief as he gathered up
the reins and settled back into his own element.
"You see, I think I'd better tell you something about my
sister before you see her, and I don't know just where to begin.
She traveled in Europe with your brother and his wife, and sang
at a lot of his concerts; but I don't know just how much you know
about her."
"Very little, except that my brother always thought her the
most gifted of his pupils, and that when I knew her she was very
young and very beautiful and turned my head sadly for a while."
Everett saw that Gaylord's mind was quite engrossed by his
grief. He was wrought up to the point where his reserve and
sense of proportion had quite left him, and his trouble was the
one vital thing in the world. "That's the whole thing," he went
on, flicking his horses with the whip.
"She was a great woman, as you say, and she didn't come of a
great family. She had to fight her own way from the first. She
got to Chicago, and then to New York, and then to Europe, where
she went up like lightning, and got a taste for it all; and now
she's dying here like a rat in a hole, out of her own world, and
she can't fall back into ours. We've grown apart, some way--
miles and miles apart--and I'm afraid she's fearfully unhappy."
"It's a very tragic story that you are telling me, Gaylord,"
said Everett. They were well out into the country now, spinning
along over the dusty plains of red grass, with the ragged-blue
outline of the mountains before them.
"Tragic!" cried Gaylord, starting up in his seat, "my God, man,
nobody will ever know how tragic. It's a tragedy I live with and
eat with and sleep with, until I've lost my grip on everything.
You see she had made a good bit of money, but she spent it all
going to health resorts. It's her lungs, you know. I've got money
enough to send her anywhere, but the doctors all say it's no use.
She hasn't the ghost of a chance. It's just getting through the
days now. I had no notion she was half so bad before she came to
me. She just wrote that she was all run down. Now that she's
here, I think she'd be happier anywhere under the sun, but she
won't leave. She says it's easier to let go of life here, and that
to go East would be dying twice. There was a time when I was a
brakeman with a run out of Bird City, Iowa, and she was a little
thing I could carry on my shoulder, when I could get her everything
on earth she wanted, and she hadn't a wish my $80 a month didn't
cover; and now, when I've got a little property together, I can't
buy her a night's sleep!"
Everett saw that, whatever Charley Gaylord's present status
in the world might be, he had brought the brakeman's heart up the
ladder with him, and the brakeman's frank avowal of sentiment.
Presently Gaylord went on:
"You can understand how she has outgrown her family. We're
all a pretty common sort, railroaders from away back. My father
was a conductor. He died when we were kids. Maggie, my other
sister, who lives with me, was a telegraph operator here while I
was getting my grip on things. We had no education to speak of.
I have to hire a stenographer because I can't spell straight--the
Almighty couldn't teach me to spell. The things that make up
life to Kate are all Greek to me, and there's scarcely a point
where we touch any more, except in our recollections of the old
times when we were all young and happy together, and Kate sang in
a church choir in Bird City. But I believe, Mr. Hilgarde, that
if she can see just one person like you, who knows about the
things and people she's interested in, it will give her about the
only comfort she can have now."
The reins slackened in Charley Gaylord's hand as they drew
up before a showily painted house with many gables and a round
tower. "Here we are," he said, turning to Everett, "and I guess
we understand each other."
They were met at the door by a thin, colorless woman, whom
Gaylord introduced as "my sister, Maggie." She asked her brother
to show Mr. Hilgarde into the music room, where Katharine wished
to see him alone.
When Everett entered the music room he gave a little start
of surprise, feeling that he had stepped from the glaring Wyoming
sunlight into some New York studio that he had always known. He
wondered which it was of those countless studios, high up under
the roofs, over banks and shops and wholesale houses, that this
room resembled, and he looked incredulously out of the window at
the gray plain that ended in the great upheaval of the Rockies.
The haunting air of familiarity about the room perplexed
him. Was it a copy of some particular studio he knew, or was it
merely the studio atmosphere that seemed so individual and
poignantly reminiscent here in Wyoming? He sat down
in a reading
chair and looked keenly about him. Suddenly his eye fell upon a
large photograph of his brother above the piano. Then it all
became clear to him: this was veritably his brother's room. If
it were not an exact copy of one of the many studios that
Adriance had fitted up in various parts of the world, wearying of
them and leaving almost before the renovator's varnish had dried,
it was at least in the same tone. In every detail Adriance's
taste was so manifest that the room seemed to exhale his
personality.
Among the photographs on the wall there was one of Katharine
Gaylord, taken in the days when Everett had known her, and when
the flash of her eye or the flutter of her skirt was enough to
set his boyish heart in a tumult. Even now, he stood before the
portrait with a certain degree of embarrassment. It was the face
of a woman already old in her first youth, thoroughly
sophisticated and a trifle hard, and it told of what her brother
had called her fight. The camaraderie of her frank, confident
eyes was qualified by the deep lines about her mouth and the
curve of the lips, which was both sad and cynical. Certainly she
had more good will than confidence toward the world, and the
bravado of her smile could not conceal the shadow of an unrest
that was almost discontent. The chief charm of the woman, as
Everett had known her, lay in her superb figure and in her eyes,
which possessed a warm, lifegiving quality like the sunlight;
eyes which glowed with a sort of perpetual salutat to the
world. Her head, Everett remembered as peculiarly well-shaped and
proudly poised. There had been always a little of the imperatrix
about her, and her pose in the photograph revived all his old
impressions of her unattachedness, of how absolutely and valiantly
she stood alone.
Everett was still standing before the picture, his hands behind him
and his head inclined, when he heard the door open. A very tall
woman advanced toward him, holding out her hand. As she started to
speak, she coughed slightly; then, laughing, said, in a low, rich
voice, a trifle husky: "You see I make the traditional Camille
entrance--with the cough. How good of you to come, Mr. Hilgarde."
Everett was acutely conscious that while addressing him she
was not looking at him at all, and, as he assured her of his
pleasure in coming, he was glad to have an opportunity to collect
himself. He had not reckoned upon the ravages of a long illness.
The long, loose folds of her white gown had been especially
designed to conceal the sharp outlines of her emaciated body, but
the stamp of her disease was there; simple and ugly and obtrusive,
a pitiless fact that could not be disguised or evaded. The
splendid shoulders were stooped, there was a swaying unevenness in
her gait, her arms seemed disproportionately long, and her hands
were transparently white and cold to the touch. The changes in her
face were less obvious; the proud carriage of the head, the warm,
clear eyes, even the delicate flush of color in her cheeks, all
defiantly remained, though they were all in a lower key--older,
sadder, softer.
She sat down upon the divan and began nervously to arrange the
pillows. "I know I'm not an inspiring object to look upon, but you
must be quite frank and sensible about that and get used to it at
once, for we've no time to lose. And if I'm a trifle irritable you
won't mind?--for I'm more than usually nervous."
"Don't bother with me this morning, if you are tired," urged
Everett. "I can come quite as well tomorrow."
"Gracious, no!" she protested, with a flash of that quick,
keen humor that he remembered as a part of her. "It's solitude
that I'm tired to death of--solitude and the wrong kind of people.
You see, the minister, not content with reading the prayers for the
sick, called on me this morning. He happened to be riding
by on his bicycle and felt it his duty to stop. Of course, he
disapproves of my profession, and I think he takes it for granted
that I have a dark past. The funniest feature of his conversation
is that he is always excusing my own vocation to me--condoning it,
you know--and trying to patch up my peace with my conscience by
suggesting possible noble uses for what he kindly calls my talent."
Everett laughed. "Oh! I'm afraid I'm not the person to call
after such a serious gentleman--I can't sustain the situation.
At my best I don't reach higher than low comedy. Have you
decided to which one of the noble uses you will devote yourself?"
Katharine lifted her hands in a gesture of renunciation and
exclaimed: "I'm not equal to any of them, not even the least
noble. I didn't study that method."
She laughed and went on nervously: "The parson's not so bad.
His English never offends me, and he has read Gibbon's Decline
and Fall, all five volumes, and that's something. Then, he has
been to New York, and that's a great deal. But how we are losing
time! Do tell me about New York; Charley says you're just on from
there. How does it look and taste and smell just now? I think a
whiff of the Jersey ferry would be as flagons of cod-liver oil to
me. Who conspicuously walks the Rialto now, and what does he or
she wear? Are the trees still green in Madison Square, or have
they grown brown and dusty? Does the chaste Diana on the Garden
Theatre still keep her vestal vows through all the exasperating
changes of weather? Who has your brother's old studio now, and
what misguided aspirants practice their scales in the rookeries
about Carnegie Hall? What do people go to see at the theaters,
and what do they eat and drink there in the world nowadays? You
see, I'm homesick for it all, from the Battery to Riverside. Oh,
let me die in Harlem!" She was interrupted by a violent attack
of coughing, and Everett, embarrassed by her discomfort, plunged
into gossip about the professional people he had met in town
during the summer and the musical outlook for the winter. He was
diagraming with his pencil, on the back of an old envelope he
found in his pocket, some new mechanical device to be
used at the Metropolitan in the production of the Rheingold,
when he became conscious that she was looking at him intently, and
that he was talking to the four walls.
Katharine was lying back among the pillows, watching him
through half-closed eyes, as a painter looks at a picture. He
finished his explanation vaguely enough and put the envelope back
in his pocket. As he did so she said, quietly: "How wonderfully
like Adriance you are!" and he felt as though a crisis of some
sort had been met and tided over.
He laughed, looking up at her with a touch of pride in his
eyes that made them seem quite boyish. "Yes, isn't it absurd?
It's almost as awkward as looking like Napoleon--but, after all,
there are some advantages. It has made some of his friends like
me, and I hope
it will make you."
Katharine smiled and gave him a quick, meaning glance from
under her lashes. "Oh, it did that long ago. What a haughty,
reserved youth you were then, and how you used to stare at people
and then blush and look cross if they paid you back in your own
coin. Do you remember that night when you took me home from a
rehearsal and scarcely spoke a word to me?"
"It was the silence of admiration," protested Everett, "very
crude and boyish, but very sincere and not a little painful.
Perhaps you suspected something of the sort? I remember you saw
fit to be very grown-up and worldly.
"I believe I suspected a pose; the one that college boys
usually affect with singers--'an earthen vessel in love with a
star,' you know. But it rather surprised me in you, for you must
have seen a good deal of your brother's pupils. Or had you an
omnivorous capacity, and elasticity that always met the
occasion?"
"Don't ask a man to confess the follies of his youth," said
Everett, smiling a little sadly; "I am sensitive about some of
them even now. But I was not so sophisticated as you imagined.
I saw my brother's pupils come and go, but that was about all.
Sometimes I was called on to play accompaniments, or to fill out
a vacancy at a rehearsal, or to order a carriage for an
infuriated soprano who had thrown up her part. But they never
spent any time on me, unless it was to notice the resemblance you
speak of."
"Yes", observed Katharine, thoughtfully, "I noticed it then,
too; but it has grown as you have grown older. That is rather
strange, when you have lived such different lives. It's not
merely an ordinary family likeness of feature, you know, but a
sort of interchangeable individuality; the suggestion of the
other man's personality in your face like an air transposed to
another key. But I'm not attempting to define it; it's beyond
me; something altogether unusual and a trifle--well, uncanny,"
she finished, laughing.
"I remember," Everett said seriously, twirling the pencil
between his fingers and looking, as he sat with his head thrown
back, out under the red window blind which was raised just a
little, and as it swung back and forth in the wind revealed the
glaring panorama of the desert--a blinding stretch of yellow,
flat as the sea in dead calm, splotched here and there with deep
purple shadows; and, beyond, the ragged-blue outline of the
mountains and the peaks of snow, white as the white clouds--"I
remember, when I was a little fellow I used to be very sensitive
about it. I don't think it exactly displeased me, or that I would
have had it otherwise if I could, but it seemed to me like a
birthmark, or something not to be lightly spoken of. People were
naturally always fonder of Ad than of me, and I used to feel the
chill of reflected light pretty often. It came into even my
relations with my mother. Ad went abroad to study when he was
absurdly young, you know, and mother was all broken up over it.
She did her whole duty by each of us, but it was sort of
generally understood among us that she'd have made burnt
offerings of us all for Ad any day. I was a little fellow then,
and when she sat alone on the porch in the summer dusk she used
sometimes to call me to her and turn my face up in the light that
streamed out through the shutters and kiss me, and then I always
knew she was thinking of Adriance."
"Poor little chap," said Katharine, and her tone was a
trifle huskier than usual. "How fond people have always been of
Adriance! Now tell me the latest news of him. I haven't heard,
except through the press, for a year or more. He was in Algeria
then, in the valley of the Chelif, riding horseback night and day
in an Arabian costume, and in his usual enthusiastic fashion he
had quite made up his mind to adopt the Mohammedan faith
and become as nearly an Arab as possible. How many countries and
faiths has be adopted, I wonder? Probably he was playing Arab to