She said: “Always the man of reason, I perceive. You have mellowed, Robbie. There was a time when you had only derision for those who considered human sensibilities while on their way between two points. Am I to congratulate you on a wisdom born of the years or to commiserate with you on the loss of realism?”
Robbie’s pale dark brow, usually so smooth and unfurrowed, puckered. He regarded Laurie steadfastly. He said: “Say, rather, that I have acquired realism.”
He stood up. His sister smiled at him sardonically. The restlessly tapping fingers increased their tempo. “This may seem irrelevant to you, Laurie, but I remember a saying of Hesiod’s: ‘For beasts of the fields and for fowl of the air Zeus has ordained one law, that they prey upon one another; but for men hath he ordained justice, which is by far the best.’”
Robbie took a thoughtful turn up and down the dank and narrow room, his head bent. “Somewhere,” he mused, “and under circumstances at which I can only guess with concern, you have learned to ‘prey.’ You have learned to disregard everyone else. You have set your course by your own desires. That is sad for you, Laurie. You will suffer for it. In a way, too, I am extremely sorry for you.”
She listened with smiling scorn and hard lips. “I fail to follow your classical references, Robbie, though I stand with humble admiration before your learning. Yes, I have learned many things. But that is beside the point. It happened that I returned to Grandeville for a specific purpose, the purpose of my life. I shall go away again, very shortly. What that business is, is my own affair. Has it been too odious of me to ask you to assist me?”
He stopped before her, in silence. But she saw his keen black eyes fixed upon her, and they were quite kind, kinder than she ever remembered them. Something stirred painfully in her; the harsh lines of her mouth softened involuntarily. He said: “No, Laurie, it is not odious of you. You are not a child, I see. If we can help you, you have only to ask.”
He held out his hand to Alice, whose face suddenly shone at the tender gesture. She rose at once, and childishly clasped her hand in his. From the heights of her love she beamed down upon poor Laurie, whom no one loved despite her beauty and her fame and her great endowment. Laurie watched them; her expression became satiric. She rose, also. “Thank you, Robbie. And now, I believe, I must prepare for my appearance before the distinguished audience.’”
The manager of the Music Hall entered after Robbie and his wife had left. He was much flustered, and when he encountered Laurie’s hardened eyes, he was even more disturbed. He was very sorry. Perhaps Miss Cauder did not understand the whole program. There were to be four renditions by the choir of the First Presbyterian Church before Miss Cauder’s appearance. A very excellent choir, he stammered, seeing Laurie’s face darkening with outrage, and if Miss Cauder just opened her door she could enjoy it also. After the choir, the minister of that church would deliver a few sound homilies and worthy sentiments. Miss Cauder would then appear.
“All this will take an hour!” exclaimed Laurie. “Am I to remain in this detestable hole, freezing and shivering, while a choir of yokels bawls to the heavens?”
The manager fled. Dangerously close to the explosive point, Laurie paced up and down the room for several moments. And then she began to laugh, uproariously.
CHAPTER 57
Special seats near the stage had been reserved for the Cauder family. Janie sat with Bertie at her right hand, Bertie wan and skeletal, but affably smiling as ever, and the despair of near-by young ladies who tried to focus his glances upon them. However, when he was not smiling, the face beneath his thickly curling and ruddy hair was tragic and haggard, and old, and his hands constantly trembled. This was his first appearance in public for several months, and the audience in the vicinity whispered and snickered. He appeared unaware of them, and favored even the most malicious, when his wandering eye touched them, with his absent and brilliant smile. This was effective in silencing them, though that had not been his intention in the least.
At Janie’s left sat Angus and the surly Gretchen, his wife, and beside her, her covertly sneering and envious parents. Angus sat as stiff as a corpse propped upright, his pale stern face fixed and expressionless, his gray eyes as cold and dull as lightless stone. Robbie, naturally, sat beside his brother Bertie, and engaged him in amiable and casual conversation, while Alice clasped his hand, unresponsive as it was.
Behind the Cauder group sat Stuart and his two friends, Father Houlihan and Sam Berkowitz. Sam was still and silent, for he had recently lost his mother, and the priest was tense and tired, though there appeared no reason for his state. Stuart actually seemed light-hearted, drunken with good spirits, and there was a glow in his eye, an exuberance, which neither of his friends had seen there for years. Yet they also detected a kind of wild intoxication about him, a feverish restlessness. Even while they talked to him through the dull renditions of the choir, and the prosy and sonorous sermon of the minister, they saw that he barely heard a single word, and that his noddings, the inclinations of his head, were all mechanical.
The audience, the newspapers lyrically announced on Monday, was extremely distinguished, exquisitely attired, and in an exceptionally receptive mood as it gathered to pay honor to its most illustrious daughter and friend. The papers spoke of the bowers of flowers heaped high on each side of the stage, the festoons of flags, the numerous blue uniforms of furloughed officers among the audience, the colorful gowns, pelisses, fans, bonnets and ribands of the ladies, the air of gay expectancy that pervaded the hall.
The hall, however, was chill, drafty and cramped. Municipal money had dwindled to such a point in the building of it that no ceiling had been added, and a confused medley of ropes, rafters, spiders’ webs and scaffolding hung high and threatening overhead. The curtain, of cheap red velveteen, was dusty and frayed, and had been imported from an old theatre. From the rafters was suspended a precariously swinging chandelier, spluttering and hissing with gas-jets, which overcame all the ladies’ perfumes with its noxious stench. This was such an innovation, however, that it received only admiring and very proud glances. The walls were painted a rough and leprous brown, and were beaded with moisture. The floors were rough, unfinished planks, stained and uneven. The seats, a miscellany gathered hastily from various churches and abandoned meeting halls, were stiff and uncomfortable, and quite out of line.
But under that flickering, flaring and uncertain light, the ladies wielded their feathered fans, arched their bonneted heads, fluttered their kerchiefs, coquetted with their escorts, and preened, quite certain that this was a most distinguished event and a most distinguished audience. They were sure that Laurie would be overwhelmed by the cosmopolitan air of this Hall, and the discernment of its temporary inhabitants. They had firmly decided that they would not be overly impressed by her, that their applause would be restrained, in order to teach her a humility not learned by her in the gilded halls of fashion in New York and Europe. Many of the ladies already exhibited a genteel ennui, languidly sniffed at smelling salts, conversed in a most blasé manner with their neighbors. Laurie had not yet appeared. Some of the ladies murmured that it was quite possible they must leave before Laurie Cauder ventured shyly out upon the stage. Children, you know, and the most odious situation as regards servants, who were flocking to the manufactories making uniforms and bedding for soldiers. One did not know what the world was coming to in these days.
The three-piece “orchestra,” composed of one piano, one violin and one insistent drum, suddenly clamored triumphantly, and as if in response, the chandelier spluttered and hissed valiantly. The curtain, which had dropped impressively after the retirement of the minister, parted with violent jerks and creakings to reveal Miss Laurie Cauder on the dusty stage, with a tasteful backdrop of a luridly painted garden scene, all violet and crimson and yellow and blue. The audience burst into dignified and restrained applause, to which Laurie bowed ironically, in acknowledgment. The footlights at her feet flared fitfully. She could smell the gas, the dust
, the dankness. She advanced a foot or two towards the footlights, and over her shoulder Miss Ellicott glanced at the famous lady with hatred mixed with fright and nervousness.
Laurie looked at the audience, and the audience, with stateliness, looked at Laurie. She smiled a little to herself, but was mortified again. With the sensitivity of an artiste, she immediately detected their mood. They were “honoring” her, she saw clearly, these provincial sausage-makers, petty manufacturers, grain merchants, shop-keepers, horse-breeders and traders, slaughter-house owners, quarrymen and brick-makers. Their genteel ladies peered at Laurie through opera glasses and tilted their bonnets majestically. Really, they whispered to each other, the girl was too big, and her stride was very unrefined, and her air too assured and bold for a female.
Laurie opened her mouth. And at once, the audience was stunned. They had expected a sweet and trilling voice, very pretty and light and prepossessing, a voice similar to Miss Ducey’s, who was much sought after at private parties. Perhaps a little better than Miss Ducey’s, they had conceded graciously, before Laurie’s appearance, and were now prepared to applaud its better timbre and higher range. Miss Cauder would not find them entirely benighted, or without discernment.
But the voice that poured through Laurie’s red and opened lips was like a cataract of pure and blazing gold, molten, effortless, and stunning in its power. It was like a great golden bird, mounting, swinging, rising up against a golden heaven, its mighty wings outspread and brilliant with blinding light. It soared, struck against the rafters, bounded back from the narrow walls, in one astounding volume of unearthly sound, so that the audience quailed under it, and opened their mouths in stupefaction. It was incredible that all that powerful and perfect music could leap from the throat of a single woman, that she herself was not torn apart by the force of it, its strength and wild dynamic might. She drowned out the feeble “orchestra,” so that she seemed to sing alone, and it was only in her pauses that one could discern the accompaniment, frantically and faintly a beat or two behind. It was like a quavering camp-follower in the rear of an army with flying banners.
Stuart, who had been smiling, was very quiet, his elbow on the back of Janie’s chair. He had turned white, become motionless. He listened to the voice that had enthralled kings and princes and dukes and queens, had thrown into frenzy tens of thousands of distant peoples. It seemed to him that Laurie sang for him alone. He did not hear Father Houlihan’s pale-lipped whisper: “My God!” nor Sam’s dim exclamation. That voice, which struck triumphantly and with savage beautiful strength against the ceiling and the walls, overpowered him, filled him with terrible ecstasy and pride, and shaking passion. Laurie! Laurie! She was looking at him, smiling even as she sang, and he saw, dazedly, that her breast rose and fell with her singing like the quiet swelling of a wave.
Some of the magic of her voice mysteriously communicated itself to her very flesh, so that she appeared ringed about in light, her face incandescent, her few gestures flashing with radiance. The audience, speechless, petrified into complete silence, stared at her with distended eyes, sucking in their lips, overwhelmed by the “most glorious Elizabeth in the world,” as Wagner with rapture had called her.
And then she was silent, and the quaking orchestra was silent, also.
There was no sound at all, except for the hissing of the chandelier. Laurie bowed, smiling ironically again, lifting her brows. The audience looked at her, frozen into complete motionlessness, unable to lift even a hand.
Then Laurie spoke: “And now, dear friends, I have a song which I will sing you, in gratitude for your appreciation. You will not find it in any shop. It was composed and sung by my father, in the hills of Scotland.”
A few among the audience, belatedly recovering themselves, feebly applauded. But all the rest were still dumb, still stupefied. Except for one man, whose wife beside him did not feel his sudden convulsive start at Laurie’s words, and did not see his stark and shrivelling face.
Laurie unrolled the small scroll of music in her hand, and graciously turned to the bewildered orchestra. “I have no accompanying music for this,” she said, gently. “I shall sing it alone.”
And then she faced the audience again. She lifted her head, the uncertain gaslight suddenly flared into her eyes, and the sockets were full of wide blue flame. She did not look at Stuart, now. She sought out her brother’s face, the face of Angus, and looked at it fixedly.
She sang her father’s song: “O Morning Star!” She poured out the simple but poignant words, the pure and tender and passionate music. Her voice shook; it was a torrent of sparkling crystal, or of tears. It rose with wild supplication, as if to a dark morning sky, in which a star burned with exultant fire. It was like the lifting of marble praying hands, that voice, like a face upturned humbly yet proudly to the brightening heavens. It was the call of a soul, adoring, pleading, communicating with God, full of pride that it possessed the consciousness of knowing Him. It was the wings of angels, turning into light at the touch of dawn. It was the sweetest and most reverent ecstasy, pellucid yet stern.
No one saw Angus leaning forward to listen to her, the gaslight wan on his face, which was wet and slimy with moisture. No one saw him put his hands to his head in one fierce gesture of anguish. No one was aware that he looked only at his sister, and that she looked only at him, crying out to him with all the power and remembering tenderness of her voice, as if, in that moment, she had recalled him and was holding out her hands to him in one last final pleading.
“By heaven!” exclaimed Bertie, when the last note had faded away dramatically. “The girl has a wonderful voice! If Pa could only have heard her!”
Janie was wiping her eyes sentimentally. Robbie was smiling, much moved, at his pale little wife. “Ah, it’s a grand thing to know you’ve given such a voice to the world,” sighed Janie. But Angus sat like a dead man in his chair, one hand pressed against a temple that throbbed with the most terrible pain.
Laurie was bowing and smiling and retreating, her blue hoops sweeping the floor. Then she swung about so vigorously, facing the wings, that her lace pantalettes were revealed almost to her knees. In a moment she had gone, leaving upon the stage a peculiar aura brighter than the dusky flickering of the footlights, a kind of faint and quivering halo.
The audience, finally recovering itself, began to murmur softly and incoherently, in a kind of awakening daze. It was some moments before they became aware that Gretchen was calling out loudly, and with fear. “Angus! It’s my husband! Something’s happened to my husband!”
CHAPTER 58
Laurie and her mother were admitted by a swollen-faced Gretchen into Angus’ darkened room. The thick red draperies were closed tightly against the flooding April sunshine, and a hot fire made the room too close, almost stifling. The odors of unaired places were thick in the motionless air. Janie gasped a little, put her lavender-soaked kerchief to her nose. But Laurie advanced towards the bed and stood looking down in cold silence at her brother. In the background, Gretchen whimpered, wrung her hands, cast furtive and inimical glances at Laurie.
Angus lay on his white pillows, his face drawn and gray, his eyes sunken. But his thin hands moved restlessly, as if groping. Seeing this, Janie whispered shrilly: “O my God! See what the lad is doing!” and burst into tears. Gretchen, distracted from her dislike for Laurie, rushed to the bed and bent over her husband, her whimper now becoming a series of high-pitched squeals. She sought for the signs of dissolution, but as Angus was doing nothing different from what he had been doing ever since last night, her terror dissolved into resentment against Janie, and she glared furiously at her mother-in-law.
“He isn’t ‘picking at the coverlets,’” she said hoarsely. “He’s asleep, and is having a nightmare.”
“Yes,” said Laurie coolly, “he is having a nightmare.”
She sat down, bonneted and cloaked, at the bedside. An oil lamp burned mustily in the gloom. It made threads of gold of the lock of hair on Laurie’s brow. Sh
e regarded her brother without visible emotion, and then looked with amusement at the flushed Janie and the fat, whitish Gretchen who were exchanging bayonet glances.
Laurie found Gretchen more distasteful than ever. The loose violet dressing gown, billowing with lace, did not conceal her “condition” in the least. Rather, it emphasized that condition. What a dreadful creature! meditated Laurie, revolted. But pathetic, also. It was evident that she adored Angus, Angus lying there concerned only with his inner horrors and despairs.
There was little room in Laurie for pity. Nevertheless, as she contemplated Gretchen with her usual coldness and detachment, she felt something like compassion. There was a new softness and warmth in her these days, and through it more human emotions could penetrate. She smiled at the young woman, who had completed her baleful study of Janie.
“He does not look so ill,” she said soothingly. “What do his doctors say?”
Gretchen, somewhat taken aback by this kindness, and by the clear shining of Laurie’s eyes, melted with self-pity and the relaxing of her fear. She began to sniffle. “It’s one of his attacks, they say. But worse than ever. It’s his head, you know. He has such headaches. He hasn’t had an attack for some time now, and we had hopes he wouldn’t have another.”
Janie gasped again in the heat and closeness of the room. “What the lad needs is a little air and light,” she said loudly. “It’s suffocating in here.” She marched to the windows, hurled back the draperies, flung open a sash. The sunlight swept into the room on the wings of bright wind. The lamp flickered, paled. A bar of light struck across Angus’ face, and he stirred and muttered.