“The first Siegfried is next Monday?” he asked her.
“Yes, is ridiculous. Two times they do it, only in the last week. All that work.”
“It must be that he only wants to make the experiment. If it goes badly it will die off quietly, it won’t have been a real part of this year’s repertoire. If it goes well he has a start on next year.”
She made a face. “No for me. No more Wagner.”
“You needn’t worry. There is only one other Wagner part he could ask you to sing, the Shepherd in Tannhäuser. And he couldn’t be planning more Wagner unless he engages all sorts of different people.”
Renata shrugged. Randall felt unexpectedly flustered about asking her questions much less personal than those he had already ventured. She must have understood his difficulty, for she raised her brows as if inviting him to speak. So he said uneasily, “I take it, I don’t doubt, you’ve been reengaged for next year?”
“Oh, yes.”
“And in the meantime?” That was what was really bothering him. “When the opera closes now?”
“I go in Italy, naturally.”
“I see.” His voice was dull. It was what he had expected to hear. “Have you engagements there?” (Or, he tried to suppress the thought, are you just trailing along with Baldini?)
“But of course! La Scala continue until June. Poi, is many places, Bologna, Genova,” she ticked them off on her fingers, “Ravenna, Como—Oh! Dio!” She shook her head. “Poi Verona, all’Arena. Is terrible so much work.”
“You ought to be proud to have it,” said Randall crossly.
“Ma!” she said.
The cab drew up at the hotel and Randall helped her out. He started to escort her across the pavement to the door, but she shook her head and gave him her hand. He felt the rigidity of her arm, intended to hold him at the greatest distance. She was astonished when he bent and kissed her gloved hand as anybody else would do.
“Buona notte,” she murmured and turned quickly away. It had not been made definite that she would see him again on Friday, she had only hinted at it, and she had not said a word about any further rehearsals for Siegfried. There was no reason why he should go again. But he felt so agitated of mind that he stepped back into the hansom without thinking, and told the man to drive him home. Ordinarily he would have taken the street-car, just from his habitual frugality. He sat with his arms folded, scowling over the teasing rebuffs she had meted out all evening. But then she had given him a glimpse of a totally different character, and then immediately slammed the door on the person so revealed.
“I ought to forget her,” he told himself, half aloud. “I’ve got no business whatever with such a woman.” He could not understand her. Here she had a calendar crammed with tours of provincial opera houses in Italy, and still she insisted that she hated to work and looked on it only as the means to her pursuit of pleasure. “I wonder if she ever tells the truth,” he thought; and then he was standing on the deserted pavement, looking up at the dark façade of his house. It loomed at him, bleak, baleful, forbidding. He had a sense of reluctance to walk up the path and let himself in through the heavy, peeling door, and grope his way to light the dim wheezing gas-jet. This place was part of him and part of Seymour, but it was alien from everything else that could ever touch their lives. It was as if when they turned their backs on other associations and occupations they disappeared through the door of this house into a world as darkly legendary as the farther shore of the Styx. Yet, once inside, the rest of the world became unreal. Seymour was right, they must get away from here. He was also right that it would be a waste of their capital, as well as a mad gesture of ceding a hostage to fortune, to spend a penny or lift a finger to make a repair on this house. Better let it rot until it collapsed, their best defiance of any fate that might connive to keep them here.
Randall climbed the front steps slowly. One of the most oppressive things about living here was the way in which his thoughts about it rose up and obliterated other thoughts, which he preferred to pursue. Sometimes he could control these skirmishes and sometimes he could not. He felt now the small legion of ugly plaguers forming to assault him. Not since the night he had been up on the top floor had he allowed the impression of it to recur. Now, with urgent concerns to compel his mind and his retrospective ear, he could not blank out the small vile remembered sound of scratching and scurrying. This is damnable, he thought; I won’t let it get to me. I won’t hear it. I don’t have to hear it. He went into the drawing-room and lit the gas in all the fixtures, and took off his coat and sat down at the piano and plunged into a Bach fugue. He played with vigor and big sonority, and he intended to keep on playing until Seymour came home, no matter what time that might be. He had decided not to go upstairs tonight alone.
Next morning Seymour appeared early for breakfast, full of unusual good humor. Randall was distracted and glum. It was a beautiful morning and he went to the bay windows to raise the blinds. He had put the coffee pot on the round table and was filling the jug with hot milk when Seymour drew the blinds partly down again.
“Why do you do that?” asked Randall. “Isn’t this place gloomy enough for you?” He moved towards the windows again.
“I’m sorry.” Seymour’s voice was unusually gentle and Randall paused, his hand on a blind, and looked over at Seymour who was just sitting down. He had turned his chair as much as possible to cut off the light and still sit facing Randall. Randall left the window and walked across the room and put his hand on Seymour’s shoulder. He looked down at him.
“Brother,” he said slowly, “does the light hurt your eyes very much?”
Seymour laughed a little. “Oh, it’s nothing. You know I’ve never liked strong light. Come on, drink your coffee.”
Randall sat down, still looking closely at Seymour. “Do you know,” he said, “I have a feeling as if I’ve been awfully stupid about you lately.” He leaned forward. “Tell me something, Seymour. Are your eyes getting weaker? Are you worried about them?”
Seymour said, “Of course not 1 Don’t imagine things. You know my eyes have never been very strong, and I suppose the light seemed brighter than usual this morning because we’ve had a lot of rainy days lately. Forget it.”
Randall raised his brows suspiciously, but he could say nothing more without upsetting Seymour, which would be especially a pity today when his spirits were so high. So Randall asked, “When do you get your automobile?”
Seymour beamed. “Today!”
“Gee, I hadn’t realized. You must be awfully excited.” Randall ate some bread and jam and then said with his mouth full, “What about driving it?”
“I’ve been learning. When you order a car they send one out with an instructor for a few days to show you what to do, and there’s really nothing to it.”
“Really? I’d be afraid to try.”
“I don’t think I’d let you. The thing you have to watch out for is horses shying. Sometimes there’s quite a mess.”
“Lord, I’m not even sure I’d ride in the thing with you.”
“You haven’t been invited yet.”
“Whom are you going to take for the first ride in it?”
“Well, how about you? I’m going up to the Stevens place to get the car this morning. Any time after eleven o’clock, they said.”
“Oh.” Randall could perfectly well have gone, he had no work to do until tomorrow afternoon. This was surely the greatest moment of Seymour’s life, and he would like to share it. He had already decided not to go to the rehearsal of Siegfried this morning. He opened his mouth to tell Seymour he would go along to fetch the automobile, and instead he heard himself say, “That’s too bad. I’d love to go, Brother, but I have to work.” He was such a poor liar that he felt his hands go clammy as he spoke, and he almost held his breath in the effort to keep his face expressionless. Inwardly he was calling himself a fool, why should he have harbored this buried intention to go to that rehearsal and hang about in the back of the darkened theat
re to catch a couple of glimpses of Renata Tosi? He would be swamped in mortification if Seymour should catch him out now. But Seymour was far too excited and preoccupied about his automobile. He only said, “That’s too bad. You’ll see it this afternoon, or some time soon.”
“Sure,” said Randall, drawing a breath. “I won’t be your favorite guest in it, though, not by a long shot. I wonder who will be—or do you stick to your usual doctrine of safety in numbers?”
Seymour laughed. “I hope I do,” he said. “But I suppose if I follow the line of least resistance I’ll be taking out Miss Marietta Pawling a good deal. I’m trying to taper that off though.”
“Oh?”
“Frankly,” said Seymour, “I’m beginning to wish Miss Marietta Pawling at some distance such as Mount Everest.” He looked rather shamefaced, but nonchalant; he smoothed the long blond drooping wings of his moustache with the knuckle of his forefinger.
“Marietta Pawling,” said Randall. Most of Seymour’s ladies were anonymous but he knew a few, the result of the sporadic late suppers to which Seymour had dragged him. “Is that the pretty one with the reddish hair, the night we went to Mouquin’s?”
“That’s the one. Pretty and reddish hair and would you like to take over my moderately vested interest in her? I’d quite as soon write it off altogether, you know, but she seems to have other ideas.”
“None of this is the least like you. You’ve never had any trouble getting rid of them.”
“I know, I never have, have I?”
“Then what’s the trouble now?”
“Oh, one or two moments of uncharacteristic indecision on my part. Usually one leaves them in no doubt at all of one’s ultimate intentions, but I’m afraid I’ve botched this a bit. Oh, well.” He lit one of the Turkish cigarettes that he had taken to smoking instead of his pipe, which he now liked only when he was working, or when out on a boat. “How are you getting on, by the way? How’s your lark?”
“Leaving for Italy in a couple of weeks.” Randall discovered a sharp wish to keep his concern with Renata well concealed. Perhaps the best move would be to tell Seymour about Baldini, which would prove sufficient reason to drop the subject and also give Seymour the pleasure of having been right. So he said, keeping his tone as casual as possible, “You were right about that hot-tempered Latin. He’s there and that’s the end of it.”
“Too bad,” said Seymour judiciously. “She sounds amusing.”
“She is, rather.” Randall shrugged. He was determined to keep out of his voice and his face any such expression as the ‘gleam’ in his eye about which Seymour had teased him last week. “But I’ve finished the job I undertook to do and that’s all there is to it.”
“Did she pay you?”
“Of course.” The subject of pay had never been mentioned.
“Well,” said Seymour, stretching his long legs and smiling, “it’s a pity she’s due to go back to Italy with her paramour. What would you bet she’d rather stay here? He’s pretty awful, I take it?”
Randall described Baldini.
“Good God!” said Seymour, shuddering. “Can’t you save her from that?”
“Certainly not. Stop talking nonsense, among other things she doesn’t want to be saved. She likes him.”
Seymour stood up with a mocking sigh. “Wasted opportunity. No initiative. Couldn’t I help?” he asked, swinging round.
Randall stopped himself short of a brusque reply. He was aware that any word of this conversation could prove to be a snare; Seymour was trying to catch him off his guard in some admission of interest, or even involvement, with Renata Tosi. Randall knew he lacked the skill to parry this any further and he was distinctly surprised to find how strongly he felt about it. He only laughed, with the best imitation of Seymour’s cool derision that he could manage, and changed the subject. Gesturing at the breakfast dishes and the unkempt room he said, “We’ve simply got to find another cleaning-woman.”
“Yes, I suppose we should.” Seymour’s mood changed. He moved his shoulders as if the thought made him uncomfortable. “It’s a damned nuisance, some woman poking and prying about the house.”
“If we tell her she’s not to go anywhere except this floor and the halls and the drawing-room—”
“How are you going to prevent her? The last one—”
“Oh, I guess we’d just better lock all the doors, all the ones that aren’t locked already. Unless we really pitch in and go through the house and sort everything out.”
“Why?” asked Seymour. “It would be damnably tiresome and what are you going to do with all the—oh, you know—Mama’s things and—”
“I know. It’s more trouble to decide what to do about each thing than just leave it the way it is.”
“Especially since we’re sure to get out of here in another year. If we were going to sell the house eventually, there’d be a reason for going to all that trouble. But since it’s the way it is—”
“Oh, let’s lock the doors and forget it. We’ll just tell the woman to clean wherever the doors aren’t locked.”
“It might be a good idea to find somebody who doesn’t live right in the neighborhood,” said Seymour, trying to keep a tinge of uneasiness out of his voice. “That McBane woman—” He paused. “She’s cracked,” he said.
“They gab, don’t they, people like that. About anyone who’s the least bit different.”
“I don’t want any gab about us.” Seymour spoke gruffly. “Remember that.”
“Oh, I don’t want it either. I’ll find somebody or other. Aren’t you going to the office now, before you go for your automobile?”
“I should.” Seymour’s mood changed swiftly and he grinned. “But I’m not going to.”
“Why, Brother.” There was not only surprise, but anxiety in Randall’s voice. More and more often recently he had noticed Seymour’s absences from his office. No matter what the reason, Randall found this hard to understand. If Seymour was becoming lazy and irresponsible the consequences would soon enough have to be faced; but Randall doubted that. Seymour liked his work and was good at it. He seemed to be on the best of terms with the members of his firm. His absences from the office apparently caused no criticism. Then what was up? At times lately Randall had succumbed to his uneasiness and turned a more inquisitive eye on his brother than he would have dared admit. All he had learned was that Seymour spent more time than formerly down in his workshop in the basement, so Randall had made the only possible conclusion: Seymour must be designing something as a model rather than on paper. Well enough; this morning’s truancy must be sheer excitement about the new motor car. Randall put aside his disquiet and said lightly, “I guess anybody would be too excited to go to work today. You’re lucky they don’t seem to mind, though.”
“Oh, they love me,” said Seymour, with sufficient irony to raise fresh questions in Randall’s mind. “They think I’m indispensable—so anybody but a fool would know how to make the most of that. Why don’t you come along with me now, Ran, I’m going shopping.”
“What for? Why should I go?”
“You might as well get motoring clothes too. You’ll need them.”
“My word. I hadn’t thought of it. Won’t just clothes do?”
“Of course not! Come on, Ran, leave this mess for the time being, let’s walk over to Stern’s and look at these dusters.” Seymour pointed to the morning’s advertisement in the Times—fine crash dusters for three dollars and a half. “Come on.”
Walking West on Twenty-third Street Seymour said suddenly, “See here, why don’t you dine with me and Marietta and somebody else one evening this week? Maybe we could undertake a quiet transfer manoeuvre. She’s not bad, you know,” he said critically. “In her way. I’d just rather—”
“You’d rather get clear without any fireworks. I see perfectly. But—”
“Oh, don’t ‘but’ about everything. How about Friday?”
“Sorry,” said Randall, “I can’t.” He took a deep breath
of resolution and lied stoutly, “I’ve promised to dine with Dr. Fitzhugh on Friday and lay out the summer work afterwards.”
“H’m.” Seymour looked slyly at Randall from behind his thick glasses. He too had stopped to take note of the week’s opera casts in this morning’s Times. He smothered a small laugh.
When the salesman had ridden along with him twice up Central Park West and back down Broadway to the showroom where he dropped off, Seymour drove his automobile slowly and proudly down Seventh Avenue. It was a busy hour of the day. The street swarmed with drays, delivery wagons, cabs, and the carriages of ladies out on their shopping trips to the department stores grouped in Sixth and Seventh Avenues around Twenty-third Street and below. Seymour had got deep into this stream of traffic before he realized that he should have chosen a less crowded avenue. He drove at the same pace as the horse-drawn traffic, nervous about making the attempt to overtake any cart or carriage and startle its horses. He was relieved that his new goggles, a strong special prescription for distance lenses, enabled him to see well, rather better, he thought, than he could under any other circumstances. The car moved along quite smoothly, which was also a relief; he did not want to have to shift gears often while he was concentrating on all this traffic. Bystanders on the pavements pointed and waved at the spectacular scarlet car, and occasionally, in spite of his careful effort not to frighten a horse, he had to pass one, which almost always shied. Its driver then volleyed a string of curses at Seymour, and this had not happened many times before he was cheerfully thumbing his nose at the truckmen. He gained confidence so fast that by the time he reached Thirty-fourth Street he negotiated a right-hand turn without any mishap in spite of the horses, and continued on to Ninth Avenue, where the more critical business of a left-hand turn was safely dispatched. He sighed with relief. The next ten blocks were effortless, he turned right on Twenty-fourth Street, and in a moment had drawn up at the curb outside his house. He shut off the motor and sat there feeling like a king on his throne. Up and down the street heads appeared at windows, slatternly women ran down the high-stepped stoops, delivery boys and passers-by stopped in their tracks, the postman who was making his second round came up to Seymour and congratulated him. Sitting there the master of this wonderful and costly thing, Seymour looked at its gleaming bonnet and all its fascinating instruments, then turned his glance up the walk, past the mournful front yard with Randall’s hyacinths bravely budding, to the drab brown face of the sandstone house. Every window except those of the second floor was covered by a drawn blind, and while there was surely no other way to keep a place which was mostly shut up, Seymour thought what a forbidding sight it was. Lord, he muttered, will I be glad to get out of there! If it weren’t for this—he ran his hand over the beautiful red varnish of his car; but then he smiled. It was worth it. It was worth anything he had to put up with, to possess this one treasure for as long as it would be possible for him to enjoy anything.
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