The Silver Poppy Part 12

She, when all her maids were gone, With her cheek upon her hand, Gazed across a terraced lawn Down a twilit valley-land Where a white road twined and curled Through the hills that barred the west, Where some unknown outland world Filled her with a strange unrest.

JOHN HARTLEY, "The Valley Princess."

It is the under crust of motive that is the test of the moral pie.--"The Silver Poppy."

Cordelia turned the letter over and over in her hands. Something of late always depressed her when she received these letters from home, in her father's stiff, ungainly hand and his none too perfect spelling.

"Poor old dad, he won't come, after all!" Cordelia found it hard to look as miserable as she ought.

"I told you he wouldn't, my dear," said Mrs. Spaulding, with rigid retrospective conviction of mind.

"But I've leased the flat."

"And I told you not to do that, too."

"Yes; but he promised."

"Only because he thought you wanted him to."

"But I _did_ want him to."

"Then you don't now?"

Cordelia looked up at her companion quickly.

"Yes, yes; I do. But for some reason, you see, he's changed his mind."

"My dear, that was all a big, soft-hearted, foolish idea of yours. What would your poor old father at his age do in New York? How could he be happy or contented in a four-roomed flat after forty acres of hills? How long would he leave his own country for a howling wilderness of brick and mortar like this?"

"He would be near me," said Cordelia valiantly.

"Which probably wouldn't be so pleasant, after all, for either of you.

Do you ever stop to think, my dear, just how much you've changed in the last year or so?"

For a few moments Cordelia was thoughtfully silent. She felt and knew that she had changed.

"But what shall I do with it?" she asked.

"Has it never occurred to you?" Mrs. Spaulding at that precise moment sincerely wished that she possessed the psychic power of mind-reading.

She half suspected that Cordelia might be concealing more than she had need to.

"Let John Hartley have it," the older woman said bluntly. And she had the inward satisfaction of seeing Cordelia color under her direct gaze.

But she recovered herself at a stroke.

"He would never take it," Cordelia said.

"Then you should make him."

"That's something I couldn't do," murmured the other, shaking her head.

"Well, _somebody_ ought to haul him out of that hole down in--in Chinatown, or the Bowery, or wherever it is."

"I know it," agreed Cordelia.

"Then we shall do it ourselves, my dear," said Mrs. Spaulding with a note of finality that was born of a touch of impatience. And Cordelia tried to see the futility of saying anything further.

In fact, before the day was over even her nominal hesitation had vanished, and the two women had decided on many of their plans for the redemption of Hartley. From the hour of that decision both Mrs.

Spaulding and Cordelia made numerous excursions to the little apartment on lower Riverside Drive, and during the next few days the portly footman of the former enthusiastic lady was directed to carry up sundry parcels of hangings and knickknacks and small furniture.

It was a novel experience for both of them, in a way, and both of them were wringing out of it their own secret enjoyment--one retrospective, one antic.i.p.atory. Cordelia, once openly wedded to the idea, fluttered about the apartment as proudly as an April robin building a nest. The lighter touches were not overlooked; a desk was not forgotten, nor were prints and books and those many little things which were reputed to appeal to the student. Mrs. Spaulding, indeed, had given Cordelia an open order on her furniture dealer, and the fruits of her shopping tours had added much to the solid comfort of the place. She herself contributed a silver chafing-dish and a little set of Dresden china, matching her own, which had taken her fancy.

Then, when everything had been made comfortable and home-like, even to the addition of many cl.u.s.ters of carnations and roses about the rooms, a change suddenly came over Cordelia. An unaccountable mood of bashfulness took possession of her, a fear as to just how the intended and all unconscious guest would accept such boldly proffered hospitality, a haunting dread that perhaps he would refuse everything, and fail to understand the balm which she had so artfully made ready to take the sting from the gratuity--that he might leave her humiliated and misunderstood.

At the last moment she disappeared, and hid with a sort of bird-like timidity; and it was Mrs. Spaulding who had to take the somewhat astounded Hartley by the hand and lead him from one room to the other and introduce him to what she prettily called his new home.

Hartley took it all much more genially than they had expected. There was no scene, and but a moment's remonstrance and hesitation. It is true that at first he flushed hotly, and would have said something, but the eager light on Mrs. Spaulding's face kept him silent while he listened to her half-laughing explanation of how a useless flat had fallen into their hands.

"And it's so ridiculously cheap--only sixty dollars a month!"

Something in Hartley's face, a fleeting shadow of embarra.s.sment, made her ask quickly: "That--that wouldn't be too much for you to pay?"

"Oh, no; of course not," he said, with ill-a.s.sumed indifference.

"Then you're not going to be stupid about it?" she demanded, with mock sternness. He was still standing ill at ease, scarcely knowing what to say.

"Oh, no, no; but still I don't quite understand why you should do this for me."

"There's nothing very puzzling about it. We both know very well it wasn't any too comfortable--was it?--down where you've been living. And artists have to have the right kind of place to work in. So we're simply going to chain you down, and _make_ you stay."

She looked at him with a smile he had seldom seen on her lips. Her face that afternoon seemed sadly golden with the afterglow of an almost girlish tenderness that had long dropped beyond the horizon of the years, dignified with a light that seldom dwelt on it.

"And I want you to be happy and enjoy it," she added.

"How could you, Mrs. Spaulding! How could you!" he cried impetuously, taking her hand. It was not often that his Anglican coldness crept away from him, but when it did he was delightfully boyish.

"Is there anything so dreadful in it?"

"Only because it is all so dreadfully undeserved."

"Dear me, it's been the greatest fun for us. And then it's going to be so jolly to drop in every now and then and see you. And poor, dear Cordelia has tried so hard to fix things to please you. So if you shatter our faith in you, sir," she added, going to the window and gazing out where the great silver bosom of the Hudson glimmered and shone in the autumnal sunlight, "or if you fail to write a great book here, then--well, we'll never forgive you, that's all."

He had no answer to make, for he too was looking out over the wide river and already thinking his own great thoughts of the future. Rung by rung he saw the ladder of success before him, and now that he had his foot on it--now he would show them. He would be, he told himself, none the less active; he would allow himself to lose none of his old aggressive discontent. Hereafter, though, he would do only that work which lay nearest his heart. There should be no yielding to transient interests, no bending to the voice of the moment. There was, of course, still his book to finish for Cordelia; that was but a matter of a few weeks. Then he would be free. Then the artist and his opportunity would be face to face.

One small cloud hovered over the clear horizon of his happiness. On the very threshold of his freedom he was finding the lightest of golden chains clinking thinly at his wrists. It was the disquieting sense of obligation toward Cordelia. His liberty had not come to him unqualified.

Hartley could not leave his humble East Side room without a pang or two of regret. One can never turn over such a page in life, he knew, without a touch of sorrow for the chapter that is closed. He felt that he was losing the companions.h.i.+p of those whom a common poverty had drawn closely about him. He felt, too, that it was the death of the democrat in him. He had grown to take an unworded pride in cla.s.sing himself as one of the People. There could be no more of the "glad confident morning again." And if, at times, he had rebelled against the squalor and discomfort of that older life, yet now, when the hour for stepping out of and above it had arrived, he hesitated still again before taking the upper path into that new and untried world. The heat and dust and clangor of the busy streets, the cries and odors where men and women hived closely together, the wailing of young and neglected children, the sense of feverish movement and stir, the hum of the ceaseless machines--all these in the old days had entered into his life and had brought with them a riddle which he had not quite read, a lesson which he had not quite learned. And life there, too, had known its shreds and patches of color. With all its poverty there was a Southern air of gaiety and lightness about this New World East Side. It had none of the dismal and monotonous hideousness and the hopelessness of a Bethnal Green and a Whitechapel. He felt that he was stepping out to light and to liberty, yet taking with him a heavy heart--a heart that had almost grown to love its very cell. And after all, was it liberty? The softer side of life had not been unknown to him, and had not brought him happiness in the old days. A touch of the flagellant in him still turned his eyes toward the more buffeting existence, while at the same time the artist, the apostle for form, cried out in him for its leisured contemplation. Yet better to be the crystal and be broken, he felt, than the tile upon the housetop.

And John Hartley was not altogether and unrestrictedly happy during that first hour in his new apartment.