CHAPTER XXVII.
“IN MANY MOODS.”
EMILY was lunching alone at the Astor House in the innermost of the upstairs dining-rooms. She had just ordered when a woman entered—obviously a woman of the stage, although she was quietly dressed. She had a striking figure, small but lithe, and her gown was fitted to its every curve. As she passed Emily’s table, to the left of the door, the air became odorous of one of those heavy, sweet perfumes whose basis is musk. Her face was round, almost fat, babyish at first glance. Her eyes were unnaturally sleepy and had many fine wrinkles at the corners. She seated herself at the far end of the room, so that she was facing the door and Emily.
She called the waiter in a would-be imperious way, but before she had finished ordering she was laughing and talking with him as if he were a friend. Emily noted that she spoke between her shut teeth, like a morphine-eater. As the waiter left, her face lighted with pleasure and greeting. Emily was amazed as she saw the man toward whom this look was directed—Stilson. He did not see Emily when he came in, and, as he seated himself opposite the woman who was awaiting him, could not see her. Nor could Emily see his face, only his back and now and then one of his hands. As she eagerly noted every detail of him and of his companion, she suddenly discovered that there was a pain at her heart and that she was criticising the woman as if they were bitter enemies. “I am jealous of her,” she thought, startled as she grasped all that was implied in jealousy such as she was now feeling.
When had she come to care especially for Stilson? And why? Above all, how had she fallen in love without knowing what she was doing? By what subtle chemistry had sympathy, admiration, trust, been combined into this new element undoubtedly love, yet wholly unlike any emotion she had felt before? “Mary must have set me to thinking,” she said to herself.
The woman talked volubly, always with her teeth together and her eyes half-closed. But Emily could see that she was watching Stilson’s face closely, lovingly. Stilson seemed to be saying nothing and looking absently out of the window. As Emily studied the woman, she was forced to confess that she was fascinating and that she had the attractive remnants of beauty. Her manner toward Stilson made her manner toward the waiter a few minutes before seem like a real self carefully and habitually hidden from some one whom she knew would disapprove it. “She tries to live up to him,” thought Emily. “And how interesting she is to look at—what a beautiful figure, what graceful gestures—and—I wonder if I shall look as well at—at her age?”
She could not eat. “How I wish I hadn’t seen her with him. Now I shall imagine—everything, while before this I thought of that side of his life as if it didn’t exist.” She went as quickly as she could, for she felt like a spy and feared he would turn his head. In the next room, which was filled, she met Miss Furnival, the “fashion editor” of the Democrat’s Sunday magazine. Miss Furnival asked if there were any tables vacant in the next room and hastened on to get the one which Emily had left.
An hour later Miss Furnival stopped at her desk. “Didn’t you see Stilson in that room over at the Astor House?” she said, and Emily knew that gossip was coming.
“Was he there?” she asked.
“Yes—up at the far end of the room—with Marguerite Feronia. She used to be his wife, you know—and she divorced him when he went to pieces. And now they live together—at least, in the same house. Some say that he refused to re-marry her. But Mr. Gammell told me it was the other way, that she told a friend of his she wasn’t fit to be Stilson’s wife. She said she’d ruined him once and would never be a drag on him again.”
“I suppose he’s—tremendously in love with her?” Emily tried in vain to prevent herself from stooping to this question.
“I don’t know,” replied Miss Furnival. “Mr. Gammell told me he wasn’t. He says Stilson is a sentimentalist. It seems there is a child—some say a boy, some say a girl. She first told Stilson it was his, and then that it wasn’t. Mr. Gammell says Stilson stays on to protect the child from her. She’s a terror when she goes on one of her sprees—and she goes oftener and oftener as she grows older. You can always tell when she’s on the rampage by the way Stilson acts. He goes about, looking as if somebody had insulted him and he’d been too big a coward to resent it.”
Instead of being saddened by this recital, Emily was in sudden high spirits and her eyes were dancing. “I ought to be ashamed of myself,” she thought, “but I can’t help it. I wish to feel that he loathes her.” Then she said aloud in a satirical tone, to carry off her cheerful expression: “I had no idea we had such a hero among us. And Mr. Stilson, of all men! I’m afraid it’s a piece of Park Row imagination. Probably the truth is—let us say, less romantic.”
“You don’t know Mr. Gammell,” Miss Furnival sighed. “He’s the last man on earth to indulge in romance. He thinks Stilson ridiculous. But I think he’s fine. He’s the best of a few good men I’ve known in New York who weren’t good only because of not having sense enough to be otherwise.”
“Good,” repeated Emily in a tone that expressed strong aversion to the word.
“Oh, mercy no! I don’t mean that kind of good,” said Miss Furnival. “He’s not the kind of good that makes everybody else love and long for wickedness.”
After this Emily found herself making trips to the news-department on extremely thin pretexts, and returning cheerful or depressed according as she had succeeded or failed in her real object. And she began to think—to hope—that Stilson came to the Sunday department oftener than formerly. When he did come—and it certainly was oftener—he merely bowed to her as he passed her desk. But whenever she looked up suddenly, she found his gaze upon her and she felt that her vanity was not dictating her interpretation of it. She had an instinct that if he knew or suspected her secret or suspected that she was guessing his secret, she would see him no more.
As the months passed, there grew up between them a mutual understanding about which she saw that he was deceiving himself. She came to know him so well that she read him at sight. Being large and broad, he was simple, tricking himself when it would have been impossible for him to have tricked another. And it made her love him the more to see how he thought he was hiding himself from her and how unconscious he was of her love for him.
She had no difficulty in gratifying her longing to hear of him. He was naturally the most conspicuous figure in the office and often a subject of conversation. She was delighted by daily evidences of the power of his personality and by tributes to it. For Park Row liked to gossip about his eccentricities,—he was called eccentric because he had the courage of his individuality; or about his sagacity as an editor, his sardonic wit, his cynicism concealing but never hindering thoughtfulness for others. Shrinking from prying eyes, he was always unintentionally provoking curiosity. Hating flattery, he was the idol and the pattern of a score of the younger men of the profession. His epigrams were quoted and his walk was copied, his dress, his way of wearing his hair. Even his stenographer, a girl, unconsciously and most amusingly imitated his mannerisms. All the indistinct and inferior personalities about him, in the hope of making themselves less indistinct and inferior, copied as closely as they could those characteristics which, to them, seemed the cause of his standing up and out so vividly. One day Emily was passing through an inside room of the news-department on her way to the Day Telegraph Editor. Stilson was at a desk which he sometimes used. He had his back toward her and was talking into the portable telephone. She glanced at the surface of his desk. With eyes trained to take in details swiftly, she saw before she could look away an envelope addressed to Boughton and Wall, the publishers, a galley proof projecting from it, and on the proof in large type: “17 In Many Moods.”
“He has written a book,” she thought, “and that is the title.” And she was filled with loving curiosity. She speculated about it often in the next six weeks; then she saw it on a table in Brentano’s.
“Yes, it’s been selling fairly well—for poetry,” said the clerk. “There’s really no demand for new poetry. Ninety-one cents. You’ll find the verses very pretty.”
Poetry—verses—Stilson a verse-maker! Emily was surprised and somewhat amused. There was no author’s name on the title-page and it was a small volume, about twenty poems, the most of them short, each with a mood as a title—Anger, Parting, Doubt, Jealousy, Courage, Foreboding, Passion, Hope, Renunciation—at Renunciation she paused and read.
It was a crowded street-car and she bent low over the book to hide her face. She had the clue to the book. Indeed she presently discovered that it was to be found in every poem. Stilson had loved her long—almost from her first appearance in the office. And in these verses, breathing generosity and self-sacrifice, and well-aimed for one heart at least, he had poured out his love for her. It was sad, intense, sincere, a love that made her proud and happy, yet humble and melancholy, too.
As she read she seemed to see him looking at her, she felt his heart aching. Now he was holding her tight in his arms, raining kisses on her face and making her blood race like maddest joy through her veins. Again, he was standing afar off, teaching her the lesson that the love that can refrain and renounce is the truest love. It was a revelation of this strange man even to her who had studied him long and penetratingly. So absorbed was she in reading and re-reading that when she glanced up the car was at One hundred and fourteenth street—miles past her house. She walked down to and through the Park in an abandon of happiness over these love letters so strangely sent, thus accidentally received. “I must never let him see that I know,” she thought—“yet how can I help showing it?”
She met him the very next day—almost ran into him as she left the elevator at the news-department floor where he was waiting to take it on its descent. For the first time she betrayed herself, looking at him with a burning blush and with eyes shining with the emotion she could not instantly conceal. She passed on swiftly, conscious that he was gazing after her startled. “I acted like a child,” she said to herself, “and here I am, trembling all over as if I were seventeen.” And then she wrought herself up with thinking what he might think of her. “Where is my courage?” she reassured herself, “What a poor love his would be if he misunderstood me.” Nevertheless she was afraid that she had shown too much. “I suppose it’s impossible to be courageous and restrained when one loves.”
But when she saw him again—two days later, in the vestibule of the Democrat Building—it was her turn to be self-possessed and his to betray himself. He was swinging along with his head down and gloom in his face. He must have recognised her by her feet—distinctive in their slenderness and in the sort of boots that covered them. For he suddenly gave her a flash-like glance which said to her as plainly as words: “I am in the depths. If I only dared to reach out my hand to you, dear!” Then he recovered himself, reddened slightly, bowed almost guiltily and passed on without speaking.