When she returned to Mrs. Brindley's--already she had ceased to think of it as home--she announced her new plans. Mrs. Brindley said nothing, but Mildred understood the quick tightening of the lines round her mouth and the shifting of the eyes. She hastened to explain that Mrs. Belloc was no longer the sort of woman or the sort of landlady she had been a few months before. Mrs. Brindley of the older New York, could neither understand nor believe in the people of the new and real New York whom it molds for better or for worse so rapidly--and even remolds again and again. But Mildred was able to satisfy her that the house was at least not suspicious.

"It doesn't matter where you're going," said Mrs. Brindley. "It's that you are going. I can't bear giving you up. I had hoped that our lives would flow on and on together." She was with difficulty controlling her emotions. "It's these separations that age one, that take one's life. I almost wish I hadn't met you."

Mildred was moved, herself. Not so much as Mrs. Brindley because she had the necessities of her career gripping her and claiming the strongest feelings there were in her. Also, she was much the younger, not merely in years but in experience. And separations have no real poignancy in them for youth.

"Yes, I know you love me," said Cyrilla, "but love doesn't mean to you what it means to me. I'm in that middle period of life where everything has its fullest meaning. In youth we're easily consoled and distracted because life seems so full of possibilities, and we can't believe friendship and love are rare, and still more rarely worth while. In old age, when the arteries harden and the blood flows slow and cold, we become indifferent. But between thirty-five and fifty-five how the heart can ache!" She smiled, with trembling lips. "And how it can rejoice!" she cried bravely. "I must not forget to mention that.

Ah, my dear, you must learn to live intensely. If I had had your chance!"

"Ridiculous!" laughed Mildred. "You talk like an old woman. And I never think of you as older than myself."

"I AM an old woman," said Cyrilla. And, with a tightening at the heart Mildred saw, deep in the depths of her eyes, the look of old age. "I've found that I'm too old for love--for man-and-woman love--and that means I'm an old woman."

Mildred felt that there was only a thin barrier of reserve between her and some sad secret of this strange, shy, loving woman's--a barrier so thin that she could almost hear the stifled moan of a broken heart. But the barrier remained; it would have been impossible for Cyrilla Brindley to talk frankly about herself.

When Mildred came out of her room the next morning, Cyrilla had gone, leaving a note:

I can't bear good-bys. Besides, we'll see each other very soon.

Forgive me for shrinking, but really I can't.

Before night Mildred was settled in the new place and the new room, with no sense of strangeness. She was reproaching herself for hardness, for not caring about Cyrilla, the best and truest friend she had ever had. But the truth lay in quite a different direction. The house, the surroundings, where she had lived luxuriously, dreaming her foolish and fatuous dreams, was not the place for such a struggle as was now upon her. And for that struggle she preferred, to sensitive, sober, refined, impractical Cyrilla Brindley, the companionship and the sympathy, the practical sympathy, of Agnes Belloc. No one need be ashamed or nervous before Agnes Belloc about being poor or unsuccessful or having to resort to shabby makeshifts or having to endure coa.r.s.e contacts. Cyrilla represented refinement, appreciation of the finished work--luxurious and sterile appreciation and enjoyment. Agnes represented the workshop--where all the doers of all that is done live and work. Mildred was descending from the heights where live those who have graduated from the lot of the human race and have lost all that superficial or casual resemblance to that race. She was going down to live with the race, to share in its lot. She was glad Agnes Belloc was to be there.

Generalizing about such a haphazard conglomerate as human nature is highly unsatisfactory, but it may be cautiously ventured that in New England, as in old England, there is a curiously contradictory way of dealing with conventionality. Nowhere is conventionality more in reverence; yet when a New-Englander, man or woman, happens to elect to break with it, nowhere is the break so utter and so defiant. If Agnes Belloc, cut loose from the conventions that had bound her from childhood to well into middle life, had remained at home, no doubt she would have spent a large part of her nights in thinking out ways of employing her days in outraging the conventionalities before her horrified and infuriated neighbors. But of what use in New York to cuff and spit upon deities revered by only an insignificant cla.s.s--and only officially revered by that cla.s.s? Agnes had soon seen that there was no amus.e.m.e.nt or interest whatever in an enterprise which in her New England home would have filled her life to the brim with excitement.

Also, she saw that she was well into that time of life where the absence of reputation in a woman endangers her comfort, makes her liable to be left alone--not despised and denounced, but simply avoided and ignored. So she was telling Mildred the exact truth. She had laid down the arms she had taken up against the social system, and had come in--and was fighting it from the safer and wiser inside. She still insisted that a woman had the same rights as a man; but she took care to make it clear that she claimed those rights only for others, that she neither exercised them nor cared for them for herself. And to make her propaganda the more effective, she was not only circ.u.mspect herself, but was exceedingly careful to be surrounded by circ.u.mspect people. No one could cite her case as proof that woman would expand liberty into license. In theory there was nothing lively that she did not look upon at least with tolerance; in practice, more and more she disliked seeing one of her s.e.x do anything that might cause the world to say "woman would abuse liberty if she had it." "Sensible people,"

she now said, "do as they like. But they don't give fools a chance to t.i.tter and chatter."

Agnes Belloc was typical--certainly of a large and growing cla.s.s in this day--of the decay of ancient temples and the decline of the old-fashioned idealism that made men fancy they lived n.o.bly because they professed and believed n.o.bly. She had no ethical standards. She simply met each situation as it arose and dealt with it as common sense seemed in that particular instance to dictate. For a thousand years genius has been striving with the human race to induce it to abandon its superst.i.tions and hypocrisies and to defy common sense, so adaptable, so tolerant, so conducive to long and healthy and happy life. Grossly materialistic, but alluringly comfortable. Whether for good or for evil or for both good and evil, the geniuses seem in a fair way at last to prevail over the idealists, religious and political. And Mrs. Belloc, without in the least realizing it, was a most significant sign of the times.

"Your throat seems to be better to-day," said she to Mildred at breakfast. "Those simple house-remedies I tried on you last night seem to have done some good. Nothing like heat--hot water--and no eating.

The main thing was doing without dinner last night."

"My nerves are quieter," advanced Mildred as the likelier explanation of the return of the soul of music to its seat. "And my mind's at rest."

"Yes, that's good," said plain Agnes Belloc. "But getting the stomach straight and keeping it straight's the main thing. My old grandmother could eat anything and do anything. I've seen her put in a gla.s.s of milk or a saucer of ice-cream on top of a tomato-salad. The way she kept well was, whenever she began to feel the least bit off, she stopped eating. Not a bite would she touch till she felt well again."

Mildred, moved by an impulse stronger than her inclination, produced the Keith paper. "I wish you'd read this, and tell me what you think of it. You've got so much common sense."

Agnes read it through to the end, began at the beginning and read it through again. "That sounds good to me," said she. "I want to think it over. If you don't mind I'd like to show it to Miss Blond. She knows a lot about those things. I suppose you're going to see Mr.

Crossley to-day?--that's the musical manager's name, isn't it?"

"I'm going at eleven. That isn't too early, is it?"

"If I were you, I'd go as soon as I was dressed for the street. And if you don't get to see him, wait till you do. Don't talk to under-staffers. Always go straight for the head man. You've got something that's worth his while. How did he get to be head man?

Because he knows a good thing the minute he sees it. The under fellows are usually under because they are so taken up with themselves and with impressing people how grand they are that they don't see anything else.

So, when you talk to them, you wear yourself out and waste your time."

"There's only one thing that makes me nervous," said Mildred. "Everyone I've ever talked with about going on the stage--everyone who has talked candidly--has said--"

"Yes, I know," said Mrs. Belloc, as Mildred paused to search for smooth-sounding words in which to dress, without disguising, a distinctly ugly idea. "I've heard that, too. I don't know whether there's anything in it or not." She looked admiringly at Mildred, who that morning was certainly lovely enough to tempt any man. "If there is anything in it, why, I reckon YOU'D be up against it. That's the worst of having men at the top in any trade and profession. A woman's got to get her chance through some man, and if he don't choose to let her have it, she's likely to fail."

Mildred showed how this depressed her.

"But don't you fret about that till you have to," advised Mrs. Belloc.

"I've a notion that, even if it's true, it may not apply to you. Where a woman offers for a place that she can fill about as well as a hundred other women, she's at the man's mercy; but if she knows that she's far and away the best for the place, I don't think a man's going to stand in his own light. Let him see that he can make money through YOU, money he won't make if he don't get you. Then, I don't think you'll have any trouble."

But Mildred's depression did not decrease. "If my voice could only be relied on!" she exclaimed. "Isn't it exasperating that I've got a delicate throat!"

"It's always something," said Mrs. Belloc. "One thing's about as bad as another, and anything can be overcome."

"No, not in my case," said Mildred. "The peculiar quality of my voice--what makes it unusual--is due to the delicateness of my throat."

"Maybe so," said Mrs. Belloc.

"Of course, I can always sing--after a fashion," continued Mildred.

"But to be really valuable on the stage you've got to be able always to sing at your best. So I'm afraid I'm in the cla.s.s of those who'll suit, one about as well as another."

"You've got to get out of that cla.s.s," said Mrs. Belloc. "The men in that cla.s.s, and the women, have to do any dirty work the boss sees fit to give 'em--and not much pay, either. Let me tell you one thing, Miss Stevens. If you can't get among the few at the top in the singing game, you must look round for some game where you can hope to be among the few. No matter WHAT it is. By using your brains and working hard, there's something you can do better than pretty nearly anybody else can or will do it. You find that."

The words sank in, sank deep. Mildred, sense of her surroundings lost, was gazing straight ahead with an expression that gave Mrs. Belloc hope and even a certain amount of confidence. There was a distinct advance; for, after she reflected upon all that Mildred had told her, little of her former opinion of Mildred's chances for success had remained but a hope detained not without difficulty. Mrs. Belloc knew the human race unusually well for a woman--unusually well for a human being of whatever s.e.x or experience. She had discovered how rare is the temperament, the combination of intelligence and tenacity, that makes for success. She had learned that most people, judged by any standard, were almost total failures, that most of the more or less successful were so merely because the world had an enormous amount of important work to be done, even though half-way, and had no one but those half-competents to do it. As incompetence in a man would be tolerated where it would not be in a woman, obviously a woman, to get on, must have the real temperament of success.

She now knew enough about Mildred to be able to "place" her in the "lady" cla.s.s--those brought up not only knowing how to do nothing with a money value (except lawful or unlawful man-trapping), but also trained to a sensitiveness and refinement and false shame about work that made it exceedingly difficult if not impossible for them to learn usefulness. She knew all Mildred's handicaps, both those the girl was conscious of and those far heavier ones which she fatuously regarded as advantages. How was Mildred ever to learn to dismiss and disregard herself as the pretty woman of good social position, an object of admiration and consideration? Mildred, in the bottom of her heart, was regarding herself as already successful--successful at the highest a woman can achieve or ought to aspire to achieve--was regarding her career, however she might talk or might fancy she believed, as a mere livelihood, a side issue. She would be perhaps more than a little ashamed of her stage connections, should she make any, until she should be at the very top--and how get to the top when one is working under the handicap of shame? Above all, how was this indulgently and shelteredly reared lady to become a working woman, living a routine life, toiling away day in and day out, with no let up, permitting no one and nothing to break her routine? "Really," thought Agnes Belloc, "she ought to have married that Baird man--or stayed on with the nasty general. I wonder why she didn't! That's the only thing that gives me hope. There must be something in her--something that don't appear--something she doesn't know about, herself. What is it? Maybe it was only vanity and vacillation. Again, I don't know."

The difficulty Mrs. Belloc labored under in her attempt to explore and map Mildred Gower was a difficulty we all labor under in those same enterprises. We cannot convince ourselves--in spite of experience after experience--that a human character is never consistent and h.o.m.ogeneous, is always conglomerate, that there are no two traits, however naturally exclusive, which cannot coexist in the same personality, that circ.u.mstance is the dominating factor in human action and brings forward as dominant characteristics now one trait or set of traits, consistent or inconsistent, and now another. The Alexander who was Aristotle's model pupil was the same Alexander as the drunken debaucher. Indeed, may it not be that the characters which play the large parts in the comedy of life are naturally those that offer to the shifting winds of circ.u.mstances the greatest variety of strongly developed and contradictory qualities? For example, if it was Mildred's latent courage rescued her from Siddall, was it not her strong tendency to vacillation that saved her from a loveless and mercenary marriage to Stanley Baird? Perhaps the deep underlying truth is that all unusual people have in common the character that centers a powerful aversion to stagnation; thus, now by their strong qualities, now by their weaknesses, they are swept inevitably on and on and ever on. Good to-day, bad to-morrow, good again the day after, weak in this instance, strong in that, now brave and now cowardly, soft at one time, hard at another, generous and the reverse by turns, they are consistent only in that they are never at rest, but incessantly and inevitably go.

Mildred reluctantly rose, moved toward the door with lingering step. "I guess I'd better make a start," said she.

"That's the talk," said Mrs. Belloc heartily. But the affectionate glance she sent after the girl was dubious--even pitying.

IX

TWO minutes' walk through to Broadway, and she was at her destination.

There, on the other side of the way, stood the Gayety Theater, with the offices of Mr. Clarence Crossley overlooking the intersection of the two streets. Crossley was intrenched in the remotest of a series of rooms, each tenanted by under-staffers of diminishing importance as you drew way from the great man. It was next to impossible to get at him--a cause of much sneering and dissatisfaction in theatrical circles. Crossley, they said, was exclusive, had the swollen head, had forgotten that only a few years before he had been a cheap little ticket-seller grateful for a bow from any actor who had ever had his name up. Crossley insisted that he was not a victim of folie de grandeur, that, on the contrary, he had become less vain as he had risen, where he could see how trivial a thing rising was and how accidental. Said he:

"Why do I shut myself in? Because I'm what I am--a good thing, easy fruit. You say that men a hundred times bigger than I'll ever be don't shut themselves up. You say that Mountain, the biggest financier in the country, sits right out where anybody can go up to him. Yes, but who'd dare go up to him? It's generally known that he's a cannibal, that he kills his own food and eats it warm and raw. So he can afford to sit in the open. If I did that, all my time and all my money would go to the cheap-skates with hard-luck tales. I don't hide because I'm haughty, but because I'm weak and soft."

In appearance Mr. Crossley did not suggest his name. He was a tallish, powerful-looking person with a smooth, handsome, audacious face, with fine, laughing, but somehow untrustworthy eyes--at least untrustworthy for women, though women had never profited by the warning. He dressed in excellent taste, almost conspicuously, and the gay and expensive details of his toilet suggested a man given over to liveliness. As a matter of fact, this liveliness was potential rather than actual. Mr.

Crossley was always intending to resume the giddy ways of the years before he became a great man, but was always so far behind in the important things to be done and done at once that he was forced to put off. However, his neckties and his shirts and his flirtations, untrustworthy eyes kept him a reputation for being one of the worst cases in Broadway. In vain did his achievements show that he could not possibly have time or strength for anything but work. He looked like a rounder; he was in a business that gave endless dazzling opportunities for the lively life; a rounder he was, therefore.

He was about forty. At first glance, so vivid and energetic was he, he looked like thirty-five, but at second glance one saw the lines, the underlying melancholy signs of strain, the heavy price he had paid for phenomenal success won by a series of the sort of risks that make the hair fall as autumn leaves on a windy day and make such hairs as stick turn rapidly gray. Thus, there were many who thought Crossley was through vanity shy of the truth by five or six years when he said forty.

In ordinary circ.u.mstances Mildred would never have got at Crossley.

This was the first business call of her life where she had come as an unknown and unsupported suitor. Her reception would have been such at the hands of Crossley's insolent and ill-mannered underlings that she would have fled in shame and confusion. It is even well within the possibilities that she would have given up all idea of a career, would have sent for Baird, and so on. And not one of those who, timid and inexperienced, have suffered rude rebuff at their first advance, would have condemned her. But it so chanced--whether by good fortune or by ill the event was to tell--that she did not have to face a single underling. The hall door was open. She entered. It happened that while she was coming up in the elevator a quarrel between a motorman and a driver had heated into a fight, into a small riot. All the underlings had rushed out on a balcony that commanded a superb view of the battle. The connecting doors were open; Mildred advanced from room to room, seeking someone who would take her card to Mr. Crossley. When she at last faced a closed door she knocked.

"Come!" cried a pleasant voice.

And in she went, to face Crossley himself--Crossley, the "weak and soft," caught behind his last entrenchment with no chance to escape.