Chambers Robert William
The Business of Life
She laughed: "Isn't it odd? I call her that, too. She asked me to. And do you know, she has been a perfect dear about everything. We shopped together; I never had quite ventured to buy certain fascinating things to wear. And we had such a good time lunching at the Ritz, where I had never dared go. Such beautiful women! Such gowns! Such jewels!"
They halted and looked back across the ice at the distant fire and the dark forms moving about it.
"You've bowled over every man here, as a matter of course," he said lightly. "If you'll tell me how you like the women I'll know whether they like you."
"Oh, I like them; they are as nice to me as they are to each other!" she exclaimed, " – except, perhaps, one or two – "
"Marie Ledyard is hopelessly spoiled; Athalie Vannis is usually discontented," he said philosophically. "Don't expect either of them to give three cheers for another girl's popularity."
They crossed hands and swept toward the centre of the pond on the "outer edge." Jacqueline's skating skirt was short enough for her to manage a "Dutch roll," steadied and guided by Desboro; then they exchanged it for other figures, not intricate.
"Your friend, Mr. Sissly, is dining with us," he observed.
"He's really very nice," she said. "Just a little too – artistic – for you, perhaps, and for the men here – except Captain Herrendene – "
"Herrendene is a fine fellow," he said.
"I like him so much," she admitted.
He was silent for a moment, turned toward her as though to speak, but evidently reconsidered the impulse.
"He is not very young, is he?" she asked.
"Herrendene? No."
"I thought not. Sometimes in repose his face seems sad. But what kind eyes he has!"
"He's a fine fellow," said Desboro without emphasis.
Before they came within the firelight, he asked her whether she had really decided to give them a little lecture on jades and crystals; and she said that she had.
"It won't be too technical or too dry, I hope," she added laughingly. "I told Captain Herrendene what I was going to say and do, and he liked the idea."
"Won't you tell me, too, Jacqueline?"
"No, I want you to be surprised. Besides, I haven't time; we've been together too long already. Doesn't one's host have to be impartially attentive? And I think that pretty little Miss Steyr is signalling you."
Herrendene came out on the ice toward them:
"The cars are here," he said, "and Mrs. Hammerton is cold."
Dinner was an uproariously lively function, served amid a perfect eruption of bewildering gowns and jewels and flowers. Desboro had never before seen Jacqueline in a dinner gown, or even attempted to visualise her beauty amid such surroundings in contrast with other women.
She fitted exquisitely into the charming mosaic; from crown to toe she was part of it, an essential factor that, once realised, became indispensable to the harmony.
Perhaps, he told himself, she did not really dominate with the fresh delicacy of her beauty; perhaps it was only what he saw in her and what he knew of her that made the others shadowy and commonplace to him.
Yet, in all the curious eyes repeatedly turned toward her, he saw admiration, willing or conceded, recognised every unspoken tribute of her own sex as well as the less reserved surrender of his; saw her suddenly developed into a blossom of unabashed and youthful loveliness under what she had once called "the warm sun of approval"; and sat in vague and uneasy wonder, witnessing the transfiguration.
Sissly was there, allotted to Katharine Frere; and that stately girl, usually credited among her friends with artistic aspirations, apparently found him interesting.
So all went well enough, whether gaily or seriously, even with Aunt Hannah, who had discovered under Desboro's smiling composure all kinds of food for reflection and malicious diversion.
For such a small party it was certainly a gay one – at least people were beginning to think so half way through dinner – which merely meant that everybody was being properly appreciated by everybody's neighbours, and that made everybody feel unusually witty, and irrepressible, and a little inclined to be silly toward the end.
But then the after-dinner guests began to arrive – calm, perfectly poised and substantial Westchester propositions who had been bidden to assist at an unusual programme, and to dance afterward.
The stodgy old house rang with chatter and laughter; hall, stairs, library, and billiard-room resounded delightfully; you could scare up a pretty girl from almost any cover – if you were gunning for that variety of girl.
Reggie Ledyard had managed to corner Jacqueline on the stairs, but couldn't monopolise her nor protect himself against the shameless intrusion of Cairns, who spoiled the game until Herrendene raided the trio and carried her off to the billiard-room on a most flimsy pretext.
Here, very properly, a Westchester youth of sterling worth got her away and was making toward the library with her when Desboro unhooked a hunting horn from the wall and filled the house with deafening blasts as signal that the show was about to begin in the armoury.
The armoury had been strung with incandescent lights, which played over the huge mounted figures in mail, and glanced in a million reflections from the weapons on the wall. A curtained and raised stage faced seats for a hundred people, which filled the long, wide aisle between the equestrian shapes; and into these the audience was pouring, excited and mystified by the odd-looking and elaborate electrical attachments flanking the stage in front of the curtained dressing-rooms.
Jacqueline, passing Desboro, whispered:
"I'm so thrilled and excited. I know people will find Mr. Sissly's lecture interesting, but do you think they'll like mine?"
"How do I know, you little villain? You've told Herrendene what you are going to do, but you haven't given me even a hint!"
"I know it; I wanted to – to please you – " Her light hand fell for a moment on his sleeve, and he saw the blue eyes a little wistful.
"You darling," he whispered.
"Thank you. It isn't the proper thing to say to me – but I've quite recovered my courage."
"Have you quite recovered all the scattered fragments of your heart? I am afraid some of these men may carry portions of it away with them."
"I don't think so, monsieur. Really, I must hurry and dress – "
"Dress?"
"Certainly; also make up!"
"But I thought you were to give us a little talk on Chinese jades."
"But I must do it in my own way, Mr. Des – "
"Wait!" They were in the rear of the dressing-room and he took her hand.
"I call you Jacqueline, unreproved. Is my name more difficult for you?"
"Do you wish me to? In cold blood?"
"Not in cold blood."
He took her into his arms; she bent her head gravely, but he felt her restless fingers worrying his sleeve.
"Jacqueline?"
"Yes – Jim."
The swift fire in his face answered the flush in hers; he drew her nearer, but she averted her dainty head in silence and stood so, her hand always restless on his arm.
"You haven't changed toward me in these few weeks, have you, Jacqueline?"
"Do you think I have?"
He was silent. After a moment she glanced up at him with adorable shyness. He kissed her, but her lips were cold and unresponsive, and she bent her head, still picking nervously at the cloth of his sleeve.
"I must go," she said.
"I know it." He released her waist.
She drew a quick, short breath and looked up smiling; then sighed again, and once more her blue eyes became aloof and thoughtful.
He stood leaning against the side of the dressing-room, watching her.
Finally she said with composure: "I must go. Please like what I shall do. It will be done to please you – Jim."
He opened the dressing-room door for her; she entered, turned to look back at him for an instant, then closed the door.
He went back to his place among the audience.
A moment later a temple gong struck three times; the green curtains parted, revealing a white screen, and Mr. Lionel Sissly advancing with a skip to the footlights. The audience looked again at its programme cards and again read:
"No. 1: A Soundless Symphony … Lionel Sissly."
"Colour," lisped Mr. Sissly, "is not only precious for its own sake, but also because it is the blessed transmogrification of sound. And sound is sacred because all vibrations, audible or inaudible, are in miraculous harmony with that holiest of all phenomena, silence!"
"Help!" whispered Ledyard to Cairns, with resignation.
"Any audible rate of regular air vibrations is a musical note," continued Mr. Sissly. "If you double that vibratory speed, you have the first note of the octave above it. Now, the spectrum band is the colour counterpart of the musical octave; the ether vibrates with double the speed at the violet end of the spectrum band that it does at the opposite extremity, or red end. Let me show you the chromatic scales in colour and music – the latter the equivalent of the former, revealing how the intervals correspond when C represents red." And he flashed upon the screen a series of brilliant colours.
"Remember," he said, "that it is with colour as it is with sound – there is a long range of vibrations below and above the first and last visible colour and the first and last audible note – a long, long range beyond compass of the human eye and ear. Probably the music of the spheres is composed of such harmonies," he simpered.
"Modern occidental music is evolved in conformity with an arbitrary scale," he resumed earnestly. "An octave consists of seven whole tones and five half-tones. Combinations and sequences of notes or tints affect us emotionally – pleasurably when harmonious, painfully when discordant. But," and his voice shook with soulful emotion, "the holiest and the most precious alliance ever dreamed of beyond the Gates of Heaven lies in the sacred intermingling of harmonious colour and harmonious silence. Let me play for you, upon my colour organ, my soundless symphony which I call 'Weather.' Always in the world there will be weather. We have it constantly; there is so much of it that nobody knows how much there is; and I do not see very clearly how there ever could be any less than there is. Weather, then, being the only earthly condition which is eternal, becomes precious beyond human comprehension; and I have tried to interpret it as a symphony of silence and of colour divinely intermingled."
Ledyard whispered to Betty Barkley: "I'll go mad and bite if he says another word!"
She cautioned him with a light touch of her gloved hand, and strove very hard to remain serious as Mr. Sissly minced over to his "organ," seated himself, and gazed upward.
All at once every light in the house went out.
For a while the great screen remained invisible, then a faint sheen possessed its surface, blotted out at eccentric intervals by a deep and thunderous tint which finally absorbed it and slowly became a coldly profound and depthless blue.
The blue was not permanent; almost imperceptible pulsations were stirring and modifying it toward a warmer and less decisive hue, and through it throbbed and ebbed elusive sensations of palest turquoise, primrose and shell-pink. This waned and deepened into a yellow which threatened to become orange.
Suddenly all was washed out in unaccented grey; the grey gradually became instinct with rose and gold; the gold was split by a violet streak; then virile scarlet tumbled through crashing scales of green, amethyst, crimson, into a chaos of chromatic dissonance, and vanished engulfed in shimmering darkness.
The lights flashed up, disclosing Mr. Sissly, very pale and damp of features, facing the footlights again.
"That," he faltered, amid a stillness so profound that it seemed to fill the ear like a hollow roar, – "that is weather. If you approve it, the most precious expression of your sympathy will be absolute silence."
Fortunately, not even Reggie Ledyard dropped.
Mr. Sissly passed a lank and lily hand across his large pale eyes.
"Like the Japanese," he lisped, "I bring to you my most precious thought-treasures one at a time – and never more than two between the rising of the orb of day and the veiling of it at eventide. I offer you, on the altar of my colour organ, a transposition of Von Schwiggle's symphony in A minor; and I can only say that it is replete with a meaning so exquisitely precious that no human intelligence has yet penetrated it."
Out went the lights. Presently the screen became visible. Upon it there seemed to be no colour, no hint of any tint, no quality, no value. It was merely visible, and remained so for three mortal minutes. Then the lights broke out, revealing Mr. Sissly half fainting at his organ, and two young women in Greek robes waving bunches of violets at him. And the curtain fell.
"There only remains," whispered Ledyard, "the funny-house for me."
"If you make me laugh I'll never forgive you," Mrs. Barkley warned him under her breath. "But – oh, do look at Mrs. Hammerton!"
Aunt Hannah's visage resembled that of a cornered and enraged mink surrounded by enemies.
"If that man comes near me," she said to Desboro, "I shall destroy him with hatpins. You'd better keep him away. I'm morally and nervously disorganised."
Sissly had come off the stage and now stood in the wide aisle, surrounded by the earnest and intellectual womanhood of Westchester, eagerly seeking more light.
But there was little in Mr. Sissly's large and washed-out eyes; even less, perhaps, than illuminated his intellect. He gazed wanly upon adoration, edging his way toward Miss Frere, who, at dinner, had rashly admitted that she understood him.
"Was it satisfying?" he lisped, when he had attained to her vicinity.
"It was most – remarkable," she said, bewildered. "So absolutely new to me that I can find nothing as yet to say to you, except thank you."
"Why say it? Why not merely look it? Your silence would be very, very precious to me," he said in a low voice. And the stately Miss Frere blushed.
The audience, under the stimulus of the lights, recovered very quickly from its semi-stupor, and everybody was now discussing with animation the unique experience of the past half-hour. New York chattered; Westchester discussed; that was the difference. Both had expected a new kind of cabaret show; neither had found the weird performance disappointing. Flippant and unintellectual young men felt safe in the certainty that neither their pretty partners nor the more serious representatives of the substantial county knew one whit more about soundless symphonies than did they.
So laughter and noise filled the armoury with a gaily subdued uproar, silenced only when Katharine Frere's harp was brought in, and the tall, handsome girl, without any preliminaries, went forward and seated herself, drew the gilded instrument back against her right shoulder, set her feet to the pedals, her fingers to the strings, and wandered capriciously from Le Donne Curiose and the far, brief echoes of its barcarolle, into Koenigskinder, and on through Versiegelt, till she lost herself in a dreamy Bavarian folk-song which died out as sunset dies on the far alms of the Red Valepp.
Great applause; no cabaret yet. The audience looked at the programme and read:
"A Thousand Years B.C. … Miss Nevers."
And Reggie Ledyard was becoming restless, thinking perhaps that a little ragtime of the spheres might melt the rapidly forming intellectual ice, and was saying so to anybody who'd listen, when ding-dong-dang! ding-dong! echoed the oriental gong. Out went the lights, the curtain split open and was gathered at the wings; a shimmering radiance grew upon the stage disclosing a huge gold and green dragon of porcelain on its faïence pedestal. And there, high cradled between the forepaws of the ancient Mongolian monster, sat a slim figure in silken robes of turquoise, rose, and scarlet, a Chinese lute across her knees, slim feet pendant below the rainbow skirt.
Her head-dress was wrought fantastically of open-work gold, inlaid with a thousand tiny metallic blue feathers, accented by fiery gems; across the silky folds of her slitted tunic were embroidered in iris tints the single-winged birds whirling around each other between floating clouds; little clog-like shoes of silk and gold, embroidered with moss-green arabesques inset with orange and scarlet, shod the feet.
Ancient Cathay, exquisitely, immortally young, sat in jewelled silks and flowers under the huge and snarling dragon. And presently, string by string, her idle lute awoke, picked with the plectrum, note after note in strange and unfamiliar intervals; and, looking straight in front of her, she sang at random, to "the sorrows of her lute," verses from "The Maker of Moons," sung by Chinese lovers a thousand years ago:
"Like to a Dragon in the Sky
The fierce Sun flames from East to West;
The flower of Love within my breast
Blooms only when the Moon is high
And Thou art nigh."
The dropping notes of her lute answered her, rippled on, and were lost like a little rill trickling into darkness.
"The Day burns like a Dragon's flight
Until Thou comest in the night
With thy cool Moon of gold —
Then I unfold."
A faint stirring of the strings, silence; then she struck with her plectrum the weird opening chord of that sixth century song called "The Night Revel"; and sang to the end the ancient verses set to modern music by an unknown composer:
"Along the River scarlet Lanterns glimmer,
Where gilded Boats and darkling Waters shimmer;
Laughter with Singing blends;
But Love begins and ends
Forever with a sigh —
A whispered sigh.
"In fire-lit pools the crimson Carp are swirling;
The painted peacocks shining plumes are furling;
Now in the torch-light by the Gate
A thousand Lutes begin the Fête
With one triumphant Cry!
Why should Love sigh?"
The curtain slowly closed on the echoes of her lute; there came an interval of absolute silence, then an uproar of cries and of people getting to their feet, calling out: "Go on! Go on! Don't stop!" No applause except this excited clamour for more, and the racket of moving chairs.
"Good Lord!" muttered Captain Herrendene. "Did you ever see anything as beautiful as that girl?"
And: "Where did she learn such things?" demanded people excitedly of one another. "It must be the real business! How does she know?"
The noise became louder and more emphatic; calls for her reappearance redoubled and persisted until the gong again sounded, the lights went out, and the curtains twitched once more and parted.
She slid down from her cradled perch between the forelegs of the shadowy dragon and came to the edge of the footlights.
"I was going to show you one or two jades from the Desboro collection, and tell you a little about them," she began, "but my lute and I will say for you another song of ancient China, if you like. It was made by Kao-Shih about seven hundred years after the birth of Christ. He was one of the T'ang poets – and not a very cheerful one. This is his song."
And she recited for them: "There was a king of Liang."
After that she stepped back; but they would not have it, to the point of enthusiastic rudeness.
She recited for them Mêng Hao-Jan's "A Friend Expected," from "The Maker of Moons," and the quatrains of the lovely, naïve little "Spring Dream," written by Ts'en-Ts'an in the eighth century.
But they demanded still more. She laid aside her lute and intoned for them the noble lines of China's most famous writer:
"Thou that hast seen six kingdoms pass away – "
Then, warming to her audience, and herself thrilled with the spirit of the ancient splendour, she moved forward in her whispering silks, and, slightly bending, her finger lifted like one who hushes children with a magic tale, she spoke to them of Fei-yen, mistress of the Emperor; and told them how T'ai-Chên became an empress; sang for them the song of Yu Lao, the "Song of the Moon Moth":
"The great Night Moth that bears her name
Is winged in green,
Pale as the June moon's silver flame
Her silken sheen:
No other flame they know, these twain
Where dark dews rain —
This great Night Moth that bears her name
And my sweet Queen;
So let me light my Lantern flame
And breathe Her name."
She held her audience in the palm of her smooth little hand; she knew it, and tasted power. She told them of the Blue Mongol's song, reciting:
"From the Gray Plains I ride,
Where the gray hawks wheel,
In armour of lacquered hide,
Sabre and shield of steel;
The lance in my stirrup rattles,
And the quiver and bow at my back
Clatter! I sing of Battles,
Of Cities put to the sack!
Where is the Lord of the West,
The Golden Emperor's son?
I swung my Mongol sabre; —
He and the Dead are one.
For the tawny Lion of the Iort
And the Sun of the World are One!"
Then she told them the old Chinese tale called "The Never-Ending Wrong" – the immortal tragedy of that immortal maid, "a reed in motion and a rose in flame," from where she alights "in the white hibiscus bower" to where "death is drumming at the door" and "ten thousand battle-chariots on the wing" come clashing to a halt; and the trapped King, her lover, sends her forth
"Lily pale,
Between tall avenues of spears, to die."
And so, amid "the sullen soldiery," white as a flower, and all alone in soul, she "shines through tall avenues of spears, to die."
"The King has sought the darkness of his hands," standing in stricken grief, then turns and gazes at what lies there at his feet amid its scattered
" —Ornaments of gold,
One with the dust; and none to gather them; —
Hair-pins of jade and many a costly gem,
Kingfishers' wings and golden beads scarce cold."
Lingering a moment in the faint reflection of the low-turned footlights, she stood looking out over the silent audience; and perhaps her eyes found what they had been seeking, for she smiled and stepped back as the curtain closed. And no uproar of applause could lure her forth again until the lights had been long blazing and the dancers were whirling over the armoury floor, and she had washed the paint from lid and lip and cheek, and put off her rustling antique silken splendour to bewitch another century scarce begun.
Desboro, waiting at her dressing-room door for her, led her forth.
"You have done so much for me," he whispered. "Is there anything in all the world I can do for you, Jacqueline?"
She was laughing, flushed by the flattery and compliments from every side, but she heard him; and after a moment her face altered subtly. But she answered lightly:
"Can I ask for more than a dance or two with you? Is not that honour enough?" Her voice was gay and mocking, but the smile had faded from eye and lip; only the curved sweetness of the mouth remained.
They caught the music's beat and swung away together among the other dancers, he piloting her with great adroitness between the avenues of armoured figures.
When he had the opportunity, he said: "What may I send you that you would care for?"
"Send me?" She laughed lightly again. "Let me see! Well, then, perhaps you may one day send me – send me forth 'between tall avenues of spears, to die.'"
"What!" he said sharply.
"The song is still ringing in my head – that's all. Send me any inexpensive thing you wish – a white carnation – I don't really care – " she looked away from him – "as long as it comes from you."
