When love is love : a novel

Chapter I

The little clock on the mantel struck two very softly. The big clock in the church nearby rang out the number loudly, while from the floor below the two strokes sounded clear and distinct.

Notwithstanding this, no sign of separating for the night was made by the occupants of the room in which the first clock had struck, for so eagerly were they discussing a remarkable thing that had happened to one of their number, that the lateness of the hour passed unnoticed, or with no comment made upon it.

“If we were to read about this in a book we would think it a highly-colored piece of fiction/’ said the youngest looking of the quartet, leaning forward and unfastening the buttons of her shoes as she spoke. “I always did want to be like somebody in a book, and to be sister to somebody is next to being it yourself. Hurrah for the old maid!” and she threw first one shoe and then the other in the air, and followed it with her hat, which, however, she did aim toward the couch.

“Let me see it again, Portia,” said the brunette of the party, a tall, slender girl, with earnest, deep-set eyes. “It sounds so newspaperish that I can’t exactly take it in.”

She took the paper held out to her and scanned it closely.

“Thirty thousand dollars and twenty acres of land don’t make a Lady Croesus of anybody, but it’s a lift in that direction.”

She stopped and held the lawyer-like looking document closer to the light, while Virginia, balancing herself upon the piano stool, clasped her hands behind her head and watched her intently, as if afraid some flaw might be found in this wonderful paper which had been brought so unexpectedly to her sister that night.

“What time did he bring it, Portia?” asked Joyce, poking the dead coals in the grate energetically. “No, you can’t have this poker. I don’t blame you for letting the fire go out. If I’d had thirty thousand dollars and twenty acres of land overlooking the Hudson River left me, I’d let anything go out; but as I’m not in it, my flesh and blood requires heat,” and she punched the coals so vigorously that the few faint sparks left in them flickered entirely away.

The one they called Portia went over to the register and opened it, then came back and put her hand lightly on Joyce’s shoulder.

“You are in it, dear. You and Virginia and Elizabeth are in it just as much as I, but we must not talk about it any more to-night. For nearly three hours we’ve been going over it, and we’ve got the rest of our lives in which to enjoy it, and now every one of you must go to bed.”

“But can’t we do something first in honor of the occasion?” protested Elizabeth. “Can’t we celebrate in some way? I suppose it wouldn’t do to drink to the old lady’s health as long as she is dead, but we can drink to her departure. Wait a minute.”

She slipped out of the room and was back again almost instantly, with a bottle in her hand.

“Black Mammy gave it to me when I first left home,” she explained, holding it up. “She made it herself, and said it was good for pains and things. I don’t know what it is,” she went on, pressing the bottle between her knees and pulling with all her might on the cork-screw, “but I know it’s good. I think it’s apple brandy, but it may just as likely be anything else. I’m not an authority on drinks, but drunk this must be to-night.”

She poured some of the contents of the bottle into four little glasses and handed one to each of the girls, who involuntarily sniffed it before tasting.

“I think it’s blackberry wine,” said Virginia. “I took some once when I was sick, and it smelt just like this.”

“It’s scuppernong,” said Joyce, and she held her glass up to the light and surveyed it critically.

“Well, it’s all right, whatever it is,” interrupted Elizabeth. “But you haven’t guessed, Portia.”

Portia smiled slightly.

“It’s huckleberry bounce, and it’s a pity to waste it; but if Elizabeth insists we can each take a little. What is the toast, Elizabeth ?” and Portia held her glass expectantly.

“To old maids in general, and this deceased one in particular ! May she find above, all she missed below.”

“And may all spinsters who have money remember others who have none!” added Joyce, taking a good mouthful. “Next.”

“To lonely ladies — otherwise, old maids ! May there be no boarding-houses in heaven.” Virginia drained her glass. “Now, Portia, it’s your turn.”

The latter smiled slightly again.

“You’ve given me an idea,” she said, and she touched each glass lightly with her own.

“To Spinstervilla, the future home of four maiden ladies ! May it resist love, refuse matrimony, and belong to just us for a while — a little while at least.”

The glasses were touched to lips as if not understanding, and then Virginia’s fell to the floor.

“Do you mean we’re going to have a home of our own — a real home ? Is that what you mean, Portia?” and Virginia tried hard to keep her voice from trembling.

II

The older sister took the younger one in her arms for just a minute and kissed the rippling brown hair softly.

“That is what I hope/’ she said gently ; “and now to bed, every one of you. To-morrow we will begin again, but not another word to-night.”

Chapter II

It was a remarkable thing that had happened, and the happening meant much, very much, to those most nearly affected by it.

The girls had gone to the opera, and Portia, glad to have a quiet evening alone, had just seated herself comfortably with a book when some one knocked at the door. At first she hesitated to say come in. She was very tired, and to lose this hour or two of rest was irritating.

The handle of the door turned, however, and a head was poked cautiously inside.

“What’s the matter? Can’t I come in?” said a voice, and before Portia could answer, the owner of it was inside the room and shaking hands with her in an unusual fashion and with very unnecessary energy.

“The girls are out, Brydon,” she said, smiling a little at his peculiar greeting, “and I’m unutterably stupid, so please don’t stay.”

For reply, her visitor tossed his overcoat on a chair opposite and pulled out a paper from an inside pocket and laid it on the table.

“I’m in luck that you’re by yourself,” he said, coming over and pushing her into a big chair.

“Sit down. I know you’re dead tired, but I’ve something here that will make you forget it,” and he picked up the paper he had just put down and tossed it in the air. “I jumped the Perrys’ dinner to-night as soon as I decently could,” he continued, “and I’ve an engagement at 10.30, but I had to tell you about it first,” and again the mysterious paper was taken up, opened, glanced over and once more folded carefully ; but this time he did not put it out of his hands.

“Tell me about what?” asked Portia a little nervously. “Has anything happened ?”

Brydon laughed joyously.

“A very nice thing has happened, I think. I’ve a splendid piece of news for you, my lady. It isn’t such a big thing, but it will be such a help, and I’m so tremendously glad for you that if it were Christmas or the Fourth of July I’d go out and fire off something, but as it’s early October I’ll take it out in a smoke. May I?”

He went over to the mantel, and lighting a cigar took a whiff, then laid it down and came back to the table.

“You remember the Miss Carter who died last week?” he began slowly. “Well, it is about her that I have come to tell you something to-night.”

A relieved look broke over Portia’s face. “You frightened me, Brydon. You looked so important and mysterious when you came in that I thought something was the matter. Has poor old Miss Carter left me her parrot ?” And she leaned back carelessly.

Brydon laughed joyously again.

“She has for a fact; but you needn’t worry. The parrot died the day after the funeral.”

Portia’s look of amazement was sobering and Brydon brought his chair up closer to hers.

“I don’t wonder you’re shocked. It takes nerve to leave a parrot to any one. However, old Miss Carter did the decent thing. The parrot wasn’t the only remembrance she left you. To Virginia she bequeathes, as she expresses it, her two diamond rings and a thousand dollars with which to buy her wedding clothes, and to you thirty thousand dollars’ worth of United States bonds and twenty acres of land overlooking the Hudson River.”

Brydon stopped, for the sudden whiteness of Portia’s face frightened him. He got up and stood in front of her, then began to shake her hands vigorously.

“Get that look off your face, Portia, and smile, laugh, cry, hurrah, or do something to show your appreciation of the old lady’s love for you ! I thought I had such a jolly piece of news for you that you’d dance with delight, and you look, instead, like a ghost. Can’t you say something, do something, make some sort of a noise ?”

Portia’s throat made a little gurgling sound and the color came slowly back in her face, but for a moment she could not speak; then she looked up so appealingly in Brydon’s face that the latter felt his heart-strings pulled tightly.

“Are you sure, very sure, there is no mistake about this, Brydon?”

“Very sure, Miss Deming,” and he bowed as if to a new and desirable client. “Parker let me make a copy of that part of the will relating to you and Virginia, and I’ve brought it up for you to read over at your pleasure. Parker was Miss Carter’s lawyer and had charge of her estate. She had a pretty big pile of money, I believe, and left most of it to hospitals and things, but the little clause about you will be her best hope of heaven.

“I’ll see you to-morrow and talk to you more fully about it,” he went on presently. “Didn’t have but ten minutes to-night, but I wanted you to know as soon as possible. The will was just probated to-day, and I told Parker I’d personally notify you concerning your part in it.” He held out his hand to say good-night.

“The tide has turned at last,” he said cheerily. “You’ve been the pluckiest woman God ever made, Portia, and it’s time for the turning ; good-night,” and in a moment he was gone.

And Portia, standing with the paper in her hands, waited until she heard his footsteps in the street below before she began to read the copy of the will which he had left with her, and which would make so great and wonderful a change in her life.

Chapter III

Born of a name old and honored, into an atmosphere of culture inherited from generations of distinguished ancestors, with health and beauty in full measure and with every resource at her command to develop a naturally brilliant mind, Portia Deming stood on her twenty-third birthday upon the threshold of a future which promised but an ever-widening increase of the happiness of the past. On her twenty-fourth she was in New York struggling to earn her daily bread.

The revolution had been so sudden, so complete, that henceforth the old life belonged to a woman that was dead — the new one to a creature who was strange to herself. In one year death had claimed, almost upon the eve of her wedding day, the man she was to have married. Three months later her father had died, and in settling up the estate it was discovered that bad investments had caused heavy shrinkages in his assets, and from being a rich woman she found herself a poor one.

The beautiful colonial home, which for generations had been lived in by the Demings, was for a few months after her father’s death still

J 7 hers ; but at the end of that time came the final toss of fate, and it was burned to the ground, with little saved but the plate and portraits and a few pieces of furniture.

There was nothing now to be taken save Virginia, the little sister. And had it not been for this little sister, who had been put into her arms when her mother died a few days after the baby's birth, she would gladly have ended the pain of it all and lain down in the church-yard by the side of those she had so passionately loved, and who had loved her so passionately in return — but for her she must live and work.

The old plantation home in Virginia was now a thing of the past, and the place intolerable through its associations. So with a horror of what life would mean there under new conditions, she left it, and in the heart of New York sought, with the throb and stir and action of its restless life, to dull the bitter memories which so completely filled her that they sometimes threatened reason itself.

Virginia, who was twelve years younger than Portia, was put in a school outside the city, and the struggle to live began in earnest when it was found that their small amount of money would be but little more than sufficient to educate and give her the musical training necessary to properly develop the voice which was later to be her means of livelihood.

The new existence began for Portia in a typical boarding-house, where everything she most l8 WHEN LOVE IS LOVE

hated was predominantly conspicuous, and where the people were equally as hopeless as the place. But in proud endurance she made no comment or let any one imagine she was otherwise than content with her present surroundings, and in silence lived her life apart.

Loving the beautiful things of life, craving its brilliant and cultured side, accustomed to its refinements and luxuries, these new experiences cut into the quick of her soul, and she knew not how to adapt herself to them. Beyond a mere bowing acquaintance she knew only one woman in the house besides the landlady.

She had seen something of this one because their rooms adjoined and because she was sick, and as Portia thought rather poor and friendless; but with the others there was nothing in common and she kept herself aloof, scarcely knowing the names of those who sat at the table with her.

She had begun at once to work with her pen, and night after night she wrote steadily, carefully, brilliantly, and day after day her work was — courteously sometimes, discourteously at others — returned to her, and the future looked very dark.

With dogged persistency she kept on, but at the end of her first year she had not had a single article accepted, and the realization was inevitable that she had made a splendid success of failure.

“Write something that will make people feel, Portia,” said Virginia one day, “and let som$-

*9 body else make them just think. Play some kind of a tune on their hearts and let their heads alone for a while. If I knew how to write, I think that’s what I’d do.”

With characteristic common sense, Portia faced her failure bravely. Virginia was right. To write of happiness when life had denied it; of joy when there was no joy; of love when love was dead, had seemed beyond her, and in choosing her subjects she had taken those which were farthest from the experiences closest to her, and the right ring was lacking in everything she had written. That she wrote well she knew, equally as well as many others, but no better ; and until she could do something more forcibly, or more originally, or more desirably than it had yet been done, she had no right, perhaps, to hope for a hearing.

After Virginia left, she took the piles of manuscript, which represented the work of a year, and filled the grate to the full with them ; and as she watched them blaze and burn and blacken, she knew that hope and ambition and pride were being put to a test that was wormwood and gall to her nature, and she was conscious of being tired — tired unto death of the fight she was making with life.

After a while she took Virginia’s advice, however, and her first accepted manuscript was a story for children, a story based upon one that had been told her in her own childhood, and from that time on she realized she had found the field in which she could do her best work. It was not the field she would have chosen, but it was one she could make a success of, for deep down in her heart was a passionate love for babyhood and little children, and the vitality and freshness she had felt were lacking before came into her work, and came unconsciously and naturally.

With the first slight wedge of success came after a while a little larger one, and she was given a position on the staff of the magazine for little folks which had accepted her first article. The salary was not large, but the place put her in touch with other writers and promised to be a sort of training school, and she accepted it gladly, attending faithfully to its duties by day, and late into the night writing for other papers and periodicals, and with a slow but ever-increasing measure of success.

Three years had been passed in this way, and it was at the beginning of the fourth that she one day met her cousin, Brydon Field, face to face on the street. She had been looking in a store window, and turning saw him staring at her with such doubt and wonder and surprise in his eyes that she smiled and held out her hand and spoke to him.

Brydon never exactly forgave her for those years spent in the city without his knowledge. It cut deeper than Portia guessed that she should think the change in her condition would make a change in his friendship, and the hurt was long in healing, that she had so treated him and placed him with the rest.

After a few days his mother, Portia’s aunt, called — drove up in her handsome brougham — and greeted her with all the polite surprise the occasion justified, and after she had gone Portia took up her card and smiled, smiled at the name upon it and what it represented in New York society. She perfectly understood that her aunt’s world and her world were now two very different places, and that their paths would continue to diverge was but the natural sequence of their environment.

Her aunt had always been intolerable to Portia. She had sold her birthright of beauty and blood for a million-dollar mess of pottage, and the transaction had seared her soul unbecomingly. That she could be the mother of Brydon was a misfit of nature. Brydon rang true ever, but his lady-mother was a snob, and Portia was ashamed of her, and as she tore her card up and threw it away she meritally disposed of her aunt in much the same manner.

The years went by and Portia did better and better work, and her pen-name gradually became a familiar one in the literary world. She still wrote mostly for children, however, and it was while looking for some one to illustrate a volume of her stories that she stumbled upon Joyce, and the acquaintance became friendship immediately through one of those sudden currents which cause instant recognition of one’s own kind.

Joyce and Elizabeth were strugglers also, and by a happy accident they had made together the plunge from sheltered Southern homes into the whirl of New York life, and when Portia found them both were pretty well spent in their efforts to keep their feet in the straight and narrow path that would not lead to success, and both were thinking miserably of turning them southwards again.

“Of course I will illustrate your work/’ said Joyce when Portia approached her. “I would paint road fences just now and only charge half price for it ; but how did you find me ?”

Portia told her, and, like all true Southerners, before they separated each had discovered that they knew many of the other’s relatives, and without further formality they proceeded to be friends.

Joyce was a South Carolinian, Elizabeth a Georgian. They had met on the train on their way to the American Mecca, and as each was desperately lonely and afraid, they had joined forces and together had worked and waited — and not yet won — when discovered by Portia. Both were parentless and poor, and Portia’s understanding heart went out to them strongly when she saw the splendid fight they were making. And before they exactly understood what the change would mean, they found themselves living together in an apartment with some pretense of home about it, and with some promise of success in the new line of work which each was about to begin.

Chapter IV

It was a happy coincidence that Portia should have stumbled across Joyce and Elizabeth just as Virginia’s school life was to end. A boarding-house existence was not meant for Virginia, and the hope of a home for her was one that Portia had long been secretly cherishing in her heart.

The change in the manner of living was just in time for the others also, for Elizabeth’s courage and cheerfulness had been tested almost beyond human endurance, and Joyce’s sunny temperament and confident faith were daily becoming more and more beclouded by the monotony of their failure to do the right thing.

Virginia was eighteen when her college life ended, and the record she left behind her was one of which Portia was very proud. In all her classes she had done fine work; but it was to her music she had given her best energies, and the future held out to her tempting possibilities in the way of a musical career.

She was wiser than her masters, for though they predicted for her a success, after a few more years of study, that would startle the American world if she would consent to go in for opera, she only shook her head and laughed and refused to consider it.

“I have no talent for opera, and no taste for the life,” she had said, “and if I tried it I should fail. I am going in for oratorio and church music, and you will see that I am right.” And urge, plead, protest as they might, she was never turned from her purpose.

They were very earnest bread winners — these four young women who found themselves living together after a very short acquaintance ; but that each had entered her right field of work when first they joined forces, was by no means certain.

Elizabeth was a painter of pictures who would never be an artist. Her color sense was faulty, her creative faculty limited, and her drawing too absolutely perfect to be other than mechanical; and yet for years she had studied and worked persistently, and never once admitted she was on the wrong road to the success she was so determined to win.

To copy well, or to make a mechanical design with any degree of accuracy was almost impossible with Joyce, but her baby pictures were full of grace and charm and beauty of pose ; her flowers and animals and bits of illustration showed life and power; and her coloring was deliciously warm and soft and tender. But up to the time Portia found her she had been floundering painfully in black and white, giving only odd moments to the work for which she had positive genius, and back-breaking hours daily to that for which she had barely ordinary capacity.

Both Elizabeth and Joyce had been too close to their work to see its real faults, and at first they were hardly ready to accept the change which Portia most promptly pointed out was necessary to be made if they wished to succeed.

“But one can make so much money in industrial work,” protested Joyce when the matter was being talked over with her. “Fm no artist, Portia; I never expect to paint pictures. But I can draw a little, and I want to make money. Oh, isn’t it horrible to be so poor ! I know a girl who gets a big salary designing for just one house here in New York, and if I could make what she does I’d sell my whole artistic nature and design beer bottles and flower pots and kitchen forks, or anything else for which there was a demand, for I must make money — I must !”

“But you will never make it along industrial lines, dear,” answered Portia. “And it is because I want to help you that I am hurting you by telling you this. We each have our lessons to learn. I have had mine and a very bitter one it was, but if I had not learned it I would not be here to-day. You have more than talent for a certain kind of work, but not for the kind you have mistakenly chosen. You and Elizabeth have strangely mixed your gifts up, and if you don’t face the truth and find out where the diffi-

2 6 culty lies, you will be failures, both of you ; and you shall not be that if I can help you, even if I hurt you in the helping.”

For a while Joyce had sat in silence, nibbling the end of her pencil, then she got up impulsively and threw it out of the window.

“ I don’t deserve your interest and care and patience,” she said a little brokenly, “and I’m horribly stubborn and silly I know; but I did think there was a fortune in door-knobs and chandeliers and wall-paper, and all that sort of thing, and I wanted to get rich and stop this struggling. I’m so tired of being poor and buying substitutes for what I really want; and to think I’ve wasted all these years on a mistake is — ”

She stopped abruptly and her lips quivered. She bit them to keep them still, then walked over to the table on which lay her drawing materials, and began to tear up one of her designs.

Portia put out her hand and stopped her.

“Give it to me,” she said kindly ; “I want to keep some proof of my belief that you were not meant for this kind of thing. A year from now you can see it again, and if you do not agree with me, I will beg your pardon and see that it brings a good price.”

For some time they sat together and talked ; talked of all sorts of possibilities, of ways and means, of how the best preparation should be made for the work Joyce consented to try. And

2 7 then Portia showed her a magazine advertisement which offered a prize for the best design for a wedding gown, and as she did so she laughed to see the light that came in her eyes.

“Door-knobs and andirons and wall-paper would never make you look like that, my lady/’ she said brightly. “You were meant to create, not copy; to originate, not develop, and now if you win this prize I think there is a chance of your getting something permanent from the firm which offers it. This may not be high art, but if it fills a need it will perhaps open the way to another line of work which may be an advance upon this. One of the hardest things in life to accept is that success is but continual development. It is rarely reached at a leap, and you, and I, and all the world must serve our apprenticeship faithfully if in the end we would win anything worth having.”

To both Portia’s and Virginia’s surprise, after some slight protest, Elizabeth took much more readily than they had expected the former’s suggestion that she devote herself to industrial work and for the present, at least, give up oil.

“I have known for some time it was all a mistake my trying to paint,” she said when talking it over ; “but my stubborn pride refused to admit I was beaten. I didn’t even love it, though I pretended to ; but this I do love,” and she held up a piece of paper with a tall antique mantel drawn upon it. “I’ve a thousand designs in my head which are buzzing to get out, and if they ever amount to anything I will owe it to you both for turning me around and starting me in the right direction.” And Elizabeth — proud, independent, cynical, and warm-hearted to an intense degree — walked abruptly out of the room, lest she show too plainly how deeply she felt the mistakes and failures of her years of work and worry.

The summer passed quietly, and the fall opened with a fair measure of success for each. Virginia was still working hard at her music, but in addition to her studying she was earning a comfortable income from the church and concert engagements which she had been fortunate enough to make almost immediately. The peculiar quality of her voice, with its exquisite tenderness and richness, had been recognized at once, and the fear of the future was being lifted largely from Portia’s heart as she realized that if health and strength continued, Virginia would soon be able to make her own terms in the musical world which wanted that which she had to give.