A social lion

Front matter

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Chapter I The Dressing-room Of La Caralita

The low rapid tones of a woman’s voice, a quick rejoinder, and then a light ring of laughter came from behind the closed door of the dressing-room. The group around it outside closed up their ranks and watched expectantly. Presently a man who stood with his back to the door, and whose head had hitherto drooped forward, straightened up before them and spoke :

“Now, fellows, move on there! She’s coming out directly, and doesn’t want you blocking up the passage. She says so.’’

“Humph! Bobby’s her latest,” sneered one of the party, in high collar, top hat, and with the inevitable cigarette between his lips. “He can order at our expense for to-night. Never mind. She’ll choose again in a week; and then, ta-ta, Courtenay!”

With this, and a patronizing flap of his fair hand the man went off toward the dirty stairs, followed by the rest of the characterless forms. Robert Courtenay alone remained at the door of the dancer’s dressing-room. His tall, slender figure, handsome face, with its gray eyes, egotistical mouth, and the closely-cut, curly, black hair, were in prominent contrast to the vapid features of the club-men who had i just disappeared toward the wings. And still, Robert Courtenay was one of them, heart and soul. His aristocratic family had left him this, together with an inadequate fortune, as his heritage. Only at times was he more dare-devil, more totally reckless than it was possible for them to be. They knew him well, liked him well, were secretly consumed with envious awe of him. He knew them, liked their admiration, despised them, and mocked at himself for knowing them and their ways.

This periodic pursuit of some woman was one of their ways, and one to which Courtenay took with peculiar ease. He was more than ordinarily popular with the unreasoning sex, and had never yet discovered one of them unwilling to yield all her time to him and his graceless caprices. The ease of his conquests made him fickle, and little Garth had been wrong when he dared the remark that it was La Caralita who would choose again. Not so. She might hold herself lucky, he knew, if she could keep Robert the redoubtable, at her side for another ten days. Courtenay, too, knew this, and smiled as he mused at her door. Presently the dancer came out. The fiveminute bell had sounded.

Helen Howard was, for her class, a remarkablelooking woman. She did not appear old, but she was not young. Wrinkles had not come, but in her great dark eyes shone the strange, baffling light that grows more brilliant with each blow of Fate. She was not a small person; her eyes were brown, her hair, under the yellow wig, of a deep red, her teeth were small, her nose short and straight, her mouth sensitive, and her forehead white. Over her black tights and rose-colored gauze she wore a long gray cloak, which she drew more closely about her as she hurried up the stairway toward the stage. Her appearance was made from a large canvas rose, which stood nodding quite naturally in the center of the stage at a height of some fifteen feet. She herself was cramped into the hollow of the flower during a preliminary ballet, and it required no little art to spring forth at the right instant and flutter gracefully to the stage upon her rose-leaf wings, supported by a steel wire fastened to the back of her flexible bodice.

La Caralita was an artist. There was no fartherfamed dancer on the stage at that day than she. She had earned her reputation and her two thousand a week by years of hard, hard work, at a cost which only she alone could understand. Time had steadily intensified the bitterness of her sacrifice until her memory became a bondman which never left her, even now, as she smiled an au revoir upon Robert Courtenay, and climbed carefully up into her flowerbox.

The orchestra dropped from the last chords of the overture into the first notes of a quick, swaying dance. The curtain rolled back, and a little applaudic murmur from the people, expectant of their dancer, died away. A rosy light flooded the empty stage. Then from the wings came the ballet, brushing by the little crowd of dress-suited creatures whom the manager had not the pocket to command to the front. Now, the flower girls circled, broke into stars, formed again in squares, advanced, retreated, and finally paused in a serpentine wave about the great pink rose which was slowly unfolding its huge petals. Here was La Caralita’s cue. The flower stood open, the dancer’s head appeared. There came a succession of rapid jerks. The wooden stem quavered and creaked. There was a woman’s scream. A wire fell from the flies; then came a heavy crash, and in the center of the stage lay a heap of debris, soiled canvas, splinters of wood, bits of netting, and in the midst of all a palpitating mass of shredded gauze, rent silk and streaming hair that covered a woman.

Just how it happened no one knew. By now the curtain was down, the music stopped, the stage-manager before the audience, and the queen of her art lying supine on the stage, unconscious and groaning, after a fall that might well have killed her.

A throng of men and women from below, half dressed, half wigged, daubed with paint, were pouring up the narrow stairs, crying out to know what had happened. The ballet-girls for the most part wept hysterically. One or two, however, more sensible than the rest, knelt beside the still senseless woman and took her hands, while some men fanned her vaguely with their hats and shouted for brandy. At length, to the relief of all, Dobbs, the manager, appeared, anxiety and steadiness in his face, biting words on his tongue, and authority in his very walk. Under his direction matters progressed.

Four scene-shifters lifting La Caralita gingerly, carried her downstairs and placed her on an extemporized bed on the floor of her stuffy little room. Here

Fifine, her maid, weeping excitedly, took her in charge, bathing the rouge from the flushed cheeks, wiping the black from the quivering lashes, plucking off the confining wig, and straightening the rags of tulle that hung in masses about her.

A moment later the dancer, brought shudderingly back to life through copious administrations of liquor, languidly opened her eyes and looked up at her attendant. A wrench of pain forced another groan through the pallid lips, and the poor creature cowered back among her pillows, crying dizzily.

There was a murmured chorus of voices near at hand, and through the half-open door could be seen the same group of men that had waited for the appearance of their latest fancy before the curtain had risen. Their phrases were rapid now. Some of them had even lost a part of their resemblance to the lay-figures in tailors’ windows. But the odor of Turkish tobacco was still strong in the passage. La Caralita, in the dressing-room, closed her eyes and turned her head away. That scene was so wearily familiar, and this land of pain so strangely new.

“Send them away, Fifine,’’ she said, hoarsely.

Before the maid had risen from her knees, however, a man entered the room and slammed the door tight shut in the faces of his companions. It was Courtenay again. He stood in the center of the little place with his hands in his pockets, looking at her with a bored expression.

“Another advertisement, eh?’’

There was a slight pause, for the woman did not instantly grasp his meaning. When it came to her at length, she gave a painful exclamation of anger, a moment later breaking into a bitterly tragic laugh.

“I’m keeping the delusion up well, you think?”

The cynical gray eyes under the black lashes changed a little as he went nearer to her.

“Where are you hurt, then,” he asked, more gently.

She looked at him without answering. The cut of his first words had gone deep. But he could find a reply if he chose in the agony of her dim eyes. No acting could force such an expression into them, and no words’could equal the power of their silence. All her soul was in them, and for the first time in his life Courtenay recognized a little part of the utter helplessness of a woman of her profession when her day is over. He threw back his head and shook it; a trick of his when he was not pleased with himself.

“Dobbs has sent for a doctor, Helen. He ought to be here by now. Just lie still, and don’t fret till he comes. It mayn’t be so Tad. Knocked you up awfully, though, hasn’t it — dear? I say, Fifine — a — haven’t you a neglig£ of some sort here for — for Helen? Get those rags off, if you can. They’re frightful.”

The girl came up immediately with a long loose gown of silk and lace. Courtenay, bending over the injured woman, took her hand and kissed it, looking at her with a queer tenderness in his face.

“Good night,” he said. “I’ll see that you’re looked^after. ”

Helen smiled, and her smile was rarely sweet. “Good night, Bob,” she said, softly, through her pain. “Don’t think of me. You’d be better off without a thought of such a one as I.”

“Don’t turn moralist, Helen,’’ he returned sharply, drawing his brows together.

The dancer closed her eyes and slightly shook her head. So, without another word between them, he had shrugged his shoulders and was gone.

Now for the space of five minutes Helen Howard was left alone with the maid. Fifine stood beside the dancer, and eyed her closely for a second, but the dark eyes were closed, and the spasmodic breathing came more easily. “She is asleep,” thought Fifine, who forthwith seated herself at the chaotic dressing-table and applied one or two of the instruments thereon to her own face. This was an amusement of which a woman does not readily tire, and the mirror was still returning the contemplative gaze of two nondescript eyes when there came a succession of rapid taps on the door. Fifine knew the author of those taps, and lost not an instant in throwing open the door. She had a wholesome respect for the manager, who stood without, with another man, and was slightly relieved to behold Dobbs walk away again rapidly toward the scene of his unlucky performance. The other entered immediately, with the explanatory remark, “I’m the doctor.”

The small man closed the door carefully, and trotted at once to his patient’s side. Doctor James Bartwick Kent was the best known physician about town. This was due to his wife, who was an imposing figure, indeed, in Chicago society. In respect to this estimable lady, then, we will refrain from explaining just how her husband was able so quickly to reach the remote locality of a second-rate theater.

Dr. Kent was a short, stout, cheery little fellow, with white mutton-chops, and gold-rimmed spectacles, which found a difficult resting place upon his jolly little nose. Pince-nez were absolutely out of the question. He was in evening dress, and his tiny feet twinkled merrily in patent leather pumps. He had stood looking down at his prospective patient thoughtfully for a moment, when Helen opened her eyes and looked at him with recognition.

“Jim? Oh, I’m glad you’ve come!’’

The doctor carefully felt her pulse. He shook his head over it. “Now, a short examination, Helen. I’ll be as careful as possible.”

There was a series of rapid little taps, nods, and fingerings over his patient, while Helen turned her head from the doctor and set her teeth. Then the little man stepped back, and looked thoughtfully at her, putting his ten fingers together.

“Aha! I see. Not so bad after all. Some slight injury. For six months you must be careful, but after that you’ll be as light as before on those toes of yours. ”

“Six months! It’s impossible!”

“Pardon me. It’s not only possible, but absolutely necessary. If you were to be operated upon it would be quite different. But an operation is not to be had in your case. At least until I can make a thorough examination, I should be willing to swear that it is simply a sufficiently serious internal contusion. Six months, my dear girl. Six months, or I refuse the case as hopeless.”

“Hopeless — hopeless,” repeated Helen Howard, in a dreamily expressionless tone. “Why not better so? You know my reasons, surely. You cannot imagine that I have laid anything by. Why not better death than an almshouse?”

“If that were the choice, well and good. But it isn’t death that lies before you. It is life-long invalidism, Helen.”

“Oh! great God ! what is left me, then? My day is past. I’ve nothing left to sell. What men give away flowers and diamonds? Another takes my place before the public. I am a memory — to them. Are you unworldly enough to think that people cherish such memories? Don’t scowl, Jim. Tell me, would the plate be heavy when returned to me from my congregation?”

The doctor was silent for a moment before her. Then he spoke hesitatingly. “I admit that these old admirers would not be likely to stand by you at this time. It would hardly be human nature, you know. You give nothing — they give nothing. Like everything else, it is a case of traffic more or less. But I was not thinking altogether of these men. You cannot have forgotten — can you? — a certain gentleman whose gift of a plain gold ring I see has been removed from its finger? I can remember him, and the old days well, even yet. Can you place no reliance, Helen, on your husband — Her — ”

“Fifine! Fifine! Go and tell some. Qrte to call a carriage. We must have one to go home in. I shan’t want you for a few minutes, you know.”

As this shrill interruption broke upon the doctor’s words, he turned toward the woman who lay twisting with the pain which the sudden movement had caused.

“I beg pardon,” he said, earnestly; ‘‘I really forgot the girl.”

‘‘But how near you came to pronouncing his name! Why, Jim, even in my sleep I think I keep watch over myself for fear I should speak it. You and he and the priest were the only ones that knew it. Through all these years I have kept his secret as a holy trust, and now I find you referring to it as if it were something to be talked of every day! Have you ever breathed it to any one else? Don’t you realize how much is at stake — for him?”

‘‘Yes, Helen; I do and have realized what a responsibility rested with me in sharing that secret. No one has ever learned it from me. But now, here, my sympathies are with you. Your sacrifice was a noble one, but — ”

‘‘My sacrifice? It was no sacrifice. At that time he was as penniless as I. I had my choice, and I chose my liberty. That is all. It is different now, but that can never make any change for me. I — I do not ask it. ”

The conversation was closed. Kent could say nothing more. But he felt so strongly on the subject that he failed to hear the entrance of a third person, whose appearance sent the color flying into the dancer’s face, and as instantly it paled again as io she watched him. Kent was made aware of his presence by a cap and ulster which were let slip to the floor behind his feet, and he turned to stare amazedly into the face of Helen Howard’s husband.

Herbert Stagmar was not a short man, but one so muscularly built that he impressed one more with the broadness of his shoulders than with his length of limb. His head was superbly poised, his face that of a strong man. His hair was brown, not thick, and slightly wavy. His forehead was powerful, his brows straight, eyes of steel blue, nostrils sensitive as those of an Arabian horse, his chin smooth and finely molded, and his mouth straight and strong. There was a certain majesty in his movements, that was accustomed to make people who knew him but slightly somewhat nervous and awed in his presence. This last was possibly due in part to his reputation, which was great enough to make him the equal, in the eyes of his countrymen, of any crowned head of other nations. He carried about him an undeniable atmosphere of conscious power, uncontrollable ambition, unthwarted success; but he had never been called conceited. He was beyond conceit. He was rarely flattered, for he was beyond that, too. People who knew him thought often of him, feared, worshiped, envied, admired, sought after, hated, but never despised him. All of his known actions were quoted, discussed, and commented on continually. His inner life — that which he chose that none should know — was, curiously enough, in this curious world, never known. He had the invaluable faculty of secretion.

Stagmar to-night was clad in a rough suit of brown tweeds, for it was not his habit to frequent such places of amusement. He had been upon one of his periodic expeditions into the heart of the vulgar district of an ugly city, and had passed the theater from whose posters his wife’s name stared at him, in his return to cleanliness. Outside its doors he caught the rumors of the accident, and had immediately sought the dressing-room to which his name admitted him. It was supposed by Dobbs that the great writer was seeking data for a story.

When Stagmar entered he had given his wife one rapid look, which checked the exclamation that had risen, with her color, to her lips. Kent, after seeing him, was silent, waiting to perceive the purpose of his friend’s coming. The dancer’s husband did not keep them waiting.

“They told me, Helen, that you had been severely injured. ’’

“They told the truth,’’ she answered in a low voice, scarcely looking at him.

“Yes. It’s quite true,’’ Kent put in. “I’ve been saying to — to Mrs. Stagmar — pardon me, Herbert — that a retirement from her profession and entire rest will be necessary for some months.’’

“I trust,’’ replied the writer in a calm voice, “that Miss Howard will not oppose such a necessity.’’

Helen Stagmar looked her husband squarely in the face. She was perfectly colorless, and her lip curled defiantly. “Miss Howard does oppose a necessity, and for very good and sufficient reasons, Mr. Stagmar,” she answered quietly, with something nearer to contempt in her tone than she had ever used before toward this man.

At her words Stagmar smiled, genially and still with an illogical sadness. “I beg your pardon, my dear,” he said.

She looked at him for a moment with quivering lips. He was himself, as she had known him, always. In another instant she burst into a passion of uncontrollable sobs.

“Come, come, Helen, this is unnecessary. I came here to discuss many things with you. There is no time to waste. Calm yourself, for we must see what is to be done. Kent, kindly see to a carriage. I shall want about twenty minutes,” he added in an undertone as the doctor rose at once, and, after nodding agreement, went to join Fifine.

For the first time in a little more than three years Herbert Stagmar and his wife were alone together. The man sat silently beside her couch as she struggled painfully to regain composure. He remained perfectly passive, but his simple presence acted upon her like a draught of some soothing drug. In three or four minutes she lay quiet, only sobbing convulsively at intervals, as a child does after a punishment. With her eyes resting intently upon him, Stagmar began to speak :

“You must surely understand, Helen, that I am well aware of your reasons for not being willing to undergo the rest which Kent has prescribed for you. Your entire independence of me, ever since we separated, has hurt me often, but I would never interfere with what you rejoiced in as your liberty. I know, too, that with the life you have led, you could not, even if you had cared to, have laid by sufficient money to carry you through a time when you would be incapable of earning any. Understand that I have no wish to break that compact which we made many years ago. I cannot receive you into my house, nor, after the necessary arrangements have been made, shall I even visit you. I am a selfish man. My name and fame are all in all to me, for they are all I have. Nevertheless you are still, in a way, my wife. I cannot permit you to suffer, bodily. Therefore I say to you something which I request you not to oppose. During the next six months you must accept my support. You shall live where you choose, and shall choose whom you will for a companion. A suitable allowance in every way will be made, and you must be settled within two days. That is all I have to say; but I shall remain with you to-night until you have accepted the fact. I am sorry to appear harsh to you, as I do, I see, but I’ve been growing harsh of late years, I fancy, Helen.”

It was some moments before Helen Howard spoke, and when she did so it was with dreamy, cat-like precision:

‘‘And Joan? Had you forgotten that all these years I have been dancing for two?”

‘‘Oh! I had forgotten your child, I confess. Is she not provided for?”

‘‘No. And there is something that I must say to you. Something that you must know and believe. You have never once called her yours, Herbert. I have noticed that — I used to cry over it bitterly in

H those last quarrels. But she is. She is our child — - yours and mine. You must believe that. I have supported her through these years gladly. It has not been hard, and I should not have wanted to yield her even to you. I have seen her several times. She is very beautiful, Herbert. I do not wish to give her up.”

“I have not asked you to give her up. She must be old enough by this time, however, to be able to earn something for herself. She is — she must be seventeen. ”

Helen had looked fixedly at her husband during this speech. A light color tinged her cheeks as she spoke again. “You do not believe what I tell you?”

Stagmar slightly shook his head. “It is so obviously to your interest, Helen.”

“Oh, how low I must seem to you, if you will take such a point of view! Would to God, Herbert, that there were some way of proving to you that I am telling the truth! It is for the girl’s sake — and for yours, too, Herbert. Joan has seemed to me like a bit of your soul put into a woman’s body. She might almost make up to you, if you would let her, what you lost in — in me. Why wouldn’t you see her just once?”

Herbert Stagmar shook his head impatiently to stop her speaking. He had retreated into a corner, and was studying over something. La Caralita knew his ways. He had not changed. She watched his face anxiously, knowing by its expression that his mind was working rapidly. Stagmar’s argument with himself was arbitrary. He had always been rather given to ways of action which the world deemed remarkable and unwarranted. He was proud of his sympathy with outcast humanity, and to this his private works bore ample testimony. It would be through a winding course that one would have to follow his logical sophistry this time, and it is perhaps fairer to him to state merely the conclusion at which he ultimately arrived, only pausing to remark that he had this time accomplished rather more than he set out to do. At the end of five minutes he turned toward his wife with a simple remark: “I will adopt the girl, but she must be called Joan Howard.” Then he added as an after-thought, “Of course, living with me she will be treated as mine, but she can have no mother. ”

Tears that were rather bitter brightened the mother’s eyes at the last words, but they were not allowed to fall. “Thank you, Herbert,” she said a little brokenly. “You are just. I have not asked for more than that.”

“Had you been what in those days I was foolish enough to pray you to be, I would have given to you all that is wasted in me now. But, as you are, what more can you be to me than to — well — Snippington, let us say.”

“Snippington!” Helen gave a little cry, and for the first time clutched Stagmar’s arm nervously. “You know of him, Herbert? Then do not let him learn that he is discovered. He would kill me, Herbert, if he should be exposed.”

“Kill you? Is he brute enough for that? However, you’re in no danger. None of us who know it cares enough to tell. He’s a cad. I doubt if the ladies who attend his church so devoutly would believe — ”

There came the doctor’s tap at the door. “One thing more, Herbert. You — are no longer of the faith, are you?”

“No, Helen; I am nothing. I have discarded both a creed and a God. The .God of men is not worthy of worship. ”

“Oh! but Joan?” she added, breathlessly.

“I attempt no influence in religion. My daughter shall choose her own belief.”

Helen sighed heavily. Not even his use of the word daughter could take her mind from the weight of her sacrifice of faith, as she knew it. But her “so be it” was said.

Stagmar had been a little surprised at himself at the ease with which he was able to pronounce that word, and surprised, too, at the pleasant warmth which crept into him at the knowledge that something human belonged to him.

Kent and Fifine entered together. “The carriage is ready, Miss Howard, if you are. You had better not attempt to walk. Lie still there, and Stagmar and I will take you up just as you are, on that rug. You must have a warm wrap, though.”

The little man looked about helplessly, until Fifine approached with a heavy cloak of black velvet edged with gray fur. After it was on, La Caralita lay back for a moment, faint with the effort of rising. She was utterly unconscious of her husband’s eyes fixed on her with an irrepressible sorrow. And at that moment no one knew the heartbreak in his soul. Never had painter a subject like this. Here, in the subdued light, all the age and weariness and sin in the face of the woman were hidden, and her features were white and delicately strong. Her glorious red hair waved back from her head in rough masses, her eyes were dark and velvety as night, and the rich folds of her mantle made a marvelous background for the transparent jeweled hands which might have done so much that was good, and had done so much that was — not good.

The writer and the doctor bore her slowly, painfully, toward the carriage. The maid followed behind, carrying extra wraps and pillows. They placed her upon one seat in a reclining position, while Kent and Fifine sat opposite. The dancer smiled faintly out at the little crowd which had gathered at the door, clenching her hands in her pain, and looking in badlyconcealed anxiety toward Stagmar.

“Are you not coming?” she asked in an undertone.

Stagmar lifted his hat, and bowed gravely. “I should inconvenience you,” he said, politely; then seeing her eager disclaimer, he added in a different tone, “No, really Helen, it is impossible. I shall come to your hotel to-morrow morning for a few moments, that the arrangements may be completed. Expect me at twelve, and until then you are to resign yourself entirely to the doctor. Good night.”

While the little group of men went back into the theater, gossiping eagerly over what they had seen, Stagmar watched the carriage drive out of the alley in the darkness, and then he, too, moved away toward the avenue, thinking deeply. He confessed now that he had astonished himself. Had not the old fascination died yet within him? Could he still feel for this woman? Verily, she merited no kindness from him, though she had been his wife; for Herbert Stagmar was an upright man, one who loathed bestiality in himself with all his heart.

Helen Howard, burning with fever in her hotel bed, the delirious phrases running incoherently off her lips, was still happier than it seemed to her she had ever been. Before her distorted vision rose what appeared to her to be a great ball of glorious, warming light, and the name that she called it by was the next day’s noon.

i9

Chapter II

A very trim footman and a very slim maid, both in the garb quietly suited to their positions, stood side by side on the platform of one of the great railway stations in Chicago. They spoke together occasionally in subdued tones, now and then glancing expectantly at the clock on the side of the building nearest them.