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Book 1Eight
Usually Sebastian and Mockford went out of town at the end of the week to give a recital somewhere. Sebastian often telephoned the young man, making appointments for the evening or afternoon, but Mockford never dropped in upon them in the morning, and Lucy was glad of it. She had never met him, or seen him except on the concert stage. One morning when Sebastian handed her some songs from Die Winterreise and asked her to look them over, she sighed and shook her head.
"It won`t be much use, I`m afraid. After hearing Mr. Mockford play them, I think the best I can do is just to read them off."
Sebastian laughed. "Jimmy is a little genius with those, isn`t he? I doubt if Schubert ever heard them played so well. In his mind, perhaps. Jimmy`s not especially good with Mozart or the Italian composers; but in the true German Lieder, whatever he does seems to be right. I`ve got a great many hints from him."
On the day Sebastian was to leave for his concert engagements in Minnesota and Wisconsin, Lucy went to the studio to tell him good- bye. It was Mockford who opened the door for her and asked her to come in. She drew back and would have run away if she could.
"No, come in, Miss Gayheart. It is Miss Gayheart, isn`t it? Clement has gone down to Allston`s studio for a moment. Please allow me." He took her coat, waited for her to go into the music room, and limped in after her.
While he was pulling up a chair for her and poking the coal fire, she saw him by daylight for the first time. She had thought of him as a very young man, a youth, indeed. This morning he did not seem young, but wiry and rather hard. Even his white skin looked harder, somewhat rubbery, and there was a yellow glint in it where the razor had not bit close. His copper-red hair fitted his head so snugly that it might have been a well-made wig.
"I`m glad to meet you, Miss Gayheart. Glad to have an opportunity to thank you for filling in." He sat down and looked at Lucy, looked her over deliberately, and she looked at him. When they had met at the door, the light was behind him and she could not see his eyes. They might be called hazel, perhaps, but this morning they were frankly green; a cool, sparkling green, with something restless in them. He was the first to break down in the searching look they gave each other. He rose quickly and softly and lowered the window-shades a little. On the way back to his chair, he began talking:
"I`m very upset to be fussing with doctors and dropping out like this. Neither of us had looked forward to this American season with much pleasure. However, he seems to be getting on very well with you."
"I don`t know as to that. I`ve no experience. I do the best I can." Lucy could not tell whether he meant to be patronizing, or whether he was merely ill at ease. She felt that he had disliked her instantly, as she had him.
"Oh, he rather fancies breaking in a new person. The difficulty is that Clement can never work with anyone who isn`t personally sympathetic to him. The odds are always against our being able to pick up one of that sort on short notice."
Lucy flushed, but said nothing. She was looking at his white, freckled hands, lying on the red velvet arms of the chair. The fingers were square and unusually short for a pianist, but the breadth of palm was remarkable.
"He gives a good account of you"--Mockford shot her a green glance--" and since you do get on, it may be a good thing for him-- a change. He doesn`t find much to divert him here. The truth is, he`s bored to death. I wasn`t for his coming over at all. But he needs the money. And he`d be bored anywhere just now. It`s only fair to say that you`re not hearing the artist we know at home and on the Continent."
"You have been with him a long while, Mr. Mockford?"
"Yes, off and on, a long while," he said carelessly. "There have been interregnums. Mrs. Sebastian takes a fancy to a new pianist now and then, and Clement tries him out. So far they`ve not been altogether satisfactory."
"She is musical then, Mrs. Sebastian?"
"Oh, naturally! She is one of Sir Robert Lester`s daughters." He glanced at Lucy to see whether this enlightened her. It did not, so he murmured: "He was one of our best conductors. The pianist has to make it go with her as well as with Clement, if you mean that."
Lucy coloured again. "No, I did not mean that. I only wanted to know if she is much interested in--in that side of him."
"In all sides, I should say. She was accustomed to direct things in her father`s household. It becomes her very well." He wrinkled up his short nose and squinted as if a strong light had been flashed in his face.
There was a kind of fascination about Mockford, Lucy thought. He looked as if he were made up for the stage, yet there he sat in perfectly conventional clothes, except for a green silk shirt and green necktie. He couldn`t help looking theatrical; he was made so, and she couldn`t tell whether or not he liked being unusual. His manner was a baffling mixture of timidity and cheek. One thing was clear; he was uncomfortable in her company, and certainly she was in his. She was about to rise when she heard a fumbling at the door. It was not Sebastian, however, but the hall porter, with the railway tickets. He gave them to Mockford, told him at what hour their train left, and just when he would have a cab downstairs for them.
As soon as he was gone, Lucy rose and said she couldn`t wait. She wished them both a pleasant journey, and would Mr. Sebastian please let her know if he needed her again?
"He will telegraph you, doubtless. We shall be gone eight days or more; two oratorios and three recitals. He`ll be disappointed at missing you, but he`s very apt to forget engagements."
Lucy went down in the elevator, wondering whether she would ever go up in it again.
She had dreaded meeting Mockford, but she couldn`t have imagined that such a meeting would break her courage and hurt her feelings. She fiercely resented his having any opinions about her or her connection with Sebastian. This was the first time a third person had in any way come upon their little scene, and she hated it. So they had talked her over. Natural perhaps, but it hurt her, all the same. There was something else that disturbed her. She felt that this strange man who was neither young nor old, who was picturesque and a little repelling, was not altogether trustworthy. If she had encouraged him, he would have talked to her too freely about Mrs. Sebastian, and he spoke of Sebastian in a tone that was objectionably familiar. He struck her as terribly selfish and vain, and jealous of the man he called "Clement." She wished she could get his white face out of her mind.
As she hurried along the street, she thought of one mistake after another. Mockford had made her see her position as an outsider must see it. He had made her feel that an inexperienced country girl, with no education, shouldn`t be trying to do his work for him.
Why, then, hadn`t they got a professional accompanist? There were plenty of them in Chicago. It was a farce, that she should be playing for Sebastian; just how had she ever got in for it? She had gone to his studio the first time because she was asked to come; she loved being there, and went again and again. He had seemed pleased and amused, and was very kind. She even felt that he liked her being young and ignorant and not too clever. It was an accidental relationship, between someone who had everything and someone who had nothing at all; and it concerned nobody else. She had dropped down into the middle of this man`s life, and she snatched what she could, from the present and the past. Her playing for him was nothing but make-believe; and his friendliness was make-believe, perhaps. Then there was nothing real about it,-- except her own feeling. That was real.
That afternoon Lucy had to give two lessons at Auerbach`s studio. While she was there the weather changed and a sullen winter rain set in. She was used to walking home in the rain; she left the studio and set off in the right direction. But after a while she found herself facing east instead of west, and very soon she was on the far side of Michigan Avenue. She walked up and down opposite the Arts Building, watching the lights in Sebastian`s windows. After a time the windows went dark. She saw the hall porter carry out a steamer trunk on his shoulder and strap it on the back of a cab. Sebastian and Mockford followed him and stood talking under the awning while the bags were brought down. Then Sebastian tipped the porter and the bag boy, shepherded the lame man into the cab, got in after him, and drove away. Lucy felt discouraged and alone in the world.
She went slowly across the town, getting a kind of comfort out of the crowded streets and the people who rushed by and bumped into her, hurrying away from the rain. In the city you had plenty of room to be lonely, no one noticed, she reflected. And if you were burning yourself up, so was everyone else; you weren`t smouldering alone on the edge of the prairie. She thought she had never before seen so many sad and discouraged people. Tramps, wet as the horses, stood in the empty doorways for shelter. She passed an old man steaming himself in the vapour that rose from an iron grating in the sidewalk.
Usually Lucy went through these streets with her mind racing ahead of her, like a little boy following a balloon, not minding the cold for herself or for anyone else. But tonight all these people seemed like companions, and she felt a kind of humble affection for them.
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