The Cords of Vanity: A Comedy of Shirking by James Branch Cabell (free reads .txt) 📖

morning. We can do it together, if you don't mind, and if you haven't already seen it. Won't you, Miss Montmorenci? You really ought to see King's College, you know; it is quite famous, because I was educated there, and no end of other interesting things have happened within its venerable confines."

She had drawn close to the hedge. "You really mean it?" she asked. "You would walk through the streets of this Fairhaven with me—with a barn-stormer, with a strolling actress? You'd be afraid!" she cried, suddenly; "oh, yes, you talk bravely enough, but you'd be afraid, of course, when the time came! You'd be afraid!"

I had taken the hat, but my head was still uncovered. "I don't think," said I, reflectively, "that I am afraid of many things, somehow. But of one thing I am certainly not afraid, and that is of mistaking a good woman for—for anything else. Their eyes are different somehow," I haltingly explained, as to myself; then I smiled. "Shall we say eleven o'clock?"

Miss Montmorenci laid one hand upon the hedgetop and slowly twisted off four box-leaves what while I waited. "I—I believe you," she said, in' meditation; "oh, yes, I believe you, somehow, Mr. Townsend. But we rehearse in the morning, and there is a matinee every day, you know, and—and there are other reasons—" She paused, irresolutely. "No," said Miss Montmorenci, "I thank you, but—good night."

"Oh, I say! am I never to see any more of you?"

A century or so of silence now. Her deliberation seemed endless.

At last: "Matinees and rehearsal keep us busy by day. But I am boarding here for the week, and—and I rest here in the garden after the evening performance. It is cool, it—it is like a glass of water after taking rather bitter medicine. And you aren't a bad sort, are you? No; you look too big and strong and clean, Mr. Townsend. And, besides, you're just a boy—"

"In that case," cried Mr. Townsend, "I shall say goodnight with a light heart." And I turned to go.

"A moment—" said she.

"An eternity," I proffered.

"Promise me," she said, "that you will not come again this week to the
Opera House."

My brows were raised a trifle. "I adore the drama," I pleaded.

"And I loathe it. And I act very badly—hopelessly so," said Miss Montmorenci, with an indolent shrug; "and, somehow, I don't want you to see me do it. Why did you mind my calling you a boy? You are, you know."

So I protested I had not minded it at all; and I promised. "But at least," I said, triumphantly, "you can't prevent my remembering Juliet!"

She said of course not, only I was not to be silly.

"And therefore," quoth I, "Juliet shall be remembered always." I smiled and waved my hand. "Au revoir, Signorina Capulet," said I.

And I took my departure. My blood rejoiced, with a strange fervor, in the summer moonlight. It was good to be alive.

7.

He Goes Mad in a Garden

"And, oh, but it is good to be with you again, Signorina!" cried I, as I came with quick strides into the moonlit garden. I caught both her hands in mine, and laughed like an ineffably contented person. There was nothing very subtle about the boy that then was I; at worst, he overacted what he really felt; and just at present he was pleased with the universe, and he saw no possible reason for concealing the fact.

It was characteristic, also, that she made no pretence at being surprised by my coming. She was expecting me and she smiled very frankly at seeing me. Also, in place of the street dress of Tuesday, she wore something that was white and soft and clinging, and left her throat but half concealed. This, for two reasons, was sensible and praiseworthy; one being that the night was warm, and the other that it really broadened my ideas as to the state of perfection which it is possible for the human throat to attain.

2

"So you don't like my stage-name?" she asked, as I sat down beside her. "Well, for that matter, no more do I." "It doesn't suit you," I protested—"not in the least. Whereas, you might be a Signorina Somebody-or-other, you know. You are dark and stately and—well, I can't tell you all the things you are," I complained, "because the English language is so abominably limited. But, upon the whole, I am willing to take the word of the playbill,—yes, I am quite willing to accept you as Signorina Capulet. She had a habit of sitting in gardens at night, I remember. Yes," I decided, after reflection, "I really think it highly probable that you are old Capulet's daughter. I shall make a point of it to pick a quarrel as soon as possible, with that impertinent, trespassing young Montague. He really doesn't deserve you, you know."

Unaccountably, her face saddened. Then, "Signorina? Signorina?" she appraised the title. "It is rather a pretty name. And the other is horrible. Yes, you may call me Signorina, if you like."

3

She would not tell me her real name. She was unmarried,—this much she told me, but of her past life, her profession, or of her future she never spoke. "I don't want to talk about it," she said, candidly. "We play for a week in Fairhaven, and here, once off the stage, I intend to forget I am an actress. When I am on the stage," she added, in meditative wise, "of course everyone knows I am not."

I laughed. I found her very satisfying; she was not particularly intelligent, perhaps, but then I was beginning to consider clever women rather objectionable creatures. There was a sufficiency of them among the Charteris house-party—Alicia Wade, for instance, and Pauline Ashmeade and Cynthia Chaytor,—and I thought of them almost resentfully. The world had accorded them not exactly what they most wanted, perhaps, but, at least, they had its luxuries; and they said sharp, cynical things about the world in return. In a woman's mouth epigrams were as much out-of-place as a meerschaum pipe.

Here, on the contrary, was a woman whom the world had accorded nothing save hard knocks, and she regarded it, upon the whole, as an eminently pleasant place to live in. She accepted its rebuffs with a certain large calm, as being all in the day's work. There was, no doubt, some good and sufficient reason for these inconveniences; not for a moment, however, did she puzzle her handsome head in speculating over this reason. She was probably too lazy. And the few favours the world accorded her she took thankfully.

"You see," she explained to me—this was on Thursday night, when I found her contentedly eating cheap candy out of a paper bag,—"the world is really very like a large chocolate drop; it's rather bitter on the outside, but when you have bitten through, you find the heart of it sweet. Oh, how greedy!—you've taken the last candied cherry, and I am specially fond of candied cherries!" And indeed, she looked frankly regretful as I munched it.

I thought her adorable; and in exchange for that last candied cherry I promised her some of the new books,—David Harum certainly, and, When Knighthood Was in Flower, because everybody was reading it, and Mr. Dooley, because they said this young fellow Dunne was nearly as funny as Bill Nye….

4

In fact, the moon seemed to shine down each night upon that particular garden in a more and more delightful and dangerous manner. And I being a fairly normal and healthy young man, the said moonshine affected me in a fashion which has been peculiar to moonshine since Noah was a likely stripling; my blood appeared to me, at times, to leap and bubble in my veins as if it had been some notably invigorating and heady tipple; and my heart was unreasonably contented, and I gave due thanks for this woman who had come to me unsullied through the world's gutter. For she came unsullied; there was no questioning that.

I pictured her in certain execrable rhymes as the Lady in Comus, moving serene and unafraid among a rabble of threatening, bestial shapes. And I rejoiced that there were women like this in the world,— brave, wholesome, unutterably honest women, whose very lack of cleverness—oh, subtle appeal to my vanity!—demanded a gentleman's protection.

As has been said, I was a well-grown lad, but when I thought in this fashion I seemed to myself, at a moderate computation, ten feet in height,—and just the person, in short, who would be an ideal protector.

Thus far my callow meditations. My course of reasoning was perhaps faulty, but then there are, at twenty-one, many processes more interesting and desirable than the perfecting of a mathematical demonstration. And so, for a little, my blood rejoiced with a strange fervour in the summer moonlight, and it was good to be alive.

5

Thursday was the twenty-third of the month, so upon that afternoon I wrote to Bettie Hamlyn, in far-off Colorado.

It was a lengthy letter. It told her of how desolate her garden was and of how odd Fairhaven seemed without her. It told how I had half changed my mind, and would probably not go to Europe with Mr. Charteris, after all. Bettie had been at pains, in the letter I was answering, to expatiate upon her hatred of Charteris, whom she had never seen. My letter told her, in fine, of a variety of matters. And it ended:

"I went to the Opera House on Monday. But that, like everything else, isn't the same without you, dear. The woman who played Juliet was, I believe, rather good-looking, but I scarcely noticed her in worrying over the pitiful circumstance that the Apothecary and the Populace of Verona had only one pair of shoes between them. Besides, Mercutio kept putting on a bathrobe and insisting he was Friar Laurence…. I would write more about it, if I had not almost used up all my paper. There is just room to say—"

6

This was, as I have stated, on Thursday afternoon. Upon the following evening—

"And why not?" I demanded, for the ninth time.

But she was resolute. "Oh, it is dear of you!" she cried; "and I—I do care for you,—how could I help it? But it can't be,—it can't ever be," she repeated wearily; and then she looked at me, and smiled a little. "Oh, boy, boy! dear, dear boy!" she murmured, half in wonder, "how foolish of you and—how dear of you!"

"And why not?" said I—for the tenth time.

She gave a sobbing laugh. "Oh, the great, brave, stupid boy!" she said, and, for a moment, her hand rested on my hair; "he doesn't know what he is doing,—ah, no, he doesn't know! Why, I might hold you to your word! I might sue you for breach of promise! I might marry you out of hand! Think of that! Why I am only a strolling actress, and fair game for any man,—any man who isn't particular," she added, with the first trace of bitterness I had ever observed in her odd, throaty voice. "And you would marry me,—you! you would give me your name, you would make me your wife! You have actually begged me to be your wife, haven't you? Ah, my brave, strong, stupid Bobbie, how many women must love you,—women who have a right to love you! And you would give them all up for me,—for me, you foolish Bobbie, whom you haven't known a week! Ah, how dear of you!" And she caught her breath swiftly, and her voice broke.

"Yes," I brazenly confessed; "I really believe I would give them all up—every blessed one of them—for you." I inspected her, critically, and then smiled. "And I don't think that I would be deserving any very great credit for self sacrifice, either, Signorina."

"My dear," she answered, "it pleases you to call me old Capulet's daughter,—but if I were only a Capulet, and you a Montague, don't you see how much easier it would be? But we don't belong to rival families, we belong to rival worlds, to two worlds that have nothing in common, and never can have anything in common. They are too strong for us, Bobbie,—my big, dark, squalid world, that you could never sink to, and your gay little world which I can never climb to,—your world that would have none of me, even if—even if—" But the condition was not forthcoming.

"The world," said I, in an equable tone—"My dear, I may as well warn you I am shockingly given to short and