"Oh, meanwhile you just have to wait. You see how things are." She nodded her head towards an inside room where Mrs. Channing was lying down with a slight headache. "Mamma doesn't leave me very often."

Eugene did not know exactly how to take Christina. He had never encountered this att.i.tude before. Her directness, in connection with so much talent, such real ability, rather took him by surprise. He did not expect it--did not think she would confess affection for him; did not know just what she meant by speaking in the way she did of the bungalow and Florizel. He was flattered, raised in his own self-esteem. If such a beautiful, talented creature as this could confess her love for him, what a personage he must be. And she was thinking of freer conditions--just what?

He did not want to press the matter too closely then and she was not anxious to have him do so--she preferred to be enigmatic. But there was a light of affection and admiration in her eye which made him very proud and happy with things just as they were.

As she said, there was little chance for love-making under conditions then existing. Her mother was with her most of the time. Christina invited Eugene to come and hear her sing at the Philharmonic Concerts; so once in a great ball-room at the Waldorf-Astoria and again in the imposing auditorium of Carnegie Hall and a third time in the splendid auditorium of the Arion Society, he had the pleasure of seeing her walk briskly to the footlights, the great orchestra waiting, the audience expectant, herself arch, a.s.sured--almost defiant, he thought, and so beautiful. When the great house thundered its applause he was basking in one delicious memory of her.

"Last night she had her arms about my neck. Tonight when I call and we are alone she will kiss me. That beautiful, distinguished creature standing there bowing and smiling loves me and no one else. If I were to ask her she would marry me--if I were in a position and had the means."

"If I were in a position--" that thought cut him, for he knew that he was not. He could not marry her. In reality she would not have him knowing how little he made--or would she? He wondered.

CHAPTER XXIII.

Towards the end of spring Eugene concluded he would rather go up in the mountains near Christina's bungalow this summer, than back to see Angela. The memory of that precious creature was, under the stress and excitement of metropolitan life, becoming a little tarnished. His recollections of her were as delightful as ever, as redolent of beauty, but he was beginning to wonder. The smart crowd in New York was composed of a different type. Angela was sweet and lovely, but would she fit in?

Meanwhile Miriam Finch with her subtle eclecticism continued her education of Eugene. She was as good as a school. He would sit and listen to her descriptions of plays, her appreciation of books, her summing up of current philosophies, and he would almost feel himself growing. She knew so many people, could tell him where to go to see just such and such an important thing. All the startling personalities, the worth while preachers, the new actors, somehow she knew all about them.

"Now, Eugene," she would exclaim on seeing him, "you positively must go and see Haydon Boyd in 'The Signet,'" or--"see Elmina Deming in her new dances," or--"look at the pictures of Winslow Homer that are being shown at Knoedler's."

She would explain with exactness why she wanted him to see them, what she thought they would do for him. She frankly confessed to him that she considered him a genius and always insisted on knowing what new thing he was doing. When any work of his appeared and she liked it she was swift to tell him. He almost felt as if he owned her room and herself, as if all that she was--her ideas, her friends, her experiences--belonged to him. He could go and draw on them by sitting at her feet or going with her somewhere. When spring came she liked to walk with him, to listen to his comments on nature and life.

"That's splendid!" she would exclaim. "Now, why don't you write that?" or "why don't you paint that?"

He showed her some of his poems once and she had made copies of them and pasted them in a book of what she called exceptional things. So he was coddled by her.

In another way Christina was equally nice. She was fond of telling Eugene how much she thought of him, how nice she thought he was. "You're so big and smarty," she said to him once, affectionately, pinioning his arms and looking into his eyes. "I like the way you part your hair, too! You're kind o' like an artist ought to be!"

"That's the way to spoil me," he replied. "Let me tell you how nice you are. Want to know how nice you are?"

"Uh-uh," she smiled, shaking her head to mean "no."

"Wait till we get to the mountains. I'll tell you." He sealed her lips with his, holding her until her breath was almost gone.

"Oh," she exclaimed; "you're terrible. You're like steel."

"And you're like a big red rose. Kiss me!"

From Christina he learned all about the musical world and musical personalities. He gained an insight into the different forms of music, operatic, symphonic, instrumental. He learned of the different forms of composition, the terminology, the mystery of the vocal cords, the methods of training. He learned of the jealousies within the profession, and what the best musical authorities thought of such and such composers, or singers. He learned how difficult it was to gain a place in the operatic world, how bitterly singers fought each other, how quick the public was to desert a fading star. Christina took it all so unconcernedly that he almost loved her for her courage. She was so wise and so good natured.

"You have to give up a lot of things to be a good artist," she said to Eugene one day. "You can't have the ordinary life, and art too."

"Just what do you mean, Chrissy?" he asked, petting her hand, for they were alone together.

"Why, you can't get married very well and have children, and you can't do much in a social way. Oh, I know they do get married, but sometimes I think it is a mistake. Most of the singers I know don't do so very well tied down by marriage."

"Don't you intend to get married?" asked Eugene curiously.

"I don't know," she replied, realizing what he was driving at. "I'd want to think about that. A woman artist is in a d---- of a position anyway," using the letter d only to indicate the word "devil." "She has so many things to think about."

"For instance?"

"Oh, what people think and her family think, and I don't know what all. They ought to get a new s.e.x for artists--like they have for worker bees."

Eugene smiled. He knew what she was driving at. But he did not know how long she had been debating the problem of her virginity as conflicting with her love of distinction in art. She was nearly sure she did not want to complicate her art life with marriage. She was almost positive that success on the operatic stage--particularly the great opportunity for the beginner abroad--was complicated with some liaison. Some escaped, but it was not many. She was wondering in her own mind whether she owed it to current morality to remain absolutely pure. It was a.s.sumed generally that girls should remain virtuous and marry, but this did not necessarily apply to her--should it apply to the artistic temperament? Her mother and her family troubled her. She was virtuous, but youth and desire had given her some bitter moments. And here was Eugene to emphasize it.

"It is a difficult problem," he said sympathetically, wondering what she would eventually do. He felt keenly that her att.i.tude in regard to marriage affected his relationship to her. Was she wedded to her art at the expense of love?

"It's a big problem," she said and went to the piano to sing.

He half suspected for a little while after this that she might be contemplating some radical step--what, he did not care to say to himself, but he was intensely interested in her problem. This peculiar freedom of thought astonished him--broadened his horizon. He wondered what his sister Myrtle would think of a girl discussing marriage in this way--the to be or not to be of it--what Sylvia? He wondered if many girls did that. Most of the women he had known seemed to think more logically along these lines than he did. He remembered asking Ruby once whether she didn't think illicit love was wrong and hearing her reply, "No. Some people thought it was wrong, but that didn't make it so to her." Here was another girl with another theory.

They talked more of love, and he wondered why she wanted him to come up to Florizel in the summer. She could not be thinking--no, she was too conservative. He began to suspect, though, that she would not marry him--would not marry anyone at present. She merely wanted to be loved for awhile, no doubt.

May came and with it the end of Christina's concert work and voice study so far as New York was concerned. She had been in and out of the city all the winter--to Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Chicago, St. Paul and now after a winter's hard work retired to Hagerstown with her mother for a few weeks prior to leaving for Florizel.

"You ought to come down here," she wrote to Eugene early in June. "There is a sickle moon that shines in my garden and the roses are in bloom. Oh, the odors are so sweet, and the dew! Some of our windows open out level with the gra.s.s and I sing! I sing!! I sing!!!"

He had a notion to run down but restrained himself, for she told him that they were leaving in two weeks for the mountains. He had a set of drawings to complete for a magazine for which they were in a hurry. So he decided to wait till that was done.

In late June he went up to the Blue Ridge, in Southern Pennsylvania, where Florizel was situated. He thought at first he would be invited to stay at the Channing bungalow, but Christina warned him that it would be safer and better for him to stay at one of the adjoining hotels. There were several on the slope of adjacent hills at prices ranging from five to ten dollars a day. Though this was high for Eugene he decided to go. He wanted to be with this marvellous creature--to see just what she did mean by wishing they were in the mountains together.

He had saved some eight hundred dollars, which was in a savings bank and he withdrew three hundred for his little outing. He took Christina a very handsomely bound copy of Villon, of whom she was fond, and several volumes of new verse. Most of these, chosen according to his most recent mood, were sad in their poetic texture; they all preached the nothingness of life, its sadness, albeit the perfection of its beauty.

At this time Eugene had quite reached the conclusion that there was no hereafter--there was nothing save blind, dark force moving aimlessly--where formerly he had believed vaguely in a heaven and had speculated as to a possible h.e.l.l. His reading had led him through some main roads and some odd by-paths of logic and philosophy. He was an omnivorous reader now and a fairly logical thinker. He had already tackled Spencer's "First Principles," which had literally torn him up by the roots and set him adrift and from that had gone back to Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Spinoza and Schopenhauer--men who ripped out all his private theories and made him wonder what life really was. He had walked the streets for a long time after reading some of these things, speculating on the play of forces, the decay of matter, the fact that thought-forms had no more stability than cloud-forms. Philosophies came and went, governments came and went, races arose and disappeared. He walked into the great natural history museum of New York once to discover enormous skeletons of prehistoric animals--things said to have lived two, three, five millions of years before his day and he marvelled at the forces which produced them, the indifference, apparently, with which they had been allowed to die. Nature seemed lavish of its types and utterly indifferent to the persistence of anything. He came to the conclusion that he was nothing, a mere sh.e.l.l, a sound, a leaf which had no general significance, and for the time being it almost broke his heart. It tended to smash his egotism, to tear away his intellectual pride. He wandered about dazed, hurt, moody, like a lost child. But he was thinking persistently.

Then came Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, Lubbock--a whole string of British thinkers who fortified the original conclusions of the others, but showed him a beauty, a formality, a lavishness of form and idea in nature's methods which fairly transfixed him. He was still reading--poets, naturalists, essayists, but he was still gloomy. Life was nothing save dark forces moving aimlessly.

The manner in which he applied this thinking to his life was characteristic and individual. To think that beauty should blossom for a little while and disappear for ever seemed sad. To think that his life should endure but for seventy years and then be no more was terrible. He and Angela were chance acquaintances--chemical affinities--never to meet again in all time. He and Christina, he and Ruby--he and anyone--a few bright hours were all they could have together, and then would come the great silence, dissolution, and he would never be anymore. It hurt him to think of this, but it made him all the more eager to live, to be loved while he was here. If he could only have a lovely girl's arms to shut him in safely always!

It was while he was in this mood that he reached Florizel after a long night's ride, and Christina who was a good deal of a philosopher and thinker herself at times was quick to notice it. She was waiting at the depot with a dainty little trap of her own to take him for a drive.

The trap rolled out along the soft, yellow, dusty roads. The mountain dew was still in the earth though and the dust was heavy with damp and not flying. Green branches of trees hung low over them, charming vistas came into view at every turn. Eugene kissed her, for there was no one to see, twisting her head to kiss her lips at leisure.

"It's a blessed thing this horse is tame or we'd be in for some accident. What makes you so moody?" she said.

"I'm not moody--or am I? I've been thinking a lot of things of late--of you princ.i.p.ally."

"Do I make you sad?"

"From one point of view, yes."

"And what is that, sir?" she asked with an a.s.sumption of severity.

"You are so beautiful, so wonderful, and life is so short."

"You have only fifty years to love me in," she laughed, calculating his age. "Oh, Eugene, what a boy you are!--Wait a minute," she added after a pause, drawing the horse to a stop under some trees. "Hold these," she said, offering him the reins. He took them and she put her arms about his neck. "Now, you silly," she exclaimed, "I love you, love you, love you! There was never anyone quite like you. Will that help you?" she smiled into his eyes.

"Yes," he answered, "but it isn't enough. Seventy years isn't enough. Eternity isn't enough of life as it is now."

"As it is now," she echoed and then took the reins, for she felt what he felt, the need of persistent youth and persistent beauty to keep it as it should be, and these things would not stay.

CHAPTER XXIV.

The days spent in the mountains were seventeen exactly, and during that time with Christina, Eugene reached a curious exaltation of spirit different from anything he had experienced before. In the first place he had never known a girl like Christina, so beautiful, so perfect physically, so incisive mentally, so full of a fine artistic perception. She was so quick to perceive exactly what he meant. She was so suggestive to him in her own thoughts and feelings. The mysteries of life employed her mind quite as fully as they did his. She thought much of the subtlety of the human body, of its mysterious emotions, of its conscious and subconscious activities and relationships. The pa.s.sions, the desires, the necessities of life, were as a fine tapestry for her mind to contemplate. She had no time to sit down and formulate her thoughts; she did not want to write--but she worked out through her emotions and through her singing the beautiful and pathetic things she felt. And she could talk in a fine, poetic melancholy vein on occasion, though there was so much courage and strength in her young blood that she was not afraid of any phase of life or what nature might do with the little substance which she called herself, when it should dissolve. "Time and change happeneth to us all," she would quote to Eugene and he would gravely nod his head.

The hotel where he stopped was more pretentious than any he had been previously acquainted with. He had never had so much money in his life before, nor had he ever felt called upon to spend it lavishly. The room he took was--because of what Christina might think--one of the best. He took Christina's suggestion and invited her, her mother and her brother to dinner on several occasions; the remainder of the family had not arrived yet. In return he was invited to breakfast, to lunch and dinner at the bungalow.

Christina showed on his arrival that she had planned to be with him alone as much as possible, for she suggested that they make expeditions to High Hill, to Bold Face, and The Chimney--three surrounding mountains. She knew of good hotels at seven, ten, fifteen miles distance to which they could go by train, or else they drive and return by moonlight. She had selected two or three secluded spots in thickets and groves where the trees gave way to little open s.p.a.ces of gra.s.s, and in these they would string a hammock, scatter their books of verse about and sit down to enjoy the delights of talk and love-making.

Under the influence of this companionship, under cloudless skies and in the heart of the June weather, Christina finally yielded to an arrangement which brought Eugene into a relationship which he had never dreamed possible with her. They had progressed by degrees through all the subtleties of courtship. They had come to discuss the nature of pa.s.sion and emotion, and had swept aside as negligible the conviction that there was any inherent evil in the most intimate relationship. At last Christina said frankly: "I don't want to be married. It isn't for me--not until I've thoroughly succeeded, anyhow. I'd rather wait--If I could just have you and singleness too."

"Why do you want to yield yourself to me?" Eugene asked curiously.

"I don't know that I exactly want to. I could do with just your love--if you were satisfied. It's you that I want to make happy. I want to give you anything you want."

"Curious girl," observed her lover, smoothing her high forehead with his hand. "I don't understand you, Christina. I don't know how your mind works. Why should you? You have everything to lose if worst came to worst."

"Oh, no," she smiled. "I'd marry you then."

"But to do this out of hand, because you love me, because you want me to be happy!" he paused.

"I don't understand it either, honey boy," she offered, "I just do."

"But why, if you are willing to do this, you wouldn't prefer to live with me, is what I don't understand."

She took his face between her hands. "I think I understand you better than you do yourself. I don't think you'd be happy married. You might not always love me. I might not always love you. You might come to regret. If we could be happy now you might reach the point where you wouldn't care any more. Then you see I wouldn't be remorseful thinking that we had never known happiness."

"What logic!" he exclaimed. "Do you mean to say you wouldn't care any more?"

"Oh, I'd care, but not in the same way. Don't you see, Eugene, I would have the satisfaction of knowing that even if we did separate you had had the best of me."

It seemed astounding to Eugene that she should talk in this way--reason this way. What a curious, sacrificial, fatalistic turn of mind. Could a young, beautiful, talented girl really be like this? Would anybody on earth really believe it if they knew? He looked at her and shook his head sorrowfully.

"To think that the quintessence of life should not stay with us always." He sighed.

"No, honey boy," she replied, "you want too much. You think you want it to stay, but you don't. You want it to go. You wouldn't be satisfied to live with me always, I know it. Take what the G.o.ds provide and have no regrets. Refuse to think; you can, you know."

Eugene gathered her up in his arms. He kissed her over and over, forgetting in her embrace all the loves he had ever known. She yielded herself to him gladly, joyously, telling him over and over that it made her happy.

"If you could only see how nice you are to me you wouldn't wonder," she explained.

He concluded she was the most wonderful being he had ever known. No woman had ever revealed herself to him so unselfishly in love. No woman he had ever known appeared to have the courage and the insight to go thus simply and directly to what she desired. To hear an artist of her power, a girl of her beauty, discussing calmly whether she should sacrifice her virtue to love; whether marriage in the customary form was good for her art; whether she should take him now when they were young or bow to the conventions and let youth pa.s.s, was enough to shock his still trammelled soul. For after all, and despite his desire for personal freedom, his intellectual doubts and mental exceptions, he still had a profound reverence for a home such as that maintained by Jotham Blue and his wife, and for its results in the form of normal, healthy, dutiful children. Nature had no doubt attained to this standard through a long series of difficulties and experiments, and she would not readily relinquish it. Was it really necessary to abandon it entirely? Did he want to see a world in which a woman would take him for a little while as Christina was doing now, and then leave him? His experience here was making him think, throwing his theories and ideas up in the air, making a mess of all the notions he had ever formed about things. He racked his brain over the intricacies of s.e.x and life, sitting on the great verandas of the hotel and wondering over and over just what the answer was, and why he could not like other men be faithful to one woman and be happy. He wondered whether this was really so, and whether he could not. It seemed to him then that he might. He knew that he did not understand himself very clearly; that he had no grasp on himself at all as yet--his tendencies, his possibilities.

These days, under such halcyon conditions, made a profound impression on him. He was struck with the perfection life could reach at odd moments. These great quiet hills, so uniform in their roundness, so green, so peaceful, rested his soul. He and Christina climbed, one day, two thousand feet to a ledge which jutted out over a valley and commanded what seemed to him the kingdoms and the powers of the earth--vast stretches of green land and subdivided fields, little cottage settlements and towns, great hills that stood up like friendly brothers to this one in the distance.

"See that man down in that yard," said Christina, pointing to a speck of a being chopping wood in a front s.p.a.ce serving as a garden to a country cottage fully a mile distant.

"Where?" asked Eugene.

"See where that red barn is, just this side of that clump of trees?--don't you see? there, where the cows are in that field."

"I don't see any cows."

"Oh, Eugene, what's the matter with your eyes?"

"Oh, now I see," he replied, squeezing her fingers. "He looks like a c.o.c.kroach, doesn't he?"

"Yes," she laughed.

"How wide the earth is and how small we are. Now think of that speck with all his hopes and ambitions--all the machinery of his brain and nerves and tell me whether any G.o.d can care. How can He, Christina?"

"He can't care for any one particular speck much, sweet. He might care for the idea of man or a race of men as a whole. Still, I'm not sure, honey. All I know is that I'm happy now."

"And I," he echoed.

Still they dug at this problem, the question of the origin of life--its why. The tremendous and wearisome age of the earth; the veritable storms of birth and death that seemed to have raged at different periods, held them in discussion.

"We can't solve it, Eugenio mio," she laughed. "We might as well go home. Poor, dear mamma will be wondering where her Christina is. You know I think she suspects that I'm falling in love with you. She doesn't care how many men fall in love with me, but if I show the least sign of a strong preference she begins to worry."

"Have there been many preferences?" he inquired.

"No, but don't ask. What difference does it make? Oh, Eugene, what difference does it make? I love you now."

"I don't know what difference it makes," he replied, "only there is an ache that goes with the thought of previous experience. I can't tell you why it is. It just is."

She looked thoughtfully away.

"Anyhow, no man ever was to me before what you have been. Isn't that enough? Doesn't that speak?"

"Yes, yes, sweet, it does. Oh, yes it does. Forgive me. I won't grieve any more."

"Don't, please," she said, "you hurt me as much as you hurt yourself."