IN the sound of rain falling through soft darkness there is a healing quality of peace. Its persistence—the very effortless unswerving rhythm of the downpour—have the power of engulfing the spirit in a kind of sensuous oblivion. Even upon one of so violent and unreflective a nature as Ellen Tolliver, one so young, so impatient and so moody, the sound of the autumn rain falling on the roof and in the parched garden had its effect. It created a music of its own, delicate yet primitive, abundant of the richness of earth and air, so that presently in a room a dozen feet from her grandfather, Ellen stopped sobbing and buried her face in the pillow of her great oak bed, soothed, peaceful; and presently in the darkness of her room she lay at last silent and still, her dark hair tossed and disheveled against the white of the pillowcase. She lay thus in a solitude of her own, separated only by the thinness of a single wall from the solitude in which her grandfather sat enveloped. If the sound of her sobbing had been audible, there was another wall that would have stopped it . . . the wall of warm autumn rain that beat upon the earth and shut her away from all the world.
She knew no reason for this outburst of weeping. If there had been a reason she would not have locked herself in her room to weep until she had no more tears. She could not say, "I weep because some one has been unkind to me," or "I weep because I have suffered a sudden disappointment." She wept because she could not help herself; because she had been overcome by a mood that was at once melancholy and heroic, sad yet luxuriously sensuous. After a fashion, her weeping gave her pleasure. Now that the sound of the rain had quieted her, she lay bathing her soul in the darkness. Somehow it protected her. Here in a locked room where no splinter of light penetrated, she was for a little time completely herself. That was the great thing. . . . She was herself. . . . There was no one about her. . . . Sometimes this same triumphant aloofness came to her from music. . . . It too was able to set her apart where she was forced to share nothing of herself with any one. In the darkness people couldn't pry their way into your soul. All this she understood but vaguely, with the understanding of a sensitive girl who has not learned to search her own soul. And this understanding she kept to herself. None knew of it. The face she showed to the world betrayed nothing of loneliness, of wild and turbulent moods, of fierce exasperation. To the world she was a girl very like other girls, rather more hasty and bad-tempered perhaps, but not vastly different—a girl driven alone by a wild vague impulse hidden far back in the harassed regions of her impatient soul. It is one of the tragedies of youth that it feels and suffers without understanding.
For an hour she lay quite still listening to the rain; and at the end of that time, hearing sounds from below stairs which forecast the arrival of supper, she rose and lighted the gas bracket above her dressing table.
At the first pin point of flame, the world of darkness and rain vanished and in its place, as if by some abracadabra, there sprang into existence the hard, definite walls of a room, square and commonplace, touched with quaint efforts to create an illusion of beauty. The walls were covered with wall paper bearing a florid design of lattices heavily laden with red roses on anemic stalks. Two Gibson pictures, faithfully copied by an admirer, hung on either side of the oak dresser. They were "The Eternal Question" and "The Queen of Hearts." The bed, vast and ugly, and still bearing in the white counterpane the imprint of Ellen's slim young body, fitted the room as neatly as a canal barge fits a lock. The chairs varied in type from an old arm chair of curly maple, brought across the mountains into the middle-west by Ellen's great-grandfather and now relegated to the bedroom, to a damaged patent rocker upholstered in red plush with yellow tassels. On the top of the dressing table lay a cover made elaborately of imitation Valenciennes and fine cambric, profusely ornamented by bow knots of pink baby ribbon.
By the flickering light, the girl arranged her hair before the mirror. It was dark, heavy, lustrous hair with deep blue lights. Hastily tossing it into a pompadour over a wire rat, she washed her eyes with cold water to destroy the redness. She was preparing the face she showed the world. It was not a beautiful face though it had its points. It was too long perhaps and the nose was a trifle prominent; otherwise it was a pleasant face, with large dark eyes, fine straight lips and a really beautiful chin. It held the beginnings of a beauty that was fine and proud. The way the chin and throat leapt from her shoulders was a thing at which to marvel. The line was clear, triumphant, determined. Even Ellen was forced to admire it. What she lacked in beauty was amply compensated by the interest which her face inspired. The pompadour, to be sure, was ridiculous. It was but a week or two old, the sign of her emancipation from the estate of a little girl.
For a long time she studied the reflection in the mirror. This way and that she turned her proud head, admiring all the while the line of the throat and tilted chin. It delighted her as music sometimes delighted her, with a strange leaping sensation of triumph over people about her.
She thought, "Am I to be great one day? Am I to be famous? Is it written in my face? I will be or die . . . I must be!"
Early in the afternoon, before the long rain settled in for the night, she had walked out of Miss Ogilvie's little house down the brick path under the elms with a heart singing in triumph. Before she arrived home, the sense of triumph had faded a little, and by the time she reached her room it was gone altogether, submerged by a wave of despair. It seemed that her triumph only made life more difficult; instead of being an end it was only a beginning. It created the most insuperable difficulties, the most perilous and agitating problems.
Miss Ogilvie lived in a weathered old house that withdrew from the street behind a verdant bulwark of lilacs, syringas, and old apple trees abounding in birds,—wrens, blackbirds, finches and robins. In the warm season, as if the wild birds were not enough, a canary or two and a pair of love-birds hung suspended from the roof of the narrow piazza high above the scroll-work of the jig-saw rail. There were those who believed that Miss Ogilvie, in some earlier incarnation, was herself a bird . . . a wren perhaps, or a song sparrow flitting in and out of hedges and tufts of grass, shaking its immaculate tail briskly in defiance of a changing world.
When she sat in her big rocker listening to the horrible exercises of her pupils, she resembled a linnet on a swaying bough. She rocked gently as if she found the motion soothing to some wildness inside her correct and spinsterish little body. Always she rocked, perhaps because it helped her to endure the horrible renderings of Schumann and Mendelssohn by the simpering daughters and the sullen sons of the baker, the butcher, the candle-stick maker. For Miss Ogilvie understood music and she was sensitive enough. In her youth, before her father failed in the deluge that followed the Civil War, she had been abroad. She had heard music, real music, in her day. In all the Town she and Grandpa Tolliver alone knew what real music could be. She had even studied for a time in Munich where she lived in her birdlike way in a well chaperoned pension. The other girls fluttered too, for in her day women were all a little birdlike; it was a part of their training.
In the early afternoon when Ellen Tolliver came for her weekly lesson, Miss Ogilvie, dressed in a tight-fitting basque of purple poplin ornamented with pins of coral and cameo, received her formally into the little drawing-room where she lived in a nest of pampas grass, conch shells, raffia baskets, and spotless bits of bric-a-brac. There was in the reception nothing unusual; Miss Ogilvie permitted herself no relaxation, even in the privacy of her own bed-chamber. She remained a lady, elegantly so, who supported herself in a genteel fashion by giving music lessons. But with Ellen a certain warmth and kindliness, seldom to be found in her contact with other pupils, occasionally tempered the formality. To-day her manner carried even a hint of respect.
Ellen sat at the upright piano and played. She played with a wild emotionalism unhampered by problems of technique. She poured her young, rebellious soul into the music until the ebony piano rocked and the ball-fringe of the brocade piano-cover swayed. Miss Ogilvie sat in her big rocking chair in a spot of sunlight and listened. It was significant that she did not rock. She sat quite still, her tiny feet barely touching the floor, her thin blue-veined hands lying quietly like little birds at rest in her purple poplin lap. The canaries too became still and listened. A hush fell upon the garden.
"And now," said Miss Ogilvie, when Ellen paused for a moment, "some Bach," and the girl set off into the tortuous, architectural beauties of a fugue. She played without notes, her eyes closed a little, her body swaying with a passionate rhythm which arose from something far more profound than the genteel precepts of Miss Ogilvie. It was savage. It must have terrified the gentle little old woman, for she knew that to play Bach savagely was sacrilege. And yet . . . somehow it didn't matter, when Ellen did it. There was in the music a smoldering, disturbing magnificence.
Then she played some Chopin, delicately, poetically; and at last she finished and turned about on the piano stool to await the criticism of her teacher.
Miss Ogilvie said nothing. Her blue eyes winked a bit in embarrassment and down one withered cheek ran a tear which had escaped her dignity and self-possession. The sunlight flickered across her thin hands, and presently she stirred.
"My child," she said, "there is nothing for me to say."
And Ellen's heart leapt so suddenly that she grew faint with joy.
"I no longer count for anything," said Miss Ogilvie gently. "You are beyond me. . . ." She smiled suddenly and dabbed her eyes politely. "Who am I to instruct you? My child, you are an artist. You frighten me!" She leaned forward a little, confidingly, and whispered. "It happens like that . . . in the most unexpected places, in villages, in ugly towns . . . why, even in a dirty mill town like this."
Between the two there was a bond, a thing which neither ever mentioned but which, in the silence that followed Miss Ogilvie's undignified outburst, took possession of both and drew them together. Both scorned the Town, a treason which none had discovered; and now when Miss Ogilvie spoke again she dragged the secret bond into the glaring light of day.
"Artists occur," she said, "without respect for places." And then after a little pause . . . "But you must never let any one here suspect you're an artist. It would make you unhappy." Recovering herself a little she began again to rock gently. "For a long time I've known you were escaping me. . . . It was no use hiding it from myself. . . . I know it now. . . ."
She smiled triumphantly a withered, rosy smile, a bit like the smile one might see on the bright face of a lady apple, and began pulling at the lace on her handkerchief. "It's wonderful," she said, "to think I have discovered it. . . . Poor me! But you must work, Ellen, there are hard days ahead . . . harder than you guess.
"D'you know?" she continued, in her excitement leaning forward once more, "when I was a girl, I played well . . . I was like you . . . not so independent, not so strong, because I was always a little woman . . . even then," she added as if she were conscious that age had shriveled her. "Sometimes I thought I would like to be a great pianist . . . a great artist. . . . But women didn't do such things in my day. My father would never have listened to it for a moment. It wasn't a ladylike thing to do. It was like being a circus rider. He let me take lessons so that I could play in the drawing-room and accompany my young men when they sang. My father even let me study in Munich, but when he found out I was more interested in music than in young men . . . he brought me home. I never got very interested in young men . . . I always liked music better."
Ellen listened respectfully, moved as much by her feeling for Miss Ogilvie in the rôle of a friend as by her respect for older people in general. She was carefully brought up and had good manners. But, secretly, the tale bored her a little. There was nothing interesting in it, nothing to seize one's imagination, nothing to soothe her impatience, nothing which fed that wild ambition. All that Miss Ogilvie told her had happened so long ago.
"I suppose I ought to have got married," continued Miss Ogilvie. "But I waited too long. . . . I had chances!" she added proudly, "good ones. . . . Maybe I would have been happier to-day. . . . I don't know, though," she added doubtfully, puckering her withered lips as if she could come to no decision in the matter. "There's so much to be said on both sides. But what I mean to say is, that you must go ahead. . . . You mustn't let anything stop you. . . . It's easier now than it was in my day. At least there's no one to oppose you. . . . It's a gift that doesn't come to every one. . . . You see I didn't marry and I didn't become an artist." And a note of wistfulness entered her voice. "So now I'm just an old spinster who gives music lessons. Maybe," she said, "you can manage both. I don't know . . . and you don't. . . . But don't let anything stop you. . . . Don't die without having done what you wanted to do. There's no more for me to tell you. . . . I can teach you nothing, but I hope you'll come sometimes and play for me. . . . I'd like it."
By the time she finished Miss Ogilvie's eyes were again bright with tears, as much from pity of herself as in a benevolent envy of the impetuous Ellen's youth and independence.
"It won't be easy. . . ." the girl said presently. "There's my mother. . . . She thinks I ought to get married. . . . She had me take music lessons because she thought it would make me more marriageable if I could play the piano. . . . Of course she's proud that I play so well. She's proud of anything I can do."
"Perhaps she'll come round," suggested Miss Ogilvie. "But it'll be a struggle. . . . I know your mother, Ellen. . . . She's made you ambitious. . . . That's where she made a mistake." She coughed suddenly with embarrassment. "But I don't want to interfere. She's your own mother. . . . It's for her to decide." And Miss Ogilvie abased herself and her high hopes for Ellen before the altar of her generation's respect for the position of a mother.
"And there's no money. . . ." said Ellen sullenly. "There never is."
"Perhaps we could work that out . . . I could let you take some of the pupils . . . I have too many now . . . I'd be willing to help . . . to sacrifice if necessary." It was clear that Miss Ogilvie meant to say nothing directly; she had no desire to be responsible for the actions of the impetuous girl. Yet she continued to hint, to imply that she would do her part if a crisis arose.
"I want to," said Ellen, "I want to more than anything in the world. . . . I want to be great and famous. . . . I've got to be." She became so savage, so intense that in her great rocking chair Miss Ogilvie trembled.
At last Ellen put on her hat, which perched well up on the absurd pompadour, bade Miss Ogilvie good-by, and went out to the piazza, where her bicycle rested against the fancy railing under the cages of the canaries and love-birds. As she turned down the brick path, the voice of Miss Ogilvie followed her.
"If the chance comes," she said, "look to me. I'll do what I can to help you." The words came out in little gasps as if she were unable to keep them—bold though they were—imprisoned any longer. Ellen smiled back at her over her shoulder and the old lady retired into the weathered house.
As Ellen pedaled over the brick streets between rows of maple trees, her delight faded slowly before the assaults of her common sense. In these skirmishes, wild hope and inspiration went down in defeat. There were too many obstacles . . . poverty, prejudice, even her own sense of provinciality. Yet underneath a little voice kept saying, "You'll do it . . . you'll do it. . . . Nothing can stop you. You'll be able to get what you want if you want it hard enough."
And by the time she turned into the block where the Tolliver family lived, clinging like grim death to a respectability which demanded a brave face turned toward the world, her mind began once more to work in its secret way, planning how it would be possible.
Miss Ogilvie's timid, frightened offer of help she had quite forgotten. Miss Ogilvie was so old, so gentle, so ineffectual . . . like her own caged canaries. Ellen's mind had begun already to turn toward her cousin Lily. The glamorous Lily must know some way out.