Chapter XIX
Madame Leota was thankful to be back in her own apartment. Her visit to the Black Hills had been a disappointment. It was a marvelous country, dear air, clear skies and mountains that reached for the moon. As a place of residence it lacked nothing. The deficiency lay in Madame. Her love of the country was sheer fallacy. It was a false dream.
"After all," she murmured wearily, "so few of us ever learn to dream true."
Seated opposite her in a great armchair before the fireplace was Ivan Alter. He gazed moodily into it. There was no pine-log burning. Only dead ashes remained.
He said reflectively: "Dreaming true. What a beautiful subject for a sermon. But where could one find a minister worthy of such a subject? I wonder how many ministers, rabbis and priests would be able to hold their jobs if all their appointments had to be approved by God? Understand I'm not sacrilegious. I believe there is a great spirituality all about us, something fine and great and awesome, which we cannot perceive because our knowledge is still in transition. Flowers are greater than people because they are more spiritual. They are capable of recording finer shades of emotion. The human body is still a crude machine. There are sermons in stones, in the wind whispering in the treetops, in the deep blue hush of the night sky. Dawn is a prayer of hope. Sunset is a benediction. There is religion in nature and we breathe it in with the air we take into our lungs. God is all about us, in the earth and the skies. But I'm not sure that he is in all the stately idolatrous-looking churches and cathedrals that men have erected to him."
He took a cigar from his pocket and lighted it with deliberation.
"Tonight," he resumed presently, "I am in a philosophical mood."
"At that," interjected Madame, "it is not inapropos because in profile you resemble a Sphinx. It should not be odd if you possessed some of its wisdom."
Ivan paid no attention to the interruption as he went on speaking. His thought took a different track. Madame was surprised at the earnestness of his tone.
"Above all women you have aroused my interest. Had we met in the days of adolescence I should perhaps have gone through life worshipping you, desiring no other woman. Even now as I sit in your apartment, I feel more at home than I have ever felt in my life. Your personality is in every book, every picture, every chair, and it is a personality that is utterly charming. As I sit here it is all that I can do not to cry out pleadingly to the gods to give me my youth again. We've both lived fantastic lives. Always we've walked in the shoes of other people. We were born for each other, yet somehow we lost our way along the dark shadowy road. We trod the wrong trails. Poor blind fools, more helpless than lost sunsets. Fortunately ere our bodies crumbled back into dust, we met for a brief interlude. For myself it seemed as though I caught an echo of lost fragrance. I fear both our lives have been lived in vain. It makes me think of a poem by Hung. Long Tom which I recently read and which appealed to me so greatly, I committed it to memory.
'Canton blue, her eyes,
Her cheeks yellow roses
And her lips rubies
Softly matched.
In the market-place
She stands alone and smiles
And smiling, makes the day more fair,
Seller of love, banisher of care.
Arrayed in silk
That holds like cool night fog
Her languorous perfumed form.
Another age, another hour,
A Manchu Princess or a flower.
But today, she stands
In the market-place
And smiles
And offers love for pay.'"
Ivan paused and puffed thoughtfully at his cigar.
"'Another day, another hour,'" he repeated. "Strange thought. Another day and I wonder what you might have been. And that speculation gives vent to another. Louella, I wonder what you really are? Are we fools of earth capable of appraising anything? In art a silly, vapid picture can never be of vast importance. Is art then superior to life? I say no, a thousand times no. A silly vapid human being, though he be clothed in sanctity, is just a daub unless he has some outstanding personality. Perhaps we must rearrange all values. Our whole conception of civilization may be wrong. We are so beset and smirched by pomp, quackery, pseudo-religion and charlatanism, our eyes have become myopic. We cannot distinguish the false dawn from the real. Madame, I salute you. You are a great general. You have fought life's battles nobly. To meet you, to know you, has been a great adventure. Only one thing saddens me, that I have met you too late."
Madame took a bit of snuff to hide her confusion. She was inordinately moved.
"It is never too late, Ivan," she said.
"Not if one believes in eternal life," he said. "Perhaps the Yogi philosophy is right. Perhaps man only dies that he may be born again. If that be so, I hope that you are near me in that second blooming."
Long after Ivan Alter had gone that night, Madame still sat before the fireplace. There was a strange peace in the house. From the rooms downstairs came the occasional echo of laughter.
Madame Leota sighed. For the first time, she had regrets. Perhaps her life had been naught but wastage. In retrospection the glamour died from it. She saw it as it had been, tawdry, cheap. She drew her hand wearily across her eyes. She was getting old. She was growing tired.
Presently Terese entered the room with a pile of letters.
"Much mail has accumulated while you were away," she said.
"I suppose we'd better glance through it," said Madame.
Terese sat down at the table and commenced slitting open the envelopes. Besides being a maid, she acted in the capacity of confidential secretary.
Listlessly Madame picked up the first letter. She considered correspondence a waste of time and a dreadful nuisance. It was from a Jewish Orphan Asylum. They wanted a donation.
"Better send them a few dollars," she chuckled, "and write them a note expressing our regret that we can't send them a few orphans. You might explain that up to now we never bothered keeping them. However, henceforth we'll mend our ways."
The next letter was from a dancing school.
"Do you want to learn to dance in three easy lessons?" asked Terese.
"Ask him to come over," Madame said. Before withdrawing the next letter from the envelope, she looked at the name in the upper left-hand corner:
Clive Reardon
Counsellor-At-Law
200 Fifth Avenue
New York City
"It looks perilously much as though we've been pinched," she said to Terese. Then she read the letter slowly and all sign of levity left her face. So great was the shock she was speechless. The letter was from her brother's lawyer. Templeton Blaine was dead. He had died as he had lived, in his brokerage office, as he stood reading the ticker-tape. Templeton would have asked no pleasanter way to die. He had died in harness. At that very moment his stocks were going up. He did not suffer for a moment. Death had been instantaneous. He was still smiling, still clutching the ticker-tape when they picked him up.
His death had occurred move than a week before. He had already been buried. It was too late for Madame to attend the funeral.
But the letter had much in it beside that. Templeton had left a daughter, Dorothy, now about nineteen years old. Her mother was dead and Louella was her only living relative. Templeton had left his entire estate to be shared equally between his sister, Mary; and his daughter, Dorothy. He had appointed Mary executrix without bond and had requested that she come and live at his home on Fifth Avenue, New York, opposite the Park. He wished her to be Dorothy's companion and guardian. The lawyer further stated that he understood that the estate would run into millions.
Madame Leota dropped the letter. "Well I'm damned," she said.
"Not eternally, I hope," said Terese lightly.
"Unfortunately I believe it will be eternally," she muttered. "Terese, read this letter and tell me what I am to do."
Terese read it It was some moments before she spoke, then she said: "Wilt you take me with you when you go?"
"Who said I was going?" demanded Madame.
"I know you will," replied Terese meekly. "As long as that young girl is alone in die world, you'll go to her."
"Why I'm not fit to have anything to do with a decent girl." "Pardon me if I disagree."
"You mean I am fit?"
"Certainly. You're real. Genuine. There's nothing false about you. You've been a mother to the girls who have worked for you. You know life. Somehow you remind me of the pictures by Paul Gauguin which Mr. Alter talks about so much. They're elemental. You can't call them moral or immoral. They are colorful. They are great."
Madame did not answer the letter for two days and during those two days she denied herself to everyone except Ivan Alter.
"You took me to the Black Hills," she said, "but the life I have led has cast me at last into a Black Hell."
"Tush!" he said. "Don't be melodramatic. You're not acting in 'Macbeth.' Besides what is there to be in such a stew about? Few people living would care to have their family skeletons exposed. And anyway I think judging by the way you are built, you are perfectly safe. No one will ever be able to see your pet skeleton."
"You are exasperating," said she, "but you are nice to have about the house."
"Like a doormat to wipe your feet on," he suggested sarcastically.
"If so," said she, "you'd be put to perfect use."
"And when are you leaving for New York?"
"I didn't say I was going."
"You didn't need to. I know you desire a real home. Not because you are getting old. A woman like you never gets old. But because you are beginning to believe that peace and rest are worthwhile after all. Besides there is Dorothy. Did you ever meet her?"
"Never, I'm sorry to say."
"Well that doesn't matter. She'll be like a daughter to you. I know you like children."
"I wish I did have a daughter of my own."
"Dorothy is your niece and that is the next best thing. Besides you've got to be a mother to her."
"But what am I to do with this house?"
"Sell it."
"Where can I find a buyer?"
"I'm not a magician."
"You are not much of anything," she sniffed.
Ivan smiled as he surveyed her ponderous form. "You on the other hand," he drawled, "are a whole lot of something but I don't know what."
"And you never will," said she. "I'm beyond your intellect."
"If that means what I think it means," he threatened, "you'll hear from my attorneys."
"I probably will," she yawned. "So famous is my resort eventually I hear from everybody. However, warn them to keep away. If they are friends of yours, they are not welcome here."
"I am quite aware how you feel toward me," he said dryly. "That's why I never visit you. Nevertheless if I can be of any service in helping you dispose of the house, do not hesitate to call upon me."
"It will be hard on the girls," she mused.
"It certainly will. There can be no doubt of that. Perhaps they can remain on when the new owner takes it over."
"That's the trouble," she said. "When I dispose of this house I want it to cease to be a House of Joy. I couldn't bear it if the place became common. Besides it wouldn't be fair to the neighbors."
"But haven't they reported you on numerous occasions?"
"That's true."
"Then why should you think of them?"
"They are still my neighbors."
Madame finally solved the problem by turning the house over to a philanthropic organization interested in the welfare of young girls.
"The house has led a gay life," she reflected. "Now in its old age, like me, it is going straight."