HER DECISION

MISS EVA HUNGERFORD was having a mauvais quart-d’heure, or to speak more exactly, une mauvaise demi-heure. She was lying in a long chair near her dressing-table, the pale-green satin cushions tucked closely around her, and her hands held tightly over her eyes to keep out any ray of sunlight that might enter the spectrally darkened room.

She was thinking hard. Once, when she partially emerged from her abstraction, she decided with reproach that she could not remember to have thought so hard for so long a time since leaving college, though in the meanwhile she had written a tragedy and a small volume of sonnets. The occasion called for thought. In half an hour he was to be there, and she had understood from his manner the evening before that she must have an answer ready for him.

It was all very tiresome. She had warded him off so far, but that could not go on forever. She had felt a little frightened; he had looked at her in a way she had never imagined he could look, and she had been devoutly thankful that just then her “most intimate friend” (even authors have “intimate friends”) had come in with her brother to make arrangements about a coaching party for the following Saturday. But she could not hope for a much longer reprieve. There was a note in his voice that she could not mistake, as he asked her when he could see her alone. She wondered now why she had told him at half-past four the next day. Why had she not said next week, or after she got back from Mexico, or any other time more remote than the present?

“Yes,” she acknowledged to herself, “I was afraid: and not of him but of myself. That is the humiliation of it. What was it I read in Ruskin? That it all ends with Tom, Dick, or Harry? I don’t believe it. At any rate, I shall not give up my career for any man.”

Miss Hungerford always spoke of her “career” to her friends with a sad sort of expression, as if it cut her off from them in some unexplainable way, and made her not of this world. Unconsciously she enjoyed the mingled admiration and awe of the less ambitiously intellectual of her “set” when they heard that she was really going to college. When she came home at vacations they gave her afternoon receptions and luncheons, because, though of course they never breathed it to her, they had met with a flat failure when they tried to get their brothers and masculine friends to come for dinner-dances and “small and earlies.”

“Why, she’s awfully pretty!” they would exclaim when the men pleaded engagements.

“She’s terribly clever, isn’t she?” they would ask, warily. “Why, of course, Eva Hungerford is just too bright for anything, but she never makes one feel it. She doesn’t take a mean delight in showing off one’s ignorance. She talks just like we do,” they would declare, and the brothers would smile peculiarly and vanish.

But even her warmest friends admitted that she was carrying things too far when, at the end of her college career she announced her intention of taking a course in old English at Oxford, and then of going to France to study the literature.

“No, I am not going over in the Winthrop’s yacht, nor am I going coaching with them through Ireland,” she would explain. “I do not mean to travel much. I intend to study seriously. Of course, I shall take my summers off and enjoy myself, but I have a serious end in view, which I must not lose sight of.”

Miss Hungerford had a rather classic face, and looked like a true Spartan when she would say that. Her friends would be either dumb with admiration at such explanations or, sometimes, the more venturesome would try to lure her from her purpose. But she only looked with pity on such attempts.

She was away two years, and although she had tried to keep up with her friends, on returning she found a great many of them married and more or less occupied with affairs which had no part in her life. This saddened her very much and made her more than ever determined to pursue her “career.” She had very few difficulties to contend with. There had been one slight interruption. While in Paris the young Comte de la Tour, whom she had first met at the American minister’s, had taken up a great deal of her time. When he proposed, she had refused him so calmly that she felt justified in admiring herself. She was rather mortified, however, on thinking it over, to find that for a whole month afterward she had not been able to fix her mind on anything serious, and had accepted a great many invitations out. This taught her a lesson. She had discovered that “to be serious, to do her best work, men must not divert her thoughts.” She wrote that down in her commonplace book, so that it would be a perpetual warning to her.

When she got home, her mother and father were delighted to find her no more changed. They had feared the worst from her letters. Her mother, hearing that old English script was very hard on the eyesight, had, after a good cry, resigned herself to glasses. She was intensely relieved to find that there was no occasion for her resignation, and in her happiness to find that Beowulf had not injured her daughter’s vision, herself helped to select a teak desk and bookcases for a “private study” for her. She even sanctioned an edition in pomona green and gold, of the French tragedy and sonnets. These books were not as much reviewed as Miss Hungerford had thought they would be, but her friends admired them intensely and generally came to her with them, that she might write her name on the title-page.

But scarcely had the room been arranged for hard work (Miss Hungerford had determined to spend the next few months in writing a curtain-raiser for Daly’s), when another and more serious interruption occurred.

She never knew just how it happened. Certainly she had never encouraged him, though she had sometimes suspected her mother of doing so, and assuredly Paul Stanhope in no way corresponded to her ideal hero. A few years ago she would not have admitted that she had a masculine ideal, but now, as she put another cushion under her shoulder, she was forced to admit to herself that she might have one. Stanhope was big and strong and handsome. So far he answered to her ideal. But was he intellectual? He drove a four-in-hand splendidly, but that was hardly an intellectual employment. Was he literary? She remembered that in speaking once of Matthew Arnold’s “Monody on the Death of Arthur Hugh Clough,” she had noticed a distinctly blank expression on his face, and that he had tried to turn the conversation. But Miss Hungerford had been too quick for him and had herself changed the subject. That was one of her best points, as she acknowledged to herself. She could adapt herself to the people she happened to be talking to. But could she do so for a lifetime? Miss Hungerford shuddered and pressed her hands more tightly over her eyes, as if to keep out the vision of a husband who did not appreciate allusions to the “Cumnor cowslips.”

Then in some way the phrase “Art is long” got into her head. She knew it, and was not afraid. She had said it to herself a thousand times to keep up her courage. She knew she was only beginning. Still she did think the critics might have noticed more positively that she was beginning. But nothing should turn her from her purpose. She was sure the American drama needed fresh material, fresh workers. She had studied French methods, and had determined to devote the rest of her life to adapting them to the American stage. Her youth would be well spent in regenerating our drama and elevating our literature, though she should not become famous until she was an old woman. Even with such high resolves for our country’s good, Miss Hungerford could not entirely relinquish all hope of becoming renowned.

“An old woman!” She jumped up and, drawing the silk curtains slightly, gazed at herself in the mirror. She leaned forward and breathed lightly on the glass, so that the reflection might be more soft and exquisite.

“It must be hard to lose one’s good looks!” she said, half aloud. Generally, when Miss Hungerford was tempted to be vain, she laid it all to an exalted, abstract love of the beautiful. Now she put her hands through her hair at each side and drew it down loosely, so that her face was half in shadow and altogether charming. And then she put it back suddenly, for she remembered that it had fallen down so once when she and Stanhope were riding together, and he had looked at her in a very openly admiring way. When he had next called she had worn it so, and his look and exclamation of delight when she had entered the room had warned her what risks she was running.

She turned impatiently from the mirror and picked up a book that her “most intimate friend” had sent her several days before. She had not read it, because she had found that it commenced with a very modern love scene, and she never read love scenes. Miss Hungerford, who had a taste for epigram, once told her friend that “the science of reading is to know how to skip,” and she usually skipped the lui et elle dialogues, but if they occurred in a classic, and she felt that she had no right to omit anything (she was a very conscientious sort of person) she summoned all her fortitude to aid her in getting through. Now she opened the book and read a few pages. After all, it did not seem absolutely repulsive. She decided that she had not given the book a fair trial, and she noticed with some surprise that, curiously enough from the description of him, the hero of the story must resemble Paul Stanhope. But when she found that she was thinking of Stanhope she put the book down.

“I am certainly getting frivolous,” she thought severely.

“I will go up to my study. I can think better there.” As she passed her little French clock, she noticed with a slight shudder that it was twenty minutes after four. She stopped suddenly and rang a bell. “I will make it easy for both of us,” she decided; “I will order tea served as usual, and I will just tell him very calmly how impossible it is for me to take upon myself any other career than that of a student and writer. No one can possibly be sentimental over a tea-urn and champagne biscuits,” she thought with relief. When the man appeared she gave him instructions to bring in the tea-things at five precisely. “That will make our interview short and yet give me time to settle it all at once and forever,” she thought. “Afterward we can discuss every-day affairs, and I am sure he will recognize how wisely I have acted, and we can be very good friends,” and she passed slowly up the stairs to her particular den.

She felt stronger now, more certain of herself. The first sheets of her “curtain-raiser” were lying on her desk, and the sight of them encouraged her. For a moment a bewildering vision of a crowded theatre, a storm of applause, and herself, seated behind the curtains of a box, seeing, hearing her own piece, took possession of her. She even heard cries for the author, but of course her duty to herself and her family would prevent her appearing publicly as the writer of the play. She could see no objection, however, to being pointed out as “Miss Hungerford, you know, the brilliant young authoress.” Yes, life was a failure, art was everything! Nothing should ever come between her and her work.

Then she sat down at her desk and tried to write. She remembered the keen sense of pleasure she always experienced when she had finished a sonnet or scene of a play, but she was thinking now of how she would receive Stanhope. “I will give him my hand in a very quiet, friendly way that will show at once what my decision is. Nothing shall make me alter or give up my career.”

But it was very hard to give up everything, and she was very young and her friends thought her beautiful. Could there be no compromise? After all life need not be so dreary, and Paul Stanhope was distinctly the nicest and most eligible man she knew. Any number of girls liked him tremendously, and she sighed as she thought that she was keeping some girl from getting a very good husband indeed. This idea, though not wholly distasteful to her, brought her sharply back to her resolutions, and she picked up her Calderon. She had been reading it the day before and had left it turned down at the page. Suddenly a great pity for Calderon took possession of her. After all he was so dead now! Could he know how famous he was? Was he famous while he lived? Did his fame bring him love and happiness? She did not even know. Underneath the Calderon lay a copy of a poet’s works—a poet now famous and beloved, but who had died miserably poor and unknown. By the side of this volume lay the last number of a popular magazine. She had bought it because it contained a story by a man whom all the world was talking about. She had read in the morning’s paper that he had just been divorced from his wife. The sight of the book sickened her. She turned away and opened the case where she kept her Shakespeare, and took out a book at random. It was the sonnets. He, too, the greatest and wisest, had been wretchedly unhappy.

Suddenly the futility of all effort took hold of her. Suppose she should drudge her life away, never taste of happiness, die, and be only known as “Hungerford the dramatist.” She shuddered. In the years to come many people might not even know whether “Hungerford” had been a man or a woman. But she could never hold up her head again if she should relinquish her “career” now. What would her friends think? She felt that she had burned her ships behind her when she had published her tragedy, and that the eyes of her world were upon her.

She wished she were not so stylish and so distressingly well off in this world’s goods. Geniuses, she reflected, were always ugly and poor. Only lately had it come to be considered not infra dig. to grow rich off one’s brains. She would have liked to be an old-time ugly, poverty-stricken genius. As that could not be, however (her family might have objected to being dispossessed of a most generous income), the best thing she could do was to work on to the end. Better to die in harness, nobly striving after perfection, than to live to an ingloriously happy old age. She saw herself a melancholy woman, whose youth and beauty had fled before the exhausting demands of her genius. Fame had come, but too late. Her name was on every lip, but death awaited her. Nothing was left her but to choose her biographer and epitaph. She had long thought that the lines (adapted) from the “Adonais” would be very appropriate:

She considered them very sweet, and Shelley had always been one of her gods. There was a sort of poetical justice in the selection. She felt very sad and firm.

Just then someone tapped at the door, and a card was handed her. She trembled a little as she took it, but there was no change in her voice as she told the man to take Mr. Stanhope to the library and that she would be down immediately.

But she did not go at once. She stopped at her own door and went to the mirror, where she loosened her hair a little at the sides, and after looking critically at the effect, she went slowly down the stairs. At each step she repeated to herself “I must be firm. My career before everything.”

She was saying this over to herself for the twentieth time when she found, rather to her dismay, that she was at the door. Pushing aside the curtains, she extended her hand as she planned to do, but something in Stanhope’s expression as he came quickly toward her made her falter and let it drop to her side. The next thing she knew he had his arms around her and she was not repulsing him. He had not given her the least chance to explain, she thought indignantly. She would never have allowed it if he had given her a moment’s time! As for Stanhope, no idea of explanation entered his head. He saw no necessity for one.

After a while she told him that she did not love him, but he did not seem to believe her, and she could think of no way of proving it after what had happened. Then she assured him that she had always planned to spend her life in writing and study, and that it was impossible for her to marry him. But he declared that there were no end of writers in the world and absolutely but one woman who could be his wife, so that he did not think her decision just or warranted. And then he went over to her very tenderly and asked her if she really cared more for her musty books and a “brilliant career” (Stanhope was careful to use the word “career”) than she did for a man who loved her so devoutly that he would willingly lay down his life for her? At this Miss Hungerford cried a little, and he put her head on his shoulder while she thought about it.

While they were thus engaged the clock struck five and the servant appeared punctually with tea-things. He was much confused when he caught sight of them, and Miss Hungerford privately determined to speak to the man for his officiousness.

The wedding was very brilliant and Miss Hungerford’s “most intimate friend” was maid of honor. She never told the bride, but she told everyone else, “that she had never expected Eva Hungerford to marry and give up her career, but that she was thankful it had happened, and she was sure she would be happy!”

In the meantime Daly’s is without the curtain-raiser.