第46章

``I've had that joy only since my husband died.It's as well that I didn't have it sooner.One is the better for having served an apprenticeship at self-repression and at pretending to virtues one has not.Only those who earn their freedom know how to use it.If I had had it ten or fifteen years ago I'd have been an intolerable tyrant, making everyone around me unhappy and therefore myself.The ideal world would be one where everyone was born free and never knew anything else.

Then, no one being afraid or having to serve, everyone would have to be considerate in order to get himself tolerated.''

``I wonder if I really ever shall be able to earn a living?'' sighed Mildred.

``You must decide that whatever you can make shall be for you a living,'' said the older woman.``I have lived on my fixed income, which is under two thousand a year.And I am ready to do it again rather than tolerate anything or anybody that does not suit me.''

``I shall have to be extremely careful,'' laughed Mildred.``I shall be a dreadful hypocrite with you.''

Mrs.Brindley smiled; but underneath, Mildred saw --or perhaps felt--that her new friend was indeed not one to be trifled with.She said:

``You and I will get on.We'll let each other alone.

We have to be more or less intimate, but we'll never be familiar.''

After a time she discovered that Mrs.Brindley's first name was Cyrilla, but Mrs.Brindley and Miss Stevens they remained to each other for a long time--until circumstances changed their accidental intimacy into enduring friendship.Not to anticipate, in the course of that same conversation Mildred said:

``If there is anything about me--about my life--that you wish me to explain, I shall be glad to do so.''

``I know all I wish to know,'' replied Cyrilla Brindley.``Your face and your manner and your way of speaking tell me all the essentials.''

``Then you must not think it strange when I say Iwish no one to know anything about me.''

``It will be impossible for you entirely to avoid meeting people,'' said Cyrilla.``You must have some simple explanation about yourself, or you will attract attention and defeat your object.''

``Lead people to believe that I'm an orphan--perhaps of some obscure family--who is trying to get up in the world.That is practically the truth.''

Mrs.Brindley laughed.``Quite enough for New York,'' said she.``It is not interested in facts.All the New-Yorker asks of you is, `Can you pay your bills and help me pay mine?' ''

Competent men are rare; but, thanks to the advantage of the male sex in having to make the struggle for a living, they are not so rare as competent women.

Mrs.Brindley was the first competent woman Mildred had ever known.She had spent but a few hours with her before she began to appreciate what a bad atmosphere she had always breathed--bad for a woman who has her way to make in the world, or indeed for any woman not willing to be content as mere more or less shiftless, more or less hypocritical and pretentious, dependent and parasite.Mrs.Brindley--well bred and well educated--knew all the little matters which Mildred had been taught to regard as the whole of a lady's education.But Mildred saw that these trifles were but a trifling incident in Mrs.Brindley's knowledge.She knew real things, this woman who was a thorough-going housekeeper and who trebled her income by giving music lessons a few hours a day to such pupils as she thought worth the teaching.When she spoke, she always said something one of the first things noticed by Mildred, who, being too lazy to think except as her naturally good mind insisted on exercising itself, usually talked simply to kill time and without any idea of getting anywhere.But while Cyrilla--without in the least intending it--roused her to a painful sense of her own limitations, she did not discourage her.Mildred also began to feel that in this new atmosphere of ideas, of work, of accomplishment, she would rapidly develop into a different sort of person.It was extremely fortunate for her, thought she, that she was living with such a person as Cyrilla Brindley.In the old atmosphere, or with any taint of it, she would have been unable to become a serious person.She would simply have dawdled along, twaddling about ``art'' and seriousness and careers and sacrifice, content with the amateur's methods and the amateur's results--and deluding herself that she was making progress.Now--It was as different as public school from private school --public school where the mind is rudely stimulated, private school where it is sedulously mollycoddled.She had come out of the hothouse into the open.

At first she thought that Jennings was to be as great a help to her as Cyrilla Brindley.Certainly if ever there was a man with the air of a worker and a place with the air of a workshop, that man and that place were Eugene Jennings and his studio in Carnegie Hall.

When Mildred entered, on that Saturday morning, at exactly half-past ten, Jennings--in a plain if elegant house-suit--looked at her, looked at the clock, stopped a girl in the midst of a burst of tremulous noisy melody.

``That will do, Miss Bristow,'' said he.``You have never sung it worse.You do not improve.Another lesson like this, and we shall go back and begin all over again.''

The girl, a fattish, ``temperamental'' blonde, burst into tears.

``Kindly take that out into the hall,'' said Jennings coldly.``Your time is up.We cannot waste Miss Stevens's time with your hysterics.''

Miss Bristow switched from tears to fury.``You brute! You beast!'' she shrieked, and flung herself out of the room, slamming the door after her.Jennings took a book from a pile upon a table, opened it, and set it on a music-stand.Evidently Miss Bristow was forgotten--indeed, had passed out of his mind at half-past ten exactly, not to enter it again until she should appear at ten on Monday morning.He said to Mildred:

``Now, we'll see what you can do.Begin.''