“Sure, miss. I got a weight. Just sit still while I fasten my hitch-strap.” He helped her up the two flights and thanked her for his tip.

  17

  THE NEXT MORNING Lucy awoke sick and sore. She wanted not to be alone for a moment, and hurried over to Auerbach’s studio — perhaps he would have time to give her a lesson.

  He met her with a newspaper in his hand. “Look at this, Lucy; Clement is advertised to give a second recital in New York on the 3rd of May. He will scarcely get here before he goes back again. Remarkable success he has had.”

  That was the important thing. She felt better at once; nothing else mattered, when all was going well with Sebastian. Auerbach himself seemed more wide awake than usual; and for the next few days he gave Lucy the kind of attention and criticism he was usually too easy-going to give anyone. Under his heavy domesticity and middle-aged content there was a discriminating musical intelligence — not often brought to the front. As for Lucy, she was working to forget something. But at odd moments that sickening last scene with Harry Gordon would come back upon her and make her angry and ashamed. She hadn’t lied often in her life, she was too proud. And that was such a cheap, crawling, shabby lie! It was like boasting she had a claim on Sebastian, when she had none. She had used his name in a way that she could never tell him, and her ears burned whenever she thought of it. How could she have said such a thing? She considered writing to Harry, but that was difficult. She composed letters to him when she should have been asleep, and the next day put off writing them.

  One evening when she went downstairs to get her dinner, she found Giuseppe walking up and down outside, in front of the open stairway. He was wearing a black coat and looked small and grave and important. Off went his hat, and as he stood bareheaded, he broke into such a rush of speech that she could not understand him at all; she caught only that Signor Weisbourn had come to the studio about something urgent. She held up her hand and begged him to speak slowly.

  “Scusi, signorina.” He put on his hat and began again. Sebastian had written Mr. Weisbourn that all his plans were changed. He had accepted some engagements in England and would sail on the 4th of May, the day after his second New York recital.

  Here Lucy interrupted. “But this is the last week of April, Giuseppe. Isn’t he coming back here at all?”

  “Si, signorina, for three days.” Sebastian would arrive tomorrow, Friday, and would leave Chicago on Monday night. Giuseppe was to sail with him and would be with him until the engagements in England were over. Then he was going to Italy to see his father. He had been packing all day, to close the studio for the summer. Mr. Weisbourn had not asked him to communicate with Lucy; he had come on his own responsibility, thinking she might have arrangements to make or plans to change.

  “No, there is nothing to arrange, Giuseppe. I have no plans. I wish I were going with you.”

  “And I, signorina, just as we were! It will be like that again when we come back in October. A summer is soon gone.”

  Lucy could not let Giuseppe go away; not until she had grown a little used to the news he brought, until she had time to take it in. She walked him round and round the block, asking him trivial questions about his preparations, his packing — was the piano gone? No, he had received no orders about the piano.

  It was the crowded hour in the crowded part of the city, everyone going home from work. She and Giuseppe could scarcely hear each other speak for the clatter of truck wheels on the dirty pavements. Troops of screaming children on roller skates came streaking down the sidewalk, but Lucy hardly noticed them. She tried to keep close to Giuseppe, and everything around them was blank. An enormous emptiness had opened on all sides of her. This well-disposed little man seemed to be the only person who had thought of her at all. Even he, in his mind, was already outward bound. He began to tell her about the boat, Wilhelm der Grosse, on which they were to sail; its length, its tonnage, how many passengers it carried. He would be with the maestro in England and then they would go to France: before he started for Florence he would see the maestro’s house at Chantilly, and his dogs, and the Signora Sebastian, who was the daughter of a mi-lord, did Lucy know?

  As they came round the corner of the block after many circlings, Lucy felt too tired to hear any more, and was glad to say good-night. She forgot to thank him for coming. She did not go in for dinner, but went languidly upstairs to her room.

  So there would be no return; only another departure. Just now she wished she had never met Sebastian at all. It would have been better only to have heard him, to have seen him at a distance, and to carry away a memory unclouded by personal disappointments. There was nothing sure or safe in this life she was leading. She had been sailing along in the air, like a little boy’s kite; the wind drops, and the kite comes down in the dirty street, among the drays and roller skates.

  There had been that one month, to be sure, when she lived under a golden canopy among spring flowers, while the March winds and rain threatened outside the windows. Then she was never afraid of cruel surprises. Perhaps that was all she was to have in this world; some people got very little. It was strange, to feel everything slipping away from one and to have no power to struggle, no right to complain. One had to sit with folded hands and see it all go. You couldn’t, after all, live above your level: with good luck you might, for a few breaths, hold yourself up in that more vital air, but you dropped back; down, down into flatness, and it was worse than if you had never been out of it. She had known that he was to sail in June — but that had seemed years away. She had never thought about it for more than a moment. She hadn’t taken it in that after he went the days and hours would no longer carry her anywhere.

  *

  On Saturday morning Lucy was sitting in Sebastian’s studio. Both Sebastian and Auerbach were there; they had been in consultation for some time before Lucy was sent for. They were talking to her, about her, around her. Sometimes she listened and sometimes she did not. Finding Auerbach there had made her indifferent to everything.

  She had known one of these men so long and the other so intimately — and now she seemed a stranger to both. She felt as if she were applying for a position of some sort, and not very likely to get it. Moreover, she didn’t want it, whatever it was. She had not the faintest stirring of any wish or desire; and she did not believe in anything they were saying.

  The first shock came when she was told that Sebastian would not be in Chicago next winter, but in New York. Lucy, they said, was to go on in November, and work with him there as she had done here. He and Auerbach had decided that she must stay in Chicago this summer, to study in preparation for next season. Auerbach himself was not going away; he was economizing in order to take his family abroad next year. This studio was leased until October, the rent paid. Sebastian suggested that she move into it as soon as he left it; it would be much cooler than the place where she was living.

  Lucy had been listening to them without comment, but now she spoke.

  “No, I couldn’t leave my own room, Mr. Sebastian. I’m used to it, and I feel at home there.”

  “But you would get the Lake breezes here. Chicago is very hot, you know. And you would soon feel at home — if you don’t already!”

  She shook her head. “No, I couldn’t do that. I wouldn’t feel like myself, moving in here.”

  Auerbach began to reason with her, but Sebastian cut him short. “No, Paul, we mustn’t press it. You’ll surely be willing to use this place as a studio, Lucy? You won’t leave a good piano standing here idle?”

  Yes, she would be glad to work at his piano. “But I must have a little time to think about these things.”

  “We haven’t a great deal of time, Lucy. I don’t like to go away leaving you up in the air. This isn’t the summer for you to go into the country and vegetate. We want you to prepare seriously for next season. Paul understands what I think you need most, and he has promised to give you a great deal of attention.”

  At this point Auerbach rose to go. He stood holding his hat for a moment, smiling down at the girl’s discouraged face.

  “I think you’ll let Clement persuade you, Lucy. A winter in New York would be a fine thing for you. Then maybe in the spring you can go over to Vienna with my family. My wife has often said how she wished you could go with us.” The two men went out to the elevator. They were still talking about her, Lucy knew. She wished they would both go away and leave her here to cry. Everything they wanted her to do seemed out of her reach.

  Sebastian came back and stood over her where she sat limp in a corner of the sofa.

  “Oh, what a morning! First, Paul is so slow to see things; and then Lucy so unwilling to see things. Why aren’t you just a little pleased? Don’t you want to play for me any more? Or are you so fond of Chicago you can’t leave it?”

  “Next winter is a long time away.” Lucy looked up and smiled. She was feeling more pleased already. “And May was very near. I guess I’m disappointed to lose it.”

  “Oh, May would have been dragging out preparations that can be made in two days! Your summer was really the first thing to arrange. Next season is going to be an important one for me. For you, too, I hope. A winter in New York, at your age — you don’t know what is waiting for you! And you’ll like working with my new accompanist.

  “Then Mr. Mockford — ?”

  “Is not coming back.” Sebastian went over to his writing-desk and began hunting for something, speaking to her over his shoulder. “He doesn’t know it yet. We shall arrange all that in England. I intend to see that he’s well placed, but he has been with me too long. He and Weisbourn have been putting up some pretty little tricks on me. So I am going to have a new agent and a new accompanist. The best thing about this concert tour has been a revival of interest, in here, I mean,” he tapped his chest. “I’ve met so many old friends who are still interested. Those things are contagious.” He put a letter in his pocket and came back to the sofa. “Ah, now you are looking like Lucy again! You are beginning to believe in all these nice things I’ve thought out for you?”

  “No, I wasn’t thinking about them. I was thinking about you. It seems to me that something good has happened to you.”

  “Dear child!” For the first time after this long absence he gathered her up in his arms. “Now something good has happened to me! And something good has come back to me.”

  18

  ON THE LAST evening Lucy got to the Arts Building just as James Mockford was arriving in a cab, followed by an express cart. Besides his travelling luggage, he brought with him a rusty little tin trunk and a large lounge chair, which he asked Sebastian to store, as he was giving up his lodgings. Mockford’s entrance caused some confusion. Giuseppe dragged the trunk back into the bedroom, beckoning Lucy to follow him. He whispered to her that later he would get the ugly chair out of the way, so that she would not have to look at it. He meant to leave the music room very nice for her, not like a second-hand shop. She had noticed before that Giuseppe disliked Mockford. He once said to her, when Sebastian’s favourite cigarette-case was not to be found, that, since he was responsible for the place, no one but he should have a latch-key, no one! — with a murderous flash in his quick eyes.

  After Morris Weisbourn had arrived, and they were all gathered in the music room, Mockford was the only person altogether cheerful. He was so pleased to be leaving Chicago that he made himself agreeable even to Lucy. Sebastian was at the bookcase behind the piano, going over a pile of music. Giuseppe, who had been so delighted to be starting for home, and to be sailing on a big boat, had lost his enthusiasm. He stood in the background among the trunks, his hands crossed before him, solemn and hushed, as if he were waiting for a coffin to be carried out. They were all, of course, impatiently expecting the transfer men who were to come and get the luggage. The air in the room was heavy and hot — no breeze, though all the windows were open. Out over the Lake the sky was black, and from time to time there was a low growl of thunder.

  Sebastian called Lucy to his corner and began giving her some directions, to which she tried to listen. But she was distracted by Weisbourn and Mockford, who were talking very loud, as if they wished everything they said to be heard. They had seated themselves by an open window and were finishing the last bottle of port. Weisbourn must have been drinking before he came; his dark blue cheeks looked very thick, and his eyes were small. The moment they sat down together they had been overtaken by the brotherly affection which beams from two schemers who have done each other a good turn.

  “And when you are to be operate, you will send me a cable? So?”

  Sebastian shot a glance of amusement at the two from behind the piano. Lucy saw their wineglasses touch, one in the round fat hand, the other in the white freckled one.

  Just then came heavy sounds and knocking at the door. Giuseppe flew to admit the baggage men. “Thank God!” Sebastian murmured. As soon as the trunks had gone down, he put on his topcoat and turned to Mockford and Weisbourn.

  Gentlemen, I have some calls to make, and I am going to take Miss Gayheart home. I shan’t be back here. I will meet you at the station. Giuseppe will take the hand luggage down at eleven. Leave the keys with the doorman.

  The cab Sebastian customarily used had been waiting outside half an hour. He told the driver to open the windows and take them out to the Park.

  “You are worn out with all the fuss, and so am I,” he said as they drove up the avenue. He drew her head over on his shoulder. “There. Shut your eyes and rest. We have three hours, all our own.” He felt her soft young body take the line of his as she lay against him. She breathed lightly, like a child sleeping. He, too, closed his eyes. The warm night air blew in over their faces. After a while it began to smell of trees and new-cut grass, and the confused city noises died away.

  Sebastian felt a wet splash on his face. He put his hand out of the window; it was raining a little. Then it came down harder, a fierce spring shower.

  “Asleep, Lucy?”

  “No.”

  “We were glad to get away, weren’t we? But I’ve grown fond of that studio. I like to think it’s not going to be shut up dumb and dusty all summer, that you’ll be coming and going. I shall be thinking of you. When I am at sea, I shall look at my watch every morning and figure the difference in time and tell myself whether you have opened the piano yet.”

  Lucy buried her face closer, her hand on his shoulder tightened. She felt the tears rising and could not hold them back.

  “I ought to do better than this. I’m so sorry!” she quavered.

  “Never mind, dear. Cry if you feel like it. Perhaps I shall cry with you.”

  “It’s only because I’m so afraid.”

  “Afraid again? Of what?”

  “Oh, that you’ll never come back! Something tells me you won’t.”

  “That’s because you are just beginning, and are not used to good-byes. They hurt, sometimes, even after one has gone through a great many.” Sebastian felt a heaviness of heart; he scarcely knew whether on her account or his own. He was wondering whether there was not some way of escape from his life: from concerts and hotels, from Mockford, and his wife, and his place in France, from his friends in England, from everything he was and had. In what stretched out before him there was nothing he wanted very much. And this youth and devotion would not be the same when he came back, he knew; what he held against his heart was for tonight only. It was a parting between two who would never meet again.

  Lucy knew what he was thinking. She felt a kind of hopeless despair in the embrace that tightened about her. As they passed a lamppost she looked up, and in the flash of light she saw his face. Oh, then it came back to her! The night he sang When We Two Parted and she knew he had done something to her life. Presentiments like that one were not meaningless; they came out of the future. Surely that hour foretold sorrow to this. They were going to lose something. They were both clinging to it and to each other, but they must lose it.

  Presently Sebastian stopped the carriage and told the driver he could wait for them. He took Lucy’s arm and they walked for a long while up and down the winding gravel paths, the bitter fragrance of young lilac leaves coming sharp into their faces at every turn. The rain had stopped, but the dripping bushes showered them with waterdrops. Their hands and faces were wet; it was good to feel. There was not a star to be seen, but the blackness above them was soft and velvety between the scattered park lights. Sebastian was telling Lucy that perhaps next summer they would be walking under night skies far away from here. If she went abroad with the Auerbachs, he would join them in Vienna. There were a great many things he would like to show her for the first time; gardens — forests — mountains.

  They had turned back toward the carriage, the wet gravel crushing softly under their feet. As he came under one of the lamp-posts, he slipped out his watch. He said nothing to Lucy, but he gave the cabman her street-number. They drove back into the heart of the city in silence, as they had come away from it.

  At the bakery entrance Sebastian got out and followed Lucy up the two flights of stairs to her own door. In the dim hall light he took her face in his hands and looked into it for a long moment, Lucy felt the old terror coming back; to sever for years...She couldn’t bear it any longer.

  “Go,” she whispered, “go now!” She scarcely felt his arms, his lips; she could only think that in a moment he would not be there at all. He held her closer and closer, and then he let her go. She stood just inside her door, leaning against it, listening to his quick heavy tread down the first stairway — the second — then she heard the cab door slam.

  Sebastian knew she was listening. He shut the door violently to end her suspense. A last signal. He sank back in the seat and closed his eyes as the cab lumbered off. Against the rumble of the wheels he spoke aloud to himself. What he said was: