one morning the princess did not come to the atelier; and martha, after working along without her for a while, thinking that her friend might have been delayed and hoping that she would come later, found her mind so preoccupied by the absence of her usual companion that her work would not go at all, and at last she concluded to stop trying, and to go to look the princess up.
she called a cab, and drove to the apartment in the rue presbourg, where she was now well known. even the old concierge, with her shining white hair, brilliant black eyes, red cheeks, and bearded upper lip, gave her a smile of welcome as she passed through the court; and the princess’s servant gave her another as he conducted her at once to his mistress’s boudoir.
here he left her. martha tapped on the door, and waited. getting no answer, she{58} turned the knob and entered, intending to knock at the inner door; but no sooner had she shut herself into the room than she became aware, although it was almost wholly darkened, that it was not unoccupied.
a stifled sound reached her ears, and she could now make out the figure of the princess, lying on the lounge, with her face buried in her hands.
the girl’s heart ached with pity, and she did not know whether to yield to her own impulse, and to go forward, or to consult the possible preference of her friend, and go back.
while she hesitated, the princess took her hands from her face, and saw her. as she did so, she started up, touching her eyes with her handkerchief, and clearing her voice to speak.
“is it you, martha? come in, child,” she said. “i have a headache to-day, and intended to see no one. i forgot, however, that i had given orders that you were always to be the exception. i should not have let you see me like this if i had known beforehand; but now that you have looked upon your poor friend in this humiliated state, sit down, and never mind.”
martha had come near, and now took the seat beside the lounge, her face tragic with sympathy.
“i am so sorry you are ill,” was all that she could say.
“i am not ill, really,” said the princess. she was lying back upon the lounge, and fanning her flushed face with her little gossamer handkerchief, which martha could see was limp with tears. “my head does ache now, but i brought it on by this wretched crying. it’s all my own fault. you did not know that i was such a weakling, did you?” and she made an effort to smile.
“oh, i am so, so sorry!” said martha, helplessly.
“you needn’t be, dear. never be sorry for any man or woman who is equal to his or her life—and i am equal to mine. one time out of ten it gets the better of me, but the nine times i get the better of it. this mood will surely pass. indeed, it is passing now. you have helped me already. it has been very long indeed since i have found or wanted human help, and it takes me by surprise.”
martha saw that she was preparing to lead the talk away from her recent tears and their{60} cause, and she passionately wished that her friend should feel that she longed to enter into her sorrow with her, if it could be allowed her; so she said impulsively:
“i don’t suppose you feel like telling me your trouble; but oh, i wish you could!”
“i do feel like it, you darling child! i could talk to you about it better than to any one on earth; but there are some things one cannot speak of even to one’s own heart. that is the trouble now. if i were to let myself indulge freely in imaginings and regrets, i should satisfy the want of the moment, but it would undo me utterly. my great temptation is regret, and i must be strong enough not to regret.”
“oh, how sad life is!” cried martha. “i have always thought that you at least ought to be happy. i gave you the name of ‘the happy princess,’ out of tennyson. it has seemed to me from the first that you were a creature who had it in you to command happiness.”
“ah, dear child, if you could only know how helpless i am there! the best thing that is in me is the power to command courage. that i can, and for the most part do. while that is so, i shall not complain.”
“then you are really unhappy? oh!” said martha, drawing herself up with an impulsive movement.
“i know what that fervent exclamation means as well as if you had put it into words,” said the princess. “you are wishing that there were some way in which, by sacrificing yourself, you could purchase happiness for me.”
martha, startled at the correctness of this guess, could say nothing in denial.
“i knew it,” said the princess, reading her face. “i have not the faintest doubt that you would do it; and—now i am going to knock over some of your idealizing of me—there have been moments in my life when my greed for happiness has consumed me so that i believe i would have been willing to take it, and to let another pay the price. that’s a base thing for a woman to say of herself, but so true it is that i thank god i was never tempted when those moods were on me. something not wholly different from that panting after an impossible joy was upon me this morning. shall i never get the better of it utterly? can one overcome it? did you never have it, martha? to me joy is im{62}possible, but it is not so to you. don’t you ever long for it? i will speak to you quite openly, martha, and tell you this—when i say joy, i mean love. is there a woman’s heart that does not long for that? be as honest with me as i have been with you, and tell me.”
“i will try,” said martha. “i will do my best to be perfectly truthful. i do long for happiness; but—this may seem strange to you, and you may even think that i am pretending to be better or more unselfish than others—”
“that i never will! i know that isn’t so. go on.”
“i was going to say that the craving of my heart seems somehow to be impersonal. i want happiness intensely, but the way in which i want it is to see the beings whom i love best have it. now there are two creatures in the world whom i love supremely—my brother and you. you know that this is so. if i could see both of you happy, in the manner and degree that i want, i believe that i could then be perfectly happy, too. i believe all the needs of my own heart could be answered in that way; and indeed i almost{63} think that my greed for joy is as great as yours at times. it has strained my heart almost to bursting, in harold’s case, and i feel now almost the same about you. i have never spoken of this to any one; indeed, i was never fully aware of it, i think, until i put it into words now. it must seem quite incredible to you.”
“not in the least. i believe it utterly, or rather it’s a stronger thing than belief with me. i feel that it is true. i admire you for it, and all the more because it is so different from me. i want happiness and love for myself—every ounce of flesh, every drop of blood in me longs for it as well as every aspiration of my soul. it is self that i am thinking of when i get like this—my own power to enjoy, and also—oh, god knows that this is true!—and also the power to give joy to another. martha, i will tell you something,” she said, with a sudden change of tone, dropping her voice, and leaning forward to take both of martha’s hands in hers as she spoke, with her eyes fixed intently on the girl’s. “i have known this joy. i have loved supremely, and been loved. you have never tasted that cup of rapture as i have;{64} but then you have never known, as i have, the anguish of that renunciation. which of us is the fortunate one? if you knew how i suffer you would probably say that it is you; but if, on the other hand, you knew what ecstasy i have had, i think that you might decide differently. oh, if god would give me one more hour of it, i think i would be content! one more hour, to take it to the full, knowing that i must, after that, come back to what i suffer now! i think those sixty joy-absorbing minutes would make up to me for everything. but to have it never again!”
she broke off, and, hiding her face in her hands, turned away, and lay for some moments quite silent and still. she was not crying—martha could see that; and when she presently turned, and looked at the young girl, holding out both her hands to her, although there was no smile on her face, it showed that she had conquered her dark mood, and was strong again.
it was a very gentle sort of strength, however, that was not too self-sufficient to feel pleasure in the words and looks and touches of quiet sympathy which martha gave her now. they sat there, hand in hand, for a{65} long time; and presently the princess said, with her own beautiful smile:
“you have done me a world of good, martha. my headache is gone, and also its cause. sometimes, do you know,—i’m going to let you see just how weak i am,—sometimes i succumb for days to a mood like this. nobody knows that tears have anything to do with the headaches that i suffer from—at least nobody but félicie, and she gives no information. my aunt loves me dearly, but is no more acquainted with the real me than if i were a stranger; and yet she adores me—perhaps for that reason. i tell her nothing, because the feelings that i have are quite outside her comprehension, while the headaches are quite within it. she recommends various powders and pellets, and is constantly getting new prescriptions for me. she says my headaches are of a very obstinate type, and i agree with her. to show you how completely you’ve cured me,” she added, rising to her feet, with an entire change of tone, “i am going to work this afternoon. you will stay and take your lunch with me, and then we’ll be there in time for the second model’s pose.”
“i can’t stay,” said martha, rising too;{66} “but i will meet you there promptly. i am keeping my cab below, so that i may be back at the atelier by the time the carriage comes for me. you know how very quiet i am keeping my little escapades with you.”
“oh, to be sure!” exclaimed the other, smiling. “i had forgotten the necessity of that precaution. what would ‘mama and the girls’ say? i think i shall write them an anonymous letter, saying that if madame had been under the impression that her eldest daughter devoted herself wholly to the pursuit of art during the hours of her absence from home, it might have surprised her had she seen the aforesaid young lady this morning come out of the atelier, call a cab, give a number, go to a distant apartment (where she was evidently well known to the concierge, who passed her on to a servant in russian livery, who as evidently knew her well), enter, by a special passage, a certain room, where she remained shut in for a long time, emerging finally in great haste to drive rapidly in the cab, which she had kept waiting, back to the atelier in time to meet her own carriage, and come innocently home to join the family circle at lunch! couldn’t i make out a case?{67} and what would the mother and the little sisters say?”
martha, too, laughed at the picture; but in spite of some discomfiture of feeling to which it gave rise, she had no idea of changing her tactics. the very thought of her mother’s going to work to investigate the princess, and ascertain if she were a proper friend for her daughter, smote the girl to the heart, and she resolved to guard her secret more carefully than ever. she determined that she would ease her conscience for the deception by confessing everything to her brother when he came. this would make it all right.
as martha drove back to the atelier, after an affectionate au revoir to the princess, she was conscious that something was rankling in her mind. when she came to search for the ground of this feeling, she found it to exist in the confession of love which the princess had made. this knowledge caused martha to realize that she had not even yet succeeded in putting from her the imaginings by which she had connected her brother and her friend. before knowing the princess she had always cherished the belief that her brother would sink below her ideal of him if he ever loved{68} a second time. lately, however, she had imagined the possibility of his telling her, after knowing the princess, that the old love was not the perfect one he had imagined it; and she could fancy herself forgiving him for loving a second time, with the princess as his apology. it had even seemed to her lately so monstrously wrong and cruel that harold’s life should be wantonly wrecked that she was now prepared to accept a good deal more than would once have seemed possible, in order to see it mended.
martha, for all her demure appearance, had something that was more or less savage and lawless in her nature, especially where harold was concerned; and the same feeling, in a lesser degree, dominated her in regard to the princess. she had long ago admitted to herself the fact that harold had missed his chance of happiness in love; but it was as painful as it was unexpected to her to find that the princess too had loved before. she had known that she had been married, but with very little difficulty she had constructed for herself a theory of that marriage in which the princess had played the part of an innocent victim to circumstance. for instance, she might have{69} been married by her parents in early youth to a man perhaps far older than herself, whom she had never loved, and for whose death she could not have grieved much.
it was a surprise to martha now to find how entirely she had let this utterly unfounded idea take possession of her. the words of the princess this morning had shattered it to atoms, and in spite of herself she felt strangely heavy-hearted.