Max

by Katherine Cecil Thurston

  CHAPTER XXI

  It was spoken--the one word, so brief, so significant; and Jacquelinestood hesitating, pleading, equally ready to rush forward or to fly.

  At last Max spoke.

  "Why do you call me that?"

  The tone in which the question was put was extremely low, the gray eyeswere steady almost to coldness, the strong, slight fingers beganmechanically to fold up the hair, strand upon strand.

  Jacqueline's candle swayed, until a stream of the melted wax guttered tothe floor.

  "Because--"

  "Yes?"

  "Because--oh, because--because--I have always known!"

  Then indeed a silence fell. Jacqueline, too petrified to embellishher statement, let her voice trail off into silence; Max,folding--mechanically folding--the strands of hair, offered neitherdisclaimer nor acceptance. With the force of the inevitable theconfession had struck home, and deep within him was the strong soul'srespect for the inevitable.

  "You have always known?" he said, slowly, when the silence had fulfilleditself. "You have always known--that I am a woman?"

  It sounded abominably crude, abominably banal--this tardy question, andnever had Max felt less feminine than in the uttering of it.

  The lips of Jacqueline quivered, her blue eyes brimmed with tears ofdistress.

  "Oh, I could wish myself dead!"

  "And why?"

  "Because I have made myself an imbecile!"

  The humiliation, the self-contempt were so candid, so human, thatsomething changed in Max's face and the icy rigidity of pose relaxed.

  "Come here!"

  The guilty child to the life, Jacqueline came timidly across the room,the candlestick still drooping unhappily from her right hand, themysterious mug clutched in her left.

  Max's first action was to take possession of both, and to set them sideby side upon the dressing-table. The candle Jacqueline delivered up insilence, but as the mug was wrested from her, she cried out in suddenvindictiveness:

  "And that--look you--that is the cause of all! It was Lucien's idea! Iserved a cup of _bouillon_ to him and to his friend at midnight, forthey had talked much; and finding it good, nothing would serve but Imust place a cup also for Monsieur Max, to await him on his return.Alas! Alas!"

  Max pushed the cup away, as if to remove a side issue.

  "Answer the question I put to you! You know that I am a woman?"

  "Yes; I know."

  "Since when? Since the night at the Bal Tabarin?"

  "Oh, but no!"

  "Since the morning we met upon this doorstep?"

  "No."

  "Since the morning you made the coffee for M. Blake and me?"

  Jacqueline was twisting the buckle of her belt in nervous perturbation.

  "Answer me! It was since that morning?"

  "No! Yes! Oh, it was before that morning. Oh, madame--monsieur!" Shewrung her hands in a confusion of misery. "Oh, do not torture me! Icannot tell you how it was--or when. I cannot explain. You know howthese things come--from here!" She lightly touched the place where sheimagined her heart to be.

  Max, sitting quiet, made no betrayal of the agony of apprehension atwork within.

  "And how many others have had this--instinct? M. Cartel? M. Blake?"

  So surprising, so grotesque seemed the questions, that self-confidencerushed suddenly in upon Jacqueline. She threw back her head andlaughed--laughed until her old inconsequent self was restored to power.

  "Lucien! Monsieur Edouard! Oh, _la, la_! How droll!"

  "Then they do not know?"

  "Know? Are they not men? And are men not children?"

  The vast superiority--the wordly wisdom in the babyish face was at onceso comical and so reassuring that irresistibly Max laughed too; and atthe laugh, the little Jacqueline dropped to her knees beside thedressing-table and looked up, smiling, radiant.

  "I am forgiven?"

  "I suppose so!"

  "Then grant me a favor--one favor! Permit me to touch the beautifulhair!"

  Without waiting for the permission, the eager little hands caught up thecoiled strands, and in a moment the candlelight was again chasing thered tints and the bronze through the dark waves.

  "My faith, but it is beautiful! Beautiful! And what a pity!"

  "A pity--?"

  "That no man may see it!" For an instant Jacqueline buried her face inthe silky mass; then, like a little bright bird, looked up again. "A manwould go mad for this!"

  "For a thing like that? Absurd!"

  "Yet a thing like that can demolish Monsieur Max, and leave in hisplace--"

  "What?"

  "How shall I say? His sister?" She looked up anew, disarming in hernaive candor: and a swift temptation assailed her listener--thetemptation that at times assails the strongest--the temptation tounburden the mind.

  "Jacqueline," Max cried, impetuously, "you speak a great truth when yousay that! We have all of us the two natures--the brother and the sister!Not one of us is quite woman--not one of us is all man!"

  The thought sped from him, winged and potent; and Jacqueline, wise inher child's wisdom, offered no comment, put forward no opinion.

  "It is a war," Max cried again, "a relentless, eternal war; for onenature must conquer, and one must fail. There cannot be two rulers inthe same city."

  "No," Jacqueline murmured, discreetly, "that is most true."

  "It is. Most true."

  "Why, then, was madame adorning herself with her beautiful hair when Ihad the unhappiness to enter? Has not madame already waged her war--andconquered?"

  The eyes were full of innocent question, the soft lips perfectly grave.

  Max paused to frame the falsehood that should fit the occasion; but,like a flood-tide, the frankness, the courage of the boy nature rose up,and the truth broke forth.

  "I thought until to-night, Jacqueline, that the battle was won; butto-night, while I supped with M. Blake, a little play was played outbefore me--a little human play, where real people played real parts,where the woman clung to her womanhood, as you cling to yours, and theman to his manhood, as does M. Cartel; where the stage effects weresmiles and glances and eyes and hair--"

  Jacqueline nodded, but said not a word.

  "And as I watched, the thought came to me--the mad thought, that I had,perhaps, lost something--that I had, perhaps, put something from me. Oh,it was a possession! A possession of some evil spirit!"

  Max sprang from the chair, and began to pace up and down the shadowedroom, while the little Jacqueline, sitting back upon her heels in astillness almost Oriental, watched, evolving some thought of her own.

  "And so madame desired to strangle the evil spirit with her beautifulhair?"

  The hurried steps ceased.

  "I wished to see the woman in me--and to dismiss her!"

  "And was she easily dismissed?"

  The new question seemed curiously pregnant. Max heard it, and in swiftresponse came back again to the dressing-table, took the hair fromJacqueline's hands and began again to intertwist it with the boyishlocks.

  Jacqueline raised herself from her crouching position, the more easilyto gratify her curiosity.

  "It is extraordinary--the change!" she murmured. "Extraordinary! Madame,let us complete it! Let us remove that ugly coat!" Excitedly, andwithout permission, she began to free Max of the boy's coat, while Maxyielded with a certain passive excitement. "And, now, what can we findto substitute? Ah!" She gave a cry of delight and ran to the bed, overthe foot of which was thrown a faded gold scarf--a strip of rich fabricsuch as artists delight in, for which Max had bargained only the daybefore in the rue Andre de Sarte.

  "Now the tie! And the ugly collar!" She ran back, the scarf floatingfrom her arm; and Max, still passive, still held mute by conflictingsensations, suffered the light fingers to unloose the wide black tie, toremove the collar, to open a button or two of the shirt.

  "And now the hair!" With lightning-like dexterity, Jacqueline drew ahandful of hairpins from her own head, reduced her sh
ort blonde curls toconfusion, and in a moment had brushed the thick waves of Max's clippedhair upward and secured them into a firm foundation.

  "Now! Now, madame! Close your eyes! I am the magician!"

  Max's eyes closed, and the illusion of dead hours rose again, morevivid, more poignant than before. With the familiar sensation of deftfingers at work upon the business of hairdressing, a thousandrecollections of countless nights and mornings--countless preparationsand wearinesses--countless anticipations and disgusts, born with theplacing of each hairpin, the coiling of the unfamiliar--familiar--weightof hair.

  "Now, madame! Is it not a picture?"

  With the gesture and pride of an artist, Jacqueline cast the wide scarfround Max's shoulders and stepped back.

  Max's eyes opened, gazing straight into the mirror, and once again inthat night of contrasts, emotion rose paramount.

  It was most truly a picture; not the earlier, puzzling sketch--theanomalous mingling of sex--but the complete semblance of the woman--theslim neck rising from the golden folds, the proud head, seeming smallerunder its coiled hair than it had ever appeared in the untidiness of itsboy's locks.

  "And now, madame, tell me! Is the evil spirit one lightly to bedismissed?"

  All the woman in the little Jacqueline--the creature of eternaltradition, eternal intrigue--was glorying in her handiwork, in theconsciousness of its potency.

  But Max never answered; Max continued to stare into the glass.

  "You will dismiss it, madame?"

  Max still stared, a peculiar light of thought shining and wavering inthe gray eyes.

  "Madame, you will dismiss it?"

  Max turned slowly.

  "I will do more, Jacqueline. I will destroy it utterly."

  "Madame!"

  "I have a great idea."

  "Madame!"

  "If a spirit--no matter how evil--could be materialized, it would ceaseto affect the imagination. I shall materialize mine!"

  "Madame!"

  "Yes; I have arrived at a conclusion. I shall render my evil spiritpowerless by materializing it. But I must first have a promise from you;you must promise me to keep my secret."

  "Madame--madame!" Jacqueline stammered.

  "You will promise?"

  "Yes."

  "And how am I to trust you?"

  Jacqueline's blue eyes went round and round the room, in search of someoverwhelming proof of her fidelity; then swiftly they returned to Max's.

  THE COMPLETE SEMBLANCE OF THE WOMAN]

  "Not even to Lucien, madame, shall it be revealed!" And silently Maxnodded, realizing the greatness of the pledge.

  * * * * *

  Many hours later, when all the lights were out in the rue Mueller and allthe doors wore closed, the slight figure of the boy Max might have beenseen by any belated wanderer slipping down the Escalier de Sainte-Marieto post a letter--a letter that had cost much thought, and upon whichhad been dropped many blots of ink; and had the belated wanderer beenpossessed of occult powers and wished to probe inside the envelope, thewords he would have read were these--scrawled with bold impetuosity:

  _Mon Ami_,--My idea--the true idea--has come to me. It was born in the first hour of this new day, and with it has come the knowledge that, either you were right and some artists need solitude, or I am one of the fools I talked of yesterday!

  All this means that I am ill of the fever of work, and that for many, many days--many, many weeks--I shall be in my studio--locked away even from you.

  Think no unkind thing of me! All my friendship is yours--and all my thought. Be not jealous of my work! Understand! Oh, Ned, understand! And know me, for ever and for ever, your boy.

  MAX.

  PART III