In the afternoons Vandover worked in his studio, which was on Sacramento
Street, but in the mornings he was accustomed to study in the life-class
at the School of Design.
This was on California Street over the Market, an immense room
partitioned by enormous wooden screens into alcoves, where the
still-life classes worked, painting carrots, grapes, and dusty brown
stone-jugs.
All about were a multitude of casts, the fighting gladiator, the
discobulus, the Venus of Milo, and hundreds of smaller pieces, masks,
torsos, and the heads of the Parthenon horses. Flattened paint-tubes and
broken bits of charcoal littered the floor and cluttered the chairs and
shelves. A strong odour of turpentine and fixative was in the air,
mingled with the stronger odours of linseed oil and sour, stale French
bread.
Every afternoon a portrait class of some thirty-odd assembled in one of
the larger alcoves near the door. Several of the well-known street
characters of the city had posed for this class, and at one time Father
Elphick, the white-haired, bare-headed vegetarian, with his crooked
stick and white clothes, had sat to it for his head.
Vandover was probably the most promising member of the school. His style
was sketchy, conscientious, and full of strength and decision. He worked
in large lines, broad surfaces and masses of light or shade. His colour
was good, running to purples, reds, and admirable greens, full of
bitumen and raw sienna.
Though he had no idea of composition, he was clever enough to
acknowledge it. His finished pictures were broad reaches of landscape,
deserts, shores, and moors in which he placed solitary figures of men or
animals in a way that was very effective--as, for instance, a great
strip of shore and in the foreground the body of a drowned sailor; a
lion drinking in the midst of an immense Sahara; or, one that he called
"The Remnant of an Army," a dying war horse wandering on an empty plain,
the saddle turned under his belly, his mane and tail snarled with burrs.
Some time before there had come to him the idea for a great picture. It
was to be his first masterpiece, his salon picture when he should get to
Paris. A British cavalryman and his horse, both dying of thirst and
wounds, were to be lost on a Soudanese desert, and in the middle
distance on a ridge of sand a lion should be drawing in upon them,
crouched on his belly, his tail stiff, his lower jaw hanging. The
melodrama of the old English "Home Book of Art" still influenced
Vandover. He was in love with this idea for a picture and had determined
to call it "The Last Enemy." The effects he wished to produce were
isolation and intense heat; as to the soldier, he was as yet undecided
whether to represent him facing death resignedly, calmly, or grasping
the barrel of his useless rifle, determined to fight to the last.
Vandover loved to paint and to draw. He was perfectly contented when his
picture was "coming right," and when he felt sure he was doing good
work. He often did better than he thought he would, but never so well as
he thought he _could_.
However, it bored him to work very hard, and when he did not enjoy his
work he stopped it at once. He would tell himself on these occasions
that one had to be in the mood and that he should wait for the
inspiration, although he knew very well how absurd such excuses were,
how false and how pernicious.
That certain little weakness of Vandover's character, his
self-indulgence, _had_ brought him to such a point that he thought he
had to be amused. If his painting amused him, very good; if not, he
found something else that would.
On the following Monday as he worked in the life-class, Vandover was
thinking, or, rather, trying not to think, of what he had done the
Sunday morning previous when he had gone to communion with Turner Ravis.
For a long time he evaded the thought because he knew that if he allowed
it to come into his mind it would worry and harass him. But by and by
the effort of dodging the enemy became itself too disagreeable, so he
gave it up and allowed himself to look the matter squarely in the face.
Ah, yes; it was an ugly thing he had done there, a really awful thing.
He must have been still drunk when he had knelt in the chancel. Vandover
shuddered as he thought of this, and told himself that one could hardly
commit a worse sacrilege, and that some time he would surely be called
to account for it. But here he checked himself suddenly, not daring to
go further. One would have no peace of mind left if one went on brooding
over such things in this fashion. He realized the enormity of what he
had done. He had tried to be sorry for it. It was perhaps the worst
thing he had ever done, but now he had reached the lowest point. He
would take care never to do such a thing again. After this he would be
better.
But this was not so. Unconsciously, Vandover had shut a door behind him;
he would never again be exactly the same, and the keeping of his
appointment with Turner Ravis that Sunday morning was, as it were, a
long step onward in his progress of ruin and pollution.
He shook himself as though relieving his shoulders of a weight. The
model in the life-class had just been posed for the week, and the others
had begun work. The model for that week was a woman, a fact that pleased
Vandover, for he drew these nude women better than any one in the
school, perhaps better than any one in the city. Portrait work and the
power to catch subtle intellectual distinctions in a face were sometimes
beyond him, but his feeling for the flesh, and for the movement and
character of a pose, was admirable.
He set himself to work. Holding his stick of charcoal toward the model
at arm's-length, he measured off the heads, five in all, and laid off an
equal number of spaces upon his paper. After this, by aid of his mirror,
he studied the general character of the pose for nearly half an hour.
Then, with a few strokes of his charcoal he laid off his larger
construction lines with a freedom and a precision that were excellent.
Upon these lines he made a second drawing a little more detailed, though
as yet everything was blocked in, angularly and roughly. Then, putting a
thin flat edge upon his charcoal, he started the careful and finished
outline.
By the end of an hour the first sketch of his drawing was complete. It
was astonishingly good, vigorous and solid; better than all, it had that
feeling for form that makes just the difference between the amateur and
the genuine artist.
By this time Vandover's interest began to flag. Four times he had drawn
and redrawn the articulation of the model's left shoulder. As she stood,
turned sideways to him, one hand on her hip, the deltoid muscle was at
once contracted and foreshortened. It was a difficult bit of anatomy to
draw. Vandover was annoyed at his ill success--such close attention and
continued effort wearied him a little--the room was overheated and
close, and the gas stove, which was placed near the throne to warm the
model, leaked and filled the room with a nasty brassy smell. Vandover
remembered that the previous week he had been looking over some old
bound copies of _l'Art_ in the Mechanics Library and had found them of
absorbing interest. There was a pleasant corner and a huge comfortable
chair near where they were in the reading-room, and from the window one
could occasionally look out upon the street. It was a quiet spot, and he
would not be disturbed all the morning. The idea was so attractive that
he put away his portfolio and drawing things and went out.
For an hour he gave himself up to the enjoyment of _l'Art_, excusing his
indolence by telling himself that it was all in his profession and was
not time lost. A reproduction of a picture by Gérome gave him some
suggestions for the "Last Enemy," which he noted very carefully.
He was interrupted by a rustle of starched skirts and a voice that said:
"Why, hello, Van!"
He looked up quickly to see a young girl of about twenty dressed in a
black close-fitting bolero jacket of imitation astrakhan with big
leg-of-mutton sleeves, a striped silk skirt, and a very broad hat tilted
to one side. Her hair was very blond, though coarse and dry from being
bleached, and a little flat curl of it lay very low on her forehead. She
was marvellously pretty. Vandover was delighted.
"Why, _Ida_!" he exclaimed, holding her hand; "_it's_ awfully nice to
see you here; won't you sit down?" and he pushed his chair toward her.
But Ida Wade said no, she had just come in after a new book, and of
course it had to be out. But where had he kept himself so long? That was
the way he threw off on her; ah, yes, he was going with Miss Ravis now
and wouldn't look at any one else.
Vandover protested against this, and Ida Wade went on to ask him why he
couldn't come up to call on her that very night, adding:
"We might go to the Tivoli or somewhere." All at once she interrupted
herself, laughing, "Oh, I heard all about you the other night.
_'Cherries are ripe_!' You and the boys painted the town red, didn't
you? Ah, Van, I'm right on to _you_!"
She would not tell him how she heard, but took herself off, laughing and
reminding him to come up early.
Ida Wade belonged to a certain type of young girl that was very common
in the city. She was what men, among each other, called "gay," though
that was the worst that could be said of her. She was virtuous, but the
very fact that it was necessary to say so was enough to cause the
statement to be doubted. When she was younger and had been a pupil at
the Girls' High School, she had known and had even been the companion of
such girls as Turner Ravis and Henrietta Vance, but since that time
girls of that class had ignored her. Now, almost all of her
acquaintances were men, and to half of these she had never been
introduced. They had managed to get acquainted with her on Kearney
Street, at theatres, at the Mechanics' Fair, and at baseball games. She
loved to have a "gay" time, which for her meant to drink California
champagne, to smoke cigarettes, and to kick at the chandelier. She was
still virtuous and meant to stay so; there was nothing vicious about
her, and she was as far removed from Flossie's class as from that of
Turner Ravis.
She was very clever; half of her acquaintances, even the men, did not
know how very "gay" she was. Only those--like Vandover--who knew her
best, knew her for what she was, for Ida was morbidly careful of
appearances, and as jealous of her reputation as only fast girls are.
Bessie Laguna was her counterpart. Bessie was "the girl she went with,"
just as Henrietta Vance was Turner's "chum" and Nannie was Flossie's
"running-mate."
Ida lived with her people on Golden Gate Avenue not far from Larkin
Street. Her father had a three-fourths interest in a carpet-cleaning
establishment on Howard Street, and her mother gave lessons in painting
on china and on velvet. Ida had just been graduated from the normal
school, and often substituted at various kindergartens in the city. She
hoped soon to get a permanent place.
Vandover arrived at Ida's house that night at about eight o'clock in the
midst of a drenching fog. The parlour and front room on the second floor
were furnished with bay windows decorated with some meaningless sort of
millwork. The front door stood at the right of the parlour windows. Two
Corinthian pillars on either side of the vestibule supported a balcony;
these pillars had iron capitals which were painted to imitate the wood
of the house, which in its turn was painted to imitate stone. The house
was but two stories high, and the roof was topped with an iron cresting.
There was a microscopical front yard in which one saw a tiny gravel
walk, two steps long, that led to a door under the front steps, where
the gas-meter was kept. A few dusty and straggling calla-lilies grew
about.
Ida opened the door for Vandover almost as soon as he rang, and pulled
him into the entry, exclaiming: "Come in out of the wet, as the whale
said to Jonah. _Isn't_ it a nasty night?" Vandover noticed as he came in
that the house smelt of upholstery, cooking, and turpentine. He did not
take off his overcoat, but went with her into the parlour.
The parlour was a little room with tinted plaster walls shut off from
the "back-parlour" by sliding doors. A ply carpet covered the floor, a
cheap piano stood across one corner of the room, and a greenish sofa
across another. The mantelpiece was of white marble with gray spots; on
one side of it stood an Alaskan "grass basket" full of photographs, and
on the other an inverted section of a sewer-pipe painted with daisies
and full of gilded cat-tails tied with a blue ribbon. Near the piano
straddled a huge easel of imitation brass up-holding the crayon picture
of Ida's baby sister enlarged from a photograph. Across one corner of
this picture was a yellow "drape." There were a great many of these
"drapes" all about the room, hanging over the corners of the chairs,
upon an edge of the mantelpiece, and even twisted about the chandelier.
In the exact middle of the mantelpiece itself was the clock, one of the
chief ornaments of the room, almost the first thing one saw upon
entering; it was a round-faced timepiece perversely set in one corner of
an immense red plush palette; the palette itself was tilted to one
side, and was upheld by an easel of twisted brass wire. Out of the
thumb-hole stuck half a dozen brushes wired together in a round bunch
and covered with gilt paint. The clock never was wound. It went so fast
that it was useless as a timepiece. Over it, however, hung a large and
striking picture, a species of cheap photogravure, a lion lying in his
cage, looking mildly at the spectator over his shoulder. In front of the
picture were real iron bars, with real straw tucked in behind them.
Ida sat down on the piano stool, twisting back and forth, leaning her
elbows on the keys.
"All the folks have gone out to a whist-party, and I'm left all alone in
the house with Maggie," she said. Then she added: "Bessie and Bandy
Ellis said they would come down to-night, and I thought we could all go
downtown to the Tivoli or somewhere, in the open-air boxes, you know,
way up at the top." Hardly had she spoken the words when Bessie and
Ellis arrived.
Ida went upstairs to get on her hat at once, because it was so late, and
Bessie went with her.
Ellis and Vandover laughed as soon as they saw each other, and Ellis
exclaimed mockingly, "Ye-e-ow, thash jush way I feel." Vandover grinned:
"That's so," he answered. "I _do_ remember now of having made that
remark several times. But _you_--oh, you were fearful. Do you remember
the row in the Luxembourg? Look there where you bit me."
Ellis was incensed with Geary because he had forsaken their party.
"Oh, that's Charlie Geary, all over," answered Vandover.
As they were speaking there came a sudden outburst of bells in various
parts of the city and simultaneously they heard the hoarse croaking of a
whistle down by the waterfront.
"Fire," said Vandover indifferently.
Ellis was already fumbling in his pockets, keeping count of the strokes.
"That's one," he exclaimed, pulling out and studying his list of
alarm-boxes, "and one-two-three, that's three and one-two-three-_four_,
one thirty-four. Let's see now! That's Bush and Hyde streets, not very
far off," and he returned his card to the inside pocket of his coat as
though he had accomplished a duty.
He lit a cigar. "I wonder now," he said, hesitating. "I guess I better
not smoke in here. I'll go outside and get a mouthful of smoke before
the girls come down." He went out and Vandover sat down to the cheap
piano and played his three inevitable pieces, the two polkas and the air
of the topical song; but he was interrupted by Ellis, who opened the
door, crying out:
"Oh, come out here and see the _fire_, will you? Devil of a blaze!"
Vandover ran out and saw a great fan-shaped haze of red through the fog
over the roofs of the houses.
"Oh, say, girls," he shouted, jumping back to the foot of the stairs;
"Ida, Bessie, there's a fire. Just look out of your windows. Hark, there
go the engines."
Bessie came tearing down the stairs and out on the front steps, where
the two fellows were standing hatless.
"Where? Oh, show me where! O-o-oh, sure enough! That's a _big_ fire.
Just hear the engines. _Oh, let's go_!"
"Sure; come on, let's go!" exclaimed Vandover. "Tell Ida to hurry up."
"Oh, Ida," cried Bessie up the stairs, "there's an awful big fire right
near here, and we're going."
"Oh, wait!" shouted Ida, her mouth full of pins. "I had to change my
waist. Oh, _do_ wait for me. Where is it _at_? Please wait; I'm coming
right down in just a minute."
"Hurry up, hurry up!" cried Vandover. "It will be all out by the time we
get there. I'm coming up to help."
"No, no, no!" she screamed. "Don't; you rattle me. I'm all mixed up. Oh,
_darn_ it, I can't find my czarina!"
But at last she came running down, breathless, shrugging herself into
her bolero jacket. They all hurried into the street and turned in the
direction of the blaze. Other people were walking rapidly in the same
direction, and there was an opening and shutting of windows and front
doors. A steamer thundered past, clanging and smoking, followed by a
score of half-exhausted boys. It took them longer to reach the fire than
they expected, and by the time they had come within two blocks of it
they were quite out of breath. Here the excitement was lively; the
sidewalks were full of people going in the same direction; on all sides
there were guesses as to where the fire was. On the front steps of many
houses stood middle-aged gentlemen, still holding their evening papers
and cigars, very amused and interested in watching the crowd go past.
One heard them from time to time calling to their little sons, who were
dancing on the sidewalks, forbidding them to go; in the open windows
above could be seen the other members of the family, their faces faintly
tinged with the glow, looking and pointing, or calling across the street
to their friends in the opposite houses. Every one was in good humour;
it was an event, a fête for the entire neighbourhood.
Vandover and his party came at last to the first engines violently
pumping and coughing, the huge gray horses standing near by, already
unhitched and blanketed, indifferently feeding in their nosebags. Some
of the crowd preferred to watch the engines rather than the fire, and
there were even some who were coming away from it, exclaiming "false
alarm" or "all out now."
The party had come up quite close; they could smell the burning wood and
could see the roofs of the nearer houses beginning to stand out sharp
and black against the red glow beyond. It was a barn behind a huge frame
house that was afire, the dry hay burning like powder, and by the time
they reached it the flames were already dwindling. The hose was lying
like a python all about the streets, while upon the neighbouring roofs
were groups of firemen with helmets and axes; some were shouting into
the street below, and others were holding the spouting nozzles of the
hose. "Ah," exclaimed an old man, standing near to Ida and Vandover,
"ah, _I_ was here when it first broke out; you ought to have seen the
flames then! Look, there's a tree catching!"
The crowd became denser; policemen pushed it back and stretched a rope
across the street. There was a world of tumbling yellow smoke that made
one's eyes smart, and a great crackling and snapping of flames. Terribly
excited little boys were about everywhere whistling and calling for each
other as the crowd separated them.
They watched the fire for some time, standing on a pile of boards in
front of a half-built house, but as it dwindled they wearied of it.
"Want to go?" asked Vandover at last.
"Yes," answered Ida, "we might as well. Oh, where's Bessie and Ellis?"
They were nowhere to be seen. Vandover whistled and Ida even called, but
in vain. The little boys in the crowd mimicked Ida, crying back, "Hey!
Bessie! Oh, _Bes-see_, mommer wants you!" The men who stood near laughed
at this, but it annoyed Vandover much more than it did Ida.
"Ah, well, never mind," she said at length. "Let them go. Now shall _we_
go?"
It was too late for the theatre, but to return home was out of the
question. They started off aimlessly downtown.
While he talked Vandover was perplexed. Ida was gayly dressed and was
one of those girls who cannot open their mouths nor raise a finger in
the street without attracting attention. Vandover was not at all certain
that he cared to be seen on Kearney Street as Ida Wade's escort; one
never knew who one was going to meet. Ida was not a bad girl, she was
not notorious, but, confound it, it would look queer; and at the same
time, while Ida was the kind of girl that one did not want to be seen
with, she was not the kind of girl that could be told so. In an upper
box at the Tivoli it would have been different--one could keep in the
background; but to appear on Kearney Street with a girl who wore a hat
like that and who would not put on her gloves--ah, no, it was out of the
question.
Ida was talking away endlessly about a kindergarten in which she had
substituted the last week.
She told him about the funny little nigger girl, and about the games and
songs and how they played birds and hopped around and cried, "Twit,
twit," and the game of the butterflies visiting the flowers. She even
sang part of a song about the waves.
"Every little wave had its night-cap on;
Its white-cap, night-cap, white-cap on."
"It's more _fun_ than enough," she said.
"Say, Ida," interrupted Vandover at length, "I'm pretty hungry. Can't we
go somewhere and eat something? I'd like a Welsh rabbit."
"All right," she answered. "Where do you want to go?"
"Well," replied Vandover, running over in his mind the places he might
reach by unfrequented streets. "There's Marchand's or Tortoni's or the
Poodle Dog."
"Suits _me_," she answered, "any one you like. Say, Van," she added,
"weren't you boys at the Imperial the other night? What kind of a place
is that?"
On the instant Vandover wondered what she could mean. Was it possible
that Ida would go to a place like that with him?
"The Imperial?" he answered. "Oh, I don't know; the Imperial is a sort
of a nice place. It has private rooms, like all of these places. The
cooking is simply out of sight. I think there is a bar connected with
it." Then he went on to talk indifferently about the kindergarten,
though his pulse was beating fast, and his nerves were strung taut. By
and by Ida said:
"I didn't know there was a bar at the Imperial. I thought it was just
some kind of an oyster joint. Why, I heard of a very nice girl, a swell
girl, going in there."
"Oh, yes," said Vandover, "they do. I say, Ida," he went on, "what's the
matter with going down _there_?"
"The _Imperial_?" exclaimed Ida. "Well, I guess _not_!"
"Why, it's all right, if I'm with you," retorted Vandover, "but if you
don't like it we can go anywhere else."
"Well, I guess we _will_ go anywhere else," returned Ida, and for the
time the subject was dropped.
They took a Sutter Street car and got off at Grant Avenue, having
decided to go to Marchand's.
"That's the Imperial down there, isn't it?" asked Ida as they reached
the sidewalk. Vandover made a last attempt:
"I say, Ida, come on, let's go there. It's all right if I'm with you.
Ah, come along; what's the odds?"
"_No_--_no_--NO," she answered decisively. "What kind of a girl do you
think I am, anyway?"
"Well, I tell you what," answered Vandover, "just come down _by_ the
place, and if you don't like the looks of it you needn't go in. I want
to get some cigarettes, anyhow. You can walk down with me till I do
_that_."
"I'll walk down with you," replied Ida, "but I shan't go in."
They drew near to the Imperial. The street about was deserted, even the
usual hacks that had their stand there were gone.
"You see," explained Vandover as they passed slowly in front of the
doors, "this is all quiet enough. If you pulled down your veil no one
would know the difference, and here's the ladies' entrance, you see,
right at the side."
"All right, come along, let's go in," exclaimed Ida suddenly, and before
he knew it they had swung open the little door of the ladies' entrance
with its frosted pane of glass and had stepped inside.
It was between nine and ten o'clock, and the Imperial was quiet as yet;
a few men were drinking in the barroom outside, and Toby, the red-eyed
waiter, was talking in low tones to a girl under one of the electric
lights.
Vandover and Ida went into one of the larger rooms in the rear passage
and shut the door. Ida pushed her bolero jacket from her shoulders,
saying, "This seems nice and quiet enough."
"Well, of course," answered Vandover, as though dismissing the question
for good. "Now, what are we going to have? I say we have champagne and
oysters."
"Let's have Cliquot, then," exclaimed Ida, which was the only champagne
she had ever heard of besides the California brands.
She was very excited. This was the kind of "gay" time she delighted in,
tête-à-tête champagne suppers with men late at night. She had never been
in such a place as the Imperial before, and the daring and novelty of
what she had done, the whiff of the great city's vice caught in this
manner, sent a little tremor of pleasure and excitement over all her
nerves.
They did not hurry over their little supper, but ate and drank slowly,
and had more oysters to go with the last half of their bottle. Ida's
face was ablaze, her eyes flashing, her blond hair disordered and
falling about her cheeks.
Vandover put his arm about her neck and drew her toward him, and as she
sank down upon him, smiling and complaisant, her hair tumbling upon her
shoulders and her head and throat bent back, he leaned his cheek against
hers, speaking in a low voice.
"No--no," she murmured, smiling; "never--ah, if I hadn't come--no,
Van--please--" And then with a long breath she abandoned herself.
About midnight he left her at the door of her house on Golden Gate
Avenue. On their way home Ida had grown more serious than he had ever
known her to be. Now she began to cry softly to herself. "Oh, Van," she
said, putting her head down upon his shoulder, "oh, I am so _sorry_. You
don't think any less of me, do you? Oh, Van, you must be true to me
now!"