Against the heroic proportions of the back drop, which represented
a peculiarly violent sunset over the cañons of Colorado, was a
group in such incongruous attire that Dangerfield, accustomed as he
was to the eccentricities of the studio, halted in astonishment.
King O’Leary, crowned with a battered helmet and draped in a white
sheet to represent a toga, was in an attitude of deferential
amazement before Flick, who occupied the center of the tableau in
Tootles’ dress suit, which shrunk below the elbows and positively
refused to descend to the ankles. To the left, Sassafras, stripped
to the waist, with the doctored pelt of the Harlem bear flung over
one shoulder, and a wig of pendent black horsehair, was on one
knee, rolling his eyes upward in ecstatic tribute. Behind appeared
Mr. Cornelius in the most Elizabethan of frilled coats and the most
Victorian of trousers, while Pansy, in powdered wig and black-silk
knee-breeches, was the most charming of beaux.
“Do you seize the idea?” said Tootles proudly, his head on one side
in paternal affection for the group which had sprung Minerva-wise
from his brain.
Dangerfield resorted hastily to his pocket-handkerchief and
surreptitiously flicked away a tear of agony, which all his
self-control could not keep down.
“It’s only a preliminary sketch,” said Tootles hastily, “for my
monumental decoration, ‘The Ages Contemplating the Apotheosis of
the Well-dressed Man.’”
“There’s millions in it,” said Flick, who forgot himself to the
extent of raising one arm, with the result that a ripping sound was
heard.
“Holy cats! Drop that arm!” exclaimed Tootles, who rushed to the
rescue of the pride of the wardrobe.
During this diversion, Dangerfield was able to recover himself
sufficiently to present a grave mask.
“What does Sassafras represent?” he asked, stroking his chin.
“Sassafras is primitive man,” said Tootles, assuming the attitude
of a lecturer. “O’Leary represents Rome--Cæsar or some other
classic chap, you know. The baron is the Spirit of the Middle Ages,
and Pansy is the celebrated Beau Brummel. It’s symbolic, of course.”
“And Wilder is the Apotheosis of the Well-dressed Man?” said
Dangerfield gravely, contemplating the thin limbs, which seemed to
have sprouted from the legs and arms of Wimpfheimer & Goldfinch’s
glorified dress suit.
“No, no,” said Tootles hastily; “Flick is only a clothes-horse for
the time being.”
Flick objected strongly to this characterization, and while his
feelings were being soothed, Dangerfield turned the easel and
inspected the canvas.
“I’m afraid I’m in a terrible mix,” said Tootles, scratching his
head and looking in despair at the canvas, which had certain marked
resemblances to the first days of Creation, when the earth and the
waters were still mingled.
“How are you going at it?” said Dangerfield, peering into the
confusion of colors.
“Diving in, head foremost, I guess,” said Tootles, rather
discouraged.
“Have you made any sketches, charcoal sketches?”
“Oh, yes; dozens.”
He returned with heaped-up arms.
Dangerfield sorted them rapidly, humming to himself. Bits of
drawing caught his attention, a free, felicitous line here and
there evoking an approving grunt.
“Not so bad--this is more like it--too worked over--this means
something--good! But you must get your composition first, my boy.”
“I know that,” said Tootles ruefully; “but then, I’m new to
decoration, you see.”
“Harder than you thought, eh?”
Tootles nodded darkly.
“Here, give me a canvas,” said Dangerfield, selecting a charcoal;
and then, unable to hold in any longer, he burst into a shout and
began to rock back and forth, convulsed with laughter. This cleared
the atmosphere and brought them all down from the rarified heights
to a working basis.
When Inga, anxious at his continued absence, came in a moment
later, she found Dangerfield chuckling to himself, oblivious to
everything but the joy of the moment, rearranging the group, as
excited as though he were launched on a masterpiece.
“The first point is the Well-dressed Man,” he began, with splendid
gravity. “We must place him in a way to dominate everything else--a
pedestal, or better still, a throne--no, no; he mustn’t be sitting.”
“The cut of the trousers is most important,” said Flick, who had
already formed ambitious plans for the marketing.
“Right--you must stand on an elevation, a flight of steps, perhaps.
A box on the model-stand will do for the moment. Now we center it
in a triangle, Sassafras at the left, reclining, one leg out, back
to us--hold that, good line--other side, what?--the Sphinx--Adam
and the Sphinx--not a bad idea!”
“Do you want me full-face or side view?” said Flick, while
Sassafras took his pose and King O’Leary was draped in a
semi-recumbent position to fill the lower right half.
[Illustration: “There!” He gave them a signal, and stood off
grinning, his head on one side, contemplatively, as they crowded
about the composition.]
“Thought of taking him three-quarters, with hat and gloves resting
on his cane in front--see, like this!” said Tootles meekly.
“Full-front is better for commercial purposes,” said Flick.
“How so?”
“When they use it for magazine and newspaper ads., they can print
‘$47.50’ over the shirt-front. That would be very effective.”
“Vandal!” said Tootles indignantly. “This is intended for mural
decoration only--like something dignified and inspiring--over a
bar.”
“Still, if the dress suit is to be held up as the ultimate
expression of grace,” said Dangerfield, looking over at Inga, “it
ought to be full-front.”
“Absolutely,” said King O’Leary, convinced.
“But I want to get the high hat in, somehow,” said Tootles
doubtfully. “Beside, it gives us two chances to sell it. I can be
practical also.”
“Wait.” Dangerfield ran over the canvas and began hurriedly to
draw in the three figures as determined upon. Then he burst into
renewed peals of laughter, waving them back as they pressed forward
curiously to watch his progress.
“There!” He gave them a signal, and stood off grinning, his head on
one side, contemplatively, as they crowded about the composition.
Above the idealized figure of the Well-dressed Man, flanked in
servile admiration by the Sphinx and Primitive Man, an Angel of
Victory, floating down, after the uncomfortable manner of angels
of Victory, was triumphantly blowing on a trumpet sustained by one
hand, while with the other she prepared to crown the Modern Man,
not with a wreath but with an immaculate silk hat, which was held
just over his brow. The face of the Well-dressed Man likewise
expressed the serene flush that heroes must show at such monumental
moments.
“Cracky!” said O’Leary, gazing in awe.
“Wimpfheimer will weep for joy,” said Flick, delighted.
Tootles gazed at Dangerfield as the pickets of the Grand Army used
to come to startled salute at the sudden apparition of the Little
Corporal.
“You must sign it, too,” he said, in a burst of fairness.
“It’ll be a riot,” said Flick, seeing visions of a golden shower.
“We’ll work it up until we have the whole clothes-aristocracy
fighting each other for it.”
“That’s a beginning,” said Dangerfield, who enjoyed the satire
more than he dared show. “Beau Brummel can be about left center,
examining him through a lorgnon, or better, indicating him to a
belle in a powdered wig.”
“You do think there ought to be woman-interest?” said Tootles.
“Sure! Appeal to the women--get the women’s periodicals,” said
Flick.
“I think so,” said Dangerfield, setting his lips. “Gives us a
better chance at color. But start on this; that will come later.”
When he had returned to the studio, he took out his handkerchief
and wiped his eyes, which were wet with repressed emotion. Inga,
delighted to see him in this mood, stood smiling.
“It’s the most wonderful take-off,” he said, at last, when he could
get breath. “You don’t understand. I have made it a caricature of a
superhuman ass I know--Tomlinson--who thinks he can decorate. It’ll
be the death of him when it comes out.”
“You had a lot of fun directing them,” she said, glad to find even
this expedient to interest him.
The boisterous mood left him.
“Lucky devils,” he said, with the smile still lingering about
the corners of his mouth. “Wonder if they know their luck?” An
expression of great kindness came to soften his face, as he stood
there reflecting, which held her eyes and brought a smile of
tenderness to them too. For him, the darkling walls, the strident,
contending city no longer existed, the hard barriers of the present
rolling away before the rise of remembered scenes--glorious attics
and tables set with the appetite of youth.
“Reminds me of the time when we painted socks on Quinny’s legs so
that he could go out and call on a countess. What rackets we used
to cut up then! And weren’t we sure of the future! Well, that was
something--to believe, even for a few years. The young are all
geniuses. Why, Inga, I used to walk to the top of Montmartre just
to look down over Paris and say to myself, ‘Some day, all that,
glittering below there, will know who I am!’” He shook his head,
and added in a lower voice: “I used to think, in those days, I was
going to be a great man.”
“You are.” She came to the side of the armchair into which he had
sunk, and stood with her hand upon his arm.
“What?” he said, startled from his revery by the sound of her voice.
“You have the big thing in you!” she said insistently. “I knew it
from the first moment.”
He shook his head again.
“No; there are some who think I had--but I know better, I know--I
know!” he said, with a rising emphasis. “That’s the terrible time
in the life of an artist, when he realizes he can go so far--and no
farther. That’s when he pays for all the triumphs others envy.”
“I won’t have it so,” she said, with such a note of fury in
her voice that it stopped him, and he looked at her eagerly, as
though longing to be convinced. She was on the arm of his chair,
leaning toward him, serious and wilful. Their glances met, and
then gradually the seriousness of her look melted into a smile--a
flash of white teeth and the slender oval face suffused with a
light that seemed to envelop and warm him. He forgot what he had
been saying, watching her, the craving for beauty in his soul fed
by the tenderness and the youth of her eyes. He laid his hand over
hers and stared into her face with that wondering, baffled look
of his. Then his mind slipped away to the novelty of the orderly,
harmonious room.
“You have made a spot for dreams here,” he said, at length.
“I have only just begun,” she said confidently.
“Don’t!” he said, in a low voice, understanding her. “It’s not fair
to you; it cannot be done.”
She smiled again, a smile that seemed to draw him up into her arms
like a tired child, and laid her hand gently over his forehead.
“We shall see.”
“Good heavens! Haven’t you anything better to do in life,” he said,
all at once, “than to believe in derelicts?”
She did not answer for a moment, looking beyond him with a lost
glance which he had noticed once or twice before. Then she answered
slowly.
“But that--that makes me happy--to give.”
“Inga, do I remind you of any one?” he said, with a suddenness that
startled her.
“Why do you say that?” she said, drawing away and frowning.
“I feel it. Just now, as you were looking, and many times
when we were arranging the room I had the feeling--a strange
feeling--almost as though there were some one else here with
us--that all this--well, how shall I say--that you had been here
before----”
“Why do you say that?” she said, after a moment’s hesitation. “I
haven’t asked any questions, have I?”
“You can--and besides, you won’t need to, soon,” he said, his
curiosity aroused by the answer her evasion implied.
“No, no,” she said emphatically; “what has happened has nothing to
do with it. We are what we are to each other. All the rest--what’s
happened before--we want to be free of that. What right has that to
come into your life again? That’s what’s rare in a friendship, to
begin all fresh--isn’t it?”
“You _are_ queer!” he said, gazing at her profoundly, with a
growing personal curiosity awakened by the intensity which she had
put into this unusually long speech.
“Why?”
“So I am not to know anything about you?”
She faced him a long moment, and, despite all his curiosity, he
could not divine what was passing behind her eyes.
“Wonder if I shall ever see into those eyes?” he said, wandering
from his question. His gaze rested a moment on the sensitive
nostrils and the delicate mouth with its poised upper lip; and,
suddenly, he said, as though noticing it for the first time:
“You can be beautiful when you want to--why don’t you?” Then he
laughed and said in a lighter tone, “Inga, if I were ten years
younger, I’d be madly in love with those eyes of yours.”
“Would that help?” she said, her eyes filling with a sudden
compassionate gentleness.
This frank question threw him into a turmoil. He seemed suddenly
recalled to himself--to the imminence of some crisis dominating
his freedom of decision. He went from her brusquely, turning about
the studio with restless, nervous step, snapping his fingers with
quick, irritated gesture, until, as she waited, he came as suddenly
back and seized her in his big hands.
“Inga, whatever you do, don’t get to caring for me--do you hear?”
he said vehemently, with the stricken intensity of his disordered
moods. Then each seemed struck with the strangeness and the
significance of what they had been saying. He repeated: “Do you
hear--do you understand--not that!”
She looked at him, yet across her eyes, as across her soul, the
same misty curtain seemed to intervene. Then she shrugged her
shoulders, as much as to lay the decision on the lap of fate.
“It will only bring you suffering,” he said roughly, almost angrily.
“Yes, perhaps.”
She nodded, admitting its truth, and her face clouded before a
vision starting out of the shadows. Her arms drew closer about her
body, while a shiver ran through it--a premonition perhaps. She
repeated:
“Yes, perhaps.”