“And when in the grave
Her laddie they laid,
Her heart then broke,
And she fervently prayed:
O God in Heaven,
Let me go, too,
And be wi’ my laddie--so guid and true!”
So sang Millie Brewster in her faint, pleasant soprano, while
O’Leary, at the piano, nodded encouragement, and interpolated
brilliant roulades into the accompaniment. The skylight was open
in deference to the first warmth of the spring, as March went out
like a lamb. Tootles, in overalls, so splashed with variegated
tints that they might have passed for an impressionistic landscape,
was giving the last tender touches to the completed canvas of the
Well-dressed Man Contemplated By The Ages. Schneibel, who had
stolen up between appointments, in his white dentist’s coat, was
dividing his admiration between the contemplation of Tootles’
masterpiece and that critical attention which one great singer
bestows upon the performance of another. Mr. Pomello, his high hat
pushed back from his forehead, his hands on his cane, was sitting
in judgment, with a view to giving Millie a trial performance at
the Gloria, the moving-picture theater below, where King O’Leary
thundered nightly on the piano. Flick, who had organized the
demonstration with the express intention of capturing Mr. Pomello,
sat well forward, nodding his head in a romantic, melancholy way,
occasionally clearing his throat to convey emotion repressed with
difficulty.
“Bravo!” said Tootles loudly, when the lass of bonnie Dundee had
been laid away in true ballad form.
“You had me going,” said Flick, rubbing his eyes industriously,
while King O’Leary patted the frightened girl on the back in rough
encouragement.
“How about it, Pomello?” he said, wheeling on his stool. “That
ought to take the house by storm.”
At this moment, a pounding was heard on the wall, followed by
several “Bravas!” in Dangerfield’s deep voice.
“I like that better than the first thing she sang,” said Pomello;
“got more stuff to it.”
“Sure--the first was just fireworks--grand-opera stuff--opens up
the voice,” said O’Leary.
“Well, I don’t know anything about singing, but I know what I
like,” said Pomello, who, by this phrase, doubly barred himself
from the sphere of the higher criticism. “Sing something more,
something sentimental.”
“What would you like?” said Millie.
Pomello reflected. His acquaintance was limited.
“Sing ‘The Rosemary.’”
At the end of the song (“The Rosary” was then only in the beginning
of its devastating march), which Millie, with her eyes on O’Leary,
sang with surprising fervor and pathos, great tears were rolling
down Pomello’s wrinkled face. He was delighted. He hobbled over and
shook Millie by the hands, and the engagement was ratified, to the
joy of every one.
As a matter of fact, his indecision had only been a pretense. The
question had been decided from the moment that Myrtle Popper had
indicated her desire. During the last month, Pomello’s infatuation
had become public property, though few, perhaps, divined the
seriousness of it.
The party broke up, Schneibel fired with enthusiasm, yodeling
his way back to the realities of dentistry (than which nothing is
more real), while Flick escorted Mr. Pomello with ceremony to the
elevator.
“Well, Millie, you’re a professional now, all right!” said O’Leary,
laughing. “Monday night’s the night.”
“I could sing anything if you were there,” said Millie, with a
grateful glance, “when you’re at the piano, it’s just as though you
had your arm--” She stopped, confused at a shout from Tootles, who
poked his head around the corner, saying:
“Oh, don’t mind me, Millie!”
“Well, you know what I mean,” said the girl, blushing fiery red
under O’Leary’s laughing eyes. “You just make me sing.”
“Sure, I’ll make you sing, all right,” said O’Leary.
“You’re awful kind,” said the girl, holding out her hand. “I know
it was you got Pomello interested.”
Now, O’Leary had carefully concealed from her the fact that it was
Myrtle, who, in the bigness of her heart, had persuaded him to this
act of generosity, divining, perhaps, the mute jealousy slumbering
behind Millie’s quiet looks. At this moment Myrtle Popper came in
tumultuously.
“Hurrah!” she cried. “I’ve heard the news! Won’t it be grand? I’ll
make Pomello pay real hard cash too.”
“_You_’ll make him?” said Millie, drawing back. She glanced at
O’Leary, bit her lip, and became suddenly very quiet.
“Take a look at the great work, Myrtle,” said Tootles, hastily
coming to the rescue. O’Leary began a furious procession of ragtime
up and down the piano, while Myrtle, unconscious of the jealousy
she had aroused, passed behind the canvas.
“Gee, but that’ll go big!” she said, in admiration, seeing only her
own portrait, which was indeed flattering.
“Pomello couldn’t take his eyes off it,” said Tootles maliciously.
“Honest, it’s wonderful! Say, isn’t Pansy cute, too?”
“Rather good of ‘the baron’--looks no end of a swell doesn’t he?”
“Sure; you ought to make a million dollars out of that!” said
Myrtle, and, after a moment, she added, “Couldn’t you put a ring or
two on my fingers--that hand of mine looks awful bare.”
“Flick’s got a couple of the Ready-Made magnates fighting for
admission,” said Tootles, ignoring her criticism. “Soon as we land
one, won’t we have a celebration though!”
Meanwhile, Millie Brewster had leaned over O’Leary and whispered:
“King, if this is her doings, I won’t have a thing to do with
it--do you hear? I won’t take favors from her!”
“Thank you for nothing!” said O’Leary, assuming an offended air,
while his hands descended upon a resounding chord in the bass. He
managed to look so fearfully angry that the girl’s heart sank at
once.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered contritely; “but I won’t be patronized
by her.”
“I suppose I don’t count,” said O’Leary, who seized the strategic
attitude. “Millie, I’m ashamed of you!”
But at the moment when the girl was humbly imploring him with her
eyes to forgive her, a new bombshell was exploded by Myrtle’s
emerging and saying:
“King, something I want to say to you--excuse me everybody!”
O’Leary shrugged his shoulders, arose, and followed her.
No sooner had they left the room than Tootles advanced with a
reproachful air.
“My dear girl--playing the game wrong--that’s not the clever way!
Keep him guessing. Crude, very crude!”
“What does she throw herself at him that way for?” said Millie
miserably.
“Whatever she does, don’t _you_ make a scene,” said Tootles, still
in his superior manner. “Don’t be such an idiot as to show your
jealousy.”
“How about you?” said the girl rebelliously.
“How about me--what do you mean, how about me?”
“And Pansy?”
“Miss Pansy Hartmann is nothing in my life,” said Tootles,
classically cold. “I admire her, but that is all.”
“Well, that’s a blessing--for I saw her yesterday lunching at
Healy’s with that Portuguese lawyer!”
“You saw her with Drinkwater?” said Tootles furiously, dropping his
brushes in his excitement.
“Yesterday.”
“And she swore to me--” said Tootles, who began struggling out of
his overalls in such indignation that the rest of the sentence was
lost.
“No use--she’s out,” said Millie hastily, as Tootles bolted for the
door.
“You saw her?” said Tootles wildly. “The little vixen, and I
believed her, yes, believed her smiling, treacherous eyes!”
“Mr. Kidder, Mr. Kidder,” said Millie, now genuinely alarmed at the
fury with which Tootles flung paints and paint-brushes on the floor
and stamped on them, “you mustn’t take on like that!”
“That ends it--this is the end!” said Tootles, whose usually genial
face was contorted with rage. “I wouldn’t believe her again if she
swore on her mother’s grave.”
All at once, he gave a prolonged “Aha!” seized a knife, and rushed
to the canvas. The girl in horror flung herself on him, crying to
him not to destroy it.
“No; I won’t destroy it, but I’ll destroy her!” said Tootles
wildly. “Let me go!”
“What are you going to do?” said Millie, still clinging to his arm.
“I’m going to paint her out,” said Tootles, as savagely as though
he had said, “I’m going to have her blood.”
He flung away the knife, and, with an exclamation of delight,
sprang for his brushes. In five minutes, in place of the glowing
complexion of Pansy the tantalizing, the swarthy, copper-colored
hue of an Ethiopian emerged!
“Good heavens, what have you done now?” exclaimed Millie, aghast.
“I have blotted her image forever from my memory!” said Tootles.
“You’ve ruined it,” said Millie, wringing her hands. “I didn’t mean
to tell you--honest, I didn’t!”
Tootles, without conveying to her how easily the transformation
could be effected back to the Caucasian, assumed the air of one
chastened by suffering and said nobly:
“It is over. I thank you.”
Meanwhile, O’Leary had followed Myrtle into the hall, rather
puzzled by the anxiety he had read in her look, not at all annoyed
at being quarreled over by two pretty women.
“Suppose she’s going to make a scene, too,” he thought.
But, to his surprise, Myrtle, without seeming to have taken the
slightest notice of what had just passed, said directly,
“King, you’ve got to take me out to dinner to-night--alone!”
“What’s up?”
“I’ve just got to talk to you. There’s no jolly--it’s dead serious.”
“Can’t you tell me now?”
“No, no,” she said hastily and, with some confusion, she came
closer and wound her fingers in his coat. “I’ve never asked you to
take me anywhere like this before, have I?”
“No; that’s a fact.”
“And you don’t think I would now if there wasn’t something I just
had to talk over with you,” she said impulsively. “You’re the only
living soul I can come to for advice, and I need it bad and quick.”
O’Leary looked at her and drew his eyes together.
“Is that straight?”
“Dead straight.”
“All right; it’s a go,” he said solemnly. “But I’ve got to be at
the theater by seven-thirty.”
“I’ll be ready in an hour.”
He nodded acquiescence, more and more puzzled by her manner, and
as she ran down to her manicuring, he hesitated at the door of his
studio, made a wry face, and went down the hall to Dangerfield’s.
The door was open. Belle Shaler was on the model-stand in the garb
of a street urchin, hands on her hips, hair tousled, bare-armed,
and throat revealed through the ragged blouse. The great yellow rug
had been rolled to one side, and two easels were pitched. At one,
Inga was working, while, at the other, Dangerfield was filling in a
rapid sketch. He paid no attention to O’Leary’s entrance, bending
eagerly to his work, clad in loose-flowing corduroy that bore the
marks of a hundred skirmishes of the brush, and a gray-flannel
shirt.
“Hello, King! Ain’t I a Venus in these mud-rags?” said Belle,
with a shrug of her shoulders, for the reasons of this pose, which
obliterated her natural graces, were beyond her comprehension.
“Say, how did it go? Did Millie land him?”
“Hooked him clear through the gills. Monday’s the night.”
“Hold that pose!” said Dangerfield sharply. Inga sent a warning
glance toward O’Leary.
“’Scuses!” said Belle hastily. In Dangerfield’s presence she was
unaccountably subdued.
King O’Leary moved silently behind Inga, with an exclamation of
pleasure at the charm of her arrangement. Under her deft fingers,
the urchin on the model-stand had been blended into the dainty
color-scheme for a magazine cover, and, instead of the shabby
reality, a fragile, idealized figure with grapevines and clustered
purple grapes greeted his eyes.
Then he turned to Dangerfield’s easel with renewed curiosity.
Against the white canvas, a figure stood out in glaring boldness,
done in flowing, powerful lines, a figure all human flesh and
greedy life, defiant, common, vital, astonishing in the power of
its ugliness, which no longer had the quality of ugliness, so alive
and instantaneous was the unifying spark of the actual which held
it together. And King O’Leary understood.
“God, that’s it!” he exclaimed.
“Rest--finished,” said Dangerfield. He glanced a moment at the
sketch and turned away without further interest.
Belle Shaler strolled down, gave a look at the canvas, whistled,
and sauntered over to Inga. It was plain to see which picture she
preferred. Mr. Cornelius, who had been curled up in an easy chair
reading, came up, smiling and nodding.
“What strength of a brute, and still what _finesse_, eh?” he said,
admiring it as a true connoisseur.
O’Leary nodded silently, and was joined by Belle, who tried to
comprehend what they could see in it, not realizing that the artist
had revealed to them secrets of which she herself was ignorant, the
soul of a child of the people, tolerant of hardships and tragedies,
smiling down the giant, useless fabrics of conventions and laws,
fatalist and stoic, indomitable in her curiosity and enjoyment.
“He’s coming back fast,” thought O’Leary, watching from the
corner of his eye the sea-blue eyes of Inga lighting up with an
overwhelming joy.
Dangerfield returned for a second inspection, head on one side, his
thumb to his teeth. He started to take up a charcoal, then shook
his head, and, lifting the canvas, put it aside.
“Yes; she’s bringing him around,” said O’Leary wisely to himself.
“No doubt about it--but he’s far from tame yet.”