I
The winter wore away. Larimore Trench was too deeply occupied to give
much time to his small family. “Success had come to him unsought: not
the success he had hoped for or desired. Griffith Ramsay opened the way
when, as toast-master at a convention banquet, he introduced Lary as
Consulting Architect--a title the opulent New Yorker took seriously.
And it was Ramsay who looked after the contracts, stipulating enormous
fees for the service Lary would have given gratuitously, had he been
left to his own devices.
“I feel like a robber,” he told Judith when he handed her a check in
four figures--compensation for work that had actually consumed only
a few hours of his time. “You know, I met the man at a stag dinner,
early in December, and took a real liking to him. He had an option on
a place, and he asked me to go out and look at it. It was one of the
worst atrocities I ever saw--and I didn’t mince words with him. It was
such a bargain that he could afford to spend a little money on drastic
changes--and I told him what to do. I have often given that kind of
advice to a friend. I wouldn’t think of sending in a bill.”
“And it hurts your pride, to be selling your taste.”
Lary looked at her, a light dawning in his limpid brown eyes.
“You are the most remarkable woman in the world. You have the insight
of a sage ... and the intuition of a poet. I didn’t know what was wrong
with me. And in a second you put your finger on the tender spot. It is
precisely the feeling I had the first time an editor sent me a check
for a poem. You don’t sell things that come out of your soul. To take
money for them is like rubbing the bloom from the grape. It leaves your
soul shiny and bare.”
“But, Lary, an artist takes money for his pictures. It is bad for his
art if he lives by any other means. The painter who has no need to work
is almost sure to go stale in a few years. If you had been born when
Greece was at the climax of her glory--”
“I would have been an artisan--taking wages for my work, like
Apollodorus and Praxiteles--with no more social opportunity and
aspiration than an upper servant,” Lary retorted, laughing whimsically.
“The Greeks had no illusions about art. It was as closely knit with the
kitchen as with the temple. This idea that artists are fit associates
for millionaires--that is, for the aristocracy--is purely a figment of
modern times. My repugnance for money is not the result of my classical
training. It was burned into my mind by the gruelling conflict of
opinions between my father and mother. My father and I were born to an
age that knows only the money standard. The world--and my mother--are
not to blame, if he and I are out of joint with the times.”
“But you won’t let it hurt you, Lary ... let it embitter you?”
“No, sweetheart. I’ll make a joke of it. I’ll tell Ramsay to double his
infamous bills.” And Larimore Trench went forth to rob another rich man.