*CHAPTER XXI*
To have returned after three years abroad and to have slipped back into
the conventional life of the circles to which he had been accustomed in
the city of his birth might not have been very easy for Cleland. To
readjust himself among what was unfamiliar proved easier, perhaps. For
his family circle existed no longer; the old servants were gone; the
house had been closed for a long time now.
At his college club unfamiliar faces were already in the majority, men
of his own time having moved on to the University, Union, Racquet and
Knickerbocker, leaving the usual residue of undesirables and a fresh
influx from his college. And he was too young in letters to be
identified yet with any club which meant anything except the
conveniences of a hotel.
Among friend and acquaintances of his age there had been many changes,
too; much shifting and readjustment of groups and circles incident to
marriages and deaths and the scattering migration ever in progress from
New York.
It was an effort for him to pick up the threads again; and he did not
make the effort. It was much simpler to settle down here in these
quiet, old-time streets within stone's throw of the artists' quarter of
the city where Stephanie lived--where a few boyhood friends of artistic
proclivities had taken up quarters, where acquaintances were easily
made, easily avoided; and where the informalities of existence made life
more easy, more direct, and, alas, much more irresponsible. Chelsea,
with a conscious effort and a lurking smirk, mirrored the Latin Quarter
to the best of its ability.
It did pretty well. There were more exaggerations, more eccentricities,
less spontaneity and less work in Chelsea than in the Latin Quarter.
Too many of its nomadic denizens were playing a self-conscious part; too
few of them possessed the intelligence and training necessary for
self-expression in any creative profession. Otherwise, they were as
emotional, as casual, as unkempt, as vain, and as improvident as any
rapin of the original Latin Quarter.
Cleland met many of the elect even before he had settled down in his new
studio-apartment on the top floor of the same building where Stephanie
and Helen lived.
The quarter was peppered with tea-rooms and cafes and restaurants
sufficiently cheap to attract artistic youth. Also, there reigned in
that section of the city a general and resolute determination to be
bohemian; a number of damsels errant and transplanted, shock-headed
youths cooked in their own quarters, strolled about the streets in
bed-room slippers, or visited one another bare-headed and adorned with
paint-smeared smocks.
And there was, of course, much deviltry with cigarettes and cheap claret
in restaurant and cafe--frequent outbursts of horse-play and song,
especially if Philistine visitors were detected in the vicinity. And
New York French was frequently though briefly employed as the limited
medium for exchanging views on matters important only to the inmates of
Chelsea and its purlieus.
"But Washington Square bohemians are a harmless, friendly people,"
remarked Helen to Cleland one morning late in May, when he stopped on
his way out to breakfast to watch her modelling a horse in clay.
"They're like actor-folk; they live in a world entirely self-created
which marvels at and admires and watches them; they pose for its
benefit, playing as faithfully as they know how their chosen
roles--painter, writer, critic, sculptor, composer. Nobody in the
outside real and busy world notices them; but they think they're under
incessant and envious observation and they strut happily through the
little painted comedy of life, living an unreal existence, dying
undeceived. The real tragedy of it all they mercifully never
suspect--the utter lack of interest in them taken by real people."
She went on modelling, apparently amused by her own analysis.
"Where is Stephanie?" he inquired, after a slight pause.
"Out somewhere with Oswald, I believe."
"It's rather early."
"They sometimes get up early and breakfast together at Claremont,"
remarked Helen, working serenely away. The freckled livery-stable lad
who held the horse for her and occasionally backed him into the pose
again continued to chew gum and watch the pretty sculptor with absorbed
interest.
"I've got such an interesting commission," she said, wetting down her
clay with a huge and dripping sponge. "It's for the new Academy of Arts
and Letters to be built uptown, and my equestrian figure is to be cast
in silver bronze for the great marble court."
"What is the subject?" he asked, preoccupied by what she had told him
about Stephanie, yet watching this busy and efficient young girl who,
with the sleeves of her blue blouse rolled up, displaying her superb
young arms, stood vigorously kneading a double handful of clay and
studying the restless horse with clear and very beautiful brown eyes.
"The subject? 'Aspiration.' I made some sketches--a winged horse
taking flight upward. A nude female figure, breathless, with
dishevelled hair, has just flung itself upon the rearing, wide-winged
Pegasus and is sticking there like a cat to the back fence--hanging on
tooth and nail with one leg just over and the other close against the
beast's ribs, and her desperate fingers in the horse's mane.... I don't
know. It sounds interesting but it may be too violent. But I've had
that idea--hope, aspiration, fear and determination clinging to a
furious winged animal that is just starting upward like a roaring
sky-rocket----"
She turned her head, laughing:
"Is it a rotten idea?"
"I don't know," he said absently. "It's worth trying out, anyway."
She nodded; and he went on about the business of breakfast. But had now
no appetite.
There was one thing, Cleland soon found out, against which he was
helpless. Stephanie frequented Grismer at any hour of the day and
evening that her fancy prompted.
This perplexed him and made him sullen; but when he incautiously started
to remonstrate with her one evening her surprise and anger flashed like
a clear little flame, and she explained very clearly what was the
essence of personal liberty, and that the one thing she would not
tolerate from him or anybody else was any invasion of her freedom of
thought and action.
Silenced, enraged, and humiliated at the rebuke he had retired to his
studio to sulk like Achilles--a sullen mourner at the bier of love. For
he fully and firmly determined to eradicate this girl from his life and
devote it to scourging the exasperating sex of which she was a beautiful
but baffling member.
The trouble with Stephanie, however, was that she could not seem to see
the tragedy in his life or understand that a young man desired to suffer
nobly and haughtily and at his own leisure and convenience.
For there came a knock at his door after his second day of absenting
himself, and when he incautiously opened it, she marched in and took him
gaily into her unembarrassed arms and bestowed upon his astonished
countenance a hearty, wholesome and vigorous smack. Moreover, she
laughed and jeered and tormented and poked merciless fun at him until
she had badgered and worried and hectored and beaten the sulkiness out
of him. Then she admonished him:
"Don't ever do it again!" she said. "We are free, you and I. What we
are to each other alone concerns us, not what we may choose to do or be
to others."
"You don't care what I do, Steve," he said.
"I care what you do to me!"
"How I behave otherwise doesn't concern you?"
"No. It would be an impertinence for me to meddle. For," she added in
smiling paraphrase:
"If you are not nice to me
What care I how nice you be--
to other girls?"
"Do you really mean that it wouldn't make any difference to you what I
do? Suppose I take you at your word and become enamoured of some girl
and devote myself to her?"
"You mean a nice girl, don't you?" she inquired.
"Any old kind."
She considered the matter, surprised.
"I couldn't interfere with your personal liberty," she concluded,
"--whatever you choose to do."
"How would you feel about my frequenting some pretty studio model, for
example?"
"I haven't the least idea."
"It wouldn't affect you one way or the other, then?"
"It ought not to--provided you are always nice to me."
"That," he exclaimed, "is a cold-blooded, fishy creed!"
"That's the creed of tolerance, Jim."
"All right. Live up to it, then. And I'll try to, too," he added
drily. "Because, sometimes when you're off, God knows where, with
Grismer, I feel lonely enough to drift with the first attractive girl I
come across."
"Why don't you?" she asked, flushing slightly.
"The reason I haven't," he said, "is because I'm in love with you."
She was standing with head bent, but now she looked up quickly.
"You adorable infant," she laughed. "What a child you really are, after
all! Come," she added mischievously, "let's kiss like good children and
let the gods occupy themselves with our future. It's their business,
not ours. I'm glad you think you're in love with me. But, Jim, I'm in
love with life. And you're such an important part of life that,
naturally, I include you!"
She bent forward and touched his lips with hers, daintily, deftly
avoiding his arms, her eyes gay with malice.
"No," she laughed, "not that, if you please, dear friend! It rumples
and raises the deuce with my hair and gown. But we _are_ friends again,
aren't we, Jim?"
"Yes," he said in a low voice, "--if you can give me no more than
friendship."
"It's the most wonderful thing in the world!" she insisted.
"You've read that somewhere."
"You annoy me, Jim! It is my own conclusion. There's nothing finer for
anybody--unless they want children. And I don't."
Neither did he. No young man does. But what she said struck him as
unpleasantly modern.
He met Grismer here and there in the artistic channels of the city;
often in Stephanie's studio, frequently in other studios, and
occasionally amid gatherings at restaurants, theatres, art galleries.
At first he had been civil but cool, avoiding any tete-a-tete with his
old school-fellow. But, little by little, he became aware of several
things which slightly influenced his attitude toward Grismer.
One thing became plain; the man had no intimates. There was not a man
Cleland met who seemed to care very much for Grismer; he seemed to have
no frank and cordial friendships among men, no pals. Yet, he was
considered clever and amusing where people gathered; he interested men
without evoking their personal sympathy; he interested women intensely
with his unusual good looks and the light, elusive quality of his
intelligence.
Always amiably suave, graceful of movement, alert and considerate of
feminine fancies, moods and caprices, he was welcomed everywhere by them
in the circles which he sauntered into. But he was merely accepted by
men.
So, in spite of his resentment at what Grismer had done, Cleland felt
slightly sorry for this friendless man. For Grismer's was a solitary
soul, and Cleland, who had suffered from loneliness enough to understand
it, gradually became conscious of the intense loneliness of this man,
even amid his popularity with women and their sympathetic and
sentimental curiosity concerning him.
But no man seemed to care for closer intimacy with Grismer than a
friendly acquaintanceship offered. There was something about him that
did not seem to attract or invite men's careless comradeship or
confidence.
"It's those floating golden specks in his eyes," said Belter, discussing
him one day with Cleland. "He's altogether too auriferous and graceful
to be entirely genuine, Cleland--too easy and too damned bland. Poor
beggar; have you noticed how shabby and shiny he's getting? I guess
he's down and out for fair financially."
Cleland had noticed it. The man's linen was visibly frayed. His
clothes, too, betrayed his meagre circumstances, yet he wore them so
well, and there was such a courtly indifference in the man, that the
shabby effect seemed due to a sort of noble carelessness.
Cleland had never called on Grismer. He had no inclination to do so, no
particular reason except that Grismer had invited him several times.
Yet, an uneasy curiosity lurked within him concerning Grismer's abode
and whether Stephanie, always serenely unconventional, ever went there.
He didn't care to think she did, yet, after all, the girl was this man's
legal wife, and there was no moral law to prevent her going there and
taking up her abode if she were so inclined.
Cleland never asked her if she went there, perhaps dreading her reply.
As far as that was concerned, he could not find any of his friends or
acquaintances who had ever been in Grismer's lodgings. Nobody even
seemed to know exactly where they were, except that Grismer lived
somewhere in Bleecker Street and never entertained.
At times, when Stephanie was not to be found, and his unhappy inference
placed her in Grismer's company, he felt an unworthy inclination to call
on Grismer and find out whether the girl was there. But the impulse was
a low one, and made him ashamed, and his envy and jealousy disgusted him
with himself.
Besides, his state of mind was painfully confused and uncertain in
regard to Stephanie. He was in love with her, evidently. But the utter
lack of sentimental response on her part afforded his love for her no
nourishment.
He traversed the entire scale of emotions. When he was not with her he
often came to the exasperated conclusion that he could learn to forget
her; when he was with her the idea seemed rather hopeless.
The unfortunate part of it seemed to be that, like his father's, his was
a single-track heart. He'd never been in love, unless this was love.
Anyway, Stephanie occupied the single track, and there seemed to be no
switches, no sidings, nothing to clear that track.
He was exceedingly miserable at times.
However, his mind was equipped with a whole terminal full of tracks and
every one was busy in the service of his profession.
For a month, now, he had been installed in his studio-apartment on the
top floor. He picked up on Fourth and on Madison Avenues enough
preciously rickety furniture to make him comfortable and drive friends
to distraction when they ventured to trust themselves to chair or sofa.
But his writing table and corner-chair were solid and modern, and he had
half a dozen things under construction--a novel, some short stories,
some poems which he modestly mentioned as verses.
Except for the unexplored mazes in which first love had involved him he
was happy--exceedingly happy. But, to a creative mind, happiness born of
self-expression is a weird, uncanny, composite emotion, made up of
ecstatic hope and dolorous despair and well peppered with dread and
confidence, cowardice and courage, rage and tranquillity; and further
seasoned with every devilish doubt and celestial satisfaction that the
heart of a writer is heir to.
In the morning he was certain of himself. He was the captain of his
destiny; he was the dictator of his inspiration, equipped with the
technical mastery that his obedient thoughts dare not disobey.
By afternoon the demon Doubt had shaken his self-confidence, and Fear
peered at him between every line of his manuscript, and it was a case of
Childe Roland from that time on until the pencil fell from his unnerved
fingers and he rose from his work satiated, half-stunned, not knowing
whether he had done well or meanly. Vaguely he realized at such moments
that, for such as he, a just appraisal of his own work would never be
possible for him--that he himself would never know; and that what men
said of it--if, indeed, they ever said anything about his work--would
never wholly convince him, never entirely enlighten him as to its value
or its worthlessness.
That is one of the penalties imposed upon the creative mind. It goes on
producing because it must. Praise stimulates it, blame depresses; but it
never knows the truth.
Toward the end of May, one afternoon, Stephanie came into his studio,
seated herself calmly in his chair, and picked up his manuscript.
"It's no good," he said, throwing himself on an antique sofa which just
endured the strain and no more.
She read for an hour, her grey eyes never leaving the written pages, her
pretty brows bent inward with the strain of concentration.
He watched her, chin on hand, lying there on the sofa.
But the air was mild and languorous with the promise of the coming
summer; sunshine fell across the wall; the boy dozed, presently, and
after a while lay fast asleep.
She had been gone for some time when he awoke. As he sat up, blinking
through the late afternoon sunshine, a pencilled sheet of yellow
manuscript paper fluttered from his breast to the floor.
Jim, it is fine! I mean it! It is a splendid, virile, honest piece of
work. And it is intensely interesting. I'm quite mad about it--quite
thrilled that you can do such things. It's so masterly, so mature--and
I don't know where you got your knowledge of that woman, because she is
perfectly feminine and women think and do such things, and her motives
are the motives that animate that sort of woman.
As you lie there asleep you look about eighteen--not much older than
when I used to see you when you came home from school and lay on your
sofa and read Kipling aloud to me. _Then_ I was awed; you were a grown
man to me. _Now_ you are just a boy again, and I love you dearly, and
I'm going to kiss your hair, very cautiously, before I go downstairs.
I've done it. I'm going now.