In time they quarrelled, of course, and about an abstraction,--as young
people often do, as mature people almost never do. Eden came in late one
afternoon. She had been with some of her musical friends to lunch at
Burton Ives' studio, and she began telling Hedger about its splendours.
He listened a moment and then threw down his brushes. "I know exactly
what it's like," he said impatiently. "A very good department-store
conception of a studio. It's one of the show places."
"Well, it's gorgeous, and he said I could bring you to see him. The boys
tell me he's awfully kind about giving people a lift, and you might get
something out of it."
Hedger started up and pushed his canvas out of the way. "What could I
possibly get from Burton Ives? He's almost the worst painter in the
world; the stupidest, I mean."
Eden was annoyed. Burton Ives had been very nice to her and had begged
her to sit for him. "You must admit that he's a very successful one,"
she said coldly.
"Of course he is! Anybody can be successful who will do that sort of
thing. I wouldn't paint his pictures for all the money in New York."
"Well, I saw a lot of them, and I think they are beautiful."
Hedger bowed stiffly.
"What's the use of being a great painter if nobody knows about you?" Eden
went on persuasively. "Why don't you paint the kind of pictures people
can understand, and then, after you're successful, do whatever you like?"
"As I look at it," said Hedger brusquely, "I am successful."
Eden glanced about. "Well, I don't see any evidences of it," she said,
biting her lip. "He has a Japanese servant and a wine cellar, and keeps a
riding horse."
Hedger melted a little. "My dear, I have the most expensive luxury in the
world, and I am much more extravagant than Burton Ives, for I work to
please nobody but myself."
"You mean you could make money and don't? That you don't try to get a
public?"
"Exactly. A public only wants what has been done over and over. I'm
painting for painters,--who haven't been born."
"What would you do if I brought Mr. Ives down here to see your things?"
"Well, for God's sake, don't! Before he left I'd probably tell him what I
thought of him."
Eden rose. "I give you up. You know very well there's only one kind of
success that's real."
"Yes, but it's not the kind you mean. So you've been thinking me a scrub
painter, who needs a helping hand from some fashionable studio man? What
the devil have you had anything to do with me for, then?"
"There's no use talking to you," said Eden walking slowly toward the
door. "I've been trying to pull wires for you all afternoon, and this is
what it comes to." She had expected that the tidings of a prospective
call from the great man would be received very differently, and had been
thinking as she came home in the stage how, as with a magic wand, she
might gild Hedger's future, float him out of his dark hole on a tide of
prosperity, see his name in the papers and his pictures in the windows on
Fifth Avenue.
Hedger mechanically snapped the midsummer leash on Caesar's collar and
they ran downstairs and hurried through Sullivan Street off toward the
river. He wanted to be among rough, honest people, to get down where the
big drays bumped over stone paving blocks and the men wore corduroy
trowsers and kept their shirts open at the neck. He stopped for a drink
in one of the sagging bar-rooms on the water front. He had never in his
life been so deeply wounded; he did not know he could be so hurt. He had
told this girl all his secrets. On the roof, in these warm, heavy summer
nights, with her hands locked in his, he had been able to explain all his
misty ideas about an unborn art the world was waiting for; had been able
to explain them better than he had ever done to himself. And she had
looked away to the chattels of this uptown studio and coveted them for
him! To her he was only an unsuccessful Burton Ives.
Then why, as he had put it to her, did she take up with him? Young,
beautiful, talented as she was, why had she wasted herself on a scrub?
Pity? Hardly; she wasn't sentimental. There was no explaining her. But in
this passion that had seemed so fearless and so fated to be, his own
position now looked to him ridiculous; a poor dauber without money or
fame,--it was her caprice to load him with favours. Hedger ground his
teeth so loud that his dog, trotting beside him, heard him and looked up.
While they were having supper at the oyster-man's, he planned his escape.
Whenever he saw her again, everything he had told her, that he should
never have told any one, would come back to him; ideas he had never
whispered even to the painter whom he worshipped and had gone all the way
to France to see. To her they must seem his apology for not having horses
and a valet, or merely the puerile boastfulness of a weak man. Yet if she
slipped the bolt tonight and came through the doors and said, "Oh, weak
man, I belong to you!" what could he do? That was the danger. He would
catch the train out to Long Beach tonight, and tomorrow he would go on to
the north end of Long Island, where an old friend of his had a summer
studio among the sand dunes. He would stay until things came right in his
mind. And she could find a smart painter, or take her punishment.
When he went home, Eden's room was dark; she was dining out somewhere. He
threw his things into a hold-all he had carried about the world with him,
strapped up some colours and canvases, and ran downstairs.