Ruth would have liked a scholarship—not because she could not easily
afford the small fees at the Art Students’ League, but because a
scholarship would have meant that she had unusual talent; but she didn’t
get one. No one seemed particularly interested in her work. The woman
who enrolled her in the League was as casual as a clerk in an hotel.
The manner of the enrolment clerk and the grandeur of the Fine Arts
Building produced a feeling of insignificance in Ruth that was far from
pleasant. She engaged her locker for the year, and when she was led to
it to put her board and paints away, and saw the rows upon rows of other
lockers, she felt even smaller. Was it possible that all those lockers
were needed? That so many other girls and boys were also art students?
If there was an art student for every locker and each of them shared her
determination to become a great painter, the world would be so flooded
with splendid art that one might better be a stenographer. Then she
comforted herself that all of the students could not possibly succeeded.
Some of them, the girls especially, would doubtless give up art for
marriage and babies. Some of the men would become commercialized, go in
for illustrating or even advertising, but she would go “onward and
upward,” as her instructor in Indianapolis had so thrillingly said. She
felt better after that; and seeing her reflection in a shop window she
felt better still. She wasn’t beautiful, but she was interesting
looking, she told herself. The way she combed her almost black hair down
over her ears Madonna fashion, her little low-heeled shoes, her complete
absence of waist line, all marked her as “different.”
She had enrolled for the morning class in portrait painting from 9:00 to
12:30 and the afternoon class in life drawing from 1:00 to 4:30 and she
would attend the Friday afternoon lectures on anatomy. They began at
4:30, after the first of November, so she could go direct from her life
class to the lecture. She would have liked to attend some of the evening
classes, too, but Gloria had suggested that she wait a bit.
“My word, child, it’s all right to work hard. One must work hard, but
don’t spend twenty-four hours a day at it. It’s bad enough to begin at
the unearthly hour of nine in the morning without spending your evenings
there, too.”
Afterward Ruth was glad that she had not enrolled in any of the evening
classes. She usually returned to the house on Gramercy Square about five
o’clock in the afternoon, just when Gloria’s day seemed to be properly
begun, and there were always people there who interested Ruth, though
she took little part in the conversation. Ruth would come into the hall,
her sketches under her arm, and Gloria would call to her and she would
walk into the big comfortable room and be introduced to half a dozen
people, whose names she seldom remembered. The people would nod to her
and go on with their conversation, and she would sit back listening and
watching, feeling more like an audience at a play than one of the group
of people in a drawing-room.
Most of the conversation was quite meaningless to her, but there was one
man, one of the few who did not change in the ever-changing group, who
interested her intensely. She gathered that he was a playwright and that
he had written the book and lyrics for a musical comedy that was to have
its New York _première_ soon. One of the other men called him a show
doctor, and said that he had written lines into over half the shows on
Broadway.
All of the other people seemed to think him “terribly clever,” but Ruth
didn’t understand all of the things at which they laughed. They were
always begging him to sing his latest song, and he never demurred,
though any one could tell with half an ear that he hadn’t any voice at
all. He sang in a queer, half-chanty voice, with a curious appealing
note in it.
“Do you really like his singing?” she once asked Gloria.
“His voice, you mean?” Gloria looked at her with the little frown
between her eyes and the amused twist to her mouth that Ruth often
observed when her aunt was explaining things to her. “Of course not;
it’s not his voice, it’s his song. He’s the cleverest song writer in New
York, and he’s already written two fairly successful plays. He’s young,
you know.”
“Is he? I thought he must be thirty at least.”
Then Gloria laughed outright.
“He is about thirty, but that isn’t old. He’s a funny, old dear, don’t
you think so?”
“Yes,” admitted Ruth. “He dresses oddly—that is—”
“I know what you mean, but you see a man like Terry Riordan doesn’t have
to keep his trousers pressed. No other man is worth listening to while
Terry is in the room.”
Ruth decided that she would pay particular attention to Terry Riordan
the next time she met him.
Her opportunity came the next day. She had gone out to lunch that day
and had been a little late at life class in consequence, and had to
stand up at an easel in the back instead of sitting among the more
fortunate ones in the front rows, where early arrival had usually placed
her. The model was a man—“Krakowski, the wrestler,” one of the girls had
whispered to her. “He’s got a wonderful body; we’re lucky to get him.”
Ruth could not control a little gasp of admiration when he stepped on
the model throne. He looked like a statue with his shining
smooth-muscled body, and he stood almost as still. It was several
minutes before Ruth could get the proper, impersonal attitude toward
him. Most of the models had quite uninteresting faces, but Krakowski had
a face almost as handsome as his body, and there was a half smile on his
lips as if he were secretly amused at the students. For a second Ruth
saw them through his eyes—thin, earnest-eyed girls, dressed in “arty”
garments, squinting at him over drawing-boards as if the fate of nations
depended on their work, well-dressed dabblers and shabby strugglers
after beauty. She noted again the two old women, the fat one with the
dyed hair, and the ribbons and art jewelry and the thin one whose hair
was quite frankly grey. The fat one had attracted Ruth’s attention the
very first day because in the rest period she ran around insisting that
every one near her should look at her work and offer criticism, and when
the instructor came through she monopolized as much of his time as
possible to his obvious annoyance.
Why didn’t they think of studying art twenty years ago? Ruth wondered.
It seemed to her that the model was thinking the same thing. Then she
forgot his face and began to block in her sketch.
The girl next to her had a scholarship, her name was Dorothy Winslow, a
rather pretty, widemouthed girl with a shock of corn-coloured bobbed
hair and very merry blue eyes. Out of the corner of her eye Ruth watched
her work. She had large, beautiful hands and the ends of her slim
fingers were always smudged with charcoal or blotted up with paint. She
wore a painting-smock of purple and green batik. Ruth was tremendously
impressed, but tried not to be. She was torn between a desire to dress
in the same manner and a determination to consider herself superior to
such affectations and remain smug in the consciousness of her
conventional dress. Still she did wonder how she would look with her
hair bobbed. How fast Dorothy Winslow worked. Her pencil seemed so sure.
Never mind, she must not be jealous.
“Facility? Facility is dangerous—big things aren’t done in a few
minutes—Rome wasn’t built in a day,” she said to herself in the best
manner of her instructor in Indianapolis. One thing that puzzled her was
the way the instructors left the students alone. They were there to
teach, why didn’t they do it? Instead, they passed around about twice a
week and looked at the drawings and said something like “You’re getting
on all right—just keep it up,” or now and then really gave a criticism,
but more often just looked and passed on to the next without a word in
the most tantalizing manner possible. The reticence of the instructors
was amply balanced by the loquacity of the students. They looked at each
other’s work and criticized or praised in the frankest manner possible,
and seemingly without a hint of jealousy or self-consciousness. It was
time to rest. The model left the throne and immediately the students all
left their drawing-boards to talk.
Dorothy Winslow leaned over Ruth’s shoulder.
“That’s really awfully nice, the way you’ve got that line,—” she pointed
with one long, slim charcoal-smudged finger.
“Do you think so? Thank you,” said Ruth.
“Krakowski’s lovely to work from, anyway. I’d love to paint him. He’s
got such an interesting head.”
“Yes—it distracted me from my work a little,” admitted Ruth. “Why,
you’ve almost got a finished sketch,” she continued, looking at
Dorothy’s board.
“I always work fast,” admitted Dorothy, “but I’ll do it all over again a
dozen times before the week is finished.”
“I wonder how she happened to take up art,” said Ruth, nodding toward
the broad back of the fat lady with the dyed hair.
“Oh, she’s—she’s just one of the perpetual students—they say she’s been
coming here for ten years—didn’t they have any perpetual students where
you came from? But perhaps this is your first year?”
“No, I studied a year in the Indianapolis Art School and we didn’t have
any perpetual art students. Is the one with grey hair a perpetual
student, too?”
“Yes; we had one, a man too, in San Francisco where I came from.”
“Why do they do it? Isn’t it rather pitiful, or are they rich women with
a fad?”
“No, indeed, they’re not rich. I never heard of a perpetual student who
was rich. Why, Camille De Muth, the fat one, sometimes has to pose in
the portrait class to earn money to pay for her life.”
“How does she live?” asked Ruth.
“Dear Lord, as well ask me why is an art student as how does one
live—how do any of us live, except of course the lucky ones with an
allowance from home?”
All the time she was talking, Dorothy Winslow was moving her hands,
defying all the laws of physiology by bending her long fingers back over
the tops of them, and by throwing one white thumb out of joint.
“But you haven’t told me why they do it—why they keep on studying year
after year. Don’t they try to make any use of what they’ve learned?”
“Not that I ever heard of—they’re just—just art artists. They spend
their lives in class and at exhibitions, but I’ve never tried to
understand them—too busy trying to understand myself.”
“What do they do when they’re not here?” asked Ruth.
“They spend their leisure in the cool marble twilight of the
Metropolitan, making bad copies of old masters.”
The model had reappeared and they went back to their boards, but after
class Ruth found that Dorothy Winslow was walking by her side toward
Fifth Avenue.
“Do you go downtown?” asked Dorothy.
“Yes,” admitted Ruth. She was really very much interested in Dorothy,
but she was a bit afraid that the girl would attract attention on the
street. She now had a vivid blue tam with a yellow tassel on her fluffy
hair.
“How do you go?”
“On the ’bus,” said Ruth.
“So do I, when I can afford it; when I can’t I walk, but I guess I can
spend the dime today. I got some fashion work to do last week.”
“Fashions?” Ruth could not keep the scorn out of her voice.
“Oh, I know how you feel about that, but one can’t become Whistler or
Sargent all in a day, and paint and Michelet paper and canvas cost
money.”
“You must be awfully clever to be able to earn money with your work
already,” admitted Ruth, a bit ashamed of herself.
“I have talent,” admitted Dorothy, “but then so many people have talent.
I’ve got an idea that work counts a whole lot more than talent, but of
course that’s an awfully practical, inartistic idea—only I can’t help
it. I had to come to New York and I couldn’t come without a scholarship,
so I worked and got it. What do you think about it?”
“Work counts of course, but without the divine spark of genius—one must
have talent and genius, and then work added makes the ideal combination.
Why, if only hard work were necessary, any one, any stevedore or common
labourer or dull bookkeeper, could become a great artist.”
“That doesn’t sound so silly to me. I really think they could, if the
idea only occurred to them and they didn’t give up. I think any one can
be anything they please, if they only please it long enough.”
It was like Ruth to answer this with a quotation.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “‘There is a destiny that shapes our ends,
rough-hew them as we may.’”
“Perhaps, but some people do a lot more rough-hewing than others, and
I’m going to hew my way to a position as the greatest American portrait
painter, and it won’t be so rough either.”
Before such blind self-confidence Ruth was dumb. She also intended to be
a great something or other in the world of art, but she had never
thought definitely enough about it to decide just what it would be. She
did think now, or spoke without thinking.
“Then I’ll be the greatest landscape painter—landscapes with figures.”
Before they parted at Twentieth Street, Ruth had promised to go to an
exhibition with Dorothy on the following Saturday.
Gloria had given her a latch key and she went into the house on Gramercy
Square without ringing the bell. She expected to hear her aunt’s voice,
but instead a man’s voice called out:
“That you, Gloria?”
She answered by walking into the drawing-room, disappointed at not
finding Gloria there.
“Where is Gloria?”
They both said it at once, and then they both laughed. Terry Riordan was
very appealing when he laughed. He had risen at her entrance, and was
standing loose-limbed yet somehow graceful in his formless tweeds.
“I’ve been waiting at least an hour for her, though it was obvious that
George didn’t want me here. He quite overpowered me with big words and
proper English to explain why he thought my waiting quite uncalled for.”
“He’s like that, but Gloria is sure to come if you wait long enough,”
said Ruth, sinking wearily into a chair and dropping her sketches beside
her on the floor.
“Even if she doesn’t I couldn’t find a more comfortable place than this
to loaf. I’m too nervous to be any place else in comfort. The show opens
tonight. It was all right at the tryout in Stamford, but that doesn’t
mean much. I want a cigarette, and George frightened me so that I didn’t
dare ask him where they are.”
“Frightened? You, Mr. Riordan?”
“There, you looked like Gloria then. You are relatives, of course, same
name and everything, but I never noticed any resemblance before. Suppose
you must be distant relatives.”
“Gloria says we must be very distant relatives in order to be close
friends,” said Ruth, dodging the invitation to tell the extent of her
relationship to Gloria.
“As for the cigarettes, there should be some in the blue Ming jar over
there, or, if you prefer, you can roll your own. There’s tobacco in the
box—Gloria’s own tobacco.”
“Thanks; I suppose I could have found it myself, but I was actually
afraid to look around—George gave me such a wicked look—he did indeed,”
said Terry. “What a wonderful woman Gloria Mayfield is,” he continued as
he lit a cigarette.
“I know,” said Ruth. “No wonder she has so many friends.”
“Every one loves Gloria,” continued Terry.
“You love her?” asked Ruth. She felt that this man was confiding in her.
She wondered if he had proposed to Gloria and if his suit was hopeless.
She felt sorry for him, but even while she sympathized she could not
keep the three husbands out of her mind. Three husbands were rather
overwhelming, but four! Somehow, it didn’t seem quite right, even for so
amazing a woman as Gloria.
“I should say I do love Gloria. Why, she lets me read everything I’ve
written and always applauds. That’s one of the things I came for today.
I’ve written that number for Dolly Derwent. Want to hear it?”
“Yes, please; I’d love to hear it.”
“Got to tell some one,” said Terry, and without waiting for further
encouragement, he began singing in his queer, plaintive voice, that made
his words sound even more nonsensical than they were, a song the refrain
of which was:
“_Any judge can recognize
A perfect lady by her eyes,
And they ain’t got nothing, they ain’t got nothing,
They ain’t got nothing on me._”
“Do you think that’ll get across? You know Dolly Derwent. Don’t you
think that will suit her?”
Now, Ruth had never seen Dolly Derwent, and looking at Terry Riordan she
suddenly decided to drop pretence.
“I’ve never seen her,” she admitted, “and while I suppose your songs are
awfully clever and funny, I don’t know anything about the stage and half
the time I don’t know what you’re all talking about. You see I haven’t
been in New York long and I spend most of my time at the Art Students’
League and I’m afraid I’m not much good as a critic.”
For a few moments Terry did not answer. He just looked at her, smiling.
His smile diffused a warm glow all round her heart as if he were telling
her that he understood all about her and rather admired her for not
understanding all the stage patter.
“Suppose you show me your sketches. I don’t know any more about art than
you do about the stage, so then we’ll be even,” he said.
“There’s nothing here that would interest you—just studies from the life
class.”
“I say there’s an idea for a number—chorus of art students in smocks and
artists’ caps and a girl with an awfully good figure on a model
throne—no, that’s been used. Still there ought to be some sort of an
original variation of the theme.” He took out his notebook and wrote
something in it.
“Shall I bring tea, Miss Ruth?”
George was standing in the doorway, having appeared suddenly from
nowhere.
“Yes, thank you, George—”
“Perhaps if we go on just as if we weren’t waiting for Gloria, she’ll
come.”
“I’d forgotten that we were waiting for her,” said Terry. “Do you know,
I think that nigger is jealous of me—you know, as dogs are sometimes
jealous of their mistress’ friends—and he’s only being civil now because
I’m talking to you instead of Gloria. Some day he’s going to put
something in my high ball.”
“What a terrible thing to say,” said Ruth. “I’m sure George is perfectly
harmless. It’s only that he doesn’t talk like other niggers.”
“Don’t call him a nigger!” exclaimed Terry, pretending to be shocked.
“Hasn’t Gloria told you that he is a Hindoo—half-caste I imagine, and he
came from some weird place, and I heartily wish he’d return to it.”
A Hindoo—that explained George’s appearance, but it made him more
puzzling as a servant than before. He was not like the imaginations of
Hindoos that her reading had built up, but perhaps as Terry said he was
a half-caste. Terry’s words, for the moment, surprised her out of
speech.
“Here’s Gloria now,” he said. “We must stop talking treason. She thinks
she has the best servants in the world.”
Gloria came in, filling the room with cold outer air mingled with the
odour of the violets pinned on her sables.
“Just look who’s here,” she said, holding a small, plump, frizzled,
blond woman of about forty in front of her. “Billie Irwin—she came over
from London with the unfortunate ‘Love at First Sight’ company, and here
she is with no more engagement than a trapeze performer with a broken
leg—you know her, don’t you, Terry?—well, anyway you know her now, and
this is Ruth Mayfield—not in the profession, an artist of a different
kind.”
“How interesting!” murmured Billie Irwin.
“Tea? Take it away, George—we don’t want tea. I want dinner just as soon
as Amy can get it. We’re all going to see the opening of ‘Three Merry
Men.’ You thought I was going to fail you, didn’t you, Terry? But we’re
not, we’ll all be there. And, George, do get a room ready for Miss
Irwin. She’s going to stay for a few days with me.”
“She means a few months,” whispered Terry to Ruth, thereby establishing
between them a secret confidence.
That night Ruth got a new impression of Terry Riordan. He did not stay
to dinner, though Gloria asked him, but he met them at the theatre.
Every one seemed to know him and treated him as quite an important
person. It was her first experience of a first night, and she got the
impression that these people were waiting through the acts for the
intermissions instead of waiting through the intermissions for the acts.
Terry wasn’t in their box, he had a seat in the back of the theatre with
Philip Noel, who had written the music, but he slipped in and out during
the evening to chat and to hear words of praise.
“How do you think it’s going to go?” Gloria asked him when he returned
to their box after the first intermission.
“Badly, I’m afraid; I met several of the newspaper men out there, and
they seemed to like it. If the critics like it, it’s almost sure to
close in three weeks,” said Terry.
“I won’t believe it. It is sure to have a long run,” said Gloria.
“God knows I did my best to lower the moral tone of the thing and make
it successful,” said Terry. “If it will only run long enough to give me
some royalties, just long enough to keep me going until my comedy is
finished, I won’t care.”
They chatted on, commenting on the people on the stage until Ruth lost
all sense of illusion. They took away from her the fairyland sense that
had formerly made the theatre a joy, and as yet she had not acquired the
knowledge of stagecraft that gives the stage a stronger fascination for
theatrical folk than for the people who have never seen it in any way
except from “out front.”
She knew that the music was all stolen from something else, for a
composer, a rival of Philip Noel, who had dropped in to chat with
Gloria, had said so; that in an effort to do something original the
costumer had produced frightful results, for Terry Riordan had commented
on it, and Billie Irwin had spoken of how often the leading woman
flatted her notes. Her voice had been bad enough when she started ten
years ago, and now it was quite hopeless.
Terry Riordan had not spoken to Ruth since their arrival, when he had
pretended to be quite overcome with the grandeur of her gown. Since then
he had devoted himself entirely to Gloria. Ruth couldn’t blame him for
that. Gloria made every one else appear colourless. No wonder Terry
Riordan loved her. It was foolish of her to let him occupy her thoughts.
No man in his right mind would give her a second thought in the presence
of Gloria. Even the thought that she was an art student no longer
brought comfort. There were so many art students in New York. Still she
could not keep Terry out of her mind. It was not that she thought him a
genius. Indeed, she rather scorned his slapstick lyrics. New York might
bow down before his frayed cuff cleverness, but she was from the Middle
West, where men are rated by what they have done, not what they are
going to do. She couldn’t analyse exactly what it was about Terry
Riordan that stirred her emotions,—some sympathetic quality in his voice
perhaps, his never-failing cheerfulness and his absolute confidence in
his own future. She was rather glad that he didn’t talk to her very
much, for she blushed whenever he spoke to her. She had blushed when he
spoke about her frock and old John Courtney had commented on it in his
absurd exaggerated manner.
“How charmingly you blush, Miss Mayfield,” he had said. “You must pardon
an old gentleman for speaking of it, my dear, but I dare say it is the
only genuine blush that Broadway has seen these forty years.”
If it had been possible to be annoyed by anything the ancient matinée
idol said, Ruth would have been annoyed, especially as it momentarily
attracted the attention of every one to the party, to herself.
John Courtney was another of Gloria’s admirers.
“The best actress in New York,” he whispered to Ruth. “But she hasn’t
had an engagement for three years. She won’t take anything but leads,
and there isn’t a man who dares play opposite her. It’s not alone that
she’s so tall—though no man likes to play opposite a woman from one to
five inches taller than he—it’s her personality. She fills the stage.
The other players are just so much background.”
Later even John Courtney seemed to forget the existence of Ruth, and she
sat back in the crowded box in the crowded theatre quite alone. She
could not even watch the stage—for they had reduced the people on it to
a group of ordinary individuals working at their trade. She had a little
sketch pad and a pencil with her and began making caricatures of the
principals. She became absorbed in this and forgot to feel alone.
“That nose is wonderful and that’s just her trick with her hands. I
didn’t know you were a cartoonist.”
It was Terry Riordan looking over her shoulder. She had not known he was
in the box.
“I’m not a cartoonist,” she said, making an effort to hide her sketch
pad. “I was only doing it for fun.”
“But they’re great; let me see the others. I had no idea you were so
talented. I thought you just daubed around with paint.”
From any one else the words would have been cruel enough, but from Terry
Riordan they were almost unbearable. She could hardly keep the tears
back.
“That isn’t talent,” she managed to articulate. “It’s just facility. I
am studying painting—I never do this sort of thing seriously—I was just
playing.”
He had taken the sketches from her and was looking at her in puzzled
wonder.
“Do you mean to say you don’t want to do this sort of thing—that you
consider it beneath your talent?”
“It doesn’t interest me.” She spoke with as much dignity as she could
muster. For a moment he looked troubled, then his irresistible smile
came.
“Never mind, I understand,” he said. “Ten years ago I intended to be a
modern Shakespeare—and just see the awful end to which I’ve come.”
Just then the curtain went up, and she did not notice that he had not
returned her sketches.
Up to this time Gloria had been the gayest person there—so gay that Ruth
thought that she had forgotten her existence. She was in the chair in
front of Ruth, and had apparently been absorbed in the play and the
conversation of the people with her. Suddenly she rose and left the box,
pausing just long enough to whisper in Ruth’s ear, “I’m going home;
Billie will explain.”
The others in the box didn’t seem to notice. Perhaps they thought Gloria
had gone back stage to see some friend and would return. It was only
when the final curtain fell and Terry came back to ask them to go to
supper that her absence was explained.
“Where’s Gloria?” he asked.
“Gone home,” said Billie. “She asked me to explain to you that she had
to go.”
“But why?” asked Terry.
“Because she wanted to—you know Gloria—sudden fit of depression, because
she isn’t working and wants to work. Why don’t you write a play for her,
Terry?”
“I will one day perhaps—if I can, but I so wanted her tonight. Let’s
follow her home and drag her out again.”
“Not if you value her friendship,” said Billie. “Aren’t there enough of
us here to make a supper party?” She smiled coyly at him, shrugging her
plump shoulders and turning her pale eyes at him in an ingénue ogle.
“Of course—we’ll try to be as merry as possible without her.”
“I think if you’ll help me find a cab I’ll go home to Gloria,” said
Ruth.
“You too?” Terry looked at her reproachfully.
“I’d rather if you don’t mind.”
“We can’t allow you to go alone. I shall be most happy,” said John
Courtney.
“No indeed. I know that you don’t want to miss a word of what they say
about Terry’s play, and I’d rather go alone. The others would never
forgive me for taking you away.”
After that it was easy for her to slip away into the darkness and
seclusion of a cab, alone with the thousands in the checked
thoroughfare. She wanted to get away from Terry Riordan and his success.
She thought she was escaping for the same reason that Gloria had run
away, but Gloria could not be as unhappy as she, for Gloria had had her
success. Terry Riordan knew that Gloria was a great actress, but he
didn’t know that she, Ruth Mayfield, was a great painter, at least a
potential great painter. He had suggested that she was a cartoonist and
he had thought that he was paying her a compliment. Years from now, when
she became a beautiful, fascinating woman of thirty like Gloria, even in
imagination she couldn’t make herself quite thirty-five—they would meet
again. It would be at a private view at the Academy, and he would be
standing lost in wonder before the picture she would have hung there.
Every one would be talking about her and her work, and then they would
meet face to face. There would be no condescension in his words and
smile then—
She was imagining childish nonsense. By the time she had won her
success, Terry would be married to Gloria. It was easy to see that he
loved Gloria. Why not? No one could be so beautiful or so charming as
Gloria. It was silly to dream of Terry Riordan’s love, but she would win
his admiration and respect. After all, marriage had never held any place
in her plans. She didn’t want to marry. She wanted to be a great
painter. One must make some sacrifices for that. The cab turned into the
great quiet of Gramercy Square. A soft mist hung over the trees, like
quiet tears of renunciation.
She was startled to see lights gleaming in all the lower windows of the
house. Inside she found George sitting on the lower step of the stairs.
He rose as she entered, but did not respond when she spoke to him. The
doors into the drawing-room were open and she looked in. Lying face down
on the floor, still fully dressed, was Gloria and scattered around her
were the violets from the bouquet she had been wearing. She was quite
motionless, and Ruth dared not speak to her. Evidently George was
keeping watch.
“Can I do anything?” she whispered to him.
He shook his head and pointed silently up the stairs. She went, hurrying
up the three flights as if the act of going up lifted her above her own
discontent and above the unhappiness of Gloria. She went into the studio
and looked at the canvas on which she had been working. It was hard to
wait until morning to begin on it again. It had been a week since she
had touched it. When she began she had intended rising early to get an
hour’s work before breakfast, but evenings in the company of Gloria and
her friends had kept her up late and youth claimed its need of rest
despite her firmest resolves. It was no good, the picture, anyway. She
would paint it all out and begin over again. She would spend her Sundays
in the country with the other art students, sketching. She had not
entered into the student life enough. And she had entered into Gloria’s
life too much. If she had been taking her work more seriously she would
not have had time to fall in love with Terry Riordan. She did not
question that it was love that had come into her life to complicate
things. In Indianapolis it had all seemed so simple. There were paint
and canvas and her hands to work with, and she would study and work and
exhibit and become famous. Now it was made plain to her that art itself
was not a matter of paint and canvas and exhibitions, or even of work as
Dorothy Winslow had said, but a matter of men and women, and competition
and struggle and love and hate and jealousy and thwarted ambitions like
those of the woman who lay down there prostrate with defeat. The defeat
that was such a tragic jest—a great talent useless because the actress
was too tall. If success was dependent on such things as that of what
use to struggle and work? Crouched on the floor before her canvas she
looked up through the skylight at a star, and soft tears moved slowly
down her cheeks, tears for herself and for Gloria and for all the
unfruitful love and labour in the world.