Ruth had intended asking permission to have Dorothy and Nels to dinner
on the night of the private view, but if she did that they would learn
that her aunt was Gloria Mayfield and there was every chance that Nels
would refer to that fact in talking to Professor Pendragon, for Ruth had
already discovered that the art students were ardent celebrity seekers
and Gloria Mayfield, though she had not appeared on any stage for three
seasons, was still something of a celebrity.
She compromised by eating an early dinner with Dorothy at the little
restaurant on Eighth Avenue, at least Dorothy called it dinner, though
it was eaten at tea time and both girls were too excited to care what
they ate. Then they went home to dress. It was the first time that Ruth
had taken any one of the students to her house and she wondered just how
she would avoid telling Dorothy about her aunt.
George opened the door for them and they went on up to Ruth’s room
without seeing any one else, though Ruth could hear voices from the
drawing-room.
“This doesn’t look like a rooming house,” said Dorothy.
“It isn’t. I live here with friends. What do you think of my work room?”
“Great!—warm, too. There isn’t any heat where I live and I have to use a
little oil stove, but it’s expensive. You know I don’t think much of
that—one might as well be frank—” She was looking at the canvas Ruth had
on her easel. “Nels and I were talking about it yesterday. We think you
ought to follow up the cartoon thing. You know they make a lot of money,
cartoonists. You could take it up seriously, you know—”
“But I don’t want to take it up seriously. I don’t want to be a
cartoonist. I want to be a landscape painter, and if you will allow me
to be frank, too, I don’t think that you are in a position to judge
whether I have talent or not.”
Ruth had been very much surprised to find that her friends at school
seemed to think that she had achieved something by having her sketches
in a Sunday newspaper. What she had thought would make her lose caste
among them had in reality given her distinction, but it had had another
effect also. If she was a caricaturist she could also be a painter, they
reasoned, and less frankly than Dorothy, Nels Zord had expressed the
opinion that she would never be a great painter.
“Better be a successful cartoonist than an unsuccessful painter,” he had
said.
She had made no protest until now and Dorothy looked at her in
amazement.
“Don’t be angry. I didn’t mean anything, only it’s always a pity when
any one has a real talent and then insists on some other method of
expression. Of course you may be a great painter. As you say, I’m not a
critic and besides you haven’t been studying long. Only the painting is
all a gamble and the sketches are a success right now if you care to go
on with them.”
“So are your fashions if you care to go on with them,” said Ruth, still
hurt.
“Speaking of fashions, let me see the frock I’m to wear,” said Dorothy,
changing the subject with more abruptness than skill.
“They’re in my other room,” said Ruth. “You can have anything you want
except what I’m going to wear myself.”
Then followed two hours of dressing and redressing. There were only two
gowns to choose from, but Dorothy had to try both of them many times,
rearranging her bobbed hair each time, and finally deciding on the blue
one because “it makes my eyes so lovely and Nels is crazy about that
blue.”
She was so interested in her own appearance that she forgot to ask
questions about the friends with whom Ruth lived and long before Nels
called for them, Ruth knew that Gloria would have gone out for she was
dining with the Peyton-Russells. Mrs. Peyton-Russell had been a chorus
girl who after she married John Peyton-Russell had the good taste to
remember that Gloria Mayfield had befriended her, the result being that
Gloria was often invited to dinner parties at their place in town and
had a standing invitation to whatever country place happened to be
housing the Peyton-Russells, all invitations that Gloria often accepted,
though she complained that Angela Peyton-Russell took her new position
far more seriously than she had ever taken her profession. She was
almost painfully respectable and correct. She dressed more plainly than
a grand duchess, and having no children, was making strenuous efforts to
break into public work. One of the most amusing of her activities, at
least to Gloria, was in connection with a drama uplift movement.
Nels Zord came promptly at half-past eight, dressed as he had
threatened, “like a musical comedy art student.” His wide trousers,
short velvet jacket and flowing tie created in the mind of Ruth much the
same wonder that Dorothy’s unaccustomed elegance created in the mind of
Nels. Only Dorothy herself was unimpressed by their combined
magnificence. To her everything was but a stepping stone on the upward
path of her career.
“Don’t I look spiffy, Nels? And aren’t you going to make sure that I
meet Professor Pendragon, and be sure and tell him that I do portraits
and then I’ll do the rest. If one can’t make use of one’s friends, of
whom can one make use?” The last addressed to Ruth.
“I wouldn’t miss the opportunity of letting him meet you for anything,”
agreed Nels. “Only do try and be a little bit careful, Dot, you are
strenuous, you know. Anyway you’d have met him without asking. He seemed
curious to meet Ruth. Asked how she looked and if she was tall and
beautiful, and seemed awfully disappointed when I told him that she was
only short and pretty. Are you all ready? There’s the cab waiting.”
From somewhere George appeared to open the door for them, and as Ruth
paused to wrap her cloak more closely about her bare shoulders, his
soft, lisping voice whispered in her ear:
“Take care what you say to Pendragon, Miss.”
She nodded and followed Nels and Dorothy into the cold, outer air. In
the cab Nels and Dorothy chatted of the exhibitors—great artists whom
they knew by sight, while Ruth to whom they were only names, listened in
breathless admiration.
When they had arrived and had left off their wraps, Dorothy protested:
“Do we have to go down the line, or can we duck to the left?”
“No nonsense like that; remember you’re with an exhibitor, and besides
Professor Pendragon may be waiting for us. We can pay for the privilege
of looking at the pictures by breaking through the line of receiving
dowagers. It’s only fair.”
“Oh, very well—but it’s really awful, Ruth. Lots of the students just
duck the line and slip in at the left, but I suppose we’re too dignified
tonight.”
Professor Pendragon was not waiting for them, but the long line of
dowagers was. If Dorothy had not been with her, Ruth would merely have
looked at them as a long line of middle aged and elderly women in
evening dress, but Dorothy saw them with far different eyes. She knew
the names of some of them, and whispered them to Ruth while they waited
to follow some people who had arrived before them.
“Just look at the third one from the end—the one with the Valeska Suratt
make-up on the Miss Hazy frame—”
And then Ruth looked puzzled.
“You know Miss Hazy in ‘Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch’—I say, wouldn’t
you think she’d choke with all those beads—the one with the neck like a
turtle. The ones with the antique jewelry are from Philadelphia—you can
tell them with their evening cloaks on, too. They always have evening
cloaks made out of some grand, old piece of tapestry taken from the top
of the piano—”
Then Nels led them forward and in a very few seconds they had passed the
line of patronesses, thin and stout, there seemed to be no
intermediates, and were free to look at the pictures and talk to their
friends.
Not for the world would Nels have dashed immediately to his own picture,
though he knew to a fraction of an inch just where it was hung. But
gradually they went to it, hung on the eye line and in the honour room,
and there the three stood, the girls telling Nels how proud they were,
and Nels, gratified at their praise, yet half fearing that some one
would overhear, with the blood coming and going in his blond face until
he looked like a girl despite his heavy shoulders and the big hands that
looked more fitted for handling bricks than for painting delicate
seascapes in water colour.
Other people seeing their interest in the picture came and looked at it
also. The “outsiders,” as Dorothy called them, standing up as close as
their lorgnettes would permit, the artists, standing far off and closing
one eye in absurd postures, while murmurs of “atmosphere,” “divine
colour,” and other phrases and words entered the pink ears of Nels like
incense in the nostrils of a god.
So much engrossed was he in his little ceremony of success that he did
not see Professor Pendragon approaching, though Dorothy and Ruth,
without knowing his identity, were both conscious that the very tall,
distinguished looking man was watching them, Ruth even guessed who he
was before he laid his hand on Nels’ shoulder and spoke. It was not
alone that he was tall—very tall even with the slight stoop with which
he carried his shoulders; it was his face that first attracted Ruth’s
attention, a keen, dark face with a high bridged nose and eyes from
which a flame of perpetual youth seemed to flash. Yet it was a lined
face, too, full of unexpected laugh wrinkles and creases and there were
streaks of grey in the hair.
“Well, Nels, you can’t complain of how the picture was hung this time.”
His voice was like his face, poetic and with a hidden laugh in it.
Nels turned, flushing redder than before.
“Professor Pendragon, we’ve been looking for you. I knew you’d turn up
here sooner or later and just waited. Here is Dot, I mean Miss Winslow,
and Miss Mayfield.”
“Thank you so much for letting me use your guest card. It was very kind
of you, Professor Pendragon, and I’m having such a good time.”
“Not at all! I was delighted to be able to make such good use of it.
Have you seen Alice Schille’s children or Mary Cassatt’s charming
pastel? The women artists are rather outshining the men this year. If
Nels can break away from his own work we’ll go and see them. Then
there’s John Sloan and Steinlen, and a Breckenridge thing with wonderful
colour.” He led them off, smiling down with a funny little stooping
movement of his head that in a smaller man might have been described as
birdlike. He seemed to know every one and was continually being stopped
by men and women who wanted his opinion about this or that piece of
work. Ruth tried hard to look at the pictures, but her mind was
continually wandering to the people and especially to Professor
Pendragon. Dorothy noticed this.
“Don’t try to look at things tonight. None of us ever do. The people are
too funny. The dragon seems to be on intimate terms with all of them,”
she whispered. “Nels tells me that he’s a great swell with ever so much
money. I wish you could mention that I paint portraits. If I could get
him to sit it would be a start. You mention portraits and I’ll do the
rest.”
Much embarrassed and in great fear that Dorothy’s whispers would be
overheard, Ruth tried to make an opportunity for mentioning that Dorothy
painted portraits. Professor Pendragon himself made it.
“What sort of work are you doing, Miss Mayfield?” he asked.
“Nothing now, I’m just a student, but I hope to do landscapes. Dorothy
is to be a great portrait painter.”
“You know I’d love to paint you, Professor Pendragon. You have such an
interesting face—you have really,” she ended as Nels laughed.
“Some day when I have lots of time—and thank you for saying that my face
is interesting! Or perhaps I can do even better and get some beautiful
woman to sit for you. Wouldn’t you like that?”
“No; I’d rather have you,” said Dorothy, raising her large blue eyes
with ingenuous confidence.
“There’s a very interesting picture in the ‘morgue,’ by a new artist of
course, that I’d like to have you see, Nels.” He broke off, for Nels had
been drawn away by some fellow students and Dorothy had followed him,
leaving him alone with Ruth.
“Never mind; perhaps you’ll be interested, Miss Mayfield.”
Ruth thought she detected the faintest trace of hesitancy in his voice
whenever he pronounced her name.
“Is New York your home?” he asked.
“It is now. I came from Indiana, but my mother died a few months ago and
I am living with friends here.”
“How sad; you have no relatives then?”
“No.”
His eyes were searching her face and she felt that he must see that she
was lying.
“Do you paint?” she asked.
“Oh no, this art thing is a new fad with me—that is of course I’ve
always been interested in beautiful things, but it’s only recently that
I’ve been actively interested. I’m afraid I’m a dilettante—rather an
awkward confession for a man of forty-one to make, but it’s true. I
thought I had a career as an astronomer, but I gave that up some years
ago, and since then I’ve tried a bit of everything. One must play some
sort of game, you know. It must be wonderful to be like that little girl
with Nels. Her game will be earning a living for some time to come—”
Another pause gave Ruth a clue to his thoughts.
“No; I’m not exactly in that position—of course I want to earn money,
too, but only because that is the world’s stamp of success,” she said.
He had evidently forgotten the picture they went to see, for he asked
her if she was hungry, and when she said “No,—”
“I thought young things were always hungry, especially art students, but
if you’re not hungry let’s sit here and talk. Nels and Miss Winslow will
be sure to find us soon.”
“Astronomy must be an awfully interesting study,” she said, wondering
how any man once having married Gloria could ever have let her go, and
why Gloria once having loved a man like this, could ever have sent him
away.
“Yes, interesting, but like art it is very long. I sometimes think I
would have done better to take up astrology.”
“You’re joking,” said Ruth. “Surely you don’t believe in that sort of
thing.”
“Why not? There’s a grain of truth at the bottom of all old beliefs, and
it is as easy to believe that one’s destiny is controlled by the stars
as to believe in a Divine Providence, sometimes much easier. The stars
are cold, passionless things, inexorable and fixed, each moving in its
appointed round—passing and repassing other stars, meeting and
parting—alone as human lives are alone. There are satellites powerless
to leave the planet around which they circle and here and there twin
stars that seem one light from this distance, but doubtless are really
millions of miles separated in space—”
He caught the intent look on her face and smiled:
“No, on the whole I think astrology would not have been any more
satisfactory than astronomy, for even there, there is nothing clear cut,
‘The stars incline but do not compel.’ Just one thing is really sure,
one must play with something.”
“Here comes Nels,” said Ruth.
“Just in time to keep me from persuading you that I am quite insane,”
said Professor Pendragon. “I was going to show you a wonderful picture
in the morgue, but it’s too late, Nels, for you’ll never be able to find
it alone, and I am going to buy it. Some day, if you’ll come and have
tea with me—all of you—you can advise me about the proper place to hang
it.”
“We’ll do that, but I’ll bet I can find it by myself—go ahead and buy it
and when we come to your house I’ll be able to describe the picture and
tell you who painted it.”
“Of course, if some one tells you.”
“No, not that; if there’s anything in the morgue worth your attention,
I’ll be sure to notice it.”
“So will I,” said Dorothy. “Come on, Ruth, let’s look.”
Ruth had been wondering whether Pendragon would go out with them and how
she could avoid his going to the house on Gramercy Square, but evidently
he was as informal as a student, for he only nodded a careless farewell
and strolled off while they went in search of the picture.