“What happened to him, Lucia?”
She put her face against the balustrade below. “He couldn’t play a tune
on any of them in the end, Pat.”
[Illustration]
Eight in the evening.
Horace was almost as broad as he was long, physically. I met him at his
studio, as he had asked. I had wanted to see the things he was working
on; because they would be worth seeing, and because Nathaniel would love
hearing about them.
Horace had half a shaker full of Martinis before I turned up. He kissed
my hand, poured me a Martini in a tumbler, and began to talk. He admired
my frock—I had worn my sapphire-blue taffeta, because it was a
“picture” dress, and, while I did not plan to go to any great lengths to
get Horace to paint me, still one never knew.
If he wanted to, the picture would hang in some gallery where Pete could
go to see it, when he was old, and it would help him to remember how I
had looked. (I could not “sell” myself that pretty idea, with any
conviction. I was sure that Pete would remember me, if at all, as just
one among the errors of his youth.)
Horace was entertaining. He had kissed and painted his way from Soho to
Manila, and his reminiscences of the pictures and ladies he had made in
his day were almost as good as the pictures, and probably much better
than the ladies.
He told me a story about a woman who had sent for him (from St. Louis to
Honolulu) to be the father of her son. The child turned out to be a
daughter, though—and besides the date of its birth was only six months
after Horace reached Honolulu. The rest of the story was romantic
though.
When he went from that to a monologue about the amount of savoir faire
young women could gain from association with older men-of-the-world, I
sighed and recognized that he thought of me as a bedroom, not gallery,
adornment. Pete would have to get along with a photograph, if he had
kept one.
My retreat, for the moment, was easy. It always is, with men who are
really beauty-mad; if a woman will be humble enough to realize that they
rate her as somewhat less exciting than a sunset, and nothing really to
be compared with a good piece of pottery.
Horace had, in his studio, the most exquisite maple lowboy I had ever
seen. Its proportions were heavenly, and its patina was that cross
between velvet softness and satin sheen that is never actually achieved
in fabric.
I began to admire the lowboy. I was as intelligent about it as possible.
Soon, Horace was regarding it with love and absorption, and patting its
surface with the regard he had bestowed ten minutes earlier upon my
shoulders.
When his concentration upon the lowboy was complete, I said that I was
painfully hungry. The man had good manners. He took me to eat, stopping
to swear at the unfinished portrait of his Spanish girl as we went out.
[Illustration]
One in the morning.
I had had a lovely time so far. Horace was a genius, and I had met so
few of them among the semi-celebrities. He had talked five hours
straight, with time out for consuming a Gargantuan dinner, and endless
drinks—about painting and women, and art and women, and life and women
designed for the solace of men.
I was trying to remember everything he had said about painting, for Nat,
but I could scarcely keep my head up. He was thirty years older than I,
but had four times as much energy.
Nevertheless, I felt that just a little more to eat should certainly put
him to sleep for the night, so I dragged him to Childs, on the way home,
saying that I ached for some of Childs’ coffee. If Horace reached my
apartment still able to manage himself, I could not depend on Lucia for
assistance. She might not turn up until dawn. So I tried ordering an
omelet and buttercakes and pumpkin pie for him. He enclosed them all,
with no apparent difficulty.
Ten people bowed to me, but not one came over to join us. And Horace had
discovered that I was utterly voluptuous. (No one else had _ever_ said
that, and I doubted his judgment. I weighed only a hundred and five
pounds now, and that is not voluptuous by most standards.)
I looked about, but there was no maple lowboy in Childs for Horace to
examine instead of examining me. So I let him call a cab, suggested a
taxi-ride, discovered within five minutes that I might as well let him
take me home, and said, “Let’s go home.”
[Illustration]
Two in the morning.
As I waited, while Horace paid the cab, the night air blew clean and
cold and fresh against my face, and a winter moon that looked very
remote and detached, shone down on the tall dark buildings, and the
quiet grey street, and on Horace and the taxi-man and me. And I had, for
an instant, that feeling that New York was an altogether beautiful place
to live, no matter what happened to me living in it—a comforting
feeling that had come to me sometimes, of late, when I stopped looking
to people for comfort.
Horace trotted energetically up the stairs behind me. I felt worse,
every step I climbed. I did not want him to stay, could not think of any
good reason I should ask him to go, and unlocked my door.
I sat in a small chair, so that Horace would have to sit on the couch,
opposite; lighted a cigarette, and wished I could go somewhere to sleep
for a month.
Horace sat down heavily.