“Young woman,” he said. (Probably he was near enough drunk now so that
he did not remember my name.) “When I met you, I thought you were
intelligent, because your head is the right shape.”
I grinned. He was going to be original—well I might have trusted him
for that.
“You are not intelligent, though, else you would set higher value than
you seem to set on the admiration of a man like myself, who is a
connoisseur of women. Perhaps you prefer callow and pretty boys—”
(Oh, he minded being old, did he? Now I could not send him home. He
would feel so—done. It was not fair for an assistant advertising
manager to make a great painter feel—finished.)
“I’m extremely flattered that you should have devoted an evening to me,
Horace.”
“Don’t say words that mean nothing, young woman. Listen to me, please. I
have something to say that may interest you.”
He was a bit arbitrary, but if he felt like it, I did not mind. I was
too tired. His huge head was framed against the whiteness of the
panelled door behind the couch. I wondered if he had ever done a
portrait of himself—that grizzled head was marvellous. I wished that
door led somewhere I could go, instead of leading just to the bath. I
could not spend the night in the tub.
“Young woman,” (I thought that if he called me that again I would fling
a cushion at him. There was no reason why I should let people sit in my
own apartment and say “young woman” to me, whether they could paint
beautiful portraits or not.)
He went on. “You have a body that is delightful, whatever you may lack
in intelligence. And since you seem to set no value on me, personally, I
will give you the maple lowboy you had taste enough to admire, if you
will let me stay here tonight.”
That means the Spanish girl is not coming back to have her picture
finished, and the man is offering me the successorship. He can stay,
unless I think of a method of getting him out that is more subtle than
saying, “You are rather a disgusting old man; please go.” Because he is
not disgusting, he is just candid. Wants what he wants and will pay a
price for it.
Oh, I suppose I shall have to let him stay, but he can keep his maple
lowboy. The only thing I have left to cherish is my amateur standing.
(Did that door behind him move? I’m so tired I am seeing things. Of
course it did not.)
Horace had not finished talking, quite. “Permit me to light another
cigarette for you, and take five minutes to consider the lowboy. There
is not another like it in America.”
He lighted my cigarette. Then he took out his watch.
“It is twenty minutes past two. I shall ask for your answer at
twenty-five past.” He stood staring at the watch.
I laughed. He ignored me. I looked at my own watch. I knew I should say
something to stop this absurdity, but I could not talk, I could only
laugh.
“It is two twenty-five,” he said. “Do you want five minutes more to make
up your mind?”
There was a sound of glass smashing, in the bathroom. Horace turned. The
bathroom door opened a little. A voice said, “For God’s sake, Pat, take
him or leave him, _now_, I can’t live five more minutes without a
drink.”
“Kenneth!” I said. The bathroom door opened wide. Kenneth staggered out
and leant against it. His opera hat was on one side of his head—his
tail coat was crumpled. He stood, tall and golden-haired and dreadfully
thin, grinning down at us both, looking like a cartoon of a
Young-Man-About-Town.
Behind him, I could see a bottle smashed in pieces on the floor.
Horace had got his breath back. He roared—at me. “Who the hell is
this?” He lost his breath again, after the roar.
Kenneth answered.
“Sir,” he said in the more severe of his Harvard voices, “If you are
inquiring about me—I am the young woman’s—manager. I agree with you
that she is charming, but she has the annoying habit of going out to get
business for herself occasionally, in spite of our arrangements. Now—if
you will discuss things with me. . . . You were saying something about a
lowboy. We don’t usually take furniture—but if it is accessible for
evaluation—”
Horace got his breath back, permanently, as far as I was ever to know.
He got his breath and his hat and coat and gloves and stick. He began
roaring.
He roared all the short Anglo-Saxon words I had ever heard, and a few
others whose meaning I gathered by his tone. He walked out. His roars
could be heard receding, as he stamped downstairs.
I wiggled about in my chair. “Kenneth, you idiot,” I said. “Did you ever
hear so many synonyms for slut as that man used?”
* * * * *
But Kenneth did not think it was funny.
“Damn you, Patricia,” he said, “You would have let him stay—that
horrible old man. ‘Let me stay and I’ll give you a lowboy.’ Christ—let
_me_ stay and I’ll give you—”
“Kenneth, stop please—I’ve had a damnable hour and I can’t stand any
more. You had better go away.”
And then that tragic young man, whose gaiety was perennial as the
blueness of his eyes, began to sob, and sob, and sob. He sat on the
floor, and took a ruffle of my blue frock in his hands, and shook with
sobs.
I patted his hair a little. I could not think of anything else to do for
him. I said, “Please stop, Kenneth, dear. I am not important enough for
anyone to cry about.”
He grew steady, after a little while, but he still kept twisting the
blue ruffle in his hands.
“Patricia,” he said very softly, “so little and so nice—too nice to get
mauled by all the fools in New York.”
“Please don’t, Kenneth,” I said.
“You stir me too,” he said, “didn’t you know? I am no different than the
others.”
“No, I didn’t know.”
“Damn them,” he said, “and I can’t ever touch you.”
“Kenneth, my dear, my dear.”
“Patricia, if I never touched you, would you marry me and go away
somewhere? I have enough money left so that you could live a year. I
shan’t live a year. We could go to California, and you could swim in the
Pacific.”
It sounded pleasant.
“But what’s the use Kenneth? Isn’t your favourite aphorism that there’s
no sense in going other places if you have to take yourself along? Thank
you, though.”
We sat quiet for a little while.
He looked up and smiled, and I knew he was all right again.
“Car’s around the corner, Pat,” he said. “Want to put on something warm
and go for a drive in the fresh air?”
“Let’s,” I said.
“Bring a volume of Swinburne along, like a nice girl,” he said. “I’ll
make you read aloud to me at breakfast, if we stay out that long.”
Kenneth liked me to read poetry to him—quite old-fashioned, romantic
things. Perhaps they were things that had pleased him when he was in
school, or perhaps his Hungarian dancer had liked them. I never asked.
[Illustration]
Seven in the morning.
The sun was rising over the East river. We sat, Kenneth in his crumpled
evening clothes, and I in my blue frock that just would not ever look
fresh again, under an old fur coat, in his car at the foot of Beekman
Place, by the river. We were quite warm and happy and sleepy. I was
reading aloud to him from “The Garden of Proserpine.”
_From too much love of living—_
_From hope and fear set free_
_We thank with brief thanksgiving_
_Whatever Gods there be_
_That no life lives for ever—_
[Illustration]