Surprise held her at the threshold an instant, whereupon a rare,
beaming, even effusive, Mrs. Fanshaw, whom Jean's memories linked with
calls from the minister, bore down on her, two steps to her one, and
engulfed her in a prolonged embrace. Then, holding her daughter at
arm's length in swift appraisement of her dress and urban air,--
"Death brought me," she explained.
"Death!"
"Your great-aunt Martha Tuttle died last Friday at brother Andrew's
in Paterson," she announced in lugubrious tones with which her blithe
visage could not instantly be brought in harmony. "I am on my way home
from the funeral."
"I've been trying to persuade your mother to break her journey here for
a few days," Julie contributed, with a fugitive smile; "but she says
she must hurry away."
"Amelia expects her little stranger any time now," murmured Mrs.
Fanshaw, chastely. "But I will stop overnight, perhaps part of
to-morrow, thanking you kindly, Mrs. Van Ostade."
"Pray don't," deprecated Julie, moving toward the door. "This is
Jean's home, you know. Unfortunately, I'm dining out this evening."
Jean learned of Mrs. Fanshaw's haste and Julie's engagement with equal
relief. She felt no snobbish shame for her mother's rusticity, but she
did fear her babbling tongue, and her first word on Julie's withdrawal
was one of caution.
"Not a syllable about the refuge here," she charged. "Neither Craig nor
I wish Mrs. Van Ostade to know. Remember, mother."
The visitor's eyes widened.
"Oh," she observed slowly, "I don't see--"
"We see," Jean cut her short. "You must respect my wishes in this."
"All right," assented Mrs. Fanshaw, with amazing meekness. "Is your
husband on the premises?"
"You will meet him soon," she replied, thinking it expedient that Julie
or herself should first give Atwood some hint of what lay in store.
"He is really quite well known, isn't he? I've taken more notice of
magazine pictures since I heard I had another son-in-law. I hope he's
not wild. They tell of such goings-on among artists and models. I seem
to recollect, though, they were French."
"Craig is a gentleman."
"I'm bound to say his sister is a lady," Mrs. Fanshaw replied to this
laconic statement. "Is she any connection of that Mrs. Quentin Van
Ostade the papers mention so much?"
"Julie is her daughter-in-law."
"You don't tell me!" She was impressed to the verge of awe. "Why, that
makes you sister-in-law to Mrs. Quentin Van Ostade's son!"
"He is dead."
"Dead!" Her face paid the late Mr. Van Ostade the fleeting tribute of a
shadow. "What a pity! But I presume his mother still sees something of
his widow?"
"Oh, yes."
"And comes here sometimes?"
"Frequently."
Mrs. Fanshaw resurveyed her surroundings as if they had taken on
historic interest.
"You've seen her?"
"Yes."
"I mean, really met her--been introduced?"
"Yes," Jean admitted, without humility.
Her mother eyed her with respectful interest.
"I hope you'll keep your head, Jean," she admonished solemnly. "This is
a great come-up in the world for you."
An impish impulse took shape in Jean's brain, and, under cover of
showing the house, she guided Mrs. Fanshaw by edifying stages to
Craig's temporary studio and the great work.
"A portrait he's doing!" she dropped carelessly.
Her mother as carelessly bestowed a brief glance upon the canvas.
"What a wrinkled old woman," she commented, turning away. "But I
suppose it is the money your husband is thinking of?"
"Partly."
"What will he get for it?"
Jean pondered demurely.
"It is hard to say. Perhaps a thousand, perhaps two thousand dollars."
"What!" She wheeled upon the portrait. "Why, who is the woman?"
"Mrs. Joyce-Reeves."
The effect was as dramatic as Jean's unfilial fancy had hoped.
"The Mrs. Joyce-Reeves of Fifth Avenue and Newport?"
"And of Lenox, Aiken, and Ormond--yes."
Mrs. Fanshaw's attitude toward the portrait became reverential. Here
was hallowed ground!
"Have you met _her_, too?" she asked finally, with the realization that
even her child might share the sacerdotal mysteries.
"Yes."
"You have _talked_ with her?"
"Only this afternoon."
"Here?"
"She was here to-day, for a sitting, but I ran across her at Mr.
Richter's studio."
"That is where you go to--"
"To model; yes." Then, with great calm, "Mrs. Joyce-Reeves admires my
work."
A chastened, pensive, almost deferential, being, who from time to time
stole puzzled glances at her ugly duckling turned swan, let herself be
shown to her room and smartened for dinner, to which she descended at
what seemed to her robust appetite an unconscionably late hour. Here
the fame of her son-in-law and the even more disconcerting attentions
of the butler combined to make her subjugation complete.
Sweet as was her victory, however, Jean had no wish to see her mother
ill at ease, and she rejoiced when Craig exerted himself to entertain
this visitor whose subdued, almost shy, manner was so bewilderingly
at variance with the forbidding image his fancy had set up. Moreover,
he succeeded. If Mrs. Fanshaw's parochial outlook dulled the edge of
his choicer quips and anecdotes, his boyish charm, at least, required
no footnotes; and before the dinner ended she was bearing her gustful
share in the conversation with such largess of detail that a far less
imaginative listener than he might reconstruct therefrom the whole
social and economic fabric of Shawnee Springs.
To Jean, who in dark moments had longed to forget it utterly, the
narrow little town recurred with sharp, unlovely lines. Forget it! She
could as easily forget that this was her mother. Flout it as she would,
it yet stood closer to her than any spot on earth. Its censure and its
respect were neither despicable; her rehabilitation in its purblind
eyes was a thing desirable above all other ambitions. Then, presently,
in this hour when she craved such justification deepest, its
possibility, even its certainty, came to her. She had slipped away to
answer one of the more imperative letters which Craig's detestation of
affairs left to her, and as she mused a moment over her finished task,
the drift of Mrs. Fanshaw's monologue in the room beyond penetrated her
revery.
She was talking, as Jean had heard her talk times innumerable, with
endless variations upon a single theme. But the burden of her laud was
no longer Amelia! Now it was Jean--her childish spirit, her school-time
precocity, her early love of shaping things in clay, her promise,
her beauty, her future--Jean, always Jean! And as the girl at the
desk drank it in thirstily, she foresaw the end. Signs there had been
already that Amelia was wavering on her pedestal--her husband and her
husband's family, the proud Fargos, had impaired her sainthood; and now
in the tireless, fatuous, sweet refrain, Jean read her own elevation to
the vacant niche. Hot tears blinded her. It might not be her noblest
compensation; but it was the dearest.
If Mrs. Fanshaw's coming marked the dawn of another day in Jean's
spirit, its effect on her external welfare was less happy. Her
relations with Julie were beyond question altered, though precisely
where the difference lay was not easy to detect. Intuition, rather than
any overt act or word of Mrs. Van Ostade's, told her this, for their
surface intercourse went on much as before; but, elusive and volatile
as this changed atmosphere was, she nevertheless knew it for something
real, alert, and vaguely hostile. Yet this aloofness, if aloofness it
could be called, was so bound up in Julie's propaganda on behalf of
Craig's career that Jean took it for a not unnatural jealousy.
Atwood fed the flame with repeated acknowledgments of his wife's share
in solving his riddle, the fervor of which leaped from bud to bloom
with tropic extravagance as the portrait went rapidly forward and the
judgment of MacGregor and other experts assured him of its strength.
His sister, Jean noted, always took these outbursts in silence. The
portrait expressed a Mrs. Joyce-Reeves with whom she was unfamiliar,
either over the tea-cups or elsewhere, but she had the breadth to
recognize its bigness and set her restless energy to work to exploit it
with all her might.
Of her methods Jean perhaps saw more than Mrs. Van Ostade supposed. For
a fortnight Atwood let the nearly finished portrait cool, as he said,
and busied himself at his regular studio with such illustrative work as
he was still under contract to deliver. This was Julie's opportunity.
That Atwood was painting Mrs. Joyce-Reeves was no secret--a discreet
paragraph or two had sown the seed of publicity in fertile ground;
and Julie furthermore let it leak out among those it might interest
that the sittings took place beneath her roof. Skillful playing of
influential callers who rose eagerly to allusions to the opinions of
the critics--Mr. Malcolm MacGregor, for example--would lead usually,
in strictest confidence, to a stolen view of the masterpiece. By such
devices--and others--it came to pass that Atwood, happily ignorant
of the wire-pulling which loosed the falling manna, found himself
commissioned to paint three more persons of consequence so soon as his
engagements to Mrs. Joyce-Reeves and the publishers would permit.
Craig ascribed it all to society's proneness to follow its bell-wethers.
"But I never gauged Mrs. Joyce-Reeves's true power, the magic of her
mere name," he said repeatedly. "Three orders on the bare gossip that
she has given me sittings!"
Julie begged Jean not to undeceive him.
"At least not yet," she qualified. "He is quixotic enough to throw his
chance away, if he thought I used a little business common sense to
make his art pay. I've never dared let him know the labor it cost to
interest Mrs. Joyce-Reeves. Not that it was illegitimate or in any way
underhanded. All this is as legitimate as the social pressure a clever
architect brings to bear, and nobody thinks of censuring. But illusions
are precious to Craig; they feed his inspiration. So I say, let him
enjoy them while he can. Let him think commissions drop from the skies."
Jean doubted the truth of this estimate of Craig, but she did full
justice to Mrs. Van Ostade's motives and to the signal success of
her campaign which, for all she knew of such matters, might be, as
Julie said, legitimate, and at this time even vitally important. The
necessity for a change of studio, which now recurred, seemed logical,
too.
"You now see for yourself, Craig, how unsuited to portrait work your
old quarters are," Julie argued.
"Virginia Hepworth won't mind coming here--she is next, you know; but
you can't go on this way indefinitely. Of course, it's possible that
you may find it desirable to take a temporary studio at Newport for the
summer; but in the fall people will expect a city studio worthy of your
reputation."
Atwood was tractable.
"We must have a look around," he assented.
"I have looked around," announced his sister; "and I've found something
you couldn't possibly better. It has every convenience--a splendid
workroom, a large reception-room, a dressing-room, and an extra chamber
which would be useful for the caterer when you receive. It will require
very little redecorating, though they're willing to do it throughout,
if we like."
"That sounds like the Copley Studios."
"It is."
Atwood laughed.
"Must it be the pink-tea district, after all, Julie? Boy in buttons at
the door, velvet-coated poseur--Artist with a capital _A_--in the holy
of holies. What will old Mac say! Jean, what do you think?"
She felt Julie's compelling eye upon her, and resented its domination;
but she saw no choice of ways.
"The velvet jacket isn't compulsory, is it?" she said lightly. "Why not
look at the studio?"
"I'll drop in the first time I am near," he agreed.
Julie coughed.
"I ventured to make an appointment," she said. "They only show it by
special permission of the owners, the Peter Y. Satterlee Company. Mr.
Satterlee himself offered to be at the building at twelve o'clock
to-morrow, if that hour will suit. To deal with him in person would be
an advantage."
"Would it?" responded Craig, hazily. "Very well. Can you go, Jean?"
"If you want me," she returned, feeling outside the discussion.
"Of course. I count on you and Julie to browbeat the real-estate shark
into reducing the summer's rent. All I shall be good for is to tell you
whether there is a practicable north light."
Jean came late. Richter had abruptly taken her off the
spirit-mortifying antique to aid him with one of his lesser studies for
the Western exposition, and the forenoon had been absorbing. To watch
Richter model was much; to help him a heaven-sent boon to be exercised
in fear and trembling and exceeding joy. The stroke of twelve, which
should have found her with Craig, saw her but leaving Richter's door.
The distance was short, however, and at a quarter past the hour the
overupholstered elevator of the Copley Studios bore her without vulgar
haste aloft.
It was all vastly different from Craig's unfashionable top-story back,
a mile or more down-town. No shabby street confronted this temple
of the fine arts; its benign façade overlooked a trim park and the
vehicles of elegant leisure. No base odor of cabbage or garlic rose
from the nether lair of its janitor; no plebeian tailor or dressmaker
debased the tone of its lower floors. Its courts were of marble, and
its flunkies had supple spines.
The door to which Jean was directed stood ajar, and she let herself in
to encounter other mighty differences. The entrance to the down-town
studio precipitated the caller squarely into the travail of artistic
production, but the architect who planned the Copley Studios had
interposed a little hall with a stained-glass window-nook and a
reception-room of creamy empire fittings between genius and its
interruptions.
From the studio proper issued Julie's level tones, presumably in
discussion with Peter Y. Satterlee, for Jean heard Craig's meditative
whistle in another direction. Following a small passage, she came upon
him studying the convolutions of a nervous jet of steam which found
vent among the myriad chimneys of the nearer outlook.
"Will it do?" she smiled.
"Splendidly--almost too splendidly. Julie and the magnificent Satterlee
are settling terms, I believe. Behold your studio, sculptress mine!"
he added with a grandiloquent gesture. "This is the extra chamber
of Julie's rhapsodies, otherwise a bachelor's bedroom about to be
dedicated to nobler ends. Notice your view, Jean! New York, the Hudson,
Jersey's hills, and the promise of sunsets beyond compare! And look
here"--descending to practicality--"running water handy and my workshop
next. We shall virtually work side by side."
He pushed open the connecting door, and they entered the studio.
Julie and a globular man in superfine raiment stood like ill-balanced
caryatids in support of either end of the mantelpiece.
"I agree to everything," he was saying. "The leases shall be ready
to-morrow."
The voice signaled some cell in Jean's brain. The face, which he turned
immediately upon her, gave memory its instant clew, and she felt her
skin go hot and cold under Peter Y. Satterlee's earnest gaze.
"Have you a double, Mrs. Atwood?" he asked, after a moment's idle
discussion of the studio.
She tried to face him calmly.
"A double? I think not."
"Why?" demanded Julie.
Satterlee pursued his investigations with maddening care.
"It's a most extraordinary resemblance, particularly as to eyes," he
said. "There was a young woman, a dentist's wife, living in a Harlem
apartment of ours--the Lorna Doone, it was--who might be Mrs. Atwood's
twin. You didn't marry a widow, sir?" he broke off jocularly.
Atwood laughingly shook his head.
"How curious!" he exclaimed. "What was her name?"
"There you have me," admitted the agent, after brain-fagging efforts.
"I can't recollect. I sold the property very soon."