IX._The Adventures of a Widow: A Novel

The excitement of Pauline had by no means passed when she regained her

home. Kindelon's last words still rang in her ears.

She declared to herself that it was something horrible to have been

called a dainty gentlewoman. At the same time, she remembered the

impetuosity of his address, and instinctively forgave even while she

condemned. Still, there remained with her a certain severe resentful

sense. "What right," she asked herself, "has this man to undervalue and

contemn my purpose? Is it not based upon a proper and worthy impulse? Is

egotism at its root? Is not a wholesome disgust there, instead? Have I

not seen, with a radical survey, the aimless folly of the life led by

men and women who presume to call themselves social leaders and social

grandees? Has Kindelon any shred of excuse for telling me to my face

that I am a mere politic trimmer?"

She had scarcely been home an hour before she received a note from Cora

Dares. The note was brief, but very accurate in meaning. It informed

Pauline that Mrs. Dares had just sent a message to her daughter's

studio, and that Cora would be glad to receive Mrs. Varick on that or

any succeeding afternoon, with the view of a consultation regarding the

proposed list of guests.

Pauline promptly resolved to visit Cora that same day. She ordered her

carriage, and then countermanded the order. Not solely because of the

pleasant weather, and not solely because she was in a mood for walking,

did she thus alter her first design. She reflected that there might be a

touch of apparent ostentation in the use of a carriage to call upon this

young self-supporting artist. She even made a change of toilet, and

robed herself in a street costume much plainer than that which she had

previously worn.

Cora Dares's studio was on Fourth Avenue, and one of many others in a

large building which artists principally peopled. It was in the top

floor of this structure, and was reached, like her mother's sanctum, by

that most simplifying of modern conveniences, the elevator. Pauline's

knock at a certain rather shadowy door in an obscure passage was at once

answered by Cora herself.

The studio was extremely pretty; you saw this at a glance. Its one

ample window let in a flood of unrestricted sunlight. Its space was

small, and doubtless for this reason a few brilliant draperies and

effective though uncostly embellishments had made its interior bloom and

glow picturesquely enough. But it contained no ornament of a more

alluring pattern than Cora herself, as Pauline soon decided.

"Pray don't let me disturb you in your painting," said the latter, after

an exchange of greetings had occurred. "I see that you were busily

engaged at your easel. I hope you can talk and paint at the same time."

"Oh, yes," said Cora, with her bright, winsome smile. She was dressed in

some dark, soft stuff, whose sombre hue brought into lovely relief the

chestnut ripples of her hair and the placid refinement of her

clear-chiselled face. "But if I am to give you a list of names," she

went on, "that will be quite another matter."

"Oh, never mind the list of names," replied Pauline, who had just seated

herself. "I mean, not for the present. It will be more convenient for

you, no doubt, to send me this list to-morrow or next day. Meanwhile I

shall be willing to wait very patiently. I am in no great hurry, Miss

Dares. It was exceedingly kind of you to communicate with me in this

expeditious way. And now, if you will only extend your benevolence a

little further and give an hour or two of future leisure toward the

development of my little plan, I shall feel myself still more in your

debt."

Cora nodded amiably. "Perhaps that _would_ be the better arrangement,"

she said. Her profile was now turned toward Pauline, as she stood in

front of her canvas and began to make little touches upon it with her

long, slim brush. "I think, Mrs. Varick, that I can easily send you the

list to-morrow. I will make it out to-night; I shall not forget anybody;

at least I am nearly sure that I shall not."

"You are more than kind," said Pauline. She paused for a slight while,

and then added: "You spend all day here, Miss Dares?"

"All day," was Cora's answer; and the face momentarily turned in

Pauline's direction, with its glimpse of charming, dimpled chin, with

the transitory light from its sweet, blue, lustrous eyes, affected her

as a rarity of feminine beauty. "But I often have my hours of

stupidity," Cora continued. "It is not so with me to-day. I have somehow

seized my idea and mastered it, such as it is. You can see nothing on

the canvas as yet. It is all obscure and sketchy."

"It is still very vague," said Pauline. "But have you no finished

pictures?"

"Oh, yes, five or six. They are some yonder, if you choose to look at

them."

"I do choose," Pauline replied, rising. She went toward the wall which

Cora had indicated by a slight wave of her brush.

The pictures were four in number. They were without frames. Pauline

examined each attentively. She knew nothing of Art in a technical and

professional way; but she had seen scores of good pictures abroad; she

knew what she liked without being able to tell why she liked it, and not

seldom it befell that she liked what was intrinsically and solidly good.

"You paint figures as if you had studied in foreign schools," she said,

quite suddenly, turning toward her hostess.

"I studied in Paris for a year," Cora replied. "That was all mamma could

afford for me." And she gave a sad though by no means despondent little

laugh.

"You surely studied to advantage," declared Pauline. "Your color makes

me think of Henner ... and your flesh-tints, too. And as for these two

landscapes, they remind me of Daubigny. It is a proof of your remarkable

talent that you should paint both landscapes and figure-pieces with so

much positive success."

Cora's face was glowing, now. "You have just named two artists," she

exclaimed, "whose work I have always specially admired and loved. If I

resemble either of them in the least, I am only too happy and thankful!"

Pauline was silent for several minutes. She was watching Cora with great

intentness. "Ah! how I envy you!" she at length murmured, and as she

thus spoke her voice betrayed excessive feeling.

"I thought _you_ envied nobody," answered Cora, somewhat wonderingly.

Pauline gave a little soft cry. "You mean because I am rich, no doubt!"

she said, a kind of melancholy sarcasm tinging her words.

"Riches mean a great deal," said Cora.

"But if you have no special endowment that separates you from the rest

of the world, you are still a woman."

"I am not sorry to be a woman."

"No! because you are a living protest against the inferiority of our

sex. You can do something; you need not forever have men doing something

for you, like the great majority of us!" Pauline's gray eyes had

kindled, and her lips were slightly tremulous as they began to shape

her next sentence. "Most of us _are_ sorry to be women," she went on,

"but I think a great many of us are sorry to be the sort of women fate

or circumstance makes us. There is the galling trouble. If we have no

gift, like yours, that can compel men's recognition and respect, we must

content ourselves with being merged into the big commonplace multitude.

And to be merged into the big commonplace multitude is to be more or

less despised. This may sound like the worst kind of cynicism, but I

assure you, Miss Dares, that it is by no means as flippant as that. I

have seen more of life than you ... why not? You perhaps have heard a

fact or two about my past. I have _had_ a past--and not a pleasant one,

either. And experience (which is the name we give our disappointments,

very often) has taught me that if we could see down to the innermost

depth of any good man's liking for any good woman, we would find there

an undercurrent of real contempt."

"Contempt!" echoed Cora. She had slightly thrown back her head, either

in dismay or denial.

"Yes--contempt," asseverated Pauline. "I believe, in all honesty, at

this hour, that if the charm which our sex exerts over the other--the

physical fascination, and the fascination of sentiment, tenderness,

idealization--had never existed, we would have been literally crushed

out of being long ago. Men have permitted us to live thus far through

the centuries, not because we are weaker than they, but because some

extraordinary and undiscoverable law has made them bow to our weakness

instead of destroying it outright. They always destroy every other thing

weaker than themselves, except woman. They have no compunction, no

hesitation. History will show you this, if you accept its annals in an

unbiased spirit. They either eat the lower animals, or else put them

into usages of the most severe labor. They leave woman unharmed because

Nature has so commanded them. But here they are the slaves of an edict

which they obey more blindly, more instinctively, than even the best of

them know."

"I can't believe that these are your actual views!" now exclaimed Cora.

"I can't believe that you rate the sacred emotion of love as something

to be discussed like a mere scientific problem!"

Pauline went up to the speaker and stood close beside her while she

responded,--

"Ah! my dear Miss Dares, the love between man and woman is entitled to

no more respect than the law of gravitation. Both belong to the great

unknown scheme. We may shake our heads in transcendental disapprobation,

but it is quite useless. The loftiest affection of the human heart is no

more important and no more mysterious than the question of why Newton's

apple fell from the tree or why a plant buds in spring. All causes are

unknown, and to seek their solution is to idly grope."

Cora was regarding Pauline, as the latter finished, with a look full of

sad interest. "You speak like ... like some one whom we both know," she

said hesitatingly. "You speak as if you did not believe in God."

"I do not disbelieve in God," quickly answered Pauline. "The

carelessly-applied term of 'atheist' is to my thinking a name fit only

for some pitiable braggart. He who denies the existence of a God is of

no account among people of sense; but he who says, 'I am ignorant of all

that concerns the conceivability of a God' has full right to express

such ignorance."

Cora slowly inclined her head. "That is the way I have heard _him_

talk," she said, almost musingly. Then she gave a quick glance straight

into Pauline's watchful eyes. "I--I mean," she added, confusedly, as if

she had betrayed herself into avowing some secret reflection, "that Mr.

Kindelon has more than once spoken in a similar way."

"Mr. Kindelon?" replied Pauline, with a gentle, peculiar, interrogative

emphasis. "And did you agree with him?"

"No," swiftly answered Cora. "I have a faith that he cannot shake--that

no one can shake! But he has not tried to do so; I must render him that

justice."

Pauline turned away, with a faint laugh. "The wise men, who have thought

and therefore doubted," she returned, "are often fond of orthodoxy in

the women whom they like. They think it picturesque."

She laughed again, and Cora's eyes followed her as she moved toward the

pictures which she had previously been examining. "Let us change the

subject," she went on, with a note of cold composure in her voice. "I

see that you don't like rationalism.... Well, you are a poet, as your

pictures tell me, and few poets like to do more than feel first and

think afterward.... Are these pictures for sale, Miss Dares?"

Cora's answer came a trifle tardily. "Three of them," she said.

"Which three?" Pauline asked, somewhat carelessly, as it seemed.

"All but that study of a head. As you see, it is scarcely finished."

"It is the one I should like to purchase. You say it is not for sale?"

"No, Mrs. Varick."

"It is very clever," commented Pauline, almost as though she addressed

her own thoughts. She turned her face toward Cora's; it wore an

indefinite flickering sort of smile. "Has it any name?"

"Oh, no; it is a mere study."

"I like it extremely.... By the way, is it a portrait?"

Cora did not reply for several seconds. She had begun to put little

touches upon her canvas again--or to seem as if she were so putting

them.

"It's not good enough to be called anything," she presently replied.

"I want it," said Pauline. She was looking straight at the picture--a

small square of rather recklessly rich color. "I want it very much

indeed. I ... I will give you a considerable sum for it."

She named the sum that she was willing to give, and in an admirably

cool, loitering voice. It was something that surpassed any price ever

proposed to Cora Dares for one of her paintings, by several hundreds of

dollars.

Cora kept silent. She was touching her canvas. Pauline waited. Suddenly

she turned and regarded her companion.

"Well?" she said.

Cora flung aside her brush. The two women faced each other.

"I think you are cruel!" cried Cora. It was evident that she was nearly

in straits for speech, and her very lovely blue eyes seemed to sparkle

through unshed tears. "I--I told you that I did not wish to sell the

picture," she hurried on. "I--I don't call it a picture at all, as I

also told you. It--it is far from being worth the price that you have

offered me. It ... it ... And," here Cora paused. Her last words had a

choked sound.

Pauline was looking at her fixedly but quite courteously.

"It is Ralph Kindelon's portrait," she said.

Cora started. "Well! and if it is!" she exclaimed.

Instantly, after that, Pauline went over to her and took one of her

hands.

"My dear Miss Dares," she said, with that singular sweetness which she

could always throw into her voice, "I beg you to forgive me. If you

really wish to retain that picture--and I see that you do--why, then I

would not take it from you even as a voluntary gift. Let us speak no