At the extreme end of the corridor upon which Mariana's door opened
there was a small apartment occupied by three young women from the
South, who were bent upon aims of art.
They had moved in a month before, and had celebrated a room-warming by
asking Mariana and several of the other lodgers to a feast of beer and
pretzels. Since then the girl had seen them occasionally. She knew that
they lived in a semi-poverty-stricken Bohemia, and that the pretty one
with pink cheeks and a ragged and uncurled fringe of hair, whose name
was Freighley, worked in Mr. Nevins's studio and did chrysanthemums in
oils. She had once heard Mr. Nevins remark that she was a pupil worth
having, and upon asking, "Has she talent?" had met with, "Not a bit, but
she's pretty."
"Then it is a pity she isn't a model," said Mariana.
"An example of the eternal contrariness of things," responded Mr.
Nevins. "All the good-looking ones want to paint and all the ugly ones
want to be painted." Then he rumpled his flaxen head. "In this
confounded century everything is in the wrong place, from a woman to her
waist-line."
After this Mariana accompanied Miss Freighley on students' day to the
Metropolitan Museum, and watched her make a laborious copy of "The
Christian Martyr." Upon returning she was introduced to Miss Hill and
Miss Oliver, who shared the apartment, and was told to make herself at
home.
Then, one rainy Saturday afternoon there was a knock at her door, and,
opening it, she found Miss Freighley upon the outside.
"It is our mending afternoon," she said, "and we want you to come and
sit with us. If you have any sewing to do, just bring it."
Mariana picked up her work-basket, and, finding that her thimble was
missing, began rummaging in a bureau-drawer.
"I never mend anything until I go to put it on," she said. "It saves so
much trouble."
Then she found her thimble and followed Miss Freighley into the hall.
Miss Freighley laughed in a pretty, inconsequential way. She had a soft,
monotonous voice, and spoke with a marked elimination of vowel sounds.
"We take the last Saturday of the month," she said. "Only Juliet and I
do Gerty's things, because she can't sew, and she cleans our palettes
and brushes in return."
She swung open the door of the apartment, and they entered a room which
served as studio and general lounging-room in one.
A tall girl, sitting upon the hearth-rug beside a heap of freshly
laundered garments, stood up and held out a limp, thin hand.
"I told Carrie she would find you," she said, speaking with a slight
drawl and an affected listlessness.
She was angular, with a consumptive chest and narrow shoulders. She wore
her hair--which was vivid, like flame, with golden ripples in the
undulations--coiled confusedly upon the crown of her head. Her name was
Juliet Hill. A mistaken but well-known colorist had once traced in her a
likeness to Rossetti's "Beata Beatrix." The tracing had resulted in the
spoiling of a woman without the making of an artist.
Mariana threw herself upon a divan near the hearth-rug and looked down
upon the pile of clothes.
"What a lot of them!" she observed, sympathetically.
Miss Hill drew a stocking from the heap and ran her darning-egg into the
heel to locate a hole.
"It is, rather," she responded, "but we never mend until everything we
have is in rags. I couldn't find a single pair of stockings this
morning, so I knew it was time."
"If you had looked into Gerty's bureau-drawer you might have found
them," said Miss Freighley, seating herself upon the end of the divan.
"Gerty never marks her things, and somehow she gets all of ours.
Regularly once a month I institute a search through her belongings, and
discover more of my clothes than I knew I possessed. Here, give me that
night-gown, Juliet. The laundress tore every bit of lace off the sleeve.
What a shame!"
Mariana removed a guitar from the couch and leaned back among the
pillows, glancing about the room. The walls were covered with coarse
hangings, decorated in vague outlines of flying cranes and vaguer
rushes. Here and there were tacked groups of unframed water-colors and
drawings in charcoal--all crude and fanciful and feminine. Upon a small
shelf above the door stood a plaster bust, and upon it a dejected and
moth-eaten raven--the relic of a past passion for taxidermy. In the
centre of the room were several easels, a desk, with Webster's
Unabridged for a foot-stool, and a collection of palettes, half-used
tubes of paint, and unassorted legs and arms in plaster.
"How do you ever find anything?" asked Mariana, leaning upon her arm.
"We don't," responded a small, dark girl, coming from the tiny kitchen
with a dish of cooling caramels in her hand; "we don't find, we just
lose." She placed the dish upon the table and drew up a chair. "I would
mortgage a share of my life if I could turn my old mammy loose in here
for an hour."
"Gerty used to be particular," explained Miss Freighley; "but it is a
vicious habit, and we broke her of it. Even now it attacks her at
intervals, and she gets out a duster and goes to work."
"I can't write in a mess," interrupted Miss Oliver, a shade ruefully. "I
haven't written a line since I came to New York." Then she sighed. "I
only wish I hadn't written a word before coming. At home I thought I was
a genius; now I know I am a fool."
"I have felt the same way," said Mariana, sympathetically, "but it
doesn't last. The first stage-manager I went to I almost fell at his
feet; the next almost fell at mine. Neither of them gave me a place, but
they taught me the value of men."
"I don't think it's worth learning," returned Miss Oliver, passing her
caramels. "Try one, and see if they are hard."
"Poor Gerty!" drawled Miss Hill, watching Mariana bite the caramel. "She
faces editors and all kinds of bad characters. Her views of life are
depressing."
"They are not views," remonstrated Miss Oliver, "they are facts. Facts
are always depressing, except when they are maddening."
"I have begged her to leave off writing and take to water-color or china
painting," said Miss Freighley, cheerfully, "but she won't."
"How can she?" asked Mariana.
"Of course I can't," retorted Miss Oliver, shortly. "I never had a
paint-brush in my hand in my life, except when I was cleaning it."
Miss Freighley laid her sewing aside and stretched her arms.
"It only requires a little determination," she said, "and I have it. I
got tired of Alabama. I couldn't come to New York without an object, so
I invented one. It was as good as any other, and I stuck to it."
Miss Hill shook her head, and her glorious hair shone like amber.
"Art is serious," she said, slowly. She was just entering the life-class
at the Art League.
"But the artist is not," returned Miss Freighley, "and one can be an
artist without having any art. I am. They think at home I am learning to
paint pictures to go on the parlor wall in place of the portraits that
were burned in the war. But I am not. I am here because I love New York,
and--"
"Claude Nevins," concluded Miss Oliver.
Mariana looked up with interest. "How nice!" she said. "He told me you
were awfully pretty."
Miss Freighley blushed and laughed.
"Nonsense!" she rejoined; "but Gerty is so faithful to her young fellow
down South that it has gone to her brain."
"I am faithful because I have no opportunity for faithlessness," sang
Gerty to an accompaniment she was picking upon the guitar. "I have been
in love one--two--six times since I came to New York. Once it was with
an editor, who accepted my first story. He was short and thick and
gray-haired, but I loved him. Once it was with that dark, ill-fed man
who rooms next to Mariana. He almost knocked me down upon the stairway
and forgot to apologize. I have forgotten the honorable others, as the
Japanese say, but I know it is six times, because whenever it happened I
made a little cross-mark on my desk, and there are six of them."
"It must have been Mr. Ardly," said Mariana. "I never look at him
without thinking what an adorable lover he would make."
"He has such nice hands," said Miss Oliver. "I do like a man with nice
hands."
"And he is clean-shaven," added Miss Freighley. "I detest a man with a
beard."
Miss Hill crossed her thin ankles upon the hearth.
"Love should be taken seriously," she said, with a wistful look in her
dark eyes.
Miss Freighley's pretty, inconsequent laugh broke in.
"That is one of Juliet's platitudes," she said. "But, my dear, it
shouldn't be taken seriously. Indeed, it shouldn't be taken at
all--except in cases of extreme _ennui_, and then in broken doses. The
women who take men seriously--and taking love means taking men, of
course--sit down at home and grow shapeless and have babies galore. To
grow shapeless is the fate of the woman who takes sentiment seriously.
It is a more convincing argument against it than all the statistics of
the divorce court--"
"For the Lord's sake, Carrie, beware of woman's rights," protested Miss
Oliver. "That is exactly what Mrs. Simpson said in her lecture on 'Our
Tyrant, Man.' Why, those dear old aunts of yours in Alabama have
inserted an additional clause in their Litany: 'From intemperance, evil
desires, and woman's suffrage, good Lord deliver us!' They are grounded
in the belief that the new woman is an _edition de luxe_ of the devil."
Mariana rose and shook out her skirts. "I must go," she said, "and you
haven't done a bit of work."
"So we haven't," replied Miss Hill, picking up her needle. "But take
some caramels--do."
Mariana took a caramel and went out into the hall. Algarcife's door was
open, and he was standing upon the threshold talking to Claude Nevins.
As Mariana passed, Nevins smiled and called to her:
"I say, Miss Musin, here is a vandal who complains that you make night
hideous."
Algarcife scowled.
"Nevins is a fool," he retorted, "and if he doesn't know it, he ought to
be told so."
"Thanks," returned Nevins, amiably, "but I have long since learned not
to believe anything I hear."
Anthony's irritation increased. "I should have thought the presumptive
evidence sufficient to overcome any personal bias," he replied.
Nevins spread out his hands with an imperturbable shrug.
"My dear fellow, I never found my conclusions upon presumptive evidence.
Had I done so, I should hold life to be a hollow mockery--whereas I am
convinced that it is a deuced solid one."
"You are so bad-tempered--both of you," said Mariana; "but, Mr.
Algarcife, do you really object to my singing? I can't keep silent, you
know."
Algarcife smiled.
"I never supposed that you could," he answered. "And as for music, I had
as soon listen to you as to--to Patti."
"Not that he values your accomplishments more, but Patti's less,"
observed Nevins, placidly.
"On the other hand, I should say that Miss Musin would make decidedly
the less noise," said Anthony.
"He's a brute, isn't he, Mariana?" asked Nevins--and added, "Now I never
said you made anything hideous, did I?"
Mariana laughed, looking a little vexed. "If you wouldn't always repeat
everything you hear other people say, it would be wiser," she responded,
tartly.
"Such is the reward of virtue," sighed Nevins. "All my life I have been
held as responsible for other people's speeches as for my own. And all
from a conscientious endeavor to let my neighbors see themselves as
others see them--"
Algarcife smiled good-humoredly. "Whatever bad qualities Nevins may
possess," he said, "he has at least the courage of his convictions--"
Nevins shrugged his shoulders.
"I don't know about the convictions," he rejoined, "but I've got the
courage all right." Then he looked at Mariana. "Is that an implement of
housewifery that I see?" he demanded.
"I have been to a darning-party," she answered, "but we didn't darn
anything--not even circumstances."
"Lucky circumstances!" ejaculated Nevins. Then he lowered his voice. "I
should not have believed it of you," he protested; "to attend a
darning-party, and to leave not only me, but my socks, outside."
Mariana flushed angrily.
"You are insufferable," she said, "and you haven't a particle of
tact--not a particle. Only yesterday I heard you tell Mr. Morris that
his head looked like an advertisement for sapolio, and the day before
you told Miss Freighley that I said she didn't know how to dress her
hair."
"It was true," said Nevins. "You can't make a liar of me, Mariana."
"I wish you wouldn't call me Mariana," she retorted; and he went upon
his way with a lament.
As Mariana laid her hand upon her door-knob she looked at Anthony.
"Mr. Algarcife," she said, "do you really mind my singing so very much?"
From the end of the corridor Nevins's voice was heard chanting:
"How fickle women are,
Fickle as falling star."
"I wish that Nevins would attend to his own affairs," Algarcife
responded. "As for me, you may dance a break-down every night of your
life, and, if it amuses you, I'll grin and bear it."