THE OTHER WOMAN
As we were speaking, Frances came to my room and I advanced a chair for
her.
"Thanks," she said, "I am not at all tired, Mr. Cole."
"Yet I beg that you will sit down for a moment," I asked her. "I shall
take the piano-stool and you ladies will give me the delightful feeling
of receiving a pleasant visit. I shall do my best to entertain two
callers charitable enough to penetrate a sere and yellow bachelor's
quarters. I shall proceed to make some tea."
"Gracious, Dave!" exclaimed Frieda hungrily, "you live in the lap of
luxury."
"At least your presence here gives me the illusion of it," I answered,
pulling out my alcohol lamp and other utensils.
There is little excuse for poor tea, unless it be considered as a vulgar
flavoring intended to lend a different taste to the water taken from the
faucet. A pound of the best lasts me for the greater part of a year,
for I take it seldom, and a dollar more than the price of green and
fibrous rubbish permits me to offer my friends and delight myself with a
cup such as brings joy and an eagerness for a second filling.
"Of course, I was a little afraid at first," confessed Frances, as I
measured out a spoonful for each of us and one for the greedy pot. "Mr.
McGrath was exceedingly civil, however, and briefly explained that for
the time being I must consider myself as one of his materials, like a
tube of paint or his easel."
"That's just like Gordon," I interjected.
"Well, it seemed quite right," she went on. "He made me sit down a dozen
times, in various ways, and then he'd look at me and move my chin a
little, or change the position of my arm. It took him quite a long time
and the more he shifted me around, the more he frowned, so that at last
I asked him just what he wanted.
"'I want you to hold that baby and look at it as if it were the biggest
thing on earth, and forget me, and forget that you're posing,' he said,
and I asked him to let me try all by myself. So I moved around a bit
and held my head differently, and he said that was just what he was
looking for. He told me to keep still and went to work at once. In a
half an hour he asked me if I didn't want to rest, and I told him I had
pins and needles in my legs, and he said I must get up and walk a few
times around the studio. A few minutes later I sat down again, and--and
that's all, I think."
"What did he talk about?" asked Frieda.
"He didn't talk; just kept on glaring at me and then staring at his
canvas and working away, ever so quickly. At the end of an hour he asked
me how it was that the baby kept so quiet, and I told him it was asleep.
"'When he wakes up he'll howl, won't he?' he asked me.
"'I don't think so. Paul never howls,' I told him, and just then the
poor wee thing woke up and began. It was perfectly dreadful! He never
cried so loud before. Then Mr. McGrath told me to go into the next room
and see if it was pins or hunger and to take my own time. So when I came
back he was walking up and down in front of his canvas and paid no
attention to me for the longest time. Then he said we might as well go
on, and I suppose he worked for another hour. He stopped suddenly and
told me I could take off the queer shawl he'd put about my shoulders and
run away. He warned me to be on time to-morrow, because he didn't like
to wait. After that he took his hat and went away and his Japanese man
showed me out, when I was ready."
"I told you it wouldn't be so dreadfully hard," said Frieda, "and
Gordon, in spite of his queer ways, is a very nice and decent fellow. He
paints like an angel, he does, but he's as cold-blooded about his work
as a pawnbroker."
"I'm glad," said Frances. "It makes it much easier."
I poured out the tea and produced a small box of vanilla wafers, which
Frieda is ever so fond of.
"I wonder Gordon didn't get mad, when Baby Paul began to scream," she
said.
"My dear," I remarked, "a man generally gets angry only at the
unexpected. He had made up his mind that the weather would be squally
and would have been rather disappointed if no shower had come. Before I
had the pleasure of Master Paul's acquaintance, I mistakenly thought
that every interval between waking and feeding, in a baby's life, must
be taken up with lusty shrieking. I'm positively frightened and
hopeless, sometimes, when I think of how much there is for me to learn.
I know I'll never catch up."
"You know good tea, for one thing," answered Frieda. "Give me another
cup."
I complied, and, presently, Frances, at our urging, sat down to the old
piano and played something that was very pretty and soft. And then the
old desire to sing must have come upon her, suddenly, for her low and
husky voice brought forth a few words of a sweet, old French song. This,
all at once, must have evoked some of the memories that weighed so
heavily upon her heart. Her hands went up to her face and she sobbed.
Frieda rose, swiftly and silently, and put her big, able hand upon the
girl's shoulder.
"I--I can't even sing to my baby!" Frances moaned.
What a cry from the heart! All else would have amounted to so little, if
she could only have poured out some of the melody in her soul to the
poor little mite. She was brave; working for Baby Paul was of small
moment; even the loss of the gallant soldier lad who had poured his
stream of life for the motherland was not for the moment the paramount
source of her distress. No! She could not sing for the diminutive
portrait of himself, the man had left behind!
As usual, in the presence of a woman's tears, I was mute and incapable
of giving comfort. I feared to utter some of the platitudes which cause
the sorrowing to revolt against the futility of wordy consolation.
Frieda's kindly touch was worth more than all I could have said in a
dog's age. Soon, the streaming eyes had been dabbed again to dryness,
but the smile I had hoped for did not return.
"I--I am sorry I was so weak," said Frances, and ran away to her room,
possibly for the powder surely invented by a great benefactor of
humanity, since it may serve to obliterate the traces of women's tears
and enables them to look at you again, hopefully and with courage
renewed.
* * * * *
After this, three weeks went by. The literary agent upon whose kindly
head I pour my short stories announced the sale of my virtuous dog's
tale, on the strength of which I took Frieda and Frances to a
moving-picture theatre, one Saturday night. The latter's posing for
Gordon was always a subject of conversation. The picture, it appeared,
was now quite finished, and we were moving heaven and earth in our
endeavors to find something wherewith a woman with a young baby might
earn a few dollars. Frances spoke little of her experiences at the
studio, except to gratify our curiosity. It was always the same thing.
Baby was generally ever so good and Mr. McGrath fairly patient with his
occasional relapses from slumbering silence. An impression made its way
in my mind to the effect that Gordon rather awed his model. She had
watched the picture's growth and this process of creation, utterly new
to her, seemed to fill her with some sort of amazement.
"Tell me just what it is like," I asked her, as we sat on the stoop,
waiting for Frieda to turn up.
"I suppose it looks like me," she said, doubtfully, "but then, it isn't
a portrait, of course. I--I don't think I look just like that. Sometimes
he stands in front of me for the longest time and glares, looking more
and more disappointed, and all at once he says I've got a Sphynx of a
face or a deuce of a mouth, or something just as complimentary. Then he
turns to the picture again and changes something, with merely a touch of
one of those big brushes, and plasters on another dab of paint and moves
off to look at it. After this, he says it's much better, or declares
he's spoiled everything, and he lights his pipe and goes to work again.
Sometimes he wears the expression of a bulldog worrying a bone, and a
minute later he'll be just as nice as nice can be. He's a strange man."
"He certainly is," I assented. "At any rate, I am glad that your
experience with him, on the whole, has not proved a disagreeable one."
"Indeed, sometimes I have rather enjoyed it. Yesterday, I didn't. He
began, _a propos_ of nothing, to tell me about one of your books, and
said that your idea about a girl called Laura was so silly he had no
patience with you, because you had idealized her until it was rather a
caricature than a portrait, and you didn't know any more about women
than the baby did. So, of course, I got angry at him and he looked at
me, with a smile that was half a sneer, and told me to keep on looking
just like that. It seems that I had just the expression he wanted to
bring out. When you look too long at the baby,' he said, 'you get the
likeness of a girl who's been scolded at table and is going to cry into
the soup. I thought I'd wake you up!' I was ever so provoked, and he
painted right along without minding me in the least. When he was
through, he put on his most polite air and told me that all he had said
about that Laura was nonsense, and that she was just a fool girl like
any other. As for the picture, he said it would make some fellows sit up
and take notice. He appeared to be intensely pleased with it and thanked
me for being so patient with him."
"I am not surprised," I told her. "When our good little friend, Dr.
Porter, who is the best-hearted chap you'll meet in a long day's
journey, becomes very interested in some dreadful malady and wants to
make experiments, I am sure he considers guinea-pigs and rats in the
light of mere material. Gordon will not have the slightest compunction
about vivisecting a model, if it suits his purpose."
"But he can be ever so kind. He very often is," declared Frances. "On
the very first day he told me not to allow myself to get overtired, and
he's kept on asking me ever since, if I didn't want to take a rest.
Sometimes he made me stop, when I could very well have kept on."
Frieda appeared, coming around the corner under full steam, and we got
in the car and went off to the movies. The services of Eulalie had been
obtained, to mind the baby for a couple of hours. She likes to do it,
and it gives her an opportunity to go into my room and rummage in my
bureau drawers, where she hunts for missing buttons with the eagerness
of a terrier looking for rats.
When we returned, satiated with picturesque tragedy and second-rate
vaudeville, Frances, as usual, flew upstairs, obsessed with the idea
that obviously grease-painted and false-whiskered villains such as we
had seen on the screen must have penetrated the citadel and stolen her
baby. Frieda had left us at the door, and I climbed up in more leisurely
fashion, meeting Eulalie on the stairs, loaded with my soiled linen, who
bade me good evening, pleasantly.
Frances was waiting for me on her door-sill.
"Paul is all right. Nothing has happened," she confided to me. "Good
night, Mr. Cole, and thank you ever so much."
She smiled at me, and I was pleased that I had been able to divert her
thoughts for a few moments. How glad I should be if I could render more
permanent that little look of happiness she showed for an instant!
On my desk I found a message from Gordon, asking me to come to the
studio next day, which was a Sunday, for lunch.
I kept the appointment, walking all the way up. As I passed Bryant Park,
I noticed that the leaves were becoming slightly yellow. It was evident
that the summer was giving a hint of impending departure. I reached the
big building, just before noon, knowing that I should be somewhat ahead
of time, but glad to have a chat with Gordon.
"I know you've been dying to see that canvas," he told me. "That young
woman's a wonder. A clever and intelligent woman's the one to really
understand what a fellow's after and help him out. I really think she
took some interest in the thing. If she isn't otherwise occupied when I
return from Southampton, I might possibly make use of her for another
week or two. And there's Spinelli, the sculptor, who has a commission
for a big group of sirens, for a fountain. He was in here and looked at
the picture. Asked about her, he did, but I told him I didn't think
she'd pose that way."
"I should think not," I declared.
"You needn't get mad," he retorted. "I've been looking around to see if
I could get her something to do. Come in the front room and light your
pipe, if you want to. Windows are open. I'm expecting a couple of women
in to lunch. Glad you came in early. Yumasa's juggling in the
kitchenette; the chap's an artist, when it comes to playing tunes on a
chafing-dish. Well, how does it strike you?"
The picture stood before me. It was practically finished. I sank down on
the cushioned bench that ran beneath the broad window facing the north
and stared at the canvas.
"Great Heavens, Gordon!" I exclaimed.
"It hits right out from the shoulder, doesn't it," he said. "Ever see
anything much more alive than this?"
"She's going to lift her eyes from the baby," I answered. "She's going
to indulge in that little half-timid and half-boastful look of the
young mother challenging the whole world to say that her infant isn't
perfection in flesh and blood!"
Gordon made no answer. He was standing before the canvas, his left arm
crossed over his breast with the right elbow resting upon it and the
square bluish chin in the grasp of long thin fingers.
"You've evidently stuck to the model a great deal," I commented further,
"but you've also idealized, made poetry of her."
"And you're talking like a donkey," my friend told me, rather
impatiently. "I simply have better eyes than you. Of course, I suppose
you've seen a lot of her, for she seems to think the sun rises and sets
on you, but you haven't studied every bit of her face as I've done. I've
idealized nothing at all, but my own appreciation of her, and perhaps a
trick or two, have caught you. The light came right through this open
window, naturally, and caused that glint of the fluffy ends of hair,
like powdered sunlight dusted over the dark chestnut. It also threw
those strong high lights over the edges of the features. Then, I stuck
those roses between her and the window and they gave the reflected
tints. It's just a portrait, you old idiot, and nothing else, except
perhaps for the fancy shawl. Of course, everything that wasn't directly
illumined was in subdued tones, which account for the softness. You may
think it's rather ideal, but that's only because I saw her right and got
an effective pose. Hang it all, man! If I gave you a pond and a bunch of
trees and blue hills back of them, you might describe them accurately,
and yet make the picture an interesting one, in one of those fool
stories of yours."
"She is very beautiful," I said, knowing that he expected no direct
answer to his tirade.
"If she hadn't been, I shouldn't have bothered with her," he replied, in
a tone that rather rasped on my feelings. "That's just what's the matter
with her; she's a good-looker and you daren't change anything. If I were
to use her again for anything important, fellows would ask if I intend
to stick to the same old model, all my life. If I get her to pose just
once more, it will be about the end of her usefulness to me, and I'd do
it just for the fun of making another study of an interesting type,
something to stick among the unframed things piled up against the wall
and show people, after this one's sold."
He moved off to get a cigarette from the small square stool on which he
keeps brushes and tubes, leaving me to stare in great desolation at the
picture of Frances and her baby. So he's going to sell it! Indeed, the
more I looked at it the better I realized that it was the woman herself,
described by a master. He had naturally seen things I had not noticed,
that was all. I think I've never had a great desire for money, but the
idea was very irksome that her portrait would be sold and that it would
hang on some rich man's wall, stared at only by people merely concerned
with the beauty their dollars had bought.
It is, perhaps, just as well that I have some sense of humor. The idea
of this wonderful thing hanging in my rather dingy room suddenly struck
me as rather incongruous. As well think of a necklace of brilliants
about some ragged pauper's neck. To the best of my belief I have never
envied the people who can afford to possess the gauds I have sometimes
admired in the windows of shops, in which only the rich can ever deal.
Why this sudden obsession of a desire to have that picture of the young
woman where I could look at it, daily, and delight in its perfection? I
have often thought that in my den or in her own room she is as nearly
out of place as her picture would be. She impresses one as being able to
lend further grace to the most splendid dwelling-place.
Once more I catch myself communing with my folly. After all, Madame
Dupont is just a woman; her smile gives charm to her surroundings. When
she sits in my old Morris chair, she converts it into the throne of
beautiful motherhood and the place into a palace of grace. Why should I
care for daubs, for splashes of paint never so cleverly put on, since I
can see the model from time to time and rejoice that she counts me among
her friends?
"You're the grumpiest old curmudgeon I ever knew," said Gordon,
interrupting my cogitations. "You haven't said a word for ten minutes.
And so you like it, do you?"
"You've never done anything half so good," I affirmed.
"To tell you the truth, I've a notion I've happened to do something
pretty big," he said, nodding. "But a fellow's apt to get hypnotized by
his own work, sometimes. I'll have to stop looking at the thing. It'll
stay here while I go off to the country for a few weeks and, when I come
back, I'll have the right perspective again. But I know it's devilish
good. I feel as I did once at the _Salon_, when I got the _Mention
Honorable_ for that codfish and lobster on a marble table. You know, the
one Tilson bought. I knew it was right, as soon as I'd finished it."
Mutely, I committed him to the devil and all his fallen angels. What had
this picture to do with still-life in a fishmonger's shop? Hang it, I
really believe Gordon has no soul! Or can it be a part of the pose
inseparable from him, of which he certainly is sometimes unconscious?
At this moment, the bell rang and Yumasa came out of some cubby and
rushed to the outer door. Gordon followed him and warmly welcomed a
rather stout lady of uncertain age and very youthful hair, after which
he held out his hand to the original of Miss Van Rossum's portrait.
"The steamer was awfully early," explained the young lady, "but she
took forever to dock. Don't you think we were awfully good to come in
town on such a warm day? I could have played thirty-six holes, you know,
but, of course, we hadn't seen Dad for a long time. Mamma asked him to
come with us, but he said he'd have to run over to the Club. He'll join
us here at three."
"Let me see, he was gone four months, wasn't he?" said Gordon.
"Yes, something like that," answered the mother, holding up a
tortoise-shell lorgnette and looking at me.
"I want to introduce my friend, David Cole, Mrs. Van Rossum," hastened
Gordon. "Miss Van Rossum, David is my very best pal. He's the novelist,
you know."
"How very interesting!" clamored the young lady. "Gordon has given me
two of your books to read. Now that I have met you, I shall certainly
have to begin them. You see, there is so much to do in summer, Mr.
Cole."
"Indeed there is, Miss Van Rossum," I assented. "I hardly find time even
to look over the morning paper."
"Oh! Newspapers are such rubbish," she declared, airily.
"Why, Sophia!" cried Mrs. Van Rossum. "One of them had your picture last
week."
"It was rotten," said Miss Sophia, with some firmness.
"Oh, my dear! Why will you use such dreadful language?" the mother
reproved her.
"That's all right, Ma, every one says it now."
Miss Van Rossum, having thus established the status of her vocabulary,
at least to her own satisfaction, took a few steps across the big studio
and stopped before the picture.
"Oh! I say! Did you do that, Gordon?" she asked. "Isn't she a stunner?
Was it her own baby or did she borrow it? Cunning little mite, isn't
it?"
"A study from a model," Gordon informed her. "Yes, it is her own baby."
The older lady also came forward and inspected the painting.
"Of course, you must have flattered her a great deal," she opined. "You
have _such_ an imagination, my dear Mr. McGrath!"
"It isn't a patch on David's," he replied. "Novelists can beat painters
all hollow at that sort of thing."
"I'm awfully hungry," interrupted Miss Van Rossum. "Had to get up at an
unearthly hour to come down and meet Dad."
At once we went to the small table in the next room. The flowers were
exquisite. The young lady crunched radishes, with enthusiasm, and spoke
disparagingly of a certain hackney which, according to her, had unfairly
been awarded a blue ribbon at Piping Rock, gaining a decision over her
own palfrey. Also, she discussed Mrs. Pickley-Sanderson's form at tennis
and spoke of the new shotgun her father had brought over for her, from
England.
"What's your handicap at golf, Mr. Cole?" she asked me, graciously.
"I'm afraid David's a fossil," put in Gordon. "He's utterly ignorant of
the most important things of life."
"What a pity," she sympathized. "And how do you manage to spend the
time?"
"I--I don't spend it, Miss Van Rossum," I answered, inanely. "I try to
save it and make it last as long as possible."
"How funny," she declared, and gave me up as hopeless, directing the
remainder of her conversation at Gordon.
Finally, I took my leave, conscious that I had been asinine in my
remarks and had made a deplorable impression. Upon the picture I cast
one more look before leaving. Those wonderful eyes of Frances were
directed towards the baby, of course, but for an instant I felt that she
was about to raise them and smile at me. At any rate she doesn't
consider me as a useless incumbrance of the earth because I can't play
golf or shoot birds. She is restful and gentle, whereas Miss Van Rossum
appears to me to have the soothing qualities of a healthy bass drum. But
then, I may be mistaken.