I HEAR RUMORS ABOUT GORDON
When we reached the top floor, Frances took the baby from me, while I
lit her gas-jet. She kissed Baby Paul effusively, and placed him on the
bed, after which she turned to me.
"It has done him ever so much good," she declared. "See how splendidly
he looks now. Tell me, why are you so kind to me?"
Women have been in the habit of propounding riddles ever since the world
began. This was a hard one, indeed, to answer, because I didn't know
myself. I could hardly tell her that it was because, at least
theoretically, every beautiful woman is loved by every man, nor could I
say that it was because she had inspired me with pity for her.
"We have had a few pleasant moments together," I replied, "and I am ever
so glad that Baby Paul has derived so much benefit. The kindness you
speak of is mere egotism. I have given myself the great pleasure of
your company. I do not suppose you realize how much that means to a chap
whose usual confidant is his writing machine, and whose society, except
at rare intervals, is made up of old books. My dear child, in this
transaction I am the favored one."
I was surprised to see a little shiver pass over her frame.
"Oh! Mr. Cole, sometimes I can't help feeling such wonder, such
amazement, when I think of how differently all these things might have
come to pass. I--I was going off to the hospital on the next day. I
should surely have met kindness and good enough care, but no one can
understand what it was to me to have Frieda come in, with her sweet
sympathetic face. It was as if some loving sister had dropped down to me
from Heaven, and--and she told me about you. I--I remember her very
words; she said that you were a man to be trusted, clean of soul as a
child, the only one she had ever met into whose keeping she would
entrust all that she holds most dear."
"Frieda is much given to exaggeration," I remarked, uneasily.
"She is not. Think of what my feelings would have been on the day when
they would have sent me out of the hospital, with not a friend in the
world, not a kindly heart to turn to!"
"My dear child," I said, "I believe that, if you have not been
altogether forgotten by the gods and goddesses, it was because you were
worthy of their kindest regard. I am confident that our little trip on
the water will make you sleep soundly, and I trust that you will have
pleasant dreams."
Yes! I occasionally call her my dear child, now. Neither my forty years
nor the thinness of my thatch really entitles me to consider myself
sufficiently venerable to have been her parent. But I am the least
formal of men and find it difficult to call her Madame or Mrs. Dupont.
If I did so now, I think that she would wonder if I was aggrieved
against her, for some such foolish reason as women are always keen on
inventing and annoying themselves with. Once in a while I even call her
Frances, but it is a habit I ought not to permit to grow upon me. There
are altogether too many O'Flaherty's in the world, masculine, feminine
and neuter.
She closed her door, after a friendly pressure of our hands, and I went
to my room to write. The ideas, however, came but slowly and, upon
arrival, were of the poorest. I, therefore, soon took my pipe, put my
feet on the window ledge and listened to a distant phonograph. At last,
came silence, a gradual extinguishing of lights in windows opposite, and
yawns from myself. I must repeat these trips, they make for sound
slumber.
On the next day I took it upon myself to go to the small house in
Brooklyn where Frances had formerly boarded. She was anxious to know if
any letters might have come for her that had not been forwarded. She had
wondered why her husband's parents had never written to announce the
dreadful news which, however, had been briefly confirmed on inquiry at
the Consulate. In the eastern section of our Greater City, which is
about as familiar to me as the wilds of Kamchatka, I promptly lost
myself. But kindly souls directed me, and I reached a dwelling that was
all boarded up and bore a sign indicating that the premises were to be
let. Thence, I went to a distant real estate office where the people
were unable to give me any indication or trace of the former tenants,
who had rented out rooms.
On my return I found Eulalie rummaging among my bureau drawers. She held
up two undergarments and bade me observe the perfection of her darning,
whereupon I assured her that she was a large, fat pearl without price.
"_Oui, Monsieur_," she assented, without understanding me in the least.
"Madame Dupont has gone to my cousin, Madame Smith. Her name was
Carpaux, like mine, but she married an American painter."
"An artist?" I inquired.
"_Oui, Monsieur._ He used to paint and decorate and put on wallpaper.
Then, he went away to Alaska after gold and never sent his address. So
Felicie has opened a cleaning and dyeing shop and is doing very well.
She has not heard from Smith for sixteen years, so that she thinks he
is, perhaps, lost. She has told me that she wanted an American person,
who could speak French, to wait on customers and keep the books and send
the bills and write names and addresses on the packages. She lives in
the back of the store. There is a big bed that would be very commodious
for putting the baby on. Madame Dupont has gone to see. Next week I go
to work there also and I will keep an eye on the baby when Madame is at
the counter."
I know the shop; it is on Sixth Avenue, not far away. In the window
always hang garments intended to show the perfection of dyeing and
cleaning reached by the establishment. There is a taxidermist on one
side of it and a cheap restaurant on the other. When weary of the odor
of benzine and soap suds, Frances will be able to stand on the door-sill
for a moment and inhale the effluvia of fried oysters or defunct
canaries.
Eulalie left my room, and I remained there, appalled. I wish I could
have found some better or more pleasant occupation for Frances.
When the latter returned, she looked cheerfully at me and announced that
she had accepted the position tendered to her.
"I shall be able to have Baby with me," she explained, "and it will keep
our bodies and souls together. I hope I shall suit Madame Smith. Do you
know anything about how to keep books?"
At once I took paper and pencil and launched into a long explanation,
undoubtedly bewildering her by the extent of my ignorance. Then I went
out and got her a little book on the subject, over which she toiled
fiercely for two days, after which she went to work, bearing little Paul
in her arms, and returned at suppertime, looking very tired.
"It is all right," she announced. "Felicie is a very nice, hard-working
woman, and tells me that Baby is a very fine child. I'll get along very
well."
When a woman is really brave and strong, she makes a man feel like
rather small potatoes. Her courage and determination were fine indeed,
and I must say my admiration for her grew apace. After the hopes she had
entertained; after the years spent in study, the fall must have seemed a
terrible one to her. Yet she accepted the pittance offered to her,
gratefully and with splendid pluck.
A week after this Gordon ran up to town in somebody's car, to make a
selection of cravats at the only shop in New York where, according to
him, a man could buy a decent necktie.
"Your limitations are frightful," I told him. "I know of a thousand."
"I know you do," he replied, "and most of your ties would make a dog
laugh. The rest of them would make him weep. Come along with me for a
bite of lunch at the Biltmore."
Over the Little Neck clam cocktails he announced some great triumphs he
had achieved at golf.
"And I can nearly hold my own with Miss Van Rossum at tennis," he said.
"She's a wonder at it. We got arrested last Friday on the Jericho
turnpike for going fifty miles an hour, but she jollied the policeman so
that he only swore to thirty, and we were let off with a reprimand. Good
thing she was at the wheel. If I'd been driving, I'd have been fined the
limit."
"You would have deserved it," I told him.
"I think the old judge knew her father; pretty big gun on the island,
you know. By the way, what's become of--of the Murillo young woman?"
I explained to him how she was occupied.
"The deuce! You could certainly have found something easier for her to
do, if you'd tried hard enough," he reproached me.
"I did all I could, and so did Frieda, but our hunt was in vain, on
account of the baby."
"Yes, there's that plagued infant," he said, reflectively.
"I'll be glad, if you can shed the light of your genius on the
situation, old man," I told him. "Among your enormous circle of
friends----"
"You go to the devil! I'm not going to have people saying that Gordon
McGrath is so interested in his model that he's trying to get rid of her
by placing her somewhere or other. No, old boy, if I should hear of
anything, I will let you know, but I'm not going to hunt for it. Do you
know, that woman's got a wonderful face. Did you ever see such a nose
and mouth? When she opens those big eyes of hers and looks at you and
speaks in that hoarse voice, it's quite pathetic. I--I think I'll take
her on again, for a short time."
"I'm afraid you won't," I replied. "I wouldn't advise her to lose steady
employment for the purpose of posing a couple of weeks for you."
"I suppose not. How do you like that Spanish omelette?"
Thus he cut short all reference to Frances, and, soon afterwards, we
parted on the Avenue.
* * * * *
During the next two months there was little worthy of being chronicled.
Frances, I think, grew a little thinner, but always asserted that she
was in the best of health. Baby Paul was rapidly accumulating weight,
and Frieda and I offered him a small baby carriage, which folded up most
cleverly and took little room in the shop or at home. It was on the
occasion of the completion of his fourth month that the presentation was
made by my dear old friend.
"There, my dear, is a gimcrack thing David insisted on buying. The man
at the store swore it couldn't possibly fold up suddenly with the baby
in it. And now what do you think of my having that old blue dress of
mine dyed black?"
The reply of Frances was a heartfelt one as to the perambulator, but
discouraging in regard to the garment.
"Oh, never mind," said Frieda. "I'll make paint rags out of it, then. I
only thought I'd help out the shop. Now let us get David to give us a
cup of tea."
We were talking cheerfully together, when Gordon dropped in from the
skies, most unexpectedly. We were glad to see him and, since four people
in my room crowded it considerably, my friend took a seat on the bed. I
had first met him in the Bohemia of the Latin Quarter, when his necktie
out-floated all others and any one prophesying that he would become the
portrayer in ordinary to the unsubmerged would have been met with
incredulous stares. At that time, for him, Beranger was the only poet
and Murger the only writer. And now his clothes are built, while his
shoes are designed. Yet, in my top floor, he showed some of the old
Adam, joining gladly in our orgy of tea and wafers and utterly
forgetting all pose. I noticed that he looked a great deal at Frances,
but it was no impertinent stare. She was quite unconscious of his
scrutiny or, if at all aware of it, probably deemed it a continuation of
his method of artistic study. She had become accustomed to it in his
studio.
"David tells me that you are lost to me as a model," he said, suddenly,
with a sort of eagerness that showed a trace of disappointment.
"I must now plod along without interruption," she answered.
"I had thought of making another study. The finished thing is all right,
but one doesn't come across a face like yours very often."
"No," put in Frieda, "and it's a good thing for you that you've had the
exclusive painting of it. If she had continued as a model and been done
by every Tom, Dick and Harry----"
"True. Since I can't paint her again, I'm glad no one else will. No,
thank you, I won't have any more tea. How's the new picture, Frieda?"
For a few minutes the two monopolized the conversation. To some extent
they spoke a jargon of their own, to which Frances and I listened with
little understanding.
"And what do you think of it, Dave?" he asked, turning abruptly to me.
"It is a beautiful thing," I answered. "If I had Frieda's imagination
and her sense of beauty, I should be the great, undiscovered American
novelist. She makes one believe that the world is all roses and violets
and heliotropes, touched by sunshine and kissed by soft breezes. It is
tenanted only by sprites and godlings, according to her magic brush."
"The world is no such thing," he retorted, sharply.
"The world is what one's imagination, one's sentiment and one's
conscience makes it," I asserted, "at least during some precious moments
of every lifetime."
"Oh! I know. You can sit at that old machine of yours and throw your
head back and see more upon your ceiling than the cracked plaster, and
Frieda does the same thing. Now my way is to take real flesh and blood,
yes, and dead lobsters and codfish and dowagers and paint them in the
best light I can get on them, but it's the light I really see."
"It is nothing of the kind," I emphatically disclaimed. "It is the light
your temperament sees, and your rendering of it is not much closer to
truth than Caruso's 'Celeste Aida' can be to an ordinary lover's appeal.
There is no such thing as realism in painting, while, in literature, it
has chiefly produced monsters."
"Isn't he a dear old donkey?" Gordon appealed to the two women.
"One of those animals once spoke the truth to a minor prophet," remarked
Frances, quietly.
"You are quoting the only recorded exception," he laughed, "but the hit
was a good one. Yet Dave is nothing but an incurable optimist and a
chronic wearer of pink glasses."
"That, I think, is what makes him so loveable," put in Frieda, whereat
Frances smiled at her, and I might have blushed had I not long ago lost
the habit.
Gordon rose, with the suddenness which characterizes his movements, and
declared he must run away at once. He shook hands all around, hastily,
and declined my offer to see him down to the door.
"In Italy," said Frieda, "I have eaten a sauce made with vinegar and
sweet things. They call it _agrodolce_, I believe, and the Germans make
a soup with beer. Neither of them appeal to me at all. Gordon is a
wonderful painter, but he's always trying to mix up art with iconoclasm.
It can't spoil his pictures, I'm sure, but it may--what was the
expression Kid Sullivan was fond of using? Oh yes, some day it may hand
out a jolt to him. He has a perfectly artistic temperament and the
greatest talent, but he stirs up with them a dreadful mess of cynicism
and cold-blooded calculation. My dear Dave, let you and I stick to our
soft colors and minor tones. If either of us ever abandoned them, we
should be able to see nothing but dull grays."
"We understand our limitations, Frieda," I told her, "and there is
nothing that fits one better to enjoy life. Gordon says that it is all
foolishness, and can't understand that a fellow should walk along a mile
of commonplace hedge and stop because he has found a wild rose. The
latter, with due respect to him, is as big a truth as the privet, and a
pleasanter one."
Presently, Frieda, after consuming a third cup of tea and finishing the
crackers, said that she must be going home. I insisted on accompanying
her down the stairs and naturally followed her to her domicile, where
she informed me that she was going to wash her hair and forbade my
entering.
On the other side of the street, on my return, I saw Frances going into
Dr. Porter's office. He has prevailed upon her to let him do something
to her throat, and she goes in once or twice a week. He has begged her
to come as a special and particular favor to him. I'm sure I don't know
what he expects to accomplish, for he is somewhat reticent in the
matter. Perhaps he may have thought it well to arouse a little hope in
her. I am afraid that in her life she sees a good deal of the dull
grays Frieda was speaking of.
* * * * *
And now a few more weeks have gone by and the middle of winter has come.
On Sunday afternoons we always have tea in my room, except when we go
through the same function at Frieda's. To my surprise, Gordon's visits
have been repeated a number of times. Frieda and he abuse one another
most unmercifully, like the very best of friends, and he persistently
keeps on observing Frances. It looks as if she exerted some strange
fascination upon him, of which she is perfectly ignorant. He never goes
beyond the bounds of the most simple friendliness, but, sometimes, she
sharply resents some cynical remark of his, without seeming to disturb
him in the least.
Meanwhile, my friend Willoughby Jones has told me that Gordon is doing
Mrs. Van Rossum's portrait, while the younger lady roams about the
studio and eats chocolates, talking about carburetors and tarpon-tackle.
The family will leave soon in search of the balmy zephyrs of Florida. My
friend's chatter also included the information that Gordon might soon
take a run down there.
"They say he's becoming a captive of her bow and spear," he told me. "It
looks as if he were trying to join the ranks of the Four Hundred. It has
been said that the Van Rossums, or at least Miss Sophia, show some
willingness to adopt him. Wouldn't it be funny?"
Funny! It would be tragic! I can't for an instant reconcile myself to
such an idea, for I hardly think that Miss Van Rossum is the sort of
young woman who would inspire Gordon with a consuming love. Come to
think of it, I have never known him to be in love with any one, so how
can I know the kind of fair charmer that will produce in him what the
French call the lightning stroke? And then, Willoughby Jones is known as
an inveterate and notorious gossip. The whole matter, if not an utter
invention, is simply based on Gordon's policy to cultivate the people
who can afford to pay five thousand for a full-length portrait. I wonder
whether it would not be well for me to give him a word of warning? No!
If I did such a thing, he would certainly tell me not to be a donkey,
and I should deserve the rebuke.