It was slowly becoming evident to Neville that Valerie's was the
stronger character--not through any genius for tenacity nor on account
of any domineering instinct--but because, mistaken or otherwise in her
ethical reasoning, she was consistent, true to her belief, and had the
courage to live up to it. And this made her convictions almost
unassailable.
Slavery to established custom of any kind she smilingly disdained,
refusing to submit to restrictions which centuries of social usage had
established, when such social restrictions and limitations hampered or
annoyed her.
Made conscious by the very conventions designed to safeguard
unconsciousness; made wise by the unwisdom of a civilisation which
required ignorance of innocence, she had as yet lost none of her
sweetness and confidence in herself and in a world which she considered
a friendly one at best and, at worst, more silly than vicious.
Her life, the experience of a lonely girlhood in the world, wide and
varied reading, unwise and otherwise, and an intelligence which needed
only experience and training, had hastened to a premature maturity her
impatience with the faults of civilisation. And in the honest revolt of
youth, she forgot that what she rejected was, after all, civilisation
itself, and that as yet there had been offered no acceptable substitute
for its faulty codification.
To do one's best was to be fearlessly true to one's convictions and let
God judge; that was her only creed. And from her point of view humanity
needed no other.
So she went about the pleasure and happiness of living with a light
heart and a healthy interest, not doubting that all was right between
her and the world, and that the status quo must endure.
And endless misunderstandings ensued between her and the man she loved.
She was a very busy business girl and he objected. She went about to
theatres and parties and dinners and concerts with other men; and
Neville didn't like it. Penrhyn Cardemon met her at a theatrical supper
and asked her to be one of his guests on his big yacht, the _Mohave_,
fitted out for the Azores. There were twenty in the party, and she would
have gone had not Neville objected angrily.
It was not his objection but his irritation that confused her. She could
discover no reason for it.
"It can't be that you don't trust me," she said to him, "so it must be
that you're lonely without me, even when you go to spend two weeks with
your parents. I don't mind not going if you don't wish me to, Louis, and
I'll stay here in town while you visit your father and mother, but it
seems a little bit odd of you not to let me go when I can be of no
earthly use to you."
Her gentleness with him, and her sweet way of reasoning made him
ashamed.
"It's the crowd that's going, Valerie--Cardemon, Querida, Marianne
Valdez--where did you meet her, anyway?"
"In her dressing room at the Opera. She's perfectly sweet. Isn't she all
right?"
"She's Cardemon's mistress," he said, bluntly.
A painful colour flushed her face and neck; and at the same instant he
realised what he had said.
Neither spoke for a while; he went on with his painting; she, standing
once more for the full-length portrait, resumed her pose in silence.
After a while she heard his brushes clatter to the floor, saw him leave
his easel, was aware that he was coming toward her. And the next moment
he had dropped at her feet, kneeling there, one arm tightening around
her knees, his head pressed close.
Listlessly she looked down at him, dropped one slim hand on his
shoulder, considering him.
"The curious part of it is," she said, "that all the scorn in your voice
was for Marianne Valdez and none for Penrhyn Cardemon."
He said nothing.
"Such a queer, topsy-turvy world," she sighed, letting her hand wander
from his shoulder to his thick, short hair. She caressed his forehead
thoughtfully.
"I suppose some man will say that of me some day.... But that is a
little matter--compared to making life happy for you.... To be your
mistress could never make me unhappy."
"To be your husband--and to put an end to all these damnable doubts and
misgivings and cross-purposes would make me happy all my life!" he burst
out with a violence that startled her.
"Hush, Louis. We must not begin that hopeless argument again."
"Valerie! Valerie! You are breaking my heart!"
"Hush, dear. You know I am not."
She looked down at him; her lip was trembling.
Suddenly she slid down to the floor and knelt there confronting him,
her arms around him.
"Dearer than all the world and heaven!--do you think that I am breaking
your heart? You _know_ I am not. You know what I am doing for your sake,
for your family's sake, for my own. I am only giving you a love that can
cause them no pain, bring no regret to you. Take it, then, and kiss me."
But the days were full of little scenes like this--of earnest, fiery
discussions, of passionate arguments, of flashes of temper ending in
tears and heavenly reconciliation.
He had gone for two weeks to visit his father and mother at their summer
home near Portsmouth, and before he went he took her in his arms and
told her how ashamed he was of his bad temper at the idea of her going
on the _Mohave_, and said that she might go; that he did trust her
anywhere, and that he was trying to learn to concede to her the same
liberty of action and of choice that any man enjoyed.
But she convinced him very sweetly that she really had no desire to go,
and sent him off to Spindrift House happy, and madly in love; which
resulted in two letters a day from him, and in her passing long evenings
in confidential duets with Rita Tevis.
Rita had taken the bedroom next to Valerie's, and together they had
added the luxury of a tiny living room to the suite.
It was the first time that either had ever had any place in which to
receive anybody; and now, delighted to be able to ask people, they let
it be known that their friends could have tea with them.
Ogilvy and Annan had promptly availed themselves.
"This is exceedingly grand," said Ogilvy, examining everything in a tour
around the pretty little sitting room. "We can have all kinds of a rough
house now." And he got down on his hands and knees in the middle of the
rug and very gravely turned a somersault.
"Sam! Behave! Or I'll set my parrot on you!" exclaimed Valerie.
Ogilvy sat up and inspected the parrot.
"You know," he said, "I believe I've seen that parrot somewhere."
"Impossible, my dear friend--unless you've been in my bedroom."
Ogilvy got up, dusted his trowsers, and walked over to the parrot.
"Well it looks like a bird I used to know--I--it certainly resembles--"
He hesitated, then addressing the bird:
"Hello, Leparello--you old scoundrel!" he said, cautiously.
"Forget it!" muttered the bird, cocking his head and lifting first one
slate-coloured claw from his perch, then the other;--"forget it! Help!
Oh, very well. God bless the ladies!"
"_Where_ on earth did you ever before see my parrot?" asked Valerie,
astonished. Ogilvy appeared to be a little out of countenance, too.
"Oh, I really don't remember exactly where I did see him," he tried to
explain; and nobody believed him.
"Sam! Answer me!"
"Well, where did _you_ get him?"
"José Querida gave Leparello to me."
Annan and Ogilvy exchanged the briefest glance--a perfectly blank
glance.
"It probably isn't the same bird," said Ogilvy, carelessly. "There are
plenty of parrots that talk--plenty of 'em named Leparello, probably."
"Sam, how _can_ you be so untruthful! Rita, hold him tightly while I
pull his ears!"
It was a form of admonition peculiarly distasteful to Ogilvy, and he
made a vain effort to escape.
"Now, Sam, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth! Quick,
or I'll tweak!"
"All right, then," he said, maliciously, "Querida's got relatives in
Oporto who send him these kind of parrots occasionally. He names 'em all
Leparello, teaches 'em all the same jargon, and--gives 'em to girls!"
"How funny," said Valerie. She looked at Sam, aware of something else in
his grin, and gave an uncertain little laugh.
He sat down, rubbing his ear-lobes, the malicious grin still lingering
on his countenance. What he had not told her was that Querida's
volcanically irregular affairs of the heart always ended with the gift
of an Oporto parrot. Marianne Valdez owned one. So did Mazie Gray.
His cynical gaze rested on Valerie reflectively. He had heard plenty of
rumours and whispers concerning her; and never believed any of them. He
could not believe now that the gift of this crimson, green and sky-blue
creature signified anything. Yet Querida had known her as long as
anybody except Neville.
"When did he give you this parrot?" he asked, carelessly.
"Oh, one day just before I was going to Atlantic City. He was coming
down, too, to stay a fortnight while I was there, and come back with me;
and he said that He had intended to give the parrot to me after our
return, but that he might as well give it to me before I went."
"I see," said Ogilvy, thoughtfully. A few moments later, as he and Annan
were leaving the house, he said:
"It looks to me as though our friend, José, had taken too much for
granted."
"It looks like it," nodded Annan, smiling unpleasantly.
"Too sure of conquest," added Ogilvy. "Got the frozen mitt, didn't he?"
"_And_ the Grand Cordon of the double cross."
"_And_ the hot end of the poker; yes?"
"Sure; and it's still sizzling." Ogilvy cast a gleeful glance back at
the house:
"Fine little girl. All white. Yes? No?"
"All white," nodded Annan.... "And Neville isn't that kind of a man,
anyway."
Ogilvy said: "So _you_ think so, too?"
"Oh, yes. He's crazy about her, and she isn't taking Sundays out if it's
his day in.... Only, what's the use?"
"No use.... I guess Kelly Neville has seen as many artists who've
married their models as we have. Besides, his people are frightful
snobs."
Annan, walking along briskly, swung his stick vigorously:
"She's a sweet little thing," he said.
"I know it. It's going to be hard for her. She can't stand for a
mutt--and it's the only sort that will marry her.... I don't
know--she's a healthy kind of girl--but God help her if she ever really
falls in love with one of our sort."
"I think she's done it," said Annan.
"Kelly!"
"Doesn't it look like it?"
"Oh, it will wear off without any harm to either of them. That little
girl is smart, all right; she'll never waste an evening screaming for
the moon. And Kelly Neville is--is Kelly Neville--a dear fellow, so
utterly absorbed in the career of a brilliant and intelligent young
artist named Louis Neville, that if the entire earth blew up he'd begin
a new canvas the week after.... Not that I think him cold-hearted--no,
not even selfish as that little bounder Allaire says--but he's a man who
has never yet had time to spare."
"They're the most hopeless," observed Annan--"the men who haven't time
to spare. Because it takes only a moment to say, 'Hello, old man! How in
hell are you?' It takes only a moment to put yourself, mentally, in some
less lucky man's shoes; and be friendly and sorry and interested."
"He's a pretty decent sort," murmured Ogilvy. "Anyway, that Valerie
child is safe enough in temporarily adoring Kelly Neville."
* * * * *
The "Valerie child," in a loose, rose-silk peignoir, cross-legged on her
bed, was sewing industriously on her week's mending. Rita, in
dishabille, lay across the foot of the bed nibbling bonbons and reading
the evening paper.
They had dined in their living room, a chafing dish aiding. Afterward
Valerie went over her weekly accounts and had now taken up her regular
mending; and there she sat, sewing away, and singing in her clear, young
voice, the old madrigal:
"_Let us dry the starting tear
For the hours are surely fleeting
And the sad sundown is near.
All must sip the cup of sorrow,
I to-day, and thou to-morrow!
This the end of every song,
Ding-dong! Ding-dong!
Yet until the shadows fall
Over one and over all,
Sing a merry madrigal!_"
Rita, nibbling a chocolate, glanced up:
"That's a gay little creed," she observed.
"Of course. It's the _only_ creed."
Rita shrugged and Valerie went on blithely singing and sewing.
"How long has that young man of yours been away?" inquired Rita, looking
up again.
"Thirteen days."
"Oh. Are you sure it isn't fourteen?"
"Perfectly." Then the sarcasm struck her, and she looked around at Rita
and laughed:
"Of course I count the days," she said, conscious of the soft colour
mounting to her cheeks.
Rita sat up and, tucking a pillow under her shoulders, leaned back
against the foot-board of the bed, kicking the newspaper to the floor.
"Do you know," she said, "that you have come pretty close to falling in
love with Kelly Neville?"
Valerie's lips trembled on the edge of a smile as she bent lower over
her sewing, but she made no reply.
"I should say," continued Rita, "that it was about time for you to pick
up your skirts and run for it."
Still Valerie sewed on in silence.
"Valerie!"
"What?"
"For goodness' sake, say something!"
"What do you want me to say, dear?" asked the girl, laughing.
"That you are _not_ in danger of making a silly ninny of yourself over
Kelly Neville."
"Oh, I'll say that very cheerfully--"
"Valerie!"
The girl looked at her, calmly amused. Then she said:
"I might as well tell you. I am head over heels in love with him. You
knew it, anyway, Rita. You've known it--oh, I don't know how long--but
you've known it. Haven't you?"
Rita thought a moment: "Yes, I have known it.... What are you going to
do?"
"Do?"
"Yes; what do you intend to do about this matter?"
"Love him," said Valerie. "What else can I do?"
"You could try not to."
"I don't want to."
"You had better."
"Why?"
"Because," said Rita, deliberately, "if you really love him you'll
either become his wife or his mistress; and it's a pretty rotten choice
either way."
Valerie blushed scarlet;
"Rotten--choice?"
"Certainly. You know perfectly well what your position would be when his
family and his friends learned that he'd married his model. No girl of
any spirit would endure it--no matter how affable his friends might
perhaps pretend to be. No girl of any sense would ever put herself in
such a false position.... I tell you, Valerie, it's only the exceptional
man who'll stand by you. No doubt Louis Neville would. But it would cost
him every friend he has--and probably the respect of his parents. And
that means misery for you both--because he couldn't conceal from you
what marrying you was costing him--"
[Illustration: "Valerie's lips trembled on the edge of a smile as she
bent lower over her sewing."]
"Rita!"
"Yes."
"There is no use telling me all this. I know it. He knows I know it. I
am not going to marry him."
After a silence Rita said, slowly: "Did he ask you to?"
Valerie looked down, passed her needle through the hem once, twice.
"Yes," she said, softly, "he asked me."
"And--you refused?"
"Yes."
Rita said: "I like Kelly Neville ... and I love you better, dear. But
it's not best for you to marry him.... Life isn't a very sentimental
affair--not nearly as silly a matter as poets and painters and dramas
and novels pretend it is. Love really plays a very minor part in life,
Don't you know it?"
"Yes. I lived twenty years without it," said Valerie, demurely, yet in
her smile Rita divined the hidden tragedy. And she leaned forward and
kissed her impulsively.
"Let's swear celibacy," she said, "and live out our lives together in
single blessedness! Will you? We can have a perfectly good time until
the undertaker knocks."
"I hope he won't knock for a long while," said Valerie, with a slight
shiver. "There's so much I want to see first."
"You shall. We'll see everything together. We'll work hard, live
frugally if you say so, cut out all frills and nonsense, and save and
save until we have enough to retire on respectably. And then, like two
nice old ladies, we'll start out to see the world--"
"Oh, Rita! I don't want to see it when I'm too old!"
"You'll enjoy it more--"
"Rita! How ridiculous! You've seen more of the world than I have,
anyway. It's all very well for you to say wait till I'm an old maid; but
you've been to Paris--haven't you?"
"Yes," said Rita. There was a slight colour in her face.
"Well, then! Why must I wait until I'm a dowdy old frump before I go?
Why should you and I not be as happy as we can afford to be while we're
young and attractive and unspoiled?"
"I want you to be as happy as you can afford to be, Valerie.... But you
can't afford to fall in love."
"Why?"
"Because it will make you miserable."
"But it doesn't."
"It will if it is love."
"It is, Rita," said the girl, smiling out of her dark eyes--deep brown
wells of truth that the other gazed into and saw a young soul there,
fearless and doomed.
"Valerie," she said, shivering, "you won't do--_that_--will you?"
"Dear, I cannot marry him, and I love him. What else am I to do?"
"Well, then--then you'd better marry him!" stammered Rita, frightened.
"It's better for you! It's better--"
"For _me_? Yes, but how about him?"
"What do you care about him!" burst out Rita, almost incoherent in her
fright and anger. "He's a man; he can take care of himself. Don't think
of him. It isn't your business to consider him. If he wants to marry you
it's his concern after all. Let him do it! Marry him and let him fight
it out with his friends! After all what does a man give a girl that
compares with what she gives him? Men--men--" she stammered--"they're
all alike in the depths of their own hearts. We are incidents to
them--no matter how they say they love us. They _can't_ love as we do.
They're not made for it! We are part of the game to them; they are the
whole game to us; we are, at best, an important episode in their
careers; they are our whole careers. Oh, Valerie! Valerie! listen to me,
child! That man could go on living and painting and eating and drinking
and sleeping and getting up to dress and going to bed to sleep, if you
lay dead in your grave. But if you loved him, and were his wife--or God
forgive me!--his mistress, the day he died _you_ would die, though your
body might live on. I know--_I_ know, Valerie. Death--whether it be his
body or his love, ends all for the woman who really loves him. Woman's
loss is eternal. But man's loss is only temporary--he is made that way,
fashioned so. Now I tell you the exchange is not fair--it has never been
fair--never will be, never can be. And I warn you not to give this man
the freshness of your youth, the happy years of your life, your
innocence, the devotion which he will transmute into passion with his
accursed magic! I warn you not to forsake the tranquillity of ignorance,
the blessed immunity from that devil's paradise that you are already
gazing into--"
"Rita! Rita! What are you saying?"
"I scarcely know, child. I am trying to save you from lifelong
unhappiness--trying to tell you that--that men are not worth it--"
"How do you know?"
There was a silence, then Rita, very pale and quiet, leaned forward,
resting her elbows on her knees and framing her face with her hands.
"I had my lesson," she said.
"You! Oh, my darling--forgive me! I did not know--"
Rita suffered herself to be drawn into the younger girl's impulsive
embrace; they both cried a little, arms around each other, faltering out
question and answer in unsteady whispers:
"Were you married, dearest?"
"No."
"Oh--I am _so_ sorry, dear--"
"So am I.... Do you blame me for thinking about men as I do think?"
"Didn't you love--him?"
"I thought I did.... I was too young to know.... It doesn't matter
now--"
"No, no, of course not. You made a ghastly mistake, but it's no more
shame to you than it is to him. Besides, you thought you loved him."
"He could have made me. I was young enough.... But he let me see how
absolutely wicked he was.... And then it was too late to ever love him."
"O Rita, Rita!--then you haven't ever even had the happiness of loving?
Have you?"
Rita did not answer.
"Have you, darling?"
Then Rita broke down and laid her head on Valerie's knees, crying as
though her heart would break.
"That's the terrible part of it," she sobbed--"I really do love a man,
now.... Not that _first_ one ... and there's nothing to do about
it--nothing, Valerie, nothing--because even if he asked me to marry him
I can't, now--"
"Because you--"
"Yes."
"And if you had not--"
"God knows what I would do," sobbed Rita, "I love him so, Valerie--I
love him so!"
The younger girl looked down at the blond head lying on her
knees--looked at the pretty tear-stained face gleaming through the
fingers--looked and wondered over the philosophy broken down beside the
bowed head and breaking heart.
Terrible her plight; with or without benefit of clergy she dared not
give herself. Love was no happiness to her, no confidence, no
sacrifice--only a dreadful mockery--a thing that fettered, paralysed,
terrified.
"Does he love you?" whispered Valerie.
"No--I think not."
"If he did he would forgive."
"Do you think so?"
"Of course. Love pardons everything," said the girl in surprise.
"Yes. But never forgets."
* * * * *
That was the first confidence that ever had passed between Valerie West
and Rita Tevis. And after it, Rita, apparently forgetting her own
philosophical collapse, never ceased to urge upon Valerie the wisdom,
the absolute necessity of self-preservation in considering her future
relations with Louis Neville. But, like Neville's logic, Rita's failed
before the innocent simplicity of the creed which Valerie had embraced.
Valerie was willing that their relations should remain indefinitely as
they were if the little gods of convention were to be considered; she
had the courage to sever all relations with the man she loved if anybody
could convince her that it was better for Neville. Marry him she would
not, because she believed it meant inevitable unhappiness for him. But
she was not afraid to lay her ringless hands in his for ever.
Querida called on them and was very agreeable and lively and
fascinating; and when he went away Valerie asked him to come again. He
did; and again after that. She and Rita dined with him once or twice;
and things gradually slipped back to their old footing; and Querida
remained on his best behaviour.
Neville had prolonged the visit to the parental roof. He did not explain
to her why, but the reason was that he had made up his mind to tell his
parents that he wished to marry and to find out once and for all what
their attitudes would be toward such a girl as Valerie West. But he had
not yet found courage to do it, and he was lingering on, trying to find
it and the proper moment to employ it.
His father was a gentleman so utterly devoid of imagination that he had
never even ventured into business, but had been emotionlessly content to
marry and live upon an income sufficient to maintain the material and
intellectual traditions of the house of Neville.
Tall, transparently pale, negative in character, he had made it a life
object to get through life without increasing the number of his
acquaintances--legacies in the second generation left him by his father,
whose father before him had left the grandfathers of these friends as
legacies to his son.
[Illustration: "She and Rita dined with him once or twice."]
It was a pallid and limited society that Henry Neville and his wife
frequented--a coterie of elderly, intellectual people, and their
prematurely dried-out offspring. And intellectual in-breeding was
thinning it to attenuation--to a bloodless meagreness in which they, who
composed it, conceived a mournful pride.
Old New Yorkers all, knowing no other city, no other bourne north of
Tenth Street or west of Chelsea--silent, serene, drab-toned people,
whose drawing-rooms were musty with what had been fragrance once, whose
science, religion, interests, desires were the beliefs, interests and
emotions of a century ago, their colourless existence and passive
snobbishness affronted nobody who did not come seeking affront.
To them Theodore Thomas had been the last conductor; his orchestra the
last musical expression fit for a cultivated society; the Academy of
Music remained their last symphonic temple, Wallack's the last refuge of
a drama now dead for ever.
Delmonico's had been their northern limit, Stuyvesant Square their
eastern, old Trinity their southern, and their western, Chelsea. Outside
there was nothing. The blatancy and gilt of the million-voiced
metropolis fell on closed eyes, and on ears attuned only to the murmurs
of the past. They lived in their ancient houses and went abroad and
summered in some simple old-time hamlet hallowed by the headstones of
their grandsires, and existed as meaninglessly and blamelessly as the
old catalpa trees spreading above their dooryards.
And into this narrow circle Louis Neville and his sister Lily had been
born.
It had been a shock to her parents when Lily married Gordon Collis, a
mining engineer from Denver. She came to see them with her husband every
year; Collis loved her enough to endure it.
As for Louis' career, his achievements, his work, they regarded it
without approval. Their last great painters had been Bierstadt and Hart,
their last great sculptor, Powers. Blankly they gazed upon the
splendours of the mural symphonies achieved by the son and heir of all
the Nevilles; they could not comprehend the art of the Uitlanders; their
comment was silence and dignity.
To them all had become only shadowy tradition; even affection and human
emotion, and the relationship of kin to kin, of friend to friend, had
become only part of a negative existence which conformed to precedent,
temporal and spiritual, as written in the archives of a worn-out
civilisation.
So, under the circumstances, it was scarcely to be wondered that Neville
hesitated to introduce the subject of Valerie West as he sat in the
parlour at Spindrift House with his father and mother, reading the
_Tribune_ or the _Evening Post_ or poring over some ancient tome of
travels, or looking out across the cliffs at an icy sea splintering and
glittering against a coast of frozen adamant.
At length he could remain no longer; commissions awaited him in town;
hunger for Valerie gnawed ceaselessly, unsubdued by his letters or by
hers to him.
"Mother," he said, the evening before his departure, "would it surprise
you very much if I told you that I wished to marry?"
"No," she said, tranquilly; "you mean Stephanie Swift, I suppose."
[Illustration: "Tall, transparently pale, negative in character."]
His father glanced up over his spectacles, and he hesitated; then, as
his father resumed his reading:
"I don't mean Stephanie, mother."
His father laid aside his book and removed, the thin gold-rimmed
spectacles.
"I understand from Lily that we are to be prepared to receive Stephanie
Swift as your affianced wife," he said. "I shall be gratified. Stephen
Swift was my oldest friend."
"Lily was mistaken, father. Stephanie and I are merely very good
friends. I have no idea of asking her to marry me."
"I had been given to understand otherwise, Louis. I am disappointed."
Louis Neville looked out of the window, considering, yet conscious of
the hopelessness of it all.
"Who is this girl, Louis?" asked his mother, pulling the white-and-lilac
wool shawl closer around her thin shoulders.
"Her name is Valerie West."
"One of the Wests of West Eighth Street?" demanded his father.
The humour of it all twitched for a moment at his son's grimly set jaws,
then a slight flush mantled his face:
"No, father."
"Do you mean the Chelsea Wests, Louis?"
"No."
"Then we--don't know them," concluded his father with a shrug of his
shoulders, which dismissed many, many things from any possibility of
further discussion. But his mother's face grew troubled.
"Who is this Miss West?" she asked in a colourless voice.
"She is a very good, very noble, very cultivated, very beautiful young
girl--an orphan--who is supporting herself by her own endeavours."
"What!" said his father, astonished.
"Mother, I know how it sounds to you, but you and father have only to
meet her to recognise in her every quality that you could possibly wish
for in my wife."
"_Who_ is she, Louis!" demanded his father, casting aside the evening
newspaper and folding up his spectacles.
"I've told you, father."
"I beg to differ with you. Who is this girl? In what description of
business is she actually engaged?"
The young fellow's face grew red:
"She _was_ engaged in--the drama."
"What!"
"She was an actress," he said, realising now the utter absurdity of any
hope from the beginning, yet now committed and determined to see it
through to the bitter end.
"An actress! Louis!" faltered his mother.
There was a silence, cut like a knife by the thin edge of his father's
voice:
"If she _was_ an actress, what is she now?"
"She has helped me with my painting."
"Helped you? How?"
"By--posing."
"Do you desire me to understand that the girl is an artist's model!"
"Yes."
His father stared at him a moment, then:
"And is this the woman you propose to have your mother meet?"
"Father," he said, hopelessly, "there is no use in my saying anything
more. Miss West is a sweet, good, generous young girl, fully my peer in
education, my superior in many things.... You and mother can never
believe that the ideas, standards--even the ideals of civilisation
change--have changed since your youth--are changing every hour. In your
youth the word actress had a dubious significance; to-day it signifies
only what the character of her who wears the title signifies. In your
youth it was immodest, unmaidenly, reprehensible, for a woman to be
anything except timid, easily abashed, ignorant of vital truths, and
submissive to every social convention; to-day women are neither ignorant
nor timid; they are innocent because they choose to be; they are
fearless, intelligent, ambitious, and self-reliant--and lose nothing in
feminine charm by daring to be themselves instead of admitting their
fitness only for the seraglio of some Occidental monogamist--"
"Louis! Your mother is present!"
"Good heavens, father, I know it! Isn't it possible even for a man's own
mother to hear a little truth once in a while--"
His father rose in pallid wrath:
"Be silent!" he said, unsteadily; "the subject is definitely ended."
* * * * *
It was ended. His father gave him a thin, chilly hand at parting. But
his mother met him at the outer door and laid her trembling lips to his
forehead.
"You won't bring this shame on us, Louis, I know. Nor on yourself, nor
on the name you bear.... It is an honourable name in the land, Louis....
I pray God to bless you and counsel you, my son--" She turned away,
adding in a whisper--"and--and comfort you."
And so he went away from Spindrift House through a snow-storm, and
arrived in New York late that evening; but not too late to call Valerie
on the telephone and hear again the dear voice with its happy little cry
of greeting--and the promise of to-morrow's meeting before the day of
duty should begin.
* * * * *
Love grew as the winter sped glittering toward the far primrose dawn of
spring; work filled their days; evening brought the happiness of a
reunion eternally charming in its surprises, its endless novelty. New,
forever new, love seemed; and youth, too, seemed immortal.
On various occasions when Valerie chanced to be at his studio, pouring
tea for him, friends of his sister came unannounced--agreeable women
more or less fashionable, who pleaded his sister's sanction of an
unceremonious call to see the great painted frieze before it was sent to
the Court House.
He was perfectly nice to them; and Valerie was perfectly at ease; and it
was very plain that these people were interested and charmed with this
lovely Miss West, whom they found pouring tea in the studio of an artist
already celebrated; and every one of them expressed themselves and their
curiosity to his sister, Mrs. Collis, who, never having heard of Valerie
West, prudently conveyed the contrary in smiling but silent
acquiescence, and finally wrote to her brother and told him what was
being said.
Before he determined to reply, another friend--or rather acquaintance of
the Collis family--came in to see the picture--the slim and pretty
Countess d'Enver. And went quite mad over Valerie--so much so that she
remained for an hour talking to her, almost oblivious of Neville and
his picture and of Ogilvy and Annan, who consumed time and cocktails in
the modest background.
When she finally went away, and Neville had returned from putting her
into her over-elaborate carriage, Ogilvy said:
"Gee, Valerie, you sure did make a hit with the lady. What was she
trying to make you do?"
"She asked me to come to a reception of the Five-Minute Club with
Louis," said Valerie, laughing. "What _is_ the Five-Minute Club, Louis?"
"Oh, it's a semi-fashionable, semi-artistic affair--one of the
incarnations of the latest group of revolting painters and sculptors and
literary people, diluted with a little society and a good deal of
near-society."
Later, as they were dining together at Delmonico's, he said:
"Would you care to go, Valerie?"
"Yes--if you think it best for us to accept such invitations together."
"Why not?"
"I don't know.... Considering what we are to become to each other--I
thought--perhaps the prejudices of your friends--"
He turned a dull red, said nothing for a moment, then, looking up at
her, suddenly laid his hand over hers where it rested on the table's
edge.
"The world must take us as it finds us," he said.
"I know; but is it quite fair to seek it?"
"You adorable girl! Didn't the Countess seek us--or rather you?--and
torment you until you promised to go to the up-to-date doings of her
bally club! It's across to her, now. And as half of society has
exchanged husbands and half of the remainder doesn't bother to, I don't
think a girl like you and a man like myself are likely to meet very many
people as innately decent as ourselves."
* * * * *
A reception at the Five-Minute Club was anything but an ordinary affair.
It was the ultra-modern school of positivists where realism was on the
cards and romance in the discards; where muscle, biceps, and
thumb-punching replaced technical mastery and delicate skill; where
inspiration was physical, not intellectual; where writers called a spade
a spade, and painters painted all sorts of similar bucolic instruments
with candour and an inadequate knowledge of their art; where composers
thumped their pianos the harder, the less their raucous inspiration
responded, or maundered incapably into interminable incoherency, hunting
for themes in grays and mauves and reds and yellows, determined to find
in music what does not belong there and never did.
In spite of its apparent vigour and uncompromising modernity, one
suspected a sub-stratum of weakness and a perversity slightly vicious.
Colour blindness might account for some of the canvases, strabismus for
some of the draughtmanship; but not for all. There was an ugly
deliberation in the glorification of the raw, the uncouth; there was a
callous hardness in the deadly elaboration of ugliness for its own sake.
And transcendentalism looked on in approval.
A near-sighted study of various masters, brilliant, morbid, or
essentially rotten, was the basis of this cult--not originality. Its
devotees were the devotees of Richard Strauss, of Huysmans, of Manet, of
Degas, Rops, Louis Le Grand, Forain, Monticelli; its painters painted
nakedness in footlight effects with blobs for faces and blue shadows
where they were needed to conceal the defects of impudent drawing; its
composers maundered with both ears spread wide for stray echoes of
Salome; its sculptors, stupefied by Rodin, achieved sections of human
anatomy protruding from lumps of clay and marble; its dramatists,
drugged by Mallarmé and Maeterlinck, dabbled in dullness, platitude and
mediocre psychology; its writers wrote as bloodily, as squalidly, and as
immodestly as they dared; its poets blubbered with Verlaine, spat with
Aristide Bruant, or leered with the alcoholic muses of the Dead Rat.
They were all young, all in deadly earnest, all imperfectly educated,
all hard workers, brave workers, blind, incapable workers sweating and
twisting and hammering in their impotence against the changeless laws of
truth and beauty. With them it was not a case of a loose screw; all
screws had been tightened so brutally that the machinery became
deadlocked. They were neither lazy, languid, nor precious; they only
thought they knew how and they didn't. All their vigour was sterile; all
their courage vain.
Several attractive women exquisitely gowned were receiving; there was
just a little something unusual in their prettiness, in their toilets;
and also a little something lacking; and its absence was as noticeable
in them as it was in the majority of arriving or departing guests.
It could not have been self-possession and breeding which an outsider
missed. For the slim Countess d'Enver possessed both, inherited from
her Pittsburgh parents; and Mrs. Hind-Willet was born to a social
security indisputable; and Latimer Varyck had been in the diplomatic
service before he wrote "Unclothed," and the handsome, dark-eyed Mrs.
Atherstane divided social Manhattan with a blonder and lovelier rival.
Valerie entering with Neville, slender, self-possessed, a hint of
inquiry in her level eyes, heard the man at the door announce them, and
was conscious of many people turning as they passed into the big
reception room. A woman near her murmured, "What a beauty!" Another
added, "How intelligently gowned!" The slim Countess Hélène d'Enver, née
Nellie Jackson, held out a perfectly gloved hand and nodded amiably to
Neville. Then, smiling fixedly at Valerie:
"My dear, how nice of you," she said. "And you, too, Louis; it is very
amusing of you to come. José Querida has just departed. He gave us such
a delightful five-minute talk on modernity. Quoting Huneker, he spoke of
it as a 'quality'--and 'that nervous, naked vibration'--"
She ended with a capricious gesture which might have meant anything
ineffable, or an order for a Bronx cocktail.
"What's a nervous, naked vibration?" demanded Neville, with an impatient
shrug. "It sounds like a massage parlour--not," he added with respect,
"that Huneker doesn't know what he's talking about. Nobody doubts that.
Only art is one delicious bouillabaisse to him."
The Countess d'Enver laughed, still retaining Valerie's hand:
"Your gown is charming--may I add that you are disturbingly beautiful,
Miss West? When they have given you some tea, will you find me if I
can't find you?"
"Yes, I will," said Valerie.
At the tea table Neville brought her a glass of sherry and a bite of
something squashy; a number of people spoke to him and asked to be
presented to Valerie. Her poise, her unconsciousness, the winning
simplicity of her manner were noticed everywhere, and everywhere
commented on. People betrayed a tendency to form groups around her;
women, prepared by her unusual beauty for anything between mediocrity
and inanity, were a little perplexed at her intelligence and candour.
To Mrs, Hind-Willet's question she replied innocently: "To me there is
no modern painter comparable to Mr. Neville, though I dearly love
Wilson, Sorella and Querida."
To Latimer Varyck's whimsical insistence she finally was obliged to
admit that her reasons for not liking Richard Strauss were because she
thought him ugly, uninspired, and disreputable, which unexpected truism
practically stunned that harmless dilettante and so delighted Neville
that he was obliged to disguise his mirth with a scowl directed at the
ceiling.
"Did I say anything very dreadful, Kelly?" she whispered, when
opportunity offered.
"No, you darling. I couldn't keep a civil face when you told the truth
about Richard Strauss to that rickety old sensualist."
[Illustration: "Her poise, her unconsciousness, the winning simplicity
of her manner were noticed everywhere."]
"I don't really know enough to criticise anything. But Mr. Varyck
_would_ make me answer; and one must say something."
Olaf Dennison, without preliminary, sat down at the piano, tossed aside
his heavy hair, and gave a five-minute prelude to the second act of his
new opera, "Yvonne of Bannalec." The opera might as well have been
called Mamie of Hoboken, for all the music signified to Neville.
Mrs. Hind-Willet, leaning over the chair where Valerie was seated,
whispered fervently:
"Isn't it graphic! The music describes an old Breton peasant going to
market. You can hear the very click of his sabots and the gurgle of the
cider in his jug. And that queer little slap-stick noise is where he's
striking palms with another peasant bargaining for his cider."
"But where does Yvonne come in?" inquired Valerie in soft bewilderment.
"He's Yvonne's father," whispered Mrs. Hind-Willet. "The girl doesn't
appear during the entire opera. It's a marvellously important advance
beyond the tonal and graphic subtleties of Richard Strauss."
Other earnest and worthy people consumed intervals of five minutes now
and then; a "discuse,"--whom Neville insisted on calling a
"disease,"--said a coy and rather dirty little French poem directly at
her audience, leeringly assisted by an over-sophisticated piano
accompaniment.
"If that's modernity it's certainly naked and nervous enough," commented
Neville, drily.
"It's--it's perfectly horrid," murmured Valerie, the blush still
lingering on cheek and brow. "I can't understand how intelligent people
can even think about such things."
"Modernity," repeated Neville. "Hello; there's Carrillo, the young
apostle of Bruant, who makes such a hit with the elect."
"How, Kelly?"
"Realism, New York, and the spade business. He saw a sign on a Bowery
clothing store,--'Gents Pants Half Off Today,' and he wrote a poem on it
and all Manhattan sat up and welcomed him as a peerless realist; and
dear old Dean Williams compared him to Tolstoy and Ed. Harrigan, and
there was the deuce to pay artistically and generally. Listen to the
Yankee Steinlen in five-minute verse, dear."
Carrillo rose, glanced carelessly at his type-written manuscript and
announced its title unconcernedly:
"_Mutts In Madison Square_.
"A sodden tramp sits scratching on a bench,
The S.C.D. cart trails a lengthening stench
Where White Wings scrape the asphalt; and a breeze
Ripples the fountain and the budding trees.
Now fat old women, waddling like hogs,
Arrive to exercise their various dogs;
And 'round and 'round the little mutts all run,
Grass-maddened, frantic, circling in the sun,
Wagging and nosing--see! beneath yon tree
One little mutt meets his affinity:
And, near, another madly wags his tail
Inquiringly; but his advances fail,
And, 'yap-yap-yap!' replies the shrewish tyke,
So off the other starts upon a hike,
Rushing at random, crazed with sun and air,
Circling and barking out his canine prayer:
"'Oh, Lord of dogs who made the Out-of-doors
And fashioned mutts to gambol on all fours,
Grant us a respite from the city's stones!
Grant us a grassy place to bury bones!--A
grassy spot to roll on now and then,
Oh, Lord of dogs who also fashioned men,
Accept our thanks for this brief breath of air,
And grant, Oh, Lord, a humble mongrel's prayer!'
* * * * *
The hoboe, sprawling, scratches in the sun;
While 'round and 'round the happy mongrels run."
"Good Heavens," breathed Neville, "that sort of thing may be modern and
strong, but it's too rank for me, Valerie. Shall we bolt?"
"I--I think we'd better," she said miserably. "I don't think I care
for--for these interesting people very much."
They rose and passed slowly along the walls of the room, which were hung
with "five-minute sketches," which probably took five seconds to
conceive and five hours to execute--here an unclothed woman, chiefly
remarkable for an extraordinary development of adipose tissue and
house-maid's knee; here a pathological gem that might have aptly
illustrated a work on malformations; yonder a dashing dab of balderdash,
and next it one of Rackin's masterpieces, flanked by a gem of Stanley
Pooks.
In the centre of the room, emerging from a chunk of marble, the back and
neck and one ear of an unclothed lady protruded; and the sculptured
achievement was labelled, "Beatrice Andante."
"Oh, Lord," whispered Neville, repressing a violent desire to laugh.
"Beatrice and Aunty! I didn't know he had one."
"Is it Dante's Beatrice, Kelly? Where is Dante and his Aunty?"
"God knows. They made a mess of it anyway, those two--andante--which I
suppose this mess in marble symbolises. Pity he didn't have an aunty to
tell him how."
"Louis! How irreverent!" she whispered, eyes sparkling with laughter.
"Shall I try a five-minute fashionable impromptu, dear?" he asked:
"If Dante'd had an Aunty
Who ante-dated Dante
And scolded him
And tolded him
The way to win a winner,
It's a cinch or I'm a sinner,
He'd have taken Trix to dinner,
He'd have given her the eye
Of the fish about to die,
And folded her,
And moulded her
Like dough within a pie--
sallow, pallid pie--
And cooked a scheme to marry her,
And hired a hack to carry her
To stately Harlem-by-the-Bronx,
Where now the lonely taxi honks--"
"Kelly!" she gasped.
They both were laughing so that they hastened their steps, fearful of
offending, and barely contrived to compose their features when making
their adieux to Mrs. Hind-Willet and the Countess d'Enver.
As they walked east along Fifty-ninth Street, breathing in the fresh,
sparkling evening air, she said impulsively:
"And to think, Louis, that if I had been wicked enough to marry you I'd
have driven you into that kind of society--or into something genetically
similar!"
His face sobered:
"You could hold your own in any society."
"Perhaps I could. But they wouldn't let me."
"Are you afraid to fight it out?"
"Yes, dear--at _your_ expense. Otherwise--" She gazed smilingly into
space, a slight colour in either cheek.