Valerie West was twenty-two years old in February. One year of life lay
behind her; her future stretched away into sunlit infinity.
Neville attained his twenty-eighth year in March. Years still lay before
him, a few lay behind him; but in a single month he had waded so swiftly
forward through the sea of life that the shallows were already passed,
the last shoal was deepening rapidly. Only immeasurable and menacing
depths remained between him and the horizon--that pale, dead line
dividing the noonday of to-day from the phantom suns of blank eternity.
It was that winter that he began the picture destined to fix definitely
his position among the painters of his times--began it humbly, yet
somehow aware of what it was to be; afraid, for all his courage, yet
conscious of something inevitable impending. It was Destiny; and,
instinctively, he arose to meet it.
He called the picture "A Bride." A sapphire sky fading to turquoise, in
which great clouds crowded high in argent splendour--a young girl naked
of feet, her snowy body cinctured at the waist with straight and
silvered folds, standing amid a riot of wild flowers, head slightly
dropped back, white arms inert, pendant. And in her eyes' deep velvet
depths the mystery of the Annunciation.
All of humanity and of maturity--of adolescence and of divinity was in
that face; in the exquisitely sensitive wisdom of the woman's eyes, in
the full sweet innocence of the childish mouth--in the smooth little
hands so unsoiled, so pure--in the nun-like pallor and slender beauty of
the throat.
[Illustration: "'Where do you keep those pretty models, Louis?' he
demanded."]
Whatever had been his inspiration--whether spiritual conviction, or the
physical beauty of Valerie, neither he nor she considered very deeply.
But that he was embodying and creating something of the existence of
which neither he nor she had been aware a month ago, was awaking
something within them that had never before stirred or given sign of
life.
Since the last section of the mural decoration for the new court house
had been shipped to its destination, he had busied himself on two
canvases, a portrait of his sister in furs, and the portrait of Valerie.
Lily Collis came in the mornings twice a week to sit for her; and once
or twice Stephanie Swift came with her; also Sandy Cameron, ruddy, bald,
jovial, scoffing, and insatiably curious.
"Where do you keep all those pretty models, Louis?" he demanded, prying
aside the tapestry with the crook of his walking stick, and peeping
behind furniture and hangings and big piles of canvases. "Be a sport and
introduce us; Stephanie wants to see a few as well as I do."
Neville shrugged and went on painting, which exasperated Cameron.
"It's a fraud," he observed, in a loud, confidential aside to Stephanie;
"this studio ought to be full of young men in velvet coats and bunchy
ties, singing, 'Oh la--la!' and dextrously balancing on their baggy
knees a series of assorted soubrettes. It's a bluff, a hoax, a con game!
Are you going to stand for it? I don't see any absinthe either--or even
any Vin ordinaire! Only a tea-pot--a _tea-pot!_" he repeated in
unutterable scorn. "Why, there's more of Bohemia in a Broad Street Trust
Company than there is in this Pullman car studio!"
Mrs. Collis was laughing so that her brother had difficulty in going on
with her portrait.
"Get out of here, Sandy," he said--"or take Stephanie into the rest of
the apartment, somewhere, and tell her your woes."
Stephanie, who had been exploring, turning over piles of chassis and
investigating canvases and charcoal studies stacked up here and there
against the wainscot, pulled aside an easel which impeded her progress,
and in so doing accidentally turned the canvas affixed to it toward the
light.
"Hello!" exclaimed Cameron briskly, "who is this?"
Lily turned her small, aristocratic head, and Stephanie looked around.
"What a perfectly beautiful girl!" she exclaimed impulsively; "who is
she, Louis?"
"A model," he said calmly; but the careless and casual exposure of the
canvas had angered him so suddenly that his own swift emotion astonished
him.
Lily had risen from her seat, and now stood looking fixedly at the
portrait of Valerie West, her furs trailing from one shoulder to the
chair.
"My eye and Betty Martin!" cried Cameron, "I'll take it all back, girls!
It's a real studio after all--and this is the real thing! Louis, do you
think she's seen the Aquarium? I'm disengaged after three o'clock--"
He began to kiss his hand rapidly in the direction of the portrait, and
then, fondly embracing his own walking stick, he took a few jaunty steps
in circles, singing "Waltz me around again, Willy."
Lily Collis said: "If your model is as lovely as her portrait, Louis,
she is a real beauty. Who is she?"
"A professional model." He could scarcely contain his impatience with
his sister, with Cameron's fat humour, with Stephanie's quiet and
intent scrutiny--as though, somehow, he had suddenly exposed Valerie
herself to the cool and cynically detached curiosity of a world which
she knew must always remain unfriendly to her.
He was perfectly aware that his sister had guessed whose portrait
confronted them; he supposed, too, that Stephanie probably suspected.
And the knowledge irritated him more than the clownishness of Cameron.
"It is a splendid piece of painting," said Stephanie cordially, and
turned quietly to a portfolio of drawings at her elbow. She had let her
fleeting glance rest on Neville for a second; had divined in a flash
that he was enduring and not courting their examination of this picture;
that, somehow, her accidental discovery of it had displeased him--was
even paining him.
"Sandy," she said cheerfully, "come here and help me look over these
sketches."
"Any peaches among 'em?"
"Bushels."
Cameron came with alacrity; Neville waited until Lily reluctantly
resumed her seat; then he pushed back the easel, turned Valerie's
portrait to the wall, and quietly resumed his painting.
Art in any form was powerless to retain Cameron's attention for very
many consecutive minutes at a time; he grew restless, fussed about with
portfolios for a little while longer, enlivening the tedium with
characteristic observations.
"Well, I've got business down town," he exclaimed, with great pretence
of regret. "Come on, Stephanie; we'll go to the Exchange and start
something. Shall we? Oh, anything--from a panic to a bull-market! I
don't care; go as far as you like. You may wreck a few railroads if you
want to. Only I've _got_ to go.... Awfully good of you to let
me--er--see all these--er--interesting and er--m-m-m--things, Louis.
Glad I saw that dream of a peacherino, too. What is she on the side? An
actorine? If she is I'll take a box for the rest of the season including
the road and one-night stands.... Good-bye, Mrs. Collis! Good-bye,
Stephanie! _Good_-bye, Louis!--I'll come and spend the day with you when
you're too busy to see me. Now, Stephanie, child! It's the Stock
Exchange or the Little Church around the Corner for you and me, if you
say so!"
Stephanie had duties at a different sort of an Exchange; and she also
took her leave, thanking Neville warmly for the pleasure she had had,
and promising to lunch with Lily at the Continental Club.
When they had departed, Lily said:
"I suppose that is a portrait of your model, Valerie West."
"Yes," he replied shortly.
"Well, Louis, it is perfectly absurd of you to show so plainly that you
consider our discovery of it a desecration."
He turned red with surprise and irritation:
"I don't know what you mean."
"I mean exactly what I say. You showed by your expression and your
manner that our inspection of the picture and our questions and comments
concerning it were unwelcome."
"I'm sorry I showed it.... But they _were_ unwelcome."
"Will you tell me why?"
"I don't think I know exactly why--unless the portrait was a personal
and private affair concerning only myself--"
"Louis! Has it gone as far as that?"
"As far as what? What on earth are you trying to say, Lily?"
"I'm trying to say--as nicely and as gently as I can--that your
behaviour--in regard to this girl is making us all perfectly wretched."
"Who do you mean by 'us all'?" he demanded sullenly.
"Father and mother and myself. You must have known perfectly well that
father would write to me about what you told him at Spindrift House a
month ago."
"Did he?"
"Of course he did, Louis! Mother is simply worrying herself ill over
you; father is incredulous--at least he pretends to be; but he has
written me twice on the subject--and I think you might just as well be
told what anxiety and unhappiness your fascination for this girl is
causing us all."
Mrs. Collis was leaning far forward in her chair, forgetful of her pose;
Neville stood silent, head lowered, absently mixing tints upon his
palette without regard to the work under way.
When he had almost covered his palette with useless squares of colour he
picked up a palette-knife, scraped it clean, smeared the residue on a
handful of rags, laid aside brushes and palette, and walked slowly to
the window.
It was snowing again. He could hear the feathery whisper of the flakes
falling on the glass roof above; and he remembered the night of the new
year, and all that it had brought to him--all the wonder and happiness
and perplexity of a future utterly unsuspected, undreamed of.
And now it was into that future he was staring with a fixed and blank
gaze as his sister's hand fell upon his shoulder and her cheek rested a
moment in caress against his.
"Dearest child," she said tremulously, "I did not mean to speak harshly
or without sympathy. But, after all, shouldn't a son consider his father
and mother in a matter of this kind?"
"I have considered them--tried to."
Mrs. Collis dropped into an arm-chair. After a few moments he also
seated himself listlessly, and sat gazing at nothing out of absent eyes.
She said: "You know what father and mother are. Even I have something
left of their old-fashioned conservatism clinging to me--and yet people
consider me extremely liberal in my views. But all my liberality, all my
modern education since I left the dear old absurdities of our narrow
childhood and youth, can not reconcile me to what you threaten us
with--with what you are threatened--you, your entire future life."
"What seems to threaten you--and them--is my marriage to the woman with
whom I'm in love. Does that shock you?"
"The circumstances shock me."
"I could not control the circumstances."
"You can control yourself, Louis."
"Yes--I can do that. I can break her heart and mine."
"Hearts don't break, Louis. And is anybody to live life through exempt
from suffering? If your unhappiness comes early in life to you it will
pass the sooner, leaving the future tranquil for you, and you ready for
it, unperplexed--made cleaner, purer, braver by a sorrow that came, as
comes all sorrow--and that has gone its way, like all sorrows, leaving
you the better and the worthier."
"How is it to leave _her_?"
He spoke so naturally, so simply, that for the moment his sister did not
recognise in him what had never before been there to recognise--the
thought of another before himself. Afterward she remembered it.
She said quietly: "If Valerie West is a girl really sincere and meriting
your respect, she will face this matter as you face it."
"Yes--she would do that," he said, thoughtfully.
"Then I think that the sooner you explain matters to her--"
He laughed: "_I_ don't have to explain anything to her, Lily."
"What do you mean?"
"She knows how things stand. She is perfectly aware of your world's
attitude toward her. She has not the slightest intention of forcing
herself on you, or of asking your indulgence or your charity."
"You mean, then, that she desires to separate you from your family--from
your friends--"
"No," he said wearily, "she does not desire that, either."
His sister's troubled eyes rested on him in silence for a while; then:
"I know she is beautiful; I am sure she is good, Louis--good in--in her
own way--worthy, in her own fashion. But, dear, is that all that you, a
Neville, require of the woman who is to bear your name--bear your
children?"
"She _is_ all I require--and far more."
"Dear, you are utterly blinded by your infatuation!"
"You do not know her."
"Then let me!" exclaimed Mrs. Collis desperately. "Let me meet her,
Louis--let me talk with her--"
"No.... And I'll tell you why, Lily; it's because she does not care to
meet you."
"What!"
"I have told you the plain truth. She sees no reason for knowing you, or
for knowing my parents, or any woman in a world that would never
tolerate her, never submit to her entrance, never receive her as one of
them!--a world that might shrug and smile and endure her as my wife--and
embitter my life forever."
As he spoke he was not aware that he merely repeated Valerie's own
words; he remained still unconscious that his decision was in fact
merely her decision; that his entire attitude had become hers because
her nature and her character were as yet the stronger.
But in his words his sister's quick intelligence perceived a logic and a
conclusion entirely feminine and utterly foreign to her brother's habit
of mind. And she realised with a thrill of fear that she had to do, not
with her brother, but with a woman who was to be reckoned with.
"Do you--or does Miss West think it likely that I am a woman to wound,
to affront another--no matter who she may be? Surely, Louis, you could
have told her very little about me--"
"I never mention you to her."
Lily caught her breath.
"Why?"
"Why should I?"
"That is unfair, Louis! She has the right to know about your own
family--otherwise how can she understand the situation?"
"It's like all situations, isn't it? You and father and mother have your
own arbitrary customs and traditions and standards of respectability.
You rule out whom you choose. Valerie West knows perfectly well that you
would rule her out. Why should she give you the opportunity?"
"Is she afraid of me?"
He smiled: "I don't think so." And his smile angered his sister.
"Very well," she said, biting her lip.
For a few moments she sat there deliberating, her pointed patent-leather
toe tapping the polished floor. Then she stood up, with decision:
"There is no use in our quarrelling, Louis--until the time comes when
some outsider forces us into an unhappy misunderstanding. Kiss me
good-bye, dear."
She lifted her face; he kissed her; and her hand closed impulsively on
his arm:
"Louis! Louis! I love you. I am so proud of you--I--you know I love you,
don't you?"
"Yes--I think so."
"You _know_ I am devoted to your happiness!--your _real_
happiness--which those blinded eyes in that obstinate head of yours
refuse to see. Believe me--believe me, dear, that your _real_ happiness
is not in this pretty, strange girl's keeping. No, no, no! You are
wrong, Louis--terribly and hopelessly wrong! Because happiness for you
lies in the keeping of another woman--a woman of your own world,
dear--of your own kind--a gently-bred, lovable, generous girl whom you,
deep in your heart and soul, love, unknowingly--have always loved!"
He shook his head, slowly, looking down into his sister's eyes.
She said, almost frightened:
"You--you won't do it--suddenly--without letting us know--will you,
Louis?"
"What?"
"Marry this girl!"
"No," he said, "it is not likely."
"But you--you mean to marry her?"
"I want to.... But it is not likely to happen--for a while."
"How long?"
"I don't know."
She drew a tremulous breath of relief, looking up into his face. Then
her eyes narrowed; she thought a moment, and her gaze became preoccupied
and remote, and her lips grew firm with the train of thought she was
pursuing.
He put his arms around her and kissed her again; and she felt the boyish
appeal in it and her lip quivered. But she could not respond, could not
consider for one moment, could not permit her sympathy for him to enlist
her against what she was devoutly convinced were his own most vital
interests--his honour, his happiness, the success of his future career.
She said with tears in her eyes: "Louis, I love you dearly. If God will
grant us all a little patience and a little wisdom there will be a way
made clear to all of us. Good-bye."
[Illustration: "'Your--profession--must be an exceedingly interesting
one,' said Lily."]
Whether it was that the Almighty did not grant Mrs. Collis the patience
to wait until a way was made clear, or whether another letter from her
father decided her to clear that way for herself, is uncertain; but one
day in March Valerie received a letter from Mrs. Collis; and answered
it; and the next morning she shortened a seance with Querida, exchanged
her costume for her street-clothes, and hastened to her apartments,
where Mrs. Collis was already awaiting her in the little sitting-room.
Valerie offered her hand and stood looking at Lily Collis, as though
searching for some resemblance to her brother in the pretty, slightly
flushed features. There was a very indefinite family resemblance.
"Miss West," she said, "it is amiable of you to overlook the
informality--"
"I am not formal, Mrs. Collis," she said, quietly. "Will you sit here?"
indicating an arm-chair near the window,--"because the light is not very
good and I have some mending to do on a costume which I must pose in
this afternoon."
Lily Collis seated herself, her bewitched gaze following Valerie as she
moved lightly and gracefully about, collecting sewing materials and the
costume in question, and bringing them to a low chair under the north
window.
"I am sure you will not mind my sewing," she said, with a slight upward
inflection to her voice, which made it a question.
"Please, Miss West," said Lily, hastily.
"It is really a necessity," observed Valerie threading her needle and
turning over the skirt. "Illustrators are very arbitrary gentlemen; a
model's failure to keep an engagement sometimes means loss of a valuable
contract to them, and that isn't fair either to them or to their
publishers, who would be forced to hunt up another artist at the last
moment."
"Your--profession--must be an exceedingly interesting one," said Lily in
a low voice.
Valerie smiled: "It is a very exacting one."
There was a silence. Valerie's head was bent over her sewing; Mrs.
Collis, fascinated, almost alarmed by her beauty, could not take her
eyes from her. Outwardly Lily was pleasantly reserved, perfectly at
ease with this young girl; inwardly all was commotion approaching actual
consternation.
She had been prepared for youth, for a certain kind of charm and
beauty--but not for this kind--not for the loveliness, the grace, the
composure, the exquisite simplicity of this young girl who sat sewing
there before her.
She was obliged to force herself to recollect that this girl was a model
hired to pose for men--paid to expose her young, unclothed limbs and
body! Yet--could it be possible! Was this the girl hailed as a comrade
by the irrepressible Ogilvy and Annan--the heroine of a score of
unconventional and careless gaieties recounted by them? Was this the
coquette who, it was rumoured, had flung over Querida, snapped her white
fingers at Penrhyn Cardemon, and laughed disrespectfully at a dozen
respected pillars of society, who appeared to be willing to support her
in addition to the entire social structure?
Very quietly the girl raised her head. Her sensitive lips were edged
with a smile, but there was no mirth in her clear eyes:
"Mrs. Collis, perhaps you are waiting for me to say something about your
letter and my answer to it. I did not mean to embarrass you by not
speaking of it, but I was not certain that the initiative lay with me."
Lily reddened: "It lies with _me_, Miss West--the initiative. I mean--"
She hesitated, suddenly realising how difficult it had become to go
on,--how utterly unprepared she was to encounter passive resistance from
such composure as this young girl already displayed.
"You wrote to me about your anxiety concerning Mr. Neville," said
Valerie, gently.
"Yes--I did, Miss West. You will surely understand--and forgive me--if I
say to you that I am still a prey to deepest anxiety."
"Why?"
The question was so candid, so direct that for a moment Lily remained
silent. But the dark, clear, friendly eyes were asking for an answer,
and the woman of the world who knew how to meet most situations and how
to dominate them, searched her experience in vain for the proper words
to use in this one.
After a moment Valerie's eyes dropped, and she resumed her sewing; and
Lily bit her lip and composed her mind to its delicate task:
"Miss West," she said, "what I have to say is not going to be very
agreeable to either of us. It is going to be painful perhaps--and it is
going to take a long while to explain--"
"It need not take long," said Valerie, without raising her eyes from her
stitches; "it requires only a word to tell me that you and your father
and mother do not wish your brother to marry me."
She looked up quietly, and her eyes met Lily's:
"I promise not to marry him," she said. "You are perfectly right. He
belongs to his own family; he belongs in his own world."
She looked down again at her sewing with a faint smile:
"I shall not attempt to enter that world as his wife, Mrs. Collis, or to
draw him out of it.... And I hope that you will not be anxious any
more."
She laid aside her work and rose to her slender height, smilingly, as
though the elder woman had terminated the interview; and Lily, utterly
confounded, rose, too, as Valerie offered her hand in adieu.
"Miss West," she began, not perfectly sure of what she was saying,
"I--scarcely dare thank you--for what you have
said--for--my--brother's--sake--"
Valerie laughed: "I would do much more than that for him, Mrs.
Collis.... Only I must first be sure of what is really the best way to
serve him."
Lily's gloved hand tightened over hers; and she laid the other one over
it:
"You are so generous, so sweet about it!" she said unsteadily. "And I
look into your face and I know you are good--_good_--all the way
through--"
Valerie laughed again:
"There isn't any real evil in me.... And I am not astonishingly
generous--merely sensible. I knew from the first that I couldn't marry
him--if I really loved him," she added, under her breath.
They were at the door now. Lily passed out into the entry, halted,
turned impulsively, the tears in her eyes, and put both arms tenderly
around the girl.
"You poor child," she whispered. "You dear, brave, generous girl! God
knows whether I am right or wrong. I am only trying to do my
duty--trying to do what is best for him."
Valerie looked at her curiously:
"Yes, you cannot choose but think of him if you really love him.... That
is the way it is with love."
Afterward, sewing by the window, she could scarcely see the stitches for
the clinging tears. But they dried on her lashes; not one fell. And when
Rita came in breezily to join her at luncheon she was ready, her
costume mended and folded in her hand-satchel, and there remained
scarcely even a redness of the lids to betray her.
That evening she did not stop for tea at Neville's studio; and, later,
when he telephoned, asking her to dine with him, she pleaded the
feminine prerogative of tea in her room and going to bed early for a
change. But she lay awake until midnight trying to think out a _modus
vivendi_ for Neville and herself which, would involve no sacrifice on
his part and no unhappiness for anybody except, perhaps, for herself.
The morning was dull and threatened rain, and she awoke with a slight
headache, remembering that she had dreamed all night of weeping.
In her mail there was a note from Querida asking her to stop for a few
moments at his studio that afternoon, several business communications,
and a long letter from Mrs. Collis which she read lying in bed, one hand
resting on her aching temples:
"MY DEAR Miss WEST: Our interview this morning has left me with a
somewhat confused sense of indebtedness to you and an admiration and
respect for your character which I wished very much to convey to you
this morning, but which I was at a loss to express.
"You are not only kind and reasonable, but so entirely unselfish that my
own attitude in this unhappy matter has seemed to me harsh and
ungracious.
"I went to you entertaining a very different idea of you, and very
different sentiments from the opinion which I took away with me. I admit
that my call on you was not made with any agreeable anticipations; but
I was determined to see you and learn for myself what manner of woman
had so disturbed us all.
"In justice to you--in grateful recognition of your tact and gentleness,
I am venturing to express to you now my very thorough respect for you,
my sense of deep obligation, and my sympathy--which I am afraid you may
not care for.
"That it would not be suitable for a marriage to take place between my
brother and yourself is, it appears, as evident to you as it is to his
own family. Yet, will you permit me to wish that it were otherwise? I do
wish it; I wish that the circumstances had made such a marriage
possible. I say this to you in spite of the fact that we have always
expected my brother to marry into a family which has been intimate with
our own family for many generations. It is a tribute to your character
which I am unwilling to suppress; which I believe I owe to you, to say
that, had circumstances been different, you might have been made welcome
among us.
"The circumstances of which I speak are of an importance to us, perhaps
exaggerated, possibly out of proportion to the fundamental conditions of
the situation. But they are conditions which our family has never
ignored. And it is too late for us to learn to ignore them now.
"I think that you will feel--I think that a large part of the world
might consider our attitude toward such a woman as you have shown
yourself to be, narrow, prejudiced, provincial. The modern world would
scarcely arm us with any warrant for interfering in a matter which a man
nearly thirty is supposed to be able to manage for himself. But my
father and mother are old, and they will never change in their beliefs
and prejudices inherited from their parents, who, in turn, inherited
their beliefs.
"It was for them more than for myself--more even than for my
brother--that I appealed to you. The latter end of their lives should
not be made unhappy. And your generous decision assures me that it will
not be made so.
"As for myself, my marriage permitted me an early enfranchisement from
the obsolete conventional limits within which my brother and I were
brought up.
"I understand enough of the modern world not to clash with, it
unnecessarily, enough of ultra-modernity not to be too much afraid of
it.
"But even I, while I might theoretically admit and even admire that
cheerful and fearless courage which makes it possible for such a
self-respecting woman as yourself to face the world and force it to
recognise her right to earn her own living as she chooses--I could not
bring myself to contemplate with equanimity my brother's marrying you.
And I do not believe my father would survive such an event.
"To us, to me, also, certain fixed conventional limits are the basis of
all happiness. To offend them is to be unhappy; to ignore them would
mean destruction to our peace of mind and self-respect. And, though I do
admire you and respect you for what you are, it is only just to you to
say that we could never reconcile ourselves to those modern social
conditions which you so charmingly represent, and which are embodied in
you with such convincing dignity.
"Dear Miss West, have I pained you? Have I offended you in return for
all your courtesy to me? I hope not. I felt that I owed you this.
Please accept it as a tribute and as a sorrowful acquiescence in
conditions which an old-fashioned family are unable to change.
"Very sincerely yours,
"LILLY COLLIS."
She lay for a while, thinking, the sheets of the letter lying loose on
the bed. It seemed to require no answer. Nor had Mrs. Collis,
apparently, any fear that Valerie would ever inform Louis Neville of
what had occurred between his sister and herself.
Still, to Valerie, an unanswered letter was like a civil observation
ignored.
She wrote that evening to Lily:
"Dear Mrs. Collis: In acknowledging your letter of yesterday I beg to
assure you that I understand the inadvisability of my marrying your
brother, and that I have no idea of doing it, and that, through me, he
shall never know of your letters or of your visit to me in his behalf.
"With many thanks for your kindly expressions of good-will toward me, I
am
"Very truly yours,
"VALERIE WEST."
She had been too tired to call at Querida's studio, too tired even to
take tea at the Plaza with Neville.
Rita came in, silent and out of spirits, and replied in monosyllables to
Valerie's inquiries.
It finally transpired that Sam Ogilvy and Harry Annan had been
tormenting John Burleson after their own fashion until their inanity
had exasperated her and she expressed herself freely to everybody
concerned.
"It makes me very angry," she said, "to have a lot of brainless people
believe that John Burleson is stupid. He isn't; he is merely a trifle
literal, and far too intelligent to see any humour in the silly capers
Sam and Harry cut."
Valerie, who was feeling better, sipped her tea and nibbled her toast,
much amused at Rita's championship of the big sculptor.
"John is a dear," she said, "but even his most enthusiastic partisans
could hardly characterise him as a humorist."
"He's not a clown--if that's what you mean," said Rita shortly.
"But, Rita, he _isn't_ humorous, you know."
"He _is_. He has a sense of humour perfectly intelligible to those who
understand it."
"Do you, dear?"
"Certainly ... And I always have understood it."
"Oh, what kind of occult humour is it?"
"It is a quiet, cultivated, dignified sense of humour not uncommon in
New England, and not understood in New York."
Valerie nibbled her toast, secretly amused. Burleson was from
Massachusetts. Rita was the daughter of a Massachusetts clergyman. No
doubt they were fitted to understand each other.
It occurred to her, too, that John Burleson and Rita Tevis had always
been on a friendly footing rather quieter and more serious than the
usual gay and irresponsible relations maintained between two people
under similar circumstances.
Sometimes she had noticed that when affairs became too frivolous and
the scintillation of wit and epigram too rapid and continuous, John
Burleson and Rita were very apt to edge out of the circle as though for
mutual protection.
"You're not posing for John, are you, Rita?" she asked.
"No. He has a bad cold, and I stopped in to see that he wore a red
flannel bandage around his throat. A sculptor's work is so dreadfully
wet and sloppy, and his throat has always been very delicate."
"Do you mean to say that you charge your mind with the coddling of that
great big, pink-cheeked boy?" laughed Valerie,
"Coddling!" repeated Rita, flushing up. "I don't call it coddling to
stop in for a moment to remind a friend that he doesn't know how to take
care of himself, and never will."
"Nonsense. You couldn't kill a man of that size and placidity of
character."
"You don't know anything about him. He is much more delicate than he
looks."
Valerie glanced curiously at the girl, who was preparing oysters in the
chafing dish.
"How do _you_ happen to know so much about him, Rita?"
She answered, carelessly: "I have known him ever since I began to
pose--almost."
Valerie set her cup aside, sprang up to rinse mouth and hands. Then,
gathering her pink negligée around her, curled up in a big wing-chair,
drawing her bare feet up under the silken folds and watching Rita
prepare the modest repast for one.
"Rita," she said, "who was the first artist you ever posed for? Was it
John Burleson--and did you endure the tortures of the damned?"
"No, it was not John Burleson.... And I endured--enough."
"Don't you care to tell me who it was?"
Rita did not reply at that time. Later, however, when the simple supper
was ended, she lighted a cigarette and found a place where, with
lamplight behind her, she could read a book which Burleson had sent her,
and which she had been attempting to assimilate and digest all winter.
It was a large, thick, dark book, and weighed nearly four pounds. It was
called "Essays on the Obvious "; and Valerie had made fun of it until,
to her surprise, she noticed that her pleasantries annoyed Rita.
Valerie, curled up in the wing-chair, cheek resting against its velvet
side, was reading the Psalms again--fascinated as always by the noble
music of the verse. And it was only by chance that, lifting her eyes
absently for a moment, she found that Rita had laid aside her book and
was looking at her intently.
"Hello, dear!" she said, indolently humorous.
Rita said: "You read your Bible a good deal, don't you?"
"Parts of it."
"The parts you believe?"
"Yes; and the parts that I can't believe."
"What parts can't you believe?"
Valerie laughed: "Oh, the unfair parts--the cruel parts, the
inconsistent parts."
"What about faith?"
"Faith is a matter of temperament, dear."
"Haven't you any?"
"Yes, in all things good."
"Then you have faith in yourself that you are capable of deciding what
is good and worthy of belief in the Scriptures, and what is unworthy?"
[Illustration: "It was a large, thick, dark book, and weighed nearly
four pounds."]
"It must be that way. I am intelligent. One must decide for one's self
what is fair and what is unfair; what is cruel and what is merciful and
kind. Intelligence must always evolve its own religion; sin is only an
unfaithfulness to what one really believes."
"What _do_ you believe, Valerie?"
"About what, dear?"
"Love."
"Loving a man?"
"Yes."
"You know what my creed is--that love must be utterly unselfish to be
pure--to be love at all."
"One must not think of one's self," murmured Rita, absently.
"I don't mean that. I mean that one must not hesitate to sacrifice one's
self when the happiness or welfare of the other is in the balance."
"Yes. Of course!... Suppose you love a man."
"Yes," said Valerie, smiling, "I can imagine that."
"Listen, dear. Suppose you love a man. And you think that perhaps he is
beginning--just beginning to care a little for you. And suppose--suppose
that you are--have been--long ago--once, very long ago--"
"What?"
"Unwise," said Rita, in a low voice.
"Unwise? How?"
"In the--unwisest way that a girl can be."
"You mean any less unwise than a man might be--probably the very man she
is in love with?"
"You know well enough what is thought about a girl's unwisdom and the
same unwisdom in a man."
"I know what is thought; but _I_ don't think it."
"Perhaps you don't. But the world's opinion is different."
"Yes, I know it.... What is your question again? You say to me, here's
a man beginning to care for a girl who has been unwise enough before she
knew him to let herself believe she cared enough for another man to
become his mistress. Is that it, Rita?"
"Y-yes."
"Very well. What do you wish to ask me?"
"I wish to ask you what that girl should do."
"Do? Nothing. What is there for her to do?"
"Ought she to let that man care for her?"
"Has he ever made the same mistake she has?"
"I--don't think so."
"Are you sure?"
"Almost."
"Well, then, I'd tell him."
Rita lay silent, gazing into space, her blond hair clustering around the
pretty oval of her face.
Valerie waited for a few moments, then resumed her reading, glancing
inquiringly at intervals over the top of her book at Rita, who seemed
disinclined for further conversation.
After a long silence she sat up abruptly on the sofa and looked at
Valerie.
"You asked me who was the first man for whom I posed. I'll tell you if
you wish to know. It was Penrhyn Cardemon!... And I was eighteen years
old."
Valerie dropped her book in astonishment.
"Penrhyn Cardemon!" she repeated. "Why, he isn't an artist!"
"He has a studio."
"Where?"
"On Fifth Avenue."
"What does he do there?"
"Deviltry."
Valerie's face was blank; Rita sat sullenly cradling one knee in her
arms, looking at the floor, her soft, gold hair hanging over her face
and forehead so that it shadowed her face.
"I've meant to tell you for a long time," she went on; "I would have
told you if Cardemon had ever sent for you to--to pose--in his place."
"He asked me to go on _The Mohave_."
"I'd have warned you if Louis Neville had not objected."
"Do you suppose Louis knew?"
"No. He scarcely knows Penrhyn Cardemon. His family and Cardemon are
neighbours in the country, but the Nevilles and the Collises are
snobs--I'm speaking plainly, Valerie--and they have no use for that
red-faced, red-necked, stocky young millionaire."
Valerie sat thinking; Rita, nursing her knee, brooded under the bright
tangle of her hair, linking and unlinking her fingers as she gently
swayed her foot to and fro.
"That's how it is," she said at last. "Now you know."
Valerie's head was still lowered, but she raised her eyes and looked
straight at Rita where she sat on the sofa's edge, carelessly swinging
her foot to and fro.
"Was it--Penrhyn Cardemon?" she asked.
"Yes.... I thought it had killed any possibility of ever caring--that
way--for any other man."
"But it hasn't?"
"No."
"And--you are in love?"
"Yes."
"With John Burleson?"
Rita looked up from the burnished disorder of her hair:
"I have been in love with him for three years," she said, "and you are
the only person in the world except myself who knows it."
Valerie rose and walked over to Rita and seated herself beside her. Then
she put one arm around her; and Rita bit her lip and stared at space,
swinging her slender foot.
"You poor dear," said Valerie. Rita's bare foot hung inert; the silken
slipper dropped from it to the floor; and then her head fell, sideways,
resting on Valerie's shoulder, showering her body with its tangled gold.
Valerie said, thoughtfully: "Girls don't seem to have a very good
chance.... I had no idea about Cardemon--that he was that kind of a man.
A girl never knows. Men can be so attractive and so nice.... And so many
of them are merciless.... I suppose you thought you loved him."
"Y--yes."
"We all think that, I suppose," said Valerie, thoughtfully.
"Other girls have thought it of Penrhyn Cardemon."
"Other _girls?_"
"Yes."
Valerie's face expressed bewilderment.
"I didn't know that there were really such men."
Rita closed her disillusioned eyes.
"Plenty," she said wearily.
"I don't care to believe that."
"You may believe it, Valerie. Men are almost never single-minded; women
are--almost always. You see what chance for happiness we have? But it's
the truth, and the world has been made that way. It's a man's world,
Valerie. I don't think there's much use for us to fight against it....
She sat very silent for a while, close to Valerie, her hot face on the
younger girl's shoulder. Suddenly she straightened up and dried her eyes
naïvely on the sleeve of her kimona.
"Goodness!" she said, "I almost forgot!"
And a moment later Valerie heard her at the telephone:
"Is that you, John?"
* * * * *
"Have you remembered to take your medicine?"
* * * * *
"How perfectly horrid of you! Take it at once! It's the one in the brown
bottle--six drops in a wineglass of water--"