Though Mrs. Palmer Pence kept looking forward, off and on, to the
pleasure of making Abner's acquaintance, it was a full six months before
the happy day finally came round. But when she read _The Rod of the
Oppressor_ that seemed to settle it; her salon would be incomplete
without its author, and she must take steps to find him.
Abner's second book, in spirit and substance, was a good deal like his
first: the man who has succeeded follows up his success, naturally, with
something of the same sort. The new book was a novel, however,--the first
of the long series that Abner was to put forth with the prodigal ease and
carelessness of Nature herself; and it was as gloomy, strenuous and
positive as its predecessor.
Abner, by this time, had enlarged his circle. Through the reformers he
had become acquainted with a few journalists, and journalists had led on
to versifiers and novelists, and these to a small clique of artists and
musicians. Abner was now beginning to find his best account in a sort of
decorous Bohemia and to feel that such, after all, was the atmosphere he
had been really destined to breathe. The morals of his new associates
were as correct as even he could have insisted upon, and their manners
were kindly and not too ornate. They indulged in a number of little
practices caught, he supposed, from "society," but after all their modes
were pleasantly trustful and informal and presently quite ceased to irk
and to intimidate him. Many members of his new circle were massed in one
large building whose owner had attempted to name it the Warren Block; but
the artists and the rest simply called it the Warren--sometimes the
Burrow or the Rabbit-Hutch--and referred to themselves collectively as
the Bunnies.
Abner found it hard to countenance such facetiousness in a world so full
of pain; yet after all these dear people did much to cushion his
discomfort, and before long hardly a Saturday afternoon came round
without his dropping into one studio or another for a chat and a cup of
tea. To tell the truth, Abner could hardly "chat" as yet, but he was
beginning to learn, and he was becoming more reconciled as well to all
the paraphernalia involved in the brewing of the draught. He was boarding
rather roughly with a landlady who, like himself, was from "down state"
and who had never cultivated fastidiousness in table-linen or in
tableware, and he sniffed at the fanciful cups and spoons and pink
candle-shades that helped to insure the attendance of the "desirable
people," as the Burrow phrased it, and at the manifold methods of
tea-making that were designed to turn the desirable people into
profitable patrons. That is, he sniffed at the samovar and the lemons and
so on; but when the rum came along he looked away sternly and in silence.
Well, the desirable people came in numbers--studios were the fad that
year--and as soon as Mrs. Palmer Pence understood that Abner was to be
met with somewhere in the Burrow she hastened to enroll herself among
them.
Eudoxia Pence was a robust and vigorous woman in her prime--and by
"prime" I mean about thirty-six. She was handsome and rich and
intelligent and ambitious, and she was hesitating between a career as a
Society Queen and a self-devotion to the Better Things: perhaps she was
hoping to combine both. With her she brought her niece, Miss Clytie
Summers, who had been in society but a month, yet who was enterprising
enough to have joined already a class in sociological science, composed
of girls that were quite the ones to know, and to have undertaken two or
three little excursions into the slums. Clytie hardly felt sure just yet
whether what she most wanted was to gain a Social Triumph or to lend a
Helping Hand. It was Abner's lot to help influence her decision.