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The Common Law, a novel by Robert W. Chambers |
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Chapter 10 |
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_ CHAPTER X 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."
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?" "Jose 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, Jose, 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:
"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--" "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. 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." 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 Mallarme 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 Helene d'Enver, nee 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. Jose 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." "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: "A sodden tramp sits scratching on a bench, "'Oh, Lord of dogs who made the Out-of-doors * * * * * The hoboe, sprawling, scratches in the sun;
"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:
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. _ |
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