A Top-Floor Idyl Part 14

"I must now plod along without interruption," she answered.

"I had thought of making another study. The finished thing is all right, but one doesn't come across a face like yours very often."

"No," put in Frieda, "and it's a good thing for you that you've had the exclusive painting of it. If she had continued as a model and been done by every Tom, d.i.c.k and Harry----"

"True. Since I can't paint her again, I'm glad no one else will. No, thank you, I won't have any more tea. How's the new picture, Frieda?"

For a few minutes the two monopolized the conversation. To some extent they spoke a jargon of their own, to which Frances and I listened with little understanding.

"And what do you think of it, Dave?" he asked, turning abruptly to me.

"It is a beautiful thing," I answered. "If I had Frieda's imagination and her sense of beauty, I should be the great, undiscovered American novelist. She makes one believe that the world is all roses and violets and heliotropes, touched by sunshine and kissed by soft breezes. It is tenanted only by sprites and G.o.dlings, according to her magic brush."

"The world is no such thing," he retorted, sharply.

"The world is what one's imagination, one's sentiment and one's conscience makes it," I a.s.serted, "at least during some precious moments of every lifetime."

"Oh! I know. You can sit at that old machine of yours and throw your head back and see more upon your ceiling than the cracked plaster, and Frieda does the same thing. Now my way is to take real flesh and blood, yes, and dead lobsters and codfish and dowagers and paint them in the best light I can get on them, but it's the light I really see."

"It is nothing of the kind," I emphatically disclaimed. "It is the light your temperament sees, and your rendering of it is not much closer to truth than Caruso's 'Celeste Ada' can be to an ordinary lover's appeal.

There is no such thing as realism in painting, while, in literature, it has chiefly produced monsters."

"Isn't he a dear old donkey?" Gordon appealed to the two women.

"One of those animals once spoke the truth to a minor prophet," remarked Frances, quietly.

"You are quoting the only recorded exception," he laughed, "but the hit was a good one. Yet Dave is nothing but an incurable optimist and a chronic wearer of pink gla.s.ses."

"That, I think, is what makes him so loveable," put in Frieda, whereat Frances smiled at her, and I might have blushed had I not long ago lost the habit.

Gordon rose, with the suddenness which characterizes his movements, and declared he must run away at once. He shook hands all around, hastily, and declined my offer to see him down to the door.

"In Italy," said Frieda, "I have eaten a sauce made with vinegar and sweet things. They call it _agrodolce_, I believe, and the Germans make a soup with beer. Neither of them appeal to me at all. Gordon is a wonderful painter, but he's always trying to mix up art with iconoclasm.

It can't spoil his pictures, I'm sure, but it may--what was the expression Kid Sullivan was fond of using? Oh yes, some day it may hand out a jolt to him. He has a perfectly artistic temperament and the greatest talent, but he stirs up with them a dreadful mess of cynicism and cold-blooded calculation. My dear Dave, let you and I stick to our soft colors and minor tones. If either of us ever abandoned them, we should be able to see nothing but dull grays."

"We understand our limitations, Frieda," I told her, "and there is nothing that fits one better to enjoy life. Gordon says that it is all foolishness, and can't understand that a fellow should walk along a mile of commonplace hedge and stop because he has found a wild rose. The latter, with due respect to him, is as big a truth as the privet, and a pleasanter one."

Presently, Frieda, after consuming a third cup of tea and finishing the crackers, said that she must be going home. I insisted on accompanying her down the stairs and naturally followed her to her domicile, where she informed me that she was going to wash her hair and forbade my entering.

On the other side of the street, on my return, I saw Frances going into Dr. Porter's office. He has prevailed upon her to let him do something to her throat, and she goes in once or twice a week. He has begged her to come as a special and particular favor to him. I'm sure I don't know what he expects to accomplish, for he is somewhat reticent in the matter. Perhaps he may have thought it well to arouse a little hope in her. I am afraid that in her life she sees a good deal of the dull grays Frieda was speaking of.

And now a few more weeks have gone by and the middle of winter has come.

On Sunday afternoons we always have tea in my room, except when we go through the same function at Frieda's. To my surprise, Gordon's visits have been repeated a number of times. Frieda and he abuse one another most unmercifully, like the very best of friends, and he persistently keeps on observing Frances. It looks as if she exerted some strange fascination upon him, of which she is perfectly ignorant. He never goes beyond the bounds of the most simple friendliness, but, sometimes, she sharply resents some cynical remark of his, without seeming to disturb him in the least.

Meanwhile, my friend Willoughby Jones has told me that Gordon is doing Mrs. Van Rossum's portrait, while the younger lady roams about the studio and eats chocolates, talking about carburetors and tarpon-tackle.

The family will leave soon in search of the balmy zephyrs of Florida. My friend's chatter also included the information that Gordon might soon take a run down there.

"They say he's becoming a captive of her bow and spear," he told me. "It looks as if he were trying to join the ranks of the Four Hundred. It has been said that the Van Rossums, or at least Miss Sophia, show some willingness to adopt him. Wouldn't it be funny?"

Funny! It would be tragic! I can't for an instant reconcile myself to such an idea, for I hardly think that Miss Van Rossum is the sort of young woman who would inspire Gordon with a consuming love. Come to think of it, I have never known him to be in love with any one, so how can I know the kind of fair charmer that will produce in him what the French call the lightning stroke? And then, Willoughby Jones is known as an inveterate and notorious gossip. The whole matter, if not an utter invention, is simply based on Gordon's policy to cultivate the people who can afford to pay five thousand for a full-length portrait. I wonder whether it would not be well for me to give him a word of warning? No!

If I did such a thing, he would certainly tell me not to be a donkey, and I should deserve the rebuke.

CHAPTER X

THE WORK LOST

However plat.i.tudinous it may sound, I am compelled to remark how the time flies. From the calendar's standpoint there are but three weeks to come before the advent of Spring, and I trust the sprite will be better clad than she is in one of Frieda's pictures. In this particular lat.i.tude March is not very apt to temper the wind to such a shorn lamb as smiles out of that painting, clad with Cupid-like garments of infinite grace, but questionable warmth. She should have worn a heavy sweater.

Day by day I have watched the growth of Baby Paul, but it is only on Sundays that I have been able to see much of his mother, who comes home rather weary, as a rule, and always has ever so much sewing to do after her return. I have heard her discuss ways and means with Frieda, till I felt my small allowance of brains positively addling. Together they have been planning tiny garments for the babe and larger ones for themselves, while I sat there conscious of my inferiority and looking at them admiringly, but with something of the understanding of an average lap-dog. I find them very indulgent, however.

Dear me! What a time we had of it at Christmas. My midday meal took place at my sister's, in Weehawken, but the dinner was at Frieda's, where I was permitted to contribute the turkey. It could not be made to penetrate the exiguous oven of the little gas-stove, but we bribed the janitress to cook it for us. I had been in grave consultation with my dear old friend in regard to the toys I might purchase for Baby Paul, being anxious that his first experience of the great day should be a happy one, but Frieda frowned upon woolly lambs, teddy bears and Noah's Arks.

"If you will insist, Dave," she told me, "you can go and buy him a rubber elephant or some such thing, but he is altogether too young to play games. I know you have a sneaking desire to teach him checkers. If you will persist in wasting your money on presents, give me a five-dollar bill and I'll go around and buy him things he really needs.

I'll put them in a box and send them with your best love."

"What about Frances?" I asked.

"A good pair of stout boots would be wisest," she informed me, "but perhaps you had better make it flowers, after all. More useful things might remind her too much of present hardship and poverty. A few American Beauties will give her, with their blessed fragrance, some temporary illusion of not being among the disinherited ones of the earth. I--I can give her the boots."

And so we had that dinner, just the three of us together, with Baby Paul just as good as gold and resting on Frieda's sofa. There was a box of candy sent by Kid Sullivan to his benefactress, and, although the contents looked positively poisonous, they came from a grateful heart, and she appreciated them hugely. I had brought a little present of flowers in a tiny silver vase, and they graced the table. I wore a terrible necktie Frieda had presented me with. It was a splendid refection.

The little dining-room was a thing of delight. From the walls hung many pictures, mostly unframed. They were sketches and impressions that had met favor from their gifted maker and been deemed worthy of the place.

The table was covered with a lovely white cloth, all filmy with lace, and there was no lack of pretty silver things holding bonbons and buds.

It all gave me a feeling of womanly refinement, of taste mingled with the freedom of an artistic temperament unrestrained by common metes and bounds.

Frances had one of my roses pinned to her waist, and often bent down to inhale its fragrance. When will some profound writer give us an essay on the Indispensability of the Superfluous?

Again we had a feast on New Year's eve, in my room. Gordon, who was going to a house-party at Lakewood, lent me his chafing-dish. I'll say little about the viands we concocted; at least they were flavored with affection and mutual good wishes, with the heartiest hopes for good things to come. It was not very cold, that night, and on the stroke of twelve I threw my window wide open. We listened to the orgy of sound from steam-whistles and tin horns. There floated to us, through the din, a pealing of faraway chiming bells. When I closed the window again, Frieda took the chafing-dish for a housewifely cleaning. Baby Paul had been sleeping on my bed and Frances was kneeling beside him, looking at the sleeping tot. For a moment she had forgotten us and the trivialities of the entertainment, and was breathing a prayer for her man-child.

Thus pa.s.sed the New Year's eve, and on the next morning Frances was up early, as usual, and went off to work. I pottered idly about my room till Mrs. Milliken chased me out. On the afternoon of the first Sunday of the year Gordon came in again.

Until last Autumn he had invaded my premises perhaps once in a couple of months, but, now, he is beginning to come as regularly as Frieda herself. He gives me the impression of being rather tired, and I explain this by the fact that he leads too active a life and takes too much out of himself. I am sure few men ever painted harder than he does. When I watch him at his work, it looks very easy, of course, but I know better.

His is powerful, creative work, such as no man can accomplish without putting all his energy into his toil. I am often exhausted after a few hours of writing, and I am sure that Gordon also feels the drag and the travail of giving birth to the children of his soul. Then, after a day of this sort of thing, he goes out to the theatres or the Opera and prolongs the night at the club and delves into books, for he is a great reader, especially of what he terms modern thought and philosophy. The first rays of good working light find him again at his canvas, sometimes pleased and sometimes frowning, giving me often the impression of a latter-day Sisyphus.

"I'm getting there," he said to me, one morning, in his studio. "Last year I made thirty-five thousand and this year I'll do better than that.

The time is coming soon when I won't have to go around as a sort of drummer for myself. They'll be coming to me and begging me to paint them. I'll do it for six or seven months a year, and, during the remainder of the time, I'll take life easily. My plans are all cut and dried."

"I am glad to hear it, Gordon. You deserve your success. But----"

"Go on," he snapped at me, "I know that everything must be paid for."