Between Friends Part 6

"I believe you had a run-in with that Cecile girl once, didn't you, Graylock? Like the rest of us, eh? Oh, well--my hat off to old Drene if he wins out. I hold no malice. After all, Graylock, what's a woman between friends?"

And he nodded gaily at Graylock and sauntered leisurely to the window.

And kept his back turned, fearful of exploding with laughter in the very face of the man who had been staring at him out of pale, unchanging eyes so steadily and so long.

Guilder's patient, bored, but moderate voice was raised once more:

"In regard to the letting of these contracts--"

But Graylock, staring at Quair's back, neither heeded nor heard him, for his brain was still ringing with the mockery of Quair's words--"What is a woman between friends?" And now, for the first time, he was beginning to understand what the answer might be.

III

She had not posed for Drene during the last two weeks, and he had begun to miss her, after his own fashion--that is, he thought of her when not preoccupied and sometimes desired her companionship when unoccupied.

And one evening he went to his desk, rummaged among note-books, and scribbled sheets of paper, until he found her address, which he could never remember, wrote it down on another slip of paper, pocketed it, and went out to his dinner.

But as he dined, other matters reoccupied his mind, matters professional, schemes little and great, broad and in detail, which gradually, though not excluding her entirely, quenched his desire to see her at that particular time.

Sometimes it was sheer disinclination to make an effort to communicate with her, sometimes, and usually, the self-centering concentration which included himself and his career, as well as his work, seemed to obliterate even any memory of her existence.

Now and then, when alone in his shabby bedroom, reading a dull book, or duly preparing to retire, far in the dim recesses of heart and brain a faint pain became apparent--if it could still be called pain, this vague ghost of anger stirring in the ashes of dead years--and at such moments he thought of Graylock, and of another; and the partly paralyzed emotion, which memory of these two evoked, stirred him finally to think of Cecile.

It was at such times that he always determined to seek her the next day and continue with her what had been begun--an intimacy which depended upon his own will; a destiny for her which instinct whispered was within his own control. But the next day found him at work; models of various types, ages, and degrees of stupidity came, posed, were paid, and departed; his studies for the groups in collaboration with Guilder and Quair were approaching the intensely interesting period--that stage of completion where composition has been determined upon and the excitement of developing the construction and the technical charm of modeling begins.

And evening always found him physically tired and mentally satisfied--or perturbed--to the exclusion of such minor interests as life is made of--dress, amus.e.m.e.nt, food, women. Between a man and a beloved profession in full shock of embrace there is no real room for these or thought of these.

He ate irregularly and worked with the lack of wisdom characteristic of creative ability, and he grew thinner and grayer at the temples, and grayer of flesh, too, so that within a month, between the torrid New York summer and his own unwisdom, he became again the gaunt, silent, darkly absorbed recluse, never even stirring abroad for air until some half-deadened pang of hunger, or the heavy warning of a headache, set him in reluctant motion.

He heard of Cecile now and then; Cosby had used her for a figure on a fountain destined to embellish the estate of a wealthy young man somewhere or other; Greer employed her for the central figure of Innocence in his lovely and springlike decoration for some Western public edifice. Quair had met her several times at Manhattan Beach with various and a.s.sorted wealthy young men.

And one evening Guilder came alone to his studio and found him lying on the lounge, his lank, muscular hands, still clay-stained, hanging inert to the floor above an evening paper fallen there.

"h.e.l.lo, Guilder," he said, without rising, as the big architect shambled loosely through the open doorway.

"How are you, Drene?"

"All right. It's hot."

"There's not a breath of air. It looks like a thunder-storm in the west."

He pulled up a chair and sprawled on it, wiping his grave features with a damp handkerchief.

"Drene," he said, "a philanthropic guy of sorts wants to add a chapel to the church at Shallow Brook, Long Island. We've pinched the job. Can you do an altar piece?"

"What sort?"

"They want a Virgin. It's to be called the Chapel of the Annunciation.

It's for women to repair to--under certain and natural circ.u.mstances."

"I've so much on hand--"

"It's only a single figure-barring the dove. Why don't you do it?"

"There are plenty of other men--"

"They want you. There'll be no difficulty about terms."

Drene said with a shrug:

"Terms are coming to mean less and less to me, Guilder. It costs very little for me to live." He turned his gray, tired face. "Look at this barn of a place; and go in there and look at my bedroom. I have no use for what are known as necessities."

"Still, terms are terms--"

"Oh, yes. A truck may run over me. Even at that, I've enough to live life out as I am living it here--between these empty walls--and that expanse of gla.s.s overhead. That's about all life holds for me--a sheet of gla.s.s and four empty walls--and a fistfull of wet clay."

"Are you a trifle morbid, Drene?"

"I'm not by any means; I merely prefer to live this way. I have sufficient means to live otherwise if I wish. But this is enough of the world to suit me, Guilder--and I can go to a noisy restaurant to eat in when I'm so inclined--" He laughed a rather mirthless laugh and glanced up, catching a peculiar expression in Guilder's eyes.

"You're thinking," said Drene coolly, "what a G.o.d I once set up on the altar of domesticity. I used to talk a lot once, didn't I?--a h.e.l.l of a clamor I made in eulogy of the domestic virtues. Well, only idiots retain the same opinions longer than twenty-four hours. Fixity is imbecility; the inconstant alone progress; dissatisfaction is only a synonym for intelligence; contentment translated means stagnation..... I have changed my opinion concerning the virtues of domesticity."

Guilder said, in his even, moderate voice:

"Your logic is weird, Drene: in one breath you say you have changed your opinion; in another that you are content; in another that contentment is the fixedness of imbecility--"

Drene, reddening slightly, half rose on one elbow from his couch:

"What I meant was that I change in my convictions from day to day, without reproaching myself with inconstancy. What I believed with all my heart to be sacred yesterday I find a barrier to-day; and push it aside and go on."

"Toward what?"

"I go on, that's all I know--toward sanctuary."

"You mean professionally."

"In every way--ethically--spiritually. The G.o.ds of yesterday, too, were very real--yesterday."

"Drene, a man may change and progress on his way toward what never changes. But standards remained fixed. They were there in the beginning; they are immutable. If they shifted, humanity could have no goal."

"Is there a goal?"

"Where are you going, then?"

"Just on."