A Top-Floor Idyl

"I'm glad," said Frances. "It makes it much easier."

I poured out the tea and produced a small box of vanilla wafers, which Frieda is ever so fond of.

"I wonder Gordon didn't get mad, when Baby Paul began to scream," she said.

"My dear," I remarked, "a man generally gets angry only at the unexpected. He had made up his mind that the weather would be squally and would have been rather disappointed if no shower had come. Before I had the pleasure of Master Paul's acquaintance, I mistakenly thought that every interval between waking and feeding, in a baby's life, must be taken up with lusty shrieking. I'm positively frightened and hopeless, sometimes, when I think of how much there is for me to learn. I know I'll never catch up."

"You know good tea, for one thing," answered Frieda. "Give me another cup."

I complied, and, presently, Frances, at our urging, sat down to the old piano and played something that was very pretty and soft. And then the old desire to sing must have come upon her, suddenly, for her low and husky voice brought forth a few words of a sweet, old French song. This, all at once, must have evoked some of the memories that weighed so heavily upon her heart. Her hands went up to her face and she sobbed. Frieda rose, swiftly and silently, and put her big, able hand upon the girl's shoulder.

"I – I can't even sing to my baby!" Frances moaned.

What a cry from the heart! All else would have amounted to so little, if she could only have poured out some of the melody in her soul to the poor little mite. She was brave; working for Baby Paul was of small moment; even the loss of the gallant soldier lad who had poured his stream of life for the motherland was not for the moment the paramount source of her distress. No! She could not sing for the diminutive portrait of himself, the man had left behind!

As usual, in the presence of a woman's tears, I was mute and incapable of giving comfort. I feared to utter some of the platitudes which cause the sorrowing to revolt against the futility of wordy consolation. Frieda's kindly touch was worth more than all I could have said in a dog's age. Soon, the streaming eyes had been dabbed again to dryness, but the smile I had hoped for did not return.

"I – I am sorry I was so weak," said Frances, and ran away to her room, possibly for the powder surely invented by a great benefactor of humanity, since it may serve to obliterate the traces of women's tears and enables them to look at you again, hopefully and with courage renewed.

After this, three weeks went by. The literary agent upon whose kindly head I pour my short stories announced the sale of my virtuous dog's tale, on the strength of which I took Frieda and Frances to a moving-picture theatre, one Saturday night. The latter's posing for Gordon was always a subject of conversation. The picture, it appeared, was now quite finished, and we were moving heaven and earth in our endeavors to find something wherewith a woman with a young baby might earn a few dollars. Frances spoke little of her experiences at the studio, except to gratify our curiosity. It was always the same thing. Baby was generally ever so good and Mr. McGrath fairly patient with his occasional relapses from slumbering silence. An impression made its way in my mind to the effect that Gordon rather awed his model. She had watched the picture's growth and this process of creation, utterly new to her, seemed to fill her with some sort of amazement.

"Tell me just what it is like," I asked her, as we sat on the stoop, waiting for Frieda to turn up.

"I suppose it looks like me," she said, doubtfully, "but then, it isn't a portrait, of course. I – I don't think I look just like that. Sometimes he stands in front of me for the longest time and glares, looking more and more disappointed, and all at once he says I've got a Sphynx of a face or a deuce of a mouth, or something just as complimentary. Then he turns to the picture again and changes something, with merely a touch of one of those big brushes, and plasters on another dab of paint and moves off to look at it. After this, he says it's much better, or declares he's spoiled everything, and he lights his pipe and goes to work again. Sometimes he wears the expression of a bulldog worrying a bone, and a minute later he'll be just as nice as nice can be. He's a strange man."

"He certainly is," I assented. "At any rate, I am glad that your experience with him, on the whole, has not proved a disagreeable one."

"Indeed, sometimes I have rather enjoyed it. Yesterday, I didn't. He began, à propos of nothing, to tell me about one of your books, and said that your idea about a girl called Laura was so silly he had no patience with you, because you had idealized her until it was rather a caricature than a portrait, and you didn't know any more about women than the baby did. So, of course, I got angry at him and he looked at me, with a smile that was half a sneer, and told me to keep on looking just like that. It seems that I had just the expression he wanted to bring out. When you look too long at the baby,' he said, 'you get the likeness of a girl who's been scolded at table and is going to cry into the soup. I thought I'd wake you up!' I was ever so provoked, and he painted right along without minding me in the least. When he was through, he put on his most polite air and told me that all he had said about that Laura was nonsense, and that she was just a fool girl like any other. As for the picture, he said it would make some fellows sit up and take notice. He appeared to be intensely pleased with it and thanked me for being so patient with him."

"I am not surprised," I told her. "When our good little friend, Dr. Porter, who is the best-hearted chap you'll meet in a long day's journey, becomes very interested in some dreadful malady and wants to make experiments, I am sure he considers guinea-pigs and rats in the light of mere material. Gordon will not have the slightest compunction about vivisecting a model, if it suits his purpose."

"But he can be ever so kind. He very often is," declared Frances. "On the very first day he told me not to allow myself to get overtired, and he's kept on asking me ever since, if I didn't want to take a rest. Sometimes he made me stop, when I could very well have kept on."

Frieda appeared, coming around the corner under full steam, and we got in the car and went off to the movies. The services of Eulalie had been obtained, to mind the baby for a couple of hours. She likes to do it, and it gives her an opportunity to go into my room and rummage in my bureau drawers, where she hunts for missing buttons with the eagerness of a terrier looking for rats.

When we returned, satiated with picturesque tragedy and second-rate vaudeville, Frances, as usual, flew upstairs, obsessed with the idea that obviously grease-painted and false-whiskered villains such as we had seen on the screen must have penetrated the citadel and stolen her baby. Frieda had left us at the door, and I climbed up in more leisurely fashion, meeting Eulalie on the stairs, loaded with my soiled linen, who bade me good evening, pleasantly.

Frances was waiting for me on her door-sill.

"Paul is all right. Nothing has happened," she confided to me. "Good night, Mr. Cole, and thank you ever so much."

She smiled at me, and I was pleased that I had been able to divert her thoughts for a few moments. How glad I should be if I could render more permanent that little look of happiness she showed for an instant!

On my desk I found a message from Gordon, asking me to come to the studio next day, which was a Sunday, for lunch.

I kept the appointment, walking all the way up. As I passed Bryant Park, I noticed that the leaves were becoming slightly yellow. It was evident that the summer was giving a hint of impending departure. I reached the big building, just before noon, knowing that I should be somewhat ahead of time, but glad to have a chat with Gordon.

"I know you've been dying to see that canvas," he told me. "That young woman's a wonder. A clever and intelligent woman's the one to really understand what a fellow's after and help him out. I really think she took some interest in the thing. If she isn't otherwise occupied when I return from Southampton, I might possibly make use of her for another week or two. And there's Spinelli, the sculptor, who has a commission for a big group of sirens, for a fountain. He was in here and looked at the picture. Asked about her, he did, but I told him I didn't think she'd pose that way."

"I should think not," I declared.

"You needn't get mad," he retorted. "I've been looking around to see if I could get her something to do. Come in the front room and light your pipe, if you want to. Windows are open. I'm expecting a couple of women in to lunch. Glad you came in early. Yumasa's juggling in the kitchenette; the chap's an artist, when it comes to playing tunes on a chafing-dish. Well, how does it strike you?"

The picture stood before me. It was practically finished. I sank down on the cushioned bench that ran beneath the broad window facing the north and stared at the canvas.

"Great Heavens, Gordon!" I exclaimed.

"It hits right out from the shoulder, doesn't it," he said. "Ever see anything much more alive than this?"

"She's going to lift her eyes from the baby," I answered. "She's going to indulge in that little half-timid and half-boastful look of the young mother challenging the whole world to say that her infant isn't perfection in flesh and blood!"

Gordon made no answer. He was standing before the canvas, his left arm crossed over his breast with the right elbow resting upon it and the square bluish chin in the grasp of long thin fingers.

"You've evidently stuck to the model a great deal," I commented further, "but you've also idealized, made poetry of her."

"And you're talking like a donkey," my friend told me, rather impatiently. "I simply have better eyes than you. Of course, I suppose you've seen a lot of her, for she seems to think the sun rises and sets on you, but you haven't studied every bit of her face as I've done. I've idealized nothing at all, but my own appreciation of her, and perhaps a trick or two, have caught you. The light came right through this open window, naturally, and caused that glint of the fluffy ends of hair, like powdered sunlight dusted over the dark chestnut. It also threw those strong high lights over the edges of the features. Then, I stuck those roses between her and the window and they gave the reflected tints. It's just a portrait, you old idiot, and nothing else, except perhaps for the fancy shawl. Of course, everything that wasn't directly illumined was in subdued tones, which account for the softness. You may think it's rather ideal, but that's only because I saw her right and got an effective pose. Hang it all, man! If I gave you a pond and a bunch of trees and blue hills back of them, you might describe them accurately, and yet make the picture an interesting one, in one of those fool stories of yours."

"She is very beautiful," I said, knowing that he expected no direct answer to his tirade.

"If she hadn't been, I shouldn't have bothered with her," he replied, in a tone that rather rasped on my feelings. "That's just what's the matter with her; she's a good-looker and you daren't change anything. If I were to use her again for anything important, fellows would ask if I intend to stick to the same old model, all my life. If I get her to pose just once more, it will be about the end of her usefulness to me, and I'd do it just for the fun of making another study of an interesting type, something to stick among the unframed things piled up against the wall and show people, after this one's sold."

He moved off to get a cigarette from the small square stool on which he keeps brushes and tubes, leaving me to stare in great desolation at the picture of Frances and her baby. So he's going to sell it! Indeed, the more I looked at it the better I realized that it was the woman herself, described by a master. He had naturally seen things I had not noticed, that was all. I think I've never had a great desire for money, but the idea was very irksome that her portrait would be sold and that it would hang on some rich man's wall, stared at only by people merely concerned with the beauty their dollars had bought.

It is, perhaps, just as well that I have some sense of humor. The idea of this wonderful thing hanging in my rather dingy room suddenly struck me as rather incongruous. As well think of a necklace of brilliants about some ragged pauper's neck. To the best of my belief I have never envied the people who can afford to possess the gauds I have sometimes admired in the windows of shops, in which only the rich can ever deal. Why this sudden obsession of a desire to have that picture of the young woman where I could look at it, daily, and delight in its perfection? I have often thought that in my den or in her own room she is as nearly out of place as her picture would be. She impresses one as being able to lend further grace to the most splendid dwelling-place.

Once more I catch myself communing with my folly. After all, Madame Dupont is just a woman; her smile gives charm to her surroundings. When she sits in my old Morris chair, she converts it into the throne of beautiful motherhood and the place into a palace of grace. Why should I care for daubs, for splashes of paint never so cleverly put on, since I can see the model from time to time and rejoice that she counts me among her friends?

"You're the grumpiest old curmudgeon I ever knew," said Gordon, interrupting my cogitations. "You haven't said a word for ten minutes. And so you like it, do you?"

"You've never done anything half so good," I affirmed.

"To tell you the truth, I've a notion I've happened to do something pretty big," he said, nodding. "But a fellow's apt to get hypnotized by his own work, sometimes. I'll have to stop looking at the thing. It'll stay here while I go off to the country for a few weeks and, when I come back, I'll have the right perspective again. But I know it's devilish good. I feel as I did once at the Salon, when I got the Mention Honorable for that codfish and lobster on a marble table. You know, the one Tilson bought. I knew it was right, as soon as I'd finished it."

Mutely, I committed him to the devil and all his fallen angels. What had this picture to do with still-life in a fishmonger's shop? Hang it, I really believe Gordon has no soul! Or can it be a part of the pose inseparable from him, of which he certainly is sometimes unconscious?

At this moment, the bell rang and Yumasa came out of some cubby and rushed to the outer door. Gordon followed him and warmly welcomed a rather stout lady of uncertain age and very youthful hair, after which he held out his hand to the original of Miss Van Rossum's portrait.

"The steamer was awfully early," explained the young lady, "but she took forever to dock. Don't you think we were awfully good to come in town on such a warm day? I could have played thirty-six holes, you know, but, of course, we hadn't seen Dad for a long time. Mamma asked him to come with us, but he said he'd have to run over to the Club. He'll join us here at three."

"Let me see, he was gone four months, wasn't he?" said Gordon.

"Yes, something like that," answered the mother, holding up a tortoise-shell lorgnette and looking at me.

"I want to introduce my friend, David Cole, Mrs. Van Rossum," hastened Gordon. "Miss Van Rossum, David is my very best pal. He's the novelist, you know."

"How very interesting!" clamored the young lady. "Gordon has given me two of your books to read. Now that I have met you, I shall certainly have to begin them. You see, there is so much to do in summer, Mr. Cole."

"Indeed there is, Miss Van Rossum," I assented. "I hardly find time even to look over the morning paper."

"Oh! Newspapers are such rubbish," she declared, airily.

"Why, Sophia!" cried Mrs. Van Rossum. "One of them had your picture last week."

"It was rotten," said Miss Sophia, with some firmness.

"Oh, my dear! Why will you use such dreadful language?" the mother reproved her.

"That's all right, Ma, every one says it now."

Miss Van Rossum, having thus established the status of her vocabulary, at least to her own satisfaction, took a few steps across the big studio and stopped before the picture.

"Oh! I say! Did you do that, Gordon?" she asked. "Isn't she a stunner? Was it her own baby or did she borrow it? Cunning little mite, isn't it?"

"A study from a model," Gordon informed her. "Yes, it is her own baby."

The older lady also came forward and inspected the painting.

"Of course, you must have flattered her a great deal," she opined. "You have such an imagination, my dear Mr. McGrath!"

"It isn't a patch on David's," he replied. "Novelists can beat painters all hollow at that sort of thing."

"I'm awfully hungry," interrupted Miss Van Rossum. "Had to get up at an unearthly hour to come down and meet Dad."

At once we went to the small table in the next room. The flowers were exquisite. The young lady crunched radishes, with enthusiasm, and spoke disparagingly of a certain hackney which, according to her, had unfairly been awarded a blue ribbon at Piping Rock, gaining a decision over her own palfrey. Also, she discussed Mrs. Pickley-Sanderson's form at tennis and spoke of the new shotgun her father had brought over for her, from England.

"What's your handicap at golf, Mr. Cole?" she asked me, graciously.

"I'm afraid David's a fossil," put in Gordon. "He's utterly ignorant of the most important things of life."

"What a pity," she sympathized. "And how do you manage to spend the time?"

"I – I don't spend it, Miss Van Rossum," I answered, inanely. "I try to save it and make it last as long as possible."

"How funny," she declared, and gave me up as hopeless, directing the remainder of her conversation at Gordon.

Finally, I took my leave, conscious that I had been asinine in my remarks and had made a deplorable impression. Upon the picture I cast one more look before leaving. Those wonderful eyes of Frances were directed towards the baby, of course, but for an instant I felt that she was about to raise them and smile at me. At any rate she doesn't consider me as a useless incumbrance of the earth because I can't play golf or shoot birds. She is restful and gentle, whereas Miss Van Rossum appears to me to have the soothing qualities of a healthy bass drum. But then, I may be mistaken.

CHAPTER VIII

WE TAKE AN EXCURSION

The day was a hot one. In Gordon's studio a slight breeze had blown in and mingled with the scent of the flowers with which his table was adorned, and the behavior of my collar had been of the best. The ladies, secure in the absence of starched things such as we men throttle ourselves with, had been pictures of comfortable coolness. But in the street I plunged in an atmosphere of sodden heat and refused to obey the instinct that usually leads me to walk whenever I am not pressed for time. This happens often, for the productive hours of a writer are few, leaving many to be employed in alleged thoughts. Of these the most harrowing lie in the fact that a laborer can dig for eight hours a day, whereas helplessness comes to me after writing a few pages.

I took the car, turning in my mind the observations I had made in the studio. Several times I had heard Miss Van Rossum call my friend by his first name, and the mother had manifested no surprise. They are probably old acquaintances. I think he once told me that he had first met them in Paris. For aught I know, however, he may have dandled her on his knees when she was a child. The process now would be lacking in comfort, for she outweighs him by a good thirty pounds. Her forearms seem larger and just as hard as those of Frieda's pugilistic model. And then, Gordon is a misogynist and considers the feminine form divine from a chilly, artistic standpoint. From this I judged that Miss Van Rossum is a young lady who calls every man she meets two or three times by his first name. Gordon certainly doesn't mind it, but then, he got five thousand for the portrait, a sum that excuses some lack of formality.

The young woman's looks are undeniable. She's an utterly handsome creature and, as far as I have been able to see, accepts the fact as she does the family fortune. It is something due to a Van Rossum, and she is too ladylike to boast of such advantages. This serves to make her very simple and natural. Like many of the mortals built on a generous scale she is good tempered. I wondered that she had asked so few questions in regard to the model of the picture she had seen. Practically, she had come, looked and turned away to the contemplation of scrambled eggs with truffles, followed by squabs. True, she had inquired whether the baby belonged to the model. To Pygmalion his sculptured beauty came to life, but from the young lady's standpoint I think that the purchased beauty that is to be changed into limned or chiselled grace must be already considered to have turned to paint or stone. If I had declared that a model was probably a thing of pulsing blood and quivering nerves, it is likely that she would have opened her fine blue eyes in surprise. But then, most of us, subconsciously, are apt to feel that those we deem beneath us in position or talent or virtue can really possess but the outward semblance of humanity.

The foregoing platitudes came to me, I think, because I actually resented the scanty attention they had paid to Frances. They had looked at the "Mother and Child," and approved. The signature made it a valuable work of art and, as such, had awakened a polite interest. But then, after all, it was worth but a few thousand dollars, and a Van Rossum couldn't very well go into ecstasies over an article of such moderate worth.

Poor Frances! She has come down to the rank of the women who stand behind counters till ready to drop; of those who toil in spite of aching heads and weary limbs. It is appalling to think of men by the million considered as food for cannon, but it seems just as cruel on the part of fate to designate women in equal numbers as carriers of burdens, destined for most of their lives to bear pain and weariness and the constant effort to smile in spite of these.

And then, Frances is further punished on account of that little child. It hangs about her neck, a heavy treasure. She has fulfilled the most glorious purpose of womanhood, and, for the time being, her reward lies in the fact that she can scarce find an occupation that will keep body and soul together. There is no room for sprouting manhood in workrooms, in offices, in any of the places wherein only the ripe are of avail to be squeezed into the vintage of the prosperity destined to a few. Her gift of voice and her inheritance of beauty have served but to bring bitterness. Had she possessed a shrill voice and ordinary looks, there would have been no going abroad, no love for a kindred artistic soul, no tiny infant to weep over. By this time she might have been a nice schoolmarm, conscious of superiority over the small flock in her care and tranquil in the expectation of a modest salary. Also, there might have been dreams of a plush-covered parlor in a little home, some day, when honest John or Joe should at last decide to let her teach little pupils of her own providing. I suppose that such dreams must come to all. Even the little cripple in the library, the other day, who was looking at the fine girl who never noticed him, indulges in them, and who shall say that they do not brighten some of his hours even if, at other times, they deepen his darkness.

Gordon seems to me like the only exception I know to the rule I have just formulated. He has the brain of an artist, but the soul of an actuary, and, sometimes, I wish I were not so fond of him. The way he speaks of Frances actually revolts me. For another week or two he may, perhaps, make use of her, forsooth! But he must not indulge such weakness too long, for fear he may be considered as a man of one model. He has plucked the flower of her beauty and spread it on canvas, destined to bring forth admiration and dollars. But now, like squeezed out paint tubes and worn out brushes she may be discarded. He has obliged me, and made a good speculation. Next week he will be playing golf and cultivating damsels and dowagers who may desire immortality in paint. On the putting-green he may obtain commissions, and in the tennis court inveigle some white-flanneled banker into leaving his facial characteristics to posterity. I could have forgiven him, if he had shown a little real enthusiasm in his model and deplored his inability to employ her further. After all, she has inspired him to great accomplishment and he is a cold-blooded opportunist, in spite of our mutual fondness. The last word I heard from him as he saw me to the door was a whispered one, as he jerked his head towards the studio, where we had left the ladies.