A Top-Floor Idyl

"I'm afraid you won't," I replied. "I wouldn't advise her to lose steady employment for the purpose of posing a couple of weeks for you."

"I suppose not. How do you like that Spanish omelette?"

Thus he cut short all reference to Frances, and, soon afterwards, we parted on the Avenue.

During the next two months there was little worthy of being chronicled. Frances, I think, grew a little thinner, but always asserted that she was in the best of health. Baby Paul was rapidly accumulating weight, and Frieda and I offered him a small baby carriage, which folded up most cleverly and took little room in the shop or at home. It was on the occasion of the completion of his fourth month that the presentation was made by my dear old friend.

"There, my dear, is a gimcrack thing David insisted on buying. The man at the store swore it couldn't possibly fold up suddenly with the baby in it. And now what do you think of my having that old blue dress of mine dyed black?"

The reply of Frances was a heartfelt one as to the perambulator, but discouraging in regard to the garment.

"Oh, never mind," said Frieda. "I'll make paint rags out of it, then. I only thought I'd help out the shop. Now let us get David to give us a cup of tea."

We were talking cheerfully together, when Gordon dropped in from the skies, most unexpectedly. We were glad to see him and, since four people in my room crowded it considerably, my friend took a seat on the bed. I had first met him in the Bohemia of the Latin Quarter, when his necktie out-floated all others and any one prophesying that he would become the portrayer in ordinary to the unsubmerged would have been met with incredulous stares. At that time, for him, Béranger was the only poet and Murger the only writer. And now his clothes are built, while his shoes are designed. Yet, in my top floor, he showed some of the old Adam, joining gladly in our orgy of tea and wafers and utterly forgetting all pose. I noticed that he looked a great deal at Frances, but it was no impertinent stare. She was quite unconscious of his scrutiny or, if at all aware of it, probably deemed it a continuation of his method of artistic study. She had become accustomed to it in his studio.

"David tells me that you are lost to me as a model," he said, suddenly, with a sort of eagerness that showed a trace of disappointment.

"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, Dick 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 godlings, 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 asserted, "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 Aïda' 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 glasses."

"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 platitudinous 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 latitude 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 passed 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."

"I'm not so sure of that. I was merely about to say that I don't know whether you can be so very sure of being able to take life in such a leisurely way as you hope to."

"Don't you worry, old man," he answered. "I know what's best for me and how to go to work to obtain it."

"I trust you do," I replied. "Well, I'll be going now. See you next Sunday."

"Why next Sunday?" he asked sharply.

"Simply because you've lately acquired the excellent habit of calling on that day."

"I'll not be there," he declared. "I have other fish to fry."

I took my leave, somewhat surprised. But three days later, as we were taking our habitual Sabbatical refection of tea and biscuits, he appeared again, bearing a box of what he calls the only chocolates in New York fit to eat. But he came in a taxi, for he wouldn't be seen carrying anything but his cane and gloves. For a second, as I looked at him, he seemed slightly embarrassed, although I may have erred in so thinking.

Frieda seized upon the chocolates, greedily. She is one of those dear stout people, who assure you that they hardly ever eat anything and whom one always finds endowed with a fine appetite.

"It's too bad about Baby Paul," she said. "He is yet too young to be stuffed with sweets or amused with toys."

"I presume that a nursling is the only really normal human being," remarked Gordon. "He possesses but the most natural desires, has no ambitions unconnected with feeding and sleeping, and expresses his emotions without concealment. Affectation is foreign to him, and his virtues and vices are still in abeyance."

"Paul," declared Frances, indignantly, "is extremely intelligent and has no vices at all."

"I stand corrected, Mrs. Dupont. He is the exception, of course, and I only spoke in general. Frieda, my dear, won't you be so obliging as to open the piano and play something for us? I don't suppose it will awaken the baby, will it?"

"He just loves music," asserted his mother. "When I play, he often opens his eyes and listens quietly, ever so long. I know that it pleases him, ever so much. His – oh! He must have music in his soul! How – how could it be otherwise?"

Frieda hurried to the piano and opened it, after giving the stool a couple of turns. She began with some Mendelssohn. Frances was holding her baby in her arms, her wonderful head bent towards the little one, with a curve of her neck so graceful that it fascinated me. Gordon was also looking at her with a queer, eager look upon his features. He knew as well as I that she had heard again some vibrant music of former days, had felt the sound-waves that trembled in her own soul, and that, to her, the child represented something issued from wondrous melodies, a swan's song uplifted to the heavens and bearing with it the plaint of a lost happiness.

"Oh! Frieda, some – something else," she cried. "I – I – Just play some Chopin."

At once Frieda complied. Where on earth does the woman find the ability to play as she does? She tells me that she hardly ever practises, and, in my many visits to her, I have never chanced to find her at the piano, though she possesses a very fair instrument. But I think I understand; what I mistake for technique must chiefly be her wonderful sentiment and the appreciation of beauty that overshadows some faults of execution. Frieda's real dwelling place is in a heaven of her own making, that is all beauty and color and harmony. From there come her painting and her music, which evidently enter her being and flow out at the finger-tips. I have always thought that if her color-tubes had not possessed such an overwhelming attraction for her, she might have become one of the most wonderful musicians of the world.

Gradually, Frances raised her head again, until it finally rested on the back of the armchair, with the eyes half-closed under the spell of Frieda's playing. By this time she had perhaps forgotten the memories evoked by the "Songs Without Words," that had for a moment brought back to her the masterful bow that had made her heart vibrate, for the first time, with the tremulousness of a love being born. Chopin did not affect her in the same way, and she was calm again. Frieda came to the end of the "Valse Brillante" and took up the "Berçeuse." Then the young mother closed her eyes altogether. The melody brought rest to her, and sweetness with a blessed peace of soul.

When I looked at Gordon, he was still staring, and by this time I thought I knew the reason of his visits. Beyond a peradventure Frances was the lodestone that attracted him. Did her wonderful features suggest to him a new and greater picture? Was he ruminating over the plan of some masterpiece and seeking inspiration from her? It seemed probable indeed. When the idea comes to me for a novel, I am apt to moon about, searching the recesses of my mind, digging in the depths of my experience, staring into a vacancy peopled only by faint shadows that begin to gather form and strength and, finally, I hope, some attributes of humanity. At such times I often fail to recognize friends on the street or, even, I may attempt to read books upside down. Is it possible that Gordon suffers from similar limitations and needs to muse and toil and delve before he can bring out the art that is in him?

Only yesterday I saw in the paper that he led a cotillon at the Van Rossums. Moreover, at the Winter Exhibition I had the shock of my life. I hurried there to see again the "Mother and Child," instead of which I found his signature on the portrait of a railroad president. The papers spoke of it as a wonderful painting, and one of them reproduced it. I freely acknowledge that it deserves all the encomiums lavished upon it, for it is a bold and earnest piece of work. But he has never done anything like the picture of Frances.

I met him there and looked at him, questioningly. He understood me at once.

"I'll get half the financial big guns now," he told me coolly, and left me to greet a millionaire's bride.

I am not so foolish as to think he can be in love with Frances, and I doubt very much whether he is in love with any one else, in spite of the gossip that has reached me. No, he must simply be thinking of some great composition with which he expects, in his own good time, to take the world by storm. And yet, what if I should be mistaken? The mere idea makes me feel very cold and uncomfortable, for no reason that I know of.

When he finally took his leave, he thanked Frieda for playing to us, and said good-by to Frances as perfunctorily as he does everything else. We began to clean up the teacups, and Frieda folded the frivolous little tablecloth she has contributed to my outfit and put it away, while Frances and I quarreled.

"I am not going," she said firmly.

"You are utterly mistaken," I insisted, "and you're a bold, mad, rebellious creature. You will go at once and put on your best hat, and your cloak, and dab powder on your nose, if it will make you happy, and come along like a good child."

"But what is the use of my paying board to Mrs. Milliken and then having you spend money for dinners at restaurants?" she objected.

"The use is obvious. It affords us the joy of permitting ourselves, once in a blue moon, to behave like spendthrifts; it allows us to indulge in the company of the young and ambitious, as well as of the old and foolish. Moreover, an occasional change of diet was recommended by Hippocrates. Who are you to rebel against the most ancient and respectable medical authority, pray?"

"It is utterly wrong," she persisted. "I am always accepting your kindnesses, and Frieda's, and there is nothing I can do in return, and – and – "

She seemed to choke a little. Her voice came hoarse and muffled as ever, and I fear that Dr. Porter's ministrations are doing her little, if any, good.

"My dear Frances," said Frieda, "we both understand you, perfectly. It is the most splendid thing for a woman to keep her self-respect and refuse to be a drag upon her friends. But when she can give them genuine pleasure by accepting a trifling thing like this, now and then, she ought to be loath to deprive them. David says that the company downstairs rather stifles his imagination, and he further alleges that dining alone at Camus is a funereal pleasure. Now go and get ready. There is plenty of time, and I'll come in and hook up your waist, if you want me to."

So Frances ran away to her room, with Baby Paul on her arm. She often rebels like this, yet generally succumbs to our wiles. The pair of us, fortunately, is more than she can successfully contend against.

Frieda followed her to her room, and I rummaged among the Sunday papers, finding the French daily. Frances likes to look at it and I have ordered the newsman at the corner to deliver me the Sunday number regularly. But to-day she has been busy with a lot of mending so that it remained unopened. My first glance revealed a column giving a list of unclaimed letters in the hands of the French Consul. There was one for Madame Paul Dupont, it appeared.

I seized the paper and ran with it to the door of her room. My hand was already lifted to knock, when I bethought myself that a delay of a few minutes would be unimportant, and that it was best to run no chances of interfering with Baby Paul's entertainment. I returned to my room and paced up and down the worn Brussels. She had often told me how sorry she was that she had never heard from her late husband's parents. This letter, in all probabilities, was from them. If I told Frances about it immediately, she would worry over it until next day. Why not wait at least until our return from Camus, or even until the morning? If she knew about it, she would probably not have a wink of sleep. I determined to postpone the announcement.