CHAPTER XVThe usual happened to James Cleland; for the first two months in Paris he was intensely lonely. Life in an English-speaking pension near the Place de l'Etoile turned out to be very drab and eventless after he returned to his rooms, fatigued from sight-seeing and exploration. The vast silver-grey city seemed to him cold, monotonously impressive and oppressive; he was not in sympathy with it, being totally unaccustomed to the splendour of a municipal ensemble with all its beauty of reticence and good taste. The vast vistas, the subdued loveliness of detail, the stately tranquillity of this capital, he did not understand after the sham, the ignorance, the noisy vulgarity of his native municipality.Here were new standards; the grey immensity of the splendid capital gave him, at first, an impression of something flat and almost featureless under the horizon-wide sweep of sky. There were no sky-scrapers. With exquisite discretion, Notre Dame dominated the east, the silvery majesty of the Pantheon the south; in the west the golden bubble of the Invalides burned; the frail tracery of the Eiffel Tower soared from the city's centre.And for the first two months he was an alien here, depressed, silenced, not comprehending, oblivious of the subtle atmosphere of civil friendliness possessing the throngs which flowed by him on either hand, unaware that he stood upon the kindly hearthstone of the world itself, where the hospitable warmth never grew colder, where the generous glow was for all.He went to lectures at the Sorbonne; he attended a class in philology in the Rue des Ecoles; he studied in the quiet alcoves of the great Library of Ste. Genevieve; he paced the sonorous marble pavements of the Louvre. And the austere statues seemed to chill him to the soul.All was alien to him, all foreign; the English-speaking landlady of his pension, with her eternal cold in the head and her little shoulder shawl; the dreary American families from the Middle West who gathered thrice a day at the pension table; passing wayfarers he saw from the windows; red-legged soldiers in badly fitting uniforms, priests in shovel hats and black soutanes, policemen slouching by under cowled cloaks, their bayonets dangling; hatless, chattering shop girls, and the uninteresting types of civilian citizens; men in impossible hats and oddly awful clothes; women who all looked smart from the rear and dubious from the front.He found an annoying monotony in the trees of the Bois, a tiresome sameness in square and circle and park and boulevard. He found the language difficult to understand, more difficult to speak. Food, accommodations, the domestic régime, were not to his liking. French economies bored him.At lectures his comrades seemed merely superficially polite and not very desirable as acquaintances. He felt himself out of place, astray from familiar things, out of touch with this civilization, out of sympathy with place and people. He was intensely lonely.In the beginning he wrote to Stephanie every other day. That burst of activity lasted about two months.Also, in his rather dingy and cheerless suite of rooms, he began a tragedy in five acts and a pessimistic novel called "Out of the Depths." Also, he was guilty of a book of poems called "Day Dreams."He missed his father terribly; he missed his home; he missed the noisy, grotesque, half-civilized and monstrous city of his nativity. And he missed Stephanie violently.He told her so in every letter. The more letters he wrote the warmer grew this abrupt affection for her. And, his being a creative talent, with all its temperamental impulses, exaggerations and drawbacks, he began to evolve, unconsciously, out of Stephanie Quest a girl based on the real girl he knew, only transcendentally endowed with every desirable and ornamental quality abstractly favoured by himself.He began to create an ideal Stephanie to comfort him in his loneliness; he created, too, a mutual situation and a sentimental atmosphere for them both, neither of which had existed when he left America.But now, in his letters, more and more this romantic and airy fabric took shape. Being young, and for the first time in his life thrown upon his own resources—and, moreover, feeling for the first time the pleasures of wielding an eloquent, delicate and capricious pen to voice indefinable aspirations, he began to lose himself in romantic subtleties, evoking drama out of nothing, developing it by implication and constructing it with pensive and capricious humour hinting of dreamy melancholy.Until the Stephanie Quest of his imagination had become to him the fair, and exquisitely indifferent little renaissance figure of his fancy; and he, somehow or other, her victim. And the more exquisite and indifferent he created her, the more she fascinated him, until he completely hypnotized himself with his own cleverly finished product.A letter from her woke him up more or less, jolting him in his trance so that the jingle and dissonance of the real world filled, for a moment, his enchanted ears.DEAR JIM:Your letters perplex me more and more, and I don't know at all how to take them. Do you mean you are in love with me? I can't believe it. I read and re-read your last three letters—such dear, odd, whimsical letters!—so wonderfully written, so full of beauty and of poetry.They do almost sound like love-letters—or at least as I imagine love-letters are written. But they can't be!Howcan they be?And first of all, even if you meant them that way, I don't know what to think. I've never been in love. I know how I feel about you—have always felt. You know, too.But you never gave me any reason to think—and I never dreamed of thinking anything likethatwhen you were here. It never occurred to me. It would not occur to me now except for your very beautiful letters—so unlike you—so strangely sad, so whimsical, so skillful in wonderful phrases that they're like those vague prose poems you sent me, which hint enough to awaken your imagination and set you aflame with curiosity.But youcan'tmean that you're in love with me. I should be too astonished. Besides, I shouldn't know what to do about it. It wouldn't seem real. I never have thought of you in such a way.What makes a girl fall in love? Do you know? Could she fall in love with a man through his letters because they are so beautiful and sad and elusive, so full of charm and mystery? I'm in love withthem. But, Jim, I don't know what to think about you. I'd have to see you again, first, anyway. You are such a dear boy! I can't seem to think of you that way. You know it's a different kind of love, ours. All I can think about it is the tremendous surprise—if it's true.But I don't believe it is. You are lonely; you miss dad—miss me, perhaps. I think you do miss me, for the first time in your life. You see, I have rather a clear mind and memory, and I can't help remembering that when you were here you certainly could not have felt that way toward me; so how can you now? I did bore you sometimes.Anyway, I adore you with all my heart, as you know. My affection hasn't changed one bit since I was a tiny girl and came into your room that day and saw you down on the floor unpacking your suit-case. I adored you instantly. I have not changed. Girls don't change.Another letter from her some months later:You're such a funny boy—just a boy, still, while in these six months I've overtaken and passed you in years. You won't believe it, but I have. Maturity has overtaken me. I am really a real woman.Why are your letters vaguely reproachful? Have I done anything? Were you annoyed when I asked you whether you meant me to take them as love letters? You didn't write for a month after that. Did I scare you? Youarefunny!I do really think youarein love—not with me, Jim—not with any other particular girl—but just in love with love. Writers and artists and poets are inclined to that sort of thing, I fancy.That's what worries me about myself; I am not inclined that way; I don't seem to be artistic enough in temperament to pay any attention to sentiment of that sort. I don't desire it; I don't miss it; it simply is not an item in the list of things that interest me. But of all things in the world, I do adore friendship.I had an afternoon off from the hospital the other day—I'm still a probationer in a pink and white uniform, you know—and I went up to town and flew about the shops and lunched with a college friend, Helen Davis, at the Ritz and had a wonderful time.And who do you suppose I ran into? Oswald Grismer! Jim, he certainly is the best-looking fellow—such red-gold hair,—such fascinating golden eyes and colouring.We chatted most amiably and he took us to tea, and then—I suppose it wasn't conventional—but we went to his studio with him, Helen Davis and I.Heisthe cleverest man! He has done a delightful fountain and several portrait busts, and a beautiful tomb for the Lidsey family, and his studies in wax and clay are wonderful!He really seems very nice. And the life he leads is heavenly! Such a wonderful way to live—just a bed-room and the studio.He's going to give a little tea for me next time I have an afternoon off, and I'm to meet a lot of delightful, unconventional people there—painters, writers, actors—people who havedonethings!—I'm sure it will be wonderful.I have bought five pounds of plasticine and I'm going to model in it in my room every time I have a few moments to myself. But oh, it does smell abominably, and it ruins your finger nails.After that, Oswald Grismer's name recurred frequently in her letters. Cleland recognized also the names of several old schoolmates of his as figuring at various unconventional ceremonies in Grismer's studio—Harry Belter, now a caricaturist on the New YorkMorning Star; Badger Spink, drawing for the illustrated papers; Clarence Verne, who painted pretty girls for the covers of popular magazines, and his one-time master, Phil Grayson, writer for the better-class periodicals.It's delightful, she wrote; we sometimes have music—often celebrated people from the Metropolitan Opera drop in and you meet everybody of consequence you ever heard of outside the Social Register—people famous in their professions—and it is exciting and inspiring and fills me with enthusiasm and desire to amount to something.Of course there areallkinds, Jim; but I'm old enough and experienced enough to know how to take care of myself. Intellectuals are, of course, broad, liberal and impatient of petty conventions: they live for their professions, regardless of orthodox opinion, oblivious of narrow-minded Philistines.The main idea is to be tolerant. That is the greatest thing in the world, tolerance. I may not care to smoke cigarettes myself or drink cocktails and highballs, but if another girl does it it's none of my business. That is the foundation of the unconventional and intellectual world—freedom and tolerance of other people's opinions and behaviour.Thatis democracy!As for the futurists and symbolists of various schools, I am not narrow enough, I hope, to ridicule them or deny them the right to self-expression, but I am not in sympathy with them. However, it is most interesting to listen to their views.Well, these delightful treats are rare events in my horridly busy life. I'm in the infirmary and the hospital almost all the time; I'm always on duty or studying or attending lectures and clinics. I don't faint any more. And the poor little sufferers fill my heart with sympathy. I do love children—even defective ones. It makes me furious that there should be any. We must regulate this some day. And regulate birth control, too.It is interesting; I am rather glad that I shall have had this experience. As a graduate nurse, some day, I shall add immensely to my own self-respect and self-confidence. But I should never pursue the profession further; never study medicine; never desire to become a professional physician. The minute I graduate I shall rent a studio and start in to find out what most properly shall be my vehicle for self-expression.I forgot to tell you that Oswald Grismer's father and mother are dead within a week of each other. Pneumonia! Poor boy, he is stunned. He wrote me. He won't give any every second to creative work without a thought of financial gain.Harry Belter is such a funny, fat man. He asks after you every time I meet him. I sent you some of his cartoons in theStar. Badger Spink is an odd sort of man with his big, boyish figure and his mass of pompadour hair and his inextinguishable energy and amazing talent. He draws, draws, draws all the time; you see his pictures in every periodical; yet he seems to have time for all sorts of gaiety, private theatricals, dances, entertainments. He belongs to tie Players, the Ten Cent Club, the Dutch Treat, Illustrators, Lotus, Coffee House, Two by Four—and about a hundred others—and I think he's president of most of them. Healwayssends his regards to you and requests to know whether you're not yet fed up with Latin Quarter stuff—whatever that means!And Clarence Verne always mentions you. Such a curious man with a face like Pharaoh, and Egyptian hands, too, deeply cut in between thumb and forefinger like the hands of people sculptured in bas reliefs on Egyptian tombs.But such lovely girls he paints!—so exquisite! He is a very odd man—with a fixed gaze, and speaks as though he were a trifle deaf—or drugged, or something....You haven't said much about yourself, Jim, in your last letters; and also your letters arrive at longer and longer intervals.Somehow, I think that you are becoming reconciled to Paris. I don't believe you feel very lonely any longer. Butwhatdo you do to amuse yourself after your hours of work are ended? And who are your new friends over there? For, of course, you must have made new friends—I don't mean the students whose names you have occasionally mentioned. Haven't you met any nice girls?He did not mention having met any girls, nice or otherwise, when he wrote again. He did say that he was enjoying his work and that he had begun to feel a certain affection for Paris—particularly after he had been away travelling in Germany, Spain and Italy. Really, he admitted, it was like coming home. The usual was still happening to James Cleland.He had an apartment, now, overlooking the Luxembourg Gardens. He had friends to dinner sometimes. There was always plenty to do. Life had become very inspiring. The French theatres were a liberal education; French literature a miracle of artistic clarity and a model for all young aspirants. In fact, the spring source of all art was France, and Paris the ornamental fountain jet from which flashed the ever-living waters that all may quaff.Very pretty. He did not add that some of the waters were bottled and kept in pails of chopped ice. He wrote many gracefully composed pages—when he wrote at all—concerning the misty beauty of the French landscape and the effect of the rising sun of Notre Dame. He had seen it rise several times.But, on the whole, he behaved discreetly and with much circumspection; and within his youthful heart lay that deathless magic of the creative mind which transmutes leaden reality into golden romance—which is blind to the sordid and which transforms it into the picturesque.A saucy smile from a pretty girl on an April day germinated into a graceful string of verses by night; a chance encounter by the Seine, a laugh, a gay adieu—and a delicate short story was born, perhaps to be laboured over and groomed and swaddled and nourished into life—or to be abandoned, perhaps, in the back yard of literary débris.Life ran evenly and pleasantly for Cleland in those deathless days—light, happy, irresponsible days when idleness becomes saturated with future energy unawares; when the seeds of inspiration fall thicker and thicker and take root; when the liberality, the vastness, and the inspiration of the world begin to dawn upon a youthful intellect, not oppressively, but with a wide and reassuring kindliness.There was a young girl—very pretty, whose loneliness made her not too conventional. After several encounters on the stairs, she smiled in response; and they crossed the Luxembourg Gardens together, strolling in the chestnut shade and exchanging views of life.The affair continued—charming and quite harmless—a touch of tragedy and tears one evening—and the boy deeply touched and temporarily in love—in love with love, temporarily embodied in this blue-eyed, white-skinned, slender girl who had wandered with him close to the dead line and was inclined to cross it—with him.He had a delightfully wretched hour of renunciation—and was rewarded with much future material, though he didn't know it at the time.There were tears—several. It is not certain that she spiritually appreciated the situation. That sort of gratitude seldom is genuine in the feminine heart.But such things are very real to the creative mind, and Cleland was far too unhappy to sleep—deeply wallowing in martyrdom. Fate laughed and pinned this little episode on the clothes-line to dry out with the others—quite a little line-full, now, all fluttering gaily there and drying in the sun. And after a proper interval Cleland wont about the business of washing out a few more samples of experience in the life and manners and customs of his time, later to be added to the clothes-line wash.He had to prod himself to write to Stephanie. He was finding it a little difficult to discover very much to say to her. In youth two people grow apart during absence much faster than they grow together when in each other's company.It was so with Cleland and Stephanie—less so with her.Not seeing her for nearly two years left him with the unconscious impression that she had not altered during that period—that she was still the same young girl he had left, no more mature, no more experienced, little wiser.Her letters were interesting but he had lost touch, in a measure, with interests and people at home. He had adapted himself to the new angle of vision, to the new aspect of life, to new ideals, new aspirations. He was at the source of inspiration, drinking frequently at times, always unconsciously absorbing.At the end of the two years he had no desire to return to New York.A series of voluminous letters passed between him and Stephanie and between him and Miss Quest.He had plenty of excuses for remaining another year; his education was not completed; he needed a certain atmosphere and a certain environment which could be enjoyed only in Europe.Of course, if he were needed in New York, etc., etc. No, he wasn't needed. Matters could be attended to. The house in 80th Street ought to be closed as it was a useless expense to keep the servants there.Poor old Meacham had died; Janet, too, was dead; Lizzie had gone back to Ireland. The house in town should, therefore, be closed and wired; and the house in the country, "Runner's Rest," should remain closed and in charge of the farmer who had always looked out for it.This could be attended to; no need of his coming back.So he wrote his directions to Stephanie and settled down again with a sigh of relief to the golden days which promised.His work, now deeply coloured by Gallic influence and environment, had developed to that stage of embryonic promise marred by mannerisms and affectations. His style, temporarily spoiled by a sort of Franco-American jargon, became involved in the swamps of psychological subtleties, emerging jerkily at times, or relapsing into Debussy-like redundancy.Nobody wanted his short stories, his poems, his impressions. Publishers in London and in America returned "Day Dreams" and "Out of the Depths" with polite regrets. He sounded every depth of despondency and self-distrust; he soared on wings of hope again, striving to keep his gaze on the blinding source of light, only to become confused and dazzled in the upper oceans and waver and flutter and come tumbling down, frantically beating the too rarified atmosphere with unaccustomed wings.Nobody could tell him. He had to find out the way. He had within him what was worth saying; had not yet learned how to say it. The massed testimony of the masters lay heavily undigested within him; he was too richly fed, stuffed; the intricacies and complexities of technique worried and disheartened him; he felt too keenly, too deeply to keep a clear mind and a cool one.Every sense he possessed was necessary to him in his creative work; emotion, intense personal sympathy with his characters, his theme, clogged, checked and halted inspiration, smothering simplicity and clarity. This was a phase. He had the usual experience. He struggled through it and onward.Stephanie wrote that she had graduated, but that as her aunt was ill she would remain for the present at the hospital.He felt that he ought to go back. And did not. He was in a dreadfully involved dilemma with his new novel, "Renunciation"—all about a woman—one of the sort he never had met—and no wonder he was in a mess! Besides that, and in spite of the gaily coloured line of rags fluttering on the clothes-line of experience, he knew very little about women. One day, when he came to realize that he knew nothing at all about them, he might begin to write about them, convincingly and acceptably. But he was not yet as far along as that in his education.He had a desperate affair with an engaging woman of the real world—a countess. She took excellent care of herself, had a delightful time with Cleland, and, in gratitude, opened his eyes to the literary morass in which he had been wading.Clear-minded, witty, charming, very lovely to look upon, she read and criticised what he wrote, discussed, consulted, advised, and, with exquisite tact, divining the boy's real talent, led him deftly to solid land again. And left him there, enchanted, miserable, inspired, heart-broken, with a laughing admonition to be faithful to her memory while she enjoyed her husband's new post at the Embassy in Sofia.He wrote, after her departure, a poem simple enough for a child to understand. And tucked it away with a ribbon and a dried flower in his portfolio. It was the first good thing he had ever written. But he remained unconscious of the fact for a long time.Besides, other matters were bothering him, in particular a letter from Miss Quest:I am not well. I shall not be better. Still, there is no particular hurry about your returning.Stephanie remains with me very loyally. She has graduated; she is equipped with a profession. She has turned into a very lovely woman to look upon.But that sex restlessness which now overwhelmingly obsesses the world, possesses her. Freedom from all restraint, liberty to work out and accomplish her own destiny, contempt of convention, utter disregard of established formality, and hostility to custom, enroll her among the vast army of revolutionists now demanding a revision of all laws and customs made by one sex alone to govern the conduct of both.You and I once conversed on this subject, if you remember. I told you what I feared. And it has happened: Stephanie has developed along radical lines. With everything revolutionary in the world-wide feminist movement she is in sympathy. Standards that have been standards are no longer so to her. To the world's conservatism she is fiercely and youthfully hostile; equality, tolerance, liberty are the only guide-posts she pretends to recognize.I shall not live to see the outcome of this world-wide propaganda and revolt. I don't want to. But, in my opinion, it takes a strong character, already accustomed to liberty, to keep its balance in this dazzling flood let in by opening prison doors....I have left Stephanie what property I have outside of that invested and endowed to maintain my Home for Defective Children. Securities have shrunk; it is not much. It may add four thousand dollars to her present income.Mr. Cleland, you and Stephanie have gradually and very naturally grown apart since your absence. I don't know what you have developed into. But you were a nice boy.Stephanie is a beautiful, willful, intelligent, and I fear slightly erratic woman, alive with physical and mental vigour, restless and sensitive under pressure of control, yet to be controlled through her affections first, and only afterward through her reason.These are unconventional times; a new freedom is dawning, and to me the dawn seems threatening. I am too old, too near my end not to feel that the old régime, with all its drawbacks, was safer for women, productive of better results, less hazardous, less threatening.But I don't know: I am old-fashioned except in theory. I have professed the creed of the new feminism; I have in my time—and very properly—denounced the tyranny and selfishness and injustice of man-made laws which fetter and cripple my sex.But—at heart—and with not very many days left to me—at heart I am returning rather wearily along the way I came toward what, now to me, seems safer. It may be only the notions of an old woman, very tired, very sad, conscious of failure, and ready to rest and leave the responsibility where it originated and where it belongs. I don't know. But I wish Stephanie were not alone in the world.Miss Quest died before the letter reached him. Stephanie's next letter informed him of all the details. She continued:No use your coming back until you are quite ready, Jim. There's nothing for you to do.I've taken a studio and apartment with Helen Davis, the animal sculptor. I don't yet know just what I shall do. I'm likely to try several things before I know what I ought to stick to.Don't feel any absurd sense of responsibility for me. That would be too silly. Feel free to remain abroad as long as it suits you. I also feel absolutely free to go and come as I please. That's the best basis for our friendship, Jim, and, in fact, the necessary and vital basis. My affection is unaltered, but, somehow, it has been such a long time that you seem almost unreal to me.He did not sail at once. After all, in the face of such an unmistakable declaration of independence, it did not seem worth while for him to arouse himself from the golden lethargy of enchantment and break the spell of Europe which held him content, amid the mellow ripeness of her capitals and the tinted splendour of her traditions.He wrote frequently for a few months. Then his letters lagged.Once his pretty Countess had warned him that, for an American, Europe was merely the school-room but his own country was the proper and only place for creative labour.He remembered this at intervals, a little uneasy, a trifle conscious-stricken because he shrank from making an end to preparation—because he still loitered, disinclined to break the golden web and return to the clear, shadowless skies and the pitiless sun of the real world where he belonged, and where alone, he knew, was the workshop for which he had been so leisurely preparing.Then the shock came—the bolt out of the blue.The cablegram said:I married Oswald Grismer this morning.STEPHANIE.CHAPTER XVIHe sailed in April. When he sailed, he knew he would not come back for many years, if ever. His business here was done, the dream of Europe ended. The cycle of Cathay awaited him in all its acrid crudity.Yes, the golden web was rent, torn across, destroyed. The shock to his American mind left nothing of the lotus eater in him. He was returning where he belonged.Married! Steve married! To Oswald Grismer, who, save as a schoolboy and later in college, was a doubtful and unknown quantity to him.He had never known Grismer well. Since their schoolboy differences, they had been good enough friends when thrown together, which had been infrequently. He had no particular liking for Grismer, no dislike. Grismer had been a clever, adroit, amusing man in college, generally popular, yet with no intimacies, no close friends.As for Steve, he never dreamed that Stephanie would do such a thing. It was so damnably silly, so utterly unthinkable a thing to do.And in his angry perplexity and growing resentment, Cleland's conscience hurt as steadily as a toothache. He ought to have been home long ago. He should have gone back at the end of his two years. His father had trusted him to look out for Steve, and, in spite of her rather bumptious letters proclaiming her independence, he should have gone back and kept an eye on her, whether or not she liked it.In his astonishment and unhappiness, he did not know what to write her when the cablegram came hurtling into his calm and delightfully ordered life and blew up the whole fabric.Sometimes, to himself, he called her a "little fool"; sometimes "poor little Steve." But always he unfeignedly cursed Grismer and bitterly blamed himself.The affair made him sick at heart and miserable, and ruined any pleasure remaining in his life and work.He did not cable her; he wrote many letters and tore all of them to bits. It was beyond him to accept thefait accompli, beyond him to write even politely, let alone with any pretense of cordiality.His resentment grew steadily, increased by self-reproach. What kind of man had Oswald Grismer grown into? What kind of insolence was this—his marrying Steve——"Damn his yellow soul, I'll wring his neck!" muttered Cleland, pacing the deck of the Cunarder in the chilly April sunshine.But the immense astonishment of it still possessed him. He couldn't imagine Steve married.Whyhad she married? What earthly reason was there? It was incredible, absurd.Still in his mind lingered the image of the girl Stephanie whom he remembered as he last had seen her.Once or twice, too, thinking of that time, and conjuring up all he could picture of her, he remembered the delicate ardour of her parting embrace, the fragrant warmth of her mouth, and her arms around his neck.It angered him oddly to remember it—to think of her as the wife of Oswald Grismer. The idea seemed unendurable; it threw him into a rage against this man who had so suddenly taken Stephanie Quest out of his life."Damn him! Damn him!" he muttered, staring out over the wind-whipped sea. "I'd like to twist his neck! There's something queer about this. I'll take her away from him if I can. I'll do everything I can to take her away from him. I want her back. I'll get her back if it's possible. How can she care for Grismer?"He had nobody, now, to return to; no home, for the house was closed; no welcome to expect.He had not written her that he was coming; he had no desire to see her at the steamer with Grismer. With a youthful heart full of indefinable bitterness and self-contempt that his own indifference and selfishness had brought Steve and himself to such a pass, he paced the decks day after day, making no acquaintances, keeping to himself.And one night the great light on Montauk Point stared at him across leagues of unseen water. He was in touch again with his own half of the earth, nearing the edges of the great, raw, sprawling Continent where no delicate haze of tradition softened sordid facts; where there reigned no calm and ordered philosophy of life; where everything was in extremes; where everything was etched sharply against aggressive backgrounds; where there were no misty middle distances, no tranquil spaces; only the roaring silences of deserts to mitigate the yelling dissonance of life.He saw the sun on the gilded tips of snowy towers piled up like Alpine cliffs; the vast webs of bridges stretching athwart a leaden flood; forests of masts and huge painted funnels; acres of piers and docks; myriads of craft crossing and recrossing the silvery flood flowing between great cities.On the red castle to the southwest a flag flew, sun-dyed, vivid, lovely as a flower.His eyes filled; he choked."Thank God," he thought, "I'm where I belong at last!"And so Cleland came home.CHAPTER XVIIIt was late afternoon before Cleland got his luggage unpacked and himself settled in the Hotel Rochambeau, where he had been driven from the steamer and had taken rooms.The French cuisine, the French proprietor and personnel, the French café in front, all helped to make his home-coming a little less lonely and strange. Sunlight fell on the quaint yellow brick façade and old-fashioned wrought iron railings, and made his musty rooms and tarnished furniture and hangings almost cheerful.He had not telephoned to Stephanie. He had nothing to say to her over the wire. From the moment he crossed the gang-plank the growing resentment had turned to a curious, impotent sort of anger which excited him and stifled any other emotion.She had not known that he was coming back. He had made no response to her cablegram. She could not dream that he had landed; that he was within a stone's throw of her lodgings.The whole thing, too, seemed unreal to him—to find himself here in New York again amid its clamour, its dinginess, its sham architecture and crass ugliness!—back again in New York—and everything in his life so utterly changed!—no home—the 80th Street house still closed and wired and the old servants gone or dead; and the city empty of interest and lonely as a wilderness to him since his father's death—and now Steve gone! nothing, now, to hold him here—for the ties of friends and clubs had loosened during his years abroad, and his mind and spirit had become formed in other moulds.Yet here he knew he must do his work if ever he was to do any. Here was the place for the native-born—here his workshop where he must use and fashion all that he had witnessed and learned of life during the golden hours through which he sauntered under the lovely skies of an older civilization.Here was the place and now was the time for self-expression, for creative work, for the artistic interpretation of the life and manners of his own people.If he was to do anything, be anybody, attain distinction, count among writers of his era, he knew that his effort lay here—here where he was born and lived his youth to manhood—here where the tension of feverish living never relaxed, where a young, high-mettled, high-strung nation was clamouring and fretting and quarrelling and forging ahead, now floundering aside after some will-o'-the-wisp, now scaling stupendous moral heights, noisy, half-educated, half-civilized, suspicious, flippant, bragging, sentimental, yet iron-hearted, generous and brave.Here, on the nation's eastern edge, where the shattering dissonance of the iron city never ceased by day; where its vast, metallic vibration left the night eternally unquiet and the very sky quivering with the blows of sound under the stars' incessant sparkle—here, after all, was where he belonged. Here he must have his say. Here lay his destiny. And, for the sake of all this which was his, and for no other reason, was attainment and distinction worth his effort.All this good and evil, all this abominable turmoil and futile discord, all this relentless, untiring struggle deep in the dusty, twilight cañons and steel towers with their thin skins of stone—all the passions of these people, and their motives and their headlong strivings and their creeds and sentiments, false or true or misguided—these things were his to interpret, to understand, to employ.For these people, and for their cities, for their ambitions, desires, aspirations—for the vast nation of which they formed their local fragment—only a native-born could be their interpreter, their eulogist, their defender, their apologist, and their prophet. And for their credit alone was there any reason for his life's endeavour.No cultured, suave product of generations of Europe's cultivation could handle these people and these themes convincingly and with the subtle comprehension of authority. Rod and laurel, scalpel and palm should be touched only by the hand of the native-born.His pretty Countess had said to him once:"Only what you have seen, what you have lived and seen others live; only what you detect from the clear-minded, cool, emotionless analysis of your own people, is worth the telling. Only this carries conviction. And, when told with all the cunning simplicity and skill of an artist, it carries with it that authority which leaves an impression indelible! Go back to your own people—if you really have anything to write worth reading."Thinking of these things, he locked his door on rooms now more or less in order, and went out into the street.It was too warm for an overcoat. A primrose sunset light filled the street; the almost forgotten specific odour of New York invaded his memory again—an odour entirely different from that of any other city. For every city in the world has its own odour—not always a perfume.Now, again, his heart was beating hard and fast at thought of seeing Stephanie, and the same indefinable anger possessed him—not directed entirely against anyone, but inclusive of himself, and her, and Grismer, and his own helplessness and isolation.The street she lived in was quiet. There seemed to be a number of studios along the block. In a few minutes he saw the number he was looking for.Four brick dwelling houses had been made over into one with studios on every floor—a rather pretty Colonial effect with green shutters, white doorway, and iron fence painted white.In the quaint vestibule with its classic fanlight and delicate side-lights, he found her name on a letter box and pushed the electric button. The street door swung open noiselessly.On the ground floor, facing him on the right, he saw a door on which was a copper plate bearing the names, "Miss Davis; Miss Quest." The door opened as he touched the knocker; a young girl in stained sculptor's smock stood there regarding him inquiringly, a cigarette between her pretty, clay-stained fingers."Miss——" he checked himself, reddening—"Mrs. Grismer, I mean?" he asked.The girl laughed. She was brown-eyed, pink-cheeked, compactly and beautifully moulded, and her poise and movement betrayed the elasticity of superb health."She's out just now. Will you come in and wait?"He went in, aware of clay studies on revolving stands, academic studies in unframed canvases, charcoal drawings from the nude, thumb-tacked to the wall—the usual mess of dusty draperies, decrepit and nondescript furniture, soiled rugs and cherished objects of art. A cloying smell of plasticine pervaded the place. A large yellow cat, dozing on a sofa, opened one golden eye a little way, then closed it indifferently.The girl who had admitted him indicated a chair and stepped before a revolving table on which was the roughly-modelled sketch of a horse and rider.She picked up a lump of waxy material, and, kneading it in one hand, glanced absently at the sketch, then looked over her shoulder at Cleland with a friendly, enquiring air:"Miss Quest went out to see about her costume. I suppose she'll be back shortly.""What costume?" he asked."Oh, didn't you know? It's for the Caricaturists' Ball in aid of the Artists' Fund. It's the Ball of the Gods—the great event of the season and the last. Evidently you don't live in New York.""I haven't, recently.""I see. Will you have a cigarette?" She pointed at a box on a tea tray; he thanked her and lighted one. As he continued to remain standing, she asked him again to be seated, and he complied.She continued to pinch off little lumps of waxy, pliable composition and stick them on the horse. Still fussing with the sketch, he saw a smile curve her cheek in profile; and presently she said without turning:"Why did you speak of Stephanie Quest as Mrs. Grismer?Wedon't, you know.""Why not? Isn't she?"The girl looked at him over her shoulder; she was startlingly pretty, fresh and smooth-skinned as a child."Whoareyou?" she asked, with that same little hint of friendly curiosity in her brown eyes;—"I'm Helen Davis, Stephanie's chum. You seem to know a good deal about her.""I'm James Cleland," he said quietly, "—her brother."At that the girl's brown eyes flew wide open:"Good Heavens!" she said; "did Steve expect you? She never said a word to me! I thought you were a fixture in Europe!"He sat biting the end of his cigarette, not looking at her:"She didn't expect me," he said, flinging the half-burned cigarette into the silver slop-dish of the tea service. "I didn't notify her that I was coming."Helen Davis dropped one elbow on the modelling table, rested her rounded chin in her palm, and bent her eyes on Cleland. Smoke from the cigarette between her fingers mounted in a straight, thin band to the ceiling."So you are Steve's Jim," she mused aloud. "I recognize you now, from your photographs, only you're older and thinner—and you wear a moustache.... You've been away a long while, haven't you?""Too long," he said, casting a sombre look at her."Oh, do you feel that way? How odd it will seem to you to see Steve again. She's such a darling! Quite wonderful, Mr. Cleland. The artists' colony in New York raves over her.""Does it?" he said drily."Everybody does. She's so amusing, so clever, so full of talent and animation—like a beautiful and mischievous thoroughbred on tip-toes with vitality and the sheer joy of living. She never is in low spirits or depressed. That's what fascinates everybody—her gaiety and energy and high spirits. I knew her in college and she wasn't quite that way then. Perhaps because she hated college. But she could be a perfect little devil if she wanted to. She can be that still."Cleland nodded almost absently; his preoccupied gaze travelled over the disordered studio and concentrated scowlingly on the yellow cat. He kept twisting the head of his walking stick between his hands and staring at the animal in silence while Helen Davis watched him. Presently, and without any excuse, she walked slowly away and vanished into some inner room. When she returned, she had discarded her working smock, and her smooth hands were slightly rosy from a recent toilet."I'm going to give you some tea," she said, striking a match and lighting the lamp under the kettle at his elbow."Thanks, no," he said with an effort."Yes, you shall have some," she insisted, smiling in her gay little friendly way. "Come, Mr. Cleland, you are man of the world enough to waive formality. I'm going to sit here and make tea and talk to you. Look at me! Wouldn't you like to be friends with me? Most men would."He looked up, and his slightly drawn features relaxed."Yes," he said with a smile, "of course I would.""That's very human of you," she laughed. "Shall we talk about Steve? Whatdidyou think of that cablegram? Did you ever hear of such a crazy thing?"He flushed with anger but said nothing. The girl looked at him intently over the steaming kettle, then went on measuring out tea."Shall I tell you about it, or would you rather that Steve told you?" she asked carelessly, busy with her preparations."She is actually married to—Grismer—then?""Well—I suppose so. You know him, of course.""Yes.""Heisfascinating—in that unusual way of his—poor fellow. Women like him better than men do. One meets him everywhere in artistic circles; but do you know, Mr. Cleland, I've always seemed to be conscious of a curious sort of latent hostility to Oswald Grismer, even among people he frequents—among men, particularly. However, he has no intimates.""If they are actually married," he said with an effort, "why does Stephanie live here with you?""Oh, that was the ridiculous understanding. I myself don't know why she married him. The whole affair was a crazy, feather-brained performance——" She poured his tea and offered him a sugar biscuit, which he declined."You see," she continued, curling up into the depths of her rickety velvet arm-chair and taking her cup and a heap of sugar biscuits into her lap, "Oswald Grismer has been Steve's shadow—at her heels always—and I know well enough that Stephanie was not insensible to the curious fascination of the man. You know how devotion impresses a girl—and heisclever and good looking."And that was all very well, and I don't think it would have amounted to anything serious as long as Oswald was the amusing, good-looking, lazy and rich amateur of sculpture, with plenty of leisure to saunter through life and be charmingly attentive, and play with his profession when the whim suited him."She sipped her tea and looked at Cleland meditatively."Did you know he'd lost all his money?""No," said Cleland."Oh, yes. He lost it a year ago. He has scarcely anything, I believe. He had a beautiful studio and apartment, wonderful treasures of antique furniture; he had about everything a rich young man fancies. It all went.""What was the matter?""Nobody knows. He took a horrid little stable studio in Bleecker Street, and he lives there. Andthat'swhy Steve did that crazy, impulsive thing, I suppose.""You mean she was sorry for him?""Ithinkit must have been that—and the general fascination he had for her—and his persistency and devotion. Really, I don't know, myself, how she came to do it. She did it on one of her ill-considered, generous, headlong impulses. Ask her. All she ever told me was that she had married Oswald and didn't know how it was going to turn out, but had decided to keep her own name for the present and continue to live with me.""Do they see each other—much?" he asked."Oh, they encounter each other here and there as usual. He drops in here every day.""Does she go—there?""I don't know," said the girl gravely.He had set aside his tea, untasted. She, still curled up in her arm-chair, ate and drank with a delightfully healthy appetite."Would you prefer a highball?" she enquired. "I could fix you one.""No, thank you." He rose and began to walk nervously about the studio.Her perplexed, brown eyes followed him. It was clear that she could not make him out.Natural chagrin at a clandestine marriage might account for his manner. Probably it was that, because Stephanie could not have meant anything more personal and serious to him, or he could not have remained away so long.He stopped abruptly in his aimless promenade and turned to Helen:"Am I in the way?" he asked."My dear Mr. Cleland," she said, "we are a perfectly informal community. If you were in the way I'd say so. Also, I have a bed-room where I can retire when Steve comes in. Or you and she can go into her room to talk things over." She lighted another cigarette, rose, strolled over to the wax horse, with a friendly smile at him."I was just making a sketch," she said. "I've a jolly commission—two bronze horses for the Hispano-Moresque Museum. The Cid is on one, Saladin on the other. I was just fussing with an idea when you rang."He came and stood beside her, looking at the sketch."I've a fine, glass-roofed courtyard in the rear of the studio for my animal models—horses and dogs and any beast I require," she explained. "This sort of thing comes first, of course. I think I'll get Oswald to pose for the Cid."She stood contemplating her sketch, the cigarette balanced between her fingers; then, of a sudden, she turned swiftly around to confront him."Mr. Cleland, itisa dreadful and foolish and irrational thing that Steve has done, and I know you are justly angry. But—she is a darling in spite of being a feather-head sometimes. Youwillforgive her, won't you?""Of course. After all, it is her business."Helen sighed:"Youareangry. But please don't lose interest in her. She's so loyal to you. She adores you, Mr. Cleland——"A key rattled in the lock; the door swung open; into the dusky studio stepped a slender figure, charmingly buoyant and graceful in the fading light."Helen, they're to send our costumes in an hour. They are the most fascinating things——"Stephanie's voice ceased abruptly. There was a silence."Who is—that?" she asked unsteadily.Helen turned and went quietly away toward her bed-room. Stephanie stood as though frozen, then reached forward and pressed the electric button with a gloved finger that trembled."Jim!" she whispered.She stole forward, nearer, close to him, still incredulous, her grey eyes wide with excitement; then, with a little sobbing cry she threw both arms around his neck.She had laughed and cried there in his arms; her lovely head and disordered hair witnessed the passionate ardour of her welcome to this man who now sat beside her in her bed-room, her hands clasped in his, and all her young soul's adoration in her splendid eyes."Oh," she whispered again and again, "—Oh, to have you back, Jim. That is too heavenly to believe. You dear, dear boy—so good looking—and a little older and graver——" She nestled close to him, laying her cheek against his.She murmured:"It seems too delicious to endure. You do love me, don't you, Jim? We haven't anybody else in the world except each other, you know. Isn't it good—good to have each other again! It's been like a dream, your absence. You gradually became unreal—a dear, beloved memory. Somehow, I didn't think you'd ever come back. Are you happy to be with me?""Happier than you know, Steve——" His voice trembled oddly and he drew her into his arms: "Good God," he said under his breath, "—I must have been mad to leave you to your own devices so long! I ought to be shot!""What do you mean, Jim?""You know. Oh, Steve, Steve, I can't understand—I simply can not understand."After a silence she lifted her head and rested her lips softly against his cheek."Do you mean—my marrying Oswald?" she asked."Yes. Why did you do such a thing?"She bent her head, considering the question for a while in silence. Then she said calmly:"There's one reason why I did it that I can't tell you. I promised him not to. Another reason was that he was very much in love with me. I don't know exactly what it is that I feel for him—but he does fascinate me. He always did, somehow. Even as a boy——""You didn't know him as a boy!""No. But I saw him once. And I realize now that I was even then vaguely conscious of an odd interest in him. And that time at Cambridge, too. He had that same, indefinable attraction for me——""Youarein love with him then!""I don't know. Jim, I don't think it is love. I don't think I know what love really is. So, knowing this, but being grateful to him, and deeply sorry——""Why?""I can't tell you why. Perhaps I'll tell you sometime. But I was very grateful and sorry and—and more or less moved—fascinated. It's funny; there are things I don't like about Oswald, and still I can't keep away from him.... Well, so everything seemed to combine to make me try it——""Try what?""Marrying him.""What do you mean by 'trying it?'""Why, it's a trial marriage——""Good God!" he said. "What do you mean?""I mean it's a trial marriage," she repeated coolly."You mean there was no—no ceremony?" he stammered."There wasn't any ceremony. We don't believe in it. We just said to each other that we'd marry——""You mean you've—you'velivedwith that man on such terms of understanding?" he demanded, white with rage."I don't live with him. I live here with Helen," she said, perplexed. "All I would consent to was a trial marriage to see how it went for a year or two——""Do you mean that what you've done is legal?""Oh, yes, it's legal," she said seriously. "I've found that out.""And—you know wh-what I mean," he said, stammering in his anger; "Was that sufficient for you? Do you want me to speak plainer, Steve? I mean, have you—lived with him?"She understood and dropped her reddening cheek on his shoulder."Haveyou?" he repeated harshly."No.... I thought you understood. It is only a trial marriage; I've tried to explain that—make it clear——""What loose-minded, unconventional Bohemians call a 'trial marriage,'" he said, with brutal directness, "is an agreement between a pair of fools to live as man and wife for a while with an understanding that a formal ceremony shall ultimately confirm the irregularity if they find themselves suited to each other. Is that what you've done?""No."He drew a deep, trembling breath of relief, took her in his arms and held her close."My little Steve," he whispered, "—my own little Steve! What sort of trap is this he's led you into?""No trap. Iwantedto try it.""Youwishedit?""I was quite willing to try. After a year or two, I'll know whether I shall ever care to live with him.""After a year or two!""Yes. That was the understanding. And then, if I didn't wish to live with him, we can be very quietly divorced. Itwasa crazy thing to do. But there wasn't any real risk. Besides——" She hesitated."Go on," he said."No, I can't. If I don't fall in love with him, I certainly shall never live with him. So," she added calmly, "there'll be no children to complicate the parting. You see I had some sense, Jim."She lifted her head from his shoulder and smiled at him:"It was just an escapade of sorts," she explained, more cheerfully. "It really doesn't mean anything yet, and I fly around and have a wonderful time, and maybe I'll take up sculpture with Helen, and maybe I'll try the stage. Anyway——" she pressed closer to him with a happy sigh, "I've gotyouback, haven't I? So what do we care whether I'm his wife or not?"He said, holding her closely embraced:"Suppose some other man should fall in love with you, Steve?""Oh!" she laughed. "Plenty do. Or say they do. I'm nice to them, and they get along very well.... Your moustache is becoming to you, Jim." She touched it curiously, with one tentative finger."But supposeyoushould return another man's love some day?""I haven't ever!" she said, laughing back into his eyes."No, but suppose you did? And found yourself tied legally by a fool agreement to Oswald Grismer?""Oh. I never considered that.""Consider it, now!""It isn't likely to happen——""Consider it, all the same.""Well—but I've never been in love. But if it happened—well—thatwouldbe a jolly mess, wouldn't it?""I should think so! What would you do about it?""There wouldn't be anything to do except to wait until my two years of trial marriage was up," she said thoughtfully."You could divorce him before that.""Oh, no. I promised to give him two years.""To sit saddled with this ridiculous burden for two years?""Yes, I promised.""Oh, Steve! Steve! What a muddle you have made of things! What good does it do you or him to have this chain between you? You've lost your liberty. You're a legal wife without being one. You've put shackles on yourself for God knows what whim or caprice.""But, Jim," she said, bewildered, "Iexpectto be his wife, ultimately.""What?""Of course. I wasn't absolutely sure that I could fall in love with him, that was all. I have very little doubt that I shall. I like to be with him: I am never bored when he is with me; our tastes are similar; our beliefs are unconventional. We suit each other admirably. It wasn't such a rash thing to do. You see, it is perfectly safe every way."For a long while he sat beside her in silence. She had slipped out of his arms and now sat with one hand lying across his, watching the enigmatic expressions which flitted over his rather sombre and flushed features.Finally he looked up:"Steve?""Yes?""SupposeIfell in love with—you?""Oh, Jim!" She began to laugh, then the mirth faded in her grey eyes, and her lips grew quiet and rather grave."You?" she said, half to herself."Do you remember some letters I once wrote you?""Yes.""You wrote asking if I meant them to be love letters.""Yes. You answered very vaguely. I think I frightened you," she said, laughing."Theywerelove letters," he said. "I didn't happen to know it; that is all. Iwasin love with you then. I didn't realize it; you did not believe it. But now I know it was so.""Howcouldyou have been in love with me?" she inquired, astonished.
CHAPTER XV
The usual happened to James Cleland; for the first two months in Paris he was intensely lonely. Life in an English-speaking pension near the Place de l'Etoile turned out to be very drab and eventless after he returned to his rooms, fatigued from sight-seeing and exploration. The vast silver-grey city seemed to him cold, monotonously impressive and oppressive; he was not in sympathy with it, being totally unaccustomed to the splendour of a municipal ensemble with all its beauty of reticence and good taste. The vast vistas, the subdued loveliness of detail, the stately tranquillity of this capital, he did not understand after the sham, the ignorance, the noisy vulgarity of his native municipality.
Here were new standards; the grey immensity of the splendid capital gave him, at first, an impression of something flat and almost featureless under the horizon-wide sweep of sky. There were no sky-scrapers. With exquisite discretion, Notre Dame dominated the east, the silvery majesty of the Pantheon the south; in the west the golden bubble of the Invalides burned; the frail tracery of the Eiffel Tower soared from the city's centre.
And for the first two months he was an alien here, depressed, silenced, not comprehending, oblivious of the subtle atmosphere of civil friendliness possessing the throngs which flowed by him on either hand, unaware that he stood upon the kindly hearthstone of the world itself, where the hospitable warmth never grew colder, where the generous glow was for all.
He went to lectures at the Sorbonne; he attended a class in philology in the Rue des Ecoles; he studied in the quiet alcoves of the great Library of Ste. Genevieve; he paced the sonorous marble pavements of the Louvre. And the austere statues seemed to chill him to the soul.
All was alien to him, all foreign; the English-speaking landlady of his pension, with her eternal cold in the head and her little shoulder shawl; the dreary American families from the Middle West who gathered thrice a day at the pension table; passing wayfarers he saw from the windows; red-legged soldiers in badly fitting uniforms, priests in shovel hats and black soutanes, policemen slouching by under cowled cloaks, their bayonets dangling; hatless, chattering shop girls, and the uninteresting types of civilian citizens; men in impossible hats and oddly awful clothes; women who all looked smart from the rear and dubious from the front.
He found an annoying monotony in the trees of the Bois, a tiresome sameness in square and circle and park and boulevard. He found the language difficult to understand, more difficult to speak. Food, accommodations, the domestic régime, were not to his liking. French economies bored him.
At lectures his comrades seemed merely superficially polite and not very desirable as acquaintances. He felt himself out of place, astray from familiar things, out of touch with this civilization, out of sympathy with place and people. He was intensely lonely.
In the beginning he wrote to Stephanie every other day. That burst of activity lasted about two months.
Also, in his rather dingy and cheerless suite of rooms, he began a tragedy in five acts and a pessimistic novel called "Out of the Depths." Also, he was guilty of a book of poems called "Day Dreams."
He missed his father terribly; he missed his home; he missed the noisy, grotesque, half-civilized and monstrous city of his nativity. And he missed Stephanie violently.
He told her so in every letter. The more letters he wrote the warmer grew this abrupt affection for her. And, his being a creative talent, with all its temperamental impulses, exaggerations and drawbacks, he began to evolve, unconsciously, out of Stephanie Quest a girl based on the real girl he knew, only transcendentally endowed with every desirable and ornamental quality abstractly favoured by himself.
He began to create an ideal Stephanie to comfort him in his loneliness; he created, too, a mutual situation and a sentimental atmosphere for them both, neither of which had existed when he left America.
But now, in his letters, more and more this romantic and airy fabric took shape. Being young, and for the first time in his life thrown upon his own resources—and, moreover, feeling for the first time the pleasures of wielding an eloquent, delicate and capricious pen to voice indefinable aspirations, he began to lose himself in romantic subtleties, evoking drama out of nothing, developing it by implication and constructing it with pensive and capricious humour hinting of dreamy melancholy.
Until the Stephanie Quest of his imagination had become to him the fair, and exquisitely indifferent little renaissance figure of his fancy; and he, somehow or other, her victim. And the more exquisite and indifferent he created her, the more she fascinated him, until he completely hypnotized himself with his own cleverly finished product.
A letter from her woke him up more or less, jolting him in his trance so that the jingle and dissonance of the real world filled, for a moment, his enchanted ears.
DEAR JIM:
Your letters perplex me more and more, and I don't know at all how to take them. Do you mean you are in love with me? I can't believe it. I read and re-read your last three letters—such dear, odd, whimsical letters!—so wonderfully written, so full of beauty and of poetry.
They do almost sound like love-letters—or at least as I imagine love-letters are written. But they can't be!Howcan they be?
And first of all, even if you meant them that way, I don't know what to think. I've never been in love. I know how I feel about you—have always felt. You know, too.
But you never gave me any reason to think—and I never dreamed of thinking anything likethatwhen you were here. It never occurred to me. It would not occur to me now except for your very beautiful letters—so unlike you—so strangely sad, so whimsical, so skillful in wonderful phrases that they're like those vague prose poems you sent me, which hint enough to awaken your imagination and set you aflame with curiosity.
But youcan'tmean that you're in love with me. I should be too astonished. Besides, I shouldn't know what to do about it. It wouldn't seem real. I never have thought of you in such a way.
What makes a girl fall in love? Do you know? Could she fall in love with a man through his letters because they are so beautiful and sad and elusive, so full of charm and mystery? I'm in love withthem. But, Jim, I don't know what to think about you. I'd have to see you again, first, anyway. You are such a dear boy! I can't seem to think of you that way. You know it's a different kind of love, ours. All I can think about it is the tremendous surprise—if it's true.
But I don't believe it is. You are lonely; you miss dad—miss me, perhaps. I think you do miss me, for the first time in your life. You see, I have rather a clear mind and memory, and I can't help remembering that when you were here you certainly could not have felt that way toward me; so how can you now? I did bore you sometimes.
Anyway, I adore you with all my heart, as you know. My affection hasn't changed one bit since I was a tiny girl and came into your room that day and saw you down on the floor unpacking your suit-case. I adored you instantly. I have not changed. Girls don't change.
Another letter from her some months later:
You're such a funny boy—just a boy, still, while in these six months I've overtaken and passed you in years. You won't believe it, but I have. Maturity has overtaken me. I am really a real woman.
Why are your letters vaguely reproachful? Have I done anything? Were you annoyed when I asked you whether you meant me to take them as love letters? You didn't write for a month after that. Did I scare you? Youarefunny!
I do really think youarein love—not with me, Jim—not with any other particular girl—but just in love with love. Writers and artists and poets are inclined to that sort of thing, I fancy.
That's what worries me about myself; I am not inclined that way; I don't seem to be artistic enough in temperament to pay any attention to sentiment of that sort. I don't desire it; I don't miss it; it simply is not an item in the list of things that interest me. But of all things in the world, I do adore friendship.
I had an afternoon off from the hospital the other day—I'm still a probationer in a pink and white uniform, you know—and I went up to town and flew about the shops and lunched with a college friend, Helen Davis, at the Ritz and had a wonderful time.
And who do you suppose I ran into? Oswald Grismer! Jim, he certainly is the best-looking fellow—such red-gold hair,—such fascinating golden eyes and colouring.
We chatted most amiably and he took us to tea, and then—I suppose it wasn't conventional—but we went to his studio with him, Helen Davis and I.
Heisthe cleverest man! He has done a delightful fountain and several portrait busts, and a beautiful tomb for the Lidsey family, and his studies in wax and clay are wonderful!
He really seems very nice. And the life he leads is heavenly! Such a wonderful way to live—just a bed-room and the studio.
He's going to give a little tea for me next time I have an afternoon off, and I'm to meet a lot of delightful, unconventional people there—painters, writers, actors—people who havedonethings!—I'm sure it will be wonderful.
I have bought five pounds of plasticine and I'm going to model in it in my room every time I have a few moments to myself. But oh, it does smell abominably, and it ruins your finger nails.
After that, Oswald Grismer's name recurred frequently in her letters. Cleland recognized also the names of several old schoolmates of his as figuring at various unconventional ceremonies in Grismer's studio—Harry Belter, now a caricaturist on the New YorkMorning Star; Badger Spink, drawing for the illustrated papers; Clarence Verne, who painted pretty girls for the covers of popular magazines, and his one-time master, Phil Grayson, writer for the better-class periodicals.
It's delightful, she wrote; we sometimes have music—often celebrated people from the Metropolitan Opera drop in and you meet everybody of consequence you ever heard of outside the Social Register—people famous in their professions—and it is exciting and inspiring and fills me with enthusiasm and desire to amount to something.
Of course there areallkinds, Jim; but I'm old enough and experienced enough to know how to take care of myself. Intellectuals are, of course, broad, liberal and impatient of petty conventions: they live for their professions, regardless of orthodox opinion, oblivious of narrow-minded Philistines.
The main idea is to be tolerant. That is the greatest thing in the world, tolerance. I may not care to smoke cigarettes myself or drink cocktails and highballs, but if another girl does it it's none of my business. That is the foundation of the unconventional and intellectual world—freedom and tolerance of other people's opinions and behaviour.Thatis democracy!
As for the futurists and symbolists of various schools, I am not narrow enough, I hope, to ridicule them or deny them the right to self-expression, but I am not in sympathy with them. However, it is most interesting to listen to their views.
Well, these delightful treats are rare events in my horridly busy life. I'm in the infirmary and the hospital almost all the time; I'm always on duty or studying or attending lectures and clinics. I don't faint any more. And the poor little sufferers fill my heart with sympathy. I do love children—even defective ones. It makes me furious that there should be any. We must regulate this some day. And regulate birth control, too.
It is interesting; I am rather glad that I shall have had this experience. As a graduate nurse, some day, I shall add immensely to my own self-respect and self-confidence. But I should never pursue the profession further; never study medicine; never desire to become a professional physician. The minute I graduate I shall rent a studio and start in to find out what most properly shall be my vehicle for self-expression.
I forgot to tell you that Oswald Grismer's father and mother are dead within a week of each other. Pneumonia! Poor boy, he is stunned. He wrote me. He won't give any every second to creative work without a thought of financial gain.
Harry Belter is such a funny, fat man. He asks after you every time I meet him. I sent you some of his cartoons in theStar. Badger Spink is an odd sort of man with his big, boyish figure and his mass of pompadour hair and his inextinguishable energy and amazing talent. He draws, draws, draws all the time; you see his pictures in every periodical; yet he seems to have time for all sorts of gaiety, private theatricals, dances, entertainments. He belongs to tie Players, the Ten Cent Club, the Dutch Treat, Illustrators, Lotus, Coffee House, Two by Four—and about a hundred others—and I think he's president of most of them. Healwayssends his regards to you and requests to know whether you're not yet fed up with Latin Quarter stuff—whatever that means!
And Clarence Verne always mentions you. Such a curious man with a face like Pharaoh, and Egyptian hands, too, deeply cut in between thumb and forefinger like the hands of people sculptured in bas reliefs on Egyptian tombs.
But such lovely girls he paints!—so exquisite! He is a very odd man—with a fixed gaze, and speaks as though he were a trifle deaf—or drugged, or something....
You haven't said much about yourself, Jim, in your last letters; and also your letters arrive at longer and longer intervals.
Somehow, I think that you are becoming reconciled to Paris. I don't believe you feel very lonely any longer. Butwhatdo you do to amuse yourself after your hours of work are ended? And who are your new friends over there? For, of course, you must have made new friends—I don't mean the students whose names you have occasionally mentioned. Haven't you met any nice girls?
He did not mention having met any girls, nice or otherwise, when he wrote again. He did say that he was enjoying his work and that he had begun to feel a certain affection for Paris—particularly after he had been away travelling in Germany, Spain and Italy. Really, he admitted, it was like coming home. The usual was still happening to James Cleland.
He had an apartment, now, overlooking the Luxembourg Gardens. He had friends to dinner sometimes. There was always plenty to do. Life had become very inspiring. The French theatres were a liberal education; French literature a miracle of artistic clarity and a model for all young aspirants. In fact, the spring source of all art was France, and Paris the ornamental fountain jet from which flashed the ever-living waters that all may quaff.
Very pretty. He did not add that some of the waters were bottled and kept in pails of chopped ice. He wrote many gracefully composed pages—when he wrote at all—concerning the misty beauty of the French landscape and the effect of the rising sun of Notre Dame. He had seen it rise several times.
But, on the whole, he behaved discreetly and with much circumspection; and within his youthful heart lay that deathless magic of the creative mind which transmutes leaden reality into golden romance—which is blind to the sordid and which transforms it into the picturesque.
A saucy smile from a pretty girl on an April day germinated into a graceful string of verses by night; a chance encounter by the Seine, a laugh, a gay adieu—and a delicate short story was born, perhaps to be laboured over and groomed and swaddled and nourished into life—or to be abandoned, perhaps, in the back yard of literary débris.
Life ran evenly and pleasantly for Cleland in those deathless days—light, happy, irresponsible days when idleness becomes saturated with future energy unawares; when the seeds of inspiration fall thicker and thicker and take root; when the liberality, the vastness, and the inspiration of the world begin to dawn upon a youthful intellect, not oppressively, but with a wide and reassuring kindliness.
There was a young girl—very pretty, whose loneliness made her not too conventional. After several encounters on the stairs, she smiled in response; and they crossed the Luxembourg Gardens together, strolling in the chestnut shade and exchanging views of life.
The affair continued—charming and quite harmless—a touch of tragedy and tears one evening—and the boy deeply touched and temporarily in love—in love with love, temporarily embodied in this blue-eyed, white-skinned, slender girl who had wandered with him close to the dead line and was inclined to cross it—with him.
He had a delightfully wretched hour of renunciation—and was rewarded with much future material, though he didn't know it at the time.
There were tears—several. It is not certain that she spiritually appreciated the situation. That sort of gratitude seldom is genuine in the feminine heart.
But such things are very real to the creative mind, and Cleland was far too unhappy to sleep—deeply wallowing in martyrdom. Fate laughed and pinned this little episode on the clothes-line to dry out with the others—quite a little line-full, now, all fluttering gaily there and drying in the sun. And after a proper interval Cleland wont about the business of washing out a few more samples of experience in the life and manners and customs of his time, later to be added to the clothes-line wash.
He had to prod himself to write to Stephanie. He was finding it a little difficult to discover very much to say to her. In youth two people grow apart during absence much faster than they grow together when in each other's company.
It was so with Cleland and Stephanie—less so with her.
Not seeing her for nearly two years left him with the unconscious impression that she had not altered during that period—that she was still the same young girl he had left, no more mature, no more experienced, little wiser.
Her letters were interesting but he had lost touch, in a measure, with interests and people at home. He had adapted himself to the new angle of vision, to the new aspect of life, to new ideals, new aspirations. He was at the source of inspiration, drinking frequently at times, always unconsciously absorbing.
At the end of the two years he had no desire to return to New York.
A series of voluminous letters passed between him and Stephanie and between him and Miss Quest.
He had plenty of excuses for remaining another year; his education was not completed; he needed a certain atmosphere and a certain environment which could be enjoyed only in Europe.
Of course, if he were needed in New York, etc., etc. No, he wasn't needed. Matters could be attended to. The house in 80th Street ought to be closed as it was a useless expense to keep the servants there.
Poor old Meacham had died; Janet, too, was dead; Lizzie had gone back to Ireland. The house in town should, therefore, be closed and wired; and the house in the country, "Runner's Rest," should remain closed and in charge of the farmer who had always looked out for it.
This could be attended to; no need of his coming back.
So he wrote his directions to Stephanie and settled down again with a sigh of relief to the golden days which promised.
His work, now deeply coloured by Gallic influence and environment, had developed to that stage of embryonic promise marred by mannerisms and affectations. His style, temporarily spoiled by a sort of Franco-American jargon, became involved in the swamps of psychological subtleties, emerging jerkily at times, or relapsing into Debussy-like redundancy.
Nobody wanted his short stories, his poems, his impressions. Publishers in London and in America returned "Day Dreams" and "Out of the Depths" with polite regrets. He sounded every depth of despondency and self-distrust; he soared on wings of hope again, striving to keep his gaze on the blinding source of light, only to become confused and dazzled in the upper oceans and waver and flutter and come tumbling down, frantically beating the too rarified atmosphere with unaccustomed wings.
Nobody could tell him. He had to find out the way. He had within him what was worth saying; had not yet learned how to say it. The massed testimony of the masters lay heavily undigested within him; he was too richly fed, stuffed; the intricacies and complexities of technique worried and disheartened him; he felt too keenly, too deeply to keep a clear mind and a cool one.
Every sense he possessed was necessary to him in his creative work; emotion, intense personal sympathy with his characters, his theme, clogged, checked and halted inspiration, smothering simplicity and clarity. This was a phase. He had the usual experience. He struggled through it and onward.
Stephanie wrote that she had graduated, but that as her aunt was ill she would remain for the present at the hospital.
He felt that he ought to go back. And did not. He was in a dreadfully involved dilemma with his new novel, "Renunciation"—all about a woman—one of the sort he never had met—and no wonder he was in a mess! Besides that, and in spite of the gaily coloured line of rags fluttering on the clothes-line of experience, he knew very little about women. One day, when he came to realize that he knew nothing at all about them, he might begin to write about them, convincingly and acceptably. But he was not yet as far along as that in his education.
He had a desperate affair with an engaging woman of the real world—a countess. She took excellent care of herself, had a delightful time with Cleland, and, in gratitude, opened his eyes to the literary morass in which he had been wading.
Clear-minded, witty, charming, very lovely to look upon, she read and criticised what he wrote, discussed, consulted, advised, and, with exquisite tact, divining the boy's real talent, led him deftly to solid land again. And left him there, enchanted, miserable, inspired, heart-broken, with a laughing admonition to be faithful to her memory while she enjoyed her husband's new post at the Embassy in Sofia.
He wrote, after her departure, a poem simple enough for a child to understand. And tucked it away with a ribbon and a dried flower in his portfolio. It was the first good thing he had ever written. But he remained unconscious of the fact for a long time.
Besides, other matters were bothering him, in particular a letter from Miss Quest:
I am not well. I shall not be better. Still, there is no particular hurry about your returning.
Stephanie remains with me very loyally. She has graduated; she is equipped with a profession. She has turned into a very lovely woman to look upon.
But that sex restlessness which now overwhelmingly obsesses the world, possesses her. Freedom from all restraint, liberty to work out and accomplish her own destiny, contempt of convention, utter disregard of established formality, and hostility to custom, enroll her among the vast army of revolutionists now demanding a revision of all laws and customs made by one sex alone to govern the conduct of both.
You and I once conversed on this subject, if you remember. I told you what I feared. And it has happened: Stephanie has developed along radical lines. With everything revolutionary in the world-wide feminist movement she is in sympathy. Standards that have been standards are no longer so to her. To the world's conservatism she is fiercely and youthfully hostile; equality, tolerance, liberty are the only guide-posts she pretends to recognize.
I shall not live to see the outcome of this world-wide propaganda and revolt. I don't want to. But, in my opinion, it takes a strong character, already accustomed to liberty, to keep its balance in this dazzling flood let in by opening prison doors....
I have left Stephanie what property I have outside of that invested and endowed to maintain my Home for Defective Children. Securities have shrunk; it is not much. It may add four thousand dollars to her present income.
Mr. Cleland, you and Stephanie have gradually and very naturally grown apart since your absence. I don't know what you have developed into. But you were a nice boy.
Stephanie is a beautiful, willful, intelligent, and I fear slightly erratic woman, alive with physical and mental vigour, restless and sensitive under pressure of control, yet to be controlled through her affections first, and only afterward through her reason.
These are unconventional times; a new freedom is dawning, and to me the dawn seems threatening. I am too old, too near my end not to feel that the old régime, with all its drawbacks, was safer for women, productive of better results, less hazardous, less threatening.
But I don't know: I am old-fashioned except in theory. I have professed the creed of the new feminism; I have in my time—and very properly—denounced the tyranny and selfishness and injustice of man-made laws which fetter and cripple my sex.
But—at heart—and with not very many days left to me—at heart I am returning rather wearily along the way I came toward what, now to me, seems safer. It may be only the notions of an old woman, very tired, very sad, conscious of failure, and ready to rest and leave the responsibility where it originated and where it belongs. I don't know. But I wish Stephanie were not alone in the world.
Miss Quest died before the letter reached him. Stephanie's next letter informed him of all the details. She continued:
No use your coming back until you are quite ready, Jim. There's nothing for you to do.
I've taken a studio and apartment with Helen Davis, the animal sculptor. I don't yet know just what I shall do. I'm likely to try several things before I know what I ought to stick to.
Don't feel any absurd sense of responsibility for me. That would be too silly. Feel free to remain abroad as long as it suits you. I also feel absolutely free to go and come as I please. That's the best basis for our friendship, Jim, and, in fact, the necessary and vital basis. My affection is unaltered, but, somehow, it has been such a long time that you seem almost unreal to me.
He did not sail at once. After all, in the face of such an unmistakable declaration of independence, it did not seem worth while for him to arouse himself from the golden lethargy of enchantment and break the spell of Europe which held him content, amid the mellow ripeness of her capitals and the tinted splendour of her traditions.
He wrote frequently for a few months. Then his letters lagged.
Once his pretty Countess had warned him that, for an American, Europe was merely the school-room but his own country was the proper and only place for creative labour.
He remembered this at intervals, a little uneasy, a trifle conscious-stricken because he shrank from making an end to preparation—because he still loitered, disinclined to break the golden web and return to the clear, shadowless skies and the pitiless sun of the real world where he belonged, and where alone, he knew, was the workshop for which he had been so leisurely preparing.
Then the shock came—the bolt out of the blue.
The cablegram said:
I married Oswald Grismer this morning.
STEPHANIE.
CHAPTER XVI
He sailed in April. When he sailed, he knew he would not come back for many years, if ever. His business here was done, the dream of Europe ended. The cycle of Cathay awaited him in all its acrid crudity.
Yes, the golden web was rent, torn across, destroyed. The shock to his American mind left nothing of the lotus eater in him. He was returning where he belonged.
Married! Steve married! To Oswald Grismer, who, save as a schoolboy and later in college, was a doubtful and unknown quantity to him.
He had never known Grismer well. Since their schoolboy differences, they had been good enough friends when thrown together, which had been infrequently. He had no particular liking for Grismer, no dislike. Grismer had been a clever, adroit, amusing man in college, generally popular, yet with no intimacies, no close friends.
As for Steve, he never dreamed that Stephanie would do such a thing. It was so damnably silly, so utterly unthinkable a thing to do.
And in his angry perplexity and growing resentment, Cleland's conscience hurt as steadily as a toothache. He ought to have been home long ago. He should have gone back at the end of his two years. His father had trusted him to look out for Steve, and, in spite of her rather bumptious letters proclaiming her independence, he should have gone back and kept an eye on her, whether or not she liked it.
In his astonishment and unhappiness, he did not know what to write her when the cablegram came hurtling into his calm and delightfully ordered life and blew up the whole fabric.
Sometimes, to himself, he called her a "little fool"; sometimes "poor little Steve." But always he unfeignedly cursed Grismer and bitterly blamed himself.
The affair made him sick at heart and miserable, and ruined any pleasure remaining in his life and work.
He did not cable her; he wrote many letters and tore all of them to bits. It was beyond him to accept thefait accompli, beyond him to write even politely, let alone with any pretense of cordiality.
His resentment grew steadily, increased by self-reproach. What kind of man had Oswald Grismer grown into? What kind of insolence was this—his marrying Steve——
"Damn his yellow soul, I'll wring his neck!" muttered Cleland, pacing the deck of the Cunarder in the chilly April sunshine.
But the immense astonishment of it still possessed him. He couldn't imagine Steve married.Whyhad she married? What earthly reason was there? It was incredible, absurd.
Still in his mind lingered the image of the girl Stephanie whom he remembered as he last had seen her.
Once or twice, too, thinking of that time, and conjuring up all he could picture of her, he remembered the delicate ardour of her parting embrace, the fragrant warmth of her mouth, and her arms around his neck.
It angered him oddly to remember it—to think of her as the wife of Oswald Grismer. The idea seemed unendurable; it threw him into a rage against this man who had so suddenly taken Stephanie Quest out of his life.
"Damn him! Damn him!" he muttered, staring out over the wind-whipped sea. "I'd like to twist his neck! There's something queer about this. I'll take her away from him if I can. I'll do everything I can to take her away from him. I want her back. I'll get her back if it's possible. How can she care for Grismer?"
He had nobody, now, to return to; no home, for the house was closed; no welcome to expect.
He had not written her that he was coming; he had no desire to see her at the steamer with Grismer. With a youthful heart full of indefinable bitterness and self-contempt that his own indifference and selfishness had brought Steve and himself to such a pass, he paced the decks day after day, making no acquaintances, keeping to himself.
And one night the great light on Montauk Point stared at him across leagues of unseen water. He was in touch again with his own half of the earth, nearing the edges of the great, raw, sprawling Continent where no delicate haze of tradition softened sordid facts; where there reigned no calm and ordered philosophy of life; where everything was in extremes; where everything was etched sharply against aggressive backgrounds; where there were no misty middle distances, no tranquil spaces; only the roaring silences of deserts to mitigate the yelling dissonance of life.
He saw the sun on the gilded tips of snowy towers piled up like Alpine cliffs; the vast webs of bridges stretching athwart a leaden flood; forests of masts and huge painted funnels; acres of piers and docks; myriads of craft crossing and recrossing the silvery flood flowing between great cities.
On the red castle to the southwest a flag flew, sun-dyed, vivid, lovely as a flower.
His eyes filled; he choked.
"Thank God," he thought, "I'm where I belong at last!"
And so Cleland came home.
CHAPTER XVII
It was late afternoon before Cleland got his luggage unpacked and himself settled in the Hotel Rochambeau, where he had been driven from the steamer and had taken rooms.
The French cuisine, the French proprietor and personnel, the French café in front, all helped to make his home-coming a little less lonely and strange. Sunlight fell on the quaint yellow brick façade and old-fashioned wrought iron railings, and made his musty rooms and tarnished furniture and hangings almost cheerful.
He had not telephoned to Stephanie. He had nothing to say to her over the wire. From the moment he crossed the gang-plank the growing resentment had turned to a curious, impotent sort of anger which excited him and stifled any other emotion.
She had not known that he was coming back. He had made no response to her cablegram. She could not dream that he had landed; that he was within a stone's throw of her lodgings.
The whole thing, too, seemed unreal to him—to find himself here in New York again amid its clamour, its dinginess, its sham architecture and crass ugliness!—back again in New York—and everything in his life so utterly changed!—no home—the 80th Street house still closed and wired and the old servants gone or dead; and the city empty of interest and lonely as a wilderness to him since his father's death—and now Steve gone! nothing, now, to hold him here—for the ties of friends and clubs had loosened during his years abroad, and his mind and spirit had become formed in other moulds.
Yet here he knew he must do his work if ever he was to do any. Here was the place for the native-born—here his workshop where he must use and fashion all that he had witnessed and learned of life during the golden hours through which he sauntered under the lovely skies of an older civilization.
Here was the place and now was the time for self-expression, for creative work, for the artistic interpretation of the life and manners of his own people.
If he was to do anything, be anybody, attain distinction, count among writers of his era, he knew that his effort lay here—here where he was born and lived his youth to manhood—here where the tension of feverish living never relaxed, where a young, high-mettled, high-strung nation was clamouring and fretting and quarrelling and forging ahead, now floundering aside after some will-o'-the-wisp, now scaling stupendous moral heights, noisy, half-educated, half-civilized, suspicious, flippant, bragging, sentimental, yet iron-hearted, generous and brave.
Here, on the nation's eastern edge, where the shattering dissonance of the iron city never ceased by day; where its vast, metallic vibration left the night eternally unquiet and the very sky quivering with the blows of sound under the stars' incessant sparkle—here, after all, was where he belonged. Here he must have his say. Here lay his destiny. And, for the sake of all this which was his, and for no other reason, was attainment and distinction worth his effort.
All this good and evil, all this abominable turmoil and futile discord, all this relentless, untiring struggle deep in the dusty, twilight cañons and steel towers with their thin skins of stone—all the passions of these people, and their motives and their headlong strivings and their creeds and sentiments, false or true or misguided—these things were his to interpret, to understand, to employ.
For these people, and for their cities, for their ambitions, desires, aspirations—for the vast nation of which they formed their local fragment—only a native-born could be their interpreter, their eulogist, their defender, their apologist, and their prophet. And for their credit alone was there any reason for his life's endeavour.
No cultured, suave product of generations of Europe's cultivation could handle these people and these themes convincingly and with the subtle comprehension of authority. Rod and laurel, scalpel and palm should be touched only by the hand of the native-born.
His pretty Countess had said to him once:
"Only what you have seen, what you have lived and seen others live; only what you detect from the clear-minded, cool, emotionless analysis of your own people, is worth the telling. Only this carries conviction. And, when told with all the cunning simplicity and skill of an artist, it carries with it that authority which leaves an impression indelible! Go back to your own people—if you really have anything to write worth reading."
Thinking of these things, he locked his door on rooms now more or less in order, and went out into the street.
It was too warm for an overcoat. A primrose sunset light filled the street; the almost forgotten specific odour of New York invaded his memory again—an odour entirely different from that of any other city. For every city in the world has its own odour—not always a perfume.
Now, again, his heart was beating hard and fast at thought of seeing Stephanie, and the same indefinable anger possessed him—not directed entirely against anyone, but inclusive of himself, and her, and Grismer, and his own helplessness and isolation.
The street she lived in was quiet. There seemed to be a number of studios along the block. In a few minutes he saw the number he was looking for.
Four brick dwelling houses had been made over into one with studios on every floor—a rather pretty Colonial effect with green shutters, white doorway, and iron fence painted white.
In the quaint vestibule with its classic fanlight and delicate side-lights, he found her name on a letter box and pushed the electric button. The street door swung open noiselessly.
On the ground floor, facing him on the right, he saw a door on which was a copper plate bearing the names, "Miss Davis; Miss Quest." The door opened as he touched the knocker; a young girl in stained sculptor's smock stood there regarding him inquiringly, a cigarette between her pretty, clay-stained fingers.
"Miss——" he checked himself, reddening—"Mrs. Grismer, I mean?" he asked.
The girl laughed. She was brown-eyed, pink-cheeked, compactly and beautifully moulded, and her poise and movement betrayed the elasticity of superb health.
"She's out just now. Will you come in and wait?"
He went in, aware of clay studies on revolving stands, academic studies in unframed canvases, charcoal drawings from the nude, thumb-tacked to the wall—the usual mess of dusty draperies, decrepit and nondescript furniture, soiled rugs and cherished objects of art. A cloying smell of plasticine pervaded the place. A large yellow cat, dozing on a sofa, opened one golden eye a little way, then closed it indifferently.
The girl who had admitted him indicated a chair and stepped before a revolving table on which was the roughly-modelled sketch of a horse and rider.
She picked up a lump of waxy material, and, kneading it in one hand, glanced absently at the sketch, then looked over her shoulder at Cleland with a friendly, enquiring air:
"Miss Quest went out to see about her costume. I suppose she'll be back shortly."
"What costume?" he asked.
"Oh, didn't you know? It's for the Caricaturists' Ball in aid of the Artists' Fund. It's the Ball of the Gods—the great event of the season and the last. Evidently you don't live in New York."
"I haven't, recently."
"I see. Will you have a cigarette?" She pointed at a box on a tea tray; he thanked her and lighted one. As he continued to remain standing, she asked him again to be seated, and he complied.
She continued to pinch off little lumps of waxy, pliable composition and stick them on the horse. Still fussing with the sketch, he saw a smile curve her cheek in profile; and presently she said without turning:
"Why did you speak of Stephanie Quest as Mrs. Grismer?Wedon't, you know."
"Why not? Isn't she?"
The girl looked at him over her shoulder; she was startlingly pretty, fresh and smooth-skinned as a child.
"Whoareyou?" she asked, with that same little hint of friendly curiosity in her brown eyes;—"I'm Helen Davis, Stephanie's chum. You seem to know a good deal about her."
"I'm James Cleland," he said quietly, "—her brother."
At that the girl's brown eyes flew wide open:
"Good Heavens!" she said; "did Steve expect you? She never said a word to me! I thought you were a fixture in Europe!"
He sat biting the end of his cigarette, not looking at her:
"She didn't expect me," he said, flinging the half-burned cigarette into the silver slop-dish of the tea service. "I didn't notify her that I was coming."
Helen Davis dropped one elbow on the modelling table, rested her rounded chin in her palm, and bent her eyes on Cleland. Smoke from the cigarette between her fingers mounted in a straight, thin band to the ceiling.
"So you are Steve's Jim," she mused aloud. "I recognize you now, from your photographs, only you're older and thinner—and you wear a moustache.... You've been away a long while, haven't you?"
"Too long," he said, casting a sombre look at her.
"Oh, do you feel that way? How odd it will seem to you to see Steve again. She's such a darling! Quite wonderful, Mr. Cleland. The artists' colony in New York raves over her."
"Does it?" he said drily.
"Everybody does. She's so amusing, so clever, so full of talent and animation—like a beautiful and mischievous thoroughbred on tip-toes with vitality and the sheer joy of living. She never is in low spirits or depressed. That's what fascinates everybody—her gaiety and energy and high spirits. I knew her in college and she wasn't quite that way then. Perhaps because she hated college. But she could be a perfect little devil if she wanted to. She can be that still."
Cleland nodded almost absently; his preoccupied gaze travelled over the disordered studio and concentrated scowlingly on the yellow cat. He kept twisting the head of his walking stick between his hands and staring at the animal in silence while Helen Davis watched him. Presently, and without any excuse, she walked slowly away and vanished into some inner room. When she returned, she had discarded her working smock, and her smooth hands were slightly rosy from a recent toilet.
"I'm going to give you some tea," she said, striking a match and lighting the lamp under the kettle at his elbow.
"Thanks, no," he said with an effort.
"Yes, you shall have some," she insisted, smiling in her gay little friendly way. "Come, Mr. Cleland, you are man of the world enough to waive formality. I'm going to sit here and make tea and talk to you. Look at me! Wouldn't you like to be friends with me? Most men would."
He looked up, and his slightly drawn features relaxed.
"Yes," he said with a smile, "of course I would."
"That's very human of you," she laughed. "Shall we talk about Steve? Whatdidyou think of that cablegram? Did you ever hear of such a crazy thing?"
He flushed with anger but said nothing. The girl looked at him intently over the steaming kettle, then went on measuring out tea.
"Shall I tell you about it, or would you rather that Steve told you?" she asked carelessly, busy with her preparations.
"She is actually married to—Grismer—then?"
"Well—I suppose so. You know him, of course."
"Yes."
"Heisfascinating—in that unusual way of his—poor fellow. Women like him better than men do. One meets him everywhere in artistic circles; but do you know, Mr. Cleland, I've always seemed to be conscious of a curious sort of latent hostility to Oswald Grismer, even among people he frequents—among men, particularly. However, he has no intimates."
"If they are actually married," he said with an effort, "why does Stephanie live here with you?"
"Oh, that was the ridiculous understanding. I myself don't know why she married him. The whole affair was a crazy, feather-brained performance——" She poured his tea and offered him a sugar biscuit, which he declined.
"You see," she continued, curling up into the depths of her rickety velvet arm-chair and taking her cup and a heap of sugar biscuits into her lap, "Oswald Grismer has been Steve's shadow—at her heels always—and I know well enough that Stephanie was not insensible to the curious fascination of the man. You know how devotion impresses a girl—and heisclever and good looking.
"And that was all very well, and I don't think it would have amounted to anything serious as long as Oswald was the amusing, good-looking, lazy and rich amateur of sculpture, with plenty of leisure to saunter through life and be charmingly attentive, and play with his profession when the whim suited him."
She sipped her tea and looked at Cleland meditatively.
"Did you know he'd lost all his money?"
"No," said Cleland.
"Oh, yes. He lost it a year ago. He has scarcely anything, I believe. He had a beautiful studio and apartment, wonderful treasures of antique furniture; he had about everything a rich young man fancies. It all went."
"What was the matter?"
"Nobody knows. He took a horrid little stable studio in Bleecker Street, and he lives there. Andthat'swhy Steve did that crazy, impulsive thing, I suppose."
"You mean she was sorry for him?"
"Ithinkit must have been that—and the general fascination he had for her—and his persistency and devotion. Really, I don't know, myself, how she came to do it. She did it on one of her ill-considered, generous, headlong impulses. Ask her. All she ever told me was that she had married Oswald and didn't know how it was going to turn out, but had decided to keep her own name for the present and continue to live with me."
"Do they see each other—much?" he asked.
"Oh, they encounter each other here and there as usual. He drops in here every day."
"Does she go—there?"
"I don't know," said the girl gravely.
He had set aside his tea, untasted. She, still curled up in her arm-chair, ate and drank with a delightfully healthy appetite.
"Would you prefer a highball?" she enquired. "I could fix you one."
"No, thank you." He rose and began to walk nervously about the studio.
Her perplexed, brown eyes followed him. It was clear that she could not make him out.
Natural chagrin at a clandestine marriage might account for his manner. Probably it was that, because Stephanie could not have meant anything more personal and serious to him, or he could not have remained away so long.
He stopped abruptly in his aimless promenade and turned to Helen:
"Am I in the way?" he asked.
"My dear Mr. Cleland," she said, "we are a perfectly informal community. If you were in the way I'd say so. Also, I have a bed-room where I can retire when Steve comes in. Or you and she can go into her room to talk things over." She lighted another cigarette, rose, strolled over to the wax horse, with a friendly smile at him.
"I was just making a sketch," she said. "I've a jolly commission—two bronze horses for the Hispano-Moresque Museum. The Cid is on one, Saladin on the other. I was just fussing with an idea when you rang."
He came and stood beside her, looking at the sketch.
"I've a fine, glass-roofed courtyard in the rear of the studio for my animal models—horses and dogs and any beast I require," she explained. "This sort of thing comes first, of course. I think I'll get Oswald to pose for the Cid."
She stood contemplating her sketch, the cigarette balanced between her fingers; then, of a sudden, she turned swiftly around to confront him.
"Mr. Cleland, itisa dreadful and foolish and irrational thing that Steve has done, and I know you are justly angry. But—she is a darling in spite of being a feather-head sometimes. Youwillforgive her, won't you?"
"Of course. After all, it is her business."
Helen sighed:
"Youareangry. But please don't lose interest in her. She's so loyal to you. She adores you, Mr. Cleland——"
A key rattled in the lock; the door swung open; into the dusky studio stepped a slender figure, charmingly buoyant and graceful in the fading light.
"Helen, they're to send our costumes in an hour. They are the most fascinating things——"
Stephanie's voice ceased abruptly. There was a silence.
"Who is—that?" she asked unsteadily.
Helen turned and went quietly away toward her bed-room. Stephanie stood as though frozen, then reached forward and pressed the electric button with a gloved finger that trembled.
"Jim!" she whispered.
She stole forward, nearer, close to him, still incredulous, her grey eyes wide with excitement; then, with a little sobbing cry she threw both arms around his neck.
She had laughed and cried there in his arms; her lovely head and disordered hair witnessed the passionate ardour of her welcome to this man who now sat beside her in her bed-room, her hands clasped in his, and all her young soul's adoration in her splendid eyes.
"Oh," she whispered again and again, "—Oh, to have you back, Jim. That is too heavenly to believe. You dear, dear boy—so good looking—and a little older and graver——" She nestled close to him, laying her cheek against his.
She murmured:
"It seems too delicious to endure. You do love me, don't you, Jim? We haven't anybody else in the world except each other, you know. Isn't it good—good to have each other again! It's been like a dream, your absence. You gradually became unreal—a dear, beloved memory. Somehow, I didn't think you'd ever come back. Are you happy to be with me?"
"Happier than you know, Steve——" His voice trembled oddly and he drew her into his arms: "Good God," he said under his breath, "—I must have been mad to leave you to your own devices so long! I ought to be shot!"
"What do you mean, Jim?"
"You know. Oh, Steve, Steve, I can't understand—I simply can not understand."
After a silence she lifted her head and rested her lips softly against his cheek.
"Do you mean—my marrying Oswald?" she asked.
"Yes. Why did you do such a thing?"
She bent her head, considering the question for a while in silence. Then she said calmly:
"There's one reason why I did it that I can't tell you. I promised him not to. Another reason was that he was very much in love with me. I don't know exactly what it is that I feel for him—but he does fascinate me. He always did, somehow. Even as a boy——"
"You didn't know him as a boy!"
"No. But I saw him once. And I realize now that I was even then vaguely conscious of an odd interest in him. And that time at Cambridge, too. He had that same, indefinable attraction for me——"
"Youarein love with him then!"
"I don't know. Jim, I don't think it is love. I don't think I know what love really is. So, knowing this, but being grateful to him, and deeply sorry——"
"Why?"
"I can't tell you why. Perhaps I'll tell you sometime. But I was very grateful and sorry and—and more or less moved—fascinated. It's funny; there are things I don't like about Oswald, and still I can't keep away from him.... Well, so everything seemed to combine to make me try it——"
"Try what?"
"Marrying him."
"What do you mean by 'trying it?'"
"Why, it's a trial marriage——"
"Good God!" he said. "What do you mean?"
"I mean it's a trial marriage," she repeated coolly.
"You mean there was no—no ceremony?" he stammered.
"There wasn't any ceremony. We don't believe in it. We just said to each other that we'd marry——"
"You mean you've—you'velivedwith that man on such terms of understanding?" he demanded, white with rage.
"I don't live with him. I live here with Helen," she said, perplexed. "All I would consent to was a trial marriage to see how it went for a year or two——"
"Do you mean that what you've done is legal?"
"Oh, yes, it's legal," she said seriously. "I've found that out."
"And—you know wh-what I mean," he said, stammering in his anger; "Was that sufficient for you? Do you want me to speak plainer, Steve? I mean, have you—lived with him?"
She understood and dropped her reddening cheek on his shoulder.
"Haveyou?" he repeated harshly.
"No.... I thought you understood. It is only a trial marriage; I've tried to explain that—make it clear——"
"What loose-minded, unconventional Bohemians call a 'trial marriage,'" he said, with brutal directness, "is an agreement between a pair of fools to live as man and wife for a while with an understanding that a formal ceremony shall ultimately confirm the irregularity if they find themselves suited to each other. Is that what you've done?"
"No."
He drew a deep, trembling breath of relief, took her in his arms and held her close.
"My little Steve," he whispered, "—my own little Steve! What sort of trap is this he's led you into?"
"No trap. Iwantedto try it."
"Youwishedit?"
"I was quite willing to try. After a year or two, I'll know whether I shall ever care to live with him."
"After a year or two!"
"Yes. That was the understanding. And then, if I didn't wish to live with him, we can be very quietly divorced. Itwasa crazy thing to do. But there wasn't any real risk. Besides——" She hesitated.
"Go on," he said.
"No, I can't. If I don't fall in love with him, I certainly shall never live with him. So," she added calmly, "there'll be no children to complicate the parting. You see I had some sense, Jim."
She lifted her head from his shoulder and smiled at him:
"It was just an escapade of sorts," she explained, more cheerfully. "It really doesn't mean anything yet, and I fly around and have a wonderful time, and maybe I'll take up sculpture with Helen, and maybe I'll try the stage. Anyway——" she pressed closer to him with a happy sigh, "I've gotyouback, haven't I? So what do we care whether I'm his wife or not?"
He said, holding her closely embraced:
"Suppose some other man should fall in love with you, Steve?"
"Oh!" she laughed. "Plenty do. Or say they do. I'm nice to them, and they get along very well.... Your moustache is becoming to you, Jim." She touched it curiously, with one tentative finger.
"But supposeyoushould return another man's love some day?"
"I haven't ever!" she said, laughing back into his eyes.
"No, but suppose you did? And found yourself tied legally by a fool agreement to Oswald Grismer?"
"Oh. I never considered that."
"Consider it, now!"
"It isn't likely to happen——"
"Consider it, all the same."
"Well—but I've never been in love. But if it happened—well—thatwouldbe a jolly mess, wouldn't it?"
"I should think so! What would you do about it?"
"There wouldn't be anything to do except to wait until my two years of trial marriage was up," she said thoughtfully.
"You could divorce him before that."
"Oh, no. I promised to give him two years."
"To sit saddled with this ridiculous burden for two years?"
"Yes, I promised."
"Oh, Steve! Steve! What a muddle you have made of things! What good does it do you or him to have this chain between you? You've lost your liberty. You're a legal wife without being one. You've put shackles on yourself for God knows what whim or caprice."
"But, Jim," she said, bewildered, "Iexpectto be his wife, ultimately."
"What?"
"Of course. I wasn't absolutely sure that I could fall in love with him, that was all. I have very little doubt that I shall. I like to be with him: I am never bored when he is with me; our tastes are similar; our beliefs are unconventional. We suit each other admirably. It wasn't such a rash thing to do. You see, it is perfectly safe every way."
For a long while he sat beside her in silence. She had slipped out of his arms and now sat with one hand lying across his, watching the enigmatic expressions which flitted over his rather sombre and flushed features.
Finally he looked up:
"Steve?"
"Yes?"
"SupposeIfell in love with—you?"
"Oh, Jim!" She began to laugh, then the mirth faded in her grey eyes, and her lips grew quiet and rather grave.
"You?" she said, half to herself.
"Do you remember some letters I once wrote you?"
"Yes."
"You wrote asking if I meant them to be love letters."
"Yes. You answered very vaguely. I think I frightened you," she said, laughing.
"Theywerelove letters," he said. "I didn't happen to know it; that is all. Iwasin love with you then. I didn't realize it; you did not believe it. But now I know it was so."
"Howcouldyou have been in love with me?" she inquired, astonished.