A Top-Floor Idyl Part 23

"Well, good night, Frances," I bade her. "I do hope your poor head will let you have some sleep to-night, and perhaps dreams of pleasant things to come."

So I hastened down to the street and to the station of the Elevated, on my way to Gordon's, wondering why he was thus summoning me and inventing a score of explanations, all of which I rejected as soon as I had formulated them.

When I pressed the b.u.t.ton at his door, my friend opened it himself, his features looking very set and grave. I followed him into the studio, that was only half-lighted with a few shaded bulbs, and sat down on the divan by the window while he took a cigar and cut off the end, with unusual deliberation.

"Hang it all!" he finally grumbled, "why don't you speak? Have you seen--Mrs. Dupont?"

"Yes, I have," I answered, rather surprised, because to me he generally called her Frances now, as we all did.

"And she has told you all about it, of course!"

"She only told me that she had a severe headache, and would see no one, not even Frieda."

He looked at me, sharply, after which he lit a match for his cigar, with a hand that was decidedly shaky. Then he paced up and down the big room, nervously, while I stared at him in anxious surprise.

"Oh! You can look at me!" he exclaimed, after a moment. "I'm the clever chap who warned you against that woman, am I not? Marked _explosive_, I told you she ought to be. And now you can have your laugh, if you want to. Go ahead and don't mind me!"

For a moment I felt my chest constricted as with a band of iron. I felt that I could hardly breathe, and the hand I put up to my forehead met a cold and clammy surface.

"For G.o.d's sake, Gordon!" I cried, "what--what have you----?"

He pitched the cigar in the fireplace and stood before me, his hands deep in his trousers pockets, his voice coming cold and hard, the words forced and sounding artificial and metallic.

"What have I done? You want to know, eh? Oh! It's soon enough told.

First I did a 'Mother and Child,' a devil of a good piece of work, too.

And, while I was painting it, I saturated every fiber of me with the essence of that wonderful face. Man alive! Her husky little voice, when I permitted her to speak, held an appeal that slowly began to madden me.

Oh! It didn't come on the first day, or the first week, but, by the time I was putting on the last few strokes of the brush, I realized that I was making an arrant fool of myself, caught by the mystery of those great dark eyes, bound hand and foot by the glorious tresses of her hair, trapped by that amazing smile upon her face. Then, I worked--worked as I never did before, fevered by the eagerness to finish that picture and send her away, out of my sight. I was tempted to leave the thing unfinished, but I couldn't! I wanted to run away and called myself every name under the sun, and gritted my teeth. Up and down this floor I walked till all hours. I decided that it was but a sudden fever, a distemper that would pa.s.s off when she was no longer near me. Every day I swore I would react against it. What had I in common with a woman who had already given the best of her heart and soul to another man, who still goes on weeping for his memory, who is but one amid the wreck and flotsam of that artistic life so many start upon and so few ever succeed in! And the picture was finished and I gave her the few dollars she had earned and sent her away, just as calmly as if she'd been any poor drab of a creature. My G.o.d! Dave! If she had stood there and asked me for all I had, for my talent, for my soul to tread beneath her feet, I would have laid them before her, thankfully, gladly. But I took her as far as the door of the lift, forsooth, and gave her my coldest and most civil smile. I'm a wonderful actor, Dave, and have mistaken my profession! I hid it all from her--I--I think I did, anyway, and she never knew anything, at that time. So, when she had gone, I told Yumasa to turn the picture to the wall and then I went out to the club, and treated myself pretty well, and then to the theatre and back to the club. Some of the fellows are a pretty gay lot, sometimes, and I was good company for them that night!"

For a moment he stopped and took up another cigar, mechanically, while I kept on staring at him in silence.

"Oh! I was able to walk straight enough when I came home. The stuff had little effect on me. In the taxi my head was whirling, though. But I got back here and took up the picture again and placed it on the easel, in a flood of light. It was wonderful! It seemed to me that she was coming out of the frame and extending her round arms and slender fingers to me till my heart was throbbing in my throat and choking me!"

He stopped again and took up his pacing once more, like some furred beast in a cage.

"In the morning I looked at myself," he resumed. "A fine wreck of manhood I appeared, bleared and haggard and with a mouth tasting of the ash heap. But, after a Turkish bath, I was like some imitation of my real self again, for I could hold myself in and think clearly. It meant the abandoning of all my plans and the awakening, some day, in a period of disillusionment, with a woman at my side carrying another man's child and bestowing on me the remnants of her love. Ay, man! I was egotist enough to think I should only have to ask, to put out my hand to her!

But I gripped myself again and felt proud of the control I could exercise over my madness. The j.a.p packed up my things, and I went away over there, where the other woman awaited me, with her horses and her autos, her rackets and her golf-clubs, with other rich women about her, laughing, simpering, chattering, but culling all the blossoms of a life I had aimed for and was becoming a part of. I had paid for it, Dave, in toil such as few other men have undergone, at the price of starvation in garrets, over there in the _Quartier_. No light o' loves for me, no hours wasted, never a penny spent but for food of a sort and the things I needed for painting. And it took me years. Then the reward was before me, for I had won time. Yes, man! I was the master of time! Fools say it is money! What utter rot! Money is time, that's what it is. It can bring time for leisure, and to enjoy luxury, to bask in smiles, to lead a life of ease and refinement, and time also to accomplish the great work of one's dreams!"

There was another pause.

"I didn't forget her, of course. She was before me night and day, but I thought I was mastering my longing, beginning to lord it over an insane pa.s.sion. I could golf and swim and dance, and listen to fools prattling of art, and smile at them civilly and agree with their silly nonsense.

They're not much more stupid than most of the highbrows, after all, and, usually, a devilish sight more pleasant to a.s.sociate with. None of Camus's poison in their kitchens! And--and that other woman was a beauty, and she held all that I aimed for in her hand and was stretching it out to me. And she's a good woman too and a plucky one! Rather too good for me, I am sure. It was at night, going forty miles an hour, I think, that I finally made up my mind to ask her. And--and she consented. She was driving and never slowed down a minute, for we were late. I was half scared, and yet hoping that she might wrap that car around a telegraph pole, before we arrived. When we finally stopped, she declared it had been a glorious ride, and gave me her lips to kiss, and--and I went up to my room to dress for dinner, feeling that I had made an end of all insanity, that I had achieved all that I had fought so hard for!

"Then, later on, after some months, you came around to ask me to use Frances as a model again. I thought I was quite cured at that time, and I refused. Oh, yes! I had been coming to that shack of yours. On those Sunday afternoons the devil would get into me. A look at her would do no harm. You and Frieda would be there too. And I would come and sit on your rickety bed and look at her, and listen to you all, and watch you pouring out tea. But I thought all the time that I was keeping a fine hold on myself, just tapering off, the dope-fiends call it. Then it was that you came to me. You're ugly and gawky enough, Dave, but no evil angel of temptation was ever so compelling as you. I remember how you stared when I said I didn't want her. And you hadn't been gone ten minutes before the devil had his clutches on me and flung me in my car and I met you at your door and told you to let her come!

"And I've been painting her again. Such beastly stuff as I've turned out! Daubing in and rubbing out again, and staring at her till I knew she was beginning to feel uneasy and anxious. But I always managed to keep a hold on my tongue. G.o.d! What a fight I was waging, every minute of the time, crazy to fling the palette to the floor, to kick the easel over, to rush to her and tell her I was mad for the love of her! And to-day the crisis came; I'd been shaking all over; couldn't hold a brush to save my life. I--I don't know what I said to her; but it was nothing to offend her, I am sure, nothing that a sweet, clean woman could not hear and listen to, from a man who loved her. But I remember her words.

They were very halting and that poor voice of hers was very hoa.r.s.e again.

"'Oh!' she cried, 'I--I am so miserably sorry. I--I thought you were just one of the dear kind friends who have been so good to me. I--I never said a word or did a thing to--to bring such a thing about.

Please--please let me go away. It makes me dreadfully unhappy!'

"And so she picked up her hat and put it on, her hands shaking all over, and took the baby to her bosom and went out, and--and I guess that's all, Dave."

He sank down on the teakwood stool he generally uses to put his colors on and his brushes. His jaws rested in the open palms of his hands, and he looked as if his vision was piercing the walls and wandering off to some other world.

"Why don't you speak?" he finally cried.

"Because I don't know what to say," I replied. "I've an immense pity for you in my heart, old man. You--you've been playing with fire and your burnt flesh is quivering all over."

"Let it go at that, Dave," he answered, rising. "I'm glad you're not one of the preaching kind. I'd throw you neck and crop out of the window, if you were."

"What of Miss Van Rossum?" I asked, gravely.

"They went off a week ago to Palm Beach. Looking for those tarpon. Come along."

"You haven't treated her right, Gordon."

"Know that as well as you. Come on out!"

I followed him downstairs. His car was drawn up against the curb and he jumped in.

"Want a ride?" he asked.

"No, I think I had better go home now."

"All right. Thanks for coming. I didn't want you to think I had behaved badly to Frances, for I didn't, and I had to talk to some one. Good by!"

He let in his clutch, quickly, and the machine jerked forward. He turned into the Park entrance and disappeared, going like a crazy man.

So I returned home, feeling ever so badly for the two of them. I honestly think and hope that I am of a charitable disposition, but I could not extend all sympathy and forgiveness to my friend. He had deliberately gone to work and proposed to a woman he did not truly love, and she had accepted him. The poor girl probably thinks the world of him, in her own way, which is probably a true and womanly one. And now, after he is bound hand and foot by her consent, he goes to work and lays down his heart at the feet of another.

Honor, manliness, even common decency should have held him back! I wondered sadly whether the best and truest friend I ever had was now lost to me, and I could have sat down and wept, had not tears been for many years foreign to my eyes.

And then the picture of Frances seemed to appear before me, in all its glory of tint, in all its sweetness and loveliness, and I shook my head as I thought of the awful weakness of man and of how natural it was that, before such a vision, no strength of will or determination of purpose could have prevented the culmination of this tragedy. I am sure that he resisted until the very last moment, to be at last overwhelmed.

Poor old Gordon!

Her door was closed and there was utter silence when I returned. I tried to write, but the noise of the machine offended me. For a long time I stared at the pages of an open book, never turning a leaf over, and, finally, I sought my bed, more than weary.

At two o'clock, on the next afternoon, I got a wire from Gordon.

"Am taking the _Espagne_. Lots of sport driving an ambulance at the front. May perhaps write.

"GORDON."

I stared at the yellow sheet, stupidly. After this there was a knock at the door and the colored servant came in, bringing me a parcel. I opened it and found some advance copies of the "Land o' Love," which I threw down on the floor. What did all those silly words amount to!