Jeanne Judson

“ The house was quite silent and dark, save for one dim light burning in the hall, and this light seemed to illumine a thick blue haze or smoke that floated out enveloping her as she paused on the threshold. At the same moment she was conscious of an almost overpowering odour of incense, something that Gloria never used, she knew. She stood a moment peering through the blue haze until she made out a figure crouching on the stairs, not George as she at first supposed, but Amy, who seldom showed herself in the front of the house. ”

“ If Gloria and Pendragon, who had once been married, could meet thus as strangers, if she and Terry knowing their secret, or at least a part of it, could calmly pretend to the world that they did not know, might not all these other people have secrets, too—old memories that wine would not drown, meetings and partings whose pleasure or pain even time could not dim—immortal loves and hates still living, but sealed securely in coffins of conventionality? ”

“ She thought of perpetual students—did she want to become one of them? That was what it meant, following a muse who had not called. Art is not chosen. It chooses its own. Dorothy Winslow was wrong—fame could not be achieved merely by ambition, energy, and determination—neither is genius the art of taking pains, she thought. Sometimes it is achieved with infinite carelessness. The hour was afternoon, class was over and she had not touched crayon to paper. Not until she was on the street, hurrying out to avoid speaking to Nels or Dorothy, did she remember her engagement with Terry. ”

“ Anyway I’m quite sane now, and I do want to get back to New York so that I can begin rehearsals in Terry’s new play. I feel like working hard, like beginning all over again— I feel—so—so free, that’s the word, as if I had been in prison—a prison with mirror walls, every one of which reflected a distorted vision of myself. ”

“ He stopped talking now, but Ruth waited. Over the hills the rose flush had faded, the thin, keen blade of the almost disappearing moon hung like a scimitar in a field of dark purple and resting above 225it a star hung, trembling, as if waiting for the cold arms of a laggard lover.
“I suppose half confidences won’t do,” he said at last. “I still love Gloria; what man once having loved her could forget? ‘Time cannot change nor custom stale her infinite variety’; but of what use to fight one’s destiny—in another incarnation, perhaps. I cannot believe all that you say of George. ”

“ They all sat on hard benches in the railway station, or looking through the soiled windows at other passengers driving gaily off to their homes—and breakfast, as Terry said quite wistfully. Prince Aglipogue paced up and down in melancholy silence. Ruth could imagine that he was preparing dignified reproaches to hurl at the auburn head of Gloria. Her train came in finally and she stepped off swathed in furs, exhaling the perfume of violets, followed by respectful porters and greeted by George, who took possession of everything, before the vicarious servitors quite knew what was happening. ”

“ Her mother, being the least imaginative person she knew as well as the one most conveniently near, she decided to try with her. It was one evening when her father was not at home. Her mother was busy embroidering—one of those never to be finished articles of no conceivable use, which occupy the hands of women who have no active interest in life. Ruth was pretending to read. She dared not shut her eyes lest her mother should observe. But she bent unseeing eyes over her book and concentrated on the inner vision of the mystic—shutting out everything except the thought of violets. ”

“ You can’t afford to be always giving and never taking anything from any one. If you’d only let me live here on a sensible basis—it would make me feel much more comfortable, and—”
“It would not,” said Gloria. “If I’d known you were going to be sensible and practical and all that sort of thing, I wouldn’t have asked you to look at the silly, old bills. And I’m not generous at all. I’m selfish. Generous people are the sort of people who accept favors gracefully—people like Billie Irwin and Ben Stark. ”

“ She was roused by seeing the other students filing out at the luncheon hour. She did not want to see Nels and Dorothy; she would not go to their restaurant, instead she would eat the “cheap and wholesome” lunch offered in the building. There she would be with strangers. She ate something, she did not know what, and returned to her life class, but again she could not work. She was beginning to think definitely now. She had no talent—no future. If she could not be a great artist, a great painter, there was nothing in life for her. She didn’t want anything else, not even love. ”

“ In this Ruth thought she detected the interest of a jealous suitor.
“Professor Pendragon is very charming and very clever and good looking. He is taller than Gloria, and apparently has no particular vocation, for he has given up astronomy. His interest in art he calls a fad; he lives alone in a suite in the Belton Hotel and about ten days ago he became mysteriously paralysed—his right leg up to the knee. That’s all I know,” said Ruth, “except that he’s one of the most fascinating men I’ve ever seen and I can’t understand why any woman would ever give him up. ”

“ There was the faintest trace of mockery in her voice, but somehow Ruth could not be angry, though she knew that this woman, her father’s sister, was laughing at her dead mother and her dead mother’s conventions and moralities. She decided that she would be as frank as her aunt.
“No, Aunt Gloria, I don’t think Mother’s views had changed at all. She sent me here because you are my only living relative and she thought I was too young to live alone—and I came,” she continued bravely, “because New York is the best place in America to study art and I want to be a great painter. ”

“ Ruth had been very much surprised to find that her friends at school seemed to think that she had achieved something by having her sketches in a Sunday newspaper. What she had thought would make her lose caste among them had in reality given her distinction, but it had had another effect also. If she was a caricaturist she could also be a painter, they reasoned, and less frankly than Dorothy, Nels Zord had expressed the opinion that she would never be a great painter.
“Better be a successful cartoonist than an unsuccessful painter,” he had said. ”

“ Ruth wondered afterward where she got all this worldly knowledge and how she was able to say it, with George’s eyes burning into her back.
“What a practical child you are; but let’s not talk about it tonight. I’m awfully tired. We were going to announce our engagement Christmas Eve, but there’s no harm in your knowing.”
“Gloria, you can’t—you can’t marry him. He’s fat and selfish and horrid!” In her excitement she forgot George and moved to Gloria’s side. “You don’t know what you’re doing.” ”

“ She looked stunning, Ruth thought, 212and her heart swelled with pride at the thought that at least her Gloria was looking her very best for the encounter.
“Afraid to go down alone?” Gloria asked. “You needn’t be; you’re looking ducky. I hope she has a millionaire for you to meet, but no such luck. That would spoil ‘our Bohemian circle.’”. She mimicked Angela’s gurgling voice perfectly. “I dare say those hungry brutes of men are waiting now—if they have the grace to wait, which I doubt; I could eat almost anything myself.” ”

“ It was good to love, even when love was unreciprocated. She pitied women who had never loved, as she did, unselfishly—a love more like adoration than earthly passion. She wanted to help Terry and Gloria. She would rejoice in their marriage. If she could only solve 118their problems, she would not care what life held for her after that. It was an exalted mood for a girl of nineteen years, some months and days, and Terry, all unsuspecting, broke into it with words:
“I wish we could arrange to have Gloria and Professor Pendragon meet again,” he said. ”

“ Suddenly with an annoyed gesture he threw up his hands, apparently throwing off the water, which instantaneously began to flow in myriad streams from his headdress, reminding Ruth of Shiva, who, with his hair, separated the flow of the sacred river when it came down from the Himalayas. George removed his headdress, disclosing a close white turban beneath, and the flow of the fountain died as unceremoniously as it had begun. ”

“ At first he understood the prejudices of a Western woman and realized that he couldn’t marry her, but I think if you will look back perhaps now you can see how he separated you and Gloria. I have never seen the two men who followed, but I think he must have hypnotized her into marrying them, and then himself broken the marriages, and now she is going to marry this horrible Prince Aglipogue. George is forcing her to do that. He boasted that it was so to me. It will ruin her career and make her poor, and break her heart with shame when she wakes to what she has done. ”

“ She thinks she has the best servants in the world.”
Gloria came in, filling the room with cold outer air mingled with the odour of the violets pinned on her sables.
“Just look who’s here,” she said, holding a small, plump, frizzled, blond woman of about forty in front of her. “Billie Irwin—she came over from London with the unfortunate ‘Love at First Sight’ company, and here she is with no more engagement than a trapeze performer with a broken leg—you know her, don’t you, Terry?—well, anyway you know her now, and this is Ruth Mayfield—not in the profession, an artist of a different kind.” ”

“ Ruth found the entire family, as Gloria called her household, assembled when she reached the house on Gramercy Park. Terry Riordan was among them.
“Please, Ruth, won’t you go to the theatre with Terry tonight? He has a perfect passion for first nights, but as an honest working woman I need my rest and I’m too tired to go tonight,” said Gloria.
“I’d like to, but—” Ruth glanced in the direction of Ben Stark.
“Oh, don’t mind me,” said that youth. “The fact that you have refused me three times won’t make any difference. I’m accustomed to such treatment from the fair sex.” ”

“ His wide trousers, short velvet jacket and flowing tie created in the mind of Ruth much the same wonder that Dorothy’s unaccustomed elegance created in the mind of Nels. Only Dorothy herself was unimpressed by their combined magnificence. To her everything was but a stepping stone on the upward path of her career.
“Don’t I look spiffy, Nels? And aren’t you going to make sure that I meet Professor Pendragon, and be sure and tell him that I do portraits and then I’ll do the rest. If one can’t make use of one’s friends, of whom can one make use?” The last addressed to Ruth. ”

“ His invitation was addressed to both Ben and Ruth, but Ben, with motives which Ruth understood only too well begged off.
“You know I have to report for rehearsals tomorrow morning, if you don’t mind I’ll run along.”
He evidently thought that Terry would like to be alone with Ruth, and Ruth, realizing his mistake, was yet too timid to protest, even had she not secretly desired to be alone with Terry. She had never gone to supper with a man alone. It would be an adventure, and the fact that she loved the man even though he did not know or care, made it even more thrilling. ”

“ You know you mustn’t think you have to stay here and amuse me,” said Ruth.
“I can live ever so long without a cigarette. Besides I’d rather go when he isn’t there. I’ve been thinking about Gloria. Do you suppose she could have found out about Pendragon and isn’t coming? It would be like her. She could telephone that she’s ill or something.”
“I don’t think so, but of course I don’t know. I don’t know anything. Perhaps Pendragon himself has left and all my worry is for nothing. Who’d ever think an aunt could be such a responsibility?” ”

“ I should never have married at all. Tomorrow we’ll go back to town and Percy and I will each go our separate ways and forget the horrible nightmare of this place. It was just chance that we met—a weird freak of coincidence. He didn’t want it; neither did I.”
There was nothing that Ruth could answer and presently Gloria went on:
“No woman was meant to have both a career and a husband; lots of them try it—most women in fact, but usually they come to grief. It isn’t written in the stars that one woman should have both loves, art and a husband.”
Ruth thought of Nels and Dorothy. ”

“ Now it was made plain to her that art itself was not a matter of paint and canvas and exhibitions, or even of work as Dorothy Winslow had said, but a matter of men and women, and competition and struggle and love and hate and jealousy and thwarted ambitions like those of the woman who lay down there prostrate with defeat. ”

“ She spoke to Dorothy about it.
“You can’t get everything in a year, and it all counts. I don’t think one can tell exactly what one’s forte is until one has studied for some time. Better keep on as you are. Certainly don’t give up the portrait class. Bridgelow is wonderful,” Dorothy had assured her, “and you may not get a chance to study under him again.”
It seemed to Ruth that she was living a sort of double life, her hours among the art students were so separate from her life with the people at the house on Gramercy Square. ”

“ Ruth would never dare throw a hat across the room, no matter how much she felt like it. She watched Gloria in a perfect passion of admiration that half drowned the sharp pain in her heart because she knew that Terry also saw Gloria’s beauty and felt the charm of her.
“If you really must go away, and I can understand that too, for I’d like to get away myself, why not take a sea voyage—that’s the real thing in rest cures. Go to San Francisco by rail and then take one of those boats that run to Hawaii and Samoa and on to Sydney if you don’t want to stop at Samoa. ”

“ In the cab Nels and Dorothy chatted of the exhibitors—great artists whom they knew by sight, while Ruth to whom they were only names, listened in breathless admiration.
When they had arrived and had left off their wraps, Dorothy protested:
“Do we have to go down the line, or can we duck to the left?”
“No nonsense like that; remember you’re with an exhibitor, and besides Professor Pendragon may be waiting for us. We can pay for the privilege of looking at the pictures by breaking through the line of receiving dowagers. It’s only fair.” ”

“ If he’s at all like Gloria, he’ll be too proud to look her up; besides we may be talking nonsense. How do we know that they don’t really hate each other?”
“That’s not the worst. People don’t usually hate over ten years. They may be utterly indifferent. I realize that possibility, but I don’t believe they are indifferent. It’s all just guessing.”
“The simplest way would be to get rid of the snake,” persisted Ruth. ”

“ I’ve got an idea that work counts a whole lot more than talent, but of course that’s an awfully practical, inartistic idea—only I can’t help it. I had to come to New York and I couldn’t come without a scholarship, so I worked and got it. What do you think about it?”
“Work counts of course, but without the divine spark of genius—one must have talent and genius, 32and then work added makes the ideal combination. Why, if only hard work were necessary, any one, any stevedore or common labourer or dull bookkeeper, could become a great artist.” ”

“ That so many other girls and boys were also art students? If there was an art student for every locker and each of them shared her determination to become a great painter, the world would be so flooded with splendid art that one might better be a stenographer. Then she comforted herself that all of the students could not possibly succeeded. Some of them, the girls especially, would doubtless give up art for marriage and babies. ”

“ If she talked to Terry his lack of faith would weaken her purpose. She left him now, abruptly, ignoring the look of reproach in his eyes, and walked beside Professor Pendragon, who was moving slowly on his crutches, a little behind the others. She meant to stay close beside him through the rest of the night.
In the room that had been the scene of the children’s party that afternoon a stage had been put up—a low platform covered with a black velvet carpet and divided in half by a black curtain on which the signs of the Zodiac were embroidered in gold thread. ”

“ He was propped up on a chaise longue, with newspapers and the remains of breakfast scattered about on the floor and on a low table beside him. His face was very pale and Ruth thought that he looked as if he had not slept. She tried not to look at some photographs of Gloria prominently displayed on the scattered sheets. Evidently he had seen them, so now he knew that she was in New York, or at least in America.
“I’m awfully sorry to disappoint you and myself. But you see a man can’t have his portrait painted in a pose like this,” he said. ”