Part 16

"At least not yet," she qualified. "He is quixotic enough to throw his chance away, if he thought I used a little business common sense to make his art pay. I've never dared let him know the labor it cost to interest Mrs. Joyce-Reeves. Not that it was illegitimate or in any way underhanded. All this is as legitimate as the social pressure a clever architect brings to bear, and nobody thinks of censuring. But illusions are precious to Craig; they feed his inspiration. So I say, let him enjoy them while he can. Let him think commissions drop from the skies."

Jean doubted the truth of this estimate of Craig, but she did full justice to Mrs. Van Ostade's motives and to the signal success of her campaign which, for all she knew of such matters, might be, as Julie said, legitimate, and at this time even vitally important. The necessity for a change of studio, which now recurred, seemed logical, too.

"You now see for yourself, Craig, how unsuited to portrait work your old quarters are," Julie argued.

"Virginia Hepworth won't mind coming here--she is next, you know; but you can't go on this way indefinitely. Of course, it's possible that you may find it desirable to take a temporary studio at Newport for the summer; but in the fall people will expect a city studio worthy of your reputation."

Atwood was tractable.

"We must have a look around," he assented.

"I have looked around," announced his sister; "and I've found something you couldn't possibly better. It has every convenience--a splendid workroom, a large reception-room, a dressing-room, and an extra chamber which would be useful for the caterer when you receive. It will require very little redecorating, though they're willing to do it throughout, if we like."

"That sounds like the Copley Studios."

"It is."

Atwood laughed.

"Must it be the pink-tea district, after all, Julie? Boy in buttons at the door, velvet-coated poseur--Artist with a capital _A_--in the holy of holies. What will old Mac say! Jean, what do you think?"

She felt Julie's compelling eye upon her, and resented its domination; but she saw no choice of ways.

"The velvet jacket isn't compulsory, is it?" she said lightly. "Why not look at the studio?"

"I'll drop in the first time I am near," he agreed.

Julie coughed.

"I ventured to make an appointment," she said. "They only show it by special permission of the owners, the Peter Y. Satterlee Company. Mr. Satterlee himself offered to be at the building at twelve o'clock to-morrow, if that hour will suit. To deal with him in person would be an advantage."

"Would it?" responded Craig, hazily. "Very well. Can you go, Jean?"

"If you want me," she returned, feeling outside the discussion.

"Of course. I count on you and Julie to browbeat the real-estate shark into reducing the summer's rent. All I shall be good for is to tell you whether there is a practicable north light."

Jean came late. Richter had abruptly taken her off the spirit-mortifying antique to aid him with one of his lesser studies for the Western exposition, and the forenoon had been absorbing. To watch Richter model was much; to help him a heaven-sent boon to be exercised in fear and trembling and exceeding joy. The stroke of twelve, which should have found her with Craig, saw her but leaving Richter's door. The distance was short, however, and at a quarter past the hour the overupholstered elevator of the Copley Studios bore her without vulgar haste aloft.

It was all vastly different from Craig's unfashionable top-story back, a mile or more down-town. No shabby street confronted this temple of the fine arts; its benign façade overlooked a trim park and the vehicles of elegant leisure. No base odor of cabbage or garlic rose from the nether lair of its janitor; no plebeian tailor or dressmaker debased the tone of its lower floors. Its courts were of marble, and its flunkies had supple spines.

The door to which Jean was directed stood ajar, and she let herself in to encounter other mighty differences. The entrance to the down-town studio precipitated the caller squarely into the travail of artistic production, but the architect who planned the Copley Studios had interposed a little hall with a stained-glass window-nook and a reception-room of creamy empire fittings between genius and its interruptions.

From the studio proper issued Julie's level tones, presumably in discussion with Peter Y. Satterlee, for Jean heard Craig's meditative whistle in another direction. Following a small passage, she came upon him studying the convolutions of a nervous jet of steam which found vent among the myriad chimneys of the nearer outlook.

"Will it do?" she smiled.

"Splendidly--almost too splendidly. Julie and the magnificent Satterlee are settling terms, I believe. Behold your studio, sculptress mine!" he added with a grandiloquent gesture. "This is the extra chamber of Julie's rhapsodies, otherwise a bachelor's bedroom about to be dedicated to nobler ends. Notice your view, Jean! New York, the Hudson, Jersey's hills, and the promise of sunsets beyond compare! And look here"--descending to practicality--"running water handy and my workshop next. We shall virtually work side by side."

He pushed open the connecting door, and they entered the studio. Julie and a globular man in superfine raiment stood like ill-balanced caryatids in support of either end of the mantelpiece.

"I agree to everything," he was saying. "The leases shall be ready to-morrow."

The voice signaled some cell in Jean's brain. The face, which he turned immediately upon her, gave memory its instant clew, and she felt her skin go hot and cold under Peter Y. Satterlee's earnest gaze.

"Have you a double, Mrs. Atwood?" he asked, after a moment's idle discussion of the studio.

She tried to face him calmly.

"A double? I think not."

"Why?" demanded Julie.

Satterlee pursued his investigations with maddening care.

"It's a most extraordinary resemblance, particularly as to eyes," he said. "There was a young woman, a dentist's wife, living in a Harlem apartment of ours--the Lorna Doone, it was--who might be Mrs. Atwood's twin. You didn't marry a widow, sir?" he broke off jocularly.

Atwood laughingly shook his head.

"How curious!" he exclaimed. "What was her name?"

"There you have me," admitted the agent, after brain-fagging efforts. "I can't recollect. I sold the property very soon."

XXVI

Rid of them all, Jean was tormented by a host of replies and courses of action, any one of which, she believed, would have blunted the edge of Julie's suspicion. For she was suspicious! There could be no doubt of it. To Craig she longed to offer some explanation, but her love bade her reject anything short of the whole truth, even as it told her that the whole truth was impossible. Every hour of her wedded happiness heaped proof on proof of the joy he took in the belief that he alone had filled her heart. And was he not right? Had not his dear image persisted--canonized, enshrined, worshiped--since their forest meeting! Paul had never displaced it. In truth, it had shone the brighter because of Paul. But how put this holy mystery in words!

She took refuge in an opportunism not unlike Amy's. Did not time and chance rule the world! Yet her peace of mind was fitful, and she shunned the Copley Studios with a fear which hearkened to no argument. It was useless to remind herself that Satterlee was a man of many interests. Her imagination always figured him as haunting the room where she had come upon him. There he waited, a rotund bomb by the mantelpiece, with the explosive "Bartlett" in his subconsciousness ready to destroy her the instant her face should at last apply the fatal spark. So it fell out that, pleading her own work whenever Craig, himself absorbed in the Hepworth portrait, asked her opinion of his sister's ideas, the new studio's furnishing went forward without her and in unhampered accord with Julie's ambitious plans.

How far-reaching these plans were she first adequately perceived through MacGregor, whose card came up to her one evening when both Atwood and Mrs. Van Ostade were out.

"I counted on finding you alone," he owned with characteristic bluntness. "Craig has gone to the Salmagundi doings, of course,--I'm due there later; while I happen to know that Julie is dining with her mother-in-law. I met Julie this afternoon at the Copley Studios."

"Then you saw Craig's new quarters?"

"Yes. Have you seen them?"

"Why do you ask that question?"

"I gathered that you hadn't."

"I went there the day Craig took the place."

"And have not returned! Why?"

"I am working hard with Richter."

"So he tells me. Don't overwork. Art isn't everything."

"Aren't you inconsistent?" she laughed.

"Lord, yes! Consistently inconsistent. Life would lose half its sparkle, if I weren't. But the new studio; you should have a look in; it would interest you. I don't often trouble the pink-tea district, but an errand took me into the Copley building to-day just as Julie entered, and she offered to show me through."

His meditations became irksome.

"Well?" Jean prompted.

"Julie should have been a stage-manager," he said. "Her scenic instinct is remarkable. She sees Craig's place peopled with a fashionable portrait-painter's clientele, and has set her properties accordingly. His Italian finds,--his tapestries, his old furniture, his Pompeian bronzes,--the new grand piano, and the various other newnesses, all present themselves as background for society drama. I take off my hat to her. She, too, is an artist, an artist of imagination. It is all perfectly done. Nothing lacks but the fashionable portrait-painter."

"And the drama?" Jean suggested.

"Oh, that is being looked after. She plans a house-warming of some sort. You haven't been consulted?"

"No."

"Neither has Craig, I dare say. Perhaps the idea only took shape while she talked with me. I can't give you the technical name of the function, but it will be worthy of the manager's reputation. The scheme is to get Mrs. Joyce-Reeves's portrait, Miss Hepworth's, and mine--yes, mine!--before as many as possible of the opulent beings who itch to hand their empty faces down to posterity. By the way, I want to see the Hepworth portrait."

She took him to the billiard-room and brought the unfinished picture to the easel. MacGregor turned off a warring light, chose a view-point, bestrode a chair, and lapsed into a long silence. Jean tried to read his rugged face, but finding it inscrutable, herself studied the canvas. Fuller knowledge of Craig's sitter had failed to reveal the qualities of mind he found so stimulating; but now, confronting the immobile counterfeit, she hit with disturbing certainty upon the truth that Virginia Hepworth's appeal was physical, and to men as men.

A moment afterward MacGregor confirmed her intuition.

"I don't know her any better," he said. "Outwardly she is the same neurotic creature I've seen all along. Apathetic with other women, she stirs to life and takes her tints from the particular male with whom she chances to be. Craig has missed an opportunity to dissect a chameleon."

"You think it's a failure!"

"Psychologically, I do; technically, no. In color, texture, it is masterly. Don't distress yourself about its success; it will be only too successful. I think it will even have the bad luck to be popular."

Jean's loyalty rose to do battle.

"It's to Craig's credit that he could not see her truly," she retorted. "If she takes her tints from the man with whom she talks, then he has painted into her something of himself, something fine. But wasn't it hers for the moment? Why, then, shouldn't he show her at her best, not her worst?"

MacGregor laughed immoderately.

"That is stanch and wifely and nonsensical. It is not a portrait-painter's business to supply the virtues or the vices. His palette ought to contain neither mud nor whitewash. It is his duty to see things as they are."

"But how can you expect Craig to see Miss Hepworth as she is? He's not--"

"Middle-aged, like myself," suggested MacGregor, as she hesitated. "Say it! It makes your fling concrete, personal, feminine."

Jean's wrath cooled in a smile.

"I was going to add, cynical," she said. "Is that a personality?"

"It's wide of the mark, whatever we call it. I'm no cynic. If I were, I should merely stand by and laugh, not interfere."

"Don't put it that way."

"It amounts to interference. I can't cheat you, and I don't fool myself into thinking my talk about Craig's work is impersonal. Neither is what I say about Julie impersonal. Of course you've heard that she jilted me for Van Ostade? Eh? I thought so. Don't think you must say you're sorry," he protested hastily, as her lips parted. "I'm not sorry. I'm thankful for my escape. That sounds bitter to you. Perhaps I am bitter, but the bitterness is for myself, not her; and it doesn't sway my judgment of her influence upon Craig by a hair's breadth. He thinks it does, naturally, and he discounts my warnings. But I know, and you _will_ know, if you don't see it yet, that he must shake her off. Otherwise he's damned."

Jean kindled from his fiery earnestness.

"What must I do?" she asked. "Do you think the new studio is a mistake?"

"No; I don't say it is. Craig had to come uptown. I'm not maintaining, either, that he can't paint under such conditions. Some men they stimulate. It isn't the studio; it's the commercial campaign it stands for which makes my gorge rise. Mind you, I don't censure Craig for not grasping Miss Hepworth in character. His youth is responsible for that fluke. But if he listens to Julie, he'll soon be painting everybody at their best moments. He'll take orders like a factory--yes; and execute then? like a factory--shallow, slap-dash, characterless vanities all of a mould, which fools will buy and the future ignore. There is no lost soul so tortured as the fashionable portrait-painter who has once known honest work. You must save Craig from such a fate. Don't think he is too strong to succumb. I've seen men with as much promise as his go under. Help him keep his feeling fresh. See that he has time to linger over and search out each subject. Make him paint even the mediocrities as they are."

"How shall I begin?"

"Throw Julie overboard," answered MacGregor, instantly. "I did not come here to mince words. I want to bring this home to you before I leave the country. I sail for Africa day after to-morrow."

"For Africa!"

"Yes. This is good-by. A magazine has made me an offer I can't afford to refuse."

She was oppressed by a great loneliness.

"Then I must fight it out single-handed," she said.

"You would fight single-handed if I were here, I'm afraid. Nobody can help you much. The most I can do is to try to convince you that you must fight. You must show Julie her place, and show her soon. Don't be soft-hearted about it. She's not soft, trust my word. You are dealing with an enemy--understand it clearly. She is an enemy and a clever one. Julie could not prevent your marriage, but she may break it."

She paled at the conviction of his tone.

"I can't believe it!"

"Can't you? I tell you the process of alienation has begun. Doesn't Craig think you indifferent about the studio?"

"Perhaps. I had reasons--"

"Chuck them away."

"And he knows I've been busy with Richter. Craig himself is lukewarm about the studio."

"You must not be. It may be your battle-ground. I don't say it will; but it may be, and it behooves you to look after your defences." He glowered at the painted face a moment, then: "You may know that the Chameleon was Julie's own choice for sister-in-law. Yes? It's a fact worth thinking over. Good-by, Jean, and good luck! I haven't been agreeable, but I've spoken as a friend. You feel that, I hope?"

"Yes," she answered unsteadily; "and thank you."

MacGregor winced as her voice broke.

"Buck up, buck up!" he charged. "You'll win out, sure!"

She brooded over his words till Atwood's return, but without seeing her way, and a restless night suggested only courses too fantastic for the light of day. She could not repeat MacGregor's warnings to Craig, nor could she voice them as her own; while to attack Julie openly seemed maddest of all. She could only drift and bide a time to assert herself with dignity.

Such a chance seemed to offer at luncheon when Mrs. Van Ostade asked Craig for suggestions regarding the decoration of the small room off the main studio.

"It has never been done up, you know," she continued. "The last tenant did not occupy it at all. We shall need it, however, and I think it should be put in order at once. I'll use my own discretion, if you don't want to be bothered."

"But that is Jean's affair," he said.

Julie's eyebrows arched.

"Really!"

"She and I settled it in the beginning that she should have that room for her work."

His sister drew her knife through an inoffensive chop with bloodthirsty vehemence.

"Indeed!" she returned.

"I will look after its decoration," put in Jean, quietly.

Mrs. Van Ostade's dusky skin shadowed with the dull red which marked her infrequent flush.

"It must be in harmony with the other rooms," she said sharply. "At times it will be necessary to throw everything open."

"Of course."

"And it should be done immediately. In fact, Mr. Satterlee promised to look in at the studio about it at five o'clock to-day."

Jean was staggered, but she could not hesitate.

"I will meet Mr. Satterlee," she answered.

Julie's thin lips parted in a travesty of a smile.

"You are sure it would be agreeable?" she asked.

Atwood lifted his eyes at her tone.

"Agreeable, Julie?" he said. "Why do you give the word that twist? Why shouldn't it be agreeable?"

Jean felt like an animal in a trap, but she faced Mrs. Van Ostade with head erect and unflinching eyes.

"Yes; why?" she demanded.

Julie seemed to weigh a reply which prudent second thought bade her check.

"How tragic you two have suddenly become," she drawled. "Isn't it possible that the exacting Richter may have a prior claim? I am only too happy that Jean can find time to revisit the studio--and meet Mr. Satterlee. I hope, Craig, you will be present yourself?"

Atwood looked frankly distressed over the rancorous turn the discussion had taken.

"If you'll wait for me, Jean," he said, "we will walk over together. Miss Hepworth is to give me a sitting at three."

Jean went heavy-hearted to her room and flung herself down to wonder dully how it would end. Drowsiness overtook her in these unprofitable questionings, and, spent with her wearing night, she fell into a deep slumber which shut out all thought till a knock called her back to face reality smugly embodied in a servant with a card-tray.

Paul! The bit of pasteboard fluttered to the floor. What brought him here? Then, perceiving a gleam of human curiosity light the face of the automaton with the tray, she gripped her self-control and bade the man tell Bartlett that she would see him.

"It's Amy," explained the dentist, rising from a respectful survey of Mrs. Van Ostade's drawing-room. "Nothing will do her but that you must come up to the flat. It isn't a thing I could 'phone or I wouldn't have broken in on you like this, let alone hustling down here between appointments and maybe missing other patients."

"But what is it?"

"The drummer. Amy thinks he means to shake her, and she's gone all to pieces. I ran in there to ask for the rent, which is 'way behind, and found her all in a heap. It was no place for P.B. Amy needs another woman and needs her bad; and it seems to be up to you. I know it's tough, asking you to go back to the Lorna Doone where every stick of furniture--"

"I'll go," she interrupted. "If Amy didn't need me, I know you would not have come."

"I'm afraid I can't wait to ride up with you," Paul apologized. "You see, I'm only here between appointments, and--"

"I understand. Besides, I must see Mr. Atwood first."

She mounted hurriedly to the billiard-room where Craig must still be at work, but hesitated on the threshold. The door was half open, and, unseen herself, she saw both painter and sitter. Virginia Hepworth had dropped her pose and had come behind Craig's chair. Neither spoke, though his brush was idle. They merely faced the canvas in a silence, the long-standing intimacy of which stabbed Jean with a jealous pang and sent her away with her message unspoken.

She trusted Craig, but she could not trust herself, and deemed it the part of wisdom to leave word with the dispassionate butler that a friend's sickness would prevent her going to the studio.

XXVII

Jean entered the Lorna Doone with a sense of having known the place in some former life. Its braggart onyx, its rugs, its palms, all the veneer which went to make for "tone"--that fetich of the dentist--greeted her with a luster scarcely dimmed; the negro hall-boy flashed a toothful smile of recognition; and even a scratch, which their moving had left on the green denim by the flat door, had its keen associations.

It was a relief to lay eyes upon Amy, who had no close relationship to this dead yet risen past. Amy, poor wight, seemed related to nothing familiar. Easily flooding tears, which gushed afresh at sight of Jean, had washed her prettiness away.

"I knew you'd come," she whispered, clinging desperately. "Paul thought it was no use to ask, but I made him go. You're not mad at me, Jean, for sending? I've nobody else--not a soul."

Jean soothed her as she would a child, and leading her into a bedroom close at hand, made her lie down. No sooner did her head touch the pillow, however, than she struggled up again.

"I can't lie still," she pleaded. "Don't make me lie still. I tossed here all night. I can't rest, I must talk. I want you to know what's happened. I want you to tell me what to do. I must do something. It can't go on. I'll lose my mind. I'll die."

Jean drew the woebegone figure to her.

"Tell me, Amy," she said gently. "Perhaps it isn't as black as it seems."

Amy rocked herself disconsolately.

"It's blacker than it seems," she lamented. "Oh, if I'd never taken the flat! Fred never wanted me to do it. I've only myself to thank. I didn't know when I was well off."

"But what has the flat to do with your trouble?"

"Everything. I thought it would be heaven to keep house,--my own house,--but it's been a hell. Fred said we couldn't afford a girl, though I never saw why, for he's done splendid in his new territory. And he didn't like my cooking! I only learned the plain things at the refuge, you know, and he's been pampered, living so much at hotels. Somehow I never can do things his way. Traveling men think a lot of their stomachs, and Fred is more particular than most."

Jean began to comprehend the sordid little tragedy.

"But you'll learn," she comforted. "Make Fred buy you a first-class cook-book. Try the recipes by yourself till you succeed. Don't feed him on the experiments."

"I did try by myself. I practiced on a Welsh rabbit, and I thought I had it down fine. So I surprised him one night after the theater when he came home hungry. He said it wasn't fit for a h-h-hog!"

Jean's indignation boiled over.

"It was a thousand times too good for him," she cried.

"Don't," begged Amy. "I didn't blame him after I tasted it. The thing I do blame him for and can't bear is the way he criticises my looks. I can't always look pretty and do my work. Fred seems to think I ought, and is always holding up Stella to me without stopping to remember that she has nothing to do but sing and change her clothes."

"Stella! Do you let Stella Wilkes come here?"

"Fred made me ask her. She's got a flat herself--just a common sort of a place that she rents furnished, with two chorus-girls. She's making money now. She left the Coney Island beer-hall for one of those cheap Fourteenth Street theaters. Fred says she's bound to make a hit. He's crazy about her,"--her voice rose to a wail,--"just crazy!"

Jean held the shaking form closer.