Chambers Robert William
The Common Law
CHAPTER XI
Valerie West was twenty-two years old in February. One year of life lay behind her; her future stretched away into sunlit infinity.
Neville attained his twenty-eighth year in March. Years still lay before him, a few lay behind him; but in a single month he had waded so swiftly forward through the sea of life that the shallows were already passed, the last shoal was deepening rapidly. Only immeasurable and menacing depths remained between him and the horizon—that pale, dead line dividing the noonday of to-day from the phantom suns of blank eternity.
It was that winter that he began the picture destined to fix definitely his position among the painters of his times—began it humbly, yet somehow aware of what it was to be; afraid, for all his courage, yet conscious of something inevitable impending. It was Destiny; and, instinctively, he arose to meet it.
He called the picture "A Bride." A sapphire sky fading to turquoise, in which great clouds crowded high in argent splendour—a young girl naked of feet, her snowy body cinctured at the waist with straight and silvered folds, standing amid a riot of wild flowers, head slightly dropped back, white arms inert, pendant. And in her eyes' deep velvet depths the mystery of the Annunciation.
All of humanity and of maturity—of adolescence and of divinity was in that face; in the exquisitely sensitive wisdom of the woman's eyes, in the full sweet innocence of the childish mouth—in the smooth little hands so unsoiled, so pure—in the nun-like pallor and slender beauty of the throat.
Whatever had been his inspiration—whether spiritual conviction, or the physical beauty of Valerie, neither he nor she considered very deeply. But that he was embodying and creating something of the existence of which neither he nor she had been aware a month ago, was awaking something within them that had never before stirred or given sign of life.
Since the last section of the mural decoration for the new court house had been shipped to its destination, he had busied himself on two canvases, a portrait of his sister in furs, and the portrait of Valerie.
Lily Collis came in the mornings twice a week to sit for her; and once or twice Stephanie Swift came with her; also Sandy Cameron, ruddy, bald, jovial, scoffing, and insatiably curious.
"Where do you keep all those pretty models, Louis?" he demanded, prying aside the tapestry with the crook of his walking stick, and peeping behind furniture and hangings and big piles of canvases. "Be a sport and introduce us; Stephanie wants to see a few as well as I do."
Neville shrugged and went on painting, which exasperated Cameron.
"It's a fraud," he observed, in a loud, confidential aside to Stephanie; "this studio ought to be full of young men in velvet coats and bunchy ties, singing, 'Oh la—la!' and dextrously balancing on their baggy knees a series of assorted soubrettes. It's a bluff, a hoax, a con game! Are you going to stand for it? I don't see any absinthe either—or even any Vin ordinaire! Only a tea-pot—a tea-pot!" he repeated in unutterable scorn. "Why, there's more of Bohemia in a Broad Street Trust Company than there is in this Pullman car studio!"
Mrs. Collis was laughing so that her brother had difficulty in going on with her portrait.
"Get out of here, Sandy," he said—"or take Stephanie into the rest of the apartment, somewhere, and tell her your woes."
Stephanie, who had been exploring, turning over piles of chassis and investigating canvases and charcoal studies stacked up here and there against the wainscot, pulled aside an easel which impeded her progress, and in so doing accidentally turned the canvas affixed to it toward the light.
"Hello!" exclaimed Cameron briskly, "who is this?"
Lily turned her small, aristocratic head, and Stephanie looked around.
"What a perfectly beautiful girl!" she exclaimed impulsively; "who is she, Louis?"
"A model," he said calmly; but the careless and casual exposure of the canvas had angered him so suddenly that his own swift emotion astonished him.
Lily had risen from her seat, and now stood looking fixedly at the portrait of Valerie West, her furs trailing from one shoulder to the chair.
"My eye and Betty Martin!" cried Cameron, "I'll take it all back, girls! It's a real studio after all—and this is the real thing! Louis, do you think she's seen the Aquarium? I'm disengaged after three o'clock—"
He began to kiss his hand rapidly in the direction of the portrait, and then, fondly embracing his own walking stick, he took a few jaunty steps in circles, singing "Waltz me around again, Willy."
Lily Collis said: "If your model is as lovely as her portrait, Louis, she is a real beauty. Who is she?"
"A professional model." He could scarcely contain his impatience with his sister, with Cameron's fat humour, with Stephanie's quiet and intent scrutiny—as though, somehow, he had suddenly exposed Valerie herself to the cool and cynically detached curiosity of a world which she knew must always remain unfriendly to her.
He was perfectly aware that his sister had guessed whose portrait confronted them; he supposed, too, that Stephanie probably suspected. And the knowledge irritated him more than the clownishness of Cameron.
"It is a splendid piece of painting," said Stephanie cordially, and turned quietly to a portfolio of drawings at her elbow. She had let her fleeting glance rest on Neville for a second; had divined in a flash that he was enduring and not courting their examination of this picture; that, somehow, her accidental discovery of it had displeased him—was even paining him.
"Sandy," she said cheerfully, "come here and help me look over these sketches."
"Any peaches among 'em?"
"Bushels."
Cameron came with alacrity; Neville waited until Lily reluctantly resumed her seat; then he pushed back the easel, turned Valerie's portrait to the wall, and quietly resumed his painting.
Art in any form was powerless to retain Cameron's attention for very many consecutive minutes at a time; he grew restless, fussed about with portfolios for a little while longer, enlivening the tedium with characteristic observations.
"Well, I've got business down town," he exclaimed, with great pretence of regret. "Come on, Stephanie; we'll go to the Exchange and start something. Shall we? Oh, anything—from a panic to a bull-market! I don't care; go as far as you like. You may wreck a few railroads if you want to. Only I've got to go…. Awfully good of you to let me—er—see all these—er—interesting and er—m-m-m—things, Louis. Glad I saw that dream of a peacherino, too. What is she on the side? An actorine? If she is I'll take a box for the rest of the season including the road and one-night stands…. Good-bye, Mrs. Collis! Good-bye, Stephanie! Good-bye, Louis!—I'll come and spend the day with you when you're too busy to see me. Now, Stephanie, child! It's the Stock Exchange or the Little Church around the Corner for you and me, if you say so!"
Stephanie had duties at a different sort of an Exchange; and she also took her leave, thanking Neville warmly for the pleasure she had had, and promising to lunch with Lily at the Continental Club.
When they had departed, Lily said:
"I suppose that is a portrait of your model, Valerie West."
"Yes," he replied shortly.
"Well, Louis, it is perfectly absurd of you to show so plainly that you consider our discovery of it a desecration."
He turned red with surprise and irritation:
"I don't know what you mean."
"I mean exactly what I say. You showed by your expression and your manner that our inspection of the picture and our questions and comments concerning it were unwelcome."
"I'm sorry I showed it…. But they were unwelcome."
"Will you tell me why?"
"I don't think I know exactly why—unless the portrait was a personal and private affair concerning only myself—"
"Louis! Has it gone as far as that?"
"As far as what? What on earth are you trying to say, Lily?"
"I'm trying to say—as nicely and as gently as I can—that your behaviour—in regard to this girl is making us all perfectly wretched."
"Who do you mean by 'us all'?" he demanded sullenly.
"Father and mother and myself. You must have known perfectly well that father would write to me about what you told him at Spindrift House a month ago."
"Did he?"
"Of course he did, Louis! Mother is simply worrying herself ill over you; father is incredulous—at least he pretends to be; but he has written me twice on the subject—and I think you might just as well be told what anxiety and unhappiness your fascination for this girl is causing us all."
Mrs. Collis was leaning far forward in her chair, forgetful of her pose; Neville stood silent, head lowered, absently mixing tints upon his palette without regard to the work under way.
When he had almost covered his palette with useless squares of colour he picked up a palette-knife, scraped it clean, smeared the residue on a handful of rags, laid aside brushes and palette, and walked slowly to the window.
It was snowing again. He could hear the feathery whisper of the flakes falling on the glass roof above; and he remembered the night of the new year, and all that it had brought to him—all the wonder and happiness and perplexity of a future utterly unsuspected, undreamed of.
And now it was into that future he was staring with a fixed and blank gaze as his sister's hand fell upon his shoulder and her cheek rested a moment in caress against his.
"Dearest child," she said tremulously, "I did not mean to speak harshly or without sympathy. But, after all, shouldn't a son consider his father and mother in a matter of this kind?"
"I have considered them—tried to."
Mrs. Collis dropped into an arm-chair. After a few moments he also seated himself listlessly, and sat gazing at nothing out of absent eyes.
She said: "You know what father and mother are. Even I have something left of their old-fashioned conservatism clinging to me—and yet people consider me extremely liberal in my views. But all my liberality, all my modern education since I left the dear old absurdities of our narrow childhood and youth, can not reconcile me to what you threaten us with—with what you are threatened—you, your entire future life."
"What seems to threaten you—and them—is my marriage to the woman with whom I'm in love. Does that shock you?"
"The circumstances shock me."
"I could not control the circumstances."
"You can control yourself, Louis."
"Yes—I can do that. I can break her heart and mine."
"Hearts don't break, Louis. And is anybody to live life through exempt from suffering? If your unhappiness comes early in life to you it will pass the sooner, leaving the future tranquil for you, and you ready for it, unperplexed—made cleaner, purer, braver by a sorrow that came, as comes all sorrow—and that has gone its way, like all sorrows, leaving you the better and the worthier."
"How is it to leave her?"
He spoke so naturally, so simply, that for the moment his sister did not recognise in him what had never before been there to recognise—the thought of another before himself. Afterward she remembered it.
She said quietly: "If Valerie West is a girl really sincere and meriting your respect, she will face this matter as you face it."
"Yes—she would do that," he said, thoughtfully.
"Then I think that the sooner you explain matters to her—"
He laughed: "I don't have to explain anything to her, Lily."
"What do you mean?"
"She knows how things stand. She is perfectly aware of your world's attitude toward her. She has not the slightest intention of forcing herself on you, or of asking your indulgence or your charity."
"You mean, then, that she desires to separate you from your family—from your friends—"
"No," he said wearily, "she does not desire that, either."
His sister's troubled eyes rested on him in silence for a while; then:
"I know she is beautiful; I am sure she is good, Louis—good in—in her own way—worthy, in her own fashion. But, dear, is that all that you, a Neville, require of the woman who is to bear your name—bear your children?"
"She is all I require—and far more."
"Dear, you are utterly blinded by your infatuation!"
"You do not know her."
"Then let me!" exclaimed Mrs. Collis desperately. "Let me meet her, Louis—let me talk with her—"
"No…. And I'll tell you why, Lily; it's because she does not care to meet you."
"What!"
"I have told you the plain truth. She sees no reason for knowing you, or for knowing my parents, or any woman in a world that would never tolerate her, never submit to her entrance, never receive her as one of them!—a world that might shrug and smile and endure her as my wife—and embitter my life forever."
As he spoke he was not aware that he merely repeated Valerie's own words; he remained still unconscious that his decision was in fact merely her decision; that his entire attitude had become hers because her nature and her character were as yet the stronger.
But in his words his sister's quick intelligence perceived a logic and a conclusion entirely feminine and utterly foreign to her brother's habit of mind. And she realised with a thrill of fear that she had to do, not with her brother, but with a woman who was to be reckoned with.
"Do you—or does Miss West think it likely that I am a woman to wound, to affront another—no matter who she may be? Surely, Louis, you could have told her very little about me—"
"I never mention you to her."
Lily caught her breath.
"Why?"
"Why should I?"
"That is unfair, Louis! She has the right to know about your own family—otherwise how can she understand the situation?"
"It's like all situations, isn't it? You and father and mother have your own arbitrary customs and traditions and standards of respectability. You rule out whom you choose. Valerie West knows perfectly well that you would rule her out. Why should she give you the opportunity?"
"Is she afraid of me?"
He smiled: "I don't think so." And his smile angered his sister.
"Very well," she said, biting her lip.
For a few moments she sat there deliberating, her pointed patent-leather toe tapping the polished floor. Then she stood up, with decision:
"There is no use in our quarrelling, Louis—until the time comes when some outsider forces us into an unhappy misunderstanding. Kiss me good-bye, dear."
She lifted her face; he kissed her; and her hand closed impulsively on his arm:
"Louis! Louis! I love you. I am so proud of you—I—you know I love you, don't you?"
"Yes—I think so."
"You know I am devoted to your happiness!—your real happiness—which those blinded eyes in that obstinate head of yours refuse to see. Believe me—believe me, dear, that your real happiness is not in this pretty, strange girl's keeping. No, no, no! You are wrong, Louis—terribly and hopelessly wrong! Because happiness for you lies in the keeping of another woman—a woman of your own world, dear—of your own kind—a gently-bred, lovable, generous girl whom you, deep in your heart and soul, love, unknowingly—have always loved!"
He shook his head, slowly, looking down into his sister's eyes.
She said, almost frightened:
"You—you won't do it—suddenly—without letting us know—will you, Louis?"
"What?"
"Marry this girl!"
"No," he said, "it is not likely."
"But you—you mean to marry her?"
"I want to…. But it is not likely to happen—for a while."
"How long?"
"I don't know."
She drew a tremulous breath of relief, looking up into his face. Then her eyes narrowed; she thought a moment, and her gaze became preoccupied and remote, and her lips grew firm with the train of thought she was pursuing.
He put his arms around her and kissed her again; and she felt the boyish appeal in it and her lip quivered. But she could not respond, could not consider for one moment, could not permit her sympathy for him to enlist her against what she was devoutly convinced were his own most vital interests—his honour, his happiness, the success of his future career.
She said with tears in her eyes: "Louis, I love you dearly. If God will grant us all a little patience and a little wisdom there will be a way made clear to all of us. Good-bye."
Whether it was that the Almighty did not grant Mrs. Collis the patience to wait until a way was made clear, or whether another letter from her father decided her to clear that way for herself, is uncertain; but one day in March Valerie received a letter from Mrs. Collis; and answered it; and the next morning she shortened a seance with Querida, exchanged her costume for her street-clothes, and hastened to her apartments, where Mrs. Collis was already awaiting her in the little sitting-room.
Valerie offered her hand and stood looking at Lily Collis, as though searching for some resemblance to her brother in the pretty, slightly flushed features. There was a very indefinite family resemblance.
"Miss West," she said, "it is amiable of you to overlook the informality—"
"I am not formal, Mrs. Collis," she said, quietly. "Will you sit here?" indicating an arm-chair near the window,—"because the light is not very good and I have some mending to do on a costume which I must pose in this afternoon."
Lily Collis seated herself, her bewitched gaze following Valerie as she moved lightly and gracefully about, collecting sewing materials and the costume in question, and bringing them to a low chair under the north window.
"I am sure you will not mind my sewing," she said, with a slight upward inflection to her voice, which made it a question.
"Please, Miss West," said Lily, hastily.
"It is really a necessity," observed Valerie threading her needle and turning over the skirt. "Illustrators are very arbitrary gentlemen; a model's failure to keep an engagement sometimes means loss of a valuable contract to them, and that isn't fair either to them or to their publishers, who would be forced to hunt up another artist at the last moment."
"Your—profession—must be an exceedingly interesting one," said Lily in a low voice.
Valerie smiled: "It is a very exacting one."
There was a silence. Valerie's head was bent over her sewing; Mrs. Collis, fascinated, almost alarmed by her beauty, could not take her eyes from her. Outwardly Lily was pleasantly reserved, perfectly at ease with this young girl; inwardly all was commotion approaching actual consternation.
She had been prepared for youth, for a certain kind of charm and beauty—but not for this kind—not for the loveliness, the grace, the composure, the exquisite simplicity of this young girl who sat sewing there before her.
She was obliged to force herself to recollect that this girl was a model hired to pose for men—paid to expose her young, unclothed limbs and body! Yet—could it be possible! Was this the girl hailed as a comrade by the irrepressible Ogilvy and Annan—the heroine of a score of unconventional and careless gaieties recounted by them? Was this the coquette who, it was rumoured, had flung over Querida, snapped her white fingers at Penrhyn Cardemon, and laughed disrespectfully at a dozen respected pillars of society, who appeared to be willing to support her in addition to the entire social structure?
Very quietly the girl raised her head. Her sensitive lips were edged with a smile, but there was no mirth in her clear eyes:
"Mrs. Collis, perhaps you are waiting for me to say something about your letter and my answer to it. I did not mean to embarrass you by not speaking of it, but I was not certain that the initiative lay with me."
Lily reddened: "It lies with me, Miss West—the initiative. I mean—" She hesitated, suddenly realising how difficult it had become to go on,—how utterly unprepared she was to encounter passive resistance from such composure as this young girl already displayed.
"You wrote to me about your anxiety concerning Mr. Neville," said Valerie, gently.
"Yes—I did, Miss West. You will surely understand—and forgive me—if I say to you that I am still a prey to deepest anxiety."
"Why?"
The question was so candid, so direct that for a moment Lily remained silent. But the dark, clear, friendly eyes were asking for an answer, and the woman of the world who knew how to meet most situations and how to dominate them, searched her experience in vain for the proper words to use in this one.
After a moment Valerie's eyes dropped, and she resumed her sewing; and Lily bit her lip and composed her mind to its delicate task:
"Miss West," she said, "what I have to say is not going to be very agreeable to either of us. It is going to be painful perhaps—and it is going to take a long while to explain—"
"It need not take long," said Valerie, without raising her eyes from her stitches; "it requires only a word to tell me that you and your father and mother do not wish your brother to marry me."
She looked up quietly, and her eyes met Lily's:
"I promise not to marry him," she said. "You are perfectly right. He belongs to his own family; he belongs in his own world."
She looked down again at her sewing with a faint smile:
"I shall not attempt to enter that world as his wife, Mrs. Collis, or to draw him out of it…. And I hope that you will not be anxious any more."
She laid aside her work and rose to her slender height, smilingly, as though the elder woman had terminated the interview; and Lily, utterly confounded, rose, too, as Valerie offered her hand in adieu.
"Miss West," she began, not perfectly sure of what she was saying, "I—scarcely dare thank you—for what you have said—for—my—brother's—sake—"
Valerie laughed: "I would do much more than that for him, Mrs. Collis…. Only I must first be sure of what is really the best way to serve him."
Lily's gloved hand tightened over hers; and she laid the other one over it:
"You are so generous, so sweet about it!" she said unsteadily. "And I look into your face and I know you are good—good—all the way through—"
Valerie laughed again:
"There isn't any real evil in me…. And I am not astonishingly generous—merely sensible. I knew from the first that I couldn't marry him—if I really loved him," she added, under her breath.
They were at the door now. Lily passed out into the entry, halted, turned impulsively, the tears in her eyes, and put both arms tenderly around the girl.
"You poor child," she whispered. "You dear, brave, generous girl! God knows whether I am right or wrong. I am only trying to do my duty—trying to do what is best for him."
Valerie looked at her curiously:
"Yes, you cannot choose but think of him if you really love him…. That is the way it is with love."
Afterward, sewing by the window, she could scarcely see the stitches for the clinging tears. But they dried on her lashes; not one fell. And when Rita came in breezily to join her at luncheon she was ready, her costume mended and folded in her hand-satchel, and there remained scarcely even a redness of the lids to betray her.
That evening she did not stop for tea at Neville's studio; and, later, when he telephoned, asking her to dine with him, she pleaded the feminine prerogative of tea in her room and going to bed early for a change. But she lay awake until midnight trying to think out a modus vivendi for Neville and herself which, would involve no sacrifice on his part and no unhappiness for anybody except, perhaps, for herself.
The morning was dull and threatened rain, and she awoke with a slight headache, remembering that she had dreamed all night of weeping.
In her mail there was a note from Querida asking her to stop for a few moments at his studio that afternoon, several business communications, and a long letter from Mrs. Collis which she read lying in bed, one hand resting on her aching temples:
"MY DEAR Miss WEST: Our interview this morning has left me with a somewhat confused sense of indebtedness to you and an admiration and respect for your character which I wished very much to convey to you this morning, but which I was at a loss to express.
"You are not only kind and reasonable, but so entirely unselfish that my own attitude in this unhappy matter has seemed to me harsh and ungracious.
"I went to you entertaining a very different idea of you, and very different sentiments from the opinion which I took away with me. I admit that my call on you was not made with any agreeable anticipations; but I was determined to see you and learn for myself what manner of woman had so disturbed us all.
"In justice to you—in grateful recognition of your tact and gentleness, I am venturing to express to you now my very thorough respect for you, my sense of deep obligation, and my sympathy—which I am afraid you may not care for.
"That it would not be suitable for a marriage to take place between my brother and yourself is, it appears, as evident to you as it is to his own family. Yet, will you permit me to wish that it were otherwise? I do wish it; I wish that the circumstances had made such a marriage possible. I say this to you in spite of the fact that we have always expected my brother to marry into a family which has been intimate with our own family for many generations. It is a tribute to your character which I am unwilling to suppress; which I believe I owe to you, to say that, had circumstances been different, you might have been made welcome among us.
"The circumstances of which I speak are of an importance to us, perhaps exaggerated, possibly out of proportion to the fundamental conditions of the situation. But they are conditions which our family has never ignored. And it is too late for us to learn to ignore them now.
"I think that you will feel—I think that a large part of the world might consider our attitude toward such a woman as you have shown yourself to be, narrow, prejudiced, provincial. The modern world would scarcely arm us with any warrant for interfering in a matter which a man nearly thirty is supposed to be able to manage for himself. But my father and mother are old, and they will never change in their beliefs and prejudices inherited from their parents, who, in turn, inherited their beliefs.
"It was for them more than for myself—more even than for my brother—that I appealed to you. The latter end of their lives should not be made unhappy. And your generous decision assures me that it will not be made so.
"As for myself, my marriage permitted me an early enfranchisement from the obsolete conventional limits within which my brother and I were brought up.
"I understand enough of the modern world not to clash with, it unnecessarily, enough of ultra-modernity not to be too much afraid of it.
"But even I, while I might theoretically admit and even admire that cheerful and fearless courage which makes it possible for such a self-respecting woman as yourself to face the world and force it to recognise her right to earn her own living as she chooses—I could not bring myself to contemplate with equanimity my brother's marrying you. And I do not believe my father would survive such an event.
"To us, to me, also, certain fixed conventional limits are the basis of all happiness. To offend them is to be unhappy; to ignore them would mean destruction to our peace of mind and self-respect. And, though I do admire you and respect you for what you are, it is only just to you to say that we could never reconcile ourselves to those modern social conditions which you so charmingly represent, and which are embodied in you with such convincing dignity.
"Dear Miss West, have I pained you? Have I offended you in return for all your courtesy to me? I hope not. I felt that I owed you this. Please accept it as a tribute and as a sorrowful acquiescence in conditions which an old-fashioned family are unable to change.
"Very sincerely yours,
"LILLY COLLIS."
She lay for a while, thinking, the sheets of the letter lying loose on the bed. It seemed to require no answer. Nor had Mrs. Collis, apparently, any fear that Valerie would ever inform Louis Neville of what had occurred between his sister and herself.
Still, to Valerie, an unanswered letter was like a civil observation ignored.
She wrote that evening to Lily:
"Dear Mrs. Collis: In acknowledging your letter of yesterday I beg to assure you that I understand the inadvisability of my marrying your brother, and that I have no idea of doing it, and that, through me, he shall never know of your letters or of your visit to me in his behalf.
"With many thanks for your kindly expressions of good-will toward me, I am
"Very truly yours,
"VALERIE WEST."
She had been too tired to call at Querida's studio, too tired even to take tea at the Plaza with Neville.
Rita came in, silent and out of spirits, and replied in monosyllables to Valerie's inquiries.
It finally transpired that Sam Ogilvy and Harry Annan had been tormenting John Burleson after their own fashion until their inanity had exasperated her and she expressed herself freely to everybody concerned.
"It makes me very angry," she said, "to have a lot of brainless people believe that John Burleson is stupid. He isn't; he is merely a trifle literal, and far too intelligent to see any humour in the silly capers Sam and Harry cut."
Valerie, who was feeling better, sipped her tea and nibbled her toast, much amused at Rita's championship of the big sculptor.
"John is a dear," she said, "but even his most enthusiastic partisans could hardly characterise him as a humorist."
"He's not a clown—if that's what you mean," said Rita shortly.
"But, Rita, he isn't humorous, you know."
"He is. He has a sense of humour perfectly intelligible to those who understand it."
"Do you, dear?"
"Certainly … And I always have understood it."
"Oh, what kind of occult humour is it?"
"It is a quiet, cultivated, dignified sense of humour not uncommon in New England, and not understood in New York."
Valerie nibbled her toast, secretly amused. Burleson was from Massachusetts. Rita was the daughter of a Massachusetts clergyman. No doubt they were fitted to understand each other.
It occurred to her, too, that John Burleson and Rita Tevis had always been on a friendly footing rather quieter and more serious than the usual gay and irresponsible relations maintained between two people under similar circumstances.
