He did not, after all, return for luncheon; and when she came upstairs from her solitary meal their salon was still untenanted. She permitted herself no sensational fears; for she could not, at the height of apprehension, figure Keniston as yielding to any tragic impulse; but the lengthening hours brought an uneasiness that was fuel to her pity. Suddenly she heard the clock strike five. It was the hour at which they had promised to meet Mrs. Davant at the gallery—the hour of the “ovation.” Claudia rose and went to the window, straining for a glimpse of her husband in the crowded street. Could it be that he had forgotten her, had gone to the gallery without her? Or had something happened—that veiled “something” which, for the last hour, had grimly hovered on the outskirts of her mind?
She heard a hand on the door and Keniston entered. As she turned to meet him her whole being was swept forward on a great wave of pity: she was so sure, now, that he must know.
But he confronted her with a glance of preoccupied brightness; her first impression was that she had never seen him so vividly, so expressively pleased. If he needed her, it was not to bind up his wounds.
He gave her a smile which was clearly the lingering reflection of some inner light. “I didn’t mean to be so late,” he said, tossing aside his hat and the little red volume that served as a clue to his explorations. “I turned in to the Louvre for a minute after I left you this morning, and the place fairly swallowed me up—I couldn’t get away from it. I’ve been there ever since.” He threw himself into a chair and glanced about for his pipe.
“It takes time,” he continued musingly, “to get at them, to make out what they’re saying—the big fellows, I mean. They’re not a communicative lot. At first I couldn’t make much out of their lingo—it was too different from mine! But gradually, by picking up a hint here and there, and piecing them together, I’ve begun to understand; and to-day, by Jove, I got one or two of the old chaps by the throat and fairly turned them inside out—made them deliver up their last drop.” He lifted a brilliant eye to her. “Lord, it was tremendous!” he declared.
He had found his pipe and was musingly filling it. Claudia waited in silence.
“At first,” he began again, “I was afraid their language was too hard for me—that I should never quite know what they were driving at; they seemed to cold-shoulder me, to be bent on shutting me out. But I was bound I wouldn’t be beaten, and now, to-day”—he paused a moment to strike a match—“when I went to look at those things of mine it all came over me in a flash. By Jove! it was as if I’d made them all into a big bonfire to light me on my road!”
His wife was trembling with a kind of sacred terror. She had been afraid to pray for light for him, and here he was joyfully casting his whole past upon the pyre!
“Is there nothing left?” she faltered.
“Nothing left? There’s everything!” he exulted. “Why, here I am, not much over forty, and I’ve found out already—already!” He stood up and began to move excitedly about the room. “My God! Suppose I’d never known! Suppose I’d gone on painting things like that forever! Why, I feel like those chaps at revivalist meetings when they get up and say they’re saved! Won’t somebody please start a hymn?”
Claudia, with a tremulous joy, was letting herself go on the strong current of his emotion; but it had not yet carried her beyond her depth, and suddenly she felt hard ground underfoot.
“Mrs. Davant—” she exclaimed.
He stared, as though suddenly recalled from a long distance. “Mrs. Davant?”
“We were to have met her—this afternoon—now—”
“At the gallery? Oh, that’s all right. I put a stop to that; I went to see her after I left you; I explained it all to her.”
“All?”
“I told her I was going to begin all over again.”
Claudia’s heart gave a forward bound and then sank back hopelessly.
“But the panels—?”
“That’s all right too. I told her about the panels,” he reassured her.
“You told her—?”
“That I can’t paint them now. She doesn’t understand, of course; but she’s the best little woman and she trusts me.”
She could have wept for joy at his exquisite obtuseness. “But that isn’t all,” she wailed. “It doesn’t matter how much you’ve explained to her. It doesn’t do away with the fact that we’re living on those panels!”
“Living on them?”
“On the money that she paid you to paint them. Isn’t that what brought us here? And—if you mean to do as you say—to begin all over again—how in the world are we ever to pay her back?”
Her husband turned on her an inspired eye. “There’s only one way that I know of,” he imperturbably declared, “and that’s to stay out here till I learn how to paint them.”
“COPY”
A DIALOGUE
Mrs. Ambrose Dale—forty, slender, still young—sits in her drawingroom at the tea-table. The winter twilight is falling, a lamp has been lit, there is a fire on the hearth, and the room is pleasantly dim and flower-scented. Books are scattered everywhere—mostly with autograph inscriptions “From the Author”—and a large portrait of Mrs. Dale, at her desk, with papers strewn about her, takes up one of the wall-panels. Before Mrs. Dale stands Hilda, fair and twenty, her hands full of letters.
Mrs. Dale. Ten more applications for autographs? Isn’t it strange that people who’d blush to borrow twenty dollars don’t scruple to beg for an autograph?
Hilda (reproachfully). Oh—
Mrs. Dale. What’s the difference, pray?
Hilda. Only that your last autograph sold for fifty—
Mrs. Dale (not displeased). Ah?—I sent for you, Hilda, because I’m dining out tonight, and if there’s nothing important to attend to among these letters you needn’t sit up for me.
Hilda. You don’t mean to work?
Mrs. Dale. Perhaps; but I sha’n’t need you. You’ll see that my cigarettes and coffee-machine are in place, and: that I don’t have to crawl about the floor in search of my pen-wiper? That’s all. Now about these letters—
Hilda (impulsively). Oh, Mrs. Dale—
Mrs. Dale. Well?
Hilda. I’d rather sit up for you.
Mrs. Dale. Child, I’ve nothing for you to do. I shall be blocking out the tenth chapter of Winged Purposes and it won’t be ready for you till next week.
Hilda. It isn’t that—but it’s so beautiful to sit here, watching and listening, all alone in the night, and to feel that you’re in there (she points to the study-door) creating—._(Impulsively.)_ What do I care for sleep?
Mrs. Dale (indulgently). Child—silly child!—Yes, I should have felt so at your age—it would have been an inspiration—
Hilda (rapt). It is!
Mrs. Dale. But you must go to bed; I must have you fresh in the morning; for you’re still at the age when one is fresh in the morning! (She sighs.) The letters? (Abruptly.) Do you take notes of what you feel, Hilda—here, all alone in the night, as you say?
Hilda (shyly). I have—
Mrs. Dale (smiling). For the diary?
Hilda (nods and blushes).
Mrs. Dale (caressingly). Goose!—Well, to business. What is there?
Hilda.