Chapter TWO: I

The next afternoon they were all settled peacefully at work. They had agreed to give up the idea of getting all in order first; they had decided that they would do a little every day.

Miss Mell was at work on an oil painting representing a white tiled bathroom in which sat a heavenly fair young mother undressing a baby on her lap, while near her were playing two misty, wistful little children in bathgowns. In the air, over their heads, was a huge tin of talcum powder, and beneath the picture were the words--“THAT COM’FY, SILKY, CUDDLY FEELING WHICH ONLY FEATHERBLO POWDER CAN GIVE.”

It was an order; she had enough commissions ahead to keep her busy for months. She made it her business to suit her clients and their public; if she had any tastes of her own, she set them aside. She had good sense and shrewdness and no illusions of her own greatness. She wished to earn a living by drawing, because she was fond of it and did it fairly well. She never used the word “Art,” never expressed an aesthetic opinion. The advertising agency for which she did most of her work considered her in all things perfect and especially created to fill their wants.

Miss Bainbridge was stippling the background of a little pen and ink sketch--a bizarre thing which she was going to try on a brand new art magazine. It was a woman, nude except for an immense black cloak sprinkled with white stars which floated from her shoulders. She stood alone on an immense stage with a background of black dots; and before and below her was a swimming sea of eyes. She called it “Failure.”

Rosaleen too was working, but neither contentedly nor successfully. The more she saw of the others, the less she thought of herself. They worked with such industry, hour after hour. They didn’t seem to have the slightest trace of her fatal desire for distraction. After she had been drawing for an hour or so, she always became intolerably restless, so that even washing dishes was a relief.... By the side of Enid Bainbridge she felt as some poor little clergyman, struggling incessantly to feed and clothe his family, sick with cares and worries of this world, might feel by the side of Saint Paul. Enid worshipped her god with a single heart. Not for money, not for praise, not for any conceivable reward, would she do anything but her best. Even her ruthlessness, her selfishness, had in them something sublime. She was the priestess, sacrificing all things on her altar. Rosaleen, while disagreeing with her as to the relative importance of art in life, nevertheless venerated her devotion.

She wanted very much to ask their opinion of the design she had just made, but she didn’t venture to interrupt them. She regarded them covertly; Miss Mell in her gingham apron, with her calm, bespectacled face cheerfully intent on her painting; Enid Bainbridge bending over her drawing with desperate intensity.... She had beautiful hair, Rosaleen observed, and she knew how to dress it.

She got up and crossed the room, very quietly, so as not to shake the floor, and sat down before the hearth to bait a mouse-trap. The place was overrun with mice; they had disturbed her horribly the night before.

And suddenly the industrious silence was broken by a tremendous knock at the door.

“_Come_ in!” called Miss Mell, in her cheerful, encouraging voice.

The door opened, so widely that it slammed against the wall, and in walked an enormously fat man, with a swarthy face, an upturned mustache and a monocle dangling by a broad black ribbon. He was dressed with extreme care, with well-creased trousers, a fastidious necktie, and fawn-coloured spats; but the greater part of him was enveloped in a flowing grey linen smock.

They all stared at him, astonished; he was so extraordinary. He stared at them.

“I heard,” he said, “that there were three little female artists up here, and I came in to look them over, to see if they were pretty and interesting, or not. I live downstairs, my children, and my name is Lawrence Iverson.”

“I’ve seen some of your work,” said Enid, carelessly. “In the Kremoth Galleries. Rather good.”

He looked critically at Enid, but she met his glance with one quite as cool and appraising.

“Who are _you_?” he asked. “To call my work ‘rather good’?”

“No one much, _just yet_,” she answered.

He crossed the room and fixing his monocle, examined her work.

“Not even ‘rather good,’” he said. “Clever--cheaply clever. Trick stuff--all in one dimension. Worthless.”

“No, it isn’t,” she contradicted. “It’s what I mean it to be, anyway. It expresses what I want it to. Now, a thing like that ‘Idols’ you did is what I call a failure. You had something you wanted to express, and you didn’t. It didn’t mean anything.”

“My God! Young woman, I never mean anything.... But you’re the perfect school marm ‘doing art.’ You’re concerned with ideas, because you have a brain, a little tiny one, but no soul. You don’t know what beauty is. What, you girl, does a tree _mean_? What does a lovely arm _mean_? I give my pictures names because people won’t buy them without names. But the names are all damn nonsense, just to make the fools talk. For instance, I will conceive a group, of perfect, heart-breaking harmony, three figures in attitudes which form a complete and exquisite design.... You see that sort of thing once in a while, without forethought. I saw, the other day, a woman bending down from the top of a flight of steps to take a bag a grocer’s boy was reaching up to her. They made the most beautiful combination of curves God ever allowed.... _You’re_ not bad looking....”

Enid paid no attention to this compliment. She frowned.

“You’re wrong,” she said, after a while. “I’m not that sort--the school marm.... But you _did_ have an idea in that picture of yours. I think you wanted it to be ironic and terrible. And it wasn’t. It was only severe. You missed what you aimed at. But I _don’t_ care about ideas....”

“Keep quiet, sensitive, egotistic, female thing!” said Lawrence Iverson. “Why do you care what I think about you? I don’t care--I couldn’t possibly care--what you thought about me. Now to show you--what mood are you trying to get in your little picture there? Explain it! If it means something, what does it mean? Eh?”

“It’s the sensation of an actress who knows she’s failing----”

“Oh bosh! Oh rot! Oh stale, idiotic futility! So we have here the portrait of a sensation! Well, here is what you want.”

He took Enid by the arm and pulled her to her feet; then he sat down on her chair and began to draw with her pen, in strong, fine, sure lines, the figure of a woman, in a strange attitude, half defiant, half cringing.

“There’s your silly idea,” he said. “Without any black dots or white stripes.... You can’t draw. No woman can. But it’s pretty to see them try. I approve. I approve of you all. Even the trying will give you some faint comprehension of what I accomplish. But now, my dear little souls, put down your work and let us become acquainted!”

II

“Wasn’t he awful?” said Rosaleen, with a sigh of relief, when he had gone.

“Oh, I don’t know!” said Miss Mell. “That’s only his way. He’s really a very well known artist.... What are you laughing at, Enid?”

“At him,” she answered. “And his babyishness. And his airs. Why, he’s crazy about women. You can see _that_. I’ll have him eating out of my hand in a week or two.”

III

But the next morning when Miss Mell opened the door to put a bundle of rubbish out into the hall she found there a neat little package, and in it a sketch of Rosaleen standing with the mouse-trap in her hand, startled and puzzled.

“To you!” he had written. “Because you look just as a little female artist ought to look. All soul. Of course, you haven’t any soul. But I will help you to play being an artist, because of your lovely soulful artist eyes.”

“Hum!” said Enid. “She’d better not have that. It won’t do to let her get conceited. She’s too useful.”

And she tore it into pieces and threw it into the fire.

“My dear!” cried Miss Mell. “I don’t think that was right!”

“Rot!” said Enid. “He’s simply trying to show that he’s not attracted by me. Can’t you see?”

“What I can’t see,” said Miss Mell, thoughtfully. “_Is_--which is the most unbearably conceited--you or Lawrence Iverson?”

“He is,” said Enid, “because he’s older. It gets worse, always.”

He came up again that afternoon; and, though they hadn’t spoken of it, they were all three quite sure that he would come, and were waiting for him.

He went over to Miss Mell.

“Your work,” he said, “is entirely hopeless. And you don’t care. You’re really the cleverest of the lot. You know what you’re doing. You’re earning a living.... But I can’t look at it. It’s too obscene.”

She smiled good-humouredly, without looking up from the picture of a small boy and a big package of coffee “For My Mudder.”

“And you,” he said to Enid. “You’re so infernally puffed up with pride in your work and your fine body that you can’t see the truth. Nothing but crazy visions. What you ought to be is an artist’s model. That is what you were intended for.”

“That’s a part that wouldn’t suit you very well,” she answered, looking at his great, ungainly bulk.

“Cheap!” he said. “Cheap wit. Cheap impudence. My skeleton is largely covered with fat, which is a source of great discomfort to me. And it seems humourous to you. Very well; that is Enid. Now this sweet child, Rosaleen, is promising. She is innocent, naïve. She sees what is, because she is rather too stupid to imagine what is not. I am going to teach her.”

“To see what is not, I suppose,” said Enid. “Go ahead, then. Of course you’ll spoil her. She was useful before. She used to cook the meals and go to market and sweep and mend our clothes. Now she’ll want to _draw_.”

“So she shall draw! She shall be my Galatea. I shall create an artist with my own breath.”

He sat down beside the alarmed and confused Rosaleen and began to instruct her. He was wonderful. He explained with exquisite lucidity; he was patient, he was kind. But Rosaleen was too nervous to profit by his teaching. Her hand trembled pitiably.

“Very well, then, my dear,” he said, kindly, “I’ll wait until you’re more used to me. But in the meantime, don’t touch a pencil. Every stroke you draw is a step on the road to perdition.”

He patted her shoulder and left her, and began walking up and down the room.

“Don’t!” said Enid, impatiently. “It shakes the floor.... Sit down and smoke.”

“I don’t smoke.”

“Why don’t you work?”

“Still the school marm. You imagine you can ‘be an artist’ by sitting over your work all your life. You haven’t the wit to see that art is the outcome of experience----”

“No, it isn’t. Unless it’s your ancestors’ experience. It comes with you when you’re born. Art is the result of impressions----”

“And how do you get impressions, woman, except through experience?”

“Some people can get a vivid impression by looking at a blank wall. It’s inside, not outside. What you call experience is nothing but distractions, interruptions....”

“Young woman, what _I_ call experience _is_ experience. I’m not a timid female thing.”

Then he began to boast--of how he had lived, how he had felt, what he had seen. He swaggered amazingly, pacing up and down the room, stroking his little black mustache, continually fixing his monocle with a tremendous grimace. Rosaleen was lost in bewilderment. She couldn’t for the life of her tell whether he was joking or serious, whether his talk was brilliant or idiotic. She could get no clue from Miss Mell, for she was still working and apparently paying no heed. Enid’s face had its usual fierce and scornful look, her voice its usual impatient vigour. She longed to have this man interpreted.

She waited until Enid had gone out to the theatre that evening, and then, when she and Miss Mell were alone together in their candle-lighted studio, with a fire burning and a great air of peace and comfort, she said:

“Isn’t that Mr. Iverson--queer?”

“Not so queer as he pretends to be,” she answered, which gave Rosaleen very little help.

“Don’t you think he’s--sort of like Enid?”

“Oh, mercy, no!” cried Miss Mell. “What makes you think that, Rosaleen?”

Rosaleen couldn’t quite explain.

“They’re both so--they’re such--they talk----”

“They’re both very rude, if that’s what you mean. But Enid’s rude because she’s so honest, and Iverson’s rude as a pose. He’s a famous poseur.”

That was Greek to Rosaleen. Miss Mell saw her puzzled frown and expatiated.

“I’ve met him before,” she said. “He doesn’t remember me, though. I’ve seen him two or three times. And I’ve heard a great deal about him. He’s a remarkable man--in some ways. But a poseur.... He affects that bluntness, but he’s not sincere.... I don’t think anyone could be less like Enid. To begin with, he hasn’t any self-control. They say he has the most terrific temper. He quarrels with everyone. And he’s perfectly reckless; he doesn’t care what he does. I’ve heard the most extraordinary stories about him. He’s like a madman. And yet very greedy. He runs after people with money. While Enid--but you must know Enid a little by this time. She’s never reckless. She always knows what she’s doing, and she’d rather cut her heart out than do anything to injure her career. And as for toadying, she _couldn’t_. She cares no more for money than a baby.”

“You think a lot of Enid, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do!” said Miss Mell.

There was a pause.

“Well--do you like--him?” asked Rosaleen.

“No,” said Miss Mell. “Not much. And don’t you, either!”

But Rosaleen couldn’t help liking him!

He didn’t come up the next afternoon. Rosaleen, going out on an errand, had of course to pass the door of his studio on the floor below, and from within she heard a most pleasant sound of feminine voices, gay, light, well-bred voices. On her way in again, she had paused for just a moment outside that door, and the hidden festivity was still going on; she heard the clink of silver on china, and those nice voices again. Later on, from the window upstairs, she saw a motor car glide up to the door in the dusk and stand there waiting, until finally two exquisitely dressed women came out and entered it, escorted gallantly by Lawrence Iverson. They drove off, leaving him standing bare-headed in the street.

IV

Miss Waters had become terribly excited when Rosaleen told her.

“My _dear_! Not _Lawrence Iverson_! Right in the same _house_! Isn’t that marvellous! Now tell me all about him!”

Rosaleen tried, but not very successfully.

“But come and see him for yourself,” she said. “He’s sure to come in again some afternoon soon.”

“Oh, no!” said Miss Waters, hastily. “I don’t think I will, dear. It would make me too nervous.”

After that she wasn’t seen so often at the studio. She would dart in during the morning, perhaps leaving a pupil at her home, and chat with Rosaleen for a little while, but always on edge, ready to flit away. It made her very happy to observe the happiness of her favourite. And she alone was able to comprehend the things that made up that happiness. She could understand the joy that seized Rosaleen whenever she had been out on a frosty morning, when she crossed the snow-covered Square and entered the room with its crackling fire and saw the two girls working in absolute quiet. She loved even the careless and shiftless housekeeping, the things brought in from the delicatessen, salads in paper boats, cold sliced meats, buns, rolls, cakes. They rarely cooked anything; they went out every night to dinner, either to an Italian table d’hote or to the tea room in the basement; when Enid wasn’t with them, they always asked Miss Waters, and frequently the two English girls who had a dressmaking establishment near by would join them. They were nice, jolly, sophisticated girls and Rosaleen liked them. She used to go now and then to their place, which they call “FINE FEATHERS,” and they would give her “pointers” about making her own clothes.

The tea room in the basement was kept by the desperately lively girl who had been at the birthday party; she was from the Middle West, and she was blessed with the name of Esther Gosorkus. She had enormous, babyish blue eyes and oily brown hair always done with a wide fillet of blue ribbon. She was enthusiastic and friendly and agreeable beyond belief; she adored everyone. Yet she was able to charge hair-raising prices for her food, and for the Antiques which she also sold down there. Enid always called her The Fool.

“She can’t be a fool,” said Miss Mell. “She’s making pots of money.”

“Plenty of fools can do that,” said Enid. “Set a fool to catch a fool! Of course! They prey on one another.”

Miss Gosorkus’ connection with Art was vague; still she wore smocks and went to studio parties; she talked about the Artists’ Colony, and considered that she belonged to it. She used to come up to the studio rather often, and had to talk to Rosaleen, because the other two gave her no encouragement. But Rosaleen thought her jolly and rather nice, and when she went out marketing, used to stop in at the Tea Room and Antique Shop and buy sandwiches for lunch, or if there were something palatable in course of preparation, she would buy three portions and bring them upstairs to her friends. Not very often, though; for she was fastidious about food, and Miss Gosorkus’ methods seemed to her more than questionable at times. She had to see it all done by Miss Gosorkus and the coloured cook before she would buy.

The mornings generally fled by in work of this unartistic nature, in marketing, in making up the cots, washing the dishes, and “attending to things.” After lunch was eaten and cleared away she would always sit down resolved to work earnestly, but often Lawrence Iverson came in, and while he was there, she dared not draw a line.

V

Perhaps the very foundation of her satisfaction with life lay in Lawrence Iverson’s kindness. He would come swaggering up and talk outrageously, unpardonably to Enid, look with a groan over Miss Mell’s shoulder and call her work “filth for the hungry hogs.” But he would look at Rosaleen’s dress designs and simpering fashion plates quite seriously, and advise her, with wonderfully practical advice.

What most touched her though was his niceness to Miss Waters. The poor old thing was trapped one day, and couldn’t get away; had to stand there in all her preposterousness, in her fur coat and her battered hat, and allow that most elegant and critical artist to be presented to her. Rosaleen was frightened, thinking of Enid’s rudeness. But Iverson was _not_ rude; on the contrary he was very polite, very friendly. He talked to her about Paris, and she was transported to the Seventh Heaven. Just to recall the names of the streets! (She didn’t know very much else of the city.) She went off with Rosaleen almost idiotic with pleasure.

“Lawrence,” said Enid, when they had gone, “you make me _sick_!”

“Why?” he enquired, twirling his little mustache.

“You’re a regular, old-fashioned stage villain,” she said. “All the trouble you’re taking--all the elaborate plots--to get that silly little kid.”

“Hold your tongue!” he said, flushing angrily. “Let’s have no more of your beastly female obsessions.”

VI

Two days later he came upstairs unexpectedly early, before lunch, and found Rosaleen peeling mushrooms in the dark back room. It made him furious; he swore at Enid and Miss Mell and called them beastly exploiters.

“Rosaleen,” he said. “Come downstairs with me and work.”

“Don’t you go!” said Enid. “He’s a villain. He has evil designs upon you.”

Rosaleen turned crimson.

“Oh, go along!” said Miss Mell. “It’ll do you good, Rosaleen. You can take care of yourself.”

“Of course she can!” said Enid. “All the little burgesses know how to do that. Lawrence, if you want to love Rosaleen, you’ll have to pay for her mushrooms all the days of your life!”