The Common Law

"Valerie! You bad little thing! Don't you know enough to stop when you're tired?"

"I—didn't know I was so utterly gone," she said, bewildered.

He passed his arm around her and supported her to the sofa where she sat, demure, a little surprised at her collapse, yet shyly enjoying his disconcerted attentions to her.

"It's your fault, Kelly. You had such a queer expression—not at all like you—that I tried harder than ever to help you—and fell down for my pains."

"You're an angel," he said, contritely, "but a silly one."

"A scared one, Kelly—and a fallen one." She laughed, flexing the muscles of her benumbed leg: "Your expression intimidated me. I didn't recognise you; I could not form any opinion of what was going on inside that very stern and frowning head of yours. If you look like that I'll never dare call you Kelly."

"Did I seem inhuman?"

"N-no. On the contrary—very human—ordinary—like the usual ill-tempered artist man, with whom I have learned how to deal. You know," she added, teasingly, "that you are calm and god-like, usually—and when you suddenly became a mere mortal—"

"I'll tell you what I'll do with you," he said; "I'll pick you up and put you to bed."

"I wish you would, Kelly. I haven't had half enough sleep."

He sat down beside her on the sofa: "Don't talk any more of that god-like business," he growled, "or I'll find the proper punishment."

"Would you punish me, Kelly?"

"I sure would."

"If I displeased you?"

"You bet."

"Really?" She turned partly toward him, half in earnest. "Suppose—suppose—" but she stopped suddenly, with a light little laugh that lingered pleasantly in the vast, still room.

She said: "I begin to think that there are two Kellys—no, one Kelly and one Louis. Kelly is familiar to me; I seem to have known him all my life—the happy part of my life. Louis I have just seen for the first time—there at the easel, painting, peering from me to his canvas with Kelly's good-looking eyes all narrow with worry—"

"What on earth are you chattering about, Valerie?"

"You and Kelly…. I don't quite know which I like best—the dear, sweet, kind, clever, brilliant, impersonal, god-like Kelly, or this new Louis—so very abrupt in speaking to me—"

"Valerie, dear! Forgive me. I'm out of sorts somehow. It began—I don't know—waiting for you—wondering if you could be ill—all alone. Then that ass, Sam Ogilvy—oh, it's just oversmoking I guess, or—I don't know what."

She sat regarding him, head tipped unconsciously on one side in an attitude suggesting a mind concocting malice.

"Louis?"

"What?"

"You're very attractive when you're god-like—"

"You little wretch!"

"But—you're positively dangerous when you're human."

"Valerie! I'll—"

"The great god Kelly, or the fascinating, fearsome, erring Louis! Which is it to be? I've an idea that the time is come to decide!"

Fairly radiating a charming aura of malice she sat back, nursing one knee, distractingly pretty and defiant, saying: "I will call you a god if I like!"

"I'll tell you what, Valerie," he said, half in earnest; "I've played grandmother to you long enough, by Heck!"

"Oh, Kelly, be lofty and Olympian! Be a god and shame the rest of us!"

"I'll shamefully resemble one of 'em in another moment if you continue tormenting me!"

"Which one, great one?"

"Jupiter, little lady. He was the boss philanderer you know."

"What is a philanderer, my Olympian friend?"

"Oh, one of those Olympian divinities who always began the day by kissing the girls all around."

"Before breakfast?"

"Certainly."

"It's—after breakfast, Kelly."

"Luncheon and dinner still impend."

"Besides—I'm not a bit lonely to-day…. I'm afraid I wouldn't let you, Kel—I mean Louis."

"Why didn't you say 'Kelly'?"

"Kelly is too god-like to kiss."

"Oh! So that's the difference! Kelly isn't human; Louis is."

"Kelly, to me," she admitted, "is practically kissless…. I haven't thought about Louis in that regard."

"Consider the matter thoroughly."

"Do you wish me to?" She bent her head, smiling. Then, looking up with enchanting audacity:

"I really don't know, Mr. Neville. Some day when I'm lonely—and if Louis is at home and Kelly is out—you and I might spend an evening together on a moonlit lake and see how much of a human being Louis can be."

She laughed, watching him under the dark lashes, charming mouth mocking him in every curve.

"Do you think you're likely to be lonely to-night?" he asked, surprised at the slight acceleration of his pulses.

"No, I don't. Besides, you'd be only the great god Kelly to me this evening. Besides that I'm going to dinner with Querida, and afterward we're going to see the 'Joy of the Town' at the Folly Theatre."

"I didn't know," he said, curtly. For a few moments he sat there, looking interestedly at a familiar door-knob. Then rising: "Do you feel all right for posing?"

"Yes."

"Alors—"

"Allons, mon dieu!" she laughed.

Work began. She thought, watching him with sudden and unexpected shyness, that he seemed even more aloof, more preoccupied, more worried, more intent than before. In this new phase the man she had known as a friend was now entirely gone, vanished! Here stood an utter stranger, very human, very determined, very deeply perplexed, very much in earnest. Everything about this man was unknown to her. There seemed to be nothing about him that particularly appealed to her confidence, either; yet the very uncertainty was interesting her now—intensely.

This other phase of his dual personality had been so completely a surprise that, captivated, curious, she could keep neither her gaze from him nor her thoughts. Was it that she was going to miss in him the other charm, lose the delight in his speech, his impersonal and kindly manner, miss the comfortable security she had enjoyed with him, perhaps after some half gay, half sentimental conflict with lesser men?

What was she to expect from this brand-new incarnation of Louis Neville? The delightful indifference, fascinating absent-mindedness and personal neglect of the other phase? Would he be god enough to be less to her, now? Man enough to be more than other men? For a moment she had a little shrinking, a miniature panic lest this man turn too much like other men. But she let her eyes rest on him, and knew he would not. Whatever Protean changes might yet be reserved for her to witness, she came to the conclusion that this man was a man apart, different, and would not disappoint her no matter what he turned into.

She thought to herself: "If I want Kelly to lean on, he'll surely appear, god-like, impersonally nice, and kindly as ever; if I want Louis to torment and provoke and flirt with—a little—a very little—I'm quite sure he'll come, too. Whatever else is contained in Mr. Neville I don't know; but I like him separately and compositely, and I'm happy when I'm with him."

With which healthy conclusion she asked if she might rest, and came around to look at the canvas.

As she had stood in silence for some time, he asked her, a little nervously, what she thought of it.

"Louis—I don't know."

"Is your opinion unfavourable?"

"N-no. I am like that, am I not?"

"In a shadowy way. It will be like you."

"Am I as—interesting?"

"More so," he said.

"Are you going to make me—beautiful?"

"Yes—or cut this canvas into shreds."

"Oh-h!" she exclaimed with a soft intake of breath; "would you have the heart to destroy me after you've made me?"

"I don't know what I'd do, Valerie. I never felt just this way about anything. If I can't paint you—a human, breathing you—with all of you there on the canvas—all of you, soul, mind, and body—all of your beauty, your youth, your sadness, happiness—your errors, your nobility—you, Valerie!—then there's no telling what I'll do."

She said nothing. Presently she resumed the pose and he his painting.

It became very still in the sunny studio.

CHAPTER IV

In that month of June, for the first time in his deliberately active career, Neville experienced a disinclination to paint. And when he realised that it was disinclination, it appalled him. Something—he didn't understand what—had suddenly left him satiated—and with all the uneasiness and discontent of satiation he forced matters until he could force no further.

He had commissions, several, and valuable; and let them lie. For the first time in all his life the blank canvas of an unexecuted commission left him untempted, unresponsive, weary.

He had, also, his portrait of Valerie to continue. He continued it mentally, at intervals; but for several days, now, he had not laid a brush to it.

"It's funny," he said to Querida, going out on the train to his sister's country home one delicious morning—"it's confoundedly odd that I should turn lazy in my old age. Do you think I'm worked out?" He gulped down a sudden throb of fear smilingly.

"Lie fallow," said Querida, gently. "No soil is deep enough to yield without rest."

"Yours does."

"Oh, for me," said Querida, showing his snowy teeth, "I often sicken of my fat sunlight, frying everything to an iridescent omelette." He shrugged, laughed: "I turn lazy for months every year. Try it, my friend. Don't you even keep mi-carême?"

Neville stared out of the window at the station platform past which they were gliding, and rose with Querida as the train stopped. His sister's touring car was waiting; into it stepped Querida, and he followed; and away they sped over the beautiful rolling country, where handsome cattle tried to behave like genuine Troyon's, and silvery sheep attempted to imitate Mauve, and even the trees, separately or in groups, did their best to look like sections of Rousseau, Diaz, and even Corot—but succeeded only in resembling questionable imitations.

"There's to be quite a week-end party?" inquired Querida.

"I don't know. My sister telephoned me to fill in. I fancy the party is for you."

"For me!" exclaimed Querida with delightful enthusiasm. "That is most charming of Mrs. Collis."

"They'll all think it charming of you. Lord, what a rage you've become and what a furor you've aroused!… And you deserve it," added Neville, coolly.

Querida looked at him, calm intelligence in his dark gaze; and understood the honesty of the comment.

"That," he said, "if you permit the vigour of expression, is damn nice of you, Neville. But you can afford to be generous to other painters."

"Can I?" Neville turned and gazed at Querida, gray eyes clear in their searching inquiry. Then he laughed a little and looked out over the sunny landscape.

Querida's olive cheeks had reddened a trifle.

Neville said: "What is the trouble with my work, anyway? Is it what some of you fellows say?"

Querida did not pretend to misunderstand:

"You're really a great painter, Neville. And you know it. Must you have everything?"

"Well—I'm going after it."

"Surely—surely. I, also. God knows my work lacks many, many things—"

"But it doesn't lack that one essential which mine lacks. What is it?"

Querida laughed: "I can't explain. For me—your Byzantine canvas—there is in it something not intimate—"

"Austere?"

"Yes—even in those divine and lovely throngs. There is, perhaps, an aloofness—even a self-denial—" He laughed again: "I deny myself nothing—on canvas—even I have the audacity to try to draw as you do!"

Neville sat thinking, watching the landscape speed away on either side in a running riot of green.

"Self-denial—too much of it—separates you from your kind," said Querida. "The solitary fasters are never personally pleasant; hermits are the world's public admiration and private abomination. Oh, the good world dearly loves to rub elbows with a talented sinner and patronise him and sentimentalise over him—one whose miracles don't hurt their eyes enough to blind them to the pleasant discovery that his halo is tarnished in spots and needs polishing, and that there's a patch on the seat of his carefully creased toga."

Neville laughed. Presently he said: "Until recently I've cherished theories. One of 'em was to subordinate everything in life to the enjoyment of a single pleasure—the pleasure of work…. I guess experience is putting that theory on the blink."

"Surely. You might as well make an entire meal of one favourite dish. For a day you could stand it, even like it, perhaps. After that—" he shrugged.

"But—I'd rather spend my time painting—if I could stand the diet."

"Would you? I don't know what I'd rather do. I like almost everything. It makes me paint better to talk to a pretty woman, for example. To kiss her inspires a masterpiece."

"Does it?" said Neville, thoughtfully.

"Of course. A week or two of motoring—riding, dancing, white flannel idleness—all these I adore. And," tapping his carefully pinned lilac tie—"inside of me I know that every pleasant experience, every pleasure I offer myself, is going to make me a better painter!"

"Experience," repeated the other.

"By all means and every means—experience in pleasure, in idleness, in love, in sorrow—but experience!—always experience, by hook or by crook, and at any cost. That is the main idea, Neville—my main idea—like the luscious agglomeration of juicy green things which that cow is eating; they all go to make good milk. Bah!—that's a stupid simile," he added, reddening.

Neville laughed. Presently he pointed across the meadows.

"Is that your sister's place?" asked Querida with enthusiasm, interested and disappointed. "What a charming house!"

"That is Ashuelyn, my sister's house. Beyond is El Naúar, Cardemon's place…. Here we are."

The small touring car stopped; the young men descended to a grassy terrace where a few people in white flannels had gathered after breakfast. A slender woman, small of bone and built like an undeveloped girl, came forward, the sun shining on her thick chestnut hair.

"Hello, Lily," said Neville.

"Hello, Louis. Thank you for coming, Mr. Querida—it is exceedingly nice of you to come—" She gave him her firm, cool hand, smiled on him with unfeigned approval, turned and presented him to the others—Miss Aulne, Miss Swift, Miss Annan, a Mr. Cameron, and, a moment later, to her husband, Gordon Collis, a good-looking, deeply sun-burned young man whose only passion, except his wife and baby, was Ashuelyn, the home of his father.

But it was a quiet passion which bored nobody, not even his wife.

When conversation became general, with Querida as the centre around which it eddied, Neville, who had seated himself on the gray stone parapet near his sister, said in a low voice:

"Well, how goes it, Lily?"

"All right," she replied with boyish directness, but in the same low tone. "Mother and father have spent a week with us. You saw them in town?"

"Of course. I'll run up to Spindrift House to see them as often as I can this summer…. How's the kid?"

"Fine. Do you want to see him?"

"Yes, I'd like to."

His sister caught his hand, jumped up, and led him into the house to the nursery where a normal and in nowise extraordinary specimen of infancy reposed in a cradle, pink with slumber, one thumb inserted in its mouth.

"Isn't he a wonder," murmured Neville, venturing to release the thumb.

The young mother bent over, examining her offspring in all the eloquent silence of pride unutterable. After a little while she said: "I've got to feed him. Go back to the others, Louis, and say I'll be down after a while."

He sauntered back through the comfortable but modest house, glancing absently about him on his way to the terrace, nodding to familiar faces among the servants, stopping to inspect a sketch of his own which he had done long ago and which his sister loved and he hated.

"Rotten," he murmured—"it has an innocence about it that is actually more offensive than stupidity."

On the terrace Stephanie Swift came over to him:

"Do you want a single at tennis, Louis? The others are hot for Bridge—except Gordon Collis—and he is going to dicker with a farmer over some land he wants to buy."

Neville looked at the others:

"Do you mean to say that you people are going to sit here all hunched up around a table on a glorious day like this?"

"We are," said Alexander Cameron, calmly breaking the seal of two fresh, packs. "You artists have nothing to do for a living except to paint pretty models, and when the week end comes you're in fine shape to caper and cut up didoes. But we business men are too tired to go galumphing over the greensward when Saturday arrives. It's a wicker chair and a 'high one,' and peaceful and improving cards for ours."

Alice Annan laughed and glanced at Querida degrees Cameron's idea was her idea of what her brother Harry was doing for a living; but she wasn't sure that Querida would think it either flattering or humorous.

But Jose Querida laughed, too, saying: "Quite right, Mr. Cameron. It's only bluff with, us; we never work. Life is one continual comic opera."

"It's a cinch," murmured Cameron. "Stocks and bonds are exciting, but your business puts it all over us. Nobody would have to drive me to business every morning if there was a pretty model in a cosey studio awaiting me."

"Sandy, you're rather horrid," said Miss Aulne, watching him sort out the jokers from the new packs and, with a skilful flip, send them scaling out, across the grass, for somebody to pick up.

Cameron said: "How about this Trilby business, anyway, Miss Annan? You have a brother in it. Is the world of art full of pretty models clad in ballet skirts—when they wear anything? Is it all one mad, joyous melange of high-brow conversation discreetly peppered with low-brow revelry? Yes? No? Inform an art lover, please—as they say in the Times Saturday Review."

"I don't know," said Miss Annan, laughing. "Harry never has anybody interesting in the studio when he lets me take tea there."

Rose Aulne said: "I saw some photographs of a very beautiful girl in Sam Ogilvy's studio—a model. What is her name, Alice?—the one Sam and Harry are always raving over?"

"They call her Valerie, I believe."

"Yes, that's the one—Valerie West, isn't it? Is it, Louis? You know her, of course."

Neville nodded coolly.

"Introduce me," murmured Cameron, spreading a pack for cutting. "Perhaps she'd like to see the Stock Exchange when I'm at my best."

"Is she such a beauty? Do you know her, too, Mr. Querida?" asked Rose Aulne.

Querida laughed: "I do. Miss West is a most engaging, most amiable and cultivated girl, and truly very beautiful."

"Oh! They are sometimes educated?" asked Stephanie, surprised.

"Sometimes they are even equipped to enter almost any drawing-room in New York. It doesn't always require the very highest equipment to do that," he added, laughing.

"That sounds like romantic fiction," observed Alice Annan. "You are a poet, Mr. Querida."

"Oh, it's not often a girl like Valerie West crosses our path. I admit that. Now and then such a comet passes across our sky—or is reported. I never before saw any except this one."

"If she's as much of a winner as all that," began Cameron with decision,

"I want to meet her immediately—"

"Mere brokers are out of it," said Alice…. "Cut, please."

Rose Aulne said: "If you painters only knew it, your stupid studio teas would be far more interesting if you'd have a girl like this Valerie West to pour for you … and for us to see."

"Yes," added Alice; "but they're a vain lot. They think we are unsophisticated enough to want to go to their old studios and be perfectly satisfied to look at their precious pictures, and listen to their art patter. I've told Harry that what we want is to see something of the real studio life; and he tries to convince me that it's about as exciting as a lawyer's life when he dictates to his stenographer."

"Is it?" asked Stephanie of Neville.

"Just about as exciting. Some few business men may smirk at their stenographers; some few painters may behave in the same way to their models. I fancy it's the exception to the rule in any kind of business—isn't it, Sandy?"

"Certainly," said Cameron, hastily. "I never winked at my stenographer—never! never! Will you deal, Mr. Querida?" he asked, courteously.

"I should think a girl like that would be interesting to know," said Lily Collis, who had come up behind her brother and Stephanie Swift and stood, a hand on each of their shoulders, listening and looking on at the card game.

"That is what I wanted to say, too," nodded Stephanie. "I'd like to meet a really nice girl who is courageous enough, and romantic enough to pose for artists—"

"You mean poor enough, don't you?" said Neville. "They don't do it because it's romantic."

"It must be romantic work."

"It isn't, I assure you. It's drudgery—and sometimes torture."

Stephanie laughed: "I believe it's easy work and a gay existence full of romance. Don't undeceive me, Louis. And I think you're selfish not to let us meet your beautiful Valerie at tea."

"Why not?" added his sister. "I'd like to see her myself."

"Oh, Lily, you know perfectly well that oil and water don't mix," he said with a weary shrug.

"I suppose we're the oil," remarked Rose Aulne—"horrid, smooth, insinuating stuff. And his beautiful Valerie is the clear, crystalline, uncontaminated fountain of inspiration."

Lily Collis dropped her hands from Stephanie's and her brother's shoulders:

"Do ask us to tea to meet her, Louis," she coaxed.

"We've never seen a model—"

"Do you want me to exhibit a sensitive girl as a museum freak?" he asked, impatiently.

"Don't you suppose we know how to behave toward her? Really, Louis, you—"

"Probably you know how to behave. And I can assure you that she knows perfectly well how to behave toward anybody. But that isn't the question. You want to see her out of curiosity. You wouldn't make a friend of her—or even an acquaintance. And I tell you, frankly, I don't think it's square to her and I won't do it. Women are nuisances in studios, anyway."

"What a charming way your brother has of explaining things," laughed Stephanie, passing her arm through Lily's: "Shall we reveal to him that he was seen with his Valerie at the St. Regis a week ago?"

"Why not?" he said, coolly, but inwardly exasperated. "She's as ornamental as anybody who dines there."

"I don't do that with my stenographers!" called out Cameron gleefully, cleaning up three odd in spades. "Oh, don't talk to me, Louis! You're a gay bunch all right!—you're qualified, every one of you, artists and models, to join the merry, merry!"

Stephanie dropped Lily's arm with a light laugh, swung her tennis bat, tossed a ball into the sunshine, and knocked it over toward the tennis court.

"I'll take you on if you like, Louis!" she called back over her shoulder, then continued her swift, graceful pace, white serge skirts swinging above her ankles, bright hair wind-blown—a lithe, full, wholesome figure, very comforting to look at.

"Come upstairs; I'll show you where Gordon's shoes are," said his sister.

Gordon's white shoes fitted him, also his white trousers. When he was dressed he came out of the room and joined his sister, who was seated on the stairs, balancing his racquet across her knees.

"Louis," she said, "how about the good taste of taking that model of yours to the St. Regis?"

"It was perfectly good taste," he said, carelessly.

"Stephanie took it like an angel," mused his sister.

"Why shouldn't she? If there was anything queer about it, you don't suppose I'd select the St. Regis, do you?"

"Nobody supposed there was anything queer."

"Well, then," he demanded, impatiently, "what's the row?"

"There is no row. Stephanie doesn't make what you call rows. Neither does anybody in your immediate family. I was merely questioning the wisdom of your public appearance—under the circumstances."

"What circumstances?"

His sister looked at him calmly:

"The circumstances of your understanding with Stephanie…. An understanding of years, which, in her mind at least, amounts to a tacit engagement."