“Hello, Guilder,” he said, without rising, as the big architect shambled loosely through the open doorway.
“How are you, Drene?”
“All right. It’s hot.”
“There’s not a breath of air. It looks like a thunder-storm in the west.”
He pulled up a chair and sprawled on it, wiping his grave features with a damp handkerchief.
“Drene,” he said, “a philanthropic guy of sorts wants to add a chapel to the church at Shallow Brook, Long Island. We’ve pinched the job. Can you do an altar piece?”
“What sort?”
“They want a Virgin. It’s to be called the Chapel of the Annunciation. It’s for women to repair to — under certain and natural circumstances.”
“I’ve so much on hand—”
“It’s only a single figure-barring the dove. Why don’t you do it?”
“There are plenty of other men—”
“They want you. There’ll be no difficulty about terms.”
Drene said with a shrug:
“Terms are coming to mean less and less to me, Guilder. It costs very little for me to live.” He turned his gray, tired face. “Look at this barn of a place; and go in there and look at my bedroom. I have no use for what are known as necessities.”
“Still, terms are terms—”
“Oh, yes. A truck may run over me. Even at that, I’ve enough to live life out as I am living it here — between these empty walls — and that expanse of glass overhead. That’s about all life holds for me — a sheet of glass and four empty walls — and a fistfull of wet clay.”
“Are you a trifle morbid, Drene?”
“I’m not by any means; I merely prefer to live this way. I have sufficient means to live otherwise if I wish. But this is enough of the world to suit me, Guilder — and I can go to a noisy restaurant to eat in when I’m so inclined—” He laughed a rather mirthless laugh and glanced up, catching a peculiar expression in Guilder’s eyes.
“You’re thinking,” said Drene coolly, “what a god I once set up on the altar of domesticity. I used to talk a lot once, didn’t I? — a hell of a clamor I made in eulogy of the domestic virtues. Well, only idiots retain the same opinions longer than twenty-four hours. Fixity is imbecility; the inconstant alone progress; dissatisfaction is only a synonym for intelligence; contentment translated means stagnation..... I have changed my opinion concerning the virtues of domesticity.”
Guilder said, in his even, moderate voice:
“Your logic is weird, Drene: in one breath you say you have changed your opinion; in another that you are content; in another that contentment is the fixedness of imbecility—”
Drene, reddening slightly, half rose on one elbow from his couch:
“What I meant was that I change in my convictions from day to day, without reproaching myself with inconstancy. What I believed with all my heart to be sacred yesterday I find a barrier to-day; and push it aside and go on.”
“Toward what?”
“I go on, that’s all I know — toward sanctuary.”
“You mean professionally.”
“In every way — ethically — spiritually. The gods of yesterday, too, were very real — yesterday.”
“Drene, a man may change and progress on his way toward what never changes. But standards remained fixed. They were there in the beginning; they are immutable. If they shifted, humanity could have no goal.”
“Is there a goal?”
“Where are you going, then?”
“Just on.”
“In your profession there is a goal toward which you sculptors all journey.”
“Perfection?”
Guilder nodded.
“But,” smiled Drene, “no two sculptors ever see it alike.”
“It is still Perfection. It is still the goal to the color-blind and normal alike, whatever they call it, however, they visualize it. That is its only importance; it is The Goal..... In things spiritual the same obtains — whether one’s vision embraces Nirvana, or the Algonquin Ocean of Light, or a pallid Christ half hidden in floating clouds — Drene, it is all one, all one. It is not the Goal that changes; only our intelligence concerning its existence and its immortality.”
Drene lay looking at him:
“You never knew pain — real pain, did you? The world never ended for you, did it?”
“In one manner or another we all must be reborn before we can progress.”
“That is a cant phrase.”
“No; there’s truth under the cant. Under all the sleek, smooth, canty phrases of ecclesiastic proverb, precept, axiom, and lore, there is truth worth the sifting out.”
“You are welcome to think so, Guilder.”
“You also could come to no other conclusion if you took the trouble to investigate.”
Drene smiled:
“Morals are no more than folk-ways — merely mental condition consequent upon custom. Spiritual beliefs are radically dependant upon folkways and the resultant physical and mental condition of the human brain which creates everything that has been and that is to be.”
“Physiology has proven that no idea, no thought, ever originated within the concrete and physical brain.”
“I’ve read of those experiments.”
“Then you can’t ignore a conclusion.”
“I haven’t reached a conclusion. Meanwhile, I have my own beliefs.”
“That’s all that’s necessary,” said Guilder, gravely, “ — to entertain some belief, temporary or final.” He smiled slightly down at Drene’s drawn, gray visage.
“You and I have been friends of many years, Drene, but we have never before talked this way. I did not feel at liberty to assume any intimacy with you, even when I wanted to, even when — when you were in trouble—” He hesitated.
“Go on,” grunted the other. “I’m out of trouble now.”
“I just — it’s a whimsical notion — no, it’s a belief; — I just wanted to tell you one or two things concerning my own beliefs—”
“Temporary?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter; they are beliefs. And this is one: all physical and mental ills are created only by our own minds—”
“Christian Science?” sneered Drene.
“Call it what you like,” said Guilder serenely. “And call this what you like: All who believe worthily will find that particular belief true in every detail after death.”
“What do you call that?” demanded Drene, amused.
“God knows. It seems to be my interpretation of the Goal. I seem to be journeying toward it without more obstacles and more embarrassments to encounter than confront the wayfarer who professes any other creed.”
After a while Drene sat up on his couch:
“How did all this conversation start?” he asked uneasily.
“It was about the Virgin for that chapel we are going to do..... That’s part of my belief: those who pray for her intercession will find her after death, interceding—” he smiled, “ — if any intercession be necessary between us and Him who made us.”
“And those unlisted millions who importune Mohammed and Buddha?”
“They shall find Mohammed and Buddha, who importune them worthily.”
“And — Christ?”
“He bears that name also — He!”
“Oh! And so, spiritually as well as artistically, you believe in the Virgin?”
“You also can make a better Virgin if you believe in her otherwise than esthetically.”
Drene gazed at him incredulously, then, with a shrug:
“When do you want this thing started?”
“Now.”
“I can’t take it on now.”
“I want a sketch pretty soon — the composition. You can have a model of the chapel to — morrow. We went on with it as a speculation. Now we’ve clinched the thing. When shall I send it up from the office?”
“I’ll look it over, but—”
“And,” interrupted Guilde
r, “you had better get that Miss White for the Virgin — before she goes off somewhere out of reach.”
Drene looked up somberly:
“I haven’t kept in touch with her. I don’t know what her engagements may be.”
“One of her engagements just now seems to be to go about with Graylock,” said Guilder.
Drene flushed, but said nothing.
“If he marries her,” added Guilder, “as it’s generally understood he is trying to, the best sculptor’s model in town is out of the question. Better secure her now.”
“He wants to marry her?” repeated Drene, in a curiously still voice.
“He’s mad about her. He’s abject. It’s no secret among his friends. Men like that — and of that age — sometimes arrive at such a terminal — men with Graylock’s record sometimes get theirs. She has given him a run, believe me, and he’s brought up with a crash against a stone wall. He is lying there all doubled up at her feet like a rabbit with a broken back. There was nothing left for him to do but lie there. He’s lying there still, with one of her little feet on his bull neck. All the town knows it.”
“He wants to marry her,” repeated Drene, as though to himself.
“She may not take him at that. They’re queer — some women. I suppose she’d jump at it if she were not straight. But there’s another thing—” Guilder looked curiously at Drene. “Some people think she’s rather crazy about you.”
Drene gazed into space.
“But that wouldn’t hurt her,” added Guilder, in his calm, pleasant voice. “She’s a straight little thing — white and straight. She could come to no harm through a man like you.”
Drene continued to stare at space.
“So,” continued the other, confident, “when she recovers from a natural and childlike infatuation for you she’ll marry somebody... Possibly even such a man as Graylock might make her happy. You can’t ever tell about such men at the eleventh hour.”
Drene turned his eyes on him. There was no trace of color in his face.
“Aren’t you pretty damned charitable?”
“Charitable? Well, I — I’m so inclined, I fancy.”
“You’d be content to see that girl marry a dog like that?”
“I did not say so. I am no judge of men. No man knows enough to condemn souls.”
Drene looked at him:
“Well, I’ll tell you something. I know enough to do it. I had rather damn my soul — and hers, too — than see her marry the man you have named. It would be worth it to me.”
After a strained silence, Guilder said:
“There is a mode of dealing with those who have injured you, which is radically different—”
“I deal with such people in my own fashion!”
“But, after all, the infamy is Graylock’s. Why oblige him by sharing it with him?”
“Do you know what he did to me and mine?”
“A few of us know,” said Guilder, gently, “ — your old friends.”
There came a pale, infernal flicker into Drene’s eyes:
“I’ll take your commission for that altar piece,” he said.
“What is it? An Annunciation?”
IV
Composition had been determined upon, and the sketch completed by the middle of August; Cecile had sat for him every day from nine until five; every evening they had dined together at the seashore or other suburban and cool resorts. Together they had seen every summer entertainment in town, had spent the cooler, starlit evenings together in his studio, chatting, reading loud sometimes, sometimes discussing he work in hand or other subjects of he moment, even topics covering a wider and more varied range than he had ever before discussed with any woman.
He seemed to have become utterly changed; the dark preoccupation had been absent from his face — the gauntness, the grayness, seemed to have become subdued; the deep lines of pain, imperceptible at times, smoothed out and shadowed in an almost gay resurgence of youth.
If, during the first week or two of her companionship, his gaiety had been not entirely spontaneous, his smile shadowed with something duller, his laughter a trifle forced, she had not perceived it in her surprised and shyly troubled preoccupation with this amazing and delightful transfiguration.
At first she scarcely knew what to look for, what to expect from him, from herself, when she came into the studio after many weeks of absence; and she always halted in the doorway, trembling a little, as always, when in contact with him.
But he was very delightful, smiling, easy, and deferential enough to reassure her with a greeting that became him, as he saluted her pretty hand, held it a moment in possession, laughingly, and released it.
From the moment of their reunion he had never touched her, save for a quick, firm, smiling hand-clasp in the morning and another at the night’s parting.
Now, little by little, she was finding herself delightfully at ease with him, emerging by degrees from her charming bewilderment out of isolation to a happy companionship never before shared with any man.
Nor even vaguely had she dreamed that Drene could be such a man, such a friend, never had she imagined there was in him such kindness, such patience, such gentleness, such comprehension, such virile sense and sympathy.
And never, now, was her troubled consciousness aware of anything disquieting in his attitude, of anything to perturb her.
He seemed to enjoy himself like a boy, with her companionship, wholly, heartily, without any motive other than the pleasure of the moment; and so, little by little, she gave herself up to it too, in the same fashion, unguardedly, frankly, innocently revealing herself to him by degrees as their comradeship became deliciously unembarrassed.
He was making a full length study in clay now. All day long she sat there enthroned, her eyes partly closed, the head lifted a trifle and fallen back, and her lovely hands resting on her heart — and sometimes she strove to imagine something of the divine moment which she was embodying; pondering, dreaming, wondering; and sometimes, in the stillness, through her trance crept a thrill, subtle, exquisite, as though in faint perception of the heavenly moment. And once, into her half-dreaming senses came the soft stirring of wings, and she opened her eyes and looked up, startled and thrilled.
But it was only a pigeon which had come through the great window from the cote on the adjacent roof and which circled above her on whimpering wings for a moment and then sheered out into the sunlight.
They dined together at a roof garden that evening, the music was particularly and surprisingly good, and what surprised him even more was that she knew it and spoke of it. And continued speaking of music, he not interrupting.
Reticent hitherto concerning her antecedents he learned now something of them — and inferred more; nothing unusual — a musical career determined upon, death intervening dragging over her isolation the steel meshes of destitution — the necessity for self-support, a friend who knew a painter who employed models — not anything unusual, not even dramatic.
He nodded as she ended:
“Have you saved anything?”
“A hundred dollars.”
“That’s fine.”
She smiled, then sighed unconsciously.
“You are thinking,” he said, “that youth is flying.”
She smiled wistfully.
“Youth is the time to study. You were thinking that, too.”
She nodded.
“You could have married.”
“Why?” she asked, troubled.
“To obtain the means for a musical education.”
She gazed at him in amazement, then: “I could go out on the street, too, as far as that is concerned. It would be no more disgraceful.”
“Folk-ways sanction self-sale, when guaranteed by the clergy,” he said. She turned her head and he saw the pure, cold profile against the golden table-lamp, and he saw something else under the palms beyond — Graylock’s light eyes riveted upon them both.
“You know,” he said, under his bre
ath, “that I shall not marry you. But — would you care to begin your studies again?”
There was a long silence: She remained with face partly averted until the orchestra ceased. Then she turned and looked at him, and he saw her lip tremble.
“I had not thought you meant to ask me — that. I do not quite understand what you mean.”
“I care enough for you to wish to help you. May I?”
“I was not sure you cared — enough—”
“Do you — for me?”
“Before I say that I do — care for you—” she began, tremulously— “tell me that I have nothing to fear—”
Neither spoke. Over her shoulder Drene stared at the distant man who stared back at him.
Presently his eyes reverted to hers, absently studying the childlike beauty of her.
“I’m going to tell you something,” he said. “Love is no more wonderful than hate, no more perfect, no more eternal. And it is less fierce, and not as strong.”
“What!” she whispered, bewildered at the sinister change in him.
“And I want to tell you another thing. I am alone in the world. What I have, I have devised to you — in case I step out — suddenly—”
He paused, hesitated, then:
“Also I desire you to hear something else,” he went on. “This is the proper time for you to hear it, I think — now — to-night—”
He lifted his blazing eyes and looked at the other man.
“There was a woman,” he said— “She happened to be my wife. Also there was my closest friend: and myself. The comedy was cast. Afterward she died — abroad. I believe he was there at the time — Kept up a semblance — But he never married her.... And I do not intend to marry — you.”
After a moment: “And that,” she whispered, “is why you once said to me that I should have let you alone.”
“Did I say that to you?”
“Yes.” She looked up at him, straight into his eyes: “But if you care for me — I do not regret that I did not let you alone.”
“I shall not marry you.”
Her lip trembled but she smiled.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 747
