Between Friends
R >>
Robert W. Chambers >> Between Friends
This eBook was produced by Andre Boutin-Maloney of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.
Between Friends
by Robert W. Chambers
1914
I
Like a man who reenters a closed and darkened house and lies down;
lying there, remains conscious of sunlight outside, of bird-calls,
and the breeze in the trees, so had Drene entered into the obscurity
of himself.
Through the chambers of his brain the twilit corridors where cringed
his bruised and disfigured soul, there nothing stirring except the
automatic pulses which never cease.
Sometimes, when the sky itself crashes earthward and the world lies
in ruins from horizon to horizon, life goes on.
The things that men live through--and live!
But no doubt Death was too busy elsewhere to attend to Drene.
He had become very lean by the time it was all over. Gray glinted
on his temples; gray softened his sandy mustache: youth was finished
as far as he was concerned.
An odd idea persisted in his mind that it had been winter for many
years. And the world thawed out very slowly for him.
But broken trees leaf out, and hewed roots sprout; and what he had
so long mistaken for wintry ashes now gleamed warmly like the orange
and gold of early autumn. After a while he began to go about more or
less--little excursions from the dim privacy of mind and soul--and
he found the sun not very gray; and a south wind blowing in the
world once more.
Quair and Guilder were in the studio that day on business; Drene
continued to modify his composition in accordance with Guilder's
suggestions; Quair, always curious concerning Drene, was becoming
slyly impudent.
"And listen to me, Guilder. What the devil's a woman between
friends?" argued Quair, with a malicious side glance at Drene. "You
take my best girl away from me--"
"But I don't," remarked his partner dryly.
"For the sake of argument, you do. What happens? Do I raise hell?
No. I merely thank you. Why? Because I don't want her if you can get
her away. That," he added, with satisfaction, "is philosophy. Isn't
it, Drene?"
Guilder intervened pleasantly:
"I don't think Drene is particularly interested in philosophy. I'm
sure I'm not. Shut up, please."
Drene, gravely annoyed, continued to pinch bits of modeling wax out
of a round tin box, and to stick them all over the sketch he was
modifying.
Now and then he gave a twirl to the top of his working table, which
revolved with a rusty squeak.
"If you two unusually intelligent gentlemen ask me what good a woman
the world--" began Quair.
"But we don't," interrupted Guilder, in the temperate voice peculiar
to his negative character.
"Anyway," insisted Quair, "here's what I think of 'em--"
"My model, yonder," said Drene, a slight shrug of contempt, "happens
to be feminine, and may also be human. Be decent enough to defer the
development of your rather tiresome theory."
The girl on the model-stand laughed outright at the rebuke,
stretched her limbs and body, and relaxed, launching a questioning
glance at Drene.
"All right; rest a bit," said the sculptor, smearing the bit of wax
he was pinching over the sketch before him.
He gave another twirl or two to the table, wiped his bony fingers on
a handful of cotton waste, picked up his empty pipe, and blew into
the stem, reflectively.
Quair, one of the associated architects of the new opera, who had
been born a gentleman and looked the perfect bounder, sauntered over
to examine the sketch. He was still red from the rebuke he had
invited.
Guilder, his senior colleague, got up from the lounge and walked
over also. Drene fitted the sketch into the roughly designed group,
where it belonged, and stood aside, sucking meditatively on his
empty pipe.
After a silence:
"It's all right," said Guilder.
Quair remarked that the group seemed to lack flamboyancy. It is
true, however, that, except for Guilder's habitual restraint, the
celebrated firm of architects was inclined to express themselves
flamboyantly, and to interpret Renaissance in terms of Baroque.
"She's some girl," added Quair, looking at the lithe, modeled
figure, and then half turning to include the model, who had seated
herself on the lounge, and was now gazing with interest at the
composition sketched in by Drene for the facade of the new opera.
"Carpeaux and his eternal group--it's the murderous but inevitable
standard of comparison," mused Drene, with a whimsical glance at the
photograph on the wall.
"Carpeaux has nothing on this young lady," insisted Quair
flippantly; and he pivoted on his heel and sat down beside the
model. Once or twice the two others, consulting before the wax
group, heard the girl's light, untroubled laughter behind their
backs gaily responsive to Quair's wit. Perhaps Quair's inheritance
had been humor, but to some it seemed perilously akin to mother-wit.
The pockets of Guilder's loose, ill-fitting clothes bulged with
linen tracings and rolls of blue-prints. He and Drene consulted over
these for a while, semi-conscious of Quair's bantering voice and the
girl's easily provoked laughter behind them. And, finally:
"All right, Guilder," said Drene briefly. And the firm of
celebrated architects prepared to evacuate the studio--Quair
exhibiting symptoms of incipient skylarking, in which he was said to
be at his best.
"Drop in on me at the office some time," he suggested to the
youthful model, in a gracious tone born of absolute
self-satisfaction.
"For luncheon or dinner?" retorted the girl, with smiling audacity.
"You may stay to breakfast also--"
"Oh, come on," drawled Guilder, taking his colleague's elbow.
The sculptor yawned as Quair went out: then he closed the door then
celebrated firm of architects, and wandered back rather aimlessly.
For a while he stood by the great window, watching the pigeons on
neighboring roof. Presently he returned to his table, withdrew the
dancing figure with its graceful, wide flung arms, set it upon the
squeaky revolving table once more, and studied it, yawning at
intervals.
The girl got up from the sofa behind him, went to the model-stand,
and mounted it. For a few moments she was busy adjusting her feet to
the chalk marks and blocks. Finally she took the pose. She always
seemed inclined to be more or less vocal while Drene worked; her
voice, if untrained, was untroubled. Her singing had never bothered
Drene, nor, until the last few days, had he even particularly
noticed her blithe trilling--as a man a field, preoccupied, is
scarcely aware of the wild birds' gay irrelevancy along the way.
He happened to notice it now, and a thought passed through his mind
that the country must be very lovely in the mild spring sunshine.
As he worked, the brief visualization of young grass and the faint
blue of skies, evoked, perhaps, by the girl's careless singing, made
for his dull concentration subtly pleasant environment.
"May I rest?" she asked at length.
"Certainly, if it's necessary."
"I've brought my lunch. It's twelve," she explained.
He glanced at her absently, rolling a morsel of wax; then, with
slight irritation which ended in a shrug, he motioned her to
descend.
After all, girls, like birds, were eternally eating. Except for
that, and incessant preening, existence meant nothing more important
to either species.
He had been busy for a few moments with the group when she said
something to him, and he looked around from his abstraction. She was
holding out toward him a chicken sandwich.
When his mind came back from wool gathering, he curtly declined the
offer, and, as an afterthought, bestowed upon her a wholly
mechanical smile, in recognition of a generosity not welcome.
"Why don't you ever eat luncheon?" she asked.
"Why should I?" he replied, preoccupied.
"It's bad for you not to. Besides, you are growing thin."
"Is that your final conclusion concerning me, Cecile?" he asked,
absently.
"Won't you please take this sandwich?"
Her outstretched arm more than what she said arrested his drifting
attention again.
"Why the devil do you want me to eat?" he inquired, fishing out his
empty pipe and filling it.
"You smoke too much. It's bad for you. It will do very queer
things to the lining of your stomach if you smoke your luncheon
instead of eating it."
He yawned.
"Is that so?" he said.
"Certainly it's so. Please take this sandwich."
He stood looking at the outstretched arm, thinking of other things
and the girl sprang to her feet, caught his hand, opened the
fingers, placed the sandwich on the palm, then, with a short laugh
as though slightly disconcerted by her own audacity, she snatched
the pipe from his left hand and tossed it upon the table. When she
had reseated herself on the lounge beside her pasteboard box of
luncheon, she became even more uncertain concerning the result of
what she had done, and began to view with rising alarm the steady
gray eyes that were so silently inspecting her.
But after a moment Drene walked over to the sofa, seated himself,
curiously scrutinized the sandwich which lay across the palm of his
hand, then gravely tasted it.
"This will doubtless give me indigestion," he remarked. "Why,
Cecile, do you squander your wages on nourishment for me?"
"It cost only five cents."
"But why present five cents to me?" "I gave ten to a beggar this
morning."
"Why?"
"I don't know."
"Was he grateful?"
"He seemed to be."
"This sandwich is excellent; but if I feel the worse for it, I'll
not be very grateful to you." But he continued eating.
"'The woman tempted me,'" she quoted, glancing at him sideways.
After a moment's survey of her:
"You're one of those bright, saucy, pretty, inexplicable things that
throng this town and occasionally flit through this
profession--aren't you?"
"Am I?"
"Yes. Nobody looks for anything except mediocrity; you're one of
the surprises. Nobody expects you; nobody can account for you, but
you appear now and then, here and there, anywhere, even
everywhere--a pretty sparkle against the gray monotony of life, a
momentary flash like a golden moat afloat in sunshine--and what
then?"
She laughed.
"What then? What becomes of you? Where do you go? What do you
turn into?"
"I don't know."
"You go somewhere, don't you? You change into something, don't you?
What happens to you, petite Cigale?"
"When?"
"When the sunshine is turned off and the snow comes."
"I don't know, Mr. Drene." She broke her chocolate cake into halves
and laid one on his knee.
"Thanks for further temptation," he said grimly.
"You are welcome. It's good, isn't it?"
"Excellent. Adam liked the apple, too. But it raised hell with
him."
She laughed, shot a direct glance at him, and began to nibble her
cake, with her eyes still fixed on him.
Once or twice he encountered her gaze but his own always wandered
absently elsewhere.
"You think a great deal, don't you?" she remarked.
"Don't you?"
"I try not to--too much."
"What?" he asked, swallowing the last morsel of cake.
She shrugged her shoulders:
"What's the advantage of thinking?"
He considered her reply for a moment, her blue and rather childish
eyes, and the very pure oval of her face. Then his attention flagged
as usual--was wandering--when she sighed, very lightly, so that he
scarcely heard it--merely noticed it sufficiently to conclude that,
as usual, there was the inevitable hard luck story afloat in her
vicinity, and that he lacked the interest to listen to it.
"Thinking," she said, "is a luxury to a tranquil mind and a
punishment to a troubled one. So I try not to."
It was a moment or two before it occurred to him that the girl had
uttered an unconscious epigram.
"It sounded like somebody--probably Montaigne. Was it?" he inquired.
"I don't know what you mean."
"Oh. Then it wasn't. You're a funny little girl, aren't you?"
"Yes, rather."
"On purpose?"
"Yes, sometimes."
He looked into her very clear eyes, now brightly blue with
intelligent perception of his not too civil badinage.
"And sometimes," he went on, "you're funny when you don't intend to
be."
"You are, too, Mr. Drene."
"What?"
"Didn't you know it?"
A dull color tinted his cheek bones.
"No," he said, "I didn't know it."
"But you are. For instance, you don't walk; you stalk. You do what
novelists make their gloomy heroes do--you stride. It's rather
funny."
"Really. And do you find my movements comic?"
She was a trifle scared, now, but she laughed her breathless,
youthful laugh:
"You are really very dramatic--a perfect story-book man. But, you
know, sometimes they are funny when the author doesn't intend them
to be. . . . Please don't be angry."
Why the impudence of a model should have irritated him he was at a
loss to understand--unless there lurked under that impudence a trace
of unflattering truth.
As he sat looking at her, all at once, and in an unexpected flash of
selfillumination, he realized that habit had made of him an actor;
that for a while--a long while--a space of time he could not at the
moment conveniently compute--he had been playing a role merely
because he had become accustomed to it.
Disaster had cast him for a part. For a long while he had been that
part. Now he was still playing it from sheer force of habit. His
tragedy had really become only the shadow of a memory. Already he
had emerged from that shadow into the everyday outer world. But he
had forgotten that he still wore a somber makeup and costume which
in the sunshine might appear grotesque. No wonder the world thought
him funny.
Glancing up from a perplexed and chagrined meditation he caught her
eye--and found it penitent, troubled, and anxious.
"You're quite right," he said, smiling easily and naturally; "I am
unintentionally funny. And I really didn't know it--didn't suspect
it--until this moment."
"Oh," she said quickly. "I didn't mean--I know you are often
unhappy--"
"Nonsense!"
"You are! Anybody can see--and you really do not seem to be very
old, either--when you smile--"
"I'm not very old," he said, amused. "I'm not unhappy, either. If I
ever was, the truth is that I've almost forgotten by this time what
it was all about--"
"A woman," she quoted, "between friends"--and checked herself,
frightened that she had dared interpret Quair's malice.
He changed countenance at that; the dull red of anger clouded his
visage.
"Oh," she faltered, "I was not saucy, only sorry. . . . I have been
sorry for you so long--"
"Who intimated to you that a woman ever played any part in my
career?"
"It's generally supposed. I don't know anything more than that.
But I've been--sorry. Love is a very dreadful thing," she said under
her breath.
"Is it?" he asked, controlling a sudden desire to laugh.
"Don't you think so?"
"I have not thought of it that way, recently. . . . I haven't
thought about it at all--for some years. . . . Have you?" he added,
trying to speak gravely.
"Oh, yes. I have thought of it," she admitted.
"And you conclude it to be a rather dreadful business?"
"Yes, it is."
"How?"
"Oh, I don't know. A girl usually loves the wrong man. To be poor
is always bad enough, but to be in love, too, is really very
dreadful. It usually finishes us--you know."
"Are you in love?" he inquired, managing to repress his amusement.
"I could be. I know that much." She went to the sink, turned on the
water, washed her hands, and stood with dripping fingers looking
about for a towel.
"I'll get you one," he said. When he brought it, she laughed and
held out her hands to be dried.
"Do you think you are a Sultana?" he inquired, draping the towel
across her outstretched arms and leaving it there.
"I thought perhaps you'd dry them," she said sweetly.
"Not in the business," he remarked; and lighted his pipe.
Her hands were her particular beauty, soft and snowy. She was much
in demand among painters, and had posed many times for pictures of
the Virgin, her hands usually resting against her breast.
Now she bestowed great care upon them, thoroughly drying each
separate, slender finger. Then she pushed back the heavy masses of
her hair--"a miracle of silk and sunshine," as Quair had whispered
to her. That same hair, also, was very popular among painters.
It was her figure that fascinated sculptors.
"Are you ready?" grunted Drene. Work presently recommenced.
She was entirely accustomed to praise from men, for her general
attractiveness, for various separate features in what really was an
unusually lovely ensemble.
She was also accustomed to flattery, to importunity, to the ordinary
variety of masculine solicitation; to the revelation of genuine
feeling, too, in its various modes of expression--sentimental,
explosive, insinuating--the entire gamut.
She had remained, however, untouched; curious and amused, perhaps,
yet quite satisfied, so far, to be amused; and entirely content with
her own curiosity.
She coquetted when she thought it safe; learned many things she had
not suspected; was more cautious afterwards, but still, at
intervals, ventured to use her attractiveness as a natural lure, as
an excuse, as a reason, as a weapon, when the probable consequences
threatened no embarrassment or unpleasantness for her.
She was much liked, much admired, much attempted, and entirely
untempted.
When the Make-up Club gave its annual play depicting the foibles of
artists and writers in the public eye, Cecile White was always cast
for a role which included singing and dancing.
On and off for the last year or two she had posed for Drene, had
dropped into his studio to lounge about when he had no need of her
professionally, and when she had half an hour of idleness
confronting her.
As she stood there now on the model stand, gazing dreamily from his
busy hands to his lean, intent features, it occurred to her that
this day had not been a sample of their usual humdrum relations.
From the very beginning of their business relations he had remained
merely her employer, self-centered, darkly absorbed in his work, or,
when not working, bored and often yawning. She had never come to
know him any better than when she first laid eyes on him.
Always she had been a little interested in him, a little afraid,
sometimes venturing an innocent audacity, out of sheer curiosity
concerning the effect on him. But never had she succeeded in
stirring him to any expression of personal feeling in regard to
herself, one way or the other.
Probably he had no personal feeling concerning her. It seemed odd
to her; model and master thrown alone together, day after day,
usually became friends in some degree. But there had been nothing at
all of camaraderie in their relationship, only a colorless,
professional sans-gene, the informality of intimacy without the
kindly essence of personal interest on his part.
He paid her wages promptly; said good morning when she came, and
good night when she went; answered her questions when she asked them
seriously; relapsed into indifference or into a lazy and not too
civil badinage when she provoked him to it; and that was all.
He never complimented her, never praised her; yet he must have
thought her a good model, or he would not have continued to send for
her.
"Do you think me pretty?" she had asked one day, saucily invading
one of his yawning silences.
"I think you're pretty good," he replied, "as a model. You'd be
quite perfect if you were also deaf and dumb."
That had been nearly a year ago. She thought of it now, a slight
heat in her cheeks as she remembered the snub, and her almost
childish amazement, and the hurt and offended silence which lasted
all that morning, but which, if he noticed at all, was doubtless
entirely gratifying to him.
"May I rest?"
"If it's necessary."
She sprang lightly to the floor walked around behind him, and stood
looking at his work.
"Do you want to know my opinion?" she asked.
"Yes," he said, with unexpected urbanity; "if you are clever enough
to have an opinion. What is it?"
She said, looking at the wax figure of herself and speaking with
deliberation:
"In the last hour you have made out of a rather commonplace study an
entirely spontaneous and charming creation."
"What!" he exclaimed, his face reddening with pleasure at her
opinion, and with surprise at her mode of expressing it.
"It's quite true. That dancing figure is wholly charming. It is no
study; it is pure creation."
He knew it; was a little thrilled that she, representing to him an
average and mediocre public, should recognize it so intelligently.
"As though," she continued, "you had laid aside childish things."
"What?" he asked, surprised again at the authority of the
expression.
"Academic precision and the respectable excellencies
of-the-usual;--you have put away childish things and become a man."
"Where did you hear that?" he said bluntly.
"I heard it when I said it. You know, Mr. Drene, I am not wholly
uneducated, although your amiable question insinuates as much."
"I'm not unamiable. Only I didn't suppose--"
"Oh, you never have supposed anything concerning me. So why are you
surprised when I express myself with fragmentary intelligence?"
"I'm sorry--"
"Listen to me. I'm not afraid of you any more. I've been afraid
for two years. Now, I'm not. Your study is masterly. I know it. You
know it. You didn't know I knew it; you didn't know I knew anything.
And you didn't care."
She sat down on the sofa, facing him with a breathless smile.
"You don't care what I think, what I am, what interests I may have,
what intellect, what of human desire, hope, fear, ambition animates
me; do you? You don't care whether I am ignorant or educated, bad or
good, ill or well--as long as it does not affect my posing for you;
whether I am happy or unhappy, whether I--"
"For Heaven's sake--"
"But you don't care! . . . Do you?"
He was silent; he stood looking at her in a stupid sort of way.
After a moment or two she rose, picked up her hat, went to the glass
and pinned it on, then strolled slowly back, drawing on her gloves.
"It's five o'clock, you know, Drene."
"Yes, certainly."
"Do you want me to-morrow?"
"Yes. Yes, of course."
"You are not offended?"
He did not answer. She came up to him and repeated the question in
a childishly anxious voice that was a trifle too humble. And looking
down into her eyes he saw a gleam of pure mischief in them.
"You little villain!" he said; and caught her wrists. "A lot you
care whether I am offended!"
She looked away from him, turning her profile. Her expression was
inscrutable. After a silence he dropped her wrists with a vague
laugh.
"You should have let me alone," he said.
"'The woman tempted me,'" she repeated, still looking away from him.
He said nothing.
"Good night," she nodded, and turned toward the door.
He went with her, falling into step beside her. One arm slipped
around her waist as they entered the hallway. They walked slowly to
the door. He unlatched it, hesitated; she moved one foot forward,
and he took a step at the same time which brought her across his
path so closely that contact was unavoidable. And he kissed her.
"Oh," she said. "So you are human after all! I often wondered."
She looked up, trying to laugh, but could not seem to take it as
coolly as she might have wished to.
"Not that a kiss is very important in these days," she continued,
"yet it might interest you to hear that a friend of yours rather
fancies me. He wouldn't like you to do it. But--" She lifted her
blue eyes with faint malice--"What is a woman between friends?"
"Who is he?"
"Jack Graylock."
Drene remained motionless.
"I haven't encouraged him," she said. "Perhaps that is why."
"Why he fancies you?"
"Why he asked me to marry him. It was the only thing he had not
asked."
"He asked that?"
"After he realized it was the only way, I suppose," she said coolly.
Drene took her into his arms and kissed her deliberately on the
mouth. Looking up at him she said: "After all, he is your friend,
isn't he?"
"A friend of many years. But, as you say, what is a woman between
friends?"
"I don't know," said the girl. And, still clasped in his arms, she
bent her head, thoughtfully, considering the question.
And as though she had come to some final conclusion, she raised her
head, lifted her eyes slowly, and her lips, to the man whose arms
enfolded her. It was her answer to his question, and her own.
When she had gone, he went back and stood again by the great window,
watching the cote on a neighboring roof, where the pigeons were
strutting and coquetting in the last rays of the western sun.
II
When she came again to the studio, she was different, subdued,
evading, avoiding, smiling a little in her flushed diffidence at his
gay ease of manner--or assumption of both ease and gaiety.
He was inclined to rally her, tease her, but her reticence was not
all embarrassment. The lightest contact, the slightest caress from
him, added a seriousness to her face, making it very lovely under
its heightened color, and strangely childlike.
Model and master they would have remained no longer had it been for
him to say, he desiring now to make it a favor and concession on her
part to aid him professionally, she gravely insisting on
professionalism as the basis of whatever entente might develop
between them, as well as the only avowed excuse for her presence
there alone with him.