Complete weird tales of.., p.570
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 570
“How do you happen to know so much about him, Rita?”
She answered, carelessly: “I have known him ever since I began to pose — almost.”
Valerie set her cup aside, sprang up to rinse mouth and hands. Then, gathering her pink negligée around her, curled up in a big wing-chair, drawing her bare feet up under the silken folds and watching Rita prepare the modest repast for one.
“Rita,” she said, “who was the first artist you ever posed for? Was it
John Burleson — and did you endure the tortures of the damned?”
“No, it was not John Burleson…. And I endured — enough.”
“Don’t you care to tell me who it was?”
Rita did not reply at that time. Later, however, when the simple supper was ended, she lighted a cigarette and found a place where, with lamplight behind her, she could read a book which Burleson had sent her, and which she had been attempting to assimilate and digest all winter. It was a large, thick, dark book, and weighed nearly four pounds. It was called “Essays on the Obvious “; and Valerie had made fun of it until, to her surprise, she noticed that her pleasantries annoyed Rita.
Valerie, curled up in the wing-chair, cheek resting against its velvet side, was reading the Psalms again — fascinated as always by the noble music of the verse. And it was only by chance that, lifting her eyes absently for a moment, she found that Rita had laid aside her book and was looking at her intently.
“Hello, dear!” she said, indolently humorous.
Rita said: “You read your Bible a good deal, don’t you?”
“Parts of it.”
“The parts you believe?”
“Yes; and the parts that I can’t believe.”
“What parts can’t you believe?”
Valerie laughed: “Oh, the unfair parts — the cruel parts, the inconsistent parts.”
“What about faith?”
“Faith is a matter of temperament, dear.”
“Haven’t you any?”
“Yes, in all things good.”
“Then you have faith in yourself that you are capable of deciding what is good and worthy of belief in the Scriptures, and what is unworthy?”
[Illustration: “It was a large, thick, dark book, and weighed nearly four pounds.”]
“It must be that way. I am intelligent. One must decide for one’s self what is fair and what is unfair; what is cruel and what is merciful and kind. Intelligence must always evolve its own religion; sin is only an unfaithfulness to what one really believes.”
“What do you believe, Valerie?”
“About what, dear?”
“Love.”
“Loving a man?”
“Yes.”
“You know what my creed is — that love must be utterly unselfish to be pure — to be love at all.”
“One must not think of one’s self,” murmured Rita, absently.
“I don’t mean that. I mean that one must not hesitate to sacrifice one’s self when the happiness or welfare of the other is in the balance.”
“Yes. Of course!… Suppose you love a man.”
“Yes,” said Valerie, smiling, “I can imagine that.”
“Listen, dear. Suppose you love a man. And you think that perhaps he is beginning — just beginning to care a little for you. And suppose — suppose that you are — have been — long ago — once, very long ago—”
“What?”
“Unwise,” said Rita, in a low voice.
“Unwise? How?”
“In the — unwisest way that a girl can be.”
“You mean any less unwise than a man might be — probably the very man she is in love with?”
“You know well enough what is thought about a girl’s unwisdom and the same unwisdom in a man.”
“I know what is thought; but I don’t think it.”
“Perhaps you don’t. But the world’s opinion is different.”
“Yes, I know it…. What is your question again? You say to me, here’s a man beginning to care for a girl who has been unwise enough before she knew him to let herself believe she cared enough for another man to become his mistress. Is that it, Rita?”
“Y-yes.”
“Very well. What do you wish to ask me?”
“I wish to ask you what that girl should do.”
“Do? Nothing. What is there for her to do?”
“Ought she to let that man care for her?”
“Has he ever made the same mistake she has?”
“I — don’t think so.”
“Are you sure?”
“Almost.”
“Well, then, I’d tell him.”
Rita lay silent, gazing into space, her blond hair clustering around the pretty oval of her face.
Valerie waited for a few moments, then resumed her reading, glancing inquiringly at intervals over the top of her book at Rita, who seemed disinclined for further conversation.
After a long silence she sat up abruptly on the sofa and looked at
Valerie.
“You asked me who was the first man for whom I posed. I’ll tell you if you wish to know. It was Penrhyn Cardemon!… And I was eighteen years old.”
Valerie dropped her book in astonishment.
“Penrhyn Cardemon!” she repeated. “Why, he isn’t an artist!”
“He has a studio.”
“Where?”
“On Fifth Avenue.”
“What does he do there?”
“Deviltry.”
Valerie’s face was blank; Rita sat sullenly cradling one knee in her arms, looking at the floor, her soft, gold hair hanging over her face and forehead so that it shadowed her face.
“I’ve meant to tell you for a long time,” she went on; “I would have told you if Cardemon had ever sent for you to — to pose — in his place.”
“He asked me to go on The Mohave.”
“I’d have warned you if Louis Neville had not objected.”
“Do you suppose Louis knew?”
“No. He scarcely knows Penrhyn Cardemon. His family and Cardemon are neighbours in the country, but the Nevilles and the Collises are snobs — I’m speaking plainly, Valerie — and they have no use for that red-faced, red-necked, stocky young millionaire.”
Valerie sat thinking; Rita, nursing her knee, brooded under the bright tangle of her hair, linking and unlinking her fingers as she gently swayed her foot to and fro.
“That’s how it is,” she said at last. “Now you know.”
Valerie’s head was still lowered, but she raised her eyes and looked straight at Rita where she sat on the sofa’s edge, carelessly swinging her foot to and fro.
“Was it — Penrhyn Cardemon?” she asked.
“Yes…. I thought it had killed any possibility of ever caring — that way — for any other man.”
“But it hasn’t?”
“No.”
“And — you are in love?”
“Yes.”
“With John Burleson?”
Rita looked up from the burnished disorder of her hair:
“I have been in love with him for three years,” she said, “and you are the only person in the world except myself who knows it.”
Valerie rose and walked over to Rita and seated herself beside her. Then she put one arm around her; and Rita bit her lip and stared at space, swinging her slender foot.
“You poor dear,” said Valerie. Rita’s bare foot hung inert; the silken slipper dropped from it to the floor; and then her head fell, sideways, resting on Valerie’s shoulder, showering her body with its tangled gold.
Valerie said, thoughtfully: “Girls don’t seem to have a very good chance…. I had no idea about Cardemon — that he was that kind of a man. A girl never knows. Men can be so attractive and so nice…. And so many of them are merciless…. I suppose you thought you loved him.”
“Y — yes.”
“We all think that, I suppose,” said Valerie, thoughtfully.
“Other girls have thought it of Penrhyn Cardemon.”
“Other girls?”
“Yes.”
Valerie’s face expressed bewilderment.
“I didn’t know that there were really such men.”
Rita closed her disillusioned eyes.
“Plenty,” she said wearily.
“I don’t care to believe that.”
“You may believe it, Valerie. Men are almost never single-minded; women are — almost always. You see what chance for happiness we have? But it’s the truth, and the world has been made that way. It’s a man’s world, Valerie. I don’t think there’s much use for us to fight against it…. She sat very silent for a while, close to Valerie, her hot face on the younger girl’s shoulder. Suddenly she straightened up and dried her eyes naïvely on the sleeve of her kimona.
“Goodness!” she said, “I almost forgot!”
And a moment later Valerie heard her at the telephone:
“Is that you, John?”
* * * * *
“Have you remembered to take your medicine?”
* * * * *
“How perfectly horrid of you! Take it at once! It’s the one in the brown bottle — six drops in a wineglass of water—”
CHAPTER XII
MRS. HIND-WILLET, BORN to the purple — or rather entitled to a narrow border of discreet mauve on all occasions of ceremony in Manhattan, was a dreamer of dreams. One of her dreams concerned her hyphenated husband, and she put him away; another concerned Penrhyn Cardemon; and she woke up. But the persistent visualisation, which had become obsession, of a society to be formed out of the massed intellects of Manhattan regardless of race, morals, or previous condition of social servitude — a gentle intellectual affinity which knew no law of art except individual inspiration, haunted her always. And there was always her own set to which she could retreat if desirable.
She had begun with a fashionable and semi-fashionable nucleus which included Mrs. Atherstane, the Countess d’Enver, Latimer Varyck, Olaf Dennison, and Pedro Carrillo, and then enlarged the circle from those perpetual candidates squatting anxiously upon the social step-ladder all the way from the bottom to the top.
The result was what Ogilvy called intellectual local option; and though he haunted this agglomeration at times, particularly when temporarily smitten by a pretty face or figure, he was under no illusions concerning it or the people composing it.
Returning one afternoon from a reception at Mrs. Atherstane’s he replied to Annan’s disrespectful inquiries and injurious observations:
“You’re on to that joint, Henry; it’s a saloon, not a salon; and Art is the petrified sandwich. Fix me a very, ve-ry high one, dearie, because little sunshine is in love again.”
“Who drew the lucky number?” asked Annan with a shrug.
“The Countess d’Enver. She’s the birdie.”
“Intellectually?”
“Oh, she’s an intellectual four-flusher, bless her heart! But she was the only woman there who didn’t try to mentally frisk me. We lunch together soon, Henry.”
“Where’s Count hubby?”
“Aloft. She’s a bird,” he repeated, fondly reminiscent over his high-ball— “and I myself am the real ornithological thing — the species that Brooklyn itself would label ‘boid’ … She has such pretty, confiding ways, Harry.”
“You’d both better join the Audubon Society for Mutual Protection,” observed Annan dryly.
“I’ll stand for anything she stands for except that social Tenderloin; I’ll join anything she joins except the ‘classes now forming’ in that intellectual dance hall. By the way, who do you suppose was there?”
“The police?”
“Naw — the saloon wasn’t raided, though ‘Professor’ Carrillo’s poem was assez raide. Mek-mek-k-k-k! But oh, the ginky pictures! Oh, the Art Beautiful! Aniline rainbows exploding in a physical culture school couldn’t beat that omelette!… And guess who was pouring tea in the centre of the olio, Harry!”
“You?” inquired Annan wearily.
“Valerie West.”
“What in God’s name has that bunch taken her up for?”
* * * * *
For the last few weeks Valerie’s telephone had rung intermittently summoning her to conversation with Mrs. Hind-Willet.
At first the amiable interest displayed by Mrs. Hind-Willet puzzled Valerie until one day, returning to her rooms for luncheon, she found the Countess d’Enver’s brougham standing in front of the house and that discreetly perfumed lady about to descend.
“How do you do?” said Valerie, stopping on the sidewalk and offering her hand with a frank smile.
“I came to call on you,” said the over-dressed little countess; “may I?”
“It is very kind of you. Will you come upstairs? There is no elevator.”
The pretty bejewelled countess arrived in the living room out of breath, and seated herself, flushed, speechless, overcome, her little white gloved hand clutching her breast.
Valerie, accustomed to the climb, was in nowise distressed; and went serenely about her business while the countess was recovering.
“I am going to prepare luncheon; may I hope you will remain and share it with me?” she asked.
The countess nodded, slowly recovering her breath and glancing curiously around the room.
“You see I have only an hour between poses,” observed Valerie, moving swiftly from cupboard to kitchenette, “so luncheon is always rather simple. Miss Tevis, with whom I live, never lunches here, so I take what there is left from breakfast.”
[Illustration: The Countess d’Enver.]
A little later they were seated at a small table together, sipping chocolate. There was cold meat, a light salad, and fruit. The conversation was as haphazard and casual as the luncheon, until the pretty countess lighted a cigarette and tasted her tiny glass of Port — the latter a gift from Querida. “Do you think it odd of me to call on you uninvited?” she asked, with that smiling abruptness which sometimes arises from embarrassment.
“I think it is very sweet of you,” said Valerie, “I am very happy to know that you remember me.”
The countess flushed up: “Do you really feel that way about it?”
“Yes,” said Valerie, smiling, “or I would not say so.”
“Then — you give me courage to tell you that since I first met you I’ve been — quite mad about you.”
“About me!” in smiling surprise.
“Yes. I wanted to know you. I told Mrs. Hind-Willet to ask you to the club. She did. But you never came…. And I did like you so much.”
Valerie said in a sweet, surprised way: “Do you know what I am?”
“Yes; you sit for artists.”
“I am a professional model,” said Valerie. “I don’t believe you understood that, did you?”
“Yes, I did,” said the countess. “You pose for the ensemble, too.”
Valerie looked at her incredulously:
“Do you think you would really care to know me? I, an artist’s model, and you, the Countess d’Enver?”
“I was Nellie Jackson before that.” She leaned across the table, smiling, with heightened colour; “I believe I’d never have to pretend with you. The minute I saw you I liked you. Will you let me talk to you?”
“Y — yes.”
There was a constrained silence; Hélène d’Enver touched the water in the bowl with her finger-tips, dried them, looked up at Valerie, who rose. Under the window there was a tufted seat; and here they found places together.
“Do you know why I came?” asked Hélène d’Enver. “I was lonely.”
“You!”
“My dear, I am a lonely woman; I’m lonely to desperation. I don’t belong in New York and I don’t belong in France, and I don’t like Pittsburgh. I’m lonely! I’ve always been lonely ever since I left Pittsburgh. There doesn’t seem to be any definite place anywhere for me. And I haven’t a real woman friend in the world!”
“How in the world can you say that?” exclaimed Valerie, astonished.
The countess lighted another cigarette and wreathed her pretty face in smoke.
“You think because I have a title and am presentable that I can go anywhere?” She smiled. “The society I might care for hasn’t the slightest interest in me. There is in this city a kind of society recruited largely from the fashionable hotels and from among those who have no fixed social position in New York — people who are never very far outside or inside the edge of things — but who never penetrate any farther.” She laughed. “This society camps permanently at the base of the Great Wall of China. But it never scales it.”
“Watch the men on Fifth Avenue,” she went on. “Some walk there as though they do not belong there; some walk as though they do belong there; some, as though they lived there. I move about as though I belonged where I am occasionally seen; but I’m tired of pretending that I live there.”
She leaned back among the cushions, dropping one knee over the other and tossing away her cigarette. And her little suede shoe swung nervously to and fro.
“You’re the first girl I’ve seen in New York who, I believe, really doesn’t care what I am — and I don’t care what she is. Shall we be friends? I’m lonely.”
Valerie looked at her, diffidently:
“I haven’t had very much experience in friendship — except with Rita
Tevis,” she said.
“Will you let me take you to drive sometimes?”
“I’d love to, only you see I am in business.”
“Of course I mean after hours.”
“Thank you…. But I usually am expected — to tea — and dinner—”
Hélène lay back among the cushions, looking at her.
“Haven’t you any time at all for me?” she asked, wistfully.
Valerie was thinking of Neville: “Not — very — much I am afraid—”
“Can’t you spare me an hour now and then?”
“Y — yes; I’ll try.”
There was a silence. The mantel clock struck, and Valerie glanced up. Hélène d’Enver rose, stood still a moment, then stepped forward and took both of Valerie’s hands:
“Can’t we be friends? I do need one; and I like you so much. You’ve the eyes that make a woman easy. There are none like yours in New York.”
