“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.”
Valerie laughed, uncertainly.
“Your friends wouldn’t care for me,” she said. “I don’t believe there is any real place at all for me in this city except among the few men and women I already know.”
“Won’t you include me among the number? There is a place for you in my heart.”
Touched and surprised, the girl stood looking at the older woman in silence.
“May I drive you to your destination?” asked Hélène gently.
“You are very kind…. It is Mr. Burleson’s studio — if it won’t take you too far out of your way.”
By the end of March Valerie had driven with the Countess d’Enver once or twice; and once or twice had been to see her, and had met, in her apartment, men and women who were inclined to make a fuss over her — men like Carrillo and Dennison, and women like Mrs. Hind-Willet and Mrs. Atherstane. It was her unconventional profession that interested them.
To Neville, recounting her experiences, she said with a patient little smile:
“It’s rather nice to be liked and to have some kind of a place among people who live in this city. Nobody seems to mind my being a model. Perhaps they have taken merely a passing fancy to me and are exhibiting me to each other as a wild thing just captured and being trained—” She laughed— “but they do it so pleasantly that I don’t mind…. And anyway, the Countess d’Enver is genuine; I am sure of that.”
“A genuine countess?”
“A genuine woman, sincere, lovable, and kind — I am becoming very fond of her…. Do you mind my abandoning you for an afternoon now and then? Because it is nice to have as a friend a woman older and more experienced.”
“Does that mean you’re going off with her this afternoon?”
“I was going. But I won’t if you feel that I’m deserting you.”
He laid aside his palette and went over to where she was standing.
“You darling,” he said, “go and drive in the Park with your funny little friend.”
“She was going to take me to the Plaza for tea. There are to be some very nice women there who are interested in the New Idea Home.” She added, shyly, “I have subscribed ten dollars.”
He kissed her, lightly, humorously. “And what, sweetheart, may the New
Idea Home be?”
“Oh, it’s an idea of Mrs. Hind-Willet’s about caring for wayward girls. Mrs. Willet thinks that it is cruel and silly to send them into virtual imprisonment, to punish them and watch them and confront them at every turn with threats and the merciless routine of discipline. She thinks that the thing to do is to give them a chance for sensible and normal happiness; not to segregate them one side of a dead line; not to treat them like criminals to be watched and doubted and suspected.”
She linked her arms around his neck, interested, earnest, sure of his sympathy and approval:
“We want to build a school in the country — two schools, one for girls who have misbehaved, one for youths who are similarly delinquent. And, during recreation, we mean to let them meet in a natural manner — play games together, dance, mingle out of doors in a wholesome and innocent way — of course, under necessary and sympathetic supervision — and learn a healthy consideration and respect for one another which the squalid, crowded, irresponsible conditions of their former street life in the slums and tenements made utterly impossible.”
He looked into the pretty, eager face with its honest, beautiful eyes and sensitive mouth — and touched his lips to her hair.
“It sounds fine, sweetheart,” he said: “and I won’t be lonely if you go to the Plaza and settle the affairs of this topsy-turvy world…. Do you love me?”
“Louis! Can you ask?”
“I do ask.”
She smiled, faintly; then her young face grew serious, and a hint of passion darkened her eyes as her arms tightened around his neck and her lips met his.
“All I care for in the world, or out of it, is you, Louis. If I find pleasure in anything it is because of you; if I take a little pride in having people like me, it is only for your sake — for the sake of the pride you may feel in having others find me agreeable and desirable. I wish it were possible that your, own world could find me agreeable and desirable — for your sake, my darling, more than for mine. But it never will — never could. There is a wall around your world which I can never scale. And it does not make me unhappy — I only wish you to know that I want to be what you would have me — and if I can’t be all that you might wish, I love and adore you none the less — am none the less willing to give you all there is to me — all there is to a girl named Valerie West who finds this life a happy one because you have made it so for her.”
She continued to see Hélène d’Enver, poured tea sometimes at the Five-Minute-Club, listened to the consultations over the New Idea Home, and met a great many people of all kinds, fashionable women with a passion for the bizarre and unconventional, women of gentle breeding and no social pretence, who worked to support themselves; idle women, ambitious women, restless women; but the majority formed part of the floating circles domiciled in apartments and at the great hotels — people who wintered in New York and were a part of its social and civic life to that extent, but whose duties and responsibilities for the metropolitan welfare were self-imposed, and neither hereditary nor constant.
As all circles in New York have, at certain irregular periods, accidental points of temporary contact, Valerie now and then met people whom she was scarcely ever likely to see again. And it was at a New Idea Home conference, scheduled for five o’clock in the red parlour of the ladies’ waiting room in the great Hotel Imperator, that Valerie, arriving early as delegated substitute for Mrs. Hind-Willet, found herself among a small group of beautifully gowned strangers — the sort of women whom she had never before met in this way.
They all knew each other; others who arrived seemed to recognise with more or less intimacy everybody in the room excepting herself.
She was sitting apart by the crimson-curtained windows, perfectly self-possessed and rather interested in watching the arrivals of women whose names, as she caught them, suggested social positions which were vaguely familiar to her, when an exceedingly pretty girl detached herself from the increasing group and came across to where Valerie was sitting alone.
[Illustration: “‘May I sit here with you until she arrives? I am
Stephanie Swift.’”]
“I was wondering whether you had met any of the new committee,” she said pleasantly.
The girl’s expression altered slightly, but she nodded amiably; “May I sit here with you until she arrives? I am Stephanie Swift.”
Valerie said: “It is very amiable of you. I am Valerie West.”
Stephanie remained perfectly still for a moment; then, conscious that she was staring, calmly averted her gaze while the slow fire died out in her cheeks. And in a moment she had decided:
“I have heard so pleasantly about you through Mrs. Collis,” she said with perfect composure. “You remember her, I think.”
Valerie, startled, lifted her brown eyes. Then very quietly:
“Mrs. Collis is very kind. I remember her distinctly.”
“Mrs. Collis retains the most agreeable memories of meeting you…. I—” she looked at Valerie, curiously— “I have heard from others how charming and clever you are — from Mr. Ogilvy? — and Mr. Annan?”
“They are my friends,” said Valerie briefly.
“And Mr. Querida, and Mr. Burleson, and — Mr. Neville.”
“They are my friends,” repeated Valerie…. After a second she added:
“They also employ me.”
Stephanie looked away: “Your profession must be most interesting, Miss
West.”
“Yes.”
“But — exacting.”
“Very.”
Neither made any further effort. A moment later, however, Hélène d’Enver came in. She knew some of the women very slightly, none intimately; and, catching sight of Valerie, she came across the room with a quick smile of recognition:
“I’m dreadfully late, dear — how do you do, Miss Swift” — to Stephanie, who had risen. And to Valerie: “Mr. Ogilvy came; just as I had my furs on — and you know how casually a man takes his leave when you’re in a tearing hurry!”
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 542