The Common Law

"Helped you? How?"

"By—posing."

"Do you desire me to understand that the girl is an artist's model!"

"Yes."

His father stared at him a moment, then:

"And is this the woman you propose to have your mother meet?"

"Father," he said, hopelessly, "there is no use in my saying anything more. Miss West is a sweet, good, generous young girl, fully my peer in education, my superior in many things…. You and mother can never believe that the ideas, standards—even the ideals of civilisation change—have changed since your youth—are changing every hour. In your youth the word actress had a dubious significance; to-day it signifies only what the character of her who wears the title signifies. In your youth it was immodest, unmaidenly, reprehensible, for a woman to be anything except timid, easily abashed, ignorant of vital truths, and submissive to every social convention; to-day women are neither ignorant nor timid; they are innocent because they choose to be; they are fearless, intelligent, ambitious, and self-reliant—and lose nothing in feminine charm by daring to be themselves instead of admitting their fitness only for the seraglio of some Occidental monogamist—"

"Louis! Your mother is present!"

"Good heavens, father, I know it! Isn't it possible even for a man's own mother to hear a little truth once in a while—"

His father rose in pallid wrath:

"Be silent!" he said, unsteadily; "the subject is definitely ended."

* * * * *

It was ended. His father gave him a thin, chilly hand at parting. But his mother met him at the outer door and laid her trembling lips to his forehead.

"You won't bring this shame on us, Louis, I know. Nor on yourself, nor on the name you bear…. It is an honourable name in the land, Louis…. I pray God to bless you and counsel you, my son—" She turned away, adding in a whisper—"and—and comfort you."

And so he went away from Spindrift House through a snow-storm, and arrived in New York late that evening; but not too late to call Valerie on the telephone and hear again the dear voice with its happy little cry of greeting—and the promise of to-morrow's meeting before the day of duty should begin.

* * * * *

Love grew as the winter sped glittering toward the far primrose dawn of spring; work filled their days; evening brought the happiness of a reunion eternally charming in its surprises, its endless novelty. New, forever new, love seemed; and youth, too, seemed immortal.

On various occasions when Valerie chanced to be at his studio, pouring tea for him, friends of his sister came unannounced—agreeable women more or less fashionable, who pleaded his sister's sanction of an unceremonious call to see the great painted frieze before it was sent to the Court House.

He was perfectly nice to them; and Valerie was perfectly at ease; and it was very plain that these people were interested and charmed with this lovely Miss West, whom they found pouring tea in the studio of an artist already celebrated; and every one of them expressed themselves and their curiosity to his sister, Mrs. Collis, who, never having heard of Valerie West, prudently conveyed the contrary in smiling but silent acquiescence, and finally wrote to her brother and told him what was being said.

Before he determined to reply, another friend—or rather acquaintance of the Collis family—came in to see the picture—the slim and pretty Countess d'Enver. And went quite mad over Valerie—so much so that she remained for an hour talking to her, almost oblivious of Neville and his picture and of Ogilvy and Annan, who consumed time and cocktails in the modest background.

When she finally went away, and Neville had returned from putting her into her over-elaborate carriage, Ogilvy said:

"Gee, Valerie, you sure did make a hit with the lady. What was she trying to make you do?"

"She asked me to come to a reception of the Five-Minute Club with Louis," said Valerie, laughing. "What is the Five-Minute Club, Louis?"

"Oh, it's a semi-fashionable, semi-artistic affair—one of the incarnations of the latest group of revolting painters and sculptors and literary people, diluted with a little society and a good deal of near-society."

Later, as they were dining together at Delmonico's, he said:

"Would you care to go, Valerie?"

"Yes—if you think it best for us to accept such invitations together."

"Why not?"

"I don't know…. Considering what we are to become to each other—I thought—perhaps the prejudices of your friends—"

He turned a dull red, said nothing for a moment, then, looking up at her, suddenly laid his hand over hers where it rested on the table's edge.

"The world must take us as it finds us," he said.

"I know; but is it quite fair to seek it?"

"You adorable girl! Didn't the Countess seek us—or rather you?—and torment you until you promised to go to the up-to-date doings of her bally club! It's across to her, now. And as half of society has exchanged husbands and half of the remainder doesn't bother to, I don't think a girl like you and a man like myself are likely to meet very many people as innately decent as ourselves."

* * * * *

A reception at the Five-Minute Club was anything but an ordinary affair.

It was the ultra-modern school of positivists where realism was on the cards and romance in the discards; where muscle, biceps, and thumb-punching replaced technical mastery and delicate skill; where inspiration was physical, not intellectual; where writers called a spade a spade, and painters painted all sorts of similar bucolic instruments with candour and an inadequate knowledge of their art; where composers thumped their pianos the harder, the less their raucous inspiration responded, or maundered incapably into interminable incoherency, hunting for themes in grays and mauves and reds and yellows, determined to find in music what does not belong there and never did.

In spite of its apparent vigour and uncompromising modernity, one suspected a sub-stratum of weakness and a perversity slightly vicious.

Colour blindness might account for some of the canvases, strabismus for some of the draughtmanship; but not for all. There was an ugly deliberation in the glorification of the raw, the uncouth; there was a callous hardness in the deadly elaboration of ugliness for its own sake. And transcendentalism looked on in approval.

A near-sighted study of various masters, brilliant, morbid, or essentially rotten, was the basis of this cult—not originality. Its devotees were the devotees of Richard Strauss, of Huysmans, of Manet, of Degas, Rops, Louis Le Grand, Forain, Monticelli; its painters painted nakedness in footlight effects with blobs for faces and blue shadows where they were needed to conceal the defects of impudent drawing; its composers maundered with both ears spread wide for stray echoes of Salome; its sculptors, stupefied by Rodin, achieved sections of human anatomy protruding from lumps of clay and marble; its dramatists, drugged by Mallarmé and Maeterlinck, dabbled in dullness, platitude and mediocre psychology; its writers wrote as bloodily, as squalidly, and as immodestly as they dared; its poets blubbered with Verlaine, spat with Aristide Bruant, or leered with the alcoholic muses of the Dead Rat.

They were all young, all in deadly earnest, all imperfectly educated, all hard workers, brave workers, blind, incapable workers sweating and twisting and hammering in their impotence against the changeless laws of truth and beauty. With them it was not a case of a loose screw; all screws had been tightened so brutally that the machinery became deadlocked. They were neither lazy, languid, nor precious; they only thought they knew how and they didn't. All their vigour was sterile; all their courage vain.

Several attractive women exquisitely gowned were receiving; there was just a little something unusual in their prettiness, in their toilets; and also a little something lacking; and its absence was as noticeable in them as it was in the majority of arriving or departing guests.

It could not have been self-possession and breeding which an outsider missed. For the slim Countess d'Enver possessed both, inherited from her Pittsburgh parents; and Mrs. Hind-Willet was born to a social security indisputable; and Latimer Varyck had been in the diplomatic service before he wrote "Unclothed," and the handsome, dark-eyed Mrs. Atherstane divided social Manhattan with a blonder and lovelier rival.

Valerie entering with Neville, slender, self-possessed, a hint of inquiry in her level eyes, heard the man at the door announce them, and was conscious of many people turning as they passed into the big reception room. A woman near her murmured, "What a beauty!" Another added, "How intelligently gowned!" The slim Countess Hélène d'Enver, née Nellie Jackson, held out a perfectly gloved hand and nodded amiably to Neville. Then, smiling fixedly at Valerie:

"My dear, how nice of you," she said. "And you, too, Louis; it is very amusing of you to come. José Querida has just departed. He gave us such a delightful five-minute talk on modernity. Quoting Huneker, he spoke of it as a 'quality'—and 'that nervous, naked vibration'—"

She ended with a capricious gesture which might have meant anything ineffable, or an order for a Bronx cocktail.

"What's a nervous, naked vibration?" demanded Neville, with an impatient shrug. "It sounds like a massage parlour—not," he added with respect, "that Huneker doesn't know what he's talking about. Nobody doubts that. Only art is one delicious bouillabaisse to him."

The Countess d'Enver laughed, still retaining Valerie's hand:

"Your gown is charming—may I add that you are disturbingly beautiful, Miss West? When they have given you some tea, will you find me if I can't find you?"

"Yes, I will," said Valerie.

At the tea table Neville brought her a glass of sherry and a bite of something squashy; a number of people spoke to him and asked to be presented to Valerie. Her poise, her unconsciousness, the winning simplicity of her manner were noticed everywhere, and everywhere commented on. People betrayed a tendency to form groups around her; women, prepared by her unusual beauty for anything between mediocrity and inanity, were a little perplexed at her intelligence and candour.