The Common Law

"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."