Mixed Faces

With an unwonted trepidation he climbed the studio stairs and rapped on the door.

"Come in." Her voice, sounding to Jimmy like a long unheard and beautiful song, responded and he turned the handle and entered.

She was sitting in front of an easel and the forenoon light from outside lent finer lights and shadows to her face as with her head half-turned over her shoulder she regarded him.

"Oh, hello! It's you, is it?" she greeted, and then got to her feet quickly, and stepped toward him as if to inspect him at shorter range, or else as if wondering what mood he might be in at the moment. There was a palpable uncertainty, curiosity, and perhaps reserve in her attitude, as if she wondered whether he would begin talking pompous platitudes or, on the contrary, breezing into some whimsy. He didn't quite know what to say or do. He felt like a human interrogation point; aware of the necessity of finding out something and adapting himself to that knowledge.

He had kept away from her when discharged from the old employment and sought her when his outlook was brightened by the new. He had tried to find her when his dreams were flashing fast. He had anticipated this interview. His imagination and love had so gilded her and her surroundings with glamour that now, as he stood there, awkward, irresolute, with hat in hand, everything seemed unreal. Everything seemed reduced to hard realities. The fire that warmed the studio was a real fire. The light that entered through the windows was real light. The studio was but a real working room, and she but a real flesh-and-blood girl standing there in a paint-soiled apron with a palette in one hand and a brush in the other.

And then her voice brought him back to earth.

"For goodness sake! Can't you speak?" she asked, and extricated a thumb from the palette, and turned to lay it and the paint brush on a littered table near her easel. Inasmuch as her eyes were for the moment diverted from him he succeeded in recovering some of his customary wits.

"Speak? Speak! I've got so much to speak that I'm smothered with talk," he replied. "Aren't you going to shake hands before I begin?"

"I suppose it's polite," she said, extending a hand which, with all the delightful inconsequence of a man infatuated with love, he had frequently craved to hold forever. "Suppose you sit down to tell it!" she suggested, withdrawing her hand from his. "I'm – I'm rather curious to hear you talk."

"Why?" he asked. "Don't I talk enough – usually?"

"Yes, but – " She stopped, appeared to hesitate, and then almost irrelevantly said "You've never said what you thought of my work. Do you think I should continue it, or drop it?"

Jimmy was so astonished by the unexpected that he forgot his embarrassment.

"Drop it? Of course not. How absurd! It was never in me to do anything very well," he added almost wistfully, "for I have no gifts. But if I could sing even a little, I would cultivate my voice. And if I but knew how to paint at all, I would work to paint better, always hoping that some time I might do at least one picture. But – isn't it unusual for you to be either discouraged, or questioning?"

"Perhaps," she said, looking away from him. "But – suppose I had to give it up?"

"Why?" he cried solicitously. And then, remembering that all his recent worries had been of a financial nature, he was fearful that some wolf of poverty had thrust its head into the studio door. "If – if – it's money that keeps you from going ahead as you have been, I – look here! Your work mustn't stop. We're too good friends to be falsely modest. If – if you're broke, I'd like to let you have some money. I haven't got much, but – Mary – I'm going to make some. I'll – I'll buy a picture. I'd like one. I've always wanted one of yours."

She smiled a trifle sadly and shook her head in negation. He thought she doubted the affluence of a mere chocolate salesman and it brought his mind back to his own good news.

"See here, Mary Allen," he expostulated, "a lot of things have happened since I saw you last. I'm no longer Jimmy Gollop, candy drummer. I'm Mr. James Gollop, Sales Manager for one of the best institutions on earth, and I'm going to make good. I know I shall. I feel it here," and he tapped his breast with his knuckles. She did not observe his gesture, for she had turned still further from him, and was looking out of the window as if half distracted by her own thought.

"Why," he blurted, "you'd be as unhappy without paint as I'd be without work. Rather than have you give it up, I'd – I'd send you down to Maryland to my mother. Why not do that? You'd love her, because everyone does. And she'd love you because – well – just because she couldn't help it. Mary – if you'd only go down there you could have a home – no fussy hotel, and – and – I'd be so happy to – "

She suddenly turned toward him with a tiny gesture, then laughed. He was rather hurt, and felt that possibly she was ridiculing his honest and generous offer. As if she read his thought she came quickly toward him and held out her hand and caught his and said, using the old jocular name, "No, Bill Jones, Pirate, it isn't money! But don't think for an instant that I don't appreciate the offer that comes from your big, fine heart! I do! And – I wish I could accept it. I think I know what your home is like – and what your mother is like."

She dropped his hand and now turned toward the easel, smudged a blotch of paint with a slender finger tip in awkward pretense at being interested in her study, and without looking at him said, "It's not money. It's because the man to whom I am engaged to be married disapproves of my little hobby and has asserted so in most emphatic terms."

It seemed to Jim that the whole room was reeling, and that there was a great burst of sound, followed by a stillness so profound that the distressed beating of his heart had become loudly audible. His knees trembled. His hands clutched and quivered. He felt mentally and physically stricken, tried to speak, could utter no sound, and then, to conceal his hurt, turned almost mechanically to the chair she had proffered, groped blindly for its arm, and slowly subsided into it. He was pitifully thankful that she had not observed his distress; that she was still standing there in front of the easel. This betrothal was an intervention that had never entered into any of his thoughts or dreams of her. He had always pictured her as free, quite free, following her whims and ambitions within the limitations of a meager purse. He sat there, stunned, for a moment, and then remembered, dully, that he did not even know her name. The absurdities of his position, and the futilities of all his long aspirations and love dreams seemed magnified through the shock of sudden and bitter knowledge. In a moment of bitter disappointment, he wondered how he had ever dared to advance from the accident of a chance meeting to friendship, and from friendship to love.

"I – I congratulate you," he said, lamely, for want of something better to say.

"On what?" she asked. "Because the man to whom I am engaged doesn't understand what this daubing of mine means to me?"

"No, not on that; but on being betrothed," he replied, and then added, bluntly, "You see, – I – I didn't know it. You never told me. No, you never told me anything about it in all these months in which – in which you've been just Mary Allen, and I, Bill Jones!"

He was not aware of the sorry tragedy in his voice that contrasted so sharply with the banality of his words. He felt that he was but a pitiful jester who was like a clown, compelled to play a merry part when there was anguish in his mind. But – he must play.

"I don't know why I was such a fool!" he declared. "Why I thought it could go on in this way – with you as Mary Allen, and I as Bill Jones. You see – I may as well tell the truth – now that it's come to this – You see, I didn't know your name, or who you were! I thought on the day that we met in Fifth Avenue you were someone in the trade, and I was ashamed to admit that I'd forgotten where you came from. You knew who I was, but I couldn't remember you. And so, after that first meeting, I was a coward. I'm a coward now, Mary! Now that it doesn't matter!"

He sat staring at the rug and striving to his utmost to think of something to say in his own defense.

"Well," she said, "since you have been so frank, I suppose that I may as well add my confession. I never knew, until within the last five minutes, who you were. Therefore I had nothing the best of you."

"What? What's that?" he asked as if incredulous, or in fear that he had not heard her words aright.

He lifted his eyes and saw that she was now facing him.

"It's the truth," she bravely admitted. "I never knew that your name was James Gollop, and that you were a commercial man, until within the last five minutes! If there were need I could swear it."

"Then," he demanded, blankly, "who in the deuce did you think I was, anyhow?"

"I thought," she said with a slight shrug, "that you were Judge James Woodworth-Granger, of whom I suppose you have never heard. He is the Judge of the Fourth District Court, seated in a small city called Princetown."

He was so astounded that for the moment he was speechless. It seemed to him that all his chickens had come home to roost.

"Granger? Judge Granger – that inflated, stiff-necked, egotistical bag of conceit! And – and – you thought I was Granger!"

There was reproach in his voice as well as words.

"Yes," she admitted, "I thought you were Judge Granger. But – please wait a moment – I thought that you were different when away from your judicial position, admired your reticence concerning your profession, and – and I thought that I knew the real man better than anyone else. And I liked the change."

She uttered the last almost defiantly.

"I can at least thank you for that preference," his said, lowering his eyes. "I've come to dislike myself since I met him. He's bothered me a lot. Maybe I've bothered him. I played a joke on him one time and – he hasn't ever forgiven me, although I've tried to patch it up. I think he's about the most stupid, unforgiving, inhuman bounder that – "

"Please!" she objected, and Jimmy saw that she had turned toward the window, and so paused whilst she walked toward it, and stared out before again facing him. He wished that the light from without were less glaring, for it rendered her face and expression indistinct.

"It's not quite fair for me to listen to anything disparaging Judge Granger," she said. "That wouldn't be playing the game. Judge Granger is the man to whom I am betrothed."

He was incredibly shocked. Mary Allen betrothed to Granger! It was like the last blow – his ultimate humiliation. Had it been anyone but Granger it might have been less unendurable.

"I apologize," he said, mechanically. "I didn't understand the situation. Judge Granger is – is a very prominent man."

"Quite so," she assented. "A man who is distinguished, and I think will be more so."

"I expect he'll be a governor, and then a senator, and – maybe a president," said Jimmy, helplessly, and feeling his own insignificance. "But – but does Judge Granger know that you knew me? I ask this because I'm afraid that if he does, he might object to our – our acquaintanceship. He doesn't exactly approve of me."

Somewhat to Jimmy's surprise she laughed as if amused.

"No," she said, "I don't think he does know that we are friends. Indeed, I'm rather certain of it. But – just the same, if you are such enemies – it's not fair for me to show friendship under existing circumstances, is it? See here, Mr. Gollop – that's a terrible name! – You could scarcely respect me if I who am engaged to marry Judge Granger were to stand here and let you criticise him. There is a limit to most things, isn't there?"

"There is," agreed Jimmy, soberly. "You are quite right in your attitude. I'm helpless." He paused, got to his feet, buttoned his coat, looked absently for his hat, found it on the window ledge, and seemed undecided. It was the old, boyish impulsiveness that made him turn to her in what he believed to be a parting and say, "But – Mary! Mary Allen! It doesn't matter what I am, or anything about the accidents and the misunderstandings – nothing matters now – to me – only this, that – that you believe that I was honest to you and to myself when you were but Mary Allen, and I but Bill Jones!"

"No," she said, "nothing else matters. That is something quite yours and mine – our own. Conditions are about as we all make them for ourselves. Sometimes they run away from us. But we can't alter things that have been. This has been a mixup. Neither of us could help it."

He could find nothing to say, for he seemed involved in a cataclysm that had crushed him, and so moved toward the door. She walked by his side and stepped back when he opened it. He held out his hand as if to bid her good-by, for the last time, but she appeared to disregard it and stood quietly by his side.