PAGE 7
A Question Of Art
by
“Oh,” said Clayton, coolly, “and you’re thinking that I would make a good tenant.”
“Exactly,” assented Miss Marston, uncomfortably.
“And who will put up the tin: for you don’t suppose that I am low enough to live off you?”
“No,” replied the woman, quietly. “I shouldn’t allow that, though I was not quite sure you would be unwilling. But you can borrow two or three hundred dollars from your brother, and by the time that’s gone you ought to be earning something. You could join a class; the house isn’t far from those studios.”
Clayton impulsively seized her arms and looked into her face. She was startled and almost frightened.
“I believe,” he began, but the words faded away.
“No, don’t say it. You believe that I am in love with you, and do this to keep you near me. Don’t be quite such a brute, for you are a brute, a grasping, egotistical, intolerant brute.” She smiled slightly. “But don’t think that I am such a fool as not to know how impossible that is.”
Clayton still held her in astonishment. “I think I was going to say that I was in love with you.”
“Oh, no,” she laughed, sadly. “I am coffee and milk and bread and butter, the ‘stuff that dreams are made on.’ You want some noble young woman–a goddess, to make you over, to make you human. I only save you from the poor-house.”
IV
There followed a bitter two years for this strange couple. Clayton borrowed a thousand dollars–a more convenient number to remember, he said, than three hundred dollars–and induced a prominent artist “who happens to know something,” to take him into his crowded classes for a year. He began with true grit to learn again what he had forgotten and some things that he had never known. At the end of the year he felt that he could go alone, and the artist agreed, adding, nonchalantly: “You may get there; God knows; but you need loads of work.”
Domestically, the life was monotonous. Clayton had abandoned his old habits, finding it difficult to harmonize his present existence with his clubs and his fashionable friends. Besides, he hoarded every cent and, with Miss Marston’s aid, wrung the utmost of existence out of the few dollars he had left. Miss Marston’s modest house was patronized by elderly single ladies. It was situated on one of those uninteresting East Side streets where you can walk a mile without remembering an individual stone. The table, in food and conversation, was monotonous. In fact, Clayton could not dream of a more inferior milieu for the birth of the great artist.
Miss Marston had fitted herself to suit his needs, and in submitting to this difficult position felt that she was repaying a loan of a new life. He was so curious, so free, so unusual, so fond of ideas, so entertaining, even in his grim moods, that he made her stupid life over. She could enjoy vicariously by feeling his intense interest in all living things. In return, she learnt the exact time to bring him an attractive lunch, and just where to place it so that it would catch his eye without calling out a scowl of impatience. She made herself at home in his premises, so that all friction was removed from the young artist’s life. He made no acknowledgment of her devotion, but he worked grimly, doggedly, with a steadiness that he had never before known. Once, early in the first winter, having to return to Boston on some slight business, he permitted himself to be entrapped by old friends and lazed away a fortnight. On his return Miss Marston noticed with a pang that this outing had done him good; that he seemed to have more spirit, more vivaciousness, more ideas, and more zest for his work. So, in a methodical fashion, she thought out harmless dissipations for him. She induced him to take her to the opera, even allowing him to think that it was done from pure charity to her. Sunday walks in the picturesque nooks of New York–they both shunned the Fifth Avenue promenade for different reasons–church music, interesting novels, all the “fuel,” as Clayton remarked, that she could find she piled into his furnace. She made herself acquainted with the peculiar literature that seemed to stimulate his imagination, and sometimes she read him asleep in the evenings to save his overworked eyes. Her devotion he took serenely, as a rule. During the second winter, however, after a slight illness brought on by over-application, he seemed to have a thought upon his mind that troubled him. One day he impatiently threw down his palette and put his hands upon her shoulders.