The Common Law. Chambers Robert William

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      "Why, Valerie! What a—an unusual—"

      "I want to talk to you…. I suppose you are too hungry to want to talk now."

      "N-no, I'm not." He began to laugh: "What's the matter, Valerie? What is on your mind? Have you any serious fidgets, or are you just a spoiled, pretty girl?"

      "Spoiled, Kelly. There's nothing really the matter. I just felt like—what you asked me to do—"

      She jumped up suddenly, biting her lips with vexation: "I don't know what I'm saying—except that it's rather rude of me—and I've got to go home. Good-night—I think my hat is in the dressing-room—"

      He stood uneasily watching her pin it before the mirror; he could just see her profile and the slender, busy hands white in the dusk.

      When she returned, slowly drawing on her long gloves, she said to him with composure:

      "Some day ask me again. I really would like it—if you would."

      "Do you really think that you could stand the excitement of taking a cup of weak tea with me," he said, jestingly—"after all those jolly dinners and suppers and theatres and motor parties that I hear about?"

      She nodded and held out her hand with decision:

      "Good-night."

      He retained her hand a moment, not meaning to—not really intending to ask her what he did ask her. And she raised her velvet eyes gravely:

      "Do you really want me?"

      "Yes…. I don't know why I never asked you before—"

      "It was absurd not to," she said, impulsively; "I'd have gone anywhere with you the first day I ever knew you! Besides, I dress well enough for you not to be ashamed of me."

      He began to laugh: "Valerie, you funny little thing! You funny, funny little thing!"

      "Not in the slightest," she retorted, sedately. "I'm having a heavenly time for the first time in my life, and I have so wanted you to be part of it … of course you are part of it," she added, hastily—"most of it! I only meant that I—I'd like to be a little in your other life—have you enter mine, a little—just so I can remember, in years to come, an evening with you now and then—to see things going on around us—to hear what you think of things that we see together…. Because, with you, I feel so divinely free, so unembarrassed, so entirely off my guard…. I don't mean to say that I don't have a splendid time with the others even when I have to watch them; I do—and even the watching is fun—"

      The child-like audacity and laughing frankness, the confidence of her attitude toward him were delightfully refreshing. He looked into her pretty, eager, engaging face, smiling, captivated.

      "Valerie," he said, "tell me something—will you?"

      "Yes, if I can."

      "I'm more or less of a painting machine. I've made myself so, deliberately—to the exclusion of other interests. I wonder"—he looked at her musingly—"whether I'm carrying it too far for my own good."

      "I don't understand."

      "I mean—is there anything machine-made about my work? Does it lack—does it lack anything?"

      "No!" she said, indignantly loyal. "Why do you ask me that?"

      "People—some people say it does lack—a certain quality."

      She said with supreme contempt: "You must not believe them. I also hear things—and I know it is an unworthy jealousy that—"

      "What have you heard?" he interrupted.

      "Absurdities. I don't wish even to think of them—"

      "I wish you to. Please. Such things are sometimes significant."

      "But—is there any significance in what a few envious artists say—or a few silly models—"

      "More significance in what they say than in a whole chorus of professional critics."

      "Are you serious?" she asked, astonished.

      "Perfectly. Without naming anybody or betraying any confidence, what have you heard in criticism of my work? It's from models and brother painters that the real truth comes—usually distorted, half told, maliciously hinted sometimes—but usually the germ of truth is to be found in what they say, however they may choose to say it."

      Valerie leaned back against the door, hands clasped behind her, eyebrows bent slightly inward in an unwilling effort to remember.

      Finally she said impatiently: "They don't know what they're talking about. They all say, substantially, the same thing—"

      "What is that thing?"

      "Why—oh, it's too silly to repeat—but they say there is nothing lovable about your work—that it's inhumanly and coldly perfect—too—too—" she flushed and laughed uncertainly—"'too damn omniscient' is what one celebrated man said. And I could have boxed his large, thin, celebrated ears for him!"

      "Go on," he nodded; "what else do they say?"

      "Nothing. That's all they can find to say—all they dare say. You know what they are—what other men are—and some of the younger girls, too. Not that I don't like them—and they are very sweet to me—only they're not like you—"

      "They're more human. Is that it, Valerie?"

      "No, I don't mean that!"

      "Yes, you do. You mean that the others take life in a perfectly human manner—find enjoyment, amusement in each other, in a hundred things outside of their work. They act like men and women, not like a painting machine; if they experience impulses and emotions they don't entirely stifle 'em. They have time and leisure to foregather, laugh, be silly, discuss, banter, flirt, make love, and cut up all the various harmless capers that humanity is heir to. That's what you mean, but you don't realise it. And you think, and they think, that my solemn and owlish self-suppression is drying me up, squeezing out of me the essence of that warm, lovable humanity in which, they say, my work is deficient. They say, too, that my inspiration is lacking in that it is not founded on personal experience; that I have never known any deep emotion, any suffering, any of the sterner, darker regrets—anything of that passion which I sometimes depict. They say that the personal and convincing element is totally absent because I have not lived"—he laughed—"and loved; that my work lacks the one thing which only the self-knowledge of great happiness and great pain can lend to it…. And—I think they are right, Valerie. What do you think?"

      The girl stood silent, with lowered eyes, reflecting for a moment. Then she looked up curiously.

      "Have you never been very unhappy?"

      "I had a toothache once."

      She said, unsmiling: "Haven't you ever suffered mentally?"

      "No—not seriously. Oh, I've regretted little secret meannesses—bad temper, jealousy—"

      "Nothing else? Have you never experienced deep unhappiness—through death, for example?"

      "No, thank God. My father and mother and sister СКАЧАТЬ