The Common Law. Chambers Robert William

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ what we want is to see something of the real studio life; and he tries to convince me that it's about as exciting as a lawyer's life when he dictates to his stenographer."

      "Is it?" asked Stephanie of Neville.

      "Just about as exciting. Some few business men may smirk at their stenographers; some few painters may behave in the same way to their models. I fancy it's the exception to the rule in any kind of business—isn't it, Sandy?"

      "Certainly," said Cameron, hastily. "I never winked at my stenographer—never! never! Will you deal, Mr. Querida?" he asked, courteously.

      "I should think a girl like that would be interesting to know," said Lily Collis, who had come up behind her brother and Stephanie Swift and stood, a hand on each of their shoulders, listening and looking on at the card game.

      "That is what I wanted to say, too," nodded Stephanie. "I'd like to meet a really nice girl who is courageous enough, and romantic enough to pose for artists—"

      "You mean poor enough, don't you?" said Neville. "They don't do it because it's romantic."

      "It must be romantic work."

      "It isn't, I assure you. It's drudgery—and sometimes torture."

      Stephanie laughed: "I believe it's easy work and a gay existence full of romance. Don't undeceive me, Louis. And I think you're selfish not to let us meet your beautiful Valerie at tea."

      "Why not?" added his sister. "I'd like to see her myself."

      "Oh, Lily, you know perfectly well that oil and water don't mix," he said with a weary shrug.

      "I suppose we're the oil," remarked Rose Aulne—"horrid, smooth, insinuating stuff. And his beautiful Valerie is the clear, crystalline, uncontaminated fountain of inspiration."

      Lily Collis dropped her hands from Stephanie's and her brother's shoulders:

      "Do ask us to tea to meet her, Louis," she coaxed.

      "We've never seen a model—"

      "Do you want me to exhibit a sensitive girl as a museum freak?" he asked, impatiently.

      "Don't you suppose we know how to behave toward her? Really, Louis, you—"

      "Probably you know how to behave. And I can assure you that she knows perfectly well how to behave toward anybody. But that isn't the question. You want to see her out of curiosity. You wouldn't make a friend of her—or even an acquaintance. And I tell you, frankly, I don't think it's square to her and I won't do it. Women are nuisances in studios, anyway."

      "What a charming way your brother has of explaining things," laughed Stephanie, passing her arm through Lily's: "Shall we reveal to him that he was seen with his Valerie at the St. Regis a week ago?"

      "Why not?" he said, coolly, but inwardly exasperated. "She's as ornamental as anybody who dines there."

      "I don't do that with my stenographers!" called out Cameron gleefully, cleaning up three odd in spades. "Oh, don't talk to me, Louis! You're a gay bunch all right!—you're qualified, every one of you, artists and models, to join the merry, merry!"

      Stephanie dropped Lily's arm with a light laugh, swung her tennis bat, tossed a ball into the sunshine, and knocked it over toward the tennis court.

      "I'll take you on if you like, Louis!" she called back over her shoulder, then continued her swift, graceful pace, white serge skirts swinging above her ankles, bright hair wind-blown—a lithe, full, wholesome figure, very comforting to look at.

      "Come upstairs; I'll show you where Gordon's shoes are," said his sister.

      Gordon's white shoes fitted him, also his white trousers. When he was dressed he came out of the room and joined his sister, who was seated on the stairs, balancing his racquet across her knees.

      "Louis," she said, "how about the good taste of taking that model of yours to the St. Regis?"

      "It was perfectly good taste," he said, carelessly.

      "Stephanie took it like an angel," mused his sister.

      "Why shouldn't she? If there was anything queer about it, you don't suppose I'd select the St. Regis, do you?"

      "Nobody supposed there was anything queer."

      "Well, then," he demanded, impatiently, "what's the row?"

      "There is no row. Stephanie doesn't make what you call rows. Neither does anybody in your immediate family. I was merely questioning the wisdom of your public appearance—under the circumstances."

      "What circumstances?"

      His sister looked at him calmly:

      "The circumstances of your understanding with Stephanie…. An understanding of years, which, in her mind at least, amounts to a tacit engagement."

      "I'm glad you said that," he began, after a moment's steady thinking. "If that is the way that Stephanie and you still regard a college affair—"

      "A—what!"

      "A boy-and-girl preference which became an undergraduate romance—and has never amounted to anything more—"

      "Louis!"

      "What?"

      "Don't you care for her?"

      "Certainly; as much as I ever did—as much, as she really and actually cares for me," he answered, defiantly. "You know perfectly well what such affairs ever amount to—in the sentimental-ever-after line. Infant sweethearts almost never marry. She has no more idea of it than have I. We are fond of each other; neither of us has happened, so far, to encounter the real thing. But as soon as the right man comes along Stephanie will spread her wings and take flight—"

      "You don't know her! Well—of all faithless wretches—your inconstancy makes me positively ill!"

      "Inconstancy! I'm not inconstant. I never saw a girl I liked better than Stephanie. I'm not likely to. But that doesn't mean that I want to marry her—"

      "For shame!"

      "Nonsense! Why do you talk about inconstancy? It's a ridiculous word. What is constancy in love? Either an accident or a fortunate state of mind. To promise constancy in love is promising to continue in a state of mind over which your will has no control. It's never an honest promise; it can be only an honest hope. Love comes and goes and no man can stay it, and no man is its prophet. Coming unasked, sometimes undesired, often unwelcome, it goes unbidden, without reason, without logic, as inexorably as it came, governed by laws that no man has ever yet understood—"

      "Louis!" exclaimed his sister, bewildered; "what in the world are you lecturing about? Why, to hear you expound the anatomy of love—"

      He began to laugh, caught her hands, and kissed her:

      "Little goose, that was all impromptu and horribly trite and commonplace. Only it was new to me because I never before took the trouble to consider it. But it's true, even if it is trite. People love or they don't love, and a regard for ethics controls only what they do about it."

      "That's another Tupperesque truism, isn't it, dear?"

      "Sure СКАЧАТЬ