Читать книгу The Penalty - Gouverneur Morris - Страница 5

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It seemed to Wilmot that he had not seen Barbara for an age. And indeed a week had passed without their meeting. Therefore, although he had often been forbidden to call during working hours, he had himself driven to 17 McBurney Place and climbed the two flights of stairs to her studio.

It was a disconsolate Barbara who received him. She had on her work-apron, but she was not working. She sat in a deep chair, and presented the soles of her small shoes to an open fire. Wilmot, expecting to be scolded for disobeying orders, was relieved at being received with visible signs of pleasure.

"You're just the person I wanted to see," she said, "just the one and only Wilmot in the world."

"Are you dying?" he asked.

She laughed. "I'm discouraged. I've come to one of those times when you just want to chuck everything. And there's a man at the bottom of it."

"Tell me," said Wilmot, "in words of two syllables."

"Well," said Barbara, "I woke up in the middle of the night out of a dream. I dreamed I'd made a statue of Satan after the fall from heaven, and that everybody said: 'Well done, Barbs, bully for you,' 'Got Rodin skinned a mile'--it was you said that--and so forth and so on. I rose, swollen with conceit, and made a sketch of the head I'd dreamed about, so's not to forget the pose, and then I went to sleep again. Next day, early, a man stopped me in Washington Square and begged for a dime. I looked at him, and he had just the expression of the fallen Satan I'd dreamed about--a beast of a face, but all filled with a sort of hopeless longing to 'get back,' and remorse. I invited him to pose for me--not for a dime--but for real money. Well, he fell for it. And for all that morning he looked just the way I wanted him to look. But the next morning, having had the spending of certain moneys, he looked too tidy and well fed for Satan. And this morning he was hopeless. He looked smug and fatuous and disgustingly self-satisfied. So I gave him quite a lot of money, not wishing to hurt the creature's feelings, and told him to go away." She looked up, laughing at herself. "Do you know, I really believed I'd dreamed out a golden inspiration, and then to strike just the face I wanted--and then to have everything foozle out!"

Wilmot walked over to the modelling-table on which, strongly modelled in wet clay but quite meaningless, was the bust of a man.

"I think." said Barbara, "it would look better if you snubbed his nose for him."

Wilmot snubbed the long nose heavenward, and the effect was such as to make them laugh. Barbara recovered all her usual good humor.

She had on her work-apron, but she was not working.

"Get some forms out of the kitchen," she said, "and we'll turn him into mud pies."

For half an hour they diverted themselves, displaying a tremendous rivalry and enthusiasm. And then Barbara announced that there had been enough foolishness, and that if Wilmot would put fuel on the fire, he might talk with her till lunch-time and then take her out to lunch.

"Always provided," she said, "that you are not broke at the moment. In which case Barbara will pay and tip."

"I've had a funny adventure," said Wilmot. "I was dreadfully broke. A man I hadn't seen for years and years--and only the once at that--stopped me in the street, told me I was broke, and offered to lend me money. Wilmot accepted, and is now plenty flush enough to blow to lunch, thank you!"

Barbara, reseated herself in the deep chair, and once more presented the soles of her shoes to the flames. "Look here," she said, "aren't you, just among old friends, rather flitting your life away? I don't think it's very pretty to borrow money from strangers, and to be always just getting into difficulties or just getting out of them. Do you?"

"Well, you know," said Wilmot earnestly, "I don't. When I don't hate myself, I don't like myself any too well. But there's something wrong with me. Maybe I'm just lazy. Maybe I lack an impulse. Maybe I'd do better if any single solitary person in this world really gave a damn about me."

His cheerful boyish face assumed a proper solemnity of expression, and a certain nobility. At the moment he really thought that nobody in the world cared what became of him.

"Nobody," said Barbara, "likes to back a flighty pony. You yourself, for instance, are always putting money, your own or some one else's, on horses that always run somewhere near form. Of course you have excuses for yourself."

"I? None."

"Oh, yes, you have. You were brought up to be rich, and you were left poor, and a man has to live and even secure for himself the luxuries to which he has been accustomed. Haven't you ever excused yourself to yourself something like that?"

Wilmot admitted that he had, and went further. "You can't knock livings out of a tree with a stick like ripe apples," he said. "You've either got to use your wits or begin at the bottom and work up. And it seems to me that I'd rather be a little bit tarnished than toil away the best years of my life the way some men I know are doing."

"Yes," said Barbara, "but why not go somewhere where the world is younger, and there are real chances to be a man, and real opportunities to make money in real ways? I don't blame you for living on your wits. I blame you for gambling and never getting anywhere and not caring."

"Not caring? And this from you?"

She changed color under his steady eyes.

"You just give me a certain promise, Barbs, and I give you my word of honor I'll settle to something above-board and make it hum. Look here now! How about it? Who's been so faithful to the one girl for so long? Who understands her so well? Who'd enjoy dying for her so much?"

"Good old Wilmot," she said gently and gave him her hand. He kissed it and would have liked to go on holding it forever, but she took it away from him, and after a silence said, with some bitterness: "I mustn't ever marry anybody. I've learned to know myself too well. And I've no constancy, and I don't trust myself."

"That," said Wilmot with the faith of a fanatic in his god, "is because you've never really cared."

"And besides," she said, "I have what I am pleased to call my career. And 'Down to Gehenna and up to the throne he travels fastest who travels alone.'"

"True," said Wilmot, "he arrives soonest, but all tired out, and the house is empty, and there are no children in it, and only paid servants. And it may be very showy to live for fame, but it isn't good enough. When we turned that bust you began into mud pies, we did a wise thing. We amused ourselves, and we said the last word on art as opposed to life. The best thing in this world is to be children and to have children--and the next best thing is nowhere."

"Would you," said Barbara, and her eyes twinkled a little, "really rather be a parent than a Praxiteles?"

"It looks to me," said Wilmot sadly, "sometimes--in moments of despondency--as if the honorable gentleman was never going to be either. But then again," and he spoke in a strong voice, "I believe in my heart that after you've done handling the book of life and admiring the binding, you'll open it at chapter one, and read, 'Young Wilmot Allen--'"

"Lunch-time," said Barbara, and she rose from the comfortable chair with sharp decision. "I vote for a thick steak, being famished. Is my hair all mussy?"

"No," said Wilmot dejectedly. "I wish it was. And I wish it was my fault--and yours."