III.
Several days passed, during which the ladies settled themselves very readily in their new surroundings. They were very methodical, preferring to rise at an hour which, to Archibald, was something savoring of barbarism. He studied their habits, with a view to conforming to them as far as possible, but found that he could not bring himself to give up his nine-o’clock breakfasts, and so went to his club, leaving orders that the ladies should be accommodated at the earliest hour they might choose. He found that they had discovered Central Park, and came to make it a habit to stroll with them of a morning upon the Mall, and around the stagnant lakes. Central Park was a novelty to him, except as seen from horseback, or a four-in-hand, and it really seemed very beautiful those summer mornings—he was really surprised, don’t you know! He wondered that nice people did not use the Park more—as they did Hyde Park in London. As the days went on he filled his house with flowers, turned the second floor into an immense studio for Elvira, sat about and watched her, criticised, encouraged her. He forgot Newport, forgot his polo. He had strangely ceased to be bored. He was happy in New York in midsummer! Dick Trellis told his polo friends at Newport that Archibald was probably undergoing private treatment for softening of the brain, which theory, in fact, they deemed sufficiently complimentary.
As for his mother and sisters in Europe—why, pray, should he inform them of his little joke?
Elvira worked away at her easel when the light was best—during the afternoon. In the evening, after dinner, the ladies became socially inclined. It was then that they allowed Archibald to smoke in the “studio” and talk Art with Elvira. Indeed he found it very difficult to talk anything else with the shy New England primrose.
About Art—with a big A—she was rapturous. There seemed to be in her soul a strange hunger for everything ornate and richly beautiful. Archibald devoted himself to studying her. He became strangely interested in East Village, Vt., where, he gathered, the Hon. Ephraim B. Price, her father, was a very distinguished Republican lawyer and politician. He drew Aunt Perkins out concerning her Congregational church, her minister, her fear of the Catholics, her fondness for cats, her secret disbelief in Art. Once in a while they read him a letter from the Hon. Ephraim, in which he could see reflected their own liking for him. He found that he was spoken of as “Landlord Archibald.” The Hon. Ephraim was a shrewd old fellow, however, and his counsels and advice were generally of the “trust-not-too-much-to-appearances” order. One evening Miss Perkins complained of a headache, and Archibald found himself alone for an hour with Elvira. She sat beneath the rich brazen lamp, with its pretty crimson shade, absorbing some of the red glow in her lovely face. They had been two weeks in the city, and out of delicate feeling had deposited two ten-dollar bills upon the mantelpiece in the library, where Archibald would see them. He had roared with laughter over them and intended having them framed, but ultimately he found a different use for their amusing board-money.
He made some little allusion to the time they had been with him.
“Two very short weeks,” said Elvira, “and you have been so very unusually kind, Mr. Archibald. You have done so much for us. We have noticed it. Is it usual for landlords to—to do so much, in the city?”
“It depends,” he said, gravely. “Landlords do more for people who are congenial—you are congenial——”
“Oh!” A slight pause.
“You are more than congenial, really,” said Archibald. “For you take an interest, Miss Price. I have secretly espied both you and your aunt dusting——”
Elvira bit her lip. “We have dusted,” she admitted, reddening a little, “but it is merely out of force of habit.”
“Really,” said Archibald, “I rawther like you the better for it, don’t you know!”
“I’m afraid,” said Elvira, her face lighting up with conscious pleasure, “that you have made up your mind as a landlord to like us, whatever we do. I’m afraid you would not like it at all if you knew everything that aunt has done.”
“Tell me—I will keep it a profound secret, I assure you,” he laughed.
“She has actually dared to invade your kitchen!”
“Has she?” said Archibald, dubiously; “really!”
“Yes, and she declares that your cook wastes enough every day to keep four families!”
“Really!” said Archibald; “I’ll have to look into it.”
“You won’t save much out of what we pay,” said Elvira, “and we don’t want to stay if it doesn’t pay you; but——”
“Well?”
“Mr. Archibald, we are poor.” She looked down.
“I’m very sorry, I’m sure—I—” he really did feel a compassion which found its way into his voice, and made it tremble a little.
“Aunt says you can’t be making any money. Now, we don’t think it is right to stay another day and be burdens, do you see?”
A solemn pause.
“Isn’t that what they are talking about so much now in the novels?” he asked, at length.
“What?”
“The terrible New England conscience?”
“Right is right and wrong is wrong, Mr. Archibald, disguise it how we may,” and Elvira compressed her pretty lips firmly.
Archibald puffed on his cigar, lazily.
“I wasn’t sure,” he said, as if a doubt had crept into his mind.
She glanced at him impatiently.
“Can’t you see how wrong it would be for us to stay here and enjoy all we have in your beautiful house, knowing that we were swindling you?” She stamped her foot. “Mercy!” she added, half to herself, “what can you be made of?”
He hastened to a display of rugged conscience, which relieved her.
“Oh, of course, I see how wicked it would be if you did swindle; but I’m making money! Really—I haven’t spent the twenty dollars board-money yet. Oh, pray rest assured—I shan’t lose. I will tell you when I run behind.”
A great sense of relief seemed to come over the girl.
“But it is all we can pay. I told father I would not ask for more. Father said he knew it would take more, but I said I would give up Art first.”
“Oh, I say!” he protested.
“And to-morrow I am going to begin taking lessons, but I will not call on father for another cent. He shan’t be able to throw it in my face that it turned out as he said, and that I was wrong. When he and I dispute it always does turn out as he says—this time it shan’t.”
Archibald laughed a little. The poor fool, don’t you know, was so captivated that every word, every action of the girl was music to him. The two weeks of observation had told on her dress. To-night she wore a white muslin, elaborated with pretty ribbons. She no longer seemed especially rustic to him. He noticed that she was doing her hair now in the prevailing style. “By Jove!” he said to himself, “I’ll see that she comes out at the Patriarchs’ next winter!”
This was his highest earthly happiness for a débutante.
“I am going to make money,” she went on; “I’m going to paint vases, plates, odds and ends, pot-boilers, you know, and so father shan’t know what it costs.”
“Oh, by the way, if you do,” he pretended, lazily blowing out a ring of smoke, “I happen to know a fellow—an old friend of mine—who gives very fair prices for those sort of things. Now, I am sure he will take any gimcrack you may do.”
Somehow the word gimcrack displeased her.
“My Art work has always been thought very pretty in East Village,” she said. “It would never sell, but it was thought pretty. I used to long to help father—and our family is so large, you know, four little brothers and two sisters younger than I am—and now, if I only could get on, and help father! Oh, Mr. Archibald, you don’t know how little law there is to go round in East Village!” She heaved a deep sigh.
He tried to appear sympathetic.
“I know a fellow who gets a thousand dollars for a portrait, and he has only just commenced. You can’t help but succeed, Miss Price, really!”
She gave him a grateful glance.
“Oh, if I could!” she said, anxiously. “I taught school one winter, but the pay was so small. And I’ve tried—you will laugh, Mr. Archibald, at my telling you these things—but I’ve tried story writing. I was so hopeful about it, and it took as many as ten rejections before I became convinced; and now, if my Art fails me——”
She gave a little fluttering sigh.
“I think you have talent.”
“Perhaps it is only enthusiasm——”
“That amounts to the same thing. It will keep you up to your work. They used to tell me I had talent, but I had no enthusiasm, so I dropped it. I wish to encourage you,” he added; “I hope you will go on. It takes a lot of work, but you have just the right temperament. You will work. You will get on, and when you become celebrated, Miss Price, you won’t forget your old friends?”
He realized that it was a rather bold step forward, and he trembled for her reply.
“I shall always recommend your house,” she said, a little stiffly, making him feel more than ever her aristocratic superiority to landlords, “and I shall always remember your kindness. We went to at least six boarding-houses until we saw your sign—we saw the landladies. Really, Mr. Archibald, you have no idea how vulgar and unartistic most of the houses were. There was always a disagreeable odor, as if somebody was frying something. If I do succeed, as I wish, and make friends, and get to be known, and all, you may be certain that I shan’t forget you. I may organize an Art class, and take the whole house myself!”
He went no further. It was enough to him, as he sat opposite her in his evening dress, his rich opal, set with diamonds, flashing on his white shirt-front, his lawn tie, low shoes, white waistcoat—everything in the latest and most expensive style—it was enough for Mr. Jerome Archibald to sit there and smoke his delicate Havana, and reflect that he at least had her promise to do what she could to recommend his boarding-house!
The next day, at dinner, he again suggested, in an offhand way, that Miss Price should turn her attention to portrait-painting. Miss Perkins seriously objected at once.
“Your father would never give his consent,” she said. “There was old Mr. Raymond, who lived on the Poor Farm, because he found portrait-painting didn’t pay.”
“Mr. Raymond painted dreadful, hideous caricatures,” said Elvira. “He painted my mother’s portrait, and father is always throwing him in my face. But I don’t know. I have no one to begin on except aunt, and I have tried and tried, and I can’t get anything but the expression of her spectacles.”
Even Aunt Perkins laughed at this a little.
“Begin on me,” ventured Archibald. “Call it the ‘Portrait of an Ideal Landlord.’”
There was a little pause. The ladies rose without replying, and Archibald followed them into the drawing-room, feeling indefinitely that he had been too forward. As he lit his cigar and sat near an open window, feeling the cool southern breeze, he reflected that it was not improbable that in East Village the only landlord known to them was the keeper of a common tavern. It amused him to think of their primitive, quaint ignorance of city ways. He pictured the small life of East Village, Vt., the narrow social horizon, the strange interest in politics, the religious intolerance, the “strong” views on the temperance question which obtained there, and which leaked out from Miss Perkins as the days went on into August. The easy sense of accommodation to their new surroundings also amused him.
Archibald returned to the portrait. “I’d rawther like to have one for the dining-room,” he said; “I think it would interest some of my boarders when they come back next winter. I could give you no end of sittings, Miss Price——”
Elvira exhibited some hesitancy:
“Well, I might try,” she said. “But I’m not at all good at hair——”
“Shave off my mustache if you like,” said the infatuated Archibald, with a grimace.
The ladies changed the subject decorously. It was plain that Archibald’s little advances toward an intimacy, to be derived from portrait-painting, were being met in rather an unencouraging spirit, don’t you know! The next day he invited them, as an agreeable diversion, to visit Coney Island; but Elvira made an excuse that she had no time for “pleasuring.” They seemed, indeed, to have few pleasures. The morning walk in Central Park was given up; Miss Perkins spent the greater part of the time when Elvira was at the Art School in riding to and fro, apparently, upon street-cars. One day she came home very late to dinner, saying that she had discovered the “Belt Line.” While waiting her return for dinner, Archibald had an agreeable tête-à-tête with Elvira.