II
Having done his duty by the arts and crafts of his country, Nick was suddenly moved, on that eve of his departure, to go miles uptown—to Washington Bridge. He has rather an eye, Nick. I had forgotten how the tall arches of High Bridge stand up against the bright water and smoking gold of a Harlem sunset. It was better than the Academy, if I do so say who am a slave of the brush. And it inspired us to pick up a dinner somewhere in the neighborhood.
I don’t know whether it was because the place was German or whether it was that the proprietor produced for Nick such a Moselle as you didn’t come across every day even in that faraway year. But as we sipped the last of it and debated how we might worthily spend our last evening on our native shore, Nick casually proposed:
“Let’s go and see Zephine.”
I am not usually the one to lag behind. But Nick had refused, with opprobrious implications, to play with me, and it seemed good to me to refuse to play with Nick.
“Come on, Herb,” he persisted. “Don’t be a spotted zebra. Let’s go find Zephine.” And he called for the bill.
“How on earth do you propose to find Zephine at this time of day—and we sailing for Norway at ten to-morrow morning?”
“Where do you think I was born—Island Pond?” inquired Nick suavely. “There’s a telephone book in front of your nose, and a directory beside it. In addition to which I might remind you that her address was in the catalogue.”
“What was it?” I asked. I knew in my reluctant soul that if Nick had made up his mind there was no use sulking.
“O, Corlear’s Hook some place,” answered Nick, charming the heart of an anxious-looking waiter—if the heart may be charmed by that which is put into the hand.
“Corlear’s Hook!” I exclaimed. “She’s moved then, though it sounds enough like Zephine. But it’s some way from Washington Bridge.”
Nick didn’t mind, however. Neither the taxi man who presently undertook to jounce us from one end of Manhattan Island to the other. And I am happy to add that we ran over no one on the way, though we did run out of gasoline. Incidentally Nick soothed my ruffled feelings by making me tell him about Zephine all over again. I fancied, though, it was really the Corlear’s Hook that caught him. He made me promise that I would say nothing to Zephine about the picture.
At Corlear’s Hook there was no Zephine. It wasn’t that she was dining out, or anything so simple as that. She had gone up to paint at Fort Lee, in a farmhouse whose whereabouts the janitor endeavored to make plain to us in the accent of Warsaw. To Fort Lee we accordingly proceeded, to the vast delight of the taxi man. Luckily it was a moonlight night, or we never would have succeeded in tracking Zephine to her farmhouse. As it was, we nearly tumbled off the Palisades a dozen times.
I have no idea what time of night it was when we finally floundered through an orchard to Zephine’s dark and silent lair. I bet Nick she wouldn’t be in it. Nick bet me she would. She was—fast asleep in bed. But we routed her out, and she parleyed with us through a window while we kicked our heels on the edge of the piazza. It was rather like the third act of “Faust”—except that Zephine was a contralto. She had a pleasant gurgle in her voice that I had forgotten. She also had the proper yellow braid over her shoulder, if not two of them. And the whole place was operatic with apple blossoms and moonlight.
Many ladies might have betrayed a certain surprise at receiving a visit at an unknown hour of the night, in a New Jersey orchard, from a New York taxicab and two men of whom they had never seen one before in their life. Not so Zephine. She accepted it as perfectly natural that I, who had not seen her for longer than either of us could remember, should feel irresistibly impelled to bid her farewell before sailing for Norway, and that Nick, whose name she had apparently never heard, should pay this somewhat unusual tribute to a lady whose work he had happened to admire.
In token of his admiration Nick invited her to join us in a little drive—at this I heard a snicker from the direction of the taxi—and help us pick up an ice on the way. Zephine judicially considered the matter, stroking one of her Marguerite’s braids, but eventually opined that she would better not. She had models coming at sunrise, and she couldn’t paint if she were sleepy.
“O!” sighed Nick in evident disappointment. “Couldn’t you put your models off? What I really hoped was that you would get a little acquainted with us, or with me, and consent to go to Norway too.”
That was what I heard Nick Marler say, in Zephine’s moonlit orchard, swinging his long legs off her rickety little piazza! And I listened for her answer with my mouth open. For I knew she was perfectly capable of taking Nick at his word. Her deep gurgle however, reassured me.
“That is awfully nice of you, Mr. Marler. If I had sold my picture in the Academy, I might. But as it is, I’m afraid Norway is not for me.”
“O, I didn’t mean that!” cried Nick, secretly giving me an infernal pinch of reminder. “I do hope you won’t think me rude, or anything like that. But Herb here is going as my guest, to give me his expert opinion on some old enamels we have an idea of hunting up, and we’d be ever so pleased if you’d be good enough to come along too and make one of the jury.”