She was startled to see lights gleaming in all the lower windows of the house. Inside she found George sitting on the lower step of the stairs. He rose as she entered, but did not respond when she spoke to him. The doors into the drawing-room were open and she looked in. Lying face down on the floor, still fully dressed, was Gloria and scattered around her were the violets from the bouquet she had been wearing. She was quite motionless, and Ruth dared not speak to her. Evidently George was keeping watch.
“Can I do anything?” she whispered to him.
He shook his head and pointed silently up the stairs. She went, hurrying up the three flights as if the act of going up lifted her above her own discontent and above the unhappiness of Gloria. She went into the studio and looked at the canvas on which she had been working. It was hard to wait until morning to begin on it again. It had been a week since she had touched it. When she began she had intended rising early to get an hour’s work before breakfast, but evenings in the company of Gloria and her friends had kept her up late and youth claimed its need of rest despite her firmest resolves. It was no good, the picture, anyway. She would paint it all out and begin over again. She would spend her Sundays in the country with the other art students, sketching. She had not entered into the student life enough. And she had entered into Gloria’s life too much. If she had been taking her work more seriously she would not have had time to fall in love with Terry Riordan. She did not question that it was love that had come into her life to complicate things. In Indianapolis it had all seemed so simple. There were paint and canvas and her hands to work with, and she would study and work and exhibit and become famous. Now it was made plain to her that art itself was not a matter of paint and canvas and exhibitions, or even of work as Dorothy Winslow had said, but a matter of men and women, and competition and struggle and love and hate and jealousy and thwarted ambitions like those of the woman who lay down there prostrate with defeat. The defeat that was such a tragic jest—a great talent useless because the actress was too tall. If success was dependent on such things as that of what use to struggle and work? Crouched on the floor before her canvas she looked up through the skylight at a star, and soft tears moved slowly down her cheeks, tears for herself and for Gloria and for all the unfruitful love and labour in the world.
CHAPTER III
Ever since her conversation with Dorothy Winslow, Ruth had wondered whether it would not be better if she had taken painting and composition instead of portrait painting in the morning. But she didn’t like to give up the portrait painting and she knew that if she suggested attending one of the evening classes Gloria would object that she was working too hard. Of course she was her own mistress, but it wasn’t pleasant to meet with opposition nevertheless.
She spoke to Dorothy about it.
“You can’t get everything in a year, and it all counts. I don’t think one can tell exactly what one’s forte is until one has studied for some time. Better keep on as you are. Certainly don’t give up the portrait class. Bridgelow is wonderful,” Dorothy had assured her, “and you may not get a chance to study under him again.”
It seemed to Ruth that she was living a sort of double life, her hours among the art students were so separate from her life with the people at the house on Gramercy Square. And in a way she was not actually a part of either life. Among the students she felt a certain reticence, because they were most of them, at least the ones she had met, very obviously poor. They were paying their own way by working at things far removed from art. One of the girls painted stereopticon slides for illustrated songs, and some of the boys worked at night as waiters. They lived in studios and cooked their own meals, and Ruth was ashamed to let them know exactly where or how she lived. She heard their chatter of parties to which she had not been invited, and she could not control the feeling that she was inferior to these people because she had an assured income.
The morning following the opening of Terry Riordan’s play Ruth had left the house without seeing Gloria, and the thought of her aunt as she had last seen her, was with her all morning. In the brief time between classes she was glad to join the group of students who always hurried to a little restaurant on Eighth Avenue for a bite of lunch, or a “bolt of lunch” as Nels Zord called it. Nels was a Norwegian, possibly twenty-five years old who spent every other year studying. He was supposed to have a great amount of talent and he sometimes sold things—seascapes mostly, small canvases of a delicacy that seemed incredible in view of his huge, thick hands. When he was not in New York, he went on long voyages as a sailor before the mast, where he satisfied his muscles with hard work and his soul with adventure and gathered material to be painted from half finished sketches and from memory when he returned to New York. He had gone to sea first as a boy of fifteen, from his home in Seattle and always chose sailing vessels from preference. He had two passions, art and food, and had never yet been known to give a girl anything but the most comradely attentions, which was, perhaps, why he was so much sought after by them.
Ruth, Dorothy, and Nels walked together to the lunch room. All of the students were talking about the water colour show that was to open at the Academy the following Tuesday. On Monday evening there was to be a private view, and Nels Zord, by virtue of being an exhibitor was one of the few students who would be admitted. He was permitted one guest and had surprised every one by inviting Dorothy Winslow. She told the news to Ruth as they walked along.