A Top-Floor Idyl Part 26

"Good!" exclaimed Dr. Porter, "and you, Mr. Cole, had better do the same thing. You ought to take a holiday. Get some of the cobwebs off your mind and gather in a little country atmosphere to put into your next book."

"All I need," I said, "is some pills. I shall get you to prescribe them for me."

"I won't," he retorted rudely. "You must go to bed at a reasonable hour, consume regular meals, and breathe clean air and take plenty of exercise. So long, get a move on you and take my advice at once, undiluted."

"It would be ever so nice, if you could go, David," said Frances, as soon as our good little doctor had left. "I am sure you are tired also.

As for me, I know it is not so bad as he thinks. I can take Baby up on the Palisades, and to Staten Island and back on the ferry, and perhaps on the Coney Island boat, and----"

"Nothing of the sort," I interrupted. "Of course I don't care anything about Baby Paul and yourself, but I have a great pecuniary interest in your voice and I am going to have my money back, and you will have to sing in order to earn it, and----"

"And you can keep on saying all the horrid things you want to," she put in. "Now, David, be reasonable. You know that a stay in the country would do you ever so much good."

"Very well," I answered. "Then I shall hire Eulalie to elope with Baby Paul and I'll go along to watch his teething, and you can stay here and inhale benzine at Madame's, and lose all your voice and grow thin and ugly, and be well punished for disobedience and rebellion, and by the time you've----"

We were interrupted by the sound of steps on the stairs. They were somewhat heavy, but not the deliberate thumps of Frieda's climbing. It was a swift and confident progress, in which I recognized none of the inmates of our menagerie. A second later I turned. A fine young woman of healthful color and dressed in excellent taste stood at the door.

"I--I beg your pardon," she said. "The colored woman told me to go right up to the top floor. How--how do you do, Mr. Cole?"

It was Miss Sophia Van Rossum, big as life, with a face perhaps more womanly and handsome than I had ever given her credit for possessing. In our surroundings she appeared like a fine hot-house flower suddenly transplanted to a poor little tenement yard. She was looking curiously at Frances, who was standing at my side.

CHAPTER XVIII

DIANA AMONG MORTALS

"I am awfully sorry that you took the trouble of coming all the way up here," I told her. "I am afraid that the colored maid is little accustomed to social usages. There is a little parlor downstairs."

"Oh! It's all right, Mr. Cole. I asked for you and she just pointed up with her thumb and said 'Top floor,' so I climbed up."

She took a step towards Frances, extending her hand.

"I know I have seen you before," she said pleasantly, "but I can't for the moment remember where we met."

"I think, Miss Van Rossum, that you have only been acquainted with Mrs.

Dupont through the medium of my friend Gordon's talent. You may remember a 'Mother and Child' in his studio."

"Of course. I remembered the face at once. Gordon is such a wonderful painter, so clever in obtaining the most marvelous likenesses. And--and he didn't flatter his models a great deal, either. I am very glad to meet you, Mrs. Dupont."

Frances smiled, in her graceful way, and expressed her own pleasure.

"You--you also know Gordon, of course, since you posed for him, Mrs.

Dupont. I--I came here to speak with Mr. Cole about him."

"I can hardly offer you the hospitality of my room, Miss Van Rossum," I told her. "It is a rather disorderly bachelor's den. If you will allow me to lead you downstairs to the little parlor the landlady provides her guests with, I shall be delighted to----"

"No, if you don't mind, I shall remain here for a moment. Mr. Cole, you are Gordon's best friend; he used to say that you were the great exception, a man one could always trust in everything. I hope Mrs.

Dupont will not mind, she--she is a woman and may be able to advise me.

I have legions of friends--we know thousands of people, but it doesn't seem to me that there is another soul to whom I may come for--for a little----"

She interrupted her words. I had pushed a chair forward for her and she acknowledged the offer with a smile, but did not avail herself of it at once, for she went to the bed where Baby Paul was, for a wonder, lying awake and rolling his eyes about. On his face, however, there was something that Frances and I considered a polite little grin.

"Is this the dear baby of the picture?" she asked. "He has grown such a lot. What a dear lamb of a child it is! Oh! Mrs. Dupont, how proud and happy a woman must be to be the mother of such a darling!"

Decidedly Miss Sophia was revealing herself in a very fine light. For all of her riding astride after hounds, and her golfing and shooting and tennis, she was a very real woman and her heart was in the right place.

Frances took up Baby Paul and sat down with him on her lap, where he promptly went to sleep again.

"I remember how Gordon spoke of you, several times, Mrs. Dupont," said Miss Van Rossum. "He said a queer thing, once, one of the strange little sentences he always used to bring out. I was looking at your picture and told him it represented a very beautiful woman, and he answered that she was one of those ideals the other fellow always gets hold of.

But--but I don't see that there was anything very ideal about that painting. It was just you."

For a moment Frances looked away. The phrase reminded her of an unhappy circ.u.mstance, I have no doubt, but, to me, it represented cynicism carried to an unpermissible length.

"But I must come to the point," continued Miss Van Rossum, with a slight frown, which I deemed an indication that she had something rather difficult to say. "Of course you've been wondering at my coming here. I know it's a bit unconventional, but I didn't want to write and ask you to come and see me. We have only just returned from California and are off to Southampton in the morning. I--I simply felt that I must take my chance of finding you at home. I told you a minute ago that Gordon always said you were a man to be trusted to the utmost, and--and I want to find out something about him. Please, Mr. Cole, have you any news of him?"

"I have received but one very short letter," I replied. "I will go and get it for you."

I think I was glad to escape for a moment and leave her with Frances, for I foresaw a long cross-examination. She had looked very brave and strong at the moment of her amazing arrival, and I had wondered at such an unusual proceeding. But now I realized that she was very profoundly disturbed, that her show of pluck was but a veil to cover a heart which could suffer the same pains as gnaw at the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of so many of her sisters of humbler station. Gordon, old friend, I fear I shall never quite forgive you! You have done vivisection without the excuse of scientific need, without the slightest idea that it could profit any one but yourself!

I found the note, but did not return immediately. I asked myself how much she knew, seeing that there were many possibilities of inflicting further pain on a very fine young woman who was already undergoing unmerited punishment. Finally, I went back, slowly, to find her sitting in front of Frances, with their two heads quite near one another and their eyes directed to Baby Paul's little pink mouth.

"I have it here. Miss Van Rossum. You will see that it is quite short.

He must be tremendously busy and surely s.n.a.t.c.hed a precious moment for a word to an old friend."

I handed her the letter, in an envelope that had been opened by the censor and pasted over with a bit of thin paper. She took it with a very steady hand.

The girl was engaged in playing a game, I could plainly see. It was one in which her heart was involved and perhaps her pride somewhat aroused.

She opened the thing and looked over the brief sentences.

"_Dear old Dave_:

"Found a lot of fellows I knew. Didn't have a bit of trouble getting in. I'm going to drive one of those cars I wouldn't have been found dead in, in old New York. They tell me they do very well as ambulances, though. I'm close to the front now and have seen a good deal of the crop being garnered there. It makes a fellow feel that he doesn't amount to much. There isn't any harrowing of one's own mind that can last very long in the presence of this real and awful suffering.

"Ever your old GORDON.

"P.S. Give my love to Frieda."

Miss Van Rossum read it over at least twice. Then her eyes slowly rose from the page and, perhaps, without seeing very clearly, swept over Frances and me. She folded it and replaced it in the envelope, very carefully, before handing it back.

"I--I have no doubt that it has greatly appealed to him," she said, now vaguely looking out of the window into yards chiefly adorned with fluttering raiment dependent from a very spider's web of intricate lines. "It--it was a sporting thing to do, you know, very manly and fine. But he also wrote to me and--I have never been able to understand.

Of course I wouldn't have interfered with--with a plan like that. I have only wished I could have gone over and done something too--something that would count and make one feel that she could be of some use in the world. Yes--it's a big thing he's done--but why did he write me such a letter?"

She opened a small bag she had been carrying and pulled out a missive that bore my friend's monogram, a very plain G.M. cleverly interlaced.

"Won't you please look at it, Mr. Cole? I got it the day we left Florida. I--I was rather bunkered at first, you know."

I took it from her, doubtless displaying far more nervousness than she was showing, for she appeared to be quite calm. I saw that she had taken the blow as Frieda's pugilistic friend might have accepted what he calls a wallop, with a brave smile, after the first wince. I also read it over twice.