From a Bench in Our Square Part 2

"Worse."

"There ain't no sich a animile."

"There is. She's a patron of art."

"Wow!"

"Yes. She's going to patronize you."

"Not if I see her first. How do _I_ qualify as a subject?"

"She considered you a wasted life."

"Where does she get that idea?"

The Bonnie La.s.sie removed a small, sharp implement from the left eye of a stoical figurine and pointed it at herself.

"Do you think that's fair?" demanded the indignant youth.

The Bonnie La.s.sie reversed the implement and pointed it at him. "Do you or do you not," she challenged, "invade our humble precincts in a five-thousand-dollar automobile?"

"It's my only extravagance."

"Do you or do you not maintain a luxurious apartment in Gramercy Park, when you are not down here posing in your attic as an honest working-man?"

"Oh, see here, Mrs. Staten, I won't stand for that!" he expostulated.

"You know perfectly well I keep my room here because it's the only place I can work in quietly--"

"And because Peter Quick Banta would break his foolish old heart if you left him entirely," supplemented the sculptress.

Julien flushed and stood looking like an awkward child. "Did you tell all this stuff to Miss Holland?" he asked.

"Oh, no! She thinks that your pot-boiling is a desperate and barely sufficient expedient to keep the wolf from the door. So she is planning to help you realize your destiny."

"Which is?" he queried with lifted brows.

"To be a great painter."

The other winced. "As you know, I've meant all along, as soon as I've saved enough--"

"Oh, yes; _I_ know," broke in the Bonnie La.s.sie, who can be quite ruthless where Art is concerned, "and _you_ know; but time flies and h.e.l.l is paved with good intentions, and if you want to be that kind of a pavement artist--well, I think Peter Quick Banta is a better."

"Do you suppose she'd let me paint her?" he asked abruptly.

If statuettes could blink, the one upon which the Bonnie La.s.sie was busied would certainly have shrouded its vision against the dazzling radiance of her smile, for this was coming about as she had planned it from the moment when she had caught the flash of startled surprise and wonder in his eyes, as they first rested on Bobbie Holland. Here, she had guessed, might be the agency to bring Julien Tenney to his artistic senses; and even so it was now working out. But all she said was--and she said it with a sort of venomous blandness--"My dear boy, you can't paint."

"Can't I! Just because I'm a little out of practice--"

"Two years, isn't it, since you've touched a palette?"

"Give me a chance at such a model as she is! That's all I ask."

"Do you think her so pretty?" inquired the sculptress disparagingly.

"Pretty? She's the loveliest thing that--" Catching his hostess's smile he broke off. "You'll admit it's a well-modeled face," he said professionally; "and--and--well, unusual."

"Pooh! 'Dangerous' is the word. Remember it," warned the Bonnie La.s.sie.

"She's a devastating whirlwind, that child, and she comes down here partly to get away from the wreckage. Now, if you play your part cleverly--"

"I'm not going to play any part."

"Then it's all up. How is a patroness of Art going to patronize you, unless you're a poor and struggling young artist, living from hand to mouth by arduous pot-boiling? You won't have to play a part as far as the pot-boiling goes," added his monitress viciously. "Only, don't let her know that the rewards of your shame run to high-powered cars and high-cla.s.s apartments. Remember, you're poor but honest. Perhaps she'll give you money."

"Perhaps she won't," retorted the youth explosively.

"Oh, it will be done tactfully; never fear. I'll bring her around to see you and you'll have to work the sittings yourself."

As a setting for the abode of a struggling beginner, Julien's attic needed no change. It was a whim of his to keep it bare and simple. He worked out his pictorial schemes of elegance best in an environment where there was nothing to distract the eye. One could see that Miss Roberta Holland, upon her initial visit, approved its stark and cleanly poverty. (Yes, I was there to see; the Bonnie La.s.sie had taken me along to make up that first party.) Having done the honors, Julien dropped into the background, and presently was curled up over a drawing-board, sketching eagerly while the Bonnie La.s.sie and I held the doer of good deeds in talk. Now the shrewd and able tribe of advertising managers do not pay to any but a master-draughtsman the prices which "J.T."--with an arrow transfixing the initials--gets; and Julien was as deft and rapid as he was skillful. Soon appreciating what was in progress, the visitor graciously sat quite still. At the conclusion she held out her hand for the cardboard.

To be a patroness of Art does not necessarily imply that one is an adequate critic. Miss Holland contemplated what was a veritable little gem in black-and-white with cool approbation.

"Quite clever," she was pleased to say. "Would you care to sell it?"

"I don't think it would be exactly--" A stern glance from the Bonnie La.s.sie cut short the refusal. He swallowed the rest of the sentence.

"Would ten dollars be too little?" asked the visitor with bright beneficence.

"Too much," he murmured. (The Bonnie La.s.sie says that with a little crayoning and retouching he could have sold it for at least fifty times that.)

The patroness delicately dropped a bill on the table.

"Could you some day find time to let me try you in oils?" he asked.

"Does that take long?" she said doubtfully. "I'm very busy."

"You really should try it, Bobbie," put in the crafty Bonnie La.s.sie. "It might give him the start he needs."

What arguments she added later is a secret between the two women, but she had her way. The Bonnie La.s.sie always does. So the bare studio was from time to time irradiated with Bobbie Holland's youthful loveliness and laughter. For there was much laughter between those two. Shrewdly foreseeing that this bird of paradise would return to the bare cage only if it were made amusing for her, Julien exerted himself to the utmost to keep her mind at play, and, as I can vouch who helped train him, there are few men of his age who can be as absorbing a companion as Julien when he chooses to exert his charm. All the time, he was working with a pa.s.sionate intensity on the portrait; letting everything else go; tossing aside the most remunerative offers; leaving his mail unopened; throwing himself intensely, recklessly, into this one single enterprise.

The fact is, he had long been starved for color and was now satiating his soul with it. Probably it was largely impersonal with him at first.

The Bonnie La.s.sie, wise of heart that she is, thinks so. But that could not last. Men who are not otherwise safeguarded do not long retain a neutral att.i.tude toward such creatures of grace and splendor as Bobbie Holland.

Between them developed a curious relation. It was hardly to be called friends.h.i.+p; he was not, to Bobbie's recognition, a habitant of her world. Nor, certainly, was it anything more. Julien would as soon have renounced easel and canvas as have taken advantage of her coming to make love to her. In this waif of our gutters and ward of our sidewalk artist inhered a spirit of the most punctilious and rigid honor, the gift, perhaps, of some forgotten ancestry. More and more, as the intimacy grew, he deserted his uptown haunts and stuck to the attic studio above the rooms where, in the dawning days of prosperity, he had installed Peter Quick Banta in the effete and scandalous luxury of two rooms, a bath, and a gas stove. Yet the picture advanced slowly which is the more surprising in that the exotic Bobbie seemed to find plenty of time for sittings now. Between visits she took to going to the Metropolitan Museum and conscientiously studying pictures and catalogues with a view to helping her protege form sound artistic tastes. (When the Bonnie La.s.sie heard that, she all but choked.) As for Julien!

"This is all very well," he said, one day in the sculptress's studio; "but sooner or later she's going to catch me at it."

"What then?" asked the Bonnie La.s.sie, not looking up from her work.

"She'll go away."