Work of Art

18

There was peace and healing in the hillside meadow, but no languor, so brisk were the small breezes; and the late spring flowers among stately grasses were bits of scattered enamel--white and purple daisies, buttercups, red clover, and the Pompeian red of devil's paint brush. Myron contentedly brushed the side of his hand against the tickling grasses, as he lay on his back, more relaxed than for years, then clasped the hand of Effie May, sitting up beside him.

This was good, to have a companion in the adventure of leisure. Her presence completed him. He had, in offices, in long talks with Alec Monlux and Mark Elphinstone and Luciano Mora, been so incomplete, the male without the female. And what freshness and goodness there was in the hand of this untainted girl!

He had, he meditated, been reasonably free of viciousness, and most of the guests had been good and decent, yet there had inevitably been so many others--the little hotel thieves, their very pettiness making it the nastier to have to deal with them, the 'skippers' and passers of 'rubber cheques', irritating in their angry roars of innocence, the suicides who so very bloodily brought shame to hotel-rooms, the sneaking immoralists, and the equally unpleasant prudes who objected, publicly, to other people's private immoralities. After the incessant tedium of bickering with such pests, Effie May's gaiety was the water of life.

It would be fun, Myron exulted, to see new great things with an unjaded girl like this--cities and tall towers and mountains. Not much fun to have these by himself, to be unable to share them. Of course her family was a good deal of a pain in the neck, but . . . All the more reason for saving her from them! . . . If he did get an hotel job for Herby, little Herby, the bounding Bert, it would be off in Alaska, with no return ticket! . . . Effie May, the poor kid! To do things for her, to show her the world--yes, and to have her show it to him, with her fresher and less weary eyes, that would give some purpose to life!

'Do you ever want to travel, Effie?'

'Oh, I'd just love to. It would be won'erful!'

'How much have you travelled?'

'Oh, not hardly at all. I drove with Julia and Willis up to Lake Bomoseen. That was before they had to sell the car. And Papa took me to New York once for two days, he had to go on business, my! I wish we'd known where you were, then, that was two years ago, we'd of gone and called on you, would you have been glad to see us?'

'Would I! You bet I would! I'd of shown you the whole shop, and given you a good bottle of wine.'

She giggled. 'That would be won'erful. But I guess wine would of been too strong for my poor little head. I never did taste it--except maybe some elderberry wine and dandelion wine and so on, and I just hate beer, it's so bitter. But oh, I would of loved to of seen a really big hotel; we stayed at a horrid pokey little place, hardly any bigger than that American House . . . Oh! How dreadful of me! I forgot the American House was . . .'

'But I agree with you. The American House is a fierce little dump. But you just wait till I finish remodelling it! It won't be any Inside Inn for size, but it will be as comfy and cheerful as any city hotel. But how would you like to travel way beyond that?--say to Europe, and see cathedrals and castles and a lot of art galleries and so on?'

'Oh, I'd love it! It would be just won'erful! I'm just as ignorant as a rabbit, Myron. I don't know a blessed thing about art or music or any of those things.'

'Well if you want to know, kid, neither do I! I certainly have picked up a fine junk-heap of information about electric dish-washers and combustion recorders and steel furniture, but the penalty I've paid is that I don't know much else. And God how I want to! I want to know! Everything.'

'But I bet you do, Myron. My! I always feel you know so much . . .'

'I don't. I'm an illiterate hash-hustler. And I like to learn. I wish I knew all about painting. I wish I could spiel French and German and Italian like Luciano Mora--he's a fellow at the Westward; you'll meet him some day and fall so hard for him I'll be jealous! And I wish I'd read all the poets, as Ora has.'

'Well, I'll bet he hasn't--of course I've only seen a little of Ora since I was a kid, but I'll bet he's a fourflusher, like my own darling brother . . . Gee, Bert never stops talking!'

'Now you look here, Effie May, that's the first time I ever knew you to be dumb. Ora is a very intellectual fellow, with the most extraordinary imagination and originality and insight into character and so on and so forth, and he's certainly read all the poets and authors--you can tell from the way he keeps referring to them. Of course to an old stick-in-the-mud like me, sometimes he seems pretty impractical and careless about financial details--I guess he'll always be hard-up and need a little help--but you can't expect a sensitive, sympathetic mind like his to stand the grind the way a hard-boiled old drudge like me does.'

'I won't have you calling yourself names! You aren't a stick-in-the-mud! You get ever so much fun out of trying new stunts--like putting that lovely new cretonne in the American House office. I won't have you calling yourself names! And let me catch Ora or Bert or anybody else doing it, and I'll scratch their eyes out!'

He looked up at her, her golden hair of a Norse goddess glistening as she bent a little over him. 'Would you, honestly?' he whispered.

She whispered back, 'I certainly would!'

He drew her down to him. So soft! She stooped, kissed his cheek with reckless heartiness, and sprang up, crying, 'Come on, silly! We'd better keep walking!'

They tramped over the hilltop, through the scarlet patches of devil's paint brush, their clasped hands swinging as though they were sixteen. In her free hand Effie May carried her old-fashioned flowery sunbonnet. Her sister Julia laughed at her for affecting anything so out of date and rustic, and Herbert scolded that if she was willing to disgrace herself socially by such childishness, at least, she might try to think a little of his official position, but she persisted in it, every summer--her only marked rebellion against the security of Black Thread Presbyterian circles. Now, when she appealed to that urban social arbiter, Myron Weagle, he assured her that there was nothing smarter than sunbonnets, as regularly worn by Van Rensselaers at Newport, and she panted with gratitude--and the unaccustomed walking--as they swung down the hillside to the Black Thread highway.