The couple began housekeeping in a flat. It was a lonely flat. And they were happy; for they had their Art and they had each other.
Joe was painting in the class of the great Magister—you know his fame. His fees are high; his lessons are light—his high-lights have brought him fame. Delia was studying under Rosenstock—a very strict piano teacher.
They were very happy as long as their money lasted. So is everybody. Their aims were very clear. They hoped their arts could bring them wealth and fame.
But the best, in my opinion, was the home life in the little flat—the warm chats after the day’s study; the comfortable dinners and fresh, light breakfasts; the interchange of ambitions4; the mutual help and inspiration; and meat and cheese sandwiches at 11 p. m.
But after a while Art flagged5. It sometimes does, even if nobody flags it. Everything going out and nothing coming in. Money was lacking to pay Mr. Magister and Rosenstock their prices. When one loves one’s Art no service seems too hard. So, Delia said she must give music lessons to make a living.
For two or three days she went out hunting for pupils. One evening she came home happily.
“Joe, dear,” she said, “I’ve a pupil. And, oh, the loveliest people! General—General Pinkney’s daughter—on Seventy-first Street. Such a splendid house, Joe—you ought to see the front door! Byzantine6. I think you would call it. And inside! Oh, Joe, I never saw anything like it before.
“My pupil is his daughter Clementina. I dearly love her already. She’s a delicate thing—dresses always in white; and the sweetest, simplest manners! Only eighteen years old. I’m to give three lessons a week; and, just think, Joe! $5 a lesson. I don’t mind it a bit; for when I get two or three more pupils I can once again take up my lessons with Rosenstock. Now, smooth out that wrinkle between your brows7, dear, and let’s have a nice supper.”
“That’s all right for you, Dele,” said Joe, opening a can of peas with a carving knife, “but how about me? Do you think I’m going to let you hurry for wages while I enjoy the taste of high art? No! I guess I can do something, and bring in a dollar or two.”
Delia came and hung about his neck.
“Joe, dear, you are silly. You must keep on at your studies. It is not as if I had left my music and gone to work at something else. While I teach I learn. I am always with my music. And we can live as happily as millionaires on $15 a week. You mustn’t think of leaving Mr. Magister.”
“All right,” said Joe, reaching for the vegetable dish. “But I hate for you to be giving lessons. It isn’t Art. But you’re great and a dear to do it.”
“When one loves one’s Art no service seems too hard,” said Delia.
“Magister praised the sky in that sketch8 I made in the park,” said Joe. “And Tinkle gave me permission to hang two of them in his window. I may sell one if the right kind of a rich fellow sees them.”
“I’m sure you will,” said Delia sweetly. “And now let’s be thankful for General Pinkney and this roast.”
During all of the next week the couple had an early breakfast. Joe was excited about some sketches he was doing in Central Park, and Delia prepared breakfast for him, praised, and kissed at seven o’clock. It was most times seven o’clock when he returned in the evening.
At the end of the week Delia, sweetly proud but tired, threw three five-dollar bills on the 8 by 10 (inches) centre table of the 8 by 10 (feet) flat room9.
“Sometimes,” she said, “Clementina tires me. I’m afraid she doesn’t practise enough, and I have to tell her the same things so often. And then she always dresses entirely in white, and that does get monotonous10. But General Pinkney is the dearest old man! I wish you could know him, Joe. He comes in sometimes when I am with Clementina at the piano and stands there pulling his white beard. ‘And how are the semiquavers and the demi-semiquavers progressing11?’ he always asks.
“I wish you could see the wainscoting in that drawing-room, Joe!”
And then Joe, with the air of a Monte Cristo12, drew out a ten, a five, a two and a one—all legal notes13—and laid them beside Delia’s earnings.
“Sold that water-colour to a man from Peoria,” he announced happily.
“Don’t joke with me,” said Delia—“not from Peoria!”
“All the way. I wish you could see him, Dele. Fat man with a woolen coat. He saw the sketch in Tinkle’s window and thought it was a windmill14 and bought it anyhow. He ordered another—an oil sketch of the Lackawanna freight depot15—to take back with him. Music lessons! Oh, I guess Art is still in it.”
“I’m so glad you’ve kept on,” said Delia heartily. “You’re sure to win, dear. Thirty-three dollars! We never had so much to spend before. We’ll have a rich dinner to-night.”
On the next Saturday evening Joe reached home first. He spread his $18 on the table and washed what seemed to be a great deal of dark paint from his hands.
Half an hour later Delia arrived, her right hand tied up in a shapeless bundle of wraps and bandages16.
“How is this?” asked Joe after the usual greetings.
Delia laughed, but not very joyously.
“Clementina,” she explained, “insisted upon a Welsh rabbit17 after her lesson. She is such a strange girl. Welsh rabbits at five in the afternoon. The General was there. You should have seen him run for the chafing dish18, Joe, just as if there wasn’t a servant in the house. I know Clementina isn’t in good health; she is so nervous. In serving the rabbit she spilled19 a great lot of it, boiling hot, over my hand and wrist. It hurt terribly, Joe. And the dear girl was so sorry! But General Pinkney!—Joe, that old man nearly went crazy. He rushed downstairs and sent somebody out to a drug store for some oil and things to bind it up with. It doesn’t hurt so much now.”
“What’s this?” asked Joe, taking the hand softly and pulling at some white strands20 under the bandages.
“It’s something soft,” said Delia, “that had oil on it. Oh, Joe, did you sell another sketch?” She had seen the money on the table.
“Did I?” said Joe. “Just ask the man from Peoria. He got his sketch today, and he isn’t sure but he thinks he wants another parkscape and a view on the Hudson21. What time this afternoon did you burn your hand, Dele?”
“Five o’clock, I think,” said Dele . “The iron—I mean the rabbit came off the fire about that time. You ought to have seen General Pinkney, Joe, when—”
“Sit down here a moment, Dele,” said Joe. He drew her to the couch, sat down beside her and put his arm across her shoulders. “What have you been doing for the last two weeks, Dele?” he asked.
She sat in silence for a moment or two with an eye full of love, and murmured a phrase or two of General Pinkney; but at last down went her head and out came the truth and tears.
“I couldn’t get any pupils,” she said. “And I couldn’t bear to have you give up your lessons; and I got a place ironing shirts in that big Twenty-fourth Street laundry22. And I think I did very well to make up both General Pinkney and Clementina, don’t you, Joe? And when a girl in the laundry set down a hot iron on my hand this afternoon I was all the way home making up that story about the Welsh rabbit. You’re not angry, are you, Joe? And if I hadn’t got the work you mightn’t have sold your sketches to that man from Peoria.”
“He wasn’t from Peoria,” said Joe slowly.
“Well, it doesn’t matter where he was from. How clever you are, Joe—and—kiss me, Joe—and what made you ever think that I wasn’t giving music lessons to Clementina?”
“I didn’t,” said Joe, “until to-night. And I wouldn’t have then, only I sent up this cotton waste and oil from the engine-room this afternoon for a girl upstairs who had her hand burned with an iron. I’ve been firing the engine in that laundry for the last two weeks.”
“And then you didn’t—”
“My purchaser23 from Peoria,” said Joe, “and General Pinkney are both creations24 of the same art—but you wouldn’t call it either painting or music.”
And then they both laughed, and Joe began:
“When one loves one’s Art no service seems—”
But Delia stopped him with her hand on his lips. “No,” she said—“just ‘When one loves.’”
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