Part 49 (1/2)
When she tore open the envelope a number of newspaper clippings fluttered out. On one she caught a glimpse of the name of Ribot in a headline, which had such a ba.n.a.l effect that she let the clipping lie where it had fallen.
”As I have written already, the first week in October was the only time I had open,” she was reading the manager's letter mechanically at first. ”But it does not seem to matter when Miss Helen Ribot exhibits.
As for your _succes d'estime_, read the enclosed reviews. More to the point, perhaps, is that I have already sold fifteen of your drawings.
Thinking that this might be as welcome as the clippings, I enclose a check for a thousand dollars on account.
”As to your question about settling in America, I know that M.
Vailliant advises against it; but my answer to him is that art is international and any artist works best in the surroundings which he likes best. One does or does not become an American. If you catch our spirit, as I think you will, then your place is secure, whether you do what you call real drawings or something more popular. I prefer your real drawings--and more of them, please.
”I want another exhibition in the spring and shall reserve the last week in February for you unless I hear otherwise, hoping, however, that you will be with us before then. Let me know your steamer and I shall meet you at the pier. My wife joins me in asking you to stay with us until you have found a satisfactory studio.
”P.S. Won't you send a photograph of yourself? One of the magazines which is making a special article on your work wants it. Perhaps you have something which some friend has drawn of you; or, better, which you have done of yourself.”
The letter pointed the way; it threw out the bridge on the other side of the promised land.
”And a picture of myself!” she thought, when she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. ”No, I'll not send that.” They would have to see her, though, and they would say in America, as everywhere else, How plain she is!
”I don't have to exhibit my face, though!” she declared defiantly. ”I needn't meet people except those who have to do with my work.”
Those unfinished sketches which she took out of her trunk for examination still seemed to have been done by another hand. She had lost her zest. The world wanted her drawings and she was not caring whether or not she ever made another one--that was the truth of her mood to-night. But she thought of herself as tired. A long walk after dinner and a good sleep would clear the cobwebs out of her mind. Yet she was looking out of her window at the stars after midnight and saw the sun-up after a restless night.
Once in America she would begin afresh; all her old verve and love of art would return. She could not start too soon. Leave to go to Paris, first! Bricktop could arrange this and meanwhile she could get her discharge from the hospital. She would go--go! She could not wait another day.
”Well, soon I'll have his harness off and then Phil can speak,” said Bricktop, who had a slack half-hour and was in a talking mood, which meant that you had to follow his lead or rather trail on his swell like a small boat in tow of a fast cruiser. ”And let me tell you that if he hadn't had a good const.i.tution and a nerve of steel there wouldn't have been a chance. Another thing--you! You gave the inspiration to his will that kept the blood going out into the veins of all that tissue that had to wait to be fitted into its place. Why, you and I, Helen, have done a stunt that makes me wonder if the good Lord did not give a special dispensation to my clumsy old fingers in this case!”
She had heard this before. It helped her now and it hurt, too, as she listened, trying to smile.
”And he----”
”Yes, while I get my breath you may put in a word edgewise,” continued Bricktop, with a gesture of amused condescension.
”He will be quite as he was before?”
”Quite, as I keep repeating. A few little scars that will go away in time. You see, it was a peculiar kind of side-wipe; doesn't need much skin grafting. Why, what you can do with people's faces! If everybody were taken young n.o.body need be bad-looking. We straighten crooked teeth, reconstruct mouths. Why not faces? Why, there was a woman in New York who felt badly about her face and I gave her a brand-new one.
Could have had plenty of patients of that kind and made loads of money.
It might have been 'Bricktop on Beauty' instead of 'Bricktop on Jaws.'
Suggestion was too alliterative--I stuck to jaws.”
Helen was laughing. One had to laugh when Bricktop, red-headed, freckled, with a manner as distinctly his own as any great comedian's, was going full tilt. Besides, they were comrades, these two; they understood each other.
”Why shouldn't everybody be pleasing to the eye? They will be, one of these days,” he went on excitedly. ”Why, Helen, I could make you good-looking----”
He clapped his hand over his mouth.
”My mother said that I would talk myself to death some day!” he gasped.
”Well, I've said it!”
She was smiling at his confusion in a way that cured it.