odd climbed the long flight of stairs that led to hilda’s studio. the concièrge below at the entrance to the court had looked at him with the sourness common to her class, as she stood spaciously in her door. the gentleman had, evidently, definite intentions, for he had asked her no questions, and madame prinet felt his independence as a slur upon her cerberus qualifications.
odd was putting into practice his brotherly principles. he had spent the morning with katherine—the fifth morning since their engagement—and time hanging unemployed and heavy on his hands this afternoon, a visit to hilda seemed altogether desirable. it really behoved him to solve hilda’s dubious position and, if possible, help her to a more normal outlook; he felt the task far more feasible since that glimpse of gayety and confidence. indeed he was quite unconscious of madame prinet’s suspicious observation as he crossed the court, and the absorption in his pleasant duty held his mind while he wound up the interminable staircase.
his knock at hilda’s door—there was no mistaking it, for a card bearing her name was neatly nailed thereon—was promptly answered, and odd found himself face to face with a middle-aged maiden of the artistic type with which paris swarms; thin, gray-haired, energetic eyes behind eyeglasses, and a huge palette on her arm, so huge that it gave odd the impression of a misshapen table and blocked the distance out with its brave array of color. over the lady’s shoulder, odd caught sight of a canvas of heroic proportions.
“oh! i thought it was the concièrge,” said the artist, evidently disappointed; “have you come to the right door? i don’t think i know you.”
“no; i don’t know you,” odd replied, smiling and casting a futile glance around the studio, now fully revealed by the shifting of the palette to a horizontal position.
“i expected to find miss archinard. are you working with her? will she be back presently?”
the gray-haired lady smiled an answering and explanatory smile.
“miss archinard rents me her studio in the afternoon. she only uses it in the morning; she is never here in the afternoon.”
odd felt a huge astonishment.
“never here?”
“no; can i give her any message? i shall probably see her tomorrow if i come early enough.”
“oh no, thanks. thanks very much.” he realized that to reveal his dismay would stamp hilda with an unpleasantly mysterious character.
“i shall see her this evening—at her mother’s. i am sorry to have interrupted you.”
“oh! don’t mention it!” the gray-haired lady still smiled kindly; peter touched his hat and descended the stairs. perhaps she worked in a large atelier in the afternoon; strange that she had never mentioned it.
madame prinet, who had followed the visitor to the foot of the staircase and had located his errand, now stood in her door and surveyed his retreat with a fine air of impartiality; people who consulted her need not mount staircases for nothing.
“monsieur did not find mademoiselle.”
odd paused; he certainly would ask no questions of the concièrge, but she might, of her own accord, throw some light on hilda’s devious ways.
“no; i had hoped to find her. mademoiselle was in when i last called with her sister. i did not know that she went out every afternoon.”
odd thought this tactful, implying, as it did, that miss archinard’s friends were not in ignorance of her habits.
“every afternoon, monsieur; elle et son chien.”
“ah, indeed!” odd wished her good day and walked off. he had stumbled upon a mystery only hilda herself might divulge: it might be very simple, and yet a sense of anxiety weighed upon him.
at five he went to call on a pleasant and pretty woman, an american, who lived in the boulevard haussmann. he was to dine with the archinards, and katherine had said she might meet him at mrs. pope’s; if she were not there by five he need not wait for her. she was not there, and mr. pope took possession of him on his entrance and led him into the library to show him some new acquisitions in bindings. mrs. pope was not a grass widow, and her husband, a desultory dilettante, was always in evidence in her graceful, crowded salon. he was a very tall, thin man, with white hair and a mild, almost timid manner, dashed with the collector’s eagerness.
“now, mr. odd, i have a treasure here; really a perfect treasure. a genuine grolier; i captured it at the la hire sale. just look here, please; come to the light. isn’t that a beauty?”
mrs. pope, after a time, came and captured peter; she did not approve of the hiding of her lion in the library. she took him into the drawing-room, where a great many people were drinking tea and talking, and he was passed dexterously from group to group; mrs. pope, gay and stout, shuffling the pack and generously giving every one a glimpse of her trump. it was a fatiguing process, and he was glad to find himself at last in mrs. pope’s undivided possession. he was sitting on a sofa beside her, talking and drinking a well-concocted cup of tea, when a picture on the opposite wall attracted his attention. he put down the cup of tea and put up his eyeglasses to look at it. a woman in a dress of japanese blue, holding a paper fan; pink azaleas in the foreground. the decorative outline and the peculiar tonality made it unmistakable. he got up to look more closely. yes, there was the delicate flowing signature: “hilda archinard.”
he turned to mrs. pope in pleased surprise.
“i didn’t know that hilda had reached this degree of popularity. you are very lucky. did she give it to you?”
katherine’s engagement was generally known, and mrs. pope reproached herself for having failed to draw mr. odd’s attention before this to the work of his future sister.
“oh no; she is altogether too distinguished a little person to give away her pictures. that was in the champs de mars last year. i bought it. the two others sold as well. i believe she sells most of her things; for high prices, too. always the way, you know; a starving genius is allowed to starve, but material success comes to a pretty girl who doesn’t need it. katherine is so well known in paris that hilda’s public was already made for her; there was no waiting for the appreciation that is her due. her work is certainly charming.”
peter felt a growing sense of anxiety. he could not share mrs. pope’s feeling of easy pleasantness. hilda did need it. certainly there was nothing pathetic in doing what she liked best and making money at it. yet he wondered just how far hilda’s earnings helped the family; kept the butcher and baker at bay. with a new keenness of conjecture he thought of the black serge dress; somewhere about hilda’s artistic indifference there might well lurk a tragic element. did she not really care to wear the amethyst velvets that her earnings perhaps went to provide? the vague distress that had never left him since his first disappointment at the embassy dinner, that the afternoon’s discovery at the atelier had sharpened, now became acute.
“i always think it such a pretty compensation of providence,” said mrs. pope, gracefully anxious to please, “that all the talent that hilda archinard expresses, puts on her canvas, is more personal in katherine; is part of herself as it were, like a perfume about her.”
“yes,” said odd rather dully, not particularly pleased with the comparison.
“she is such a brilliant girl,” mrs. pope added, “such a splendid character. i can’t tell you how it delighted me to hear that katherine had at last found the rare some one who could really appreciate her. it strengthened my pet theory of the fundamental fitness of things.”
“yes,” odd repeated, so vaguely that mrs. pope hurriedly wondered if she had been guilty of bad taste, and changed the subject.
when peter reached the archinards’ at half-past six that evening, he found the captain and mrs. archinard alone in the drawing-room.
“hilda not in yet?” he asked. his anxiety was so oppressive that he really could not forbear opening the old subject of grievance. indeed, odd fancied that in mrs. archinard’s jeremiads there was an element of maternal solicitude. that hilda should voluntarily immolate herself, have no pretty dresses, show herself nowhere—these facts perhaps moved mrs. archinard as much as her own neglected condition. at least, so peter charitably hoped, feeling almost cruel as he deliberately broached the painful subject.
mrs. archinard now gave a dismal sigh, and the captain shook his head impatiently as he put down le temps.
odd went on quite doggedly—
“i didn’t know that hilda sold her pictures. i saw one of them at mrs. pope’s this afternoon.”
there could certainly be no indiscretion in the statement, for mrs. pope herself had mentioned the fact of hilda’s success as well known. indeed, although the captain’s face showed an uneasy little change, mrs. archinard’s retained its undisturbed pathos.
“yes,” she said, “oh yes, hilda has sold several things, i believe. she certainly needs the money. we are not rich people, peter.” mrs. archinard had immediately adopted the affectionate intimacy of the christian name. “and we could hardly indulge hilda in her artistic career if, to some extent, she did not help herself. i fancy that hilda makes few demands on her papa’s purse, and she must have many expenses. models are expensive things, i hear. i cannot say that i rejoice in her success. it seems to justify her obstinacy—makes her independent of our desires—our requests.”
odd felt that there was a depth of selfish ignorance in these remarks. the captain’s purse he knew by experience to be very nearly mythical, and the captain’s expression at this moment showed to peter’s sharpened apprehension an uncomfortable consciousness. peter was convinced that, far from making demands on papa’s purse, hilda had replenished it, and further conjectures as to hilda’s egotistic one-sidedness began to shape themselves.
“and a very lucky girl she is to be able to make money so easily,” the captain remarked, after a pause. “by jove! i wish that doing what pleased me most would give me a large income!” and the captain, who certainly had made most conscientious efforts to fulfil his nature, and had, at least, tried to do what most pleased him all his life long, and with the utmost energy, looked resentfully at his narrow well-kept finger-nails.
“does she work all day long at her studio?” peter asked, conscious of a certain hesitation in his voice. the mystery of hilda’s afternoon absences would now be either solved or determined. it was determined—definitely. there was no shade of suspicion in mrs. archinard’s sighing, “dear me, yes!” or in the captain’s, “from morning till night. wears herself out.”
hilda, all too evidently, had a secret.
“she ought to go to two studios, it would tire her less. her own half the day, and a large atelier the other.” assurance might as well be made doubly sure.
“hilda left julian’s a long time ago. she has lived in her own place since then, really lived there. i haven’t seen it; of course i could not attempt the stairs. katherine tells me there are terrible stairs. most shockingly unhealthy life she leads, i think, and most, most inconsiderate.”
at the dinner-table odd knew that hilda had only him to thank for the thorough “heckling” she received at the hands of both her parents. her silence, with its element of vacant dulness, now admitted many interpretations. it hedged round a secret unknown to either father or mother. unknown to katherine? her grave air of aloofness might imply as much, or might mean only a natural disapproval of the scolding process carried on before her lover, a loyalty to hilda that would ask no question and make no reproach.
“any one would tell you, hilda, that it is positively not decent in paris for a young girl to be out alone after dusk,” said the captain. “odd will tell you so; he was speaking about it only this evening. you must come home earlier; i insist upon it.”
odd sat opposite to her, and hilda raised her eyes and met his.
he smiled gravely at her, and shook his head.
“naughty little hilda!” but his voice expressed all the tender sympathy the very sight of her roused in him, and hilda smiled back faintly.
