Murder in Any Degree | Page 3

night--plain as the nose on your face. Only there are other portraits to paint. Enter the wife."
"Charming," said Stibo, who had not ceased twining his mustaches in his pink fingers.
"Ah, that's the point. What of the wife?" said Steingall, violently.
"The wife--the ideal wife, mind you--is then the weapon, the refuge. To escape from the entanglement of his momentary inspiration, the artist becomes a man: my wife and bonjour. He returns home, takes off the duster of his illusion, cleans the palette of old memories, washes away his vows, protestations, and all that rot, you know, lies down on the sofa, and gives his head to his wife to be rubbed. Curtain. The comedy is over."
"But that's what they don't understand," said Steingall, with enthusiasm. "That's what they will never understand."
"Such miracles exist?" said Towsey with a short, disagreeable laugh.
"I know the wife of an artist," said Quinny, "whom I consider the most remarkable woman I know--who sits and knits and smiles. She is one who understands. Her husband adores her, and he is in love with a woman a month. When he gets in too deep, ready for another inspiration, you know, she calls up the old love on the telephone and asks her to stop annoying her husband."
"Marvelous!" said Steingall, dropping his glasses.
"No, really?" said Rankin.
"Has she a sister?" said Towsey.
Stibo raised his eyes slowly to Quinny's but veiled as was the look, De Gollyer perceived it, and smilingly registered the knowledge on the ledger of his social secrets.
"That's it, by George! that is it," said Steingall, who hurled the enthusiasm of a reformer into his pessimism. "It's all so simple; but they won't understand. And why--do you know why? Because a woman is jealous. It isn't simply of other women. No, no, that's not it; it's worse than that, ten thousand times worse. She's jealous of your art! That's it! There you have it! She's jealous because she can't understand it, because it takes you away from her, because she can't share it. That's what's terrible about marriage--no liberty, no individualism, no seclusion, having to account every night for your actions, for your thoughts, for the things you dream--ah, the dreams! The Chinese are right, the Japanese are right. It's we Westerners who are all wrong. It's the creative only that counts. The woman should be subordinated, should be kept down, taught the voluptuousness of obedience. By Jove! that's it. We don't assert ourselves. It's this confounded Anglo-Saxon sentimentality that's choking art--that's what it is."
At the familiar phrases of Steingall's outburst, Rankin wagged his head in unequivocal assent, Stibo smiled so as to show his fine upper teeth, and Towsey flung away his cigar, saying:
"Words, words."
At this moment when Quinny, who had digested Steingall's argument, was preparing to devour the whole topic, Britt Herkimer, the sculptor, joined them. He was a guest, just in from Paris, where he had been established twenty years, one of the five men in art whom one counted on the fingers when the word genius was pronounced. Mentally and physically a German, he spoke English with a French accent. His hair was cropped en brosse, and in his brown Japanese face only the eyes, staccato, furtive, and drunk with curiosity, could be seen. He was direct, opinionated, bristling with energy, one of those tireless workers who disdain their youth and treat it as a disease. His entry into the group of his more socially domesticated confrères was like the return of a wolf-hound among the housedogs.
"Still smashing idols?" he said, slapping the shoulder of Steingall, with whom and Quinny he had passed his student days, "Well, what's the row?"
"My dear Britt, we are reforming matrimony. Steingall is for the importation of Mongolian wives," said De Gollyer, who had written two favorable articles on Herkimer, "while Quinny is for founding a school for wives on most novel and interesting lines."
"That's odd," said Herkimer, with a slight frown.
"On the contrary, no," said De Gollyer; "we always abolish matrimony from four to six."
"You didn't understand me," said Herkimer, with the sharpness he used in his classes.
From his tone the group perceived that the hazards had brought to him some abrupt coincidence. They waited with an involuntary silence, which in itself was a rare tribute.
"Remember Rantoul?" said Herkimer, rolling a cigarette and using a jerky diction.
"Clyde Rantoul?" said Stibo.
"Don Furioso Barebones Rantoul, who was in the Quarter with us?" said Quinny.
"Don Furioso, yes," said Rankin. "Ever see him?"
"Never."
"He's married," said Quinny; "dropped out."
"Yes, he married," said Herkimer, lighting his cigarette. "Well, I've just seen him."
"He's a plutocrat or something," said Towsey, reflectively.
"He's rich--ended," said Steingall as he slapped the table. "By Jove! I remember now."
"Wait," said Quinny, interposing.
[Illustration: From his tone the group perceived that the hazards had brought to him some abrupt coincidences]
"I went up to