The Dark Star

“I thought you an expert. Do you live here?”

“Yes… I mean I live at Brookhollow.”

“Funny. I don’t remember you. Besides, I don’t know your name – people mumble so when they introduce a man.”

“I’m Ruhannah Carew.”

“Carew,” he repeated, while a crease came between his eyebrows. “Of Brookhollow– Oh, I know! Your father is the retired missionary – red house facing the bridge.”

“Yes.”

“Certainly,” he said, taking another look at her; “you’re the little girl daddy and I used to see across the fields when we were shooting woodcock in the willows.”

“I remember you,” she said.

“I remember you!”

She coloured gratefully.

“Because,” he added, “dad and I were always afraid you’d wander into range and we’d pepper you from the bushes. You’ve grown a lot, haven’t you?” He had a nice, direct smile though his speech and manners were a trifle breezy, confident, and sans façon. But he was at that age – which succeeds the age of bumptiousness – with life and career before him, attainment, realisation, success, everything the mystery of life holds for a young man who has just flung open the gates and who takes the magic road to the future with a stride instead of his accustomed pace.

He was already a man with a profession, and meant that she should become aware of it.

Later in the evening somebody told her what a personage he had become, and she became even more deeply thrilled, impressed, and tremulously desirous that he should seek her out again, not venturing to seek him, not dreaming of encouraging him to notice her by glance or attitude – not even knowing, as yet, how to do such things. She thought he had already forgotten her existence.

But that this thin, freckled young thing with grey eyes ought to learn how much of a man he was remained somewhere in the back of Neeland’s head; and when he heard his hostess say that somebody would have to see Rue Carew home, he offered to do it. And presently went over and asked the girl if he might – not too patronisingly.

In the cutter, under fur, with the moonlight electrically brilliant and the world buried in white, she ventured to speak of his art, timidly, as in the presence of the very great.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “I studied in Paris. Wish I were back there. But I’ve got to draw for magazines and illustrated papers; got to make a living, you see. I teach at the Art League, too.”

“How happy you must be in your career!” she said, devoutly meaning it, knowing no better than to say it.

“It’s a business,” he corrected her, kindly.

“But – yes – but it is art, too.”

“Oh, art!” he laughed. It was the fashion that year to shrug when art was mentioned – reaction from too much gabble.

“We don’t busy ourselves with art; we busy ourselves with business. When they use my stuff I feel I’m getting on. You see,” he admitted with reluctant honesty, “I’m young at it yet – I haven’t had very much of my stuff in magazines yet.”

After a silence, cursed by an instinctive truthfulness which always spoiled any little plan to swagger:

“I’ve had several – well, about a dozen pictures reproduced.”

One picture accepted by any magazine would have awed her sufficiently. The mere fact that he was an artist had been enough to impress her.

“Do you care for that sort of thing – drawing, painting, I mean?” he inquired kindly.

She drew a quick breath, steadied her voice, and said she did.

“Perhaps you may turn out stuff yourself some day.”

She scarcely knew how to take the word “stuff.” Vaguely she surmised it to be professional vernacular.

She admitted shyly that she cared for nothing so much as drawing, that she longed for instruction, but that such a dream was hopeless.

At first he did not comprehend that poverty barred the way to her; he urged her to cultivate her talent, bestowed advice concerning the Art League, boarding houses, studios, ways, means, and ends, until she felt obliged to tell him how far beyond her means such magic splendours lay.

He remained silent, sorry for her, thinking also that the chances were against her having any particular talent, consoling a heart that was unusually sympathetic and tender with the conclusion that this girl would be happier here in Brookhollow than scratching around the purlieus of New York to make both ends meet.

“It’s a tough deal,” he remarked abruptly. “ – I mean this art stuff. You work like the dickens and kick your heels in ante-rooms. If they take your stuff they send you back to alter it or redraw it. I don’t know how anybody makes a living at it – in the beginning.”

“Don’t you?”

“I? No.” He reddened; but she could not notice it in the moonlight. “No,” he repeated; “I have an allowance from my father. I’m new at it yet.”

“Couldn’t a man – a girl – support herself by drawing pictures for magazines?” she inquired tremulously.

“Oh, well, of course there are some who have arrived – and they manage to get on. Some even make wads, you know.”

“W-wads?” she repeated, mystified.

“I mean a lot of money. There’s that girl on the Star, Jean Throssel, who makes all kinds of wealth, they say, out of her spidery, filmy girls in ringlets and cheesecloth dinner gowns.”

“Oh!”

“Yes, Jean Throssel, and that Waythorne girl, Belinda Waythorne, you know – does all that stuff for The Looking Glass– futurist graft, no mouths on her people – she makes hers, I understand.”

It was rather difficult for Rue to follow him amid the vernacular mazes.

“Then, of course,” he continued, “men like Alexander Fairless and Philip Lightwood who imitates him, make fortunes out of their drawing. I could name a dozen, perhaps. But the rest – hard sledding, Miss Carew!”

“Is it very hard?”

“Well, I don’t know what on earth I’d do if dad didn’t back me as his fancy.”

“A father ought to, if he can afford it.”

“Oh, I’ll pay my way some day. It’s in me. I feel it; I know it. I’ll make plenty of money,” he assured her confidently.

“I’m sure you will.”

“Thank you,” he smiled. “My friends tell me I’ve got it in me. I have one friend in particular – the Princess Mistchenka – who has all kinds of confidence in my future. When I’m blue she bolsters me up. She’s quite wonderful. I owe her a lot for asking me to her Sunday nights and for giving me her friendship.”

“A – a princess?” whispered the girl, who had drawn pictures of thousands but was a little startled to realise that such fabled creatures really exist.

“Is she very beautiful?” she added.