The Common Law

"Why do you always smile at me, Valerie?" he asked.

"Because you're good, John, and I like you."

"I know you do. You're a fine woman, Valerie…. So is Rita."

"Rita is a darling."

"She's all right," he nodded. A moment later he added: "She comes from Massachusetts."

Valerie laughed: "The sacred codfish smiled on your cradle, too, didn't it, John?"

"Yes, thank God," he said seriously…. "I was born in the old town of Hitherford."

"How funny!" exclaimed the girl.

"What is there funny about that?" demanded John.

"Why, Rita was born in Hitherford."

"Hitherford Centre," corrected John. "Her father was a clergyman there."

"Oh; so you knew it?"

"I knew, of course, that she was from Massachusetts," said John, "because she speaks English properly. So I asked her where she was born and she told me…. My grandfather knew hers."

"Isn't it—curious," mused the girl.

"What's curious?"

"Your meeting this way—as sculptor and model."

"Rita is a very fine girl," he said. "Would you mind handing me my pipe? No, don't. I forgot that Rita won't let me. You see my chest is rather uncomfortable."

He glanced at the clock, leaned over and gulped down some medicine, then placidly folding his hands, lay back:

"How's Kelly?"

"I haven't seen him to-day, John."

"Well, he ought to be here very soon. He can take you and Rita to dinner."

"I'm so sorry you can't come."

"So am I."

Valerie laid a cool hand on his face; he seemed slightly feverish. Rita came in at that moment, smiled at Valerie, and went straight to Burleson's couch:

"Have you taken your medicine?"

"Certainly."

She glanced at the bottles. "Men are so horridly untruthful," she remarked to Valerie; "and this great, lumbering six-footer hasn't the sense of a baby—"

"I have, too!" roared John, indignantly; and Valerie laughed but Rita scarcely smiled.

"He's always working in a puddle of wet clay and he's always having colds and coughing, and there's always more or less fever," she said, looking down at the huge young fellow. "I know that he ought to give up his work and go away for a while—"

"Where?" demanded Burleson indignantly.

"Oh, somewhere—where there's plenty of—air. Like Arizona, and Colorado."

"Do you think there's anything the matter with my lungs?" he roared.

"No!—you perfect idiot!" said Rita, seating herself; "and if you shout that way at me again I'll go to dinner with Kelly and Valerie and leave you here alone. I will not permit you to be uncivil, John. Please remember it."

Neville arrived in excellent spirits, greeted everybody, and stood beside Valerie, carelessly touching the tip of his fingers to hers where they hung at her side.

"What's the matter with you, John? Rita, isn't he coming? I've a taxi outside ruining me."

"John has a bad cold and doesn't care to go—"

"Yes, I do!" growled John.

"And he doesn't care to risk contracting pneumonia," continued Rita icily, "and he isn't going, anyway. And if he behaves like a man instead of an overgrown baby, I have promised to stay and dine with him here. Otherwise I'll go with you."

"Sure. You'd better stay indoors, John. You ought to buck up and get rid of that cold. It's been hanging on all winter."

Burleson rumbled and grumbled and shot a mutinous glance at Rita, who paid it no attention.

"Order us a nice dinner at the Plaza, Kelly—if you don't mind," she said cheerfully, going with them to the door. She added under her breath: "I wish he'd see a doctor, but the idea enrages him. I don't see why he has such a cold all the time—and such flushed cheeks—" Her voice quivered and she checked herself abruptly.

"Suppose I ring up Dr. Colbert on my own hook?" whispered Neville.

"Would you?"

"Certainly. And you can tell John that I did it on my own responsibility."

Neville and Valerie went away together, and Rita returned to the studio. Burleson was reading again, and scowling; and he scarcely noticed her. She seated herself by the fire and looked into the big bare studio beyond where the electric light threw strange shadows over shrouded shapes of wet clay and blocks of marble in the rough or partly hewn into rough semblance of human figures.

It was a damp place at best; there were always wet sponges, wet cloths, pails of water, masses of moist clay about. Her blue eyes wandered over it with something approaching fear—almost the fear of hatred.

"John," she said, "why won't you go to a dry climate for a few months and get rid of your cold?"

"Do you mean Arizona?"

"Or some similar place: yes."

"Well, how am I to do any work out there? I've got commissions on hand. Where am I going to find any place to work out in Arizona?"