Chapter VIII

Clancy's ideas of studios had been gained from the perusal of fiction. So the workmanlike appearance of the room on the top floor of Sophie Carey's house on Waverly Place was somewhat of a surprise to her.

Its roof was of glass, but curtains, cunningly manipulated by not too sightly cords, barred or invited the overhead light as the artist desired. The front was a series of huge windows, which were also protected by curtains. It faced the north.

About the room, faces to wall, were easels. Mrs. Carey turned one round until the light fell upon it.

It was a large canvas, which Clancy supposed was allegorical. Three figures stood out against a background of rolling smoke above a scene of desolation--a man, a woman, and a child, their garments torn and stained, but their faces smiling.

"Like it?" asked Mrs. Carey.

"Why--it's wonderful!" cried Clancy.

"I call it 'Hope,'" said Mrs. Carey.

Clancy stared at it. She got the painter's idea. The man and his wife and their child, looking smilingly forward into a future that-- She turned to Mrs. Carey. She pointed to the foreground.

"Isn't there more--smoke--trouble--there?"

"There is--but they refuse to look at it. That, after all, is hope, isn't it, Miss Deane? Hope founded on sheer blindness never has seemed to me a particularly admirable quality. But hope founded on courage is worth while. You really like it?"

Clancy turned again to the picture. Suddenly she pointed to the figure of the man.

"Why, that's Mr. Randall!" she exclaimed.

"Yes. Of course, it isn't really a likeness. I didn't want that. I merely wanted the magnificence of his body. It is magnificent, isn't it? Such a splendid waist-line above such slender but strong thighs. Remarkable, in these days, when, outside of professional athletes, the man with a strong upper body usually has huge, ungraceful hips."

Mrs. Carey picked up a telephone as she spoke, and so did not observe the blush that stole over Clancy's face. Of course, artists, even women artists, spoke unconventionally, but to discuss in such detail the body of a man, known to both of them was not mere unconventionality--it was shocking. That is, it was shocking according to the standards of Zenith.

Clancy listened while her hostess spoke to some one whom she called "Sally," and who must be Miss Henderson.

"You said you wanted some one, Sally. Well, I have the some one. Prettiest thing you ever looked at.... The business? As much as you do, probably. What difference does it make? She's pretty. She's lovely. No man could refuse to rent an apartment or have his place done over if she asked him.... Right away. Miss Deane, her name is.... Not at all, old thing."

She hung up and turned beamingly to Clancy.

"Simple, isn't it? You are now, Miss Deane, an interior decorator. At least, within an hour you will be." She wrote rapidly upon the pad by the telephone. "Here's the address. You don't need a letter of introduction."

Dazed, Clancy took the slip of paper. She noted that the address written down was a number on East Forty-seventh Street. Little as she yet knew of the town's geography, she knew that Fifth Avenue was the great dividing-line. Therefore, any place east of it must be quite a distance from Times Square, which was two long blocks west of Fifth Avenue. She would be safe from recognition at Miss Sally Henderson's--probably. But she refused to think of probabilities.

"I don't know how to thank you, Mrs. Carey," she said.

Sophie Carey laughed carelessly.

"Don't try, my dear. Don't ever learn. The really successful person--and you're going to be a great success--never expresses gratitude. He--or she--accepts whatever comes along."

She crossed her knees and lighted a cigarette.

"I couldn't follow that philosophy," said Clancy. "I wouldn't want to."

"Why not?" demanded Sophie Carey.

"It doesn't seem--right," said Clancy. "Besides," she added hastily, "I'm not sure that I'll be a success."

Mrs. Carey stared at her.

"Why not?" she asked sharply. "God gives us brains; we use them. God gives us strength; we use it. God gives us good looks; why shouldn't we use them? As long as this is a man-ruled world, feminine good looks will assay higher than feminine brains. If you don't believe it, compare the incomes received by the greatest women novelists, artists, doctors, lawyers, with the incomes received by women who have no brains at all, but whose beauty makes them attractive in moving pictures or upon the stage. Beauty is an asset that mustn't be ignored, my dear Miss Deane. And you have it. Have it? Indeed you have! Didn't our hitherto immune David become infected with the virus of love the moment he saw you?"

Clancy looked prim.

"I'm sure," she said, almost rebukingly, "that Mr. Randall couldn't have done anything like that--so soon."

Mrs. Carey laughed.

"I'll forgive you because of your last two words, my dear. They prove that you're not the little prig that you sound. Why, you _know_ that David is extremely interested. And you are interested yourself. Otherwise, you would not be jealous of me."

"Jealous?" Clancy was indignant.

Mrs. Carey smiled.

"That's what I said. When you recognized him in the painting-- My dear, I'm too old for David. I'm thirty-one. Besides, I have a husband living. You need not worry."

She rose, and before Clancy could frame any reply, threw an arm about the girl's shoulders and led her from the studio. Descending the two flights of stairs to the street door, Clancy caught a glimpse of a lovely boudoir, and a drawing-room whose huge grand piano and subdued coloring of decoration lived up to her ideals of what society knew as correct. The studio on the top floor might be a workroom, but the rest of the house was a place that, merely to own, thought Clancy, was to be assured of happiness.

Indeed, after having left Mrs. Carey and boarding a cross-town car at Eighth Street, Clancy wondered that Mrs. Carey did not give the impression of complete happiness. She was famous, rich, sought-after, yet she seemed, to Clancy, dissatisfied. Probably, thought Clancy, some trouble with her husband. Surely it must be the fault of Mr. Carey, for no woman so sweet and generous as Sophie Carey could possibly be at fault.

For a moment, she had been indignant at Mrs. Carey's charge of jealousy. But the one salient characteristic of Clancy Deane was honesty. It was a characteristic that would bring to her unhappiness and happiness both. Just now, that honesty hurt her pride. For she had felt a certain restlessness, uneasiness, that had been indefinable until Mrs. Carey had named it. It had been jealousy. She had resented that this rich, beautiful, and famous woman should assume a slightly proprietary air toward David Randall. Clairvoyantly, Clancy knew that she would never _really_ love Sophie Carey. Still, she would try to.

At Astor Place, she took the subway, riding, according to instructions that Mrs. Carey had given her, to the Grand Central Station. Here she alighted and, a block west, turned up Madison Avenue.

If it had not occurred to her before that one found one's way about most easily in New York, she would have learned it now. With its avenues running north and south, and its cross-streets running east and west, and with practically all of both, save in the far-down-town district, numbered, it was almost impossible for any one who could read Arabic numerals to become lost in this, the greatest city of the Western hemisphere.

She found the establishment of "Sally Henderson, Interior Decorator--Apartments," a few doors east of Madison Avenue.

A young gentleman, soft-voiced, cow-eyed, moved gracefully forward to greet her. The cut of his sleeves, as narrow as a woman's, and fitting at the shoulder with the same pucker, the appearance of the waist-line as snug as her own, made Clancy realize that the art of dressing men has reappeared in the world as pronouncedly as in the days when they wore gorgeous laces and silken breeches, and bejeweled-buckled shoes.

The young gentleman--Clancy later learned that he was named Guernsey, and pronounced it "Garnsey"--ushered her into an inner office. This room was furnished less primly than the outer office. The first room she had entered seemed, with its filing-cases and busy stenographer pounding away at a typewriter and its adding machine and maps upon the wall, a place of business. But this inner room seemed like a boudoir. Clancy discovered that the outer room was where persons who desired to rent apartments were taken care of; this inner room was the spot where those desirous of the services of an interior decorator were received.

Miss Sally Henderson sat at a table upon which were samples of wall-paper. She was tall, Clancy could tell, had what in Zenith would be termed a "skinny" figure, and her hair, of a stringy mud-color, was almost plastered, man-fashion, upon a narrow, high forehead. Upon her nose were perched a pair of glasses. Her lips, surprisingly, were well-formed, full, and red. It was the mouth of a sensuous, beauty-loving, passionate woman, and the rest of her was the masculinity of an old maid.

She smiled as Clancy approached.

"So Sophie sent you to my matrimonial bureau, eh?" she said. Clancy stared. "Oh, yes," Miss Henderson went on; "three girls have been married from this business in the last eight months. I think there's a curse on the place. Tell me--are you engaged, in love, or anything?" Clancy shook her head. "That's too bad," sighed Miss Henderson.

"Why?" asked Clancy.

"Oh, if you were already engaged, you'd not be husband-hunting the men who come apartment-hunting."

"I assure you that I'm not husband-hunting," said Clancy indignantly.

Miss Henderson shrugged.

"Of course you are, my dear. All of us are. Even myself. Though I've given it up lately. My peculiar style of beauty doesn't lure the men, I'm beginning to understand. Well, you can't help it if you're beautiful, can you? And I can't help it if one of my clients runs away with you. Just stay three months, and I'll give you, to start with, fifty dollars a week."

Clancy stared at her.

"You'll give me fifty a week--right now?"

"My dear, any musical-comedy manager would give you forty to stand in the front row. You could earn a trifle more than that by not being particular. I take it that you are particular. Should a particular girl earn less than the other kind? Is it common justice? It is not. Therefore, I will pay you fifty dollars a week. You ought to rent a hundred per cent. of the apartments you show. Also, every third client you deal with ought to be wheedled into having some interior decorating done. I can afford to pay you that."

Clancy gasped. Fifty dollars a week was not, of course, a tithe of what she'd expect to earn in the moving pictures, but it was a big salary to one who possessed about five dollars in the world.

"But you'll have to buy yourself some decent clothes," continued Miss Henderson. "That suit, if you'll pardon me, my dear, looks like the very devil. I have a dressmaker, unique thing-- Oh, don't stare at the clothes I have on; I have to dress this way during office-hours. It makes me look business-like. But outside of business--it's different. You may trust my dressmaker. Cheaper--much cheaper, too. What do you know about interior decorating?" she asked suddenly.

"Nothing," Clancy confessed frankly.

"Excellent!" said Miss Henderson. "Interior decorators can design theatrically beautiful rooms, but not homes. How can they? Home is the expression of its owner. So the less you know the better."

Clancy drew in a long breath. Feebly, she comprehended that she was in the presence of a "character," a person unique in her experience. She was glad that she did not have to talk, that her new employer's verbosity covered up her own silence. She was grateful when, as Miss Henderson paused, the young man, Guernsey, entered.

"Mr. Grannis to see you, Miss Henderson," he said.

Miss Henderson shrugged petulantly. She looked at Clancy.

"Your first commission, Miss Deane," she said. "He wants to rent an apartment. He has oodles of money. Here is a list of places. Mr. Guernsey will order a car for you. You'll find the rental-rates on this card. God be with you, my child!"

She grinned, and Clancy started for the door. Her footsteps were faltering and her face white. Grannis was an unusual name. And Grannis had been one of the players in the Zenda poker game three nights ago!