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228 Leda and the Swan
can scrape together. I'm sure of that.
There's you, after all, my dear."
" I don't come into it. Besides, there's
quite enough. If you want Mannheimer
to look at them, I'll send for him. But
I'd rather not take Mr. Showalter up."
"You're confoundedly proud, Marie."
"You've made me so, then."
"All right—all right." His eyes were
closed. "I'm pretty tired. It is more
tiring to talk than to think. It used not
to be so. I must be going fast."
Mrs. Farrant rose. "I'll call Minnie to
sit in the next room, while I go for your
prescription. Mrs. Bleeker is always glad
to let her. I'll be back soon." She put
on her hat, kissed him, and left the room.
Leo Farrant, that night, in spite of the
precious drug, had a turn for the worse.
The doctor was summoned before dawn,
and when, in the middle of the morning,
he came again, he brought a nurse with
him. " Sorry to do this without your permission,
Mrs. Farrant," he said briskly;
"but I am going, for twenty-four hours,
to try a treatment that you couldn't possibly
give."
She bowed her head. There was nothing
else to do. But while Leo slept briefly,
with the nurse beside him, she went softly
up-stairs to the big attic with the skylight
which they had, from pathetic instinct
(though Leo Farrant had never seen it)
called the " studio." She got out the Tuscan
sketches, propped them against the
eaves, and stared at them. They weren't
things meant to show, to sell. They had
been done in happy honeymoon days,
when she was by his side, to keep his
hand in. To see them there called up the
dresses she had worn, the rocks on which
she had sat, the very taste of the local
wine they had drunk together after his
morning's work. She knew that never
before this had Leo thought of them as
marketable; she even, herself, fancied now
that they weren't. But they might be,
for all she positively knew; and, if so,
Mannheimer ought to be sent for. Not
Showalter—never. She had hitherto kept
Leo's friends from well-meant ministrations,
and she would, still, to the end. Leo
Farrant's name should never figure on the
long list of unrewarded talents held up
periodically for an admonition to the philistine
public. She herself was too much
bone of that public's bone, flesh of its
flesh, to endure the idea. She wanted,
for Leo, peace with honor; though well
aware that it does not lie with genius to
have both. Oh, she would send for Mannheimer—not
for Showalter, kind, gifted,
eminent as he was—and she would find
the right words to put him off while she
welcomed him. She would open no loophole
to Mannheimer's keen Semitic eye
for tragic fact. Besides, Mannheimer, she
was pretty sure, didn't gossip; was capable
of holding his tongue with a saccular
reticence. And if he liked the things at
all, he would make it out to purchasers
that his acquisition had been, not charity,
but inimitable luck—and flair. She knew
her Mannheimer as well as Leo.
A little appeased, for the moment—for
how could the sketches look so beautiful
to her and not be beautiful for others ?—
she sat down on a trunk, and let her tense,
tired limbs relax. Slight as it was, it was
the first freedom—with Leo asleep and a
nurse beside him—that she had known for
months. It had been long indeed since she
had consulted her comfort unconsciously,
like any other person. She had never
wanted to leave her husband; she had kept
so close to him that most people probably
thought them elsewhere—anywhere except
in town still, at Mrs. Bleeker's. Showalter
was supposed to know; but he
himself was here, there, and everywhere,
painting the portraits that it amused him
to paint. And Showalter tired Leo: they
had, good friends as they were, such different
points of view. Showalter was all
with the moderns; and Leo all with the
far-off, time-tested classics, with luminous
Italy and splendid, twilit Spain. Their
world wasn't his world; though once, before
that accursed horse plunged, he had
obviously hoped to make theirs his. Now
the tumult and the shouting were all for
Showalter. Well, what did they want with
the tumult and the shouting? Weren't
they "free among the dead"?
Her moment of rest—of liberty rather
than of real rest, for the trunk wasn't
over-comfortable—spurred afresh the willing
courage in her, and drove her to a
new adventure. She would, quietly there
alone, look once more at the "Leda" for
which she had posed to her husband: the
picture that he considered his masterpiece.