S she looked at her brother's thin, handsome face, there was mingled anger and pity in Mrs. Carnovan's fine blue eyes. The anger was aroused by his stubborn refusal to accept the inevitable; the pity was stirred by the basic cause of this stubbornness. These creative geniuses, high-strung and imaginative, were most difficult to handle. Silk and steel: she rather liked the simile. Away back in his childhood, he had been silk and steel.
“You're a fool, Geordie, to shut yourself away from human beings like this.”
“We've threshed that out a dozen times, Puss. What's the use of turning it over and over?”
Mallory held a folded newspaper in his right hand, and with this he tapped the piano against which he leaned. His left hand was hidden in the pocket of his velvet lounging-jacket.
“It isn't as if you'd always been like this,” went on Mrs. Carnovan. “Before the war, something was always going on in the studio here.” She waved her hand indirectly toward the paintings and sketches against the tapestried walls. “You are a great painter, Geordie. You are a great musician too. God gave you about everything—genius, money, good looks.”
“And one day took them away.” Mallory shrugged.
“Why, Geordie, you can still paint wonderfully. You haven't been up to the house in two months. We, who love you! That isn't kind. You never even telephone how-d'ye-do. I have to come down here to find out whether you're alive or dead. And I worry, day in and day out.”
His face softened. “Dear Puss, if I could change my nature, I would.”
“But your genius! You owe it to the world.”
“I have paid my debt to the world.” The bitterness in his soul broke forth in a savage note. “These arguments tear me to pieces. I wish to God you would not harp on the subject. I can't hold my palette. I have to set it on a stand under the canvas; and the awkwardness of it keeps the fury boiling in me. So my inspirations are ashes before I begin. And I can't play any more. I can't touch the piano. Always, when I was tired and discontented, I used to sit down and play my troubles away.”
“Geordie, in the war you were a brave man. But you do not take up life bravely now.”
His fury having subsided, he shrugged.
“If you were poor—” his sister went on.
“But I'm not poor,” he interrupted. “We get nowhere by supposition. I can't give away my money to test your theory.” His fury rose again, and his eyes burned. “If my arm had gone, I would have taken it like a sport; but to have all the sense of feeling, and still to be one-handed all the rest of my life! Oh, I can wriggle the fingers, make a fist of it; but that's all. I loved Grace; or thought I did. When she saw what had happened to me, she fainted—not out of pity, but at the thought of going through life with a cripple. So I let her go.”
“It was for your country,” said Mrs. Carnovan, tears in her eyes. “No one who loved you would ever mind, Geordie.”
“I'm a damned fool, Puss, but I can't change the fact.”
“Couldn't you work if you had some one to play for you?” she asked.
“Yes.”
He laughed, and stooped for the newspaper which he had dropped.
“A bit odd, that you should suggest that. The notion has been boiling in my head for several days. But I tell you frankly, Puss, I couldn't tolerate a man here, no matter how well he played. In a little he would be smoking cigarettes and talking. Besides, I could not find a good man pianist. If he were good, he'd scorn this kind of work.”
“But a woman—alone with you here?”
“Oh, that could be made proper enough. Miss Challoner, who has the studio below, could be induced to come up for an hour, three or four times a week. She is sixty, gray-haired and sensible. So the affair would have no color to it. I don't want anyone to play while I work. It's when I lay down the brushes. She can be as homely as a potato, if she can play the piano.”
A woman. Mrs. Carnovan's distaste was imminent of expression. There were so many kinds of women in New York; and her brother George was so guileless, for all his birth and station. It did not matter that he was thirty-seven; he would be easy prey to a clever, unscrupulous woman. There were, she knew, many fine women musicians in town, struggling for sustenance; but none of these, aware of the countless pitfalls in New York, would step across yonder threshold.