Page:Angna Enters - Among the Daughters.djvu/296

 of the farmerish implication. "You look wonderful," she added self-consciously.

"I feel up," he said, a touch of defiance in his voice. He had tried not to hope Lucy would be at the station too. Now, though he felt a surge of pleasure at hearing her relayed invitation, a metropolitanized Vida made him regret the rancher's hat worn as a symbol of his spiritual return home to Congress and he wished he had stuck to the old Paris beret. Perhaps he never should have returned to Congress but remained in New York to keep in touch with what was going on.

"I can't wait to see your paintings. When will the exhibition be?" Vida asked eagerly.

"Not until the end of January. Vedder, my dealer, says he wants to wait until art collectors are over the shock of Christmas bills. But I thought I'd come early with Semy and Herold. Guess I'd better phone Vedder. The crates of paintings came on the same train."

"We accompanied the corpses," Semy interjected, his shoulders shaking with silent laughter.

Vida looked at him with distaste. That was another of his irritating habits, laughing silently at his own jokes. "I don't think that's funny," she said sharply.

"Oh, Semy isn't happy unless he's trying to hurt someone," Clem said tartly, seized again with apprehension about the New York reception of his paintings, beginning with Vedder who was "giving" him the exhibition for the $500 gallery rental fee.

"I was just kidding," Semy protested with mock innocence.

Herold handed around the drinks.

Vida wanted to make Clem feel happy. "We'll drink to the success of your exhibition."

"Not so fast, it isn't up yet."

"I know you'll knock 'em cold."

"I'll show New York that America has its own art. It doesn't have to ape the French." He spoke with an aggressiveness she had not seen him ever display.

"I'm sure it will be different from anything New York has seen," she assured him earnestly, wondering how Clem's careful renditions of home Congress subjects would seem in comparison with the wild but exciting transatlantic fantasies and even those of the mad Cynski, whose work recently had been shown at a third-floor 57th Street gallery. Then there was the painting of "the Ashcan 284