Page:Stringer - Wine of Life.djvu/89



TORROW found contact with Hardy to be both stimulating and disquieting. He honoured that older man for his accomplishments and he liked him for his frank spirit of friendliness. But he left that older man's presence carrying with him an undefined and accordingly an incontestable impression of his own callow and inexperienced youth. He was a beginner, without standing, with everything still to do. Hardy was right; New York was made for workers. He remembered the novelist's repeated advice to "organize," even for a life of art. For organization eliminated waste, and artists, above all, were apt to be wasters. Storrow, however, had no intention of being what Hardy had called "a studio lizard." The hunger for power was strong in his vigorous young body. He already was old enough at the game to know that triumph came through toil, and toil alone. He had lost his earlier illusions as to any miraculous accession to fame. That was a matter for romance alone. He was willing enough to knuckle down. He was in the midst of workers, and he was glad to be one of them. It made him forget his loneliness. It kept him from remembering what he told himself he must not remember.

Hardy, a week later, found him deep in his modelling, serious-eyed and smudged with wet clay. The Canadian was glad to see the older man, to explain his work, even to ask the other's advice. But Hardy's eyes, if still kindly, remained unparticipating. Storrow was forced to the conclusion that his new-found friend was not in 79