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Title: In the Quarter
Author: Robert W. Chambers
Release Date: November, 2004 [EBook #6893]
[This file was first posted on February 8, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, IN THE QUARTER ***
In the Quarter
by Robert W. Chambers
In the Quarter was first published in 1894 and the text is in the
public domain. The transcription was done by William McClain, 2003.
A printed version of this book is available from Sattre Press
http://itq.sattre-press.com/
One
One evening in May, 1888, the Café des Écoles was even more crowded
and more noisy than usual. The marble-topped tables were wet with beer
and the din was appalling. Someone shouted to make himself heard.
"Any more news from the Salon?"
"Yes," said Elliott, "Thaxton's in with a number three. Rhodes is
out and takes it hard. Clifford's out too, and takes it -- "
A voice began to chant:
Je n'sais comment faire,
Comment concillier
Ma maitresse et mon père,
Le Code et Bullier.
"Drop it! Oh, drop it!" growled Rhodes, and sent a handful of
billiard chalk at the singer.
Mr Clifford returned a volley of the Café spoons, and continued:
Mais c'que je trouve de plus bête,
C'est qu' i' faut financer
Avec ma belle galette,
J'aimerai mieux m'amuser.
Several other voices took up the refrain, lamenting the difficulty of
reconciling their filial duties with balls at Bullier's, and
protesting that they would rather amuse themselves than consider
financial questions. Rhodes sipped his curaçoa sulkily.
"The longer I live in the Latin Quarter," he said to his neighbor,
"the less certain I feel about a place of future punishment. It would
be so tame after this." Then, reverting to his grievance, he added,
"The slaughter this year at the Salon is awful."
Reginald Gethryn stirred nervously but did not speak.
"Have a game, Rex?" called Clifford, waving a cue.
Gethryn shook his head, and reaching for a soiled copy of the Figaro,
glanced listlessly over its contents. He sighed and turned his paper
impatiently. Rhodes echoed the sigh.
"What's at the theaters?"
"Same as last week, excepting at the Gaieté. They've put on `La Belle
Hélène' there."
"Oh! Belle Hélène!" cried Clifford.
Tzing! la! la! Tzing! la! la!
C'est avec ces dames qu' Oreste
Fait danser l'argent de Papa!
Rhodes began to growl again.
"I shouldn't think you'd feel like gibbering that rot tonight."
Clifford smiled sweetly and patted him on the head. "Tzing! la! la!
My shot, Elliott?"
"Tzing! la! la!" laughed Thaxton, "That's Clifford's biography in
three words."
Clifford repeated the refrain and winked impudently at the pretty
bookkeeper behind her railing. She, alas! returned it with a blush.
Gethryn rose restlessly and went over to another table where a man,
young, but older than himself, sat, looking comfortable.
"Braith," he began, trying to speak indifferently, "any news of my
fate?"
The other man finished his beer and then answered carelessly, "No."
But catching sight of Gethryn's face he added, with a laugh:
"Look here, Rex, you've got to stop this moping."
"I'm not moping," said Rex, coloring up.
"What do you call it, then?" Braith spoke with some sharpness, but
continued kindly, "You know I've been through it all. Ten years ago,
when I sent in my first picture, I confess to you I suffered the
torments of the damned until -- "
"Until?"
"Until they sent me my card. The color was green."
"But I thought a green card meant `not admitted."'
"It does. I received three in three years."
"Do you mean you were thrown out three years in succession?"
Braith knocked the ashes out of his pipe. "I gave up smoking for
those three years."
"You?"
Braith filled his pipe tenderly. "I was very poor," he said.
"If I had half your sand!" sighed Rex.
"You have, and something more that the rest of us have not. But you
are very young yet."
This time Gethryn colored with surprise and pleasure. In all their
long and close friendship Braith had never before given him any other
encouragement than a cool, "Go ahead!"
He continued: "Your curse thus far has been want of steady
application, and moreover you're too easily scared. No matter what
happens this time, no knocking under!"
"Oh, I'm not going to knock under. No more is Clifford, it seems,"
Rex added with a laugh, as Clifford threw down his cue and took a step
of the devil's quadrille.
"Oh! Elliott!" he crowed, "what's the matter with you?"
Elliott turned and punched a sleepy waiter in the ribs.
"Emile -- two bocks!"
The waiter jumped up and rubbed his eyes. "What is it, monsieur?" he
snapped.
Elliott repeated the order and they strolled off toward a table. As
Clifford came lounging by, Carleton said, "I hear you lead with a
number one at the Salon."
"Right, I'm the first to be fired."
"He's calm now," said Elliott, "but you should have seen him
yesterday when the green card came."
"Well, yes. I discoursed a little in several languages."
"After he had used up his English profanity, he called the Jury names
in French, German and Spanish. The German stuck, but came out at last
like a cork out of a bottle -- "
"Or a bung out of a barrel."
"These comparisons are as offensive as they are unjust," said
Clifford.
"Quite so," said Braith. "Here's the waiter with your beer."
"What number did you get, Braith?" asked Rhodes, who couldn't keep
his mind off the subject and made no pretense of trying.
"Three," answered Braith.
There was a howl, and all began to talk at once.
"There's justice for you!" "No justice for Americans!" "Serves us
right for our tariff!" "Are Frenchmen going to give us all the
advantages of their schools and honors besides while we do all we can
to keep their pictures out of our markets?"
"No, we don't, either! Tariff only keeps out the sweepings of the
studios -- "
"If there were no duty on pictures the States would be flooded with
trash."
"Take it off!" cried one.
"Make it higher!" shouted another.
"Idiots!" growled Rhodes. "Let 'em flood the country with bad work
as well as good. It will educate the people, and the day will come
when all good work will stand an equal chance -- be it French or be it
American."
"True," said Clifford, "Let's all have a bock. Where's Rex?"
But Gethryn had slipped out in the confusion. Quitting the Café des
Écoles, he sauntered across the street, and turning through the Rue de
Vaugirard, entered the rue Monsieur le Prince. He crossed the dim
courtyard of his hôtel, and taking a key and a candle from the lodge
of the Concierge, started to mount the six flights to his bedroom and
studio. He felt irritable and fagged, and it did not make matters
better when he found, on reaching his own door, that he had taken the
wrong key. Nor did it ease his mind to fling the key over the
banisters into the silent stone hallway below. He leaned sulkily over
the railing and listened to it ring and clink down into the darkness,
and then, with a brief but vigorous word, he turned and forced in his
door with a crash. Two bull pups which had flown at him with
portentous growls and yelps of menace now gamboled idiotically about
him, writhing with anticipation of caresses, and a gray and scarlet
parrot, rudely awakened, launched forth upon a musical effort
resembling the song of a rusty cart-wheel.
"Oh, you infernal bird!" murmured the master, lighting his candle
with one hand and fondling the pups with the other. "There, there,
puppies, run away!" he added, rolling the ecstatic pups into a sort
of dog divan, where they curled themselves down at last and subsided
with squirms and wriggles, gurgling affection.
Gethryn lighted a lamp and then a cigarette. Then, blowing out the
candle, he sat down with a sigh. His eyes fell on the parrot. It
annoyed him that the parrot should immediately turn over and look at
him upside down. It also annoyed him that "Satan," an evil-looking
raven, was evidently preparing to descend from his perch and worry
"Mrs Gummidge."
"Mrs Gummidge" was the name Clifford had given to a large sad-eyed
white tabby who now lay dozing upon a panther skin.
"Satan!" said Gethryn. The bird checked his sinister preparations
and eyed his master. "Don't," said the young man.
Satan weighed his chances and came to the conclusion that he could
swoop down, nip Mrs Gummidge, and get back to his bust of Pallas
without being caught. He tried it, but his master was too quick for
him, and foiled, he lay sullenly in Gethryn's hands, his two long
claws projecting helplessly between the brown fists of his master.
"Oh, you fiend!" muttered Rex, taking him toward a wicker basket,
which he hated. "Solitary confinement for you, my boy."
"Double, double, toil and trouble," croaked the parrot.
Gethryn started nervously and shut him inside the cage, a regal gilt
structure with "Shakespeare" printed over the door. Then, replacing
the agitated Gummidge on her panther skin, he sat down once more and
lighted another cigarette.
His picture. He could think of nothing else. It was a serious matter
with Gethryn. Admitted to the Salon meant three more years' study in
Paris. Failure, and back he must go to New York.
The personal income of Reginald Gethryn amounted to the magnificent
sum of two hundred and fifty dollars. To this, his aunt, Miss Celestia
Gethryn, added nine hundred and fifty dollars more. This gave him a
sum of twelve hundred dollars a year to live on and study in Paris. It
was not a large sum, but it was princely when compared to the amount
on which many a talented fellow subsists, spending his best years in a
foul atmosphere of paint and tobacco, ill fed, ill clothed, scarcely
warmed at all, often sick in mind and body, attaining his first scant
measure of success just as his overtaxed powers give way.
Gethryn's aunt, his only surviving relative, had recently written him
one of her ponderous letters. He took it from his pocket and began to
read it again, for the fourth time.
You have now been in Paris three years, and as yet I have seen no
results. You should be earning your own living, but instead you are
still dependent upon me. You are welcome to all the assistance I
can give you, in reason, but I expect that you will have something
to show for all the money I expend upon you. Why are you not making
a handsome income and a splendid reputation, like Mr Spinder?
The artist named was thirty-five and had been in Paris fifteen years.
Gethryn was twenty-two and had been studying three years.
Why are you not doing beautiful things, like Mr Mousely? I'm told
he gets a thousand dollars for a little sketch.
Rex groaned. Mr Mousely could neither draw nor paint, but he made
stories of babies' deathbeds on squares of canvas with china angels
solidly suspended from the ceiling of the nursery, pointing upward,
and he gave them titles out of the hymnbook, which caused them to be
bought with eagerness by all the members of the congregation to which
his family belonged.
The letter proceeded:
I am told by many reliable persons that three years abroad is more
than enough for a thorough art education. If no results are
attained at the end of that time, there is only one of two
conclusions to be drawn. Either you have no talent, or you are
wasting your time. I shall wait until the next Salon before I come
to a decision. If then you have a picture accepted and if it shows
no trace of the immorality which is rife in Paris, I will continue
your allowance for three years more; this, however, on condition
that you have a picture in the Salon each year. If you fail again
this year, I shall insist upon your coming home at once.
Why Gethryn should want to read this letter four times, when one
perusal of it had been more than enough, no one, least of all himself,
could have told. He sat now crushing it in is hand, tasting all the
bitterness that is stored up for a sensitive artist tied by fate to an
omniscient Philistine who feeds his body with bread and his soul with
instruction about art and behavior.
Presently he mastered the black mood which came near being too much
for him, his face cleared and he leaned back, quietly smoking. From
the rug rose a muffled rumbling where Mrs Gummidge dozed in peace. The
clock ticked sharply. A mouse dropped silently from the window curtain
and scuttled away unmarked.
The pups lay in a soft heap. The parrot no longer hung head downward,
but rested in his cage in a normal position, one eye fixed steadily on
Gethryn, the other sheathed in a bluish-white eyelid, every wrinkle of
which spoke scorn of men and things.
For some time Gethryn had been half-conscious of a piano sounding on
the floor below. It suddenly struck him now that the apartment under
his, which had been long vacant, must have found an occupant.
"Idiots!" he grumbled. "Playing at midnight! That will have to
stop. Singing too! We'll see about that!"
The singing continued, a girl's voice, only passably trained, but
certainly fresh and sweet.
Gethryn began to listen, reluctantly and ungraciously. There was a
pause. "Now she's going to stop. It's time," he muttered. But the
piano began again -- a short prelude which he knew, and the voice was
soon in the midst of the Dream Song from "La Belle Hélène."
Gethryn rose and walked to his window, threw it open and leaned out.
An April night, soft and delicious. The air was heavy with perfume
from the pink and white chestnut blossoms. The roof dripped with
moisture. Far down in the dark court the gas-jets flickered and
flared. From the distance came the softened rumble of a midnight cab,
which, drawing nearer and nearer and passing the hôtel with a
rollicking rattle of wheels and laughing voices, died away on the
smooth pavement by the Luxembourg Gardens. The voice had stopped
capriciously in the middle of the song. Gethryn turned back into the
room whistling the air. His eye fell on Satan sitting behind his bars
in crumpled malice.
"Poor old chap," laughed the master, "want to come out and hop
around a bit? Here, Gummidge, we'll remove temptation out of his
way," and he lifted the docile tabby, who increased the timbre of her
song to an ecstatic squeal at his touch, and opening his bedroom door,
gently deposited her on his softest blankets. He then reinstated the
raven on his bust of Pallas, and Satan watched him from thence warily
as he fussed about the studio, sorting brushes, scraping a neglected
palette, taking down a dressing gown, drawing on a pair of easy
slippers, opening his door and depositing his boots outside. When he
returned the music had begun again.
"What on earth does she mean by singing at a quarter to one
o'clock?" he thought, and went once more to the window. "Why -- that
is really beautiful."
Oui! c'est un rêve, Oui! c'est un rêve doux d'amour.
La nuit lui prête son mystère,
Il doit finir -- il doit finir avec le jour.
The song of Hélène ceased. Gethryn leaned out and gazed down at the
lighted windows under his. Suddenly the light went out. He heard
someone open the window, and straining his eyes, could just discern
the dim outline of a head and shoulders, unmistakably those of a girl.
She had perched herself on the windowsill. Presently she began to hum
the air, then to sing it softly. Gethryn waited until the words came
again:
Oui, c'est un rêve --
and then struck in with a very sweet baritone:
Oui, c'est un rêve --
She never moved, but her voice swelled out fresh and clear in answer
to his, and a really charming duet came to a delightful finish. Then
she looked up. Gethryn was reckless now.
"Shall it be, then, only a dream?" he laughed. Was it his fate that
made him lean out and whisper, "Is it, then, only a dream, Hélène?"
There was nothing but the rustling of the chestnut branches to answer
his folly. Not another sound. He was half inclined to shut his window
and go in, well satisfied with the silence and beginning to feel
sleepy. All at once from below came a faint laugh, and as he leaned
out he caught the words:
"Paris, Hélène bids you good night!"
"Ah, Belle Hélène!" -- he began, but was cut short by the violent
opening of a window opposite.
"Bon dieu de bon dieu!" howled an injured gentleman. "To sleep is
impossible, tas d'imbeciles! -- "
And Hélène's window closed with a snap.
Two
The day broke hot and stifling. The first sunbeams which chased the
fog from bridge and street also drove the mists from the cool thickets
of the Luxembourg Garden, and revealed groups of dragoons picketed in
the shrubbery.
"Dragoons in the Luxembourg!" cried the gamins to each other. "What
for?"
But even the gamins did not know -- yet.
At the great Ateliers of Messieurs Bouguereau and Lefebvre the first
day of the week is the busiest -- and so, this being Monday, the
studios were crowded.
The heat was suffocating. The walls, smeared with the refuse of a
hundred palettes, fairly sizzled as they gave off a sickly odor of
paint and turpentine. Only two poses had been completed, but the tired
models stood or sat, glistening with perspiration. The men drew and
painted, many of them stripped to the waist. The air was heavy with
tobacco smoke and the respiration of some two hundred students of half
as many nationalities.
"Dieu! quel chaleur!" gasped a fat little Frenchman, mopping his
clipped head and breathing hard.
"Clifford," he inquired in English, "ees eet zat you haf a so great
-- a -- heat chez vous?"
Clifford glanced up from his easel. "Heat in New York? My dear
Deschamps, this is nothing."
The other eyed him suspiciously.
"You know New York is the capital of Galveston?" said Clifford,
slapping on a brush full of color and leaning back to look at it.
The Frenchman didn't know, but he nodded.
"Well, that's very far south. We suffer -- yes, we suffer, but our
poor poultry suffer more."
"Ze -- ze pooltree? Wat eez zat?"
Clifford explained.
"In summer the fire engines are detailed to throw water on the hens
to keep their feathers from singeing. Singeing spoils the flavor."
The Frenchman growled.
"One of our national institutions is the `Hen's Mutual Fire Insurance
Company,' supported by the Government," added Clifford.
Deschamps snorted.
"That is why," put in Rhodes, lazily dabbing at his canvas, "why we
seldom have omelets -- the eggs are so apt to be laid fried."
"How, zen, does eet make ze chicken?" spluttered the Frenchman, his
wrath rising.
"Our chickens are also -- " a torrent of bad language from Monsieur
Deschamps, and a howl of execration from all the rest, silenced
Clifford.
"It's too hot for that sort of thing," pleaded Elliott.
"Idiot!" muttered the Frenchman, shooting ominous glances at the
bland youth, who saw nothing.
"C'est l'heure," cried a dozen voices, and the tired model stretched
his cramped limbs. Clifford rose, dropped a piece of charcoal down on
his neighbor's neck, and stepping across Thaxton's easel, walked over
to Gethryn.
"Rex, have you heard the latest?"
"No."
"The Ministry has fallen again, and the Place de la Concorde is
filled with people yelling, A bas la Republique! Vive le General
Boulanger!"
Gethryn looked serious. Clifford went on, speaking low.
"I saw a troop of cavalry going over this morning, and old Forain
told me just now that the regiments at Versailles were ready to move
at a minute's notice."
"I suppose things are lively across the river," said Gethryn.
"Exactly, and we're all going over to see the fun. You'll come?"
"Oh, I'll come. Hello! here's Rhodes; tell him."
Rhodes knew. Ministry fallen. Mob at it some more. Been fired on by
the soldiers once. Pont Neuf and the Arc guarded by cannon. Carleton
came hurrying up.
"The French students are loose and raising Cain. We're going to
assist at the show. Come along."
"No," growled Braith, and looked hard at Rex.
"Oh, come along! We're all going," said Carleton, "Elliott,
Gethryn, the Colossus, Thaxton, Clifford."
Braith turned sharply to Rex. "Yes, going to get your heads smashed
by a bullet or carved by a saber. What for? What business is it of
yours?"
"Braith thinks he looks like a Prussian and is afraid," mused
Clifford.
"Come on, won't you, Braith?" said Gethryn.
"Are you going?"
"Why not?" said the other, uneasily, "and why won't you?"
"No French mob for me," answered Braith, quietly. "You fellows had
better keep away. You don't know what you may get into. I saw the
siege, and the man who was in Paris in '71 has seen enough."
"Oh, this is nothing serious," urged Clifford. "If they fire I
shall leg it; so will the lordly Reginald; so will we all."
Braith dug his hands into the pockets of his velveteens, and shook his
head.
"No," he said, "I've got some work to do. So have you, Rex."
"Come on, we're off," shouted Thaxton from the stairway.
Clifford seized Gethryn's arm, Elliott and Rhodes crowded on behind. A
small earthquake shock followed as the crowd of students launched
itself down the stairs.
"Braith doesn't approve of my cutting the atelier so often," said
Gethryn, "and he's right. I ought to have stayed."
"Reggy going to back out?" cooed Clifford.
"No," said Rex. "Here's Rhodes with a cab."
"It's too hot to walk," gasped Rhodes. "I secured this. It was all
I could get. Pile in."
Rex sprang up beside the driver.
"Allons!" he cried, "to the Obelisk!"
"But, monsieur -- " expostulated the cabby, "it is today the
revolution. I dare not."
"Go on, I tell you," roared Rhodes. "Clifford, take his reins away
if he refuses."
Clifford made a snatch at them, but was repulsed by the indignant
cabby.
"Go on, do you hear?" shouted the Colossus. The cabman looked at
Gethryn.
"Go on!" laughed Rex, "there is no danger."
Jehu lifted his shoulders to the level of his shiny hat, and giving
the reins a jerk, muttered, "Crazy English! -- Heu -- heu --
Cocotte!"
In twenty minutes they had arrived at the bridge opposite the Palais
Bourbon.
"By Jove!" said Gethryn, "look at that crowd! The Place de la
Concorde is black with them!"
The cab stopped with a jolt. Half a dozen policemen stepped into the
street. Two seized the horses' heads.
"The bridge is forbidden to vehicles, gentlemen," they said,
courteously. "To cross, one must descend."
Clifford began to argue, but Elliott stopped him.
"It's only a step," said he, paying the relieved cabby. "Come
ahead!"
In a moment they were across the bridge and pushing into the crowd,
single file.
"What a lot of troops and police!" said Elliott, panting as he
elbowed his way through the dense masses. "I tell you, the mob are
bent on mischief."
The Place de la Concorde was packed and jammed with struggling,
surging humanity. Pushed and crowded up to the second fountain,
clinging in bunches to the Obelisk, overrunning the first fountain,
and covering the pedestals of the "Cities of France," it heaved,
shifted, undulated like clusters of swarming ants.
In the open space about the second fountain was the Prefect of the
Seine, surrounded by a staff of officers. He looked worn and anxious
as he stood mopping the perspiration from his neck and glancing
nervously at his men, who were slowly and gently rolling back the mob.
On the bridge a battalion of red-legged soldiers lounged, leaning on
their rifles. To the right were long lines of cavalry in shining
helmets and cuirasses. The men sat motionless in their saddles, their
armor striking white fire in the fierce glow of the midday sun. Ever
and anon the faint flutter of a distant bugle announced the approach
of more regiments.
Among the shrubbery of the Gardens, a glimmer of orange and blue
betrayed the lurking presence of the Guards. Down the endless vistas
of the double and quadruple rows of trees stretching out to the Arc,
and up the Cour la Reine, long lines of scarlet were moving toward the
central point, the Place de la Concorde. The horses of a squadron of
hussars pawed and champed across the avenue, the men, in their pale
blue jackets, presenting a cool relief to the universal glare. The
Champs Elysees was deserted, excepting by troops. Not a civilian was
to be seen on the bridge. In front of the Madeleine three points of
fire blazed and winked in the sun. They were three cannon.
Suddenly, over by the Obelisk, began a hoarse murmur, confused and
dull at first, but growing louder, until it swelled into a deafening
roar. "Long live Boulanger!" "Down with Ferry!" "Long live the
Republic!" As the great wave of sound rose over the crowd and broke
sullenly against the somber masses of the Palace of the Bourbons, a
thin, shrill cry from the extreme right answered, "Vive la Commune!"
Elliott laughed nervously.
"They'll charge those howling Belleville anarchists!"
Clifford began, in pure deviltry, to whistle the Carmagnole.
"Do you want to get us all into hot water?" whispered Thaxton.
"Monsieur is of the Commune?" inquired a little man, suavely.
And, the devil still prompting Clifford, he answered: "Because I
whistled the Carmagnole? Bah!"
The man scowled.
"Look here, my friend," said Clifford, "my political principles are
yours, and I will be happy to drink at your expense."
The other Americans exchanged looks, and Elliott tried to check
Clifford's folly before it was too late.
"Espion!" muttered the Frenchman, adding, a little louder, "Sale
Allemand!"
Gethryn looked up startled.
"Keep cool," whispered Thaxton; "if they think we're Germans we're
done for."
Carleton glanced nervously about. "How they stare," he whispered.
"Their eyes pop out of their heads as if they saw Bismarck."
There was an ominous movement among the throng.
"Vive l'Anarchie! A bas les Prussiens!" yelled a beetle-browed
Italian. "A bas les etrangers!"
"My friend," said Clifford, pleasantly, "you've got a very vile
accent yourself."
"You're a Prussian!" screamed the man.
Every one was now looking at them. Gethryn began to fume.
"I'll thrash that cur if he says Prussian again," said he.
"You'll keep quiet, that's what you'll do," growled Thaxton, looking
anxiously at Rhodes.
"Yes, you will!" said the Colossus, very pale.
"Pig of a Prussian!" shouted a fearful-looking hag, planting herself
in front of Clifford with arms akimbo and head thrust forward. "Pig
of a Prussian spy!"
She glanced at her supporters, who promptly applauded.
"Ah--h--h!" she screamed, her little green eyes shining like a
tiger's -- "Spy! German spy!"
"Madam," said Clifford, politely, "go and wash yourself."
"Hold your cursed tongue, Clifford!" whispered Thaxton. "Do you
want to be torn to pieces?"
Suddenly a man behind Gethryn sprang at his back, and then, amazed and
terrified at his own daring, yelled lustily for help. Gethryn shook
him off as he would a fly, but the last remnant of self-control went
at the same time, and, wheeling, he planted a blow square in the
fellow's neck. The man fell like an ox. In an instant the mob was upon
them. Thaxton received a heavy kick in the ribs, which sent him
reeling against Carleton. Clifford knocked two men down in as many
blows, and, springing back, stood guard over Thaxton until he could
struggle to his feet again. Elliott got a sounding thwack on the nose,
which he neatly returned, adding one on the eye for interest. Gethryn
and Carleton fought back to back. Rhodes began by half strangling a
son of the Commune and then flung him bodily among his howling
compatriots.
"Good Heavens," gasped Rhodes, "we can't keep this up!" And
raising his voice, he cried with all the force of his lungs, "Help!
This way, police!" A shot answered him, and a man, clapping his hands
to his face, tilted heavily forward, the blood spurting between his
fingers.
Then a terrible cry arose, a din in which the Americans caught the
clanging of steel and the neighing of horses. A man was hurled
violently against Gethryn, who, losing in turn his balance, staggered
and fell. Rising to his knees, he saw a great foam-covered horse
rearing almost over him, and a red-faced rider in steel helmet and
tossing plume slashing furiously among the crowd. Next moment he was
dragged to his feet and back into the flying mob.
"Look out," panted Thaxton, "the cavalry -- they've charged --
run!" Gethryn glanced over his shoulder. All along the edge of the
frantic, panic-stricken crowd the gleaming crests of the cavalry
surged and dashed like a huge wave of steel.
Cries, groans, and curses rose and were drowned in the thunder of the
charging horses and the clashing of weapons.
"Spy!" screamed a voice in his ear. Gethryn turned, but the fellow
was legging it for safety.
Suddenly he saw a woman who, pushed and crowded by the mob, stumbled
and fell. In a moment he was by her side, bent over to raise her, was
hurled upon his face, rose blinded by dust and half-stunned, but
dragging her to her feet with him.
Swept onward by the rush, knocked this way and that, he still managed
to support the dazed woman, and by degrees succeeded in controlling
his own course, which he bent toward the Obelisk. As he neared the
goal of comparative safety, exhausted, he suffered himself and the
woman to be carried on by the rush. Then a blinding flash split the
air in front, and the crash of musketry almost in his face hurled him
back.
Men threw up their hands and sank in a heap or spun round and pitched
headlong. For a moment he swayed in the drifting smoke. A blast of
hot, sickening air enveloped him. Then a dull red cloud seemed to
settle slowly, crushing, grinding him into the earth.
Three
When Gethryn unclosed his eyes the dazzling sunlight almost blinded
him. A thousand grotesque figures danced before him, a hot red vapor
seemed to envelop him. He felt a dull pain in his ears and a numb
sensation about the legs. Gradually he recalled the scene that had
just passed; the flying crowd lashed by that pitiless iron scourge;
the cruel panic; the mad, suffocating rush; and then that crash of
thunder which had crushed him.
He lay quite still, not offering to move. A strange languor seemed to
weigh down his very heart. The air reeked with powder smoke. Not a
breath was stirring.
Presently the numbness in his knees changed to a hot, pricking throb.
He tried to move his legs, but found he could not. Then a sudden
thought sent the blood with a rush to his heart. Perhaps he no longer
had any legs! He remembered to have heard of legless men whose phantom
members caused them many uncomfortable sensations. He certainly had a
dull pain where his legs belonged, but the question was, had he legs
also? The doubt was too much, and with a faint cry he struggled to
rise.
"The devil!" exclaimed a voice close to his head, and a pair of
startled eyes met his own. " The devil!" repeated the owner of the
eyes, as if to a apostrophize some particular one. He was a bird-like
little fellow, with thin canary-colored hair and eyebrows and
colorless eyes, and he was seated upon a campstool about two feet from
Gethryn's head.
He blinked at Gethryn. "These Frenchmen," said he, "have as many
lives as a cat."
"Thanks!" said Gethryn, smiling faintly.
"An Englishman! The devil!" shouted the pale-eyed man, hopping in
haste from his campstool and dropping a well-thumbed sketching-block
as he did so.
"Don't be an ass," suggested Gethryn; "you'd much better help me to
get up."
"Look here," cried the other, "how was I to know you were not done
for?"
"What's the matter with me?" said Gethryn. "Are my -- my legs
gone?"
The little man glanced at Gethryn's shoes.
No, they're all there, unless you originally had more than the normal
number -- in fact I'm afraid -- I think you're all right.
Gethryn stared at him.
"And what the devil am I to do with this sketch?" he continued,
kicking the fallen block. "I've been at it for an hour. It isn't half
bad, you know. I was going to call it `Love in Death.' It was for the
London Illustrated Mirror."
Gethryn lay quite still. He had decided the little fellow was mad.
"Dead in each other's arms!" continued the stranger, sentimentally.
"She so fair -- he so brave -- "
Gethryn sprang up impatiently, but only a little way. Something held
him down and he fell back.
"Do you want to get up?" asked the stranger.
"I should rather think so."
The other bent down and placed his hands under Gethryn's arms, and --
half helped, half by his own impatient efforts -- Rex sat up, leaning
against the other man. A sharp twinge shot through the numbness of his
legs, and his eyes, seeking the cause, fell upon the body of a woman.
She lay across his knees, apparently dead. Rex remembered her now for
the first time.
"Lift her," he said weakly.
The little man with some difficulty succeeded in moving the body; then
Gethryn, putting one arm around the other's neck, struggled up. He was
stiff, and toppled about a little, but before long he was pretty
steady on his feet.
"The woman," he said, "perhaps she is not dead."
"Dead she is," said the Artist of the Mirror cheerfully, gathering
up his pencils, which lay scattered on the steps of the pedestal. He
leaned over the little heap of crumpled clothing.
"Shot, I fancy," he muttered.
Gethryn, feeling his strength returning and the circulation restored
to his limbs, went over to the place where she lay.
"Have you a flask?" he asked. The little Artist eyed him
suspiciously.
"Are you a newspaperman?"
"No, an art student."
"Nothing to do with newspapers?"
"No."
"I don't drink," said the queer little person.
"I never said you did," said Gethryn. "Have you a flask, or haven't
you?"
The stranger slowly produced one, and poured a few drops into his pink
palm.
"We may as well try," he said, and began to chafe her forehead.
"Here, take the whiskey -- let it trickle, so, between her teeth.
Don't spill any more than you can help," he added.
"Has she been shot?" asked Gethryn.
"Crushed, maybe."
"Poor little thing, look at her roll of music!" said Gethryn, wiping
a few drops of blood from her pallid face, and glancing
compassionately at the helpless, dust-covered figure.
"I'm afraid it's no use -- "
"Give her some more whiskey, quick!" interrupted the stranger.
Gethryn tremblingly poured a few more drops between the parted lips. A
faint color came into her temples. She moved, shivered from head to
foot, and then, with a half-choked sob, opened her eyes.
"Mon Dieu, comme je souffre!"
"Where do you suffer?" said Gethryn gently.
"The arm; I think it is broken."
Gethryn stood up and looked about for help. The Place was nearly
deserted. The blue-jacketed hussars were still standing over by the
Avenue, and an occasional heavy, red-faced cuirassier walked his
sweating horse slowly up and down the square. A few policemen lounged
against the river wall, chatting with the sentries, and far down the
dusty Rue Royale, the cannon winked and blinked before the Church of
the Madeleine.
The rumble of wheels caused him to turn. A clumsy, blue-covered wagon
drew up at the second fountain. It was a military ambulance. A
red-capped trooper sprang down jingling from one of the horses, and
was joined by two others who had followed the ambulance and who also
dismounted. Then the three approached a group of policemen who were
lifting something from the pavement. At the same moment he heard
voices beside him, and turning, found that the girl had risen and was
sitting on the campstool, her head leaning against the little
stranger's shoulder.
An officer stood looking down at her. His boots were spotless. The
band of purple on his red and gold cap showed that he was a surgeon.
"Can we be of any assistance to madame?" he inquired.
"I was looking for a cab," said Gethryn, "but perhaps she is not
strong enough to be taken to her home."
A frightened look came into the girl's face and she glanced anxiously
at the ambulance. The surgeon knelt quietly beside her.
"Madame is not seriously hurt," he said, after a rapid examination.
"The right arm is a little strained, but it will be nothing, I assure
you, Madame; a matter of a few days, that is all."
He rose and stood brushing the knees of his trousers with his
handkerchief. "Monsieur is a foreigner?"
Gethryn smiled. "The accent?"
"On the contrary, I assure you, Monsieur," cried the officer with
more politeness than truth. He eyed the ambulance. "The people of
Paris have learned a lesson today," he said.
A trooper clattered up, leading an officer's horse, and dismounted,
saluting. The young surgeon glanced at his watch.
"Picard," he said, "stop a closed cab and send it here."
The trooper wheeled his horse and galloped away across the square, and
the officer turned to the others.
"Madame, I trust, will soon recover," he said courteously. "Madame,
messieurs, I have the honor to salute you." And with many a clink and
jingle, he sprang into the saddle and clattered away in the wake of
the slowly moving ambulance.
At the corner of the Rue Royale, Gethryn saw the trooper stop a cab
and point to the Obelisk. He went over and asked the canary-colored
stranger, "Will you take her home, or shall I?"
"Why, you, of course; you brought her here."
"No, I didn't. I never saw her until I noticed her being pushed about
by the crowd." He caught the girl's eye and colored furiously, hoping
she did not suspect the nature of their discussion. Before her
helplessness it seemed so brutal.
The cab drew up before the Obelisk and a gruff voice cried, "V'la!
M'ssieurs! -- 'dames!"
"Put your arm on my shoulder -- so," said Gethryn, and the two men
raised her gently. Once in the cab, she sank back, looking limp and
white. Gethryn turned sharply to the other man.
"Shall I go?"
"Rather," replied the little stranger, pleasantly.
Opening his coat in haste, he produced a square of pasteboard. "My
card," he said, offering one to Gethryn, who bowed and fumbled in his
pockets. As usual, his card-case was in another coat.
"I'm sorry I have none," he said at length, "but my name is
Reginald Gethryn, and I shall give myself the pleasure of calling to
thank you for -- "
"For nothing," laughed the other, "excepting for the sketch, which
you may have when you come to see me."
"Thanks, and au revoir," glancing at the card. "Au revoir, Mr
Bulfinch."
He was giving the signal to the cabby when his new acquaintance
stopped him.
"You're quite sure -- you -- er -- don't know any newspapermen?"
"Quite."
"All right -- all right -- and -- er -- just don't mention about my
having a flask, if you do meet any of them. I -- er -- keep it for
others. I don't drink."
"Certainly not," began Gethryn, but Mr T. Hoppley Bulfinch had
seized his campstool and trotted away across the square.
Gethryn leaned into the cab.
"Will you give me your address?" he asked gently.
"Rue Monsieur le Prince -- 430 -- " she whispered. "Do you know
where it is?"
"Yes," said Gethryn. It was his own number.
"Rue Monsieur le Prince 430", he repeated to the driver, and
stepping in, softly shut the door.
Four
Rain was falling steadily. The sparrows huddled under the eaves, or
hopped disconsolately along the windowsills, uttering short,
ill-tempered chirps. The wind was rising, blowing in quick, sharp
gusts and sweeping the forest of rain spears, rank upon rank, in mad
dashes against the glass-roofed studio.
Gethryn, curled up in a corner of his sofa, listlessly watched the
showers of pink and white blossoms which whirled and eddied down from
the rocking chestnuts, falling into the windy court in little heaps.
One or two stiff-legged flies crawled rheumatically along the window
glass, only to fall on their backs and lie there buzzing.
The two bull pups had silently watched the antics of these maudlin
creatures, but their interest changed to indignation when one sodden
insect attempted a final ascent and fell noisily upon the floor under
their very noses. Then they rose as one dog and leaped madly upon the
intruder, or meant to; but being pups, and uncertain in their
estimation of distances, they brought up with startled yelps against
the wall. Gethryn took them in his arms, where they found consolation
in chewing the buttons off his coat. The parrot had driven the raven
nearly crazy by turning upside down and staring at him for fifteen
minutes of insulting silence. Mrs Gummidge was engaged in a matronly
and sedate toilet, interrupting herself now and then to bestow a
critical glance upon the parrot. She heartily approved of his attitude
toward the raven, and although the old cynic cared nothing for Mrs
Gummidge's opinion, he found a sour satisfaction in warning her of her
enemy's hostile intentions. This he always did with a croak, causing
Mrs Gummidge to look up just in time, and the raven to hop back
disconcerted.
The rain beat a constant tattoo on the roof, and this, mingling with
the drowsy purr of the cat, who was now marching to and fro with tail
erect in front of Gethryn, exercised a soothing influence, and
presently a snore so shocked the parrot that he felt obliged to
relieve his mind by a series of intricate gymnastics upon his perch.
Gethryn was roused by a violent hammering on his door. The room had
grown dark, and night had come on while he slept.
"All right -- coming," he shouted, groping his way across the room.
Slipping the bolt, he opened the door and looked out, but could see
nothing in the dark hallway. Then he felt himself seized and hugged
and dragged back into his studio, where he was treated to a heavy slap
on the shoulder. Then someone struck a match and presently, by the
light of a candle, he saw Clifford and Elliott, and farther back in
the shade another form which he thought he knew.
Clifford began, "Here you are! We thought you were dead -- killed
through my infernal fooling." He turned very red, and stammered,
"Tell him, Elliott."
"Why, you see," said Elliott, "we've been hunting for you high and
low since the fight yesterday afternoon. Clifford was nearly crazy. He
said it was his fault. We went to the Morgue and then to the
hospitals, and finally to the police -- " A knock interrupted him,
and a policeman appeared at the door.
Clifford looked sheepish.
"The young gentleman who is missing -- this is his room?" inquired
the policeman.
"Oh, he's found -- he's all right," said Clifford, hurriedly. The
officer stared.
"Here he is," said Elliott, pointing to Rex.
The man transferred his stare to Gethryn, but did not offer to move.
"I am the supposed deceased," laughed Rex, with a little bow.
"But how am I to know?" said the officer.
"Why, here I am."
"But," said the man, suspiciously, "I want to know how I am to
know?"
"Nonsense," said Elliott, laughing.
"But, Monsieur," expostulated the officer, politely.
"This is Reginald Gethryn, artist, I tell you!"
The policeman shrugged his shoulders. He was noncommittal and very
polite.
"Messieurs," he said, "my orders are to lock up this room."
"But it's my room, I can't spare my room," laughed Gethryn. "From
whom did you take your orders?"
"From Monsieur the Prefect of the Seine."
"Oh, it is all right, then," said Gethryn. "Take a seat."
He went to his desk, wrote a hasty note, and then called the man.
"Read that, if you please, Monsieur Sergeant de Ville."
The man's eyes grew round. "Certainly, Monsieur, I will take the note
to the Prefect," he said; "Monsieur will pardon the intrusion."
"Don't mention it," said Rex, smiling, and slipped a franc into his
big red fist. The officer pocketed it with a demure "Merci,
Monsieur," and presently the clank of his bayonet died away on the
stairs.
"Well," said Elliott, "you're found." Clifford was beginning again
with self-reproaches and self-abasement, but Rex broke in: "You
fellows are awfully good -- I do assure you I appreciate it. But I
wasn't in any more danger than the rest of you. What about Thaxton and
the Colossus and Carleton?" He grew anxious as he named them.
"We all got off with no trouble at all, only we missed you -- and
then the troops fired, and they chased us over the bridge and
scattered us in the Quarter, and we all drifted one by one into the
Café des Écoles. And then you didn't come, and we waited till after
dinner, and finally came here to find your door locked -- "
"Oh!" burst out Clifford, "I tell you, Rex -- damn it! I will
express my feelings!"
"No, you won't," said Rex; "drop 'em, old boy, don't express 'em.
Here we are -- that's enough, isn't it, Shakespeare?"
The bird had climbed to Gethryn's shoulder and was cocking his eye
fondly at Clifford. They were dear friends. Once he had walked up
Clifford's arm and had grabbed him by the ear, for which Clifford,
more in sorrow than in anger, soaked him in cold water. Since that,
their mutual understanding had been perfect.
"Where are you going to, you old fiend?" said Clifford, tickling the
parrot's throat.
"Hell!" shrieked the bird.
"Good Heavens! I never taught him that," said Gethryn.
Clifford smiled, without committing himself.
"But where were you, Rex?" asked Elliott.
Rex flushed. "Hullo," cried Clifford, "here's Reginald blushing. If
I didn't know him better I'd swear there's a woman in it." The dark
figure at the end of the room rose and walked swiftly over, and Rex
saw that it was Braith, as he had supposed.
"I swear I forgot him," laughed Elliott. "What a queer bird you
are, Braith, squatting over there as silent as a stuffed owl!"
"He has been walking his legs off after you," began Clifford, but
Braith cut him short with a brusque --
"Where were you, Rex?"
Gethryn winced. "I'd rather -- I think" -- he began, slowly --
"Excuse me -- it's not my business," growled Braith, throwing
himself into a seat and beginning to rub Mrs Gummidge the wrong way.
"Confound the cat!" he added, examining some red parallel lines
which suddenly decorated the back of his hand.
"She won't stand rubbing the wrong way," said Rex, smiling uneasily.
"Like the rest of us," said Elliott.
"More fool he who tries it," said Braith, and looked at Gethryn with
an affectionate smile that made him turn redder than before.
"Rex," began Clifford again, with that fine tact for which he was
celebrated, "own up! You spent last night warbling under the windows
of Lisette."
"Or Frisette," said Elliott, "or Cosette."
"Or Babette, Lisette, Frisette, Cosette, Babette!" chanted the two
young men in a sort of catch.
Braith so seldom swore, that the round oath with which he broke into
their vocal exercises stopped them through sheer astonishment. But
Clifford, determined on self-assertion and loving an argument,
especially out of season, turned on Braith and began:
"Why should not Youth love?"
"Love! Bah!" said Braith.
"Why Bah?" he persisted, stimulated by the disgust of Braith. "Now
if a man -- take Elliott, for example -- "
"Take yourself," cried the other.
"Well -- myself, for example. Suppose when my hours of weary toil are
over -- returning to my lonely cell, I encounter the blue eyes of
Ninette on the way, or the brown eyes of Cosette, or perhaps the black
eyes of -- "
Braith stamped impatiently.
"Lisette," said Clifford, sweetly. "Why should I not refresh my
drooping spirits by adoring Lisette -- Cos--- "
"Oh, come, you said that before," said Gethryn. "You're getting to
be a bore, Clifford."
"You at least can no longer reproach me," said the other, with a
quick look that increased Gethryn's embarrassment.
"Let him talk his talk of bewitching grisettes, and gay students,"
said Braith, more angry than Rex had ever seen him. "He's never
content except when he's dangling after some fool worse than himself.
Damn this `Bohemian love' rot! I've been here longer than you have,
Clifford," he said, suddenly softening and turning half
apologetically to the latter, who nodded to intimate that he hadn't
taken offense. "I've seen all that shabby romance turn into such
reality as you wouldn't like to face. I've seen promising lives go out
in ruin and disgrace -- here in this very street -- in this very house
-- lives that started exactly on the lines that you are finding so
mighty pleasant just now."
Clifford was in danger of being silenced. That would never do.
"Papa Braith," he smiled, "is it that you too have been through the
mill? Shall I present your compliments to the miller? I'm going. Come,
Elliott."
Elliott took up his hat and followed.
"Braith," he said, "we'll drink your health as we go through the
mill."
"Remember that the mill grinds slowly but surely," said Braith.
"He speaks in parables," laughed Clifford, halfway downstairs, and
the two took up the catch they had improvised, singing, "Lisette --
Cosette -- Ninette -- " in thirds more or less out of tune, until
Gethryn shut the door on the last echoes that came up from the hall
below.
Gethryn came back and sat down, and Braith took a seat beside him, but
neither spoke. Braith had his pipe and Rex his cigarette.
When the former was ready, he began to speak. He could not conceal the
effort it cost him, but that wore away after he had been talking a
while.
"Rex," he began, "when I say that we are friends, I mean, for my
own part, that you are more to me than any man alive; and now I am
going to tell you my story. Don't interrupt me. I have only just
courage enough; if any of it oozes out, I may not be able to go on.
Well, I have been through the mill. Clifford was right. They say it is
a phase through which all men must pass. I say, must or not, if you
pass through it you don't come out without a stain. You're never the
same man after. Don't imagine I mean that I was brutally dissolute. I
don't want you to think worse of me than I deserve. I kept a clean
tongue in my head -- always. So do you. I never got drunk -- neither
do you. I kept a distance between myself and the women whom those
fellows were celebrating in song just now -- so do you. How much is
due in both of us to principle, and how much to fastidiousness, Rex? I
found out for myself at last, and perhaps your turn will not be long
in coming. After avoiding entanglements for just three years -- " He
looked at Rex, who dropped his head -- "I gave in to a temptation as
coarse, vulgar and silly as any I had ever despised. Why? Heaven
knows. She was as vulgar a leech as ever fastened on a calf like
myself. But I didn't think so then. I was wildly in love with her. She
said she was madly in love with me." Braith made a grimace of such
disgust that Rex would have laughed, only he saw in time that it was
self-disgust which made Braith's mouth look so set and hard.
"I wanted to marry her. She wouldn't marry me. I was not rich, but
what she said was: `One hates one's husband.' When I say vulgar, I
don't mean she had vulgar manners. She was as pretty and trim and
clever -- as the rest of them. An artist, if he sees all that really
exists, sometimes also sees things which have no existence at all. Of
these were the qualities with which I invested her -- the moral and
mental correspondencies to her blonde skin and supple figure. She
justified my perspicacity one day by leaving me for a loathsome little
Jew. The last time I heard of her she had been turned out of a
gambling hell in his company. His name is Emanuel Pick. Is not this a
shabby romance? Is it not enough to make a self-respecting man hang
his head -- to know that he has once found pleasure in the society of
the mistress of Mr Emanuel Pick?"
A long silence followed, during which the two men smoked, looking in
opposite directions. At last Braith reached over and shook the ashes
out of his pipe. Rex lighted a fresh cigarette at the same time, and
their eyes met with a look of mutual confidence and goodwill. Braith
spoke again, firmly this time.
"God keep you out of the mire, Rex; you're all right thus far. But it
is my solemn belief that an affair of that kind would be your ruin as
an artist; as a man."
"The Quarter doesn't regard things in that light," said Gethryn,
trying hard to laugh off the weight that oppressed him.
"The Quarter is a law unto itself. Be a law unto yourself, Rex --
Good night, old chap."
"Good night, Braith," said Gethryn slowly.
Five
Thirion's at six pm. Madame Thirion, neat and demure, sat behind her
desk; her husband, in white linen apron and cap, scuttled back and
forth shouting, "Bon! Bon!" to the orders that came down the call
trumpet. The waiters flew crazily about, and cries went up for
"Pierre" and "Jean" and "green peas and fillet."
The noise, smoke, laughter, shouting, rattle of dishes, the
penetrating odor of burnt paper and French tobacco, all proclaimed the
place a Latin Quarter restaurant. The English and Americans ate like
civilized beings and howled like barbarians. The Germans, when they
had napkins, tucked them under their chins. The Frenchmen -- well!
they often agreed with the hated Teuton in at least one thing; that
knives were made to eat with. But which of the four nationalities
exceeded the others in turbulence and bad language would be hard to
say.
Clifford was eating his chop and staring at the blonde adjunct of a
dapper little Frenchman.
"Clifford," said Carleton, "stop that."
"I'm mesmerizing her," said Clifford. "It's a case of hypnotism."
The girl, who had been staring back at Clifford, suddenly shrugged her
shoulders, and turning to her companion, said aloud:
"How like a monkey, that foreigner!"
Clifford withdrew his eyes in a hurry, amid a roar of laughter from
the others. He was glad when Braith's entrance caused a diversion.
"Hullo, Don Juan! I see you, Lothario! Drinking again?"
Braith took it all as a matter of course, but this time failed to
return as good as they gave. He took a seat beside Gethryn and said in
a low tone:
"I've just come from your house. There's a letter from the Salon in
your box."
Gethryn set down his wine untasted and reached for his hat.
"What's the matter, Reggy? Has Lisette gone back on you?" asked
Clifford, tenderly.
"It's the Salon," said Braith, as Gethryn went out with a hasty
"Good night."
"Poor Reggy, how hard he takes it!" sighed Clifford.
Gethryn hurried along the familiar streets with his heart in his boots
sometimes, and sometimes in his mouth.
In his box was a letter and a note addressed in pencil. He snatched
them both, and lighting a candle, mounted the stairs, unlocked his
door and sank breathless upon the lounge. He tore open the first
envelope. A bit of paper fell out. It was from Braith and said:
I congratulate you either way. If you are successful I shall be as
glad as you are. If not, I still congratulate you on the manly
courage which you are going to show in turning defeat into victory.
"He's one in a million," thought Gethryn, and opened the other
letter. It contained a folded paper and a card. The card was white.
The paper read:
You are admitted to the Salon with a No. 1. My compliments. J.
Lefebvre
He ought to have been pleased, but instead he felt weak and giddy, and
the pleasure was more like pain. He leaned against the table quite
unstrung, his mind in a whirl. He got up and went to the window. Then
he shook himself and walked over to his cabinet. Taking out a bunch of
keys, he selected one and opened what Clifford called his "cellar."
Clifford knew and deplored the fact that Gethryn's "cellar" was no
longer open to the public. Since the day when Rex returned from
Julien's, tired and cross, to find a row of empty bottles on the floor
and Clifford on the sofa conversing incoherently with himself, and had
his questions interrupted by a maudlin squawk from the parrot -- also
tipsy -- since that day Gethryn had carried the key. He now produced a
wine glass and a dusty bottle, filled the one from the other and
emptied it three times in rapid succession. Then he took the glass to
the washbasin and rinsed it with great slowness and precision. Then he
sat down and tried to think. Number One meant a mention, perhaps a
medal. He would telegraph his aunt tomorrow. Suddenly he felt a strong
desire to tell someone. He would go and see Braith. No, Braith was in
the evening class at the Beaux Arts; so were the others, excepting
Clifford and Elliott, and they were at a ball across the river.
Whom could he see? He thought of the garçon. He would ring him up and
give him a glass of wine. Alcide was a good fellow and stole very
little. The clock struck eleven.
"No, he's gone to bed. Alcide, you've missed a glass of wine and a
cigar, you early bird."
His head was clear enough now. He realized his good fortune. He had
never been so happy in his life. He called the pups and romped with
them until an unlucky misstep sent Mrs Gummidge, with a shriek, to the
top of the wardrobe, whence she glared at Gethryn and spit at the
delighted raven.
The young man sat down fairly out of breath, but the pups still kept
making charges at his legs and tumbled over themselves with barking.
He gathered them up and carried them into his bedroom to their
sleeping box. As he stooped to drop them in, there came a knock at his
studio door. But when he hastened to open it, glad of company, there
was no one there. Surprised, he turned back and saw on the floor
before him a note. Picking it up, he took it to the lamp and read it.
It was signed, "Yvonne Descartes."
When he had read it twice, he sat down to think. Presently he took
something out of his waistcoat pocket and held it close to the light.
It was a gold brooch in the shape of a fleur-de-lis. On the back was
engraved "Yvonne." He held it in his hand a while, and then, getting
up, went slowly towards the door. He opened the door, closed it behind
him and moved toward the stairs. Suddenly he started.
"Braith! Is that you?"
There was no answer. His voice sounded hollow in the tiled hallway.
"Braith," he said again. "I thought I heard him say `Rex."' But he
kept on to the next floor and stopped before the door of the room
which was directly under his own. He paused, hesitated, looking up at
a ray of light which came out from a crack in the transom.
"It's too late," he muttered, and turned away irresolutely.
A clear voice called from within, "Entrez donc, Monsieur."
He opened the door and went in.
On a piano stood a shaded lamp, which threw a soft yellow light over
everything. The first glance gave him a hasty impression of a white
lace-covered bed and a dainty toilet table on which stood a pair of
tall silver candlesticks; and then, as the soft voice spoke again,
"Will Monsieur be seated?" he turned and confronted the girl whom he
had helped in the Place de la Concorde. She lay in a cloud of fleecy
wrappings on a lounge that was covered with a great white bearskin.
Her blue eyes met Gethryn's, and he smiled faintly. She spoke again:
"Will Monsieur sit a little nearer? It is difficult to speak loudly
-- I have so little strength."
Gethryn walked over to the sofa and half unconsciously sank down on
the rug which fell on the floor by the invalid's side. He spoke as he
would to a sick child.
"I am so very glad you are better. I inquired of the concierge and
she told me."
A slight color crept into the girl's face. "You are so good. Ah! what
should I have done -- what can I say?" She stopped; there were tears
in her eyes.
"Please say nothing -- please forget it."
"Forget!" Presently she continued, almost in a whisper, "I had so
much to say to you, and now you are really here, I can think of
nothing, only that you saved me."
"Mademoiselle -- I beg!"
She lay silent a moment more; then she raised herself from the sofa
and held out her hand. His hand and eyes met hers.
"I thank you," she said, "I can never forget." Then she sank back
among the white fluff of lace and fur. "I only learned this
morning," she went on, after a minute, " who sat beside me all that
night and bathed my arm, and gave me cooling drinks."
Gethryn colored. "There was no one else to take care of you. I sent
for my friend, Doctor Ducrot, but he was out of town. Then Dr Bouvier
promised to come, and didn't. The concierge was ill herself -- I could
not leave you alone. You know, you were a little out of your head with
fright and fever. I really couldn't leave you to get on by yourself."
"No," cried the girl, excitedly, "you could not leave me after
carrying me out of that terrible crowd; yourself hurt, exhausted, you
sat by my side all night long."
Gethryn laid his hand on her. "Hélène," he said, half jesting, "I
did what anyone else would have done under the circumstances -- and
forgotten."
She looked at him shyly. "Don't forget," she said.
"I couldn't forget your face," he rashly answered, moved by the
emotion she showed.
She brightened.
"Did you know me when you first saw me in the crowd?" She expected
him to say "Yes."
"No," he replied, "I only saw you were a woman and in danger of
your life."
The brightness fell from her face. "Then it was all the same to you
who I was."
He nodded. "Yes -- any woman, you know."
"Old and dirty and ugly?"
His hand slipped from hers. "And a woman -- yes."
She shrugged her pretty shoulders. "Then I wish it had been someone
else."
"So do I, for your sake," he answered gravely.
She glanced at him, half frightened; then leaning swiftly toward him:
"Forgive me; I would not change places with a queen."
"Nor I with any man!" he cried gayly. "Am I not Paris?"
"And I?"
"You are Hélène," he said, laughing. "Let me see -- Paris and
Hélène would not have changed -- "
She interrupted him impatiently. "Words! you do not mean them. Nor do
I, either," she added, hastily. After that neither spoke for a while.
Gethryn, half stretched on the big rug, idly twisting bits of it into
curls, felt very comfortable, without troubling to ask himself what
would come next. Presently she glanced up.
"Paris, do you want to smoke?"
"You don't think I would smoke in this dainty nest?"
"Please do, I like it. We are -- we will be such very good friends.
There are matches on that table in the silver box."
He shook his head, laughing. "You are too indulgent."
"I am never indulgent, excepting to myself. But I have caprices and I
generally die when they are not indulged. This is one. Please smoke."
"Oh, in that case, with Hélène's permission."
She laughed delightedly as he blew the rings of fragrant smoke far up
to the ceiling. There was another long pause, then she began again:
"Paris, you speak French very well."
He came from where he had been standing by the table and seated
himself once more among the furs at her feet.
"Do I, Hélène?"
"Yes -- but you sing it divinely."
Gethryn began to hum the air of the dream song, smiling, "Yes 'tis a
dream -- a dream of love," he repeated, but stopped.
Yvonne's temples and throat were crimson.
"Please open the window," she cried, "it's so warm here."
"Hélène, I think you are blushing," said he, mischievously.
She turned her head away from him. He rose and opened the window,
leaning out a moment; his heart was beating violently. Presently he
returned.
"It's one o'clock."
No answer.
"Hélène, it's one o'clock in the morning."
"Are you tired?" she murmured.
"No."
"Nor I -- don't go."
"But it's one o'clock."
"Don't go yet."
He sank down irresolutely on the rug again. "I ought to go," he
murmured.
"Are we to remain friends?"
"That is for Hélène to say."
"And Hélène will leave it to Homer!"
"To whom?" said Gethryn.
"Monsieur Homer," said the girl, faintly.
"But that was a tragedy."
"But they were friends."
"In a way. Yes, in a way."
Gethryn tried to return to a light tone. "They fell in love, I
believe." No answer. "Very well," said Gethryn, still trying to
joke, "I will carry you off in a boat, then."
"To Troy -- when?"
"No, to Meudon, when you are well. Do you like the country?"
"I love it," she said.
"Well, I'll take my easel and my paints along too."
She looked at him seriously. "You are an artist -- I heard that from
the concierge."
"Yes," said Gethryn, "I think I may claim the title tonight."
And then he told her about the Salon. She listened and brightened with
sympathy. Then she grew silent.
"Do you paint landscapes?"
"Figures," said the young man, shortly.
"From models?"
"Of course," he answered, still more drily.
"Draped," she persisted.
"No."
"I hate models!" she cried out, almost fiercely.
"They are not a pleasing set, as a rule," he admitted. "But I know
some decent ones."
She shivered and shook her curly head. "Some are very pretty, I
suppose."
"Some."
"Do you know Sarah Brown?"
"Yes, I know Sarah."
"Men go wild about her."
"I never did."
Yvonne was out of humor. "Oh," she cried, petulantly, "you are very
cold -- you Americans -- like ice."
"Because we don't run after Sarah?"
"Because you are a nation of business, and -- "
"And brains," said Gethryn, drily.
There was an uncomfortable pause. Gethryn looked at the girl. She lay
with her face turned from him.
"Hélène!" No answer. "Yvonne -- Mademoiselle!" No answer. "It's
two o'clock."
A slight impatient movement of the head.
"Good night." Gethryn rose. "Good night," he repeated. He waited
for a moment. "Good night, Yvonne," he said, for the third time.
She turned slowly toward him, and as he looked down at her he felt a
tenderness as for a sick child.
"Good night," he said once more, and, bending over her, gently laid
the little gold clasp in her open hand. She looked at it in surprise;
then suddenly she leaned swiftly toward him, rested a brief second
against him, and then sank back again. The golden fleur-de-lis
glittered over his heart.
"You will wear it?" she whispered.
"Yes."
"Then -- good night."
Half unconsciously he stooped and kissed her forehead; then went his
way. And all that night one slept until the morning broke, and one saw
morning break, then fell asleep.
Six
It was the first day of June. In the Luxembourg Gardens a soft breeze
stirred the tender chestnut leaves, and blew sparkling ripples across
the water in the Fountain of Marie de Medicis.
The modest little hothouse flowers had quite recovered from the shock
of recent transplanting and were ambitiously pushing out long spikes
and clusters of crimson, purple and gold, filling the air with spicy
perfume, and drawing an occasional battered butterfly, gaunt and
seedy, from his long winter's sleep, but still remembering the flowery
days of last season's brilliant debut.
Through the fresh young leaves the sunshine fell, dappling the glades
and thickets, bathing the gray walls of the Palais du Sénat, and
almost warming into life the queer old statues of long departed
royalty, which for so many years have looked down from the great
terrace to the Palace of the King.
Through every gate the people drifted into the gardens, and the
winding paths were dotted and crowded with brightly-colored,
slowly-moving groups.
Here a half dozen meager, black-robed priests strolled silently amid
the tender verdure; here a noisy crowd of children, gamboling
awkwardly in the wake of a painted rubber ball, made day hideous with
their yells.
Now a slovenly company of dragoons shuffled by, their big shapeless
boots covered with dust, and their whalebone plumes hanging in
straight points to the middle of their backs; now a group of strutting
students and cocottes passed noisily, the girls in spotless spring
plumage, the students vying with each other in the display of blinking
eyeglasses, huge bunchy neckties, and sleek checked trousers.
Policemen, trim little grisettes (for whatever is said to the
contrary, the grisette is still extant in Paris), nurse girls with
turbaned heads and ugly red streamers, wheeling ugly red babies; an
occasional stray zouave or turco in curt Turkish jacket and white
leggings; grave old gentlemen with white mustache and military step;
gay, baggy gentlemen from St Cyr, looking like newly-painted wooden
soldiers; students from the Ecole Polytechnique; students from the
Lycée St Louis in blue and red; students from Julien's and the Beaux
Arts with a plentiful sprinkling of berets and corduroy jackets; and
group after group of jingling artillery officers in scarlet and black,
or hussars and chasseurs in pale turquoise, strolled and idled up and
down the terrace, or watched the toy yachts braving the furies of the
great fountain.
Over by the playgrounds, the Polichinel nuisance drummed and squeaked
to an appreciative audience of tender years. The "Jeu de paume" was
also in full swing, a truly exasperating spectacle for a modern tennis
player.
The old man who feeds the sparrows in the afternoon, and beats his
wife at night, was intent on the former cheerful occupation, and
smiled benevolently upon the little children who watched him, open
mouthed. The numerous waterfowl -- mallard, teal, red-head, and dusky
-- waddled and dived and fought the big mouse-colored pigeons for a
share of the sparrow's crumbs.
A depraved and mongrel pointer, who had tugged at his chain in a wild
endeavor to point the whole heterogeneous mass of feathered creatures
from sparrow to swan, lost his head and howled dismally until dragged
off by the lean-legged student who was attached to the other end of
the chain.
Gethryn, sprawling on a bench in the sunshine, turned up his nose.
Braith grunted scornfully.
A man passed in the crowd, stopped, stared, and then hastily advanced
toward Gethryn.
"You?" said Rex, smiling and shaking hands. "Mr Clifford, this is
Mr Bulfinch; Mr Braith," -- but Mr Bulfinch was already bowing to
Braith and offering his hand, though with a curious diminution of his
first beaming cordiality. Braith's constraint was even more marked. He
had turned quite white. Bulfinch and Gethryn, who had risen to receive
him, remained standing side by side, stranded on the shoals of an
awkward situation. The little Mirror man made a grab at a topic which
he thought would float them off, and laid hold instead on one which
upset them altogether.
"I hope Mrs Braith is well. She met you all right at Vienna?"
Braith bowed stiffly, without answering.
Rex gave him a quick look, and turning on his heel, said carelessly:
"I see you and Mr Braith are old acquaintances, so I won't scruple to
leave you with him for a moment. Bring Mr Bulfinch over to the music
stand, Braith." And smiling, as if he were assisting at a charming
reunion, he led Clifford away. The latter turned, as he departed, an
eye of delighted intelligence upon Braith.
To renew his acquaintance with Mr Bulfinch was the last thing Braith
desired, but since the meeting had been thrust upon him he thanked
Gethryn's tact for removing such a witness of it as Clifford would
have been. He had no intention, however, of talking with the little
Mirror man, and maintained a profound silence, smoking steadily. This
conduct so irritated the other that he determined to force an
explanation of the matter which seemed so distasteful to his
ungracious companion. He certainly thought he had his own reasons for
resenting the sight of Braith upon a high horse, and he resumed the
conversation with all the jaunty ease which the calling of newspaper
correspondent is said to cultivate.
"I hope Mrs Braith found no difficulty in meeting you in Vienna?"
"Madame was not my wife, and we did not meet in Vienna," said Braith
shortly.
Bulfinch began to stare, and to feel a little less at ease.
"She told me -- that is, her courier came to me and -- "
"Her courier? Mr Bulfinch, will you please explain what you are
talking about?" Braith turned square around and looked at him in a
way that caused a still further diminution of his jauntiness and a
proportionate increase of respect.
"Oh -- I'll explain, if I know what you want explained. We were at
Brindisi, were we not?"
"Yes."
"On our way to Cairo?"
"Yes."
"In the same hotel?"
"Yes."
"But I had no acquaintance with madame, and had only exchanged a word
or two with you, when you were suddenly summoned to Paris by a
telegram."
Braith bowed. He remembered well the false dispatch that had drawn him
out of the way.
"Well, and when you left you told her you would be obliged to give up
going to Cairo, and asked her to meet you in Vienna, whither you would
have to go from Paris?"
"Oh, did I?"
"And you recommended a courier to her whom you knew very well, and in
whom you had great confidence."
"Ah! And what was that courier's name?"
"Emanuel Pick. I wasn't fond of Emanuel myself," with a sharp glance
at Braith's eyes, "but I supposed you knew something in his favor, or
you would not have left -- er -- the lady in his charge."
Braith was silent.
"I understood him to be your agent," said the little man,
cautiously.
"He was not."
"Oh!"
A long silence followed, during which Mr Bulfinch sought and found an
explanation of several things. After a while he said musingly:
"I should like to meet Mr Pick again."
"Why should you want to meet him?"
"I wish to wring his nose two hundred times, one for each franc I
lent him."
"How was that?" said Braith, absently.
"It was this way. He came to me and told me what I have repeated to
you, and that you desired madame to go on at once and wait for you in
Vienna, which you expected to reach in a few days after her arrival.
That you had bought tickets -- one first class for madame, two second
class for him and for her maid -- before you left, and had told her
you had placed plenty of money for the other expenses in her dressing
case. But this morning, on looking for the money, none could be found.
Madame was sure it had not been stolen. She thought you must have
meant to put it there, and forgotten afterwards. If she only had a few
francs, just to last as far as Naples! Madame was well known to the
bankers on the Santa Lucia there! etc. Well, I'm not such an ass that
I didn't first see madame and get her to confirm his statement. But
when she did confirm it, with such a charming laugh -- she was very
pretty -- I thought she was a lady and your wife -- "
In the midst of his bitterness, Braith could not help smiling at the
thought of Nina with a maid and a courier. He remembered the tiny
apartment in the Latin Quarter which she had been glad to occupy with
him until conducted by her courier into finer ones. He made a gesture
of disgust, and his face burned with the shame of a proud man who has
received an affront from an inferior -- and who knows it to be his own
fault.
"I can at least have the satisfaction of setting that right," he
said, holding two notes toward the little Mirror man, "and I can't
thank you enough for giving me the opportunity."
Bulfinch drew back and stammered, "You don't think I spoke for that!
You don't think I'd have spoken at all if I had known -- "
"I do not. And I'm very glad you did not know, for it gives me a
chance to clear myself. You must have thought me strangely forgetful,
Mr Bulfinch, when the money was not repaid in due time."
"I -- I didn't relish the manner in which you met me just now, I
confess, but I'm very much ashamed of myself. I am indeed."
"Shake hands," said Braith, with one of his rare smiles.
The notes were left in Mr Bulfinch's fingers, and as he thrust them
hastily out of sight, as if he truly was ashamed, he said, blinking up
at Braith, "Do you -- er -- would you -- may I offer you a glass of
whiskey?" adding hastily, "I don't drink myself."
"Why, yes," said Braith, "I don't mind, but I won't drink all
alone."
"Coffee is my tipple," said the other, in a faint voice.
"All right; suit yourself. But I should think that rather hot for
such a day."
"Oh, I'll take it iced."
"Then let us walk over to the Café by the bandstand. We shall find
the others somewhere about."
They strolled through the grove, past the music-stand, and sat down at
one of the little iron tables under the trees. The band of the Garde
Republicaine was playing. Bulfinch ordered sugar and Eau de selz for
Braith, and iced coffee for himself.
Braith looked at the program: No. 1, Faust; No. 2, La Belle Hélène.
"Rex ought to be here, he's so fond of that."
Mr Bulfinch was mixing, in a surprisingly scientific manner for a man
who didn't drink himself, something which the French call a
"coquetelle"; a bit of ice, a little seltzer, a slice of lemon, and
some Canadian Club whiskey. Braith eyed the well-worn flask.
"I see you don't trust to the Café's supplies."
"I only keep this for medicinal purposes," said the other, blinking
nervously, "and -- and I don't usually produce it when there are any
newspapermen around."
"But you," said Braith, sipping the mixture with relish, "do you
take none yourself?"
"I don't drink," said the other, and swallowed his coffee in such a
hurry as to bring on a fit of coughing. Beads of perspiration
clustered above his canary-colored eyebrows as he set down the glass
with a gasp.
Braith was watching the crowd. Presently he exclaimed:
"There's Rex now," and rising, waved his glass and his cane and
called Gethryn's name. The people sitting at adjacent tables glanced
at one another resignedly. "More crazy English!"
"Rex! Clifford!" Braith shouted, until at last they heard him. In a
few moments they had made their way through the crowd and sat down,
mopping their faces and protesting plaintively against the heat.
Gethryn's glance questioned Braith, who said, "Mr Bulfinch and I have
had the deuce of a time to make you fellows hear. You'd have been
easier to call if you knew what sort of drink he can brew."
Clifford was already sniffing knowingly at the glass and turning looks
of deep intelligence on Bulfinch, who responded gayly, "Hope you'll
have some too," and with a sidelong blink at Gethryn, he produced the
bottle, saying, "I don't drink myself, as Mr Gethryn knows."
Rex said, "Certainly not," not knowing what else to say. But the
fondness of Clifford's gaze was ineffable.
Braith, who always hated to see Clifford look like that, turned to
Gethryn. "Favorite of yours on the program."
Rex looked.
"Oh," he cried, "Belle Hélène." Next moment he flushed, and
feeling as if the others saw it, crimsoned all the deeper. This
escaped Clifford, however, who was otherwise occupied. But he joined
in the conversation, hoping for an argument.
"Braith and Rex go in for the Meistersinger, Walküre, and all that
rot -- but I like some tune to my music."
"Well, you're going to get it now," said Braith; "the band are
taking their places. Now for La Belle Hélène." He glanced at Gethryn,
who had turned aside and leaned on the table, shading his eyes with
his program.
The leader of the band stood wiping his mustache with one hand while
he turned the leaves of his score with the other. The musicians came
in laughing and chattering, munching their bit of biscuit or smacking
their lips over lingering reminiscences of the intermission.
They hung their bayonets against the wall, and at the rat-tat of
attention, came to order, standing in a circle with bugles and
trombones poised and eyes fixed on the little gold-mounted baton.
A slow wave of the white-gloved hand, a few gentle tips of the wand,
and then a sweep which seemed to draw out the long, rich opening chord
of the Dream Song and set it drifting away among the trees till it
lost itself in the rattle and clatter of the Boulevard St Michel.
Braith and Bulfinch set down their glasses and listened. Clifford
silently blew long wreaths of smoke into the branches overhead.
Gethryn leaned heavily on the table, one hand shading his eyes.
Oui c'est un rêve;
Un rêve doux d'amour --
The music died away in one last throb. Bulfinch sighed and blinked
sentimentally, first on one, then on the other of his companions.
Suddenly the little Mirror man's eyes bulged out, he stiffened and
grasped Braith's arm; his fingers were like iron.
"What the deuce!" began Braith, but, following the other's eyes, he
became silent and stern.
"Talk of the devil -- do you see him -- Pick?"
"I see," growled Braith.
"And -- and excuse me, but can that be madame? So like, and yet -- "
Braith leaned forward and looked steadily at a couple who were slowly
moving toward them in deep conversation.
"No," he said at last; and leaning back in his seat he refused to
speak again.
Bulfinch chattered on excitedly, and at last he brought his fist down
on the table at his right, where Clifford sat drawing a caricature on
the marble top.
"I'd like," cried Bulfinch, "to take it out of his hide!"
"Hello!" said Clifford, disturbed in his peaceful occupation,
"whose hide are you going to tan?"
"Nobody's," said Braith, sternly, still watching the couple who had
now almost reached their group.
Clifford's start had roused Gethryn, who stirred and slowly looked up;
at the same moment, the girl, now very near, raised her head and Rex
gazed full into the eyes of Yvonne.
Her glance fell and the color flew to her temples. Gethryn's face lost
all its color.
"Pretty girl," drawled Clifford, "but what a dirty little beggar
she lugs about with her."
Pick heard and turned, his eyes falling first on Gethryn, who met his
look with one that was worse than a kick. He glanced next at Braith,
and then he turned green under the dirty yellow of the skin. Braith's
eyes seemed to strike fire; his mouth was close set. The Jew's eyes
shifted, only to fall on the pale, revengeful glare of T. Hoppley
Bulfinch, who was half rising from his chair with all sorts of
possibilities written on every feature.
"Let him go," whispered Braith, and turned his back.
Bulfinch sat down, his eyes like saucers. "I'd like -- but not now!"
he sputtered in a weird whisper.
Clifford had missed the whole thing. He had only eyes for the girl.
Gethryn sat staring after the couple, who were at that moment passing
the gate into the Boulevard St Michel. He saw Yvonne stop and hastily
thrust something into the Jew's hand, then, ignoring his obsequious
salute, leave him and hurry down the Rue de Medicis.
The next Gethryn knew, Braith was standing beside him.
"Rex, will you join us at the Golden Pheasant for dinner?" was what
he said, but his eyes added, "Don't let people see you look like
that."
"I -- I -- don't know," said Gethryn. "Yes, I think so," with an
effort.
"Come along, then!" said Braith to the others, and hurried them
away.
Rex sat still till they were out of sight, then he got up and turned
into the Avenue de l'Observatoire. He stopped and drank some cognac at
a little café, and then started on, but he had no idea where he was
going.
Presently he found himself crossing a bridge, and looked up. The great
pile of Notre Dame de Paris loomed on his right. He crossed the Seine
and wandered on without any aim -- but passing the Tour St Jacques,
and wishing to avoid the Boulevard, he made a sharp detour to the
right, and after long wandering through byways and lanes, he crossed
the foul, smoky Canal St Martin, and bore again to the right -- always
aimlessly.
Twilight was falling when his steps were arrested by fatigue. Looking
up, he found himself opposite the gloomy mass of La Roquette prison.
Sentinels slouched and dawdled up and down before the little painted
sentry boxes under the great gate.
Over the archway was some lettering, and Gethryn stopped to read it:
La Roquette
Prison of the Condemned
He looked up and down the cheerless street. It was deserted save by
the lounging sentinels and one wretched child, who crouched against
the gateway.
"Fiche moi le camp! Allons! En route!" growled one of the sentinels,
stamping his foot and shaking his fist at the bundle of rags.
Gethryn walked toward him.
"What's the matter with the little one?" he asked.
The soldier dropped the butt of his rifle with a ring, and said
deferentially:
"Pardon, Monsieur, but the gamin has been here every day and all day
for two weeks. It's disgusting."
"Is he hungry?"
"Ma foi? I can't tell you," laughed the sentry, shifting his weight
to his right foot and leaning on the cross of his bayonet.
"Are you hungry, little one?" called Gethryn, pleasantly.
The child raised his head, with a wolfish stare, then sank it again
and murmured: "I have seen him and touched him."
Gethryn turned to the soldier.
"What does he mean by that?" he demanded.
The sentry shrugged his shoulders. "He means he saw a hunchback. They
say when one sees a hunchback and touches him, it brings good luck, if
the hunchback is neither too old nor too young. Dame! I don't say
there's nothing in it, but it can't save Henri Rigaud."
"And who is Henri Rigaud?"
"What! Monsieur has not heard of the affair Rigaud? Rigaud who did
the double murder!"
"Oh, yes! In the Faubourg du Temple."
The sentry nodded. "He dies this week."
"And the child?"
"Is his."
Gethryn looked at the dirty little bundle of tatters.
"No one knows the exact day set for the affair, but," the sentry
sank his voice to a whisper, "between you and me, I saw the widow
going into the yard just before dinner, and Monsieur de Paris is here.
That means tomorrow morning -- click!"
"The -- the widow?" repeated Gethryn.
"The guillotine. It will be over before this time tomorrow and the
gamin there, who thinks the bossu will give him back his father --
he'll find out his mistake, all in good time -- all in good time!"
and shouldering his rifle, the sentry laughed and resumed his
slouching walk before the gateway.
Gethryn nodded to the soldier's salute and went up to the child, who
stood leaning sullenly against the wall.
"Do you know what a franc is?" he asked.
The gamin eyed him doggedly.
"But I saw him," he said.
"Saw what?" said Gethryn, gently.
"The bossu," repeated the wretched infant vacantly.
"See here," said Gethryn, "listen to me. What would you do with
twenty francs?"
"Eat, all day long, forever!"
Rex slipped two twenty-franc pieces into the filthy little fist.
"Eat," he murmured, and turned away.
Seven
Next morning, when Clifford arrived at the Atelier of MM. Boulanger
and Lefebvre, he found the students more excited than usual over the
advent of a "Nouveau."
Hazing at Julien's has assumed, of late, a comparatively mild form. Of
course there are traditions of serious trouble in former years and a
few fights have taken place, consequent upon the indignant resistance
of new men to the ridiculous demands forced upon them by their
ingenious tormentors. Still, the hazing of today is comparatively
inoffensive, and there is not much of it. In the winter the students
are too busy to notice a newcomer, except to make him feel strange and
humble by their lofty scorn. But in the autumn, when the men have
returned from their long out-of-door rest, with brush and palette, a
certain amount of friskiness is developed, which sometimes expends
itself upon the luckless "nouveau." A harmless search for the
time-honored "grand reflecteur," an enforced song and dance, a stern
command to tread the mazes of the shameless quadrille with an equally
shameless model, is usually the extent of the infliction. Occasionally
the stranger is invited to sit on a high stool and read aloud to the
others while they work, as he would like to do himself. But sometimes,
if a man resists these reasonable demands in a contumacious manner, he
is "crucified." This occurs so seldom, however, that Clifford, on
entering the barn-like studios that morning, was surprised to see that
a "crucifixion" was in progress.
A stranger was securely strapped to the top rungs of a twenty-foot
ladder which a crowd of Frenchmen were preparing to raise and place in
a slanting position against the wall.
"Who is it that those fellows are fooling with?" he asked.
"An Englishman, and it's about time we put a stop to it," answered
Elliott.
When Americans or Englishmen are hazed by the French students, they
make common cause in keeping watch that the matter does not go too
far.
"How many of us are here this morning?" said Clifford.
"Fourteen who can fight," said Elliott; "they only want someone to
give the word."
Clifford buttoned his jacket and shouldered his way into the middle of
the crowd. "That's enough. He's been put through enough for today,"
he said coolly.
A Frenchman, who had himself only entered the Atelier the week
previous, laughed and replied, "We'll put you on, if you say
anything."
There was an ominous pause. Every old student there knew Clifford to
be one of the most skillful and dangerous boxers in the school.
They looked with admiration upon their countryman. It didn't cost
anything to admire him. They urged him on, and he didn't need much
urging, for he remembered his own recent experience as a new man, and
he didn't know Clifford.
"Go ahead," cried this misguided student, "he's a nouveau, and he's
going up!"
Clifford laughed in his face. "Come along," he called, as some dozen
English and American students pushed into the circle and gathered
round the prostrate Englishman.
"See here, Clifford, what's the use of interrupting?" urged a big
Frenchman.
Clifford began loosening the straps. "You know, Bonin, that we always
do interfere when it goes as far as this against an Englishman or an
American." He laughed good naturedly. "There's always been a fight
over it before, but I hope there won't be any today."
Bonin grinned and shrugged his shoulders.
After vainly fussing with the ropes, Clifford and the others finally
cut them and the "nouveau" scrambled to his feet and took an
attitude which may be seen engraved in any volume of instruction in
the noble art of self-defense. He was an Englishman of the sandy
variety. Orange-colored whiskers decorated a carefully scrubbed face,
terminating in a red-brown mustache. He had blue eyes, now lighted to
a pale green by the fire of battle, reddish-brown hair, and white
hands spattered with orange-colored freckles. All this, together with
a well made suit of green and yellow checks, and the seesaw accent of
the British Empire, answered, when politely addressed, to the name of
Cholmondeley Rowden, Esq.
"I say," he began, "I'm awfully obliged, you know, and all that;
but I'd jolly well like to give some of these cads a jolly good
licking, you know."
"Go in, my friend, go in!" laughed Clifford; "but next time we'll
leave you to hang in the air for an hour or two, that's all."
"Damn their cheek!" began the Englishman.
"See here," cried Elliott sharply, "you're only a nouveau, and
you'd better shut up till you've been here long enough to talk."
"In other words," said Clifford, "don't buck against custom."
"But I cahn't see it," said the nouveau, brushing his dusty
trousers. "I don't see it at all, you know. Damn their cheek!"
At this moment the week-weaned Frenchman shoved up to Clifford.
"What did you mean by interfering? Eh! You English pig."
Clifford looked at him with contempt. "What do you want, my little
Nouveau?"
"Nouveau!" spluttered the Gaul, "Nouveau, eh!" and he made a
terrific lunge at the American, who was sent stumbling backward, and
slipping, fell heavily.
The Frenchman gazed around in triumph, but his grin was not reflected
on the faces of his compatriots. None of them would have changed
places with him.
Clifford picked himself up deliberately. His face was calm and mild as
he walked up to his opponent, who hurriedly put himself into an
attitude of self-defense.
"Monsieur Nouveau, you are not wise. But some day you will learn
better, when you are no longer a nouveau," said Clifford, kindly. The
man looked puzzled, but kept his fists up.
"Now I am going to punish you a little," proceeded Clifford, in even
tones, "not harshly, but with firmness, for your good," he added,
walking straight up to the Frenchman.
The latter struck heavily at Clifford's head, but he ducked like a
flash, and catching his antagonist around the waist, carried him,
kicking, to the water-basin, where he turned on the water and shoved
the squirming Frenchman under. The scene was painful, but brief; when
one of the actors in it emerged from under the water-spout, he no
longer asked for anybody's blood.
"Go and dry yourself," said Clifford, cheerfully; and walking over
to his easel, sat down and began to work.
In ten minutes, all trace of the row had disappeared, excepting that
one gentleman's collar looked rather limp and his hair was uncommonly
sleek. The men worked steadily. Snatches of song and bits of whistling
rose continuously from easel and taboret, all blending in a drowsy
hum. Gethryn and Elliott caught now and then, from behind them, words
of wisdom which Clifford was administering to the now subdued Rowden.
"Yes," he was saying, "many a man has been injured for life by
these Frenchmen for a mere nothing. I had two brothers," he paused,
"and my golden-haired boy -- " he ceased again, apparently choking
with emotion.
"But -- I say -- you're not married, you know," said the Englishman.
"Hush," sighed Clifford, "I -- I -- married the daughter of an
African duke. She was brought to the States by a slave trader in
infancy."
"Black?" gasped Mr Rowden.
"Very black, but beautiful. I could not keep her. She left me, and is
singing with Haverley's Minstrels now."
Like the majority of his countrymen, Mr Rowden was ready to believe
anything he heard of social conditions in the States, but one point
required explanation.
"You said the child had golden hair."
"Yes, his mother's hair was red," sighed Clifford.
Gethryn, glancing round, saw the Englishman's jaw drop, as he said,
"How extraordinary!" Then he began to smile as if suspecting a joke.
But Clifford's eye met his in gentle rebuke.
"C'est l'heure! Rest!" Down jumped the model. The men leaned back
noisily. Clifford rose, bowed gravely to the Englishman, and stepped
across the taborets to join his friends.
Gethryn was cleaning his brushes with turpentine and black soap.
"Going home, Rex?" inquired Clifford, picking up a brush and sending
a fine spray of turpentine over Elliott, who promptly returned the
attention.
"Quit that," growled Gethryn, "don't ruin those brushes."
"What's the nouveau like, Clifford?" asked Elliott. "We heard you
instructing him a little. He seems to have the true Englishman's sense
of humor."
"Oh, he's not a bad sort," said Clifford. "Come and be introduced.
I'm half ashamed of myself for guying him, for he's really a very
decent, plucky fellow, a bit stiff and pig-headed, as many of 'em are
at first, and as for humor, I suppose they know their own kind, but
they do get a little confused between fact and fancy when they
converse with us."
The two strolled off with friendly intent, to seek out and ameliorate
the loneliness of Cholmondeley Rowden, Esq.
Gethryn tied up his brushes, closed his color box and, flinging on his
hat, hurried down the stairs and into the court, nodding to several
students who passed with canvas and paint-boxes tucked under their
arms. He reached the street, and, going through the Passage Brady,
emerged upon the Boulevard Sebastopol.
A car was passing and he boarded it, climbing up to the imperiale. The
only vacant seat was between a great, red-faced butcher, and a market
woman from the Halles, and although the odors of raw beef and fish
were unpleasantly perceptible, he settled himself back and soon became
lost in his own thoughts. The butcher had a copy of the Petit Journal
and every now and then he imparted bits of it across Gethryn, to the
market woman, lingering with relish over the criminal items.
"Dites donc," he cried, "here is the affair Rigaud!"
Gethryn roused up and listened.
"This morning, I knew it," cackled the woman, folding her fat hands
across her apron. "I said to Sophie, `Voyons Sophie,' I said -- "
"Shut up," interrupted the butcher, "I'm going to read."
"I was sure of it," said the woman, addressing Gethryn, "`Voyons,
Sophie,' said -- " but the butcher interrupted her, again reading
aloud:
"The condemned struggled fearfully, and it required the united
efforts of six gendarmes -- "
"Cochon!" said the woman.
"Listen, will you!" cried the man. "Some disturbance was caused by
a gamin who broke from the crowd and attacked a soldier. But the
miserable was seized and carried off, screaming. Two gold pieces of 20
francs each fell from some hiding-place in his ragged clothes and were
taken charge of by the police."
The man paused and gloated over the column. "Here," he cried,
"Listen -- `Even under the knife the condemned -- "'
Gethryn rose roughly and, crowding past the man, descended the steps
and, entering the car below, sat down there.
"Butor!" roared the butcher. "Cochon! He trod on my foot!"
"He is an English pig!" sneered the woman, reaching for the
newspaper. "Let me read it now," she whined.
"Hands off," growled the man, "I'll read you what I think good."
"But it's my paper."
"It's mine now -- shut up."
The first thing Gethryn did on reaching home was to write a note to
his friend, the Prefect of the Seine, telling him how the child of
Rigaud came by the gold pieces. Then he had a quiet smoke, and then he
went out and lunched at the Café des Écoles, frugally, on a sandwich
and a glass of beer. After that he returned to his studio and sat down
to his desk again. He opened a small memorandum book and examined some
columns of figures. They were rather straggling, not very well kept,
but they served to convince him that his accounts were forty francs
behind, and he would have to economize a little for the next week or
two. After this, he sat and thought steadily. Finally he took a sheet
of his best cream laid note paper, dipped his pen in the ink, and
began to write. The note was short, but it took him a long while to
compose it, and when it was sealed and directed to "Miss Ruth Deane,
Lung' Arno Guicciardini, Florence, Italy," he sat holding it in his
hand as if he did not know what to do with it.
Two o'clock struck. He started up, and quickly rolling up the shades
from the glass roof and pulling out his easel, began to squeeze tube
after tube of color upon his palette. The parrot came down and tiptoed
about the floor, peering into color boxes, pastel cases, and pots of
black soap, with all the curiosity of a regulation studio bore. Steps
echoed on the tiles outside.
Gethryn opened the door quickly. "Ah, Elise! Bon jour!" he said,
pleasantly. "Entrez donc!"
"Merci, Monsieur Gethryn," smiled his visitor, a tall, well-shaped
girl with dark eyes and red cheeks.
"Ten minutes late," Elise, said Gethryn, laughing, "my time's worth
a franc a minute; so prepare to pay up."
"Very well," retorted the girl, also laughing and showing her pretty
teeth, "but I have decided to charge twenty francs an hour from
today. Now, what do you owe me, Monsieur?"
Gethryn shook his brushes at her. "You are spoiled, Elise -- you used
to pose very well and were never late."
"And I pose well now!" she cried, her professional pride piqued.
"Monsieur Bonnat and Monsieur Constant have praised me all this week.
Voila," she finished, throwing off her waist and letting her skirts
fall in a circle to her feet.
"Oh, you can pose if you will," answered Gethryn, pleasantly.
"Come, we begin?"
The girl stepped daintily out of the pile of discarded clothes, and
picking her way across the room with her bare feet, sprang lightly
upon the model stand.
"The same as last week?" she asked, smiling frankly.
"Yes, that's it," he replied, shifting his easel and glancing up at
the light; "only drop the left elbow a bit -- there, that's it; now a
little to the left -- the knee -- that will do."
The girl settled herself into the pose, glanced at the clock, and then
turning to Gethryn said, "And I am to look at you, am I not?"
"Where could you find a more charming object?" murmured he, sorting
his brushes.
"Thank you," she pouted, stealing a glance at him; "than you?"
"Except Mademoiselle Elise. There, now we begin!"
The rest of the hour was disturbed only by the sharp rattle of brushes
and the scraping of the palette knife.
"Are you tired?" asked Gethryn, looking at the clock; "you have ten
minutes more."
"No," said the girl, "continue."
Finally Gethryn rose and stepped back.
"Time," he said, still regarding his work. "Come and give me a
criticism, Elise."
The girl stretched her limbs, and then, stepping down, trotted over to
Gethryn.
"What do you say?" he demanded, anxiously.
Artists often pay more serious attention to the criticisms of their
models than to those of a brother artist. For, although models may be
ignorant of method -- which, however, is not always the case -- from
seeing so much good work they acquire a critical acumen which often
goes straight to the mark.
It was for one of these keen criticisms that the young man was
listening now.
"I like it very much -- very much," answered the girl, slowly;
"but, you see -- I am not so cold in the face -- am I?"
"Hit it, as usual," muttered the artist, biting his lip; "I've got
more greens and blues in there than there are in a peacock's tail.
You're right," he added, aloud, "I must warm that up a bit -- there
in the shadows, and keep the high lights pure and cold."
Elise nodded seriously. "Monsieur Chaplain and I have finished our
picture," she announced, after a pause.
It is a naïve way models have of appropriating work in which, truly
enough, they have no small share. They often speak of "our pictures"
and "our success."
"How do you like it?" asked the artist, absently.
"Good," -- she shrugged her shoulders -- "but not truth."
"Right again," murmured Gethryn.
"I prefer Dagnan," added the pretty critic.
"So do I -- rather!" laughed Gethryn.
"Or you," said the girl.
"Come, come," cried the young man, coloring with pleasure, "you
don't mean it, Elise!"
"I say what I mean -- always," she replied, marching over to the
pups and gathering them into her arms.
"I'm going to take a cigarette," she announced, presently.
"All right," said Gethryn, squeezing more paint on his palette,
"you'll find some mild ones on the bookcase."
Elise gave the pups a little hug and kiss, and stepped lightly over to
the bookcase. Then she lighted a cigarette and turned and surveyed
herself in the mirror.
"I'm thinner than I was last year. What do you think?" she demanded,
studying her pretty figure in the glass.
"Perhaps a bit, but it's all the better. Those corsets simply ruined
you as a model last year."
Elise looked serious and shook her head.
"I do feel so much better without them. I won't wear them again."
"No, you have a pretty, slender figure, and you don't want them.
That's why I always get you when I can. I hate to draw or paint from a
girl whose hips are all discolored with ugly red creases from her
confounded corset."
The girl glanced contentedly at her supple, clean-limbed figure, and
then, with a laugh, jumped upon the model stand.
"It's not time," said Gethryn, "you have five minutes yet."
"Go on, all the same." And soon the rattle of the brushes alone
broke the silence.
At last Gethryn rose and backed off with a sigh.
"How's that, Elise?" he called.
She sprang down and stood looking over his shoulder.
"Now I'm like myself!" she cried, frankly; "it's delicious! But
hurry and block in the legs, why don't you?"
"Next pose," said the young man, squeezing out more color.
And so the afternoon wore away, and at six o'clock Gethryn threw down
his brushes with a long-drawn breath.
"That's all for today. Now, Elise, when can you give me the next
pose? I don't want a week at a time on this; I only want a day now and
then."
The model went over to her dress and rummaged about in the pockets.
"Here," she said, handing him a notebook and diary.
He selected a date, and wrote his name and the hour.
"Good," said the girl, reading it; and replacing the book, picked up
her stockings and slowly began to dress.
Gethryn lay back on the lounge, thoroughly tired out. Elise was
humming a Normandy fishing song. When, at last, she stood up and drew
on her gloves, he had fallen into a light sleep.
She stepped softly over to the lounge and listened to the quiet
breathing of the young man.
"How handsome -- and how good he is!" she murmured, wistfully.
She opened the door very gently.
"So different, so different from the rest!" she sighed, and
noiselessly went her way.
Eight
Although the sound of the closing door was hardly perceptible, it was
enough to wake Gethryn.
"Elise!" he called, starting up, "Elise!"
But the girl was beyond earshot.
"And she went away without her money, too; I'll drop around tomorrow
and leave it; she may need it," he muttered, rubbing his eyes and
staring at the door.
It was dinner time, and past, but he had little appetite.
"I'll just have something here," he said to himself, and catching up
his hat ran down stairs. In twenty minutes he was back with eggs,
butter, bread, a paté, a bottle of wine and a can of sardines. The
spirit lamp was lighted and the table deftly spread.
"I'll have a cup of tea, too," he thought, shaking the blue tea
canister, and then, touching a match to the well-filled grate, soon
had the kettle fizzling and spluttering merrily.
The wind had blown up cold from the east and the young man shivered as
he closed and fastened the windows. Then he sat down, his chin on his
hands, and gazed into the glowing grate. Mrs Gummidge, who had smelled
the sardines, came rubbing up against his legs, uttering a soft mew
from sheer force of habit. She was not hungry -- in fact, Gethryn knew
that the concierge, whose duty it was to feed all the creatures,
overdid it from pure kindness of heart -- at Gethryn's expense.
"Gummidge, you're stuffed up to your eyes, aren't you?" he said.
At the sound of his voice the cat hoisted her tail, and began to march
in narrowing circles about her master's chair, making gentle
observations in the cat language.
Gethryn placed a bit of sardine on a fork and held it out, but the
little humbug merely sniffed at it daintily, and then rubbed against
her master's hand.
He laughed and tossed the bit of fish into the fire, where it
spluttered and blazed until the parrot woke up with a croak of
annoyance. Gethryn watched the kettle in silence.
Faces he could never see among the coals, but many a time he had
constructed animals and reptiles from the embers, and just now he
fancied he could see a resemblance to a shark among the bits of
blazing coal.
He watched the kettle dreamily. The fire glowed and flashed and sank,
and glowed again. Now he could distinctly see a serpent twisting among
the embers. The clock ticked in measured unison with the slow
oscillation of the flame serpent. The wind blew hard against the panes
and sent a sudden chill creeping to his feet.
Bang! Bang! went the blinds. The hallway was full of strange noises.
He thought he heard a step on the threshold; he imagined that his door
creaked, but he did not turn around from his study of the fire; it was
the wind, of course.
The sudden hiss of the kettle, boiling over, made him jump and seize
it. As he turned to set it down, there was a figure standing beside
the table. Neither spoke. The kettle burnt his hand and he set it back
on the hearth; then he remained standing, his eyes fixed on the fire.
After a while Yvonne broke the silence -- speaking very low: "Are you
angry?"
"Why?"
"I don't know," said the girl, with a sigh.
The silence was too strained to last, and finally Gethryn said,
"Won't you sit down?"
She did so silently.
"You see I'm -- I'm about to do a little cooking," he said, looking
at the eggs.
The girl spoke again, still very low.
"Won't you tell me why you are angry?"
"I'm not," began Gethryn, but he sat down and glanced moodily at the
girl.
"For two weeks you have not been to see me."
"You are mistaken, I have been -- " he began, but stopped.
"When?"
"Saturday."
"And I was not at home?"
"And you were at home," he said grimly. "You had a caller -- it was
easy to hear his voice, so I did not knock."
She winced, but said quietly, "Don't you think that is rude?"
"Yes," said Gethryn, "I beg pardon."
Presently she continued: "You and -- and he -- are the only two men
who have been in my room."
"I'm honored, I'm sure," he answered, drily.
The girl threw back her mackintosh and raised her veil.
"I ask your pardon again," he said; "allow me to relieve you of
your waterproof."
She rose, suffering him to aid her with her cloak, and then sat down
and looked into the fire in her turn.
"It has been so long -- I -- I -- hoped you would come."
"Whom were you with in the Luxembourg Gardens?" he suddenly broke
out.
She did not misunderstand or evade the question, and Gethryn, watching
her face, thought perhaps she had expected it. But she resented his
tone.
"I was with a friend," she said, simply.
He came and sat down opposite her.
"It is not my business," he said, sulkily; "excuse me."
She looked at him for some moments in silence.
"It was Mr Pick," she said at length.
Gethryn could not repress a gesture of disgust.
"And that -- Jew was in your rooms? That Jew!"
"Yes." She sat nervously rolling and unrolling her gloves. "Why do
you care?" she asked, looking into the fire.
"I don't."
"You do."
There was a pause.
"Rex," she said, very low, "will you listen?"
"Yes, I'll listen."
"He is a -- a friend of my sister's. He came from her to -- to -- "
"To what!"
"To -- borrow a little money. I distrusted him the first time he came
-- the time you heard him in my room -- and I refused him. Saturday he
stopped me in the street, and, hoping to avoid a chance of meeting --
you, I walked through the park."
"And you gave him the money -- I saw you!"
"I did -- all I could spare."
"Is he -- is your sister married?"
"No," she whispered.
"And why -- " began Gethryn, angrily, "Why does that scoundrel come
to beg money -- " He stopped, for the girl was in evident distress.
"Ah! You know why," she said in a scarce audible voice.
The young man was silent.
"And you will come again?" she asked timidly.
No answer.
She moved toward the door.
"We were such very good friends."
Still he was silent.
"Is it au revoir?" she whispered, and waited for a moment on the
threshold.
"Then it is adieu."
"Yes," he said, huskily, "that is better."
She trembled a little and leaned against the doorway.
"Adieu, mon ami -- " She tried to speak, but her voice broke and
ended in a sob.
Then, all at once, and neither knew just how it was, she was lying in
his arms, sobbing passionately.
*
"Rex," said Yvonne, half an hour later, as she stood before the
mirror arranging her disordered curls, "are you not the least little
bit ashamed of yourself?"
The answer appeared to be satisfactory, but the curly head was in a
more hopeless state of disorder than before, and at last the girl gave
a little sigh and exclaimed, "There! I'm all rumpled, but its your
fault. Will you oblige me by regarding my hair?"
"Better let it alone; I'll only rumple it some more!" he cried,
ominously.
"You mustn't! I forbid you!"
"But I want to!"
"Not now, then -- "
"Yes -- immediately!"
"Rex -- you mustn't. O, Rex -- I -- I -- "
"What?" he laughed, holding her by her slender wrists.
She flushed scarlet and struggled to break away.
"Only one."
"No."
"One."
"None."
"Shall I let you go?"
"Yes," she said, but catching sight of his face, stopped short.
He dropped her hands with a laugh and looked at her. Then she came
slowly up to him, and flushing crimson, pulled his head down to hers.
"Yvonne, do you love me? Truthfully?"
"Rex, can you ask?" Her warm little head lay against his throat, her
heart beat against his, her breath fell upon his cheek, and her curls
clustered among his own.
"Yvonne -- Yvonne," he murmured, "I love you -- once and forever."
"Once and forever," she repeated, in a half whisper.
"Forever," he said.
*
An hour later they were seated tete-à-tete at Gethryn's little table.
She had not permitted him to poach the eggs, and perhaps they were
better on that account.
"Bachelor habits must cease," she cried, with a little laugh, and
Gethryn smiled in doubtful acquiescence.
"Do you like grilled sardines on toast?" she asked.
"I seem to," he smiled, finishing his fourth; "they are delicious
-- yours," he added.
"Oh, that tea!" she cried, "and not one bit of sugar. What a
hopelessly careless man!"
But Gethryn jumped up, crying, "Wait a moment!" and returned
triumphantly with a huge mass of rock-candy -- the remains of one of
Clifford's abortive attempts at "rye-and-rock."
They each broke off enough for their cups, and Gethryn, tasting his,
declared the tea "delicious." Yvonne sat, chipping an egg and
casting sidelong glances at Gethryn, which were always met and
returned with interest.
"Yvonne, I want to tell you a secret."
"What, Rex?"
"I love you."
"Oh!"
"And you?"
"No -- not at all!" cried the girl, shaking her pretty head.
Presently she gave him a swift glance from beneath her drooping
lashes.
"Rex?"
"What, Yvonne?"
"I want to tell you a secret."
"What, Yvonne?"
"If you eat so many sardines -- "
"Oh!" cried Gethryn, half angrily, but laughing, "you must pay for
that!"
"What?" she said, innocently, but jumped up and kept the table
between him and herself.
"You know!" he cried, chasing her into a corner.
"We are two babies," she said, very red, following him back to the
table. The paté was eaten in comparative quiet.
"Now," she said, with great dignity, setting down her glass,
"behave and get me some hot water."
Gethryn meekly brought it.
"If you touch me while I am washing these dishes!"
"But let me help?"
"No, go and sit down instantly."
He fled in affected terror and ensconced himself upon the sofa.
Presently he inquired, in a plaintive voice: "Have you nearly
finished?"
"No," said the girl, carefully drying and arranging the quaint
Egyptian tea-set, "and I won't for ages."
"But you're not going to wash all those things? The concierge does
that."
"No, only the wine-glasses and the tea-set. The idea of trusting such
fragile cups to a concierge! What a boy!"
But she was soon ready to dry her slender hands, and caught up a towel
with a demure glance at Gethryn.
"Which do you think most of -- your dogs, or me?"
"Pups."
"That parrot, or me?"
"Poll."
"The raven, or me? The cat, or me?"
"Bird and puss."
She stole over to his side and knelt down.
"Rex, if you ever tire of me -- if you ever are unkind -- if you ever
leave me -- I think I shall die."
He drew her to him. "Yvonne," he whispered, "we can't always be
together."
"I know it -- I'm foolish," she faltered.
"I shall not always be a student. I shall not always be in Paris,
dear Yvonne."
She leaned closer to him.
"I must go back to America someday."
"And -- and marry?" she whispered, chokingly.
"No -- not to marry," he said, "but it is my home."
"I -- I know it, Rex, but don't let us think of it. Rex," she said,
some moments after, "are you like all students?"
"How do you mean?"
"Have you ever loved -- before -- a girl, here in Paris -- like me?"
"There are none -- like you."
"Answer me, Rex."
"No, I never have," he said, truthfully. Presently he added, "And
you, Yvonne?"
She put her warm little hand across his mouth.
"Don't ask," she murmured.
"But I do!" he cried, struggling to see her eyes, "won't you tell
me?"
She hid her face tight against his breast.
"You know I have; that is why I am alone here, in Paris."
"You loved him?"
"Yes -- not as I love you."
Presently she raised her eyes to his.
"Shall I tell you all? I am like so many -- so many others. When you
know their story, you know mine."
He leaned down and kissed her.
"Don't tell me," he said.
But she went on.
"I was only seventeen -- I am nineteen now. He was an officer at --
at Chartres, where we lived. He took me to Paris."
"And left you."
"He died of the fever in Tonquin."
"When?"
"Three weeks ago."
"And you heard?"
"Tonight."
"Then he did leave you."
"Don't, Rex -- he never loved me, and I -- I never really loved him.
I found that out."
"When did you find it out?"
"One day -- you know when -- in a -- a cab."
"Dear Yvonne," he whispered, "can't you go back to -- to your
family?"
"No, Rex."
"Never?"
"I don't wish to, now. No, don't ask me why! I can't tell you. I am
like all the rest -- all the rest. The Paris fever is only cured by
death. Don't ask me, Rex; I am content -- indeed I am."
Suddenly a heavy rapping at the door caused Gethryn to spring
hurriedly to his feet.
"Rex!"
It was Braith's voice.
"What!" cried Gethryn, hoarsely.
There was a pause.
"Aren't you going to let me in?"
"I can't, old man; I -- I'm not just up for company tonight,"
stammered Gethryn.
"Company be damned -- are you ill?"
"No."
There was a silence.
"I'm sorry," began Gethryn, but was cut short by a gruff:
"All right; good night!" and Braith went away.
Yvonne looked inquiringly at him.
"It was nothing," he murmured, very pale, and then threw himself at
her feet, crying, "Oh, Yvonne -- Yvonne!"
Outside the storm raged furiously.
Presently she whispered, "Rex, shall I light the candle? It is
midnight."
"Yes," he said.
She slipped away, and after searching for some time, cried, "the
matches are all gone, but here is a piece of paper -- a letter; do you
want it? I can light it over the lamp."
She held up an envelope to him.
"I can light it over the lamp," she repeated.
"What is the address?"
"It is very long; I can't read it all, only `Florence, Italy."'
"Burn it," he said, in a voice so low she could scarcely hear him.
Presently she came over and knelt down by his side. Neither spoke or
moved.
"The candle is lighted," she whispered, at last.
"And the lamp?"
"Is out."
Nine
Cholmondeley Rowden had invited a select circle of friends to join him
in a "petit diner a la stag," as he expressed it.
Eight months of Paris and the cold, cold world had worked a wonderful
change in Mr Rowden. For one thing, he had shaved his whiskers and now
wore only a mustache. For another, he had learned to like and respect
a fair portion of the French students, and in consequence was
respected and liked in return.
He had had two fights, in both of which he had contributed to the
glory of the British Empire and prize ring.
He was a better sparrer than Clifford and was his equal in the use of
the foils. Like Clifford, he was a capital banjoist, but he insisted
that cricket was far superior to baseball, and this was the only bone
of contention that ever fell between the two.
Clifford played his shameless jokes as usual, accompanied by the
enthusiastic applause of Rowden. Clifford also played "The Widow
Nolan's Goat" upon his banjo, accompanied by the intricate pizzicatos
of Rowden.
Clifford drank numerous bottles of double X with Rowden, and Rowden
consumed uncounted egg-flips with Clifford. They were inseparable; in
fact, the triumvirate, Clifford, Elliott and Rowden, even went so far
as to dress alike, and mean-natured people hinted that they had but
one common style in painting. But they did not make the remark to any
of the triumvirate. They were very fond of each other, these precious
triumvirs, but they did not address each other by nicknames, and
perhaps it was because they respected each other enough to refrain
from familiarities that this alliance lasted as long as they lived.
It was a beautiful sight, that of the three youths, when they sallied
forth in company, hatted, clothed, and gloved alike, and each followed
by a murderous-looking bulldog. The animals were of the brindled
variety, and each was garnished with a steel spiked collar. Timid
people often crossed to the other side of the street on meeting this
procession.
Braith laughed at the whole performance, but secretly thought that a
little of their spare energy and imagination might have been spent to
advantage upon their artistic productions.
Braith was doing splendidly. His last year's picture had been hung on
the line and, in spite of his number three, he had received a third
class medal and had been praised -- even generously -- by artists and
critics, including Albert Wolff. He was hard at work on a large canvas
for the coming International Exhibition at Paris; he had sold a number
of smaller studies, and besides had pictures well hung in Munich and
in more than one gallery at home.
At last, after ten years of hard work, struggles, and disappointments,
he began to enjoy a measure of success. He and Gethryn saw little of
each other this winter, excepting at Julien's. That last visit to the
Rue Monsieur le Prince was never mentioned between them. They were as
cordial when they met as ever, but Braith did not visit his young
friend any more, and Gethryn never spoke to him of Yvonne.
"Good-bye, old chap!" Braith would say when they parted, gripping
Rex's hand and smiling at him. But Rex did not see Braith's face as he
walked away.
Braith felt helpless. The thing he most dreaded for Rex had happened;
he believed he could see the end of it all, and yet he could prevent
nothing. If he should tell Rex that he was being ruined, Rex would not
listen, and -- who was he that he should preach to another man for the
same fault by which he had wasted his own life? No, Rex would never
listen to him, and he dreaded a rupture of their friendship.
Gethryn had made his debut in the Salon with a certain amount of
éclat. True, he had been disappointed in his expectations of a medal,
but a first mention had soothed him a little, and, what was more
important, it proved to be the needed sop to his discontented aunt.
But somehow or other his new picture did not progress rapidly, or in a
thoroughly satisfactory manner. In bits and spots it showed a certain
amount of feverish brilliancy, yes, even mature solidity; in fact, it
was nowhere bad, but still it was not Gethryn and he knew that.
"Confound it!" he would mutter, standing back from his canvas; but
even at such times he could hardly help wondering at his own marvelous
technique.
"Technique be damned! Give me stupidity in a pupil every time, rather
than cleverness," Harrington had said to one of his pupils, and the
remark often rang in Gethryn's ears even when his eyes were most
blinded by his own wonderful facility.
"Some fools would medal this," he thought; "but what pleasure could
a medal bring me when I know how little I deserve it?"
Perhaps he was his own hardest critic, but it was certain that the
old, simple honesty, the subtle purity, the almost pathetic effort to
tell the truth with paint and brush, had nearly disappeared from
Gethryn's canvases during the last eight months, and had given place
to a fierce and almost startling brilliancy, never, perhaps, hitting,
but always threatening some brutal note of discord.
Even Elise looked vaguely troubled, though she always smiled brightly
at Gethryn's criticism of his own work.
"It is so very wonderful and dazzling, but -- but the color seems to
me -- unkind."
And he would groan and answer, "Yes, yes, Elise, you're right; oh, I
can never paint another like the one of last June!"
"Ah, that!" she would cry, "that was delicious -- " but checking
herself, she would add, "Courage, let us try again; I am not tired,
indeed I am not."
Yvonne never came into the studio when Gethryn had models, but often,
after the light was dim and the models had taken their leave, she
would slip in, and, hanging lightly over his shoulder, her cheek
against his, would stand watching the touches and retouches with which
the young artist always eked out the last rays of daylight. And when
his hand drooped and she could hardly distinguish his face in the
gathering gloom, he would sigh and turn to her, smoothing the soft
hair from her forehead, saying: "Are you happy, Yvonne?" And Yvonne
always answered, "Yes, Rex, when you are."
Then he would laugh, and kiss her and tell her he was always happy
with La Belle Hélène, and they would stand in the gathering twilight
until a gurgle from the now well-grown pups would warn them that the
hour of hunger had arrived.
The triumvirate, with Thaxton, Rhodes, Carleton, and the rest, had
been frequent visitors all winter at the "Ménagerie," as Clifford's
bad pun had named Gethryn's apartment; but, of late, other social
engagements and, possibly, a small amount of work, had kept them away.
Clifford was a great favorite with Yvonne. Thaxton and Elliott she
liked. Rowden she tormented, and Carleton she endured. She captured
Clifford by suffering him to play his banjo to her piano. Rowden liked
her because she was pretty and witty, though he never got used to her
quiet little digs at his own respected and dignified person. Clifford
openly avowed his attachment and spent many golden hours away from
work, listening to her singing. She had been taught by a good master
and her voice was pure and pliant, although as yet only half
developed. The little concerts they gave their friends were really
charming -- with Clifford's banjo, Gethryn's guitar, Thaxton's violin,
Yvonne's voice and piano. Clifford made the programs. They were
profusely illustrated, and he spent a great deal of time rehearsing,
writing verses, and rehashing familiar airs (he called it
"composing") which would have been as well devoted to his easel.
In Rowden, Yvonne was delighted to find a cultivated musician.
Clifford listened to their talk of chords and keys, went and bought a
"Musical Primer" on the Quai d'Orsay, spent a wretched hour groping
over it, swore softly, and closed the book forever.
But neither the triumvirate nor the others had been to the
"Ménagerie" for over a fortnight, when Rowden, feeling it incumbent
upon him to return some of Gethryn's hospitality, issued very proper
cards -- indeed they were very swell cards for the Latin Quarter --
for a "dinner," to be followed by a "quiet evening" at the Bal
Masqué at the Opera.
The triumvirate had accordingly tied up their brindled bulldogs,
"Spit," "Snap" and "Tug"; had donned their white ties and
collars of awful altitude, and were fully prepared to please and to be
pleased. Although it was nominally a "stag" party, the triumvirate
would as soon have cut off their tender mustaches as have failed to
invite Yvonne. But she had replied to Rowden's invitation by a dainty
little note, ending:
and I am sure that you will understand when I say that this time I
will leave you gentlemen in undisturbed possession of the evening,
for I know how dearly men love to meet and behave like bears all by
themselves. But I shall see you all afterward at the Opera. Au
revoir then -- at the Bal Masqué. Y.D.
The first sensation to the young men was one of disappointment. But
the second was that Mademoiselle Descartes' tact had not failed her.
The triumvirate were seated upon the sideboard swinging their legs.
Rowden cast a satisfied glance at the table laid for fifteen and
flicked an imaginary speck from his immaculate shirt front.
"I think it's all right," said Elliott, noticing his look, "eh,
Clifford?"
"Is there enough champagne?" asked that youth, calculating four
quart bottles to each person.
Rowden groaned.
"Of course there is. What are you made of?"
"Human flesh," acknowledged the other meekly.
At eleven the guests began to arrive, welcomed by the triumvirs with
great state and dignity. Rowden, looking about, missed only one --
Gethryn, and he entered at the same moment.
"Just in time," said Rowden, and made the move to the table. As
Gethryn sat down, he noticed that the place on Rowden's right was
vacant, and before it stood a huge bouquet of white violets.
"Too bad she isn't here," said Rowden, glancing at Gethryn and then
at the vacant place.
"That's awfully nice of you, Rowden," cried Gethryn, with a happy
smile; "she will have a chance to thank you tonight."
He leaned over and touched his face to the flowers. As he raised his
head again, his eyes met Braith's.
"Hello!" cried Braith, cordially.
Rex did not notice how pale he was, and called back, "Hello!" with a
feeling of relief at Braith's tone. It was always so. When they were
apart for days, there weighed a cloud of constraint on Rex's mind,
which Braith's first greeting always dispelled. But it gathered again
in the next interval. It rose from a sullen deposit of self-reproach
down deep in Gethryn's own heart. He kept it covered over; but he
could not prevent the ghost-like exhalations that gathered there and
showed where it was hidden.
Speeches began rather late. Elliott made one -- and offered a toast to
"la plus jolie demoiselle de Paris," which was drunk amid great
enthusiasm and responded to by Gethryn, ending with a toast to Rowden.
Rowden's response was stiff, but most correct. The same could not be
said of Clifford's answer to the toast, "The struggling Artist --
Heaven help him!"
Towards 1 am Mr Clifford's conversation had become incoherent. But he
continued to drink toasts. He drank Yvonne's health five times, he
pledged Rowden and Gethryn and everybody else he could think of, down
to Mrs Gummidge and each separate kitten, and finally pledged himself.
By that time he had reached the lachrymose state. Tears, it seemed,
did him good. A heart-rending sob was usually the sign of reviving
intelligence.
"Well," said Gethryn, buttoning his greatcoat, "I'll see you all in
an hour -- at the Opera."
Braith was not coming with them to the Ball, so Rex shook hands and
said "Good night," and calling "Au revoir" to Rowden and the rest,
ran down stairs three at a time. He hurried into the court and after
spending five minutes shouting "Cordon!" succeeded in getting out of
the door and into the Rue Michelet. From there he turned into the
Avenue de l'Observatoire, and cutting through into the Boulevard, came
to his hôtel.
Yvonne was standing before the mirror, tying the hood of a white silk
domino under her chin. Hearing Gethryn's key in the door, she
hurriedly slipped on her little white mask and confronted him.
"Why, who is this?" cried Gethryn. "Yvonne, come and tell me who
this charming stranger is!"
"You see before you the Princess Hélène, Monsieur, she said, gravely
bending the little masked head."
"Oh, in that case, you needn't come, Yvonne, as I have an engagement
with the Princess Hélène of Troy."
"But you mustn't kiss me!" she cried, hastily placing the table
between herself and Gethryn; "you have not yet been presented. Oh,
Rex! Don't be so -- so idiotic; you spoil my dress -- there -- yes,
only one, but don't you dare to try -- Oh Rex! Now I am all in
wrinkles -- you -- you bear!"
"Bears hug -- that's a fact," he laughed. "Come, are you ready --
or I'll just -- "
"Don't you dare!" she cried, whipping off her mask and attempting an
indignant frown. She saw the big bunch of white violets in his hand
and made a diversion by asking what those were. He told her, and she
declared, delightedly, that she should carry them with Rex's roses to
the Ball.
"They shall have the preference, Monsieur," she said, teasingly.
"Oh, Rex! don't -- please -- " she entreated.
"All right, I won't," he said, drawing her wrap around her; and
Yvonne, replacing the mask and gathering up her fluffy skirts, slipped
one small gloved hand through his arm and danced down the stairs.
On the corner of the Vaugirard and the Rue de Medicis one always finds
a line of cabs, and presently they were bumping and bouncing away down
the Rue de Seine to the river.
Je fais ce que sa fantaisie
Veut m'ordonner,
Et je puis, s'il lui faut ma vie
La lui donner
sang Yvonne, deftly thrusting tierce and quarte with her fan to make
Gethryn keep his distance.
"Do you know it is snowing?" he said presently, peering out of the
window as the cab rattled across the Pont Neuf.
"Tant mieux!" cried the girl; "I shall make a snowball -- a -- "
she opened her blue eyes impressively, "a very, very large one, and
-- "
"And?"
"Drop it on the head of Mr Rowden," she announced, with cheerful
decision.
"I'll warn poor Rowden of your intention," he laughed, as the cab
rolled smoothly up the Avenue de l'Opera, across the Boulevard des
Italiens, and stopped before the glittering pile of the great Opera.
She sprang lightly to the curbstone and stood tapping her little feet
against the pavement while Gethryn fumbled about for his fare.
The steps of the Opera and the Plaza were covered with figures in
dominoes, blue, red or black, many grotesque and bizarre costumes, and
not a few sober claw hammers. The great flare of yellow light which
bathed and flooded the shifting, many-colored throng, also lent a
strangely weird effect to the now heavily falling snowflakes.
Carriages and cabs kept arriving in countless numbers. It was half
past two, and nobody who wanted to be considered anybody thought of
arriving before that hour. The people poured in a steady stream
through the portals. Groups of English and American students in their
irreproachable evening attire, groups of French students in someone
else's doubtful evening attire, crowds of rustling silken dominoes,
herds of crackling muslin dominoes, countless sad-faced Pierrots,
fewer sad-faced Capuchins, now and then a slim Mephistopheles, now and
then a fat, stolid Turk, 'Arry, Tom, and Billy, redolent of plum
pudding and Seven Dials, Gontran, Gaston and Achille, savoring of
brasseries and the Sorbonne. And then, from the carriages and fiacres:
Mademoiselle Patchouli and good old Monsieur Bonvin, Mademoiselle
Nitouche and bad young Monsieur de Sacrebleu, Mademoiselle Moineau and
Don Cæsar Imberbe; and the pink silk domino of "La Pataude" -- mais
n'importe!
Allons, Messieurs, Mesdames, to the cloak room -- to the foyer! To the
escalier! or you, Madame la Comtesse, to your box, and smooth out your
crumpled domino; as for "La Pataude," she is going to dance tonight.
Gethryn, with Yvonne clinging tightly to his arm, entered the great
vestibule and passed through the railed lanes to the broad inclined
aisle which led to the floor.
"Do you want to take a peep before we go to our box?" he asked,
leading her to the doorway.
Yvonne's little heart beat faster as she leaned over and glanced at
the dazzling spectacle.
"Come, hurry -- let us go to the box!" she whispered, dragging
Gethryn after her up the stairway.
He followed, laughing at her excitement, and in a few minutes they
found the door of their lodge and slipped in.
Gethryn lighted a cigarette and began to unstrap his field glasses.
"Take these, Yvonne," he said, handing them to her while he adjusted
her own tiny gold ones.
Yvonne's cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkled under the little mask,
as she leaned over the velvet railing and gazed at the bewildering
spectacle below. Great puffs of hot, perfumed air bore the crash of
two orchestras to their ears, mixed with the distant clatter and whirl
of the dancers, and the shouts and cries of the maskers.
At the end of the floor, screened by banks of palms, sat the
musicians, and round about, rising tier upon tier, the glittering
boxes were filled with the elite of the demimonde, who ogled and
gossiped and sighed, entirely content with the material and social
barriers which separate those who dance for ten francs from those who
look on for a hundred.
But there were others there who should not by any means be confounded
with their sisters of the "half-world."
The Faubourg St Germain, the Champs Elysées, and the Parc Monceau were
possibly represented among those muffled and disguised beauties, who
began the evening with their fans so handy in case of need. Ah, well
-- now they lay their fans down quite out of reach in case of
emergency, and who shall say if disappointment lurks under these
dainty dominoes, that there is so little to bring a blush to modest
cheeks -- alas! few emergencies.
And you over there -- you of the "American Colony," who are tossed
like shuttlecocks in the social whirl, you, in your well-appointed
masks and silks, it is all very new and exciting -- yes, but why
should you come? American women, brought up to think clean thoughts
and see with innocent eyes, to exact a respectful homage from men and
enjoy a personal dignity and independence unknown to women anywhere
else -- why do you want to come here? Do you not know that the
foundations of that liberty which makes you envied in the old world
are laid in the respect and confidence of men? Undermine that, become
wise and cynical, learn the meaning of doubtful words and gestures
whose significance you never need have suspected, meet men on the same
ground where they may any day meet fast women of the continent, and
fix at that moment on your free limbs the same chains which corrupt
society has forged for the women of Europe.
Yvonne leaned back in her box with a little gasp.
"But I can't make out anyone at all," she said; "it's all a great,
sparkling sea of color."
"Try the field glasses," replied Gethryn, giving them to her again,
at the same time opening her big plumy fan and waving it to and fro
beside the flushed cheek.
Presently she cried out, "Oh, look! There is Mr Elliott and Mr
Rowden, and I think Mr Clifford -- but I hope not."
He leaned forward and swept the floor with the field glass.
"It's Clifford, sure enough," he muttered; "what on earth induces
him to dance in that set?"
It was Clifford.
At that moment he was addressing Elliott in pleading, though hazy,
phrases.
"Come 'long, Elliott, don't be so -- so uncomf't'ble 'n' p'tic'lar!
W't's use of be'ng shnobbish?" he urged, clinging hilariously to his
partner, a pigeon-toed ballet girl. But Elliott only laughed and said:
"No; waltzes are all I care for. No quadrille for me -- "
The crash of the orchestra drowned his voice, and Clifford, turning
and bowing gravely to his partner, and then to his vis-à-vis, began to
perform such antics and cut such pigeonwings that his pigeon-toed
partner glared at him through the slits of her mask in envious
astonishment. The door was dotted with numerous circles of maskers,
ten or fifteen deep, all watching and applauding the capers of the
hilarious couples in the middle.
But Clifford's set soon attracted a large and enthusiastic audience,
who were connoisseurs enough to distinguish a voluntary dancer from a
hired one; and when the last thundering chords of Offenbach's "March
into Hell" scattered the throng into a delirious waltz, Clifford
reeled heavily into the side scenes and sat down, rather unexpectedly,
in the lap of Mademoiselle Nitouche, who had crept in there with the
Baron Silberstein for a nice, quiet view of a genuine cancan.
Mademoiselle did not think it funny, but the Baron did, and when she
boxed Clifford's ears he thought it funnier still.
Rowden and Elliot, who were laboriously waltzing with a twin pair of
flat-footed Watteau Shepherdesses, immediately ran to his assistance;
and later, with a plentiful application of cold water and still colder
air, restored Mr Clifford to his usual spirits.
"You're not a beauty, you know," said Rowden, looking at Clifford's
hair, which was soaked into little points and curls; "you're
certainly no beauty, but I think you're all right now -- don't you,
Elliott? "
"Certainly," laughed the triumvir, producing a little silver
pocket-comb and presenting it to the woebegone Clifford, who
immediately brought out a hand glass and proceeded to construct a
"bang" of wonderful seductiveness.
In ten minutes they sallied forth from the dressing room and wended
their way through the throngs of masks to the center of the floor.
They passed Thaxton and Rhodes, who, each with a pretty nun upon his
arm, were trying to persuade Bulfinch into taking the third nun, who
might have been the Mother Superior or possibly a resuscitated 14th
century abbess.
"No," he was saying, while he blinked painfully at the ci-devant
abbess, "I can't go that; upon my word, don't ask me, fellows -- I --
I can't."
"Oh, come," urged Rhodes, "what's the odds?"
"You can take her and I'll take yours," began the wily little man,
but neither Rhodes nor Thaxton waited to argue longer.
"No catacombs for me," growled Bulfinch, eyeing the retreating nuns,
but catching sight of the triumvirate, his face regained its bird-like
felicity of expression.
"Glad to see you -- indeed I am! That Colossus is too disinterested
in securing partners for his friends; he is, I assure you. If you're
looking for a Louis Quatorze partner, warranted genuine, go to
Rhodes."
"Rex ought to be here by this time," said Rowden; "look in the
boxes on that side and Clifford and I will do the same on this."
"No need," cried Elliott, "I see him with a white domino there in
the second tier. Look! he's waving his hand to us and so is the
domino."
"Come along," said Clifford, pushing his way toward the foyer,
"I'll find them in a moment. Let me see," -- a few minutes later,
pausing outside a row of white and gilt doors -- "let me see, seventh
box, second tier -- here we are," he added, rapping loudly.
Yvonne ran and opened the door.
"Bon soir, Messieurs," she said, with a demure curtsy.
Clifford gallantly kissed the little glove and then shook hands with
Gethryn.
"How is it on the floor?" asked the latter, as Elliott and Rowden
came forward to the edge of the box. "I want to take Yvonne out for a
turn and perhaps a waltz, if it isn't too crowded."
"Oh, it's pretty rough just now, but it will be better in half an
hour," replied Rowden, barricading the champagne from Clifford.
"We saw you dancing, Mr Clifford," observed Yvonne, with a wicked
glance at him from under her mask.
Clifford blushed.
"I -- I don't make an ass of myself but once a year, you know," he
said, with a deprecatory look at Elliott.
"Oh," murmured the latter, doubtfully, "glad to hear it."
Clifford gazed at him in meek reproof and then made a flank movement
upon the champagne, but was again neatly foiled by Rowden.
Yvonne looked serious, but presently leaned over and filled one of the
long-stemmed goblets.
"Only one, Mr Clifford; one for you to drink my health, but you must
promise me truthfully not to take any more wine this evening!"
Clifford promised with great promptness, and taking the glass from her
hand with a low bow, sprang recklessly upon the edge of the box and
raised the goblet.
"A la plus belle demoiselle de Paris!" he cried, with all the
strength of his lungs, and drained the goblet.
A shout from the crowd below answered his toast. A thousand faces were
turned upward, and people leaned over their boxes, and looked at the
party from all parts of the house.
Mademoiselle Nitouche turned to Monsieur de Sacrebleu.
"What audacity!" she murmured.
Mademoiselle Goujon smiled at the Baron Silberstein.
"Tiens!" she cried, "the gayety has begun, I hope."
Little Miss Ducely whispered to Lieutenant Faucon:
"Those are American students," she sighed; "how jolly they seem to
be, especially Mr Clifford! I wonder if she is so pretty!"
Half a dozen riotous Frenchmen in the box opposite jumped to their
feet and waved their goblets at Clifford.
"A la plus jolie femme du monde!" they roared.
Clifford seized another glass and filled it.
"She is here!" he shouted, and sprang to the edge again. But Gethryn
pulled him down.
"That's too dangerous," he laughed; "you could easily fall."
"Oh, pshaw!" cried Clifford, draining the glass, and shaking it at
the opposite box.
Yvonne put her hand on Gethryn's arm.
"Don't let him have any more," she whispered.
"Give us the goblet!" yelled the Frenchmen.
"Le voila!" shouted Clifford, and stepping back, hurled the glass
with all his strength across the glittering gulf. It fell with a crash
in the box it was aimed at, and a howl of applause went up from the
floor.
Yvonne laughed nervously, but coming to the edge of the box buried her
mask in her bouquet and looked down.
"A rose! A rose!" cried the maskers below; "a rose from the most
charming demoiselle in Paris!"
She half turned to Gethryn, but suddenly stepping forward, seized a
handful of flowers from the middle of the bouquet and flung them into
the crowd.
There was a shout and a scramble, and then she tore the bouquet end
from end, sending a shower of white buds into the throng.
"None for me?" sighed Clifford, watching the fast-dwindling bouquet.
She laughed brightly as she tossed the last handful below, and then
turned and leaned over Gethryn's chair.
"You destructive little wretch!" he laughed, "this is not the
season for the Battle of Flowers. But white roses mean nothing, so I'm
not jealous."
"Ah, mon ami, I saved the red rose for you," she whispered; and
fastened it upon his breast.
And at his whispered answer her cheeks flushed crimson under the white
mask. But she sprang up laughing.
"I would so like to go onto the floor," she cried, pulling him to
his feet, and coaxing him with a simply irresistible look; "don't you
think we might -- just for a minute, Mr Rowden?" she pleaded. "I
don't mind a crowd -- indeed I don't, and I am masked so perfectly."
"What's the harm, Rex?" said Rowden; "she is well masked."
"And when we return it will be time for supper, won't it?"
"Yes, I should think so!" murmured Clifford.
"Where do we go then?"
"Maison Dorée."
"Come along, then, Mademoiselle Destructiveness!" cried Gethryn,
tossing his mask and field glass onto a chair, where they were
appropriated by Clifford, who spent the next half hour in staring
across at good old Colonel Toddlum and his frisky companion -- an
attention which drove the poor old gentleman almost frantic with
suspicion, for he was a married man, bless his soul! -- and a
pew-holder in the American Church.
"My love," said the frisky one, "who is the gentleman in the black
mask who stares?"
"I don't know," muttered the dear old man, in a cold sweat, "I
don't know, but I wish I did."
And the frisky one shrugged her shoulders and smiled at the mask.
"What are they looking at?" whispered Yvonne, as she tripped along,
holding very tightly to Gethryn's arm.
"Only a quadrille -- `La Pataude' is dancing. Do you want to see
it?"
She nodded, and they approached the circle in the middle of which `La
Pataude' and `Grille d'Egout' were holding high carnival. At every
ostentatious display of hosiery the crowd roared.
"Brava! Bis!" cried an absinthe-soaked old gentleman; "vive La
Pataude!"
For answer the lady dexterously raised his hat from his head with the
point of her satin slipper.
The crowd roared again. "Brava! Brava, La Pataude!"
Yvonne turned away.
"I don't like it. I don't find it amusing," she said, faintly.
Gethryn's hand closed on hers.
"Nor I," he said.
"But you and your friends used to go to the students' ball at
`Bullier's,"' she began, a little reproachfully.
"Only as Nouveaux, and then, as a rule, the high-jinks are pretty
genuine there -- at least, with the students. We used to go to keep
cool in spring and hear the music; to keep warm in winter; and amuse
ourselves at Carnival time."
"But -- Mr Clifford knows all the girls at `Bullier's.' Do -- do
you?"
"Some."
"How many?" she said, pettishly.
"None -- now."
A pause. Yvonne was looking down.
"See here, little goose, I never cared about any of that crowd, and I
haven't been to the Bullier since -- since last May."
She turned her face up to his; tears were stealing down from under her
mask.
"Why, Yvonne!" he began, but she clung to his shoulder, as the
orchestra broke into a waltz.
"Don't speak to me, Rex -- but dance! Dance!"
They danced until the last bar of music ceased with a thundering
crash.
"Tired?" he asked, still holding her.
She smiled breathlessly and stepped back, but stopped short, with a
little cry.
"Oh! I'm caught -- there, on your coat!"
He leaned over her to detach the shred of silk.
"Where is it? Oh! Here!"
And they both laughed and looked at each other, for she had been held
by the little golden clasp, the fleur-de-lis.
"You see," he said, "it will always draw me to you."
But a shadow fell on her fair face, and she sighed as she gently took
his arm.
When they entered their box, Clifford was still tormenting the poor
Colonel.
"Old dog thinks I know him," he grinned, as Yvonne and Rex came in.
Yvonne flung off her mask and began to fan herself.
"Time for supper, you know," suggested Clifford.
Yvonne lay back in her chair, smiling and slowly waving the great
plumes to and fro.
"Who are those people in the next box?" she asked him. "They do
make such a noise."
"There are only two, both masked."
"But they have unmasked now. There are their velvets on the edge of
the box. I'm going to take a peep," she whispered, rising and leaning
across the railing.
"Don't; I wouldn't -- " began Gethryn, but he was too late.
Yvonne leaned across the gilded cornice and instantly fell back in her
chair, deathly pale.
"My God! Are you ill, Yvonne?"
"Oh, Rex, Rex, take me away -- home -- "
Then came a loud hammering on the box door. A harsh, strident voice
called, "Yvonne! Yvonne!"
Clifford thoughtlessly threw it open, and a woman in evening dress,
very decolletée, swept by him into the box, with a waft of sickly
scented air.
Yvonne leaned heavily on Gethryn's shoulder; the woman stopped in
front of them.
"Ah! here you are, then!"
Yvonne's face was ghastly.
"Nina," she whispered, "why did you come?"
"Because I wanted to make you a little surprise," sneered the woman;
"a pleasant little surprise. We love each other enough, I hope." She
stamped her foot.
"Go," said Yvonne, looking half dead.
"Go!" mimicked the other. "But certainly! Only first you must
introduce me to these gentlemen who are so kind to you."
"You will leave the box," said Gethryn, in a low voice, holding open
the door.
The woman turned on him. She was evidently in a prostitute's tantrum
of malicious deviltry. Presently she would begin to lash herself into
a wild rage.
"Ah! this is the one!" she sneered, and raising her voice, she
called, "Mannie, Mannie, come in here, quick!"
A sidling step approached from the next box, and the face of Mr
Emanuel Pick appeared at the door.
"This is the one," cried the woman, shrilly. "Isn't he pretty?"
Mr Pick looked insolently at Gethryn and opened his mouth, but he did
not say anything, for Rex took him by the throat and kicked him
headlong into his own box. Then he locked the door, and taking out the
key, returned and presented it to the woman.
"Follow him!" he said, and quietly, but forcibly, urged her toward
the lobby.
"Mannie! Mannie!" she shrieked, in a voice choked by rage and
dissipation, "come and kill him! He's insulting me!"
Getting no response, she began to pour forth shriek upon shriek,
mingled with oaths and ravings. "I shall speak to my sister! Who
dares prevent me from speaking to my sister! You -- " she glared at
Yvonne and ground her teeth. "You, the good one. You! the mother's
pet! Ran away from home! Took up with an English hog!"
Yvonne sprang to her feet again.
"Leave the box," she gasped.
"Ha! ha! Mais oui! leave the box! and let her dance while her mother
lies dying!"
Yvonne gave a cry.
"Ah! Ah!" said her sister, suddenly speaking very slowly, nodding at
every word. "Ah! Ah! go back to your room and see what is there -- in
the room of your lover -- the little letter from Vernon. She wants
you. She wants you. That is because you are so good. She does not want
me. No, it is you who must come to see her die. I -- I dance at the
Carnival!"
Then, suddenly turning on Gethryn with a devilish grin, "You! tell
your mistress her mother is dying!" She laughed hatefully, but
preserved her pretense of calm, walked to the door, and as she reached
it swung round and made an insulting gesture to Gethryn.
"You! I will remember you!"
The door slammed and a key rattled in the next box.
Clinging to Gethryn, Yvonne passed down the long corridor to the
vestibule, while Elliott and Rowden silently gathered up the masks and
opera glasses. Clifford stood holding her crushed and splintered fan.
He looked at Elliott, who looked gloomily back at him, as Braith
entered hurriedly.
"What's the matter? I saw something was wrong from the floor. Rex
ill?"
"Ill at ease," said Clifford, grimly. "There's a sister turned up.
A devil of a sister."
Braith spoke very low. "Yvonne's sister?"
"Yes, a she-devil."
"Did you hear her name?"
"Name's Nina."
Braith went quietly out again. Passing blindly down the lobby, he ran
against Mr Bulfinch. Mr Bulfinch was in charge of a policeman.
"Hello, Braith!" he called, hilariously.
Braith was going on with a curt nod when the other man added:
"I've taken it out of Pick," and he stopped short. "I got my two
hundred francs worth," the artist of the London Mirror proceeded,
"and now I shall feel bound to return you yours -- the first time I
have it," he ended, vaguely.
Braith made an impatient gesture.
"Are you under arrest?"
"Yes, I am. He couldn't help it," smiling agreeably at the Sergeant
de Ville. "He saw me hit him."
The policeman looked stolid.
"But what excuse?" began Braith.
"Oh! none! Pick just passed me, and I felt as if I couldn't stand it
any longer, so I pitched in."
"Well, and now you're in for fine and imprisonment."
"I suppose so," said Bulfinch, beaming.
"Have you any money with you?"
"No, unless I have some in your pocket?" said the little man, with a
mixture of embarrassment and bravado that touched Braith, who saw what
the confession cost him.
"Lots!" said he, cordially. "But first let us try what we can do
with Bobby. Do you ever drink a petit verre, Monsieur le Sergeant de
Ville?" with a winning smile to the wooden policeman.
The latter looked at the floor.
"No," said he.
"Never?"
"Never!"
"Well, I was only thinking that over on the Corner of the Rue
Taitbout one finds excellent wine at twenty francs."
The officer now gazed dreamily at the ceiling.
"Mine costs forty," he said.
And a few minutes later the faithful fellow stood in front of the
Opera house quite alone.
Ten
The cab rolled slowly over the Pont au Change, and the wretched horse
fell into a walk as he painfully toiled up the hill of St Michel.
Yvonne lay back in the corner; covered with all her own wraps and
Gethryn's overcoat, she shivered.
"Poor little Yvonne!" was all he said as he leaned over now and then
to draw the cloak more closely around her. Not a sound but the rumble
of the wheels and the wheezing of the old horse broke the silence. The
streets were white and deserted. A few ragged flakes fell from the
black vault above, or were shaken down from the crusted branches.
The cab stopped with a jolt. Yvonne was trembling as Rex lifted her to
the ground, and he hurried her into the house, up the black stairway
and into their cold room.
When he had a fire blazing in the grate, he looked around. She was
kneeling on the floor beside a candle she had lighted, and her tears
were pouring down upon the page of an open letter. Rex stepped over
and touched her.
"Come to the fire." He raised her gently, but she could not stand,
and he carried her in his arms to the great soft chair before the
grate. Then he knelt down and warmed her icy hands in his own. After a
while he moved her chair back, and drawing off her dainty white
slippers, wrapped her feet in the fur that lay heaped on the hearth.
Then he unfastened the cloak and the domino, and rolling her gloves
from elbow to wrist, slipped them over the helpless little hands. The
firelight glanced and glowed on her throat and bosom, tingeing their
marble with opalescent lights, and searching the deep shadows under
her long lashes. It reached her hair, touching here and there a soft,
dark wave, and falling aslant the knots of ribbon on her bare
shoulders, tipped them with points of white fire.
"Is it so bad, dearest Yvonne?"
"Yes."
"Then you must go?"
"Oh, yes!"
"When?"
"At daylight."
Gethryn rose and went toward the door; he hesitated, came back and
kissed her once on the forehead. When the door closed on him she wept
as if her heart would break, hiding her head in her arms. He found her
lying so when he returned, and, throwing down her traveling bag and
rugs, he knelt and took her to his breast, kissing her again and again
on the forehead. At last he had to speak.
"I have packed the things you will need most and will send the rest.
It is getting light, dearest; you have to change your dress, you
know."
She roused herself and sat up, looking desolately about her.
"Forever!" she whispered.
"No! No!" cried Gethryn.
"Ah! oui, mon ami!"
Gethryn went and stood by the window. The bedroom door was closed.
Day was breaking. He opened the window and looked into the white
street. Lamps burned down there with a sickly yellow; a faint light
showed behind the barred windows of the old gray barracks. One or two
stiff sparrows hopped silently about the gutters, flying up hurriedly
when the frost-covered sentinel stamped his boots before the barracks
gate. Now and then a half-starved workman limped past, his sabots
echoing on the frozen pavement. A hooded and caped policeman, a
red-faced cabman stamping beside his sleepy horse -- the street was
empty but for them.
It grew lighter. The top of St Sulpice burned crimson. Far off a bugle
fluttered, and then came the tramp of the morning guard mount. They
came stumbling across the stony court and leaned on their rifles while
one of them presented arms and received the word from the sentry.
Little by little people began to creep up and down the sidewalks, and
the noise of wooden shutters announced another day of toil begun. The
point of the Luxembourg Palace struck fire as the ghastly gas-lamps
faded and went out. Suddenly the great bell of St Sulpice clashed the
hour -- Eight o'clock!
Again a bugle blew sharply from the barracks, and a troop of cavalry
danced and pawed through the gate, clattering away down the Rue de
Seine.
Gethryn shut the window and turned into the room. Yvonne stood before
the dying embers. He went to her, almost timidly. Neither spoke. At
last she took up her satchel and wrap.
"It is time," she whispered. "Let us go."
He clasped her once in his arms; she laid her cheek against his.
*
The train left Montparnasse station at nine. There was hardly anyone
in the waiting room. The Guard flung back the grating.
"Vernon, par Chartres?" asked Gethryn.
"Vernon -- Moulins -- Chartres -- direct!" shouted the Guard, and
stamped off down the platform.
Gethryn showed his ticket which admitted him to the platform, and they
walked slowly down the line of dismal-looking cars.
"This one?" and he opened a door.
She stood watching the hissing and panting engine, while Gethryn
climbed in and placed her bags and rugs in a window corner. The car
smelt damp and musty, and he stepped out with a choking sensation in
his chest. A train man came along, closing doors with a slam.
"All aboard -- ladies -- gentlemen -- voyageurs?" he growled, as if
to himself or some familiar spirit, and jerked a sullen clang from the
station bell. The engine panted impatiently.
Rex struggled against the constraint that seemed to be dividing them.
"Yvonne, you will write?"
"I don't know!"
"You don't know! Yvonne!"
"I know nothing except that I am wicked, and my mother is dying!"
She said it in low, even tones, looking away from him.
The gong struck again, with a startling clash.
The engine shrieked; a cloud of steam rose from under the wheels. Rex
hurried her into the carriage; there was no one else there. Suddenly
she threw herself into his arms.
"Oh! I love you! I love you! One kiss, no; no; on the lips. Good-bye,
my own Rex!"
"You will come again?" he said, crushing her to him.
Her eyes looked into his.
"I will come. I love you! Be true to me, Rex. I will come back."
Her lover could not speak. Doors slamming, and an impatient voice --
"Descendez donc, M'sieu!" -- roused him; he sprang from the
carriage, and the train rolled slowly out of the smoke-filled station.
How heavy the smoke was! Gethryn could hardly breathe -- hardly see.
He walked away and out into the street. The city was only half awake
even yet. After, as it seemed, a long time, he found himself looking
at a clock which said a quarter past ten. The winter sunshine slanted
now on roof and pane, flooding the western side of the shabby
boulevard, dappling the snow with yellow patches. He had stopped in
the chilly shadow of a gateway and was looking vacantly about. He saw
the sunshine across the street and shivered where he was, and yet he
did not leave the shadow. He stood and watched the sparrows taking
bold little baths in the puddles of melted snow water. They seemed to
enjoy the sunshine, but it was cold in the shade, cold and damp -- and
the air was hard to breathe. A policeman sauntered by and eyed him
curiously. Rex's face was haggard and pinched. Why had he stood there
in the cold for half an hour, without ever changing his weight from
one foot to the other?
The policeman spoke at last, civilly:
"Monsieur!"
Gethryn turned his head.
"Is it that Monsieur seeks the train?" he asked, saluting.
Rex looked up. He had wandered back to the station. He lifted his hat
and answered with the politeness dear to French officials.
"Merci, Monsieur!" It made him cough to speak, and he moved on
slowly.
Gethryn would not go home yet. He wanted to be where there was plenty
of cool air, and yet he shivered. He drew a deep breath which ended in
a pain. How cold the air must be -- to pain the chest like that! And
yet, there were women wheeling handcarts full of yellow crocus buds
about. He stopped and bought some for Yvonne.
"She will like them," he thought. "Ah!" -- he turned away, leaving
flowers and money. The old flower-woman crossed herself.
No -- he would not go home just yet. The sun shone brightly; men
passed, carrying their overcoats on their arms; a steam was rising
from the pavements in the Square.
There was a crowd on the Pont au Change. He did not see any face
distinctly, but there seemed to be a great many people, leaning over
the parapets, looking down the river. He stopped and looked over too.
The sun glared on the foul water eddying in and out among the piles
and barges. Some men were rowing in a boat, furiously. Another boat
followed close. A voice close by Gethryn cried, angrily:
"Dieu! who are you shoving?"
Rex moved aside; as he did so a gamin crowded quickly forward and
craned over the edge, shouting, "Vive le cadavre!"
"Chut!" said another voice.
"Vive la Mort! Vive la Morgue!" screamed the wretched little
creature.
A policeman boxed his ears and pulled him back. The crowd laughed. The
voice that had cried, "Chut!" said lower, "What a little devil,
that Rigaud!"
Rex moved slowly on.
In the Court of the Louvre were people enough and to spare. Some of
them bowed to him; several called him to turn and join them. He lifted
his hat to them all, as if he knew them, but passed on without
recognizing a soul. The broad pavements were warm and wet, but the air
must have been sharp to hurt his chest so. The great pigeons of the
Louvre brushed by him. It seemed as if he felt the beat of their wings
on his brains. A shabby-looking fellow asked him for a sou -- and,
taking the coin Rex gave him, shuffled off in a hurry; a dog followed
him, he stooped and patted it; a horse fell, he went into the street
and helped to raise it. He said to a man standing by that the harness
was too heavy -- and the man, looking after him as he walked away,
told a friend that there was another crazy foreigner.
Soon after this he found himself on the Quai again, and the sun was
sinking behind the dome of the Invalides. He decided to go home. He
wanted to get warm, and yet it seemed as if the air of a room would
stifle him. However, once more he crossed the Seine, and as he turned
in at his own gate he met Clifford, who said something, but Rex pushed
past without trying to understand what it was.
He climbed the dreary old stairs and came to his silent studio. He sat
down by the fireless hearth and gazed at a long, slender glove among
the ashes. At his feet her little white satin slippers lay half hidden
in the long white fur of the rug.
He felt giddy and weak, and that hard pain in his chest left him no
peace. He rose and went into the bedroom. Her ball dress lay where she
had thrown it. He flung himself on the bed and buried his face in the
rustling silk. A faint odor of violets pervaded it. He thought of the
bouquet that had been placed for her at the dinner. Then the flowers
reminded him of last summer. He lived over again their gay life --
their excursions to Meudon, Sceaux, Versailles with its warm meadows,
and cool, dark forests; Fontainebleau, where they lunched under the
trees; St Cloud -- Oh! he remembered their little quarrel there, and
how they made it up on the boat at Suresnes afterward.
He rose excitedly and went back into the studio; his cheeks were
aflame and his breath came sharp and hard. In a corner, with its face
to the wall, stood an old, unfinished portrait of Yvonne, begun after
one of those idyllic summer days.
When Braith walked in, after three times knocking, he found Gethryn
painting feverishly by the last glimmer of daylight on this portrait.
The room was full of shadows, and while they spoke it grew quite dark.
That night Braith sat by his side and listened to his incoherent talk,
and Dr White came and said "Pleuro-pneumonia" was what ailed him.
Braith had his traps fetched from his own place and settled down to
nurse him.
Eleven
C arnival was over. February had passed, like January, for most of the
fellows, in a bad dream of unpaid bills. March was going in much the
same way. This is the best account Clifford, Elliott and Rowden could
have given of it. Thaxton and Rhodes were working. Carleton was
engaged to a new pretty girl -- the sixth or seventh.
Satan found the time passing delightfully. There was no one at present
to restrain him when he worried Mrs Gummidge. The tabby daily grew
thinner and sadder-eyed. The parrot grew daily more blasé. He sneered
more and more bitterly, and his eyelid, when closed, struck a chill to
the soul of the raven.
At first the pups were unhappy. They missed their master. But they
were young, and flies were getting plentiful in the studio.
For Braith the nights and the days seemed to wind themselves in an
endless chain about Rex's sickbed. But when March had come and gone
Rex was out of danger, and Braith began to paint again on his belated
picture. It was too late, now, for the Salon; but he wanted to finish
it all the same.
One day, early in April, he came back to Gethryn after an unusually
long absence at his own studio.
Rex was up and trying to dress. He turned a peaked face toward his
friend. His eyes were two great hollows, and when he smiled and spoke,
in answer to Braith's angry exclamation, his jaws worked visibly.
"Keep cool, old chap!" he said, in the ghost of a voice.
"What are you getting up for, all alone?"
"Had to -- tired of the bed. Try it yourself -- six weeks!"
"You want to go back there and never quit it alive -- that's what you
want," said Braith, nervously.
"Don't, either. Come and button this collar and stop swearing."
"I suppose you're going back to Julien's the day after tomorrow,"
said Braith, sarcastically, after Rex was dressed and had been helped
to the lounge in the studio.
"No," said he, "I'm going to Arcachon tomorrow."
"Arca--- twenty thousand thunders!"
"Not at all," smiled Rex -- a feeble, willful smile.
Braith sat down and drew his chair beside Gethryn.
"Wait a while, Rex."
"I can't get well here, you know."
"But you can get a bit stronger before you start on such a journey."
"I thought the doctor told you the sooner I went south the better."
That was true; Braith was silent a while.
At last he said, "I have all the money you will want till your own
comes, you know, and I can get you ready by the end of this week, if
you will go."
Rex was no baby, but his voice shook when he answered.
"Dear old, kind, unselfish friend! I'd almost rather remain poor, and
let you keep on taking care of me, but -- see here -- " and he handed
him a letter. "That came this morning, after you left."
Braith read it eagerly, and looked up with a brighter face than he had
worn for many a day.
"By Jove!" he said. "By Jupiter!"
Rex smiled sadly at his enthusiasm.
"This means health, and a future, and -- everything to you, Rex!"
"Health and wealth, and happiness," said Gethryn bitterly.
"Yes, you ungrateful young reprobate -- that's exactly what it means.
Go to your Arcachon, by all means, since you've got a fortune to go on
-- I say -- you -- you didn't know your aunt very well, did you?
You're not cut up much?"
"I never saw her half a dozen times in my whole life. But she's been
generous to me, poor old lady!"
"I should think so. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars is a nice
sum for a young fellow to find in his pocket all on a sudden. And now
-- you want to go away and get well, and come back presently and begin
where you left off -- a year ago. Is that it?"
"That is it. I shall never get well here, and I mean to get well if I
can," -- he paused, and hesitated. "That was the only letter in my
box this morning."
Braith did not answer.
"It is nearly two months now," continued Rex, in a low voice.
"What are your plans?" interrupted Braith, brusquely.
Rex flushed.
"I'm going first" -- he answered rather drily, "to Arcachon. You
see by the letter my aunt died in Florence. Of course I've got to go
and measure out a lot of Italian red tape before I can get the money.
It seems to me the sooner I can get into the pine air and the sea
breezes at Arcachon, the better chance I have of being fit to push on
to Florence, via the Riviera, before the summer heat."
"And then?"
"I don't know."
"You will come back?"
"When I am cured."
There was a long silence. At last Gethryn put a thin hand on Braith's
shoulder and looked him lovingly in the face.
"You know, and I know, how little I have ever done to deserve your
goodness, to show my gratitude and -- and love for you. But if I ever
come back I will prove to you -- "
Braith could not answer, and did not try to. He sat and looked at the
floor, the sad lines about his mouth deeply marked, his throat moving
once or twice as he swallowed the lump of grief that kept rising.
After a while he muttered something about its being time for Rex's
supper and got up and fussed about with a spirit lamp and broths and
jellies, more like Rex's mother than a rough young bachelor. In the
midst of his work there came a shower of blows on the studio door and
Clifford, Rowden and Elliott trooped in without more ado.
They set up a chorus of delighted yells at seeing Rex dressed and on
the studio lounge. But Braith suppressed them promptly.
"Don't you know any better than that?" he growled. "What did you
come for, anyway? It's Rex's supper time."
"We came, Papa," said Clifford, "to tell Rex that I have reformed.
We wanted him to know it as soon as we did ourselves."
"Ah! he's a changed man! He's worked all day at Julien's for a week
past," cried Elliott and Rowden together.
"And my evenings?" prompted Clifford sweetly.
"Are devoted to writing letters home!" chanted the chorus.
"Get out!" was all Rex answered, but his face brightened at the
three bad boys standing in a row with their hats all held politely
against their stomachs. He had not meant to tell them, dreading the
fatigue of explanations, but by an impulse he held out his hand to
them.
"I say, you fellows, shake hands! I'm going off tomorrow."
Their surprise having been more or less noisily and profusely
expressed, Braith stepped decidedly in between them and his patient,
satisfied their curiosity, and gently signified that it was time to
go.
He only permitted one shake apiece, foiling all Clifford's rebellious
attempts to dodge around him and embrace Gethryn. But Rex was lying
back by this time, tired out, and he was glad when Braith closed the
studio door. It flew open the next minute and an envelope came
spinning across to Rex.
"Letter in your box, Reggy -- good-bye, old chap!" said Clifford's
voice.
The door did not quite close again and the voices and steps of his
departing friends came echoing back as Braith raised a black-edged
letter from the floor. It bore the postmark: Vernon.
Twelve
R ound about the narrow valley which is cut by the rapid Trauerbach,
Bavarian mountains tower, their well timbered flanks scattered here
and there with rough slides, or opening out in long green alms, and
here at evening one may sometimes see a spot of yellow moving along
the bed of a half dry mountain torrent.
Miss Ruth Dene stood in front of the Forester's lodge at Trauerbach
one evening at sunset, and watched such a spot on the almost
perpendicular slope that rose opposite, high above her head. Some
Jaegers and the Forester were looking, too.
"My glass, Federl! Ja! 's ist'n gams!"
"Gems?" inquired Miss Dene, excited by her first view of a chamois.
"Ja! 'n Gams," said the Forester, sticking to his dialect.
The sun was setting behind the Red Peak, his last rays pouring into
the valley. They fell on rock and alm, on pine and beech, and turned
the silver Trauerbach to molten gold.
Mr Isidor Blumenthal, sitting at a table under one of the windows,
drinking beer, beheld this phenomenon, and putting down his quart
measure, he glared at the waste of precious metal. Then he lighted the
stump of a cigar; then he looked at his watch, and it being almost
supper time, he went in to secure the best place. He liked being early
at table; he liked the first cut of the meats, hot and fat; he loved
plenty of gravy. While waiting to be served he could count the antlers
on the walls and estimate "how much they would fetch by an
antiquar," as he said to himself. There was nothing else marketable
in the large bare room, full of deal tables and furnished with benches
built against the wall. But he could pick his teeth demonstratively --
toothpicks were not charged in the bill -- and he could lean back on
two legs of his chair, with his hands in his pockets, and stare
through the windows at Miss Dene.
The Herr Förster and the two Jaegers had gone away. Miss Dene stood
now with her slender hands clasped easily behind her, a Tam O'Shanter
shading her sweet face. She was tall, and so far as Mr Blumenthal had
ever seen, extremely grave for her years. But Mr Blumenthal's
opportunities of observing Miss Dene had been limited.
The "gams" had disappeared. Miss Dene was looking down the road that
leads to Schicksalsee. There was not much visible there except a whirl
of dust raised by the sudden evening wind.
Sometimes it was swept away for a moment; then she saw a
weather-beaten bridge and a bend in the road where it disappeared
among the noble firs of a Bavarian forest.
The sun sank and left the Trauerbach a stream of molten lead. The
shadows crept up to the Jaeger's hut and then to the little chapel
above that. Gusts of whistling martins swept by.
A silk-lined, Paris-made wool dress rustled close beside her, and she
put out one of the slender hands without turning her head.
"Mother, dear," said she, as a little silver-haired old lady took it
and came and leaned against her tall girl's shoulder, "haven't we had
enough of the `Först-haus zu Trauerbach?"'
"Not until a certain girl, who danced away her color at Cannes,
begins to bloom again."
Ruth shrugged, and then laughed. "At least it isn't so -- so
indigestible as Munich."
"Oh! Absurd! Speaking of digestion, come to your Schmarn und
Reh-braten. Supper is ready."
Mother and daughter walked into the dingy "Stube" and took their
seats at the Forester's table.
Mr Blumenthal's efforts had not secured him a place there after all;
Anna, the capable niece of the Frau Förster, having set down a large
foot, clad in a thick white stocking and a carpet slipper, to the
effect that there was only room for the Herr Förster's family and the
Americans.
"I also am an American!" cried Mr Blumenthal in Hebrew-German.
Nevertheless, when Ruth and her mother came in he bowed affably to
them from the nearest end of the next table.
"Mamma," said Ruth, very low, "I hope I'm not going to begin being
difficult, but do you know, that is really an odious man?"
"Yes, I do know," laughed her easy-tempered mother, "but what is
that to us?"
Mr Blumenthal was reveling in hot fat. After he had bowed and smiled
greasily, he tucked his napkin tighter under his chin and fell once
more upon the gravy. He sopped his bread in it and scooped it up with
his knife. But after there was no more gravy he wished to converse. He
scrubbed his lips with one end of the napkin and called across to
Ruth, who shrank behind her mother: "Vell, Miss Dene, you have today
a shammy seen, not?"
Ruth kept out of sight, but Mrs Dene nodded, good-naturedly.
"Ja! soh! and haf you auch dose leetle deer mit der mamma seen? I haf
myself such leetle deer myself many times shoot, me and my neffe. But
not here. It is not permitted." No one answered. Ruth asked Anna for
the salt.
"My neffe, he eats such lots of salt -- " began Mr Blumenthal.
"Herr Förster," interrupted Mrs Dene -- "Is the room ready for our
friend who is coming this evening?"
"Your vriendt, he is from New York?"
"Ja, ja, Gnädige Frau!" said the Forester, hastily.
"I haf a broader in New York. Blumenthal and Cohen, you know dem,
yes?"
Mrs Dene and her daughter rose and went quietly out into the porch,
while the Frau Förster, with cold, round gray eyes and a tight mouth,
was whispering to her frowning spouse that it was none of his
business, and why get himself into trouble? Besides, Mrs Dene's Herr
Gemahl, meaning the absent colonel, would come back in a day or two;
let him attend to Mr Blumenthal.
Outside, under the windows, were long benches set against the house
with tables before them. One was crowded with students who had come
from everywhere on the foot-tours dear to Germans.
Their long sticks, great bundles, tin botanizing boxes, and sketching
tools lay in untidy heaps; their stone krugs were foaming with beer,
and their mouths were full of black bread and cheese.
Underneath the other window was the Jaeger's table. There they sat,
gossiping as usual with the Forester's helpers, a herdsman or two,
some woodcutters on their way into or out from the forest, and a pair
of smart revenue officers from the Tyrol border, close by.
Ruth said to the nearest Jaeger in passing:
"Herr Loisl, will you play for us?"
"But certainly, gracious Fraulein! Shall I bring my zither to the
table under the beech tree?"
"Please do!"
Miss Dene was a great favorite with the big blond Jaegers.
"Ja freili! will I play for the gracious Fraulein!" said Loisl, and
cut slices with his hunting knife from a large white radish and ate
them with black bread, shining good-humor from the tip of the
black-cock feather on his old green felt hat to his bare, bronzed
knees and his hobnailed shoes.
At the table under the beech trees were two more great fellows in gray
and green. They rose promptly and were moving away; Mrs Dene begged
them to remain, and they sat down again, diffidently, but with
dignity.
"Herr Sepp," said Ruth, smiling a little mischievously, "how is
this? Herr Federl shot a stag of eight this morning, and I hear that
yesterday you missed a Reh-bock!"
Sepp reddened, and laughed. "Only wait, gracious Fraulein, next week
it is my turn on the Red Peak."
"Ach, ja! Sepp knows the springs where the deer drink," said Federl.
"And you never took us there!" cried Ruth, reproachfully. "I would
give anything to see the deer come and drink at sundown."
Sepp felt his good breeding under challenge. "If the gracious Frau
permits," with a gentlemanly bow to Mrs Dene, "and the ladies care
to come -- but the way is hard -- "
"You couldn't go, dearest," murmured Ruth to her mother, "but when
papa comes back -- "
"Your father will be delighted to take you wherever there is a
probability of breaking both your necks, my dear," said Mrs Dene.
"Griffin!" said Ruth, giving her hand a loving little squeeze under
the table.
Loisl came up with his zither and they all made way before him. Anna
placed a small lantern on the table and the light fell on the handsome
bearded Jaeger's face as he leaned lovingly above his instrument.
The incurable "Sehnsucht" of humanity found not its only expression
in that great Symphony where "all the mightier strings assembling,
fell a trembling." Ruth heard it as she leaned back in the deep shade
and listened to those silvery melodies and chords of wonderful purity,
coaxed from the little zither by Loisl's strong, rough hand, with its
tender touch. To all the airs he played her memory supplied the words.
Sometimes a Sennerin was watching from the Alm for her lover's visit
in the evening. Sometimes the hunter said farewell as he sprang down
the mountainside. Once tears came into Ruth's eyes as the simple tune
recalled how a maiden who died and went to Heaven told her lover at
parting:
"When you come after me I shall know you by my ring which you will
wear, and me you will know by your rose that rests on my heart."
Loisl had stopped playing and was tuning a little, idly sounding
chords of penetrating sweetness. There came a noise of jolting and
jingling from the road below.
Mrs Dene spoke softly to Ruth. "That is the Mail; it is time he was
here." Ruth assented absently. She cared at that moment more for
hearing a new folk-song than for the coming of her old playmate.
Rapid wheels approaching from the same direction overtook and passed
the "Post" and stopped below. Mrs Dene rose, drawing Ruth with her.
The three tall Jaegers rose too, touching their hats. Thanking them
all, with a special compliment to Loisl, the ladies went and stood by
some stone steps which lead from the road to the Först-haus, just as a
young fellow, proceeding up them two at a time, arrived at the top,
and taking Mrs Dene's hand began to kiss it affectionately.
"At last!" she cried, "and the very same boy! after four years!
Ruth!" Ruth gave one hand and Reginald Gethryn took two, releasing
one the next moment to put his arm around the little old lady, and so
he led them both into the house, more at home already than they were.
"Shall we begin to talk about how we are not one bit changed, only a
little older, first, or about your supper?" said Mrs Dene.
"Oh! supper, please!" said Rex, of the sun-browned face and laughing
eyes. Smiling Anna, standing by, understood, aided by a hint from Ruth
of "Schmarn und Reh-braten" -- and clattered away to fetch the
never-changing venison and fried batter, with which, and Schicksalsee
beer, the Frau Förster sustained her guests the year round, from
"Georgi" to "Michaeli" and from "Michaeli" to "Georgi,"
reasoning that what she liked was good enough for them. The shapeless
cook was ladling out dumplings, which she called "Nudel," into some
soup for a Munich opera singer, who had just arrived by the stage.
Anna confided to her that this was a "feiner Herr," and must be
served accordingly. The kind Herr Förster came up to greet his guest.
Mrs Dene introduced him as Mr Gethryn, of New York. At this Mr
Blumenthal bounced forward from a corner where he had been spying and
shook hands hilariously. "Vell! and how it goes!" he cried. Rex saw
Ruth's face as she turned away, and stepping to her side, he
whispered, "Friend of yours?" The teasing tone woke a thousand
memories of their boy and girl days, and Ruth's young lady reserve had
changed to the frank camaraderie of former times when she shook her
head at him, laughing, as he looked back at them from the stairs, up
which he was following Grethi and his portmanteau to the room prepared
for him.
Half an hour later Mrs Dene and her daughter were looking with
approval at Rex and his hearty enjoyment of the Frau Förster's fare.
The cook, on learning that this was a "feiner Herr," had added trout
to the regulation dishes; and although she was convinced that the only
proper way to cook them was "blau gesotten" -- meaning boiled to a
livid bluish white -- she had learned American tastes from the Denes
and sent them in to Gethryn beautifully brown and crisp.
Rex turned one over critically. "Good little fish. Who is the
angler?"
"Oh! angler! They were caught with bait," said Ruth, wrinkling her
nose.
Rex gave her a quick look. "I suppose you have forgotten how to cast
a fly."
"No, I think not," she answered quietly.
Mrs Dene opened her mouth to speak, and then discreetly closed it
again in silence, reflecting that whatever there was to come on that
point would get itself said without any assistance from her.
"I had a look at the water as I came along," continued Rex. "It
seemed good casting."
"I never see it but I think how nice it would be to whip," said
Ruth.
"No! really? Not outgrown the rod and fly since you grew into ball
dresses?"
"Try me and see."
"Now, my dearest child! -- "
"Yes, my dearest mother! -- "
"Yes, dearest Mrs Dene! -- "
"Oh! nonsense! listen to me, you children. Ruth danced herself ill at
Cannes; and she lost her color, and she had a little cough, and she
has it still, and she is very easily tired -- "
"Only of not fishing and hunting, dearest, most perfect of mothers!
You won't put up papa to forbid my going with him and Rex!"
"Your mother is incapable of such an action. How little you know her
worth! She is only waiting to be assured that you are to have my
greenheart, with a reel that spins fifty yards of silk. She shall have
it, Mrs Dene."
"Is it as good as the hornbeam?" asked Ruth, smiling.
"The old hornbeam! do you remember that? I say, Ruth, you spoke of
shooting. Really, can you still shoot?"
"Could I ever forget after such teaching?"
"Well, now, I call that a girl!" cried Rex, enthusiastically.
"Let us hope some people won't call it a hoyden!" said Mrs Dene,
with the tender pride that made her faultfinding like a caress. "The
idea of a girl carrying an absurd little breech-loading rifle all over
Europe!"
"What! the one I had built for her?"
"I suppose so," said Mrs Dene, with a shade more of reserve.
"Miss Dene, you shall kill the first chamois that I see!"
"I fear, Mr Gethryn, the Duke Alfons Adalbert Maximilian in Baiern
will have something to say about that!"
"Oh--h--h! Preserved?"
"Yes, indeed, preserved!"
"But they told me I might shoot on the Sonnewendjoch."
"Ah! But that's in Tyrol, just across the line. You can see it from
here. Austrian game laws aren't Bavarian game laws, sir!"
"How much of this country does your duke own?"
"Just half a dozen mountains, and half a dozen lakes, and half a
hundred trout streams, with all the splendid forests belonging to
them."
"Lucky duke! And is the game preserved in the whole region? Can't one
get a shot?"
"One cannot even carry a gun without a permit."
Rex groaned. "And the trout -- I suppose they are preserved, too?"
"Yes, but the Herr Förster has the right to fish and so have his
guests. There are, however, conditions. The fish you take are not
yours. You must buy as many of them as you want to keep, afterward.
And they must be brought home alive -- or as nearly alive as is
consistent with being shut up in a close, round, green tin box, full
of water which becomes tepid as it is carried along by a peasant boy
in the heat. They usually die of suffocation. But to the German mind
that is all right. It is only not right when one kills them instantly
and lays them in a cool creel, on fresh wet ferns and moss."
"Nevertheless, I think we will dispense with the boy and the green
box, in favor of the ferns and moss, assisted by a five franc piece or
two."
"It isn't francs any more; you're not in France. It's marks here, you
know."
"Well, I have the same faith in the corrupting power of marks as of
francs, or lire, or shillings, or dollars."
"And I think you will find your confidence justified," said Mrs
Dene, smiling.
"Mamma trying to be cynical!" said Ruth, teasingly. "Isn't she
funny, Rex!"
A thoughtful look stole over her mother's face. "I can be terrible,
too, sometimes -- " she said in her little, clear, high soprano
voice; and she gazed musingly at the edge of a letter, which just
appeared above the table, and then sank out of sight in her lap.
"A letter from papa! It came with the stage! What does he say?"
"He says -- several things; for one, he is coming back tomorrow
instead of the next day."
"Delightful! But there is more?"
Mrs Dene's face became a cheerful blank. "Yes, there is more," she
said. A pause.
"Mamma," began Ruth, "do you think Griffins desirable as mothers?"
"Very, for bad children!" Mrs Dene relapsed into a pleasant reverie.
Ruth looked at her mother as a kitten does in a game of tag when the
old cat has retired somewhere out of reach and sits up smiling through
the barrier.
"You find her sadly changed!" she said to Gethryn, in that silvery,
mocking tone which she had inherited from her mother.
"On the contrary, I find her the same adorable gossip she always was.
Whatever is in that letter, she is simply dying to tell us all about
it."
"Suppose we try not speaking, and see how long she can stand that?"
Rex laid his repeater on the table. Two pairs of laughing eyes watched
the dear little old lady. At the end of three minutes she raised her
own; blue, sweet, running over with fun and kindness.
"The colonel has a polite invitation from the duke for himself, and
his party, to shoot on the Red Peak."
Thirteen
In July the sun is still an early riser, but long before he was up
next day a succession of raps on the door woke Gethryn, and a voice
outside inquired, "Are you going fishing with me today, you lazy
beggar?"
"Colonel!" cried Rex, and springing up and throwing open the door,
he threatened to mingle his pajamas with the natty tweeds waiting
there in a loving embrace. The colonel backed away, twisting his white
mustache. "How do, Reggy! Same boy, eh? Yes. I drove from
Schicksalsee this morning."
"This morning? Wasn't it last night?" said Rex, looking at the
shadows on the opposite mountain.
"And I am going to get some trout," continued the colonel, ignoring
the interruption. "So's Daisy. See my new waterproof rig?"
"Beautiful! but -- is it quite the thing to wear a flower in one's
fishing coat?"
"I'm not aware -- " began the other stiffly, but broke down, shook
his seal ring at Rex, and walking over to the glass, rearranged the
bit of wild hyacinth in his buttonhole with care.
"And now," he said, "Daisy and I will give you just three quarters
of an hour." Rex sent a shower from the water basin across the room.
"Look out for those new waterproof clothes, Colonel."
"I'll take them out of harm's way," said the colonel, and
disappeared.
Before the time had expired Rex stood under the beech tree with his
rod case and his creel. The colonel sat reading a novel. Mrs Dene was
pouring out coffee. Ruth was coming down a path which led from a low
shed, the door of which stood wide open, suffering the early sunshine
to fall on something that lay stretched along the floor. It was a
stag, whose noble head and branching antlers would never toss in the
sunshine again.
"Only think!" cried Ruth breathlessly, "Federl shot a stag of ten
this morning at daybreak on the Red Peak, and he's frightened out of
his wits, for only the duke has a right to do that. Federl mistook it
for a stag of eight. And they're in the velvet, besides!" she added
rather incoherently. " What luck! Poor Federl! I asked him if that
meant strafen, and he said he guessed not, only zanken."
"What's `strafen' and what's `zanken,' Daisy?" asked the Colonel,
pronouncing the latter like "z" in buzz.
Ruth went up to her father and took his face between her hands,
dropping a light kiss on his eyebrow.
" Strafen is when one whips bad boys and t--s-- zanken is when one
only scolds them. Which shall we do to you, dear? Both?"
"We'll take coffee first, and then we'll see which there's time for
before we leave you hemming a pocket handkerchief while Rex and I go
trout fishing."
"Such parents!" sighed Ruth, nestling down beside her father and
looking over her cup at Rex, who gravely nodded sympathy.
After breakfast, as Ruth stood waiting by the table where the fishing
tackle lay, perfectly composed in manner, but unable to keep the color
from her cheek and the sparkle of impatience from her eye, Gethryn
thought he had seldom seen anything more charming.
A soft gray Tam crowned her pretty hair. A caped coat, fastened to the
throat, hung over the short kilt skirt, and rough gaiters buttoned
down over a wonderful little pair of hobnailed boots.
"I say! Ruth! what a stunner you are!" cried he with enthusiasm. She
turned to the rod case and began lifting and arranging the rods.
"Rex," she said, looking up brightly, "I feel about sixteen
today."
"Or less, judging from your costume," said her mother.
"Schicksalsee isn't Rangely, you know. I only hope the good people in
the little ducal court won't call you theatrical."
"A theatrical stunner!" mused Ruth, in her clearest tones. "It is
good to know how one strikes one's friends."
"The disciplining of this young person is to be left to me," said
the colonel. "Daisy, everything else about you is all wrong, but your
frock is all right."
"That is simple and comprehensive and reassuring," murmured Ruth
absently, as she bent over the fly-book with Gethryn.
After much consultation and many thoughtful glances at the bit of
water which glittered and dashed through the narrow meadow in front of
the house, they arranged the various colored lures and leaders, and
standing up, looked at Colonel Dene, reading his novel.
"What? Oh! Come along, then!" said he, on being made aware that he
was waited for, and standing up also, he dropped the volume into his
creel and lighted a cigar.
"Are you going to take that trash along, dear?" asked his daughter.
"What trash? The work of fiction? That's literature, as the gentleman
said about Dante."
"Rex," said Mrs Dene, buttoning the colonel's coat over his snowy
collar, "I put this expedition into your hands. Take care of these
two children."
She stood and watched them until they passed the turn beyond the
bridge. Mr Blumenthal watched them too, from behind the curtains in
his room. His leer went from one to the other, but always returned and
rested on Rex. Then, as there was a mountain chill in the morning air,
he crawled back into bed, hauling his night cap over his generous ears
and rolling himself in a cocoon of featherbeds, until he should emerge
about noon, like some sleek, fat moth.
The anglers walked briskly up the wooded road, chatting and laughing,
with now and then a sage and critical glance at the water, of which
they caught many glimpses through the trees. Gethryn and Ruth were
soon far ahead. The colonel sauntered along, switching leaves with his
rod and indulging in bursts of Parisian melody.
"Papa," called Ruth, looking back, "does your hip trouble you
today, or are you only lazy?"
"Trot along, little girl; I'll be there before you are," said the
colonel airily, and stopped to replace the wild hyacinth in his coat
by a prim little pink and white daisy. Then he lighted a fresh cigar
and started on, but their voices were already growing faint in the
distance. Observing this, he stopped and looked up and down the road.
No one was in sight. He sat down on the bank with his hand on his hip.
His face changed from a frown to an expression of sharp pain. In five
minutes he had grown from a fresh elderly man into an old man, his
face drawn and gray, but he only muttered "the devil!" and sat
still. A big bronze-winged beetle whizzed past him, z--z--ip! "like a
bullet," he thought, and pressed both hands now on his hip.
"Twenty-five years ago -- pshaw! I'm not so old as that!" But it was
twenty-five years ago when the blue-capped troopers, bursting in to
the rescue, found the dandy "---th," scorched and rent and
blackened, still reeling beneath a rag crowned with a gilt eagle. The
exquisite befeathered and gold laced "---th." But the shells have
rained for hours among the "Dandies" -- and some are dead, and some
are wishing for death, like that youngster lying there with the
shattered hip.
Colonel Dene rose up presently and relighted his cigar; then he
flicked some dust from the new tweeds, picked a stem of wild hyacinth,
and began to whistle. "Pshaw! I'm not so old as all that!" he
murmured, sauntering along the pleasant wood-road. Before long he came
in sight of Ruth and Gethryn, who were waiting. But he only waved them
on, laughing.
"Papa always says that old wound of his does not hurt him, but it
does. I know it does," said Ruth.
Rex noted what tones of tenderness there were in her cool, clear
voice. He did not answer, for he could only agree with her, and what
could be the use of that?
They strolled on in silence, up the fragrant forest road. Great
glittering dragonflies drifted along the river bank, or hung quivering
above pools. Clouds of lazy sulphur butterflies swarmed and floated,
eddying up from the road in front of them and settling down again in
their wake like golden dust. A fox stole across the path, but Gethryn
did not see him. The mesh of his landing net was caught just then in a
little gold clasp that he wore on his breast.
"How quaint!" cried Ruth; "let me help you; there! One would think
you were a French legitimist, with your fleur-de-lis."
"Thank you" -- was all he answered, and turned away, as he felt the
blood burn his face. But Ruth was walking lightly on and had not
noticed. The fleur-de-lis, however, reminded her of something she had
to say, and she began again, presently --
"You left Paris rather suddenly, did you not, Rex?"
This time he colored furiously, and Ruth, turning to him, saw it. She
flushed too, fearing to have made she knew not what blunder, but she
went on seriously, not pausing for his answer:
"The year before, that is three years ago now, we waited in Italy, as
we had promised to do, for you to join us. But you never even wrote to
say why you did not come. And you haven't explained it yet, Rex."
Gethryn grew pale. This was what he had been expecting. He knew it
would have to come; in fact he had wished for nothing more than an
opportunity for making all the amends that were possible under the
circumstances. But the possible amends were very, very inadequate at
best, and now that the opportunity was here, his courage failed, and
he would have shirked it if he could. Besides, for the last five
minutes, Ruth had been innocently stirring memories that made his
heart beat heavily.
And now she was waiting for her answer. He glanced at the clear
profile as she walked beside him. Her eyes were raised a little; they
seemed to be idly following the windings of a path that went up the
opposite mountainside; her lips rested one upon the other in quiet
curves. He thought he had never seen such a pure, proud looking girl.
All the chivalry of a generous and imaginative man brought him to her
feet.
"I cannot explain. But I ask your forgiveness. Will you grant it? I
won't forgive myself!"
She turned instantly and gave him her hand, not smiling, but her eyes
were very gentle. They walked on a while in silence, then Rex said:
"Ever since I came, I have been trying to find courage to ask pardon
for that unpardonable conduct, but when I looked in your dear mother's
face, I felt myself such a brute that I was only fit to hold my
tongue. And I believed," he added, after a pause, "that she would
forgive me too. She was always better to me than I deserved."
"Yes," said Ruth.
"And you also are too good to me," he continued, "in giving me this
chance to ask your pardon." His voice took on the old caressing tone
in which he used to make peace after their boy and girl tiffs. "I
knew very well that with you I should have a stricter account to
settle than with your mother," he said, smiling.
"Yes," said Ruth again. And then with a little effort and a slight
flush she added:
"I don't think it is good for men when too many excuses are made for
them. Do you?"
"No, I do not," answered Rex, and thought, if all women were like
this one, how much easier it would be for men to lead a good life! His
heart stopped its heavy beating. The memories which he had been
fighting for two years faded away once more; his spirits rose, and he
felt like a boy as he kept step with Ruth along the path which had now
turned and ran close beside the stream.
"Now tell me something of your travels," said Ruth. "You have been
in the East."
"Yes, in Japan. But first I stopped a while in India with some
British officers, nice fellows. There was some pheasant shooting."
"Pheasants! No tigers?"
"One tiger."
"You shot him! Oh! tell me about it!"
"No, I only saw him."
"Where?"
"In a jungle."
"Did you fire?"
"No, for he was already dead, and the odor which pervaded his resting
place made me hurry away as fast as if he had been alive."
"You are a provoking boy!"
Rex laughed. "I did shoot a cheetah in China."
"A dead one?"
"No, he was snarling over a dead buck."
"Then you do deserve some respect."
"If you like. But it was very easy. One bullet settled him. I was
fined afterward."
"Fined! for what?"
"For shooting the Emperor's trained cheetah. After that I always
looked to see if the game wore a silver collar before I fired."
Ruth would not look as if she heard.
Rex went on teasingly: "I assure you it was embarrassing, when the
pheasants were bursting cover, to be under the necessity of inquiring
at the nearest house if those were really pheasants or only Chinese
hens."
"Rex," exclaimed Ruth, indignantly, "I hope you don't think I
believe a word you are saying."
They had stopped to rest beside the stream, and now the colonel
sauntered into view, his hands full of wild flowers, his single
eyeglass gleaming beside his delicate straight nose.
"Do you know," he asked, strolling up to Ruth and tucking a cluster
of bluebells under her chin, "do you know what old Hugh Montgomery
would say if he were here?"
"He'd say," she replied promptly, "that `we couldn't take no traout
with the pesky sun a shinin' and a brilin' the hull crick."'
"Yes," said Rex. "Rise at four, east wind, cloudy morning, that was
Hugh. But he could cast a fly."
"Couldn't he!" said the colonel. "`I cal'late ter chuck a bug ez
fur ez enny o' them city fellers, 'n I kin,' says Hugh. Going to begin
here, Rex?"
"What does Ruth think?"
"She thinks she isn't in command of this party," Ruth replied.
"It will take us until late in the afternoon to whip the stream from
here to the lowest bridge." Rex smiled down at her and pushed back
his cap with a boyish gesture.
She had forgotten it until that moment. Now it brought a perfect flood
of pleasant associations. She had seen him look that way a hundred
times when, in their teens, they two had lingered by the Northern
Lakes. Her whole face changed and softened, but she turned away,
nodding assent, and went and stood by her father, looking down at him
with the bantering air which was a family trait. The lively colonel
had found a sunny log on the bank, where he was sitting, leisurely
joining his rod.
"Hello!" he cried, glancing up, "what are you two amateurs about?
As usual, I'm ready to begin before Rex is awake!" and stepping to
the edge he landed his flies with a flourish in a young birch tree.
Rex came and disengaged them, and he received the assistance with
perfect self-possession.
"Now see the new waterproof rig wade!" said Ruth, saucily.
"Go and wade yourself and don't bully your old father!" cried the
colonel.
"Old! this child old!"
"Oh! come along, Ruth!" called Rex, waiting on the shore and falling
unconsciously into the tone of sixteen speaking to twelve.
For answer she slipped the cover from her slender rod and dexterously
fitted the delicate tip to the second joint.
"Hasn't forgotten how to put a rod together! Wonderful girl!"
"Oh, I knew you were waiting to see me place the second joint in the
butt first!" She deftly ran the silk through the guides, and then
scientifically knotting the leader, slipped on a cast of three flies
and picked her way daintily to the river bank. As she waded in the
sudden cold made her gasp a little to herself, but she kept straight
on without turning her head, and presently stepped on a broad, flat
rock over which the water was slipping smoothly.
Gethryn waited near the bank and watched her as she sent the silk
hissing thirty feet across the stream. The line swished and whistled,
and the whole cast, hand fly, dropper and stretcher settled down
lightly on the water. He noticed the easy motion of the wrist, the
boyish pose of the slender figure, the serious sweet face, half shaded
by the soft woolen Tam.
Swish--h--h! Swish--h--h! She slowly spun out forty feet, glancing
back at Gethryn with a little laugh. Suddenly there was a tremendous
splash, just beyond the dropper, answered by a turn of the white
wrist, and then the reel fairly shrieked as the line melted away like
a thread of smoke. Gethryn's eyes glittered with excitement, and the
colonel took his cigar out of his mouth. But they didn't shout, "You
have him! Go easy on him! Want any help!" They kept quiet.
Cautiously, and by degrees, Ruth laced her little gloved fingers over
the flying line, and presently a quiver of the rod showed that the
fish was checked. She reeled in, slowly and steadily for a moment, and
then, whiz--z--z! off he dashed again. At seventy feet the rod
trembled and the trout was still. Again and again she urged him toward
the shore, meeting his furious dashes with perfect coolness and
leading him dexterously away from rocks and roots. When he sulked she
gave him the butt, and soon the full pressure sent him flying, only to
end in a furious full length leap out of water, and another sulk.
The colonel's cigar went out.
At last she spoke, very quietly, without looking back.
"Rex, there is no good place to beach him here; will you net him,
please?" Rex was only waiting for this; he had his landing net
already unslung and he waded to her side.
"Now!" she whispered. The fiery side of a fish glittered just
beneath the surface. With a skillful dip, a splash, and a spatter the
trout lay quivering on the bank.
Gethryn quickly ended his life and held him up to view.
"Beautiful!" cried the colonel. "Good girl, Daisy! but don't spoil
your frock!" And picking up his own rod he relighted his cigar and
essayed some conscientious casting on his own account. But he soon
wearied of the paths of virtue and presently went in search of a
grasshopper, with evil intent.
Meanwhile Ruth was blushing to the tips of her ears at Gethryn's
praises.
"I never saw a prettier sight!" he cried. "You're -- you're
splendid, Ruth! Nerve, judgment, skill -- my dear girl, you have
everything!"
Ruth's eyes shone like stars as she watched him in her turn while he
sent his own flies spinning across a pool. And now there was nothing
to be heard but the sharp whistle of the silk and the rush of the
water. It seemed a long time that they had stood there, when suddenly
the colonel created a commotion by hooking and hauling forth a trout
of meagre proportions. Unheeding Rex's brutal remarks, he silently
inspected his prize dangling at the end of the line. It fell back into
the water and darted away gayly upstream, but the colonel was not in
the least disconcerted and strolled off after another grasshopper.
"Papa! are you a bait fisherman!" cried his daughter severely.
The colonel dropped his hat guiltily over a lively young cricket, and
standing up said "No!" very loud.
It was no use -- Ruth had to laugh, and shortly afterward he was
seated comfortably on the log again, his line floating with the
stream, in his hands a volume with yellow paper covers, the worse for
wear, bearing on its back the legend "Calman Levy, Editeur."
Rex soon struck a good trout and Ruth another, but the first one
remained the largest, and finally Gethryn called to the colonel, "If
you don't mind, we're going on."
"All right! take care of Daisy. We will meet and lunch at the first
bridge." Then, examining his line and finding the cricket still
there, he turned up his coat collar to keep off sunburn, opened his
book, and knocked the ashes from his cigar.
"Here," said Gethryn two hours later, "is the bridge, but no
colonel. Are you tired, Ruth? And hungry?"
"Yes, both, but happier than either!"
"Well, that was a big trout, the largest we shall take today, I
think."
They reeled in their dripping lines, and sat down under a tree beside
the lunch basket, which a boy from the lodge was guarding.
"I wish papa would come," said Ruth, with an anxious look up the
road. "He ought to be hungry too, by this time."
Rex poured her a cup of red Tyroler wine and handed her a sandwich.
Then, calling the boy, he gave him such a generous "Viertel" for
himself as caused him to retire precipitately and consume it with
grins, modified by boiled sausage. Ruth looked after him and smiled in
sympathy. "I wonder how papa got rid of the other one with the green
tin water-box."
"I know; I was present at the interview," laughed Rex. "Your father
handed him a ten mark piece and said, `Go away, you superfluous
Bavarian!"'
"In English?"
"Yes, and he must have understood, for he grinned and went."
It was good to hear the ring of Ruth's laugh. She was so happy that
she found the smallest joke delightful, and her voice was very sweet.
Rex lighted a cigarette and leaned back against a tree, in great
comfort. Ruth, perched on a log, watched the smoke drift and curl.
Gethryn watched her. They each cared as much for the hours they had
spent in the brook, and for their wet clothing, as vigorous, happy,
and imprudent youth ever cares about such things.
"So you are happy, Ruth?"
"Perfectly. And you? -- But it takes more to make a spoiled young man
happy than -- "
"Than a spoiled young woman? I don't know about that. Yes, I -- am --
happy." Was the long puff of smoke ascending slowly responsible for
the pauses between his words? A slight shadow was in his eyes for one
moment. It passed, and he turned on her his most charming smile, as he
repeated, "Perfectly happy!"
"Still no colonel!" he went on; "when he comes he will be tired. We
don't want any more trout, do we? We have eighteen, all good ones.
Suppose we rest and go back all together by the road?" Ruth nodded,
smiling to see him fondle the creel full of shining fish, bedded on
fragrant leaves.
Rex's cap lay beside him, his head leaned back against the tree, his
face was turned up to the bending branches. Presently he closed his
eyes.
It might have been one minute, or ten. Ruth sat and watched him. He
had grown very handsome. He had that pleasant air of good breeding
which some men retain under any and all circumstances. It has nothing
to do with character, and yet it is difficult to think ill of a man
who possesses it. When she had seen him last, his nose was too near a
snub to inspire much respect, and his mustache was still in the state
of colorless scarcity. Now his hair and mustache were thick and tawny,
and his features were clear and firm. She noticed the pleasant line of
the cheek, the clean curve of the chin, the light on the crisp edges
of his close-cut hair -- the two freckles on his nose, and she decided
that that short, straight nose, with its generous and humorous
nostrils, was wholly fascinating. As girls always will, she began to
wonder about his life -- idly at first, but these speculations lead
one sometimes farther than one was prepared to go at the start. How
much of his delightful manner to them all was due to affection, and
how much to kindliness and good spirits? How much did he care for
those other friends, for that other life in Paris? Who were the
friends? What was the life? She looked at him, it seemed to her, a
long time. Had he ever loved a woman? Was he still in love, perhaps,
with someone? Ruth was no child. But she was a lady, and a proud one.
There were things she did not choose to think about, although she knew
of their existence well enough. She brought herself up at this point
with a sharp pull, and just then Gethryn, opening his eyes, smiled at
her.
She turned quickly away; to her perfect consternation her cheeks grew
hot. Bewildered by her own confusion, she rose as she turned, and
saying how lovely the water looked, went and stood on the bridge,
leaning over. Rex was on his feet in an instant, so covered with
confusion too, that he never saw hers.
"I say, Ruth, I haven't been such a brute as to fall asleep! Indeed I
haven't! I was thinking of Braith."
"And if you had fallen asleep you wouldn't be a brute, you tired boy!
And who is Braith?"
Ruth turned smiling to meet him, restored to herself and thankful for
the diversion.
"Braith," said Rex earnestly. "Braith is the best man in this
wicked world, and my dearest friend. To whom," he added, "I have not
written one word since I left him two ears ago."
Ruth's face fell. "Is that the way you treat your dearest friends?"
-- and she thought: "No wonder one is neglected when one is only an
old playmate!" -- but she was instantly ashamed of the little
bitterness, and put it aside.
"Ah! you don't know of what we are capable," said Gethryn; and once
more a shadow fell on his face.
A familiar form came jauntily down the road. Ruth hastened to meet it.
"At last, Father! You want your luncheon, poor dear!"
"I do indeed, Daisy!"
The colonel came as gallantly up as if he had thirty pounds of trout
to show instead of a creel that contained nothing but a novel by the
newest and wickedest master of French fiction. He made a mild attempt
to perjure himself about a large fish that had somehow got away from
him, but desisted and merely added that a caning would be good for
Rex.
Tired he certainly was, and when he was seated on the log and Ruth was
bringing him his wine, he looked sharply at her and said, "You too,
Daisy; you've done enough for the first day. We'll go home by the
road."
"It is what I was just proposing to her," said Rex.
"Yes, you are both right," said Ruth. "I am tired."
"And happy?" laughed Rex. But perhaps Ruth did not hear, for she
spoke at the same time to her father.
"Dear, you haven't told Rex yet how you got the invitation to
shoot."
"Oh, yes! It was at an officers' dinner in Munich. The duke was there
and I was introduced to him. He spoke of it as soon as they told him
we were stopping here."
"He's a brick," said Rex, rising. "Shall we start for home,
Colonel? Ruth must be tired."
When they turned in at the Forester's door, the colonel ordered Daisy
to her room, where Mrs Dene and their maid were waiting to make her
luxuriously comfortable with dry things, and rugs, and couches, and
cups of tea that were certainly not drawn from the Frau Förster's
stores. Tea in Germany being more awful than tobacco, or tobacco more
awful than tea, according as one cares most for tea or tobacco.
The colonel and Rex sat after supper under the big beech tree. Ruth,
from her window, could see their cigars alight, and, now and then,
hear their voices.
Rex was telling the colonel about Braith, of whom he had not ceased
thinking since the afternoon. He went to his room early and wrote a
long letter to him.
It began: "You did not expect to hear from me until I was cured.
Well, you are hearing from me now, are you not?"
And it ended: "Only a few more weeks, and then I shall return to you
and Paris, and the dear old life. This is the middle of July. In
September I shall come back."
Fourteen
After the colonel's return, Mr Blumenthal found many difficulties in
the way of that social ease which was his ideal. The ladies were never
to be met with unaccompanied by the colonel or Gethryn; usually both
were in attendance. If he spoke to Mrs Dene, or Ruth, it was always
the colonel who answered, and there was a gleam in that trim warrior's
single eyeglass which did not harmonize with the grave politeness of
his voice and manner.
Rex had never taken Mr Blumenthal so seriously. He called him "Our
Bowery brother," and "the Gentleman from West Brighton," and he
passed some delightful moments in observing his gruesome familiarity
with the maids, his patronage of the grave Jaegers, and his fraternal
attitude toward the head of the house. It was great to see him hook a
heavy arm in an arm of the tall, military Herr Förster, and to see the
latter drop it.
But there came an end to Rex's patience.
One morning, when they were sitting over their coffee out of doors, Mr
Blumenthal walked into their midst. He wore an old flannel shirt, and
trousers too tight for him, inadequately held up by a strap. He
displayed a tin bait box and a red and green float, and said he had
come to inquire of Rex "vere to dig a leetle vorms," and also to
borrow of him "dot feeshpole mitn seelbern ringes."
The request, and the grossness of his appearance before the ladies,
were too much for a gentleman and an angler.
Rex felt his gorge rise, and standing up brusquely, he walked away.
Ruth thoughtlessly slipped after him and murmured over his shoulder:
"Friend of yours?"
Gethryn's fists unclenched and came out of his pockets and he and Ruth
went away together, laughing under the trees.
Mr Blumenthal stood where Rex had left him, holding out the bait-box
and gazing after them. Then he turned and looked at the colonel and
his wife. Perspiration glistened on his pasty, pale face and the rolls
of fat that crowded over his flannel collar. His little, dead,
white-rimmed, pale gray eyes had the ferocity of a hog's which has
found something to rend and devour. He looked into their shocked faces
and made a bow.
"Goot ma--a--rnin, Mister and Missess Dene!" he said, and turned his
back.
The elderly couple exchanged glances as he disappeared.
"We won't mention this to the children," said the gentle old lady.
That was the last they saw of him. Nobody knew where he kept himself
in the interval, but about a week later he came running down with a
valise in his hand and jumped into a carriage from the "Green Bear"
at Schicksalsee, which had just brought some people out and was
returning empty. He forgot to give the usual "Trinkgeld" to the
servants, and a lively search in his room discovered nothing but a
broken collar button and a crumpled telegram in French. But Grethi had
her compensation that evening, when she led the conversation in the
kitchen and Mr Blumenthal was discussed in several South German
dialects.
By this time August was well advanced, but there had been as yet no
"Jagd-partie," as Sepp called the hunting excursion planned with
such enthusiasm weeks before. After that first day in the trout
stream, Ruth not only suffered more from fatigue than she had
expected, but the little cough came back, causing her parents to draw
the lines of discipline very tight indeed.
Ruth, whose character seemed made of equal parts of good taste and
reasonableness, sweet temper and humor, did not offer the least
opposition to discipline, and when her mother remarked that, after
all, there was a difference between a schoolgirl and a young lady, she
did not deny it. The colonel and Rex went off once or twice with the
Jaegers, but in a halfhearted way, bringing back more experience than
game. Then Rex went on a sketching tour. Then the colonel was suddenly
called again to Munich to meet some old army men just arrived from
home, and so it was not until about a week after Mr Blumenthal's
departure that, one evening when the Sennerins were calling the cows
on the upper Alm, a party of climbers came up the side of the Red Peak
and stopped at "Nani's Hütterl."
Sepp threw down the green sack from his shoulders to the bench before
the door and shouted:
"Nani! du! Nani!" No answer.
"Mari und Josef!" he muttered; then raising his voice, again he
called for Nani with all his lungs.
A muffled answer came from somewhere around the other side of the
house. "Ja! komm glei!" And then there was nothing to do but sit on
the bench and watch the sunset fade from peak to peak while they
waited.
Nani did not come "glei" -- but she came pretty soon, bringing with
her two brimming milk-pails as an excuse for the delay.
She and Sepp engaged at once in a conversation, to which the colonel
listened with feelings that finally had to seek expression.
"I believe," he said in a low voice, "that German is the language
of the devil."
"I fancy he's master of more than one. And besides, this isn't
German, any more than our mountain dialects are English. And really,"
Ruth went on, "if it comes to comparing dialects, it seems to me ours
can't stand the test. These are harsh enough. But where in the world
is human speech so ugly, so poverty-stricken, so barren of meaning and
feeling, and shade and color and suggestiveness, as the awful talk of
our rustics? A Bavarian, a Tyroler, often speaks a whole poem in a
single word, like -- "
"Do you think one of those poems is being spoken about our supper
now, Daisy?"
"Sybarite!" cried Ruth, with that tinkle of fun in her voice which
was always sounding between her and her parents; "I won't tell you."
The truth was she did not dare to tell her hungry companions that, so
far as she had been able to understand Sepp and Nani, their
conversation had turned entirely on a platform dance -- which they
called a "Schuh-plattl" -- and which they proposed to attend
together on the following Sunday.
But Sepp, having had his gossip like a true South German hunter-man,
finally did ask the important question:
"Ach! supper! du lieber Himmel!" There was little enough of that for
the Herrschaften. There was black bread and milk, and there were some
Semmel, but those were very old and hard.
"No cheese?"
"Nein!"
"No butter?"
"Nein!"
"Coffee?"
"Yes, but no sugar."
"Herr Je!"
When Sepp delivered this news to his party they all laughed and said
black bread and milk would do. So Nani invited them into her only room
-- the rest of the "Hütterl" was kitchen and cow-shed -- and brought
the feast.
A second Sennerin came with her this time, in a costume which might
have startled them, if they had not already seen others like it. It
consisted of a pair of high blue cotton trousers drawn over her
skirts, the latter bulging all round inside the jeans. She had no
teeth and there was a large goiter on her neck.
"Good Heavens!" muttered the colonel, setting down his bowl of milk
and twisting around to stare out of the window behind him.
"Poor thing! she can't help it!" murmured Ruth.
"No more she can, you dear, good girl!" said Rex, and his eyes shone
very kindly. Ruth caught her breath at the sudden beating of her
heart.
What was left of daylight came through the little window and fell upon
her face; it was as white as a flower, and very quiet.
Dusk was setting in when Sepp made his appearance. He stood about in
some hesitation, and finally addressed himself to Ruth as the one who
could best understand his dialect. She listened and then turned to her
father.
"Sepp doesn't exactly know where to lodge me. He had thought I could
stay here with Nani -- "
"Not if I can help it!" cried the colonel.
"While," Ruth went on -- "while you and Rex went up to the Jaeger's
hut above there on the rocks. He says it's very rough at the
Jagd-hütte."
"Is anyone else there? What does Sepp mean by telling us now for the
first time? " demanded the colonel sharply.
"He says he was afraid I wouldn't come if I knew how rough it was --
and that -- " added Ruth, laughing -- "he says would have been such
a pity! Besides, he thought Nani was alone -- and I could have had her
room while she slept on the hay in the loft. I'm sure this is as neat
as a mountain shelter could be," said Ruth -- looking about her at
the high piled feather beds, covered in clean blue and white check,
and the spotless floor and the snow white pine table. "I'd like to
stay here, only the -- the other lady has just arrived too!"
"The lady in the blue overalls?"
"Yes -- and -- " Ruth stopped, unwilling to say how little relish
she felt for the society of the second Sennerin. But Rex and her
father were on their feet and speaking together.
"We will go and see about the Jagd-hütte. You don't mind being left
for five minutes?"
"The idea! go along, you silly boys!"
The colonel came back very soon, and in the best of spirits.
"It's all right, Daisy! It's a dream of luxury!" and carried her
off, hardly giving her time to thank Nani and to say a winningly kind
word to the hideous one, who gazed back at her, pitchfork in hand,
without reply. No one will ever know whether or not she felt any more
cheered by Ruth's pleasant ways than the cows did who were putting
their heads out from the stalls where she was working.
The dream of luxury was a low hut of two rooms. The outer one had a
pile of fresh hay in one corner and a few blankets. Some of the dogs
were already curled up there. The inner room contained two large bunks
with hay and rugs and blankets; a bench ran where the bunks were not,
around the sides; a shelf was above the bunks; there was a cupboard
and a chest and a table.
"Why, this is luxury!" cried Ruth.
"Well -- I think so, too. I'm immensely relieved. Sepp says artists
bring their wives up here to stay over for the sunrise. You'll do?
Eh?"
"I should think so!"
"Good! then Rex and I and Sepp and the Dachl" -- he always would say
"Dockles" -- "will keep guard outside against any wild cows that
may happen to break loose from Nani. Good night, little girl! Sure
you're not too tired?"
Rex stood hesitating in the open door. Ruth went and gave him her
hand. He kissed it, and she, meaning to please him with the language
she knew he liked best, said, smiling, "Bonne nuit, mon ami!" At the
same moment her father passed her, and the two men closed the door and
went away together. The last glimmer of dusk was in the room. Ruth had
not seen Gethryn's face.
"Bonne nuit, mon ami!" Those tender, half forgotten -- no! never,
never forgotten words! Rex threw himself on the hay and lay still, his
hands clenched over his breast.
The kindly colonel was sound asleep when Sepp came in with a tired but
wagging hound, from heaven knows what scramble among the higher cliffs
by starlight. The night air was chilly. Rex called the dog to his side
and took him in his arms. "We will keep each other warm," he said,
thinking of the pups. And Zimbach, assenting with sentimental whines,
was soon asleep. But Gethryn had not closed his eyes when the Jaeger
sprang up as the day broke. A faint gray light came in at the little
window. All the dogs were leaping about the room. Sepp gave himself a
shake, and his toilet was made.
"Colonel," said Rex, standing over a bundle of rugs and hay in which
no head was visible, "Colonel! Sepp says we must hurry if we want to
see a `gams."'
The colonel turned over. What he said was: "Damn the Gomps!" But he
thought better of that and stood up, looking cynical.
"Come and have a dip in the spring," laughed Rex.
When they took their dripping heads out of the wooden trough into
which a mountain spring was pouring and running out again, leaving it
always full, and gazed at life -- between rubs of the hard crash towel
-- it had assumed a kinder aspect.
Half an hour later, when they all were starting for the top, Ruth let
the others pass her, and pausing for a moment with her hand on the
lintel, she looked back into the little smoke-blackened hut. The door
of the inner room was open. She had dreamed the sweetest dream of her
life there.
Before the others could miss her she was beside them, and soon was
springing along in advance, swinging her alpenstock. It seemed as if
she had the wings as well as the voice of a bird.
Der Jaeger zieht in grünem Wald
Mit frölichem Halloh!
she sang.
Sepp laughed from the tip of his feather to the tip of his beard.
"Wie's gnädige Fraulein hat G'müth!" he said to Rex.
"What's that?" asked the colonel.
"He says," translated Rex freely, "What a lot of every delightful
quality Ruth possesses!"
But Ruth heard, and turned about and was very severe with him. "Such
shirking! Translate me Gemüth at once, sir, if you please!"
"Old Wiseboy at Yarvard confessed he couldn't, short of a treatise,
and who am I to tackle what beats Wiseboy?"
"Can you, Daisy?" asked her father.
"Not in the least, but that's no reason for letting Rex off." Her
voice took on a little of the pretty bantering tone she used to her
parents. She was beginning to feel such a happy confidence in Rex's
presence.
They were in the forest now, moving lightly over the wet, springy
leaves, probing cautiously for dangerous, loose boulders and
treacherous slides. When they emerged, it was upon a narrow plateau;
the rugged limestone rocks rose on one side, the precipice plunged
down on the other. Against the rocks lay patches of snow, grimy with
dirt and pebbles; from a cleft the long greenish white threads of
"Peter's beard" waved at them; in a hollow bloomed a thicket of pink
Alpen-rosen.
They had just reached a clump of low firs, around the corner of a huge
rock, when a rush of loose stones and a dull sound of galloping made
them stop. Sepp dropped on his face; the others followed his example.
The hound whined and pulled at the leash.
On the opposite slope some twenty Hirsch-cows, with their fawns, were
galloping down into the valley, carrying with them a torrent of earth
and gravel. Presently they slackened and stopped, huddling all
together into a thicket. The Jaeger lifted his head and whispered
"Stück"; that being the complimentary name by which one designates
female deer in German.
"All?" said Rex, under his breath. At the same moment Ruth touched
his shoulder.
On the crest of the second ridge, only a hundred yards distant, stood
a stag, towering in black outline, the sun just coming up behind him.
Then two other pairs of antlers rose from behind the ridge, two more
stags lifted their heads and shoulders and all three stood silhouetted
against the sky. They tossed and stamped and stared straight at the
spot where their enemies lay hidden.
A moment, and the old stag disappeared; the others followed him.
"If they come again, shoot," said Sepp.
Rex passed his rifle to Ruth. They waited a few minutes; then the
colonel jumped up.
"I thought we were after chamois!" he grumbled.
"So we are," said Rex, getting on his feet.
A shot rang out, followed by another. They turned, sharply. Ruth,
looking half frightened, was lowering the smoking rifle from her
shoulder. Across the ravine a large stag was swaying on the edge; then
he fell and rolled to the bottom. The hound, loosed, was off like an
arrow, scrambling and tumbling down the side. The four hunters
followed, somehow. Sepp got down first and sent back a wild Jodel. The
stag lay there, dead, and his splendid antlers bore eight prongs.
When Ruth came up she had her hand on her father's arm. She stood and
leaned on him, looking down at the stag. Pity mingled with a wild
intoxicating sense of achievement confused her. A rich color flushed
her cheek, but the curve of her lips was almost grave.
Sepp solemnly drew forth his flask of Schnapps and, taking off his hat
to her, drank "Waidmann's Heil!" -- a toast only drunk by hunters to
hunters.
Gethryn shook hands with her twenty times and praised her until she
could bear no more.
She took her hand from her father's arm and drew herself up,
determined to preserve her composure. The wind blew the little bright
rings of hair across her crimson cheek and wrapped her kilts about her
slender figure as she stood, her rifle poised across her shoulder, one
hand on the stock and one clasped below the muzzle.
"Are you laughing at me, Rex?"
"You know I am not!"
Never had she been so happy in her whole life.
The game drawn and hung, to be fetched later, they resumed their climb
and hastened upward toward the peak.
Ruth led. She hardly felt the ground beneath her, but sprang from rock
to moss and from boulder to boulder, till a gasp from Gethryn made her
stop and turn about.
"Good Heavens, Ruth! what a climber you are!"
And now the colonel sat down on the nearest stone and flatly refused
to stir.
"Oh! is it the hip, Father?" cried Ruth, hurrying back and kneeling
beside him.
"No, of course it isn't! It's indignation!" said her father, calmly
regarding her anxious face. "If you can't go up mountains like a
human girl, you're not going up any more mountains with me."
"Oh! I'll go like a human snail if you want, dear! I've been too
selfish! It's a shame to tire you so!"
"Indeed, it is a perfect shame!" cried the colonel.
Ruth had to laugh. "As I remarked to Rex, early this morning," her
father continued, adjusting his eyeglass, "hang the Gomps!" Rex
discreetly offered no comment. "Moreover," the colonel went on,
bringing all the severity his eyeglass permitted to bear on them both,
"I decline to go walking any longer with a pair of lunatics. I shall
confide you both to Sepp and will wait for you at the upper Shelter."
"But it's only indignation; it isn't the hip, Father?" said Ruth,
still hanging about him, but trying to laugh, since he would have her
laugh.
He saw her trouble, and changing his tone said seriously, "My little
girl, I'm only tired of this scramble, that's all."
She had to be contented with this, and they separated, her father
taking a path which led to the right, up a steep but well cleared
ascent to a plateau, from which they could see the gable of a roof
rising, and beyond that the tip-top rock with its white cross marking
the highest point. The others passed to the left, around and among
huge rocks, where all the hollows were full of grimy snow. The ground
was destitute of trees and all shrubs taller than the hardy
Alpen-rosen. Masses of rock lay piled about the limestone crags that
formed the summit. The sun had not yet tipped their peak with purple
and orange, but some of the others were lighting up. No insects darted
about them; there was not a living thing among the near rocks except
the bluish black salamanders, which lay here and there, cold and
motionless.
They walked on in silence; the trail grew muddy, the ground was beaten
and hatched up with small, sharp hoof prints. Sepp kneeled down and
examined them.
"Hirsch, Reh, and fawn, and ja! ja! Sehen Sie? Gams!"
After this they went on cautiously. All at once a peculiar shrill
hiss, half whistle, half cry, sounded very near.
A chamois, followed by two kids, flashed across a heap of rocks above
their heads and disappeared. The Jaeger muttered something, deep in
his beard.
"You wouldn't have shot her?" said Ruth, timidly.
"No, but she will clear this place of chamois. It's useless to stay
here now."
It was an hour's hard pull to the next peak. When at last they lay
sheltered under a ledge, grimy snow all about them, the Jaeger handed
his glass to Ruth.
"Hirsch on the Kaiser Alm, three Reh by Nani's Hütterl, and one in
the ravine," he said, looking at Gethryn, who was searching eagerly
with his own glass. Ruth balanced the one she held against her
alpenstock.
"Yes, I see them all -- and -- why, there's a chamois!"
Sepp seized the glass which she held toward him.
"The gracious Fraülein has a hunter's eyesight; a chamois is feeding
just above the Hirsch."
"We are right for the wind, but is this the best place?" said Rex.
"We must make the best of it," said Sepp.
The speck of yellow was almost imperceptibly approaching their knoll,
but so slowly that Ruth almost doubted if it moved at all.
Sepp had the glass, and declining the one Rex offered her, she turned
for a moment to the superb panorama at their feet. East, west, north
and south the mountain world extended. By this time the snow mountains
of Tyrol were all lighted to gold and purple, rose and faintest
violet. Sunshine lay warm now on all the near peaks. But great billowy
oceans of mist rolled below along the courses of the Alp-fed streams,
and, deep under a pall of heavy, pale gray cloud, the Trauerbach was
rushing through its hidden valley down to Schicksalsee and Todtstein.
There was perfect silence, only now and then made audible by the
tinkle of a distant cowbell and the Jodel of a Sennerin. Ruth turned
again toward the chamois. She could see it now without a glass. But
Sepp placed his in her hand.
The chamois was feeding on the edge of a cliff, moving here and there,
leaping lightly across some gully, tossing its head up for a
precautionary sniff. Suddenly it gave a bound and stood still, alert.
Two great clumsy "Hirsch-kühe" had taken fright at some imaginary
danger, and, uttering their peculiar half grunt, half roar, were
galloping across the alm in half real, half assumed panic with their
calves at their heels.
The elderly female Hirsch is like a timorous granny who loves to scare
herself with ghost stories, and adores the sensation of jumping into
bed before the robber under it can catch her by the ankle.
It was such an alarm as this which now sent the two fussy old deer,
with their awkward long legged calves, clattering away with
terror-stricken roars which startled the delicate chamois, and for one
moment petrified him. The next, with a bound, he fairly flew along the
crest, seeming to sail across the ravine like a hawk, and to cover
distances in the flash of an eye. Sepp uttered a sudden exclamation
and forgot everything but what he saw. He threw his rifle forward,
there was a sharp click! -- the cartridge had not exploded. Next
moment he remembered himself and turned ashamed and deprecating to
Gethryn. The latter laid his hand on the Jaeger's arm and pointed. The
chamois' sharp ear had caught the click! -- he swerved aside and
bounded to a point of rock to look for this new danger. Rex tried to
put his rifle in Ruth's hands. She pressed it back, resolutely. "It
is your turn," she motioned with her lips, and drew away out of his
reach. That was no time for argument. The Jaeger nodded, "Quick!" A
shot echoed among the rocks and the chamois disappeared.
"Is he hit? Oh, Rex! did you hit him?"
"Ei! Zimbach!" Sepp slipped the leash, the hound sprang away, and in
a moment his bell-like voice announced Rex's good fortune.
Ruth flew like the wind, not heeding their anxious calls to be
careful, to wait for help. It was not far to go, and her light, sure
foot brought her to the spot first. When Rex and Sepp arrived she was
kneeling beside the dead chamois, stroking the "beard" that waved
along its bushy spine. She sprang up and held out her hand to Gethryn.
"Look at that beard -- Nimrod!" she said. Her voice rang with an
excitement she had not shown at her own success.
"It is a fine beard," said Rex, bending over it. His voice was not
quite steady. "Herrlich!" cried Sepp, and drank the "Waidmann's
Heil!" toast to him in deep and serious draughts. Then he took out a
thong, tied the four slender hoofs together and opened his game sack;
Rex helped him to hoist the chamois in and onto his broad shoulders.
Now for the upper Shelter. They started in great spirits, a happy
trio. Rex was touched by Ruth's deep delight in his success, and by
the pride in him which she showed more than she knew. He looked at her
with eyes full of affection. Sepp was assuring himself, by all the
saints in the Bavarian Calendar, that here was a "Herrschaft" which
a man might be proud of guiding, and so he meant to tell the duke.
Ruth's generous heart beat high.
Their way back to the path where they had separated from Colonel Dene
was long and toilsome. Sepp did his best to beguile it with hunter's
yarns, more or less true, at any rate just as acceptable as if they
had been proved and sworn to.
Like a good South German he hated Prussia and all its works, and his
tales were mostly of Berliners who had wandered thither and been
abused; of the gentleman who had been told, and believed, that the
"gams" slept by hooking its horns into crevices of the rock,
swinging thus at ease, over precipices; of another whom Federl once
deterred from going on the mountains by telling how a chamois, if
enraged, charged and butted; of a third who went home glad to have
learned that the chamois produced their peculiar call by bringing up a
hind leg and whistling through the hoof.
It was about half past two in the afternoon and Ruth began to be very,
very tired, when a Jodel from Sepp greeted the "Hütte" and the white
cross rising behind it. As they toiled up the steep path to the little
alm, Ruth said, "I don't see Papa, but there are people there." A
man in a summer helmet, wound with a green veil, came to the edge of
the wooden platform and looked down at them; he was presently joined
by two ladies, of whom one disappeared almost immediately, but they
could see the other still looking down until a turn in the path
brought them to the bottom of some wooden steps, close under the
platform. On climbing these they were met at the top by the gentleman,
hat in hand, who spoke in French to Gethryn, while the stout, friendly
lady held out both hands to Ruth and cried, in pretty broken English:
"Ah! dear Mademoiselle! ees eet possible zat we meet a--h--gain!"
"Madame Bordier!" exclaimed Ruth, and kissed her cordially on both
cheeks. Then she greeted the husband of Madame, and presented Rex.
"But we know heem!" smiled Madame; and her quiet, gentlemanly
husband added in French that Monsieur the colonel had done them the
honor to leave messages with them for Miss Dene and Mr Gethryn.
"Papa is not here?" said Ruth, quickly.
Monsieur the colonel, finding himself a little fatigued, had gone on
to the Jaeger-hütte, where were better accommodations.
Ruth's face fell, and she lost her bright color.
"But no! my dear!" said Madame. "Zere ees nossing ze mattaire. Your
fazzer ees quite vell," and she hurried her indoors.
Rex and Monsieur Bordier were left together on the platform. The
amiable Frenchman did the honors as if it were a private salon.
Monsieur the colonel was perfectly well. But perfectly! It was really
for Mademoiselle that he had gone on. He had decided that it would be
quite too fatiguing for his daughter to return that day to Trauerbach,
as they had planned, and he had gone on to secure the Jagd-hütte for
the night before any other party should arrive.
"He watched for you until you turned into the path that leads up
here, and we all saw that you were quite safe. It is only half an hour
since he left. He did us the honor to say that Mademoiselle Dene could
need no better chaperon than my wife -- Monsieur the colonel was a
little fatigued, but badly, no."
Monsieur Bordier led the way to the usual spring and wooden trough
behind the house, and, while Rex was enjoying a refreshing dip, he
continued to chat.
Yes, as he had already had the honor to inform Rex, Mademoiselle had
been his wife's pupil in singing, the last two winters, in Paris.
Monsieur Gethryn, perhaps, was not wholly unacquainted with the name
of Madame Bordier?
"Madame's reputation as an artist, and a professor of singing, is
worldwide," said Rex in his best Parisian, adding:
"And you, then, Monsieur, are the celebrated manager of `La
Fauvette'?"
The manager replied with a politely gratified bow.
"The most charming theater in Paris," added Rex.
"Ah! murmured the other, Monsieur is himself an artist, though not of
our sort, and artists know."
"Colonel Dene has told you that I am studying in Paris," said Rex
modestly.
"He has told me that Monsieur exhibited in the salon with a number
one."
Rex scrubbed his brown and rosy cheeks with the big towel.
Monsieur Bordier went on: "But the talent of Mademoiselle! Mon Dieu!
what a talent! What a voice of silver and crystal! And today she will
meet another pupil of Madame -- of ours -- a genius. My word!"
"Today?"
"Yes, she is with us here. She makes her debut at the Fauvette next
autumn."
Rex concealed a frown in the ample folds of the towel. It crossed his
mind that the colonel might better have stayed and taken care of his
own daughter. If he, Rex, had had a sister, would he have liked her to
be on a Bavarian mountaintop in a company composed of a gamekeeper,
the manager of a Paris theater and his wife, and a young person who
was about to make her debut in opera-bouffe, and to have no better
guardian than a roving young art student? Rex felt his unfitness for
the post with a pang of compunction. Meantime he rubbed his head, and
Monsieur Bordier talked tranquilly on. But between vexation and
friction Gethryn lost the thread of Monsieur's remarks for a while.
The first word which recalled his wandering attention was "Chamois?"
and he saw that Monsieur Bordier was pointing to the game bag and
looking amiably at Sepp, who, divided between sulkiness at Monsieur's
native language and goodwill toward anyone who seemed to be accepted
by his "Herrschaften," was in two minds whether to open the bag and
show the game to this smiling Frenchman, or "to say him a Grobheit"
and go away. Sepp's "Grobheit" could be very insulting indeed when
he cared to make it so. Rex hastened to turn the scale.
"Yes, Herr Director, this is Sepp, one of the duke's best gamekeepers
-- Monsieur speaks German?" he interrupted himself to ask in French.
"Parfaitement! Well," he went on in Sepp's native tongue, "Herr
Director, in Sepp you see one of the best woodsmen in Bavaria, one of
the best shots in Germany. Sepp, we must show the Herr Director our
Gems."
And there was nothing for Sepp but to open the bag, sheepish, beaten,
laughing in spite of himself, and before he knew it they all three had
their heads together over the game in perfect amity.
A step sounded along the front platform, and Madame looked round the
corner of the house, saying that lunch was ready. Her husband and Rex
joined her immediately. "Ze young ladees are wizin," she said, and
led the way.
The sun-glare on the limestone rocks outside made the little room seem
almost black at first, and all Rex could distinguish as he followed
the others was Ruth's bright smile as she stood near the door and a
jumble of dark figures farther back.
"Permit me," said Monsieur, "to introduce you to our Belle
Hélène." Rex had already bowed low, seeing nothing. "Mademoiselle
Descartes -- Monsieur Gethryn -- " Rex raised his head and looked
into the white face of Yvonne.
"Ah, yes! as I was saying," gossiped Monsieur while they were taking
their places at table, "I shoot when I can, but merely the partridge
and rabbit of the turnip. Bah! a man may not boast of that!"
Rex kept his eyes fixed on the speaker and forced himself to
understand what was being said.
"But the sanglier?" His voice sounded in his ears like noises one
hears with the head under water.
"Mon Dieu! the sanglier! yes, that is also noble game. I do not deny
it." Monsieur talked on evenly and quietly in his self-possessed,
reasonable voice, about the habits and the hunt of the wild boar.
Ruth, sitting opposite, forcing herself to swallow the food, to answer
Madame gaily and look at her ease, felt her heart settle down like
lead in her breast.
What was this? Oh! what was it? She looked at Mademoiselle Descartes.
This young, gentle stranger with the dark hair and the face like
marble, this girl whom she had never heard of until an hour ago, was
hiding from Rex behind the broad shoulders of Madame Bordier. The
pupils of her blue eyes were so dilated that the sad, frightened eyes
themselves looked black. Ruth turned to Gethryn. He was listening and
answering. About his nostrils and temples the hollows showed; the
flush of sunburn was gone, leaving only a pallid brown over the ashen
grey of his face; his expression varied between a strained smile and a
fixed stare. The cold weight at her heart melted and swelled in a
passion of pity.
"Someone must keep up! Someone must keep up!" she said to herself;
and turned to assure Madame in tones which deserved the name of
"crystal and silver," that, Yes, for her part she had not been able
to see any reason why hearing Parsifal at Bayreuth should make one
forget that Bizet was also a great master.
But the strain became too great, and at the first possible moment she
said brightly to Rex, "I'm going to feed Zimbach. Sepp said I
might." She collected some scraps on a plate and went out. The hound
rose wagging as she approached. Ruth stood a moment looking down at
him. Then she knelt and took his brown head in her arms. Her eyes were
full of tears. Zimbach licked her face, and then wrenching his head
away began to dance about her, barking and running at the platter. She
took a bone and gave it to him; it went with a snap; so bit by bit she
fed him with her own hands, and the tears dried without one falling.
She heard Rex come out and stood up to meet him with clear grey eyes
that seemed to see nothing but a jest.
"Look at this dog, Rex! He hasn't a word to say about the bones he's
eaten already; he merely remarks that there don't seem to be any more
at present!"
Rex was taking down his gun. "Monsieur wants to see this," he said
in a dull, heavy voice. "And Ruth -- when you are ready -- your
father, perhaps -- "
"Yes, I really would like to join him as soon as possible -- " They
went in together.
An hour later they were taking leave. All the usual explanations had
been made; everyone knew where the others were stopping, and why they
were there, and how long they meant to stay, and where they intended
to go afterward.
The Bordiers, with Yvonne, were at a lake on the opposite side of the
mountain, but a visit to the Forester's house at Trauerbach was one of
the excursions they had already planned.
It only remained now, as Ruth said, to fix upon an early day for
coming.
The hour just past had been Ruth's hour.
Without effort, or apparent intention, she had taken and kept the lead
from the moment when she returned with Rex. She it was who had given
the key, who had set and kept the pitch, and it was due to her that
not one discordant note had been struck. Vaguely yet vividly she felt
the emergency. Refusing to ask herself the cause, she recognized a
crisis. Something was dreadfully wrong. She made no attempt to go
beyond that. Of all the deep emotions which she was learning now so
suddenly, for the first time, the dominant one with her at present was
a desire to help and to protect. All her social experience, all her
tact, were needed to shield Rex and this white-faced, silent stranger,
who, without her, must have betrayed themselves, so stunned, so dazed
they were. And the courage of her father's daughter kept her fair head
erect above the dead weight at her heart.
And now, having said "Au revoir" to Monsieur and Madame, and fixed
upon a day for their visit to the Försthaus, she turned to Yvonne and
took her hand.
"Mademoiselle, I regret so much to hear that you are not quite
strong. But when you come to Trauerbach, Mama and I will take such
good care of you that you will not mind the fatigue."
The sad blue eyes looked into the clear grey ones, and once more Ruth
responded with a passion of grief and pity.
How Rex made his adieux Ruth never knew.
When he overtook her, she and Sepp were well started down the path to
the Jagd-hütte. They seemed to be having a duet of silence, which Rex
turned into a trio when he joined them.
For such walkers as they all were the distance they had to go was
nothing. Soft afternoon lights were still lying peacefully beside the
long afternoon shadows as they approached the little hut, and Sepp
answered the colonel's abortive attempt at a Jodel with one so long
and complicated that it seemed as if he were taking that means to
express all he should have liked to say in words. The spell broken, he
turned about and asked:
"Also! what did the French people," -- he wouldn't call them
Herrschaft -- "say to the gracious Fraulein's splendid shot?"
Ruth stopped and looked absently at him, then flushed and recovered
herself quickly. It was the first time she had remembered her stag.
"I fear," said she, "that French people would disapprove a young
lady's shooting. I did not tell them."
Sepp went on again with long strides. The four little black hoofs of
the chamois stuck pitifully up out of the bag on his broad back. When
he was well out of hearing he growled aloud:
"Hab' 's schon g' wusst! Jesses, Marie and Josef! was is denn dös!"
That evening, when Rex and the Jaeger were fussing over the chamois'
beard and dainty horns inside the Hütte, Ruth and her father stood
without, before the closed door. The skies were almost black, and full
of stars. Through the wide fragrant stillness came up now and then a
Jodel from some Bursch going to visit his Sennerin. A stamp, and a
comfortable sigh, came at times from Nani's cows in their stall below.
Ruth put both arms around her father's neck and laid her head down on
his shoulder.
"Tired, Daisy?"
"Yes, dear."
Fifteen
Supper was over, evening had fallen; but there would be no music
tonight under the beech tree; the sky was obscured by clouds and a wet
wind was blowing.
Mrs Dene and Ruth were crossing the hall; Gethryn came in at the front
door and they met.
"Well?" said Rex, forcing a smile.
"Well," said Ruth. "Mademoiselle Descartes is better. Madame will
bring her down stairs by and by. It appears that wretched peasant who
drove them has been carrying them about for hours from one inn to
another, stopping to drink at all of them. No wonder they were tired
out with the worry and his insolence!"
"It appears Miss Descartes has had attacks of fainting like this more
than once before. The doctor in Paris thinks there is some weakness of
the heart, but forbids her being told," said Mrs Dene.
Ruth interposed quickly, not looking at Gethryn:
"Papa and Monsieur Bordier, where are they?"
"I left them visiting Federl and Sepp in their quarters."
"Well, you will find us in that dreadful little room yonder. It's the
only alternative to sitting in the Bauernstube with all the
woodchoppers and their bad tobacco, since out of doors fails us. We
must go now and make it as pleasant as we can."
Ruth made a motion to go, but Mrs Dene lingered. Her kind eyes, her
fair little faded face, were troubled.
"Madame Bordier says the young lady tells her she has met you before,
Rex."
"Yes, in Paris"; for his life he could not have kept down the
crimson flush that darkened his cheeks and made his temples throb.
Mrs Dene's manner grew a little colder.
"She seems very nice. You knew her people, of course."
"No, I never met any of her people," answered Rex, feeling like a
kicked coward. Ruth interposed once more.
"People!" said Ruth, impatiently. "Of course Rex only knows nice
people. Come, mother!"
Putting her arm around the old lady, she moved across the hall with
decision. As they passed into the cheerless little room, Rex held open
the door. Ruth, entering after her mother, looked in his face. It had
grown thinner; shadows were deep in the temples; from the dark circles
under the eyes to the chin ran a line of pain. She held out her hand
to him. He bent and kissed it.
He went and stood in the porch, trying to collect his thoughts. The
idea of this meeting between Ruth and Yvonne was insupportable. Why
had he not taken means -- any, every means to prevent it? He cursed
himself. He called himself a coward. He wondered how much Ruth
divined. The thought shamed him until his cheeks burned again. And all
the while a deep undercurrent of feeling was setting toward that
drooping little figure in black, as he had seen it for a moment when
she alighted from the carriage and was supported to a room upstairs.
Heavens! How it reminded him of that first day in the Place de la
Concorde! Why was she in mourning? What did the doctor mean by
"weakness of the heart"? What was she doing on mountaintops, and on
the stage of a theater if she had heart disease? He started with a
feeling that he must go and put a stop to all this folly. Then he
remembered the letter. She had told him another man had the right to
care for her. Then she was at this moment deserted for the second
time, as well as faithless to still another lover! -- to how many
more? And it was through him that a woman of such a life was brought
into contact with Ruth! And Ruth's parents had trusted him; they
thought him a gentleman. His brain reeled.
The surging waves of shame and self-contempt subsided, were forgotten.
He heard the wind sough in the Luxembourg trees, he smelled the pink
flowering chestnuts, a soft voice was in his ear, a soft touch on his
arm, her breath on his cheek, the old, old faces came crowding up.
Clifford's laugh rang faintly, Braith's grave voice; odd bits and ends
of song floated out from the shadows of that past and through the
troubled dream of face and laugh and music, so long, so long passed
away, he heard the gentle voice of Yvonne: "Rex, Rex, be true to me;
I will come back!"
"I loved her!" he muttered.
There was a stir, a door opened and shut, voices and steps sounded in
the room on his left. He leaned forward a little and looked through
the uncurtained window.
It was a bare and dingy room containing only a table, some hard
chairs, and an old "Flügel" piano with a long inlaid case.
They sat together at the table. Ruth's back was toward him; she was
speaking. Yvonne was in the full light. Her eyes were cast down, and
she was nervously plaiting the edge of her little black-bordered
handkerchief. All at once she raised her eyes and looked straight at
the window. How blue her eyes were!
Rex dropped his face in his hands.
"Oh God! I love her!" he groaned.
"Gute Nacht, gnädige Herrn!"
Sepp and Federl stood in their door with a light. Two figures were
coming down from the Jaeger's cottage. Gethryn recognized the colonel
and Monsieur Bordier.
At the risk of scrutiny from those cool, elderly, masculine eyes,
Rex's manhood pulled itself together. He went back to meet them, and
presently they all joined the ladies in the apology for a parlor,
where coffee was being served.
Coming in after the older men, Rex found no place left in the little,
crowded room, excepting one at the table close beside Yvonne. Ruth was
on the other side. He went and took the place, self-possessed and
smiling.
Yvonne made a slight motion as if to rise and escape. Only Rex saw it.
Yes, one more: Ruth saw it.
"Mademoiselle has studied seriously since I had the honor -- "
"Oui, Monsieur."
Her faint voice and timid look were more than Ruth could bear. She
leaned forward so as to shield the girl as much as possible, and
entered into the lively talk at the other end of the table.
Rex spoke again: "Mademoiselle is quite strong, I trust -- the stage
-- Sugar? Allow me! -- As I was saying, the stage is a calling which
requires a good constitution." No answer.
"But pardon. If you are not strong, how can you expect to succeed in
your career?" persisted Rex. His eyes rested on one frail wrist in
its black sleeve. The sight filled him with anger.
"I would make my debut if I knew it would kill me." She spoke at
last, low but clearly.
"But why? Mon Dieu!"
"Madame has set her heart on it. She thinks I shall do her credit.
She has been good to me, so good!" The sad voice fainted and sank
away.
"One is good to one's pupils when they are going to bring one fame,"
said Rex bitterly.
"Madame took me when she did not know I had a voice -- when she
thought I was dying -- when I was homeless -- two years ago."
"What do you mean?" said Rex sternly, sinking his voice below the
pitch of the general conversation. "What did you tell me in your
letter? Homeless!"
"I never wrote you any letter." Yvonne raised her blue eyes,
startled, despairing, and looked into his for the first time.
"You did not write that you had found a -- a home which you preferred
to -- to -- any you had ever had? And that it would be useless to --
to offer you any other?"
"I never wrote. I was very ill and could not. Afterward I went to --
you. You were gone." Her low voice was heartbreaking to hear.
"When?" Rex could hardly utter a word.
"In June, as soon as I left the hospital."
"The hospital? And your mother?"
"She was dead. I did not see her. Then I was very ill, a long time.
As soon as I could, I went to Paris."
"To me?"
"Yes."
"And the letter?"
"Ah!" cried Yvonne with a shudder. "It must have been my sister who
did that!"
The room was turning round. A hundred lights were swaying about in a
crowd of heads. Rex laid his hand heavily on the table to steady
himself. With a strong effort at self-control he had reduced the
number of lights to two and got the people back in their places when,
with a little burst of French exclamations and laughter, everyone
turned to Yvonne, and Ruth, bending over her, took both her hands.
The next moment Monsieur Bordier was leading her to the piano.
A soft chord, other chords, deep and sweet, and then the dear voice:
Oui c'est un rêve,
Un rêve doux d'amour,
La nuit lui prête son mystére
The chain is forged again. The mists of passion rise thickly, heavily,
and blot out all else forever.
Hélène's song ceased. He heard them praise her, and heard "Good
nights" and "Au revoirs" exchanged. He rose and stood near the
door. Ruth passed him like a shadow. They all remained at the foot of
the stairs for a moment, repeating their "Adieus" and
"Remerciements." He was utterly reckless, but cool enough still to
watch for his chance in this confusion of civilities. It came; for one
instant he could whisper to her, "I must see you tonight." Then the
voices were gone and he stood alone on the porch, the wet wind blowing
in his face, his face turned up to a heavy sky covered with black,
driving clouds. He could hear the river and the moaning of the trees.
It seemed as if he had stood there for hours, never moving. Then there
was a step in the dark hall, on the threshold, and Yvonne lay
trembling in his arms.
*
The sky was beginning to show a tint of early dawn when they stepped
once more upon the silent porch. The wind had gone down. Clouds were
piled up in the west, but the east was clear. Perfect stillness was
over everything. Not a living creature was in sight, excepting that
far up, across the stream, Sepp and Zimbach were climbing toward the
Schinder.
"I must go in now. I must you -- child!" said Yvonne in her old
voice, smoothing her hair with both hands. Rex held her back.
"My wife?" he said.
"Yes!" She raised her face and kissed him on the lips, then clung to
him weeping.
"Hush! hush! It is I who should do that," he murmured, pressing her
cheek against his breast.
Once more she turned to leave him, but he detained her.
"Yvonne, come with me and be married today!"
"You know it is impossible. Today! what a boy you are! As if we
could!"
"Well then, in a few days -- in a week, as soon as possible."
"Oh! my dearest! do not make it so hard for me! How could I desert
Madame so? After all she has done for me? When I know all her hopes
are set on me; that if I fail her she has no one ready to take my
place! Because she was so sure of me, she did not try to bring on any
other pupil for next autumn. And last season was a bad one for her and
Monsieur. Their debutante failed; they lost money. Behold this
child!" she exclaimed, with a rapid return to her old gay manner,
"to whom I have explained all this at least a hundred times already,
and he asks me why we cannot be married today!"
Then with another quick change, she laid her cheek tenderly against
his and murmured:
"I might have died but for her. You would not have me desert her so
cruelly, Rex?"
"My love! No!" A new respect mingled with his passion. Yes, she was
faithful!
"And now I will go in! Rex, Rex, you are quite as bad as ever! Look
at my hair!" She leaned lightly on his shoulder, her old laughing
self.
He smiled back sadly.
"Again! After all! You silly, silly boy! And it is such a little
while to wait!"
"Belle Hélène is very popular in Paris. The piece may run a long
time."
"Rex, I must. Don't make it so hard for me!" Tears filled her eyes.
He kissed her for answer, without speaking.
"Think! think of all she did for me; saved me; fed me, clothed me,
taught me when she believed I had only voice and talent enough to
support myself by teaching. It was half a year before she and Monsieur
began to think I could ever make them any return for their care of me.
And all that time she was like a mother to me. And now she has told
everyone her hopes of me. If I fail she will be ridiculed. You know
Paris. She and Monsieur have enemies who will say there never was any
pupil, nor any debut expected. Perhaps she will lose her prestige. The
fashion may turn to some other teacher. You know what malice can do
with ridicule in Paris. Let me sing for her this once, make her one
great success, win her one triumph, and then never, never sing again
for any soul but you -- my husband!"
Her voice sank at the last words, from its eager pleading, to an
exquisite modest sweetness.
"But -- if you fail?"
"I shall not fail. I have never doubted that I should have a success.
Perhaps it is because for myself I do not care, that I have no fear.
When I had lost you -- I only thought of that. And now that I have
found you again -- !"
She clung to him in passionate silence.
"And I may not see your debut?"
"If you come I shall surely fail! I must forget you. I must think
only of my part. What do I care for the house full of strange faces? I
will make them all rise up and shout my name. But if you were there --
Ah! I should have no longer any courage! Promise me to come only on
the second night."
"But if you do fail, I may come and take you immediately before
Monsieur the Maire?"
"If you please!" she whispered demurely.
And they both laughed, the old happy-children laugh of the Atelier.
"I suppose you are bad enough to hope that I will fail," added she
presently, with a little moue.
"Yvonne," said Rex earnestly, "I hope that you will succeed. I know
you will, and I can wait for you a few weeks more."
"We have waited for our happiness two years. We will make the
happiness of others now first, n'est ce pas?" she whispered.
The sky began to glow and the house was astir. Rex knew how it would
soon be talking, but he cared for nothing that the world could do or
say.
"Ah! we will be happy! Think of it! A little house near the Parc
Monceau, my studio there, Clifford, Elliott, Rowden -- Bra--- all of
them coming again! And it will be my wife who will receive them!"
She placed a little soft palm across his lips.
"Taisez-vous, mon ami! It is too soon! See the morning! I must go.
There! yes -- one more! -- my love, Adieu!"
Sixteen
Fewer tourists and more hunters had been coming to the Lodge of late;
the crack of the rifle sounded all day. There was great talk of a hunt
which the duke would hold in September, and the colonel and Rex were
invited. But though September was now only a few days off, the colonel
was growing too restless to wait.
After Yvonne's visit, he and Ruth were much together. It seemed to
happen so. They took long walks into the woods, but Ruth seemed to
share now her father's aversion to climbing, and Gethryn stalked the
deer with only the Jaegers for company.
Ruth and her father used to come home with their arms full of wild
flowers -- the fair, lovely wild blossoms of Bavaria which sprang up
everywhere in their path. The colonel was great company on these
expeditions, singing airs from obsolete operas of his youth, and
telling stories of La Grange, Brignoli and Amodio, of the Strakosches
and Maretzeks, with much liveliness. Sometimes there would be a
silence, however, and then if Ruth looked up she often met his eyes.
Then he would smile and say:
"Well, Daisy!" and she would smile and say:
"Well, dear!"
But this could not last. About a week after Yvonne's visit, the
colonel, after one of these walks, instead of joining Rex for a smoke,
left him sitting with Ruth under the beech tree and mounted the stairs
to Mrs Dene's room.
It was an hour later when he rose and kissed his wife, who had been
sitting at her window all the time of their quiet talk, with eyes
fixed on the young people below.
"I never dreamed of it!" said he.
"I did, I wished it," was her answer. "I thought he was -- but they
are all alike!" she ended sadly and bitterly. "To think of a boy as
wellborn as Rex -- " But the colonel, who possibly knew more about
wellborn boys than his wife did, interrupted her:
"Hang the boys! It's Ruth I'm grieved for!"
"My daughter needs no one's solicitude, not even ours!" said the old
lady haughtily.
"Right! Thank God!" said the veteran, in a tone of relief. "Good
night, my dear!"
Two days later they left for Paris.
Rex accompanied them as far as Schicksalsee, promising to follow them
in a few days.
The handsome, soldierly-looking Herr Förster stood by their carriage
and gave them a "Glück-liche Reise!" and a warm "Auf Wiedersehen!"
as they drove away. Returning up the steps slowly and seriously, he
caught the eye of Sepp and Federl, who had been looking after the
carriage as it turned out of sight beyond the bridge:
"Schade!" said the Herr Förster, and went into the house.
"Schade!" said Federl.
"Jammer-schade!" growled Sepp.
On the platform at Schicksalsee, Rex and Ruth were walking while they
waited for the train. "Ruth," said Rex, "I hope you never will need
a friend's life to save yours from harm; but if you do, take mine."
"Yes, Rex." She raised her eyes and looked into the distance. Far on
the horizon loomed the Red Peak.
The clumsy mail drew up beside the platform. It was the year when all
the world was running after a very commonplace Operetta with one
lovely stolen song: a Volks-song. One heard it everywhere, on both
continents; and now as the postillion, in his shiny hat with the
cockade, his light blue jacket and white small clothes, and his curly
brass horn, came rattling down the street, he was playing the same
melody:
Es ist im Leben häßlich eingerichtet --
The train drew into the station. When it panted forth again, Gethryn
stood waving his hand, and watched it out of sight.
Turning at last to leave the platform, he found that the crowd had
melted away; only a residue of crimson-capped officials remained. He
inquired of one where he could find an expressman and was referred to
a mild man absorbing a bad cigar. With him Gethryn arranged for having
his traps brought from Trauerbach and consigned to the brothers
Schnurr at the "Gasthof zur Post," Schicksalsee, that inn being
close to the station.
This settled, he lighted a cigarette and strolled across to his hotel,
sitting down on a stone bench before the door, and looking off at the
lake.
It was mid-afternoon. The little place was asleep. Nothing was
stirring about the inn excepting a bandy Dachshund, which came
wheezing up and thrust a cold nose into the young man's hand. High in
the air a hawk was wheeling; his faint, querulous cry struck Gethryn
with an unwonted sense of loneliness. He noticed how yellow some of
the trees were on the slopes across the lake. Autumn had come before
summer was ended. He leaned over and patted the hound. A door opened,
a voice cried, "Ei Dachl! du! Dachl!" and the dog made off at the
top of his hobbyhorse gait.
The silence was unbroken except for the harsh cries of the hawk,
sailing low now in great circles over the lake. The sun flashed on his
broad, burnished wings as he stooped; Gethryn fancied he could see his
evil little eyes; finally the bird rose and dwindled away, lost
against the mountainside.
He was roused from his reverie by angry voices.
"Cochon! Kerl! Menteur!" cried someone.
The other voice remonstrated with a snarl.
"Bah!" cried the first, "you lie!"
"Alsatians," thought Rex; "what horrible French!"
The snarling began again, but gradually lapsed into whining. Rex
looked about him.
The quarreling seemed to come from a small room which opened out of
the hotel restaurant. Windows gave from it over the front, but the
blinds were down.
"No! No! I tell you! Not one sou! Starve? I hope you will!" cried
the first voice, and a stamp set some bottles and glasses jingling.
"Alsatians and Jews!" thought Rex. One voice was unpleasantly
familiar to him, and he wondered if Mr Blumenthal spoke French as he
did English. Deciding with a careless smile that of course he did, Rex
ceased to think of him, not feeling any curiosity to go and see with
whom his late fellow-lodger might be quarreling. He sat and watched
instead, as he lounged in the sunshine, some smart carriages whirling
past, their horses stepping high, the lackeys muffled from the
mountain air in winter furs, crests on the panels.
An adjutant in green, with a great flutter of white cock's feathers
from his chapeau, sitting up on the box of an equipage, accompanied by
flunkies in the royal blue and white of Bavaria, was a more agreeable
object to contemplate than Mr Blumenthal, and Gethryn felt as much
personal connection with the Prince Regent hurrying home to Munich,
from his little hunting visit to the emperor of Austria, as with the
wrangling Jews behind the close-drawn blinds of the coffee-room at his
back.
The sun was slowly declining. Rex rose and idled into the
smoking-room. It was deserted but for the clerk at his desk, a railed
enclosure, one side of which opened into the smoking-room, the other
side into the hall. Across the hall was a door with "Café --
Restaurant," in gilt letters above it. Rex did not enter the café; he
sat and dreamed in the empty smoking-room over his cigarette.
But it was lively in the café, in spite of the waning season. A good
many of the tables were occupied. At one of them sat the three
unchaperoned Miss Dashleighs, in company with three solemn,
high-shouldered young officers, enjoying something in tall, slender
tumblers which looked hot and smelled spicy. At another table Mr
Everett Tweeler and Mrs Tweeler were alternately scolding and stuffing
Master Irving Tweeler, who expressed in impassioned tones a desire for
tarts.
"Ur--r--ving!" remonstrated Mr Tweeler.
"Dahling!" argued Mrs Tweeler. "If oo eats too many 'ittle cakies
then oo tant go home to Salem on the puffy, puffy choo-choo boat."
Old Sir Griffin Damby overheard and snorted.
When Master Tweeler secured his tarts, Sir Griffin blessed the meal
with a hearty "damn!"
He did not care for Master Tweeler's nightly stomach aches, but their
rooms adjoined. When "Ur--r--ving" reached unmolested for his
fourth, Sir Griffin rose violently, and muttering, "Change me room,
begad!" waddled down to the door, glaring aggressively at the
occupants of the various tables. Near the exit a half suppressed
squeal caused him to swing round. He had stepped squarely on the toe
of a meager individual, who now sat nursing his foot in bitter
dejection.
"Pardon -- " began Sir Griffin, then stopped and glared at the
sallow-faced person.
Sir Griffin stared hard at the man he had stepped on, and at his
female companion.
"Damn it!" he cried. "Keep your feet out of the way, do you hear?"
puffed his cheeks, squared his shoulders and snorted himself out of
the café.
The yellow-faced man was livid with rage.
"Don't be a fool, Mannie," whispered the woman; "don't make a row
-- do you know who that is?"
"He's an English hog," spluttered the man with an oath; "he's a
cursed hog of an Englishman!"
"Yes, and he knows us. He was at Monaco a few summers ago. Don't
forget who turned us out of the Casino."
Emanuel Pick turned a shade more sallow and sank back in his seat.
Neither spoke again for some moments. Presently the woman began to
stir the bits of lemon and ice in her empty tumbler. Pick watched her
sulkily.
"You always take the most expensive drinks. Why can't you order
coffee, as others do?" he snarled.
She glanced at him. "Jew," she sneered.
"All right; only wait! I've come to the end of my rope. I've got just
money enough left to get back to Paris -- "
"You lie, Mannie!"
He paid no attention to this compliment, but lighted a cigar and
dropped the match on the floor, grinding it under his heel.
"You have ten thousand francs today! You lie if you say you have
not."
Mr Pick softly dropped his eyelids.
"That is for me, in case of need. I will need it too, very soon!"
His companion glared at him and bit her lip.
"If you and I are to remain dear friends," continued Mr Pick, "we
must manage to raise money, somehow. You know that as well as I do."
Still she said nothing, but kept her eyes on his face. He glanced up
and looked away uneasily.
"I have seen my uncle again. He knows all about your sister and the
American. He says it is only because of him that she refuses the
handsome offer."
The woman's face grew tigerish, and she nodded rapidly, muttering,
"Ah! yes! Mais oui! the American. I do not forget him!"
"My dear uncle thinks it is our fault that your sister refuses to
forget him, which is more to the purpose," sneered Pick. "He says
you did not press that offer he made Yvonne with any skill, else she
would never have refused it again -- that makes four times," he
added. "Four times she has refused an establishment and -- "
"Pst! what are you raising your voice for?" hissed the woman. "And
how is it my fault?" she went on.
"I don't say it is. I know better -- who could wish more than we that
your sister should become the mistress of my dear rich uncle? But when
I tried to tell him just now that we had done our best, he raved at
me. He has guessed somehow that they mean to marry. I did not tell him
that we too had guessed it. But he said I knew it and was concealing
it from him. I asked him for a little money to go on with. Curse him,
he would not lend me a sou! Said he never would again -- curse him!"
There was a silence while Pick smoked on. The woman did not smoke too
because she had no cigarette, and Pick did not offer her any.
Presently he spoke again.
"Yes, you certainly are an expensive luxury, under the circumstances.
And since you have so mismanaged your fool of a sister's affair, I
don't see how the circumstances can improve."
She watched him. "And the ten thousand francs? You will throw me off
and enjoy them at your ease?"
He cringed at her tone. "Not enjoy -- without you -- "
"No," she said coolly, "for I shall kill you."
Mr Pick smiled uncomfortably. "That would please the American," he
said, trying to jest, but his hand trembled as he touched the stem of
his cigar-holder to shake off the ashes.
A sudden thought leaped into her face. "Why not please -- me --
instead?" she whispered.
Their eyes met. Her face was hard and bold -- his, cowardly and
ghastly. She clenched her hands and leaned forward; her voice was
scarcely audible. Mr Pick dropped his oily black head and listened.
"He turned me out of his box at the Opera; he struck you -- do you
hear? he kicked you!"
The Jew's face grew chalky.
"Today he stands between you and your uncle, you and wealth, you and
me! Do you understand? Cowards are stupid. You claim Spanish blood.
But Spanish blood does not forget insults. Is yours only the blood of
a Spanish Jew? Bah! Must I talk? You saw him? He is here. Alive. And
he kicked you. And he stands between you and riches, you and me, you
and -- life!"
They sat silent, she holding him fascinated with her little black
eyes. His jaw fallen, the expression of his loose mouth was horrible.
Suddenly she thrust her face close to his. Her eyes burned and the
blood surged through the distended veins under the cracking rouge. Her
lips formed the word, "Tonight!"
Without a word he crept from his seat and followed her out of the room
by a side door.
Gethryn, lounging in the smoking-room meanwhile, was listening with
delight to the bellowing of Sir Griffin Damby, who stood at the
clerk's desk in the hall.
"Don't contradict me!" he roared -- the weak-eyed clerk had not
dreamed of doing so -- "Don't you contradict me! I tell you it's the
same man!"
"But Excellence," entreated the clerk, "we do not know -- "
"What! Don't know! Don't I tell you?"
"We will telegraph to Paris -- "
"Telegraph to hell! Where's my man? Here! Dawson! Do you remember
that infernal Jew at Monaco? He's here. He's in there!" jerking an
angry thumb at the café door. "Keep him in sight till the police come
for him. If he says anything, kick him into the lake."
Dawson bowed.
The clerk tried to say that he would telegraph instantly, but Sir
Griffin barked in his face and snorted his way down the hall, followed
by the valet.
Rex, laughing, threw down his cigarette and sauntered over to the
clerk.
"Whom does the Englishman want kicked out?"
The clerk made a polite gesture, asking Rex to wait until he had
finished telegraphing. At that moment the postillion's horn heralded
the coming of the mail coach, and that meant the speedy arrival of the
last western train. Rex forgot Sir Griffin and strolled over to the
post office to watch the distribution of the letters and to get his
own.
A great deal of flopping and pounding seemed to be required as a
preliminary to postal distribution. First the mail bags seemed to be
dragged all over the floor, then came a long series of thumps while
the letters were stamped, finally the slide was raised and a face the
color of underdone pie crust, with little angry eyes, appeared. The
owner had a new and ingenious insult for each person who presented
himself. The Tweelers were utterly routed and went away not knowing
whether there were any letters for them or not. Several valets and
ladies' maids exchanged lively but ineffectual compliments with the
face in the post office window. Then came Sir Griffin. Rex looked on
with interest. What the ill-natured brute behind the grating said, Rex
couldn't hear, but Sir Griffin burst out with a roar, "Damnation!"
that made everybody jump. Then he stuck his head as far as he could
get it in at the little window and shouted -- in fluent German,
awfully pronounced -- "Here! You! It's enough that you're so stupid
you don't know what you're about. Don't you try to be impudent too!
Hand me those letters!" The official bully handed them over without a
word.
Rex took advantage of the lull and stepped to the window. "Any
letters for Mr Gethryn?"
"How you spell him?" Rex spelled him.
"Yet once again!" demanded the intelligent person. Rex wrote it in
English and in German script.
"From Trauerbach -- yes?"
"Yes."
The man went away, looked through two ledgers, sent for another, made
out several sets of blanks, and finally came back to the window, but
said nothing.
"Well?" said Rex, pleasantly.
"Well," said the man.
"Anything for me?"
"Nothing for you."
"Kindly look again," said Rex. "I know there are letters for me."
In about ten minutes the man appeared again.
"Well?" said Gethryn.
"Well," said the man.
"Nothing for me?"
"Something." And with ostentatious delay he produced three letters
and a newspaper, which Rex took, restraining an impulse to knock him
down. After all, the temptation was not very great, presenting itself
more as an act of justice than as a personal satisfaction. The truth
was, all day long a great gentleness tinged with melancholy had rested
on Gethryn's spirit. Nothing seemed to matter very much. And whatever
engaged his attention for a moment, it was only for a moment, and then
his thoughts returned where they had been all day.
Yvonne, Yvonne! She had not been out of his thoughts since he rose
that morning. In a few steps he reached his room and read his letters
by the waning daylight.
The first began:
My Darling -- in three more days I shall stand before a Paris
audience. I am not one bit nervous. I am perfectly happy. Yesterday
at rehearsal the orchestra applauded and Madame Bordier kissed me.
Some very droll things happened. Achilles was intoxicated and
chased Ajax the Less with a stick. Ajax fled into my dressing room,
and although I was not there I told Achilles afterward that I would
never forgive him. Then he wept.
The letter ran on for a page more of lively gossip and then, with a
sudden change, ended:
But why do I write these foolish things to you? Ah! you know it is
because I am too happy! too happy! and I cannot say what is in my
heart. I dare not. It is too soon. I dare not!
If it is that I am happy, who but you knows the reason? And now
listen to my little secret. I pray for you, yes, every morning and
every evening. And for myself too -- now.
God forgives. It is in my faith. Oh! my husband, we will be good!
Thy Yvonne
Gethryn's eyes blurred on the page and he sat a long time, very still,
not offering to open his remaining letters. Presently he raised his
head and looked into the street. It was dusk, and the lamps along the
lake side were lighted. He had to light his candles to read by.
The next was from Braith -- a short note.
Everything is ready, Rex, your old studio cleaned and dusted until
you would not know it.
I have kept the key always by me, and no one but myself has ever
entered it since you left.
I will meet you at the station -- and when you are really here I
shall begin to live again.
Au revoir,
Braith
It seemed as if Gethryn would never get on with his correspondence. He
sat and held this letter as he had done the other. A deep melancholy
possessed him. He did not care to move. At last, impatiently, he tore
the third envelope. It contained a long letter from Clifford.
"My blessed boy," it said.
We learn from Papa Braith that you will be here before long, but
the old chump won't tell when. He intends to meet you all alone at
the station, and wishes to dispense with a gang and a brass band.
We think that's deuced selfish. You are our prodigal as well as
his, and we are considering several plans for getting even with Pa.
One is to tell you all the news before he has a chance. And I will
begin at once.
Thaxton has gone home, and opened a studio in New York. The
Colossus has grown two more inches and hates to hear me mention the
freak museums in the Bowery. Carleton is a hubby, and wifey is
English and captivating. Rowden told me one day he was going to get
married too. When I asked her name he said he didn't know. Someone
with red hair.
When I remarked that he was a little in that way himself, he said
yes, he knew it, and he intended to found a race of that kind, to
be known as the Red Rowdens. Elliott's brindle died, and we sold
ours. We now keep two Russian bloodhounds. When you come to my
room, knock first, for "Baby" doesn't like to be startled.
Braith has kept your family together, in your old studio. The
parrot and the raven are two old fiends and will live forever. Mrs
Gummidge periodically sheds litters of kittens, to Braith's
indignation. He gives them to the concierge who sells them at a
high price, I don't know for what purpose; I have two of the
Gummidge children. The bull pups are pups no longer, but they are
beauties and no mistake. All the same, wait until you see "Baby."
I met Yvonne in the Louvre last week. I'm glad you are all over
that affair, for she's going to be married, she told me. She looked
prettier than ever, and as happy as she was pretty. She was with
old Bordier of the Fauvette, and his wife, and -- think of this!
she's coming out in Belle Hélène! Well! I'm glad she's all right,
for she was too nice to go the usual way.
Poor little Bulfinch shot himself in the Bois last June. He had
delirium tremens. Poor little chap!
There's a Miss Dene here, who knows you. Braith has met her. She's
a beauty, he says, and she's also a stunning girl, possessing
manners, and morals, and dignity, and character, and religion and
all that you and I have not, my son. Braith says she isn't too good
for you when you are at your best; but we know better, Reggy; any
good girl is too good for the likes of us.
Hasten to my arms, Reginald! You will find them at No. 640 Rue
Notre Dame des Champs, chez,
Foxhall Clifford, Esq.
Leaving Clifford's letter and the newspapers on the table, Rex took
his hat, put out the light, and went down to the street. As he stood
in the door, looking off at the dark lake, he folded Yvonne's letter
and placed it in his breast. He held Braith's a moment more and then
laid it beside hers.
The air was brisk; he buttoned his coat about him. Here and there a
moonbeam touched the lapping edge of the water, or flashed out in the
open stretch beyond the point of pines. High over the pines hung a
cliff, blackening the water all around with fathomless shadow.
A waiter came lounging by, his hands tucked beneath his coattails.
"What point is that? The one which overhangs the pines there?" asked
Rex.
"Gracious sir!" said the waiter, "that is the Schicksalfels."
"Why `Schicksal-fels'?"
"Has the gracious gentleman never heard the legend of the `Rock of
Fate'?"
"No, and on second thoughts, I don't care to hear it now. Another
time. Good night!"
"Ah! the gentleman is too good! Thousand thanks! Gute Nacht, gnädiger
Herr!"
Gethryn remained looking at the crags.
"They cannot be half a mile from here," he thought. "I suppose the
path is good enough; if not, I can turn back. The lake will look well
from there by moonlight." And he found himself moving up a little
footpath which branched below the hotel.
It was pleasant, brisk walking. The air had a touch of early frost in
it. Gethryn swung along at a good pace, pulling his cap down and
fastening the last button of his coat. The trees threw long shadows
across the path, hiding it from view, except where the moonlight fell
white on the moist gravel. The moon herself was past the full and not
very bright; a film of mist was drawing over the sky. Gethryn, looking
up, thought of that gentle moon which once sailed ghostlike at high
noon through the blue zenith among silver clouds while a boy lay
beside the stream with rod and creel; and then he remembered the dear
old yellow moon that used to flood the nursery with pools of light and
pile strange moving shades about his bed. And then he saw, still
looking up, the great white globe that hung above the frozen river,
striking blue sparks from the ringing skates.
He felt lonely and a trifle homesick. For the first time in his life
-- he was still so young -- he thought of his childhood and his
boyhood as something gone beyond recall.
He had nearly reached his destination; just before him the path
entered a patch of pine woods and emerged from it, shortly, upon the
flat-topped rock which he was seeking. Under the first arching
branches he stopped and looked back at the marred moon in the
mist-covered sky.
"I am sick of this wandering," he thought. "Wane quickly! Your
successor shall shine on my home: Yvonne's and mine."
And, thinking of Yvonne, he passed into the shadows which the pines
cast upon the Schicksalfels.
Seventeen
Paris lay sparkling under a cold, clear sky. The brilliant streets lay
coiled along the Seine and stretched glittering from bank to bank,
from boulevard to boulevard; cafés, brasseries, concert halls and
theaters in the yellow blaze of gas and the white and violet of
electricity.
It was not late, but people who entered the lobby of the Theater
Fauvette turned away before the placard "Standing room only."
Somewhere in the city a bell sounded the hour, and with the last
stroke the drop curtain fell on the first act of "La Belle Hélène."
It fell amidst a whirlwind of applause, in which the orchestra led.
The old leader of the violins shook his head, however. He had been
there twenty years, and he had never before heard of such singing in
comic opera.
"No, no," he said, "she can't stay here. Dame! she sings!"
Madame Bordier was pale and happy; her good husband was weak with joy.
The members of the troupe had not yet had time to be jealous and they,
too, applauded.
As for the house, it was not only conquered, it was wild with
enthusiasm. The lobbies were thronged.
Braith ran up against Rowden and Elliott.
"By Jove!" they cried, with one voice, "who'd have thought the
little girl had all that in her? I say, Braith, does Rex know about
her? When is he coming?"
"Rex doesn't know and doesn't care. Rex is cured," said Braith.
"And he's coming next week. Where's Clifford?" he added, to make a
diversion.
"Clifford promised to meet us here. He'll be along soon."
The pair went out for refreshments and Braith returned to his seat.
The wait between the acts proved longer than was agreeable, and people
grumbled. The machinery would not work, and two heavy scenes had to be
shifted by hand. Good Monsieur Bordier flew about the stage in a
delirium of excitement. No one would have recognized him for the
eminently reasonable being he appeared in private life. He called the
stage hands "Prussian pigs!" and "Spanish cattle!" and expressed
his intention to dismiss the whole force tomorrow.
Yvonne, already dressed, stood at the door of her room, looking along
the alley of dusty scenery to where a warm glow revealed the close
proximity of the footlights. There was considerable unprofessional
confusion, and not a little skylarking going on among the company, who
took advantage of the temporary interruption.
Yvonne stood in the door of her dressing room and dreamed, seeing
nothing.
Her pretty figure was draped in a Grecian tunic of creamy white,
bordered with gold; her soft, dark hair was gathered in a simple knot.
Presently she turned and entered her dressing room, closing the door.
Then she sat down before the mirror, her chin resting on her hands,
her eyes fixed on her reflected eyes, a faint smile curving her lips.
"Oh! you happy girl!" she thought. "You happy, happy girl! And just
a little frightened, for tomorrow he will come. And when he says --
for he will say it -- `Yvonne must we wait?' I shall tell him, No!
take me now if you will!"
Without a knock the door burst open. A rush of music from the
orchestra came in. Yvonne thought "So they have begun at last!" The
same moment she rose with a faint, heartsick cry. Her sister closed
the door and fastened it, shutting out all sound but that of her
terrible voice. Yvonne blanched as she looked on that malignant face.
With a sudden faintness she leaned back, pressing one hand to her
heart.
"You received my letter?" said the woman.
Yvonne did not answer. Her sister stamped and came nearer. "Speak!"
she cried.
Yvonne shrank and trembled, but kept her resolute eyes on the cruel
eyes approaching hers.
"Shall I tear an answer from you?" said the woman, always coming
nearer. "Do you think I will wait your pleasure, now?"
No answer.
"He is here -- Mr Blumenthal; he is waiting for you. You dare not
refuse him again! You will come with us now, after the opera. Do you
hear? You will come. There is no more time. It must be now. I told you
there would be time, but there is none -- none!"
Yvonne's maid knocked at the door and called:
"Mademoiselle, c'est l'heuer!"
"Answer!" hissed the woman.
Yvonne, speechless, holding both hands to her heart, kept her eyes on
her sister's face. That face grew ashen; the eyes had the blank glare
of a tiger's; she sprang up to Yvonne and grasped her by the wrists.
"Mademoiselle! Mademoiselle! c'est l'heure!" called the maid,
shaking the door.
"Fool!" hissed her sister, "you think you will marry the
American!"
"Mademoiselle Descartes! mais Mademoiselle Descartes!" cried
Monsieur's voice without.
"Let me go!" panted Yvonne, struggling wildly.
"Go!" screamed the woman, "go, and sing! You cannot marry him! He
is dead!" and she struck the girl with her clenched fist.
The door, torn open, crashed behind her and immediately swung back
again to admit Madame.
"My child! my child! What is it? What ails you? Quick, or it will be
too late! Ah! try, try, my child!"
She was in tears of despair.
Taking her beseeching hand, Yvonne moved toward the stage.
"Oui, chère Madame!" she said.
The chorus swelled around her.
Oh! reine en ce jour!
rose, fell, ebbed away, and left her standing alone.
She heard a voice -- "Tell me, Venus -- " but she hardly knew it for
her own. It was all dark before her eyes -- while the mad chorus of
Kings went on, "For us, what joy!" -- thundering away along the
wings.
"Fear Calchas!"
"Seize him!"
"Let Calchas fear!"
And then she began to sing -- to sing as she had never sung before.
Sweet, thrilling, her voice poured forth into the crowded auditorium.
The people sat spellbound. There was a moment of silence; no one
offered to applaud. And then she began again.
Oui c'est un réve,
Un réve doux d'amour --
She faltered --
La nuit lui préte son mystère,
Il doit finir avec le jour --
the voice broke. Men were standing up in the audience. One cried out:
"Il -- doit -- finir -- "
The music clashed in one great discord.
Why did the stage reel under her? What was the shouting?
Her heavy, dark hair fell down about her little white face as she sank
on her knees, and covered her as she lay her slender length along the
stage.
The orchestra and the audience sprang to their feet. The great blank
curtain rattled to the ground. A whirlwind swept over the house.
Monsieur Bordier stepped before the curtain.
"My friends!" he began, but his voice failed, and he only added,
"C'est fini!"
With hardly a word the audience moved to the exits. But Braith,
turning to the right, made his way through a long, low passage and
strode toward a little stage door. It was flung open and a man hurried
past him.
"Monsieur!" called Braith. "Monsieur!"
But Monsieur Bordier was crying like a child, and kept on his way,
without answering.
The narrow corridor was now filled with hurrying, excited figures in
gauze and tinsel, sham armor, and painted faces. They pressed Braith
back, but he struggled and fought his way to the door.
A Sergeant de Ville shouldered through the crowd. He was dragging a
woman along by the arm. Another policeman came behind, urging her
forward. Somehow she slipped from them and sank, cowering against the
wall. Braith's eyes met hers. She cowered still lower.
A slender, sallow man had been quietly slipping through the throng. A
red-faced fellow touched him on the shoulder.
"Pardon! I think this is Mr Emanuel Pick."
"No!" stammered the man, and started to run.
Braith blocked his way. The red-faced detective was at his side.
"So, you are Mr Emanuel Pick!"
"No!" gasped the other.
"He lies! He lies!" yelled the woman, from the floor.
The Jew reeled back and, with a piercing scream, tore at his
handcuffed wrists. Braith whispered to the detective:
"What has the woman done? What is the charge?"
"Charge? There are a dozen. The last is murder."
The woman had fainted and they carried her away. The light fell a
moment on the Jew's livid face, the next Braith stood under the dark
porch of the empty theater. The confusion was all at the stage
entrance. Here, in front, the deserted street was white and black and
silent under the electric lamps. All the lonelier for two wretched
gamins, counting their dirty sous and draggled newspapers.
When they saw Braith they started for him; one was ahead in the race,
but the other gained on him, reached him, dealt him a merciless blow,
and panted up to Braith.
The defeated one, crying bitterly, gathered up his scattered papers
from the gutter.
"Curse you, Rigaud! you hound!" he cried, in a passion of tears.
"Curse you, son of a murderer!"
The first gamin whipped out a paper and thrust it toward Braith.
"Buy it, Monsieur!" he whined, "the last edition, full account of
the Boulangist riot this morning; burning of the Prussian flags;
explosion on a warship; murder in Germany, discovered by an English
Milord -- "
Braith was walking fast; the gamin ran by his side for a moment, but
soon gave it up. Braith walked faster and faster; he was almost
running when he reached his own door. There was a light in his window.
He rushed up the stairs and into his room.
Clifford was sitting there, his head in his hands. Braith touched him,
trying to speak lightly.
"Are you asleep, old man?"
Clifford raised a colorless face to his.
"What is it? Can't you speak?"
But Clifford only pointed to a crumpled telegram lying on the table,
and hid his face again as Braith raised the paper to the light.
*
The End
_________________________________________________________________
In the Quarter was first published in 1894 and the text is in the
public domain. The transcription was done by William McClain, 2003.
A printed version of this book is available from [4]Sattre Press
http://itq.sattre-press.com/
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