WITH a new day began a new epoch. On the morning following the night, of first adventure Max woke in his odd, mountainous bed at the Hôtel Railleux kindling to fresh and definite sensations. In a manner miraculously swift, miraculously smooth and subtle, he had discovered a niche in this strange city, and had elected to fit himself to it. A knowledge of present, a pledge of future interests seemed to permeate the atmosphere, and he rose and dressed with the grave deliberation of the being who sees his way clear before him.
It was nine o'clock when he entered thesalle-à-manger, and one sharp glance brought the satisfying conviction that it was deserted save for the presence of the assiduous young waiter, who came hurrying forward as though no span of hours and incidents separated yesterday's meal from to-day's.
His attentive attitude was unrelaxed, his smile was as deferential as before, but this morning he found a less responsive guest. Max was filled with a quiet assurance that debarred familiarity; Max, in fine, was bound upon a quest, and the submissive young waiter, the bare eating-room, Paris itself, formed but the setting and background in his arrogant young mind to the greatness of the mission.
The thought—the small seed of thought that was responsible for the idea had been sown last night, as he leaned over the parapet fronting the Sacré-Coeur, looking down upon the city with its tangle of lights; and later, in the hours of darkness, when he had tossed on his heavy bed, too excited to lure sleep, it had fructified with strange rapidity, growing and blossoming with morning into definite resolve.
He drank his coffee and ate his roll in happy preoccupation, and, having finished his meal, left the room and went quietly down the stairs and through the glass door of the hotel.
The frost still held; Paris still smiled; and, buttoning up his coat, he paused for a moment on the doorstep to turn his face to the copper-red sun and breathe in the crisp, invigorating air; then, with a quaintly decisive manner that seemed to set sentiment aside, he walked to the edge of the footpath and hailed a passingfiacre.
"To the church of the Sacré-Coeur," he commanded.
Thecocherreceived the order with a grumble, looked from his unreliable horse to the frosty roadway, and was about to shake his head in definite negation when Max cajoled him with a more ingratiating voice.
"The rue Ronsard, then? Will you take me to the corner of the rue Ronsard?"
The man grumbled again, and shrugged his shoulders until his ears disappeared in the shaggy depths of his fur cape; but, when all hope seemed fled, he laconically murmured the one word "Bon!" whipped up his horse, and started off with a fine disregard of whether his fare had taken his seat or been left behind upon the footpath.
To those who know Montmartre only as an abode of night—a place of light and laughter and folly—Montmartre in the day, Montmartre at half-past nine in the morning, comes as a revelation. The whole picture is as a coin reversed. The theatres, the music-halls, thecabaretsall lie with closed eyes, innocently sleeping; the population of pleasure-seekers and pleasure-mongers has disappeared as completely as if some magician had waved his wand, and in its place the streets teem with the worker—the early, industrious shopkeeper and the householder bent upon a profitable morning's marketing. Max, gazing from thefiacrewith attentive eyes, followed the varying scenes, while his horse wound a careful and laborious way up the cobble-paved streets, and noted with an artist's eye the black, hurrying figures of the men, cloaked and hooded against the cold, and the black, homely figures of the women, silhouetted against the sharp greens and yellows of the laden vegetable stalls at which they chattered and bargained.
It was all noisy, interesting, alive; and us he watched the pleasant, changing pictures, his courage strengthened, his belief in his own star mounted higher; the decision of last night stood out, as so few nocturnal decisions can stand out, unashamed and justified in the light of day.
At the corner where the rue André de Sarte joins the rue Ronsard he dismissed his cab, and with a young inquisitiveness in all that concerned the quarter, paused to look into the old curio shop, no longer closed as on the previous night, but open and inviting in its dingy suggestion of mysteries unsolved.
Now—at this moment of recording the boy's doings—the curio shop no longer exists at the corner of the rue André de Sarte; it has faded into the unknown with its coppers and brasses, its silver and tinsel, its woollen and silk stuffs; but on that January morning of his first coming it still held place, its musty perfumes still conjured dreams, its open doorway, festooned with antique objects, still offered tempting glimpses into the long and dim interior, where an old Jew, presiding genius of the place, lurked like a spider in the innermost circle of his web.
Max lingered, drawn into self-forgetfulness by the blending of faded hues, the atmosphere of must and spices, the air of age indescribable that veiled the place. He loitered about the windows, peeped in at the doorway, would even have ventured across the threshold had not a ponderous figure, rising silently from a heap of cushions upon the floor of the inmost room, sent him hastening round the corner, guiltily conscious that it was new lamps and not old he was here to light.
The interest of his mission flowed back, sharpened by the momentary break, and it was with very swift steps that he ran up the Escalier de Sainte-Marie to the rue Müller; there, in the rue Müller, he paused, his back to the green plantation, his face to the row of houses rising one above the other, each with its open doorway, each with its front of brick and plaster, its iron balcony from which hung the inevitable array of blankets, rugs, and mattresses absorbing the morning air.
To say that, in the mystic silence of the previous night and restless hours of the dawn, Max had vowed to himself that here in the rue Müller he would make a home, and to add that, coming in the light of day, he found a door open to him, sounds at the least fabulous; yet, as he stood there—eager, alert, with face lifted expectantly, and bright gaze winging to right and left—fable was made fact: the legend 'Appartement à louer' caught his glance like a pronouncement of fate.
It sounds fabulous, it sounds preposterous, and yet it obtains, to be accounted for only by the fact that in this curious world there are certain beings to whom it is given to say of all things with naïve faith, not 'I shall seek,' but 'I shall find.'
Max had never doubted that, if courage were high enough to undertake the quest, absolute success awaited him. He read the legend again, 'Appartement à louer 5ième étage. Gaz: l'eau,'and without hesitation crossed the rue Müller and passed through the open door.
The difference was vast between his nervous entry thirty-six hours ago into the Hôtel Railleux and the boldness of his step now. The difference between secret night and candid morning lay in the two proceedings—the difference between self-distrust and self-confidence. Then he had been a creature newly created, looking upon himself and all the world with a sensitive distrust; now he was an individual accepted of others, assured of himself, already beginning to move and have his being in happy self-forgetfulness.
He stepped into the hallway of the strange house and paused to look about him, his only emotion a keen interest that kept every nerve alert. The hallway round which he looked displayed no original features: it was a lofty, rather narrow space, the walls of which—painted to resemble marble—were defaced by time, by the passing of many skirts and the rubbing of many shoulders. In the rear was a second door, composed of glass, and beyond it the suggestion of a staircase of polished oak that sprang upward from the dingy floor in a surprising beauty of panelled dado and fine old banister.
Max's eyes rested upon this staircase: in renewed excitement he hurried down the hall and, regardless of the consequence, beat a quick tattoo with his knuckles upon the glass door.
Silence greeted his imperative summons, and as he waited, listening intently, he became aware of the monotonous hum of a sewing-machine coming through a closed door upon his left.
The knowledge of a human presence emboldened him; again he knocked, this time more sharply, more persistently. Again inattention; then, as he lifted his hand for the third time, the hum of the machine ceased abruptly, the door opened, and he turned to confront a small woman with wispy hair and untidy clothes, whose bodice was adorned with innumerable pins, and at whose side hung a pair of scissors large as shears.
"Monsieur?" Her manner was curt—the manner of one who has been disturbed at some engrossing occupation.
Max felt rebuffed; he raised his hat and bowed with as close an imitation as he could summon of Blake's ingratiating friendliness.
"Madame, you have anappartementto let?"
"True, monsieur! Anappartementon the fifth floor—gas and water." There was pride in the last words, if a grudging pride.
"Precisely! And it is a goodappartement?"
"No better in Montmartre."
"A sufficiency of light?"
'Light?' The woman smiled in scorn. 'Was it not open to the skies—with those two windows in front, and that balcony?'
Max's excitement kindled.
"Madame, I must see thisappartement! May I mount now—at once?"
But the matter was no such light one. Madame shook her head. 'Ah, that was not possible!'
'Why not?'
'Ah, well, there was theconcierge! Theconciergewas out.'
'But theconciergewould return?'
'Oh yes! It was true he would return!'
The little woman cast a wistful eye on the door of her own room.
'At what hour?'
'Ah! That was a question!'
'This morning?'
'Possibly!'
'This afternoon?'
'Possibly!'
'But not for a certainty?'
'Nothing was entirely certain.'
Anger broke through Max's disappointment. Without a word he turned on his heel and strode down the hall with the air of an offended prince.
The woman watched him with an expressionless face until he reached the door, then something—perhaps his youth, perhaps his brave carriage, perhaps his defiant disappointment—moved her.
"Monsieur!" she called.
He stopped.
"Monsieur, if it is absolutely necessary that you see theappartement—"
"It is. Absolutely necessary." Max ran back.
"Then, monsieur, I will conduct you up-stairs."
The suggestion was greedily seized upon. Thisappartementon the fifth floor had grown in value with each moment of denial.
"Thank you, madame, a thousand times!"
"Shall we mount?"
"On the moment, if you will."
Through the glass door they went, and up the stairs, mounting higher and ever higher in an unbroken silence. Half way up each flight of stairs there was a window through which the light fell upon the bare oak steps, proving them to be spotless and polished as the floor of a convent. It was an unexpected quality, this rigid cleanliness, and the boy acknowledged it with a mute and deep satisfaction.
Upon each landing were two doors—closed doors that sturdily guarded whatever of secrecy might lie behind, and at each of these silent portals Max glanced with that intent and searching look that one bestows upon objects that promise to become intertwined with one's daily life. At last the ascent was made, the goal reached, and he paused on the last step of the stairs to survey the coveted fifth floor.
It was as bare, as scrupulously clean as were the other landings; but his quick glance noted that while the door upon the left was plain and unadorned as the others he had passed, that upon the right bore a small brass plate engraved with the name 'L. Salas.'
This, then, was his possible neighbor! He scanned the name attentively.
"This is the fifth floor, madame?"
"The fifth floor, monsieur!" Without ceremony the little woman went forward and, to his astonishment, rapped sharply upon the door with the brass plate.
Max started. "Madame! Theappartementis not occupied?"
The only reply that came to him was the opening of the door by an inch or two and the hissing whisper of a conversation of which he caught no word. Then the lady of the scissors looked round upon him, and the door closed.
"One moment, monsieur, while madame throws on a garment!"
A sudden loss of nerve, a sudden desire for flight seized upon Max. He had mounted the stairs anticipating the viewing of empty rooms, and now he was confronted with a furnished and inhabitedappartement, and commanded to wait 'while madame threw on a garment'! A hundred speculations crowded to his mind. Into whatmilieuwas he about to be hurled? What sordid morning scene was he about to witness? In a strange confusion of ideas, the white face of the woman Lize sprang to his imagination, coupled with the memory of the empty champagne bottle and the battered tray of the first night at the Hôtel Railleux. A deadly sensitiveness oppressed him; he turned sharply to his guide.
"Madame! Madame! It is an altogether unreasonable hour to intrude—"
The reopening of the door on the right checked him, and a gentle voice broke across his words:
"Now, madame, if you will!"
He turned, his heart still beating quickly, and a sudden shame at his own thoughts—a sudden relief so strong as almost to be painful—surged through him.
The open door revealed a woman of forty-five, perhaps of fifty, clothed in a meagre black skirt and a plain linen wrapper of exquisite cleanliness. It was this cleanliness that struck the note of her personality—that fitted her as a garment, accentuating the quiet austerity of her thin figure, the streaks of gray in her brown hair, the pale face marked with suffering and sympathy and repression.
With an instinctive deference the boy bared his head.
"Madame," he stammered, "I apologize profoundly for my intrusion at such an hour."
"Do not apologize, monsieur. Enter, if you will!" She drew back, smiling a little, and making him welcome by a simple gesture. "We are anxious, I assure you, to find a tenant for theappartement; my husband's health is not what it was, and we find it necessary to move into the country."
He followed her into a tiny hall; and with her fingers on the handle of an inner door, she looked at him again in her gentle, self-possessed way.
"You will excuse my husband, monsieur! He is an invalid and cannot rise from his chair."
She opened the inner door, and Max found himself in a bedroom, plain in furniture and without adornment, but possessing a large window, the full light from which was falling with pathetic vividness on the shrunken figure and wan, expressionless face of a very old man who sat huddled in a shabby leathern arm-chair. This arm-chair had been drawn to the window to catch the wintry sun, and pathos unspeakable lay in the contrasts of the picture—the eternal youth in the cold, dancing beams—the waste, the frailty of human things in the inert figure, the dim eyes, the folded, twitching hands.
The old man looked up as the little party entered, and his eyes sought his wife's with a mute, appealing glance; then, with a slight confusion, he turned to Max, and his shaking hand went up instinctively to the old black skullcap that covered his head.
"He wishes to greet you, monsieur, but he has not the strength." The woman's voice dropped to tenderness, and she stooped and arranged the rug about the shrunken knees. "If you will come this way, I will show you thesalon."
She moved quietly forward, opening a second door.
"You see, monsieur, it is all very convenient. In summer you can throw the windows open and pass from one room to the other by way of the balcony."
She moved from the bedroom into thesalonas she spoke, Max and the lady of the pins following.
"See, monsieur! It is quite a good room."
Max, still subdued by the vision of age, went forward silently, but as he entered this second room irrepressible surprise possessed him. Here was an atmosphere he had not anticipated. A soft, if faded, carpet covered the floor; a fine old buffet stood against the wall; antique carved chairs were drawn up to a massive table that had obviously known more spacious surroundings; while upon the walls, from floor to ceiling, were pictures—pictures of all sizes, pictures obviously from the same hand, on the heavy gold frames of which the name 'L. Salas' stood out conspicuously in proof of former publicity.
"Madame!" He turned to the sad-faced woman, the enthusiasm of a fellow-craftsman instantly kindled. "Madame! You are an artist? This is your work?"
The woman caught the sympathy, caught the fire of interest, and a faint flush warmed her cheek.
"Alas, no, monsieur! I am not artistic. It is my husband who is the creator of these." She waved her hand proudly toward the walls. "My husband is an artist."
"A renowned artist!"
It was the woman of the pins and scissors who spoke, surprising Max, not by the sudden sound of her voice, but by her sudden warmth of feeling. Again Blake's words came back—'These are the true citizens of the true Bohemia!'—and he looked curiously from one to the other of the women, so utterly apart in station, in education, in ideals, yet bound by a common respect for art.
"It is my loss," he said, quietly, "that I did not, until to-day, know of M. Salas."
"But no, monsieur! What would you know of twenty years ago? It is true that then my husband had a reputation; but, alas, time moves quickly—and the world is for the young!"
She smiled again, gently and patiently, and a sudden desire seized Max to lift and kiss one of her thin, work-worn hands. The whole pitiful story of a vogue outlived, of a generation pushed aside, breathed in the silence of these fifth-floor rooms.
"They must be a great pride to you, madame—these pictures."
"These, monsieur—and the fact that he is still with me. We can dispense with anything save the being we love—is it not so? But I must not detain you, talking of myself! The other rooms are still to see! This, monsieur, is our second bedroom! And this the kitchen!"
Max, following her obediently, took one peep into what was evidently her own bedroom—a tiny apartment of rigid simplicity, in which a narrow bed, with a large black crucifix hanging above it, seemed the only furniture, and passed on into the kitchen, a room scarce larger than a cupboard, in which a gas-stove and a water-tap promised future utility.
"See, monsieur! Everything is very convenient. All things are close at hand for cooking, and the light is good. And now, perhaps, you would wish to pass back into thesalonand step out upon the balcony?"
Still silent, still preoccupied, he assented, and they passed into the room so eloquent of past hours and dwindled fortunes.
"See, monsieur! The view is wonderful! Not to-day, perhaps, for the frost blurs the distances; but in the spring—a little later in the year—"
Crossing the room, she opened the long French window and stepped out upon the narrow iron balcony.
Max followed, and, moving to her side, stood gazing down upon the city of his dreams. For long he stood absorbed in thought, then he turned and looked frankly into her face.
"Madame," he said, softly, "it is a place of miracle. It is here that I shall live."
She smiled. She had served an apprenticeship in the reading of the artist's heart—the child's heart.
"Yes, monsieur? You will live here?"
"As soon, madame, as it suits you to vacate theappartement."
Again she smiled, gently, indulgently. "And may I ask, monsieur, whether you have ascertained the figure of the rent?"
"No, madame."
"And is not that—pardon me!—a little improvident?"
Max laughed. "Probably, madame! But if it demanded my last franc I would give that last franc with an open heart, so greatly do I desire the place."
The quiet eyes of the woman softened to a gentle comprehension.
"You are an artist, monsieur."
The color leaped into the boy's face, his eyes flashed with triumph.
"Madame, how did you guess?"
"It is no guessing, monsieur. You tell me with every word."
"Ah, madame, I thank you!" With a charming, swift grace he bent and caught her hand. "And, madame"—he hesitated naïvely and colored again. "Madame, I would like to say that when my home is here it will be my care never to desecrate the atmosphere you have created." He bent still lower, the sun caressing his crisp, dark hair, and very lightly his lips touched her fingers.
"Adieu, madame!"
"Adieu, monsieur!"
IT seemed to Max, as the door closed behind him and he found himself upon the bare landing, that he had dreamed and was awake again; for in truth theménageinto which he had been permitted to peep seemed more the fabric of a dream than part of the new, inconsequent life he had elected to make his own. A curious halo of the ideal—of things set above the corroding touch of time or fortune—surrounded the old man forgotten of his world, and the patient wife, content in her one frail possession.
He felt without comprehending that here was some precious essence, some elixir of life, secret as it was priceless; and for an instant a shadow, a doubt, a question crossed his happy egoism. But the sharp, inquisitive voice of his guide brought him back to material things.
"You like theappartement, monsieur?"
He threw aside his disturbing thoughts.
"Undoubtedly, madame!" he said, quickly. "It is here that I shall live." Without conscious intention he used the phrase that he had used to Blake—that he had used to Madame Salas.
"You are quick of decision, monsieur?"
"It is well, at least, to know one's own mind, madame! And now tell me who I shall have for my neighbor." As they moved toward the head of the stairs, he indicated the second door on the landing—the door innocent of name, bell, or knocker.
"For neighbor, monsieur? Ah, I comprehend! That is theappartementof M. Lucien Cartel, a musician; but his playing will not disturb you, for the walls are thick—and, in any case, he is a good musician."
A conclusion, winged with excitement, formed itself in the mind of Max.
"Madame!" he cried. "He plays the violin—this M. Cartel?"
"Both violin and piano, monsieur. He has a great talent."
"And, madame, he played last night? He played last night between the hours of ten and eleven?"
"He plays constantly, monsieur, but of last night I am not sure. Last night was eventful for M. Cartel! Last night—But I speak too much!"
She glanced at Max, obviously desiring the question that would unloose her tongue. But Max was not alert for gossip, he was listening instead to a faint sound, long drawn out and fine as a silver thread, that was slipping through the crevices of M. Cartel's door.
"Ah, there he goes!" interjected the little woman. "Always at the music, whatever life brings!"
"And I am right! It was he who played last night. How curious!"
The woman glanced up, memory quickening her expression.
"But, yes, monsieur, you are perfectly correct," she said. "M. Cartel did play last night. I remember now. I was finishing the hem of a black dress for Madame Dévet, of the rue des Abesses, when my husband came in at eleven o'clock. He walked in, leaving the door open—the door I came through this morning at your knock—and he stood there, blowing upon his fingers, for it was cold. 'Our good Cartel is in love, Marthe!' he said, laughing. 'He is making music like a bird in spring!' And then, monsieur, the next thing was a great rush of feet down the stairs, and who should come flying into the hallway but M. Cartel himself. He paused for an instant, seeing our door open, and he, too, was laughing. 'What a fellow that Charpentier is!' he cried to my husband. 'HisLouisehas kept me until I am all but late for myrendezvous!' And he ran out through the hall, singing as he went. That was all I saw of M. Cartel until two o'clock this morning, when some one knocked upon our door—"
But she was permitted to go no further. The silvery notes of the violin had dwindled into silence, and Max abruptly remembered that he had an appointment with Blake on the Boulevard des Italiens.
"You are very good, madame, but it is necessary that I go! When can I see theconcierge?"
"Theconcierge, monsieur, is my husband. He will be here for a certainty at one o'clock."
"Good, madame! At one o'clock I shall return."
He smiled, nodded, and ran down the first flight of stairs; but by the window at the half-landing he stopped and looked back.
"Madame, tell me something! What is the rent of theappartement?"
"The rent? Two hundred and sixty francs the year."
"Two hundred and sixty francs the year!" His voice was perfectly expressionless. Then, apparently without reason, he laughed aloud and ran down-stairs.
The woman looked after him, half inquisitively, half in bewilderment; then to herself, in the solitude of the landing, she shook her head.
"An artist, for a certainty!" she said, aloud, and, turning, she retraced her steps and knocked with her knuckles on the door of M. Lucien Cartel.
Meanwhile, Max finished his descent of the stairs, his feet gliding with pleasant ease down the polished oak steps, his hand slipping smoothly down the polished banister. Already the joy of the free life was singing in his veins, already in spirit he was an inmate of this house of many histories. He darted across the hall, picturing in imagination the last night's haste of M. Cartel of the violin. What would he be like, this M. Cartel, when he came to know him in the flesh? Fat and short and negligent of his figure? or lean and pathetic, as though dinner was not a certainty on every day of the seven? He laughed a little to himself light-heartedly, and gained the street door with unnecessary, heedless speed—gained it on the moment that another pedestrian, moving swiftly as himself, entered, bringing him to a sharp consciousness of the moment.
Incomer and outgoer each drew back a step, each laughed, each tendered an apology.
"Pardon, monsieur!"
"Pardon, mademoiselle!"
Then simultaneously a flash of recognition leaped into both faces.
"Why," cried the girl, "it is the little friend of the friend of Lize! How droll to meet like this!"
Her candor of speech was disarming; reticence fled before her smile, before her artless friendliness.
"What a strange chance!" said Max. "What brings you to the rue Müller, mademoiselle?"
She smiled, and in her smile there was a little touch of pride—an indefinite pride that glowed about her slender, youthful person like an aura.
"Monsieur, I live in this house—now."
"Now?" Sudden curiosity fired him.
"Ah, you do not comprehend! Last night was sad, monsieur; to-day—" She stopped.
"To-day, mademoiselle?"
For a second the clear, childish blue of her eyes flashed like a glimpse of spring skies.
"It is too difficult, monsieur—the explanation. It is as I say. Last night was dark; to-day the sun shines!" She laughed, displaying the dazzling whiteness of her teeth. "And you, monsieur?" she added, gayly. "You also live here in the rue Müller? Yes? No?" She bent her head prettily, first to one side, then to the other, as she put her questions.
"I hope to live here, mademoiselle."
"Ah! Then I wish you, too, the sunshine, monsieur! Good-day!"
"Good-day, mademoiselle!"
It was over—the little encounter; she moved into the dark hallway as light, as joyous, as inconsequent as a bird. And Max passed out into the sharp, crisp air, sensible that the troubling memories of the Bal Tarbarin had in some strange manner been effaced—that inadvertently he had touched some source whence the waters of life bubbled in eternal, crystal freshness.
In the rue Ronsard he found a disengaged cab, and in ten minutes he was wheeling down into the heart of Paris. It was nearing the hour ofdéjeuner, the boulevards were already filling, and the cold, crisp air seemed to vibrate to the bustle of hurrying human creatures seriously absorbed in the thought of food.
He smiled to himself at this humorously grave homage offered up so untiringly, so zealously to the appetite, as he made his way between the long line of tables at the restaurant where he had appointed to meet Blake. Like all else that appertains to the Frenchman, its very frankness disarmed criticism or disgust. He looked at the beaming faces, smiling up from the wide-spread napkins in perfect accord with life, and again, involuntarily, he smiled. It was essentially a good world, whatever the pessimists might say!
From a side-table he heard his name called, and with an added glow of pleasure, he turned, saw Blake, and made his way through the closely ranged chairs and the throng of hurrying waiters.
"Well, boy! Dissipation suits you, it seems! You're looking well. Just out of bed, I suppose?"
Max laughed. Words were brimming to his lips, until he knew not how to speak.
"And now, what 'll you eat? I waited to order until you came."
"I do not know that I can eat."
"God bless my soul, why not? Sit down!"
Max laughed again, dropped obediently into a chair, rested his arms on the table, and looked full at Blake.
"May I speak?"
"From now till Doomsday!Garçon!"
But Max laid an impulsive hand upon his arm.
"Wait! Do not order for one moment! I must tell you!" He gave a little gasp of excitement. "I have seen anappartementin the rue Müller—anappartementwith a charmingsalonopening upon a balcony, a nice little bedroom, another room with an excellent painting light, a kitchen with water and gas, all—all for what do you imagine?"
"What in God's name are you raving about?" Blake laid down themenujust handed to him.
Max paid not the slightest heed.
"All for two hundred and sixty francs the year! Figure it to yourself! Two hundred and sixty francs the year! What one would pay in a couple of days for a suite of hotel rooms! I am mad since I have seen the place—quite mad!" He laughed again so excitedly that the people at the neighboring table stared.
"I can subscribe to that!" said Blake, satirically.
"Listen! Listen! You have not heard; you have not understood. I have found anappartementin the rue Müller, at Montmartre—theappartementI had set my heart upon, the place where I can live and paint and make my success!"
Blake stared at him in silence.
"Yes! Yes!" Max insisted. "And it is all quite settled. And you are coming back with me to-day at one o'clock to interview theconcierge!"
Blake threw himself back in his chair. "I'm hanged if I am!"
Yesterday the boy would have drawn back upon the instant, armored in his pride, but to-day his reply was to look direct into Blake's face with fascinating audacity.
"Then you will leave me to contend alone against who can say what villain—whatapache?"
"It strikes me you are qualified to deal with anyapache."
"You are angry!"
"Angry! I should think not!"
"Oh yes, you are!" Max's eyes shone, his lips curled into smiles.
"And why should I be angry? Because your silly little wings have begun to sprout? I'm not such a fool, my boy! I knew well enough you'd soon be flying alone."
Max clapped his hands. "Oh yes, you are! You are angry—angry—angry! You are angry because I found my way to Montmartre without you, and made a little discovery all by myself! Is it not like a—" He stopped, laughed, reddened as though he had made some slip, and then on the instant altered his whole expression to one of appeal and contrition.
"Mon ami!"
Blake's reply was to pick up themenuand turn to the attending waiter.
"Monsieur Ned!"
Blake glanced at him reluctantly, caught the softened look, and laughed.
"You're a young scamp—and I suppose I'm a cross-grained devil! But if I was angry, where's the wonder? A man doesn't pick up a quaint little book on thequais, and look to have it turning its own leaves!"
"But now? Now it is all forgiven? You will not cast away your little book because—because the wind came and fluttered the pages?"
Once again Max spoke softly, with the softness that broke so alluringly across the reckless independence of look and gesture.
A sudden consciousness of this fascination—a sudden annoyance with himself that he should yield to it—touched Blake.
"I can't go with you to Montmartre," he said, abruptly. "It's McCutcheon's last day in Paris, and I promised to give him the afternoon."
"Who? The long, spider man who disliked me?"
"A spider who weaves big webs, I can tell you! You ought to be more respectful to your elders."
"And I ought to have a studio across the river? Oh, Monsieur Ned, order some food, for the love of God! I am perishing of hunger."
Blake ordered thedéjeuner, and talked a great deal upon indifferent subjects while they ate; but each felt jarred, each felt disappointed, though neither could exactly have said why. At last, with a certain relief, they finished their coffee and made a way between the long lines of tables to the door.
There they halted for a moment in mutual hesitation, and at last the boy held out his hand.
"And now I must wish you good-bye! Shall I see you any more?"
Blake seemed lost in thought; he took no notice of the proffered hand.
"Are you going to drive or walk?" He put the question after a considerable pause.
"I thought to drive, because—"
Without permitting him to complete the sentence Blake crossed the footpath and hailed a passing cab.
"Come on! In you get!"
Max obeyed uncertainly, and as he took his seat a sudden fear of loss crushed him—life became blank, the brightness of the sun was eclipsed.
"Monsieur Ned!" he called. "Monsieur Ned! I shall see you again?"
Blake was speaking to thecocher. 'Rue Ronsard!' he heard him say. 'The corner of the rue André de Sarte!'
He leaned out of the window.
"Monsieur Ned! Monsieur Ned! I shall see you again? This is not good-bye?"
Blake turned; he laid his hand on the door of the cab and suddenly smiled his attractive, humorous smile.
"Little fool!" he said. "Didn't you know I was coming with you?"
FROM a distinctly precarious perch—one foot on the back of a chair, the other on an oak chest—Blake surveyed the unfurnishedsalonof the fifth-floorappartement. His coat was off, in one dusty hand he held a hammer, in the other a picture, while from between his lips protruded a brass-headed nail.
"If I drive the nail here, boy, will you be satisfied? Upon my word, it's the last place I'll try!" He spoke with what dignity and distinctness he could command, but the effect was lost upon Max, who, also dusty, also bearing upon his person the evidences of manual labor, was crouching over a wood fire, intent upon the contents of a brass coffee-pot.
"Max! Do you hear me?"
"No, I do not hear. Take the nail from your mouth."
"Take it for me! I haven't a hand."
Max left the coffee-pot with some reluctance, crossed the room, and with the seriousness known only to the enthusiastic amateur in house-furnishing, removed the nail from Blake's mouth.
"It is a shame! You will spoil your nice teeth."
"What is a tooth or two in such a cause! Have you a handkerchief?"
"Yes."
"Then, for the love of God, wipe my forehead for me!"
Still without a smile, Max produced a handkerchief that had obviously played therôleof duster at an earlier hour and, passing it over Blake's face, removed the dew of heat, leaving in its place a long black streak.
"Thanks! I'm cooler now—though probably dirtier!"
"Dirtier! On the contrary,mon ami! You have the most artistic scar of dust that makes you as interesting as a German officer! Oh!" His voice rose to a cry of sharp distress, and he ran back to the fire. "Oh, my coffee! My beautiful coffee! Oh, Ned, it has over boiled!"
Blake eyed the havoc from his coign of vantage with a philosophy tinged with triumph.
"Didn't I tell you that coffee-pot was a fraud the very first day old Bluebeard tried to palm it off on us! You will never distinguish between beauty and utility."
"Beauty is utility!" Max, in deep distress, was using the much-taxed handkerchief to wipe the spilt coffee from the hearth.
"Should be, my boy, but isn't! I say, give me that business to see to!" Regardless of the picture still dangling from his hand, he jumped to the ground and strode through a litter of papers, straw, and packing-cases.
"Give me that rag!" He took the sopping handkerchief and flung it into a distant corner. "A wisp of this straw is much more useful—less beautiful, I admit!"
Max glanced up with wide eyes, extremely wistful and youthful in expression. "I do not believe I care about either the use or the beauty," he said, plaintively. "I only care that I am hungry and that my coffee is lost."
"Hungry, boy? Why, bless my soul, you must be starving! What time is it at all?" Blake pulled out his watch. "Eleven! And we've been at this hard since eight! Hungry! I should think you are. Look here! You just sit down!" He pushed aside the many objects that encumbered the floor, and began impatiently to strip the packing from a leather arm-chair.
Max laughed a little.
"But,mon cher, I prefer the ground—this nice warm little corner close to the fire. One day I think I shall have two cushions, like your Bluebeard of the curio shop, and sit all day long with my legs crossed, imagining myself a Turk. Like this!" He drew back against the wall, curling himself up with supple agility, and smiled into his companion's eyes.
Blake looked down, half amused, half concerned.
"Poor littlegamin! Tired and dirty and hungry. Just you wait!" Nodding decisively, he crossed the room, opened the door softly, and disappeared.
Left to himself, Max drew farther back into his warm corner and clasped his hands about his knees. Max was enjoying himself. The fact was patent in the lazy ease of his pose, in the smile that hovered about his lips, in the slow, pleased glance that travelled round and round the bare room and the furniture still standing ghostly in its packing. It was still the joyful beginning of things: the clean white paper upon the walls spoke of first hours as audibly as the bunch of jonquils peeping from a dark corner spoke of spring. It was still the beginning of things—the salt before the sweet, the ineffable, priceless moment when life seems malleable and to be bent to the heart's desire.
One month had passed since his first visit to this fifth floor; one month since he had entered Paris, armored in his hopes; one month since Blake had crossed his path.
The smile upon his lips deepened, then wavered to seriousness, and his gaze turned from the white wall to the fire, where the flames from the logs spurted copper and blue.
One month. A dream—or a lifetime?
Gazing into the fire, questioning his own fancy, he could scarce decide which; a dream in the quick moving of events—the swift viewing of new scenes; a lifetime in alteration of outlook and environment—the severing and knitting of bonds.
The happy seriousness was still enfolding him, his eyes were still intent upon the fire, when Blake entered, triumphant, carrying a coffee-pot, and followed by a demure girl with blonde hair and delicate pale skin.
"Monsieur is served!"
Max, startled out of his reverie, jumped to his feet.
"What is this? Oh, but you should not! You should not!"
"And why not, in the name of God? If you insist upon having antique brass coffee-pots, your neighbors must expect to suffer, eh, Jacqueline?"
The little Jacqueline laughed, shaking her fair head. "Ah, well, monsieur, it is an art—the keeping of an establishment—and must be learned like any other!"
"And you think we ought to go to school?"
"I did not say that!" She laid down the loaf of bread, the butter, and the milk-jug that she was carrying, and took the coffee from Blake's hands with an air of pretty gravity. "And now, monsieur, where are the cups?"
Blake turned to Max. "Cups?" he said in English. "I know we bought something quite unique in the matter of cups, but where the deuce we put them—For the love of God and the honor of the family, boy, tell me where they are!"
Max's eyes were shining. "They are in the chest,mon cher. We put them there for safety as we went out last night."
"Good! Give me the key."
"The key,mon ami, I have left at the Hôtel Railleux!"
Consternation spread over Blake's face, then he burst out laughing and turned to Jacqueline, relapsing into French.
"Monsieur Max would have you to know, mademoiselle, that he possesses an altogether unusual and superior set of Oriental china, which he bought from a certain villanous Jew at the corner of the rue André de Sarte; that for safety he has locked that china into the artistic and musty dower-chest standing against the wall; and that for greater safety he has forgotten the key in an antique hotel near the Gare du Nord!"
He laughed again; Max laughed; the little Jacqueline laughed, and ran to the door.
"Oh,la! la! What a pair of children!" She flitted out of the room, returning with two cups, which she set beside the coffee and the milk.
"And now, messieurs, it is possible you can arrange for yourselves!" She shot a bright, quizzical look from one to the other. "I know you would wish me to stay and measure out the milk and sugar, and it would flatter me to do so, but, unhappily, I have a dish of some importance upon my own fire, and it is necessary that one is domestic when one is only a woman—is it not so, Monsieur Max?" She wrinkled her pretty face into a grimace of mischief, and nodded as if some idea infinitely amusing, infinitely profound lurked at the back of her blonde head.
"Good-day, Monsieur Edouard. Good-day, Monsieur Max!"
"Strange little creature!" said Blake, as the door closed upon her. "Frail as a butterfly, with one capacity to prevent her taking wing!"
"And that capacity—what is it?" Max had returned to his former position, and was pouring out the coffee as he crouched comfortably by the fire.
"The capacity, boy, for thegrande passion. Odd that it should exist in so light a vessel, but these are the secrets of Nature! There are moments, you know, when this little Jacqueline isn't laughing at life—rare, I admit, but still existent—and then you see that the corners of her mouth can droop. She may live to find existence void, but she'll never live to find it shallow. Thanks, boy!" He took his cup of coffee, and, walking to the table, cut a slice of bread, which he carried back to the fire. "Now, don't say a word! I'm going to make you the finest bit of toast you ever saw in your life!"
Max, preserving the required silence, watched him make the toast, carefully balancing the bread on the tip of a knife, carefully browning, carefully buttering it.
"Now! Taste that, and tell me if there wasn't a greatcheflost in me!"
He carried the toast back to the fire and watched Max eat the first morsel.
"Nice?"
"Delicious!"
"Ah! Then it's all fair sailing! I'll cut myself a bit of bread and sit down on my heels like you. There's something in that Turkish idea, after all! But, as I was saying"—he buttered his bread and dropped into position beside the boy—"as I was saying awhile ago, that child next door, with all her innocent air and her blue eyes, has climbed the slippery stairs and reached the seventh heaven. And not only reached it herself, mind you, but dragged that ungainly Cartel with her by the tip of her tiny finger! Wonderful! Wonderful! Enviable fate!"
Max's eyes laughed. "M. Cartel's?"
"M. Cartel's. Oh, boy, that seventh heaven! Those slippery steps!"
"And the tip of a tiny finger?" Max was jesting; but Blake, lost in his own musings, did not perceive it.
"For Cartel—yes!" he said. "For me, no! I think I'd like the whole hand."
Here Max picked up a tongs and stirred the logs until they blazed.
"Absurd!" he said. "The tip of a finger or the whole of a hand, it is all the same! It is a mistake, this love! That old story of the Garden and the Serpent is as true as truth. Man and Woman were content to live and adorn the world until one day they espied the stupid red Apple—and straightway they must eat! Look even at this Cartel! He is an artist; he might make the world listen to his music. But, no! He sees a little butterfly, as you call her—all blonde and blue—and down falls his ambition, and up go his eyes to the sky, and henceforth he is content to fiddle to himself and to the stars! Oh, my patience leaves me!" Again he struck the logs, and a golden shower of sparks flew up the chimney.
"I don't know!" said Blake, placidly. "I'm not so sure that he isn't getting the best of it, when all's said and done!"
Max reddened. "You make me angry with this 'I do not know!' and 'I am not so sure!' The matter is like day. You cannot submerge your personality and yet retain it."
"I don't know! I'd submerge mine to-morrow if I could find analter ego!"
"Then,mon cher, you are a fool!"
Blake drank his coffee meditatively. "Some say the fools are happier than the wise men! I remember a poor fool of a boy at home in Clare who used to say that he danced every night with the fairies on the rath, and I often thought he was happier than the people who listened to him out of pity, and shook their heads and laughed behind his back!"
Max looked up, and as he looked the anger died out of his eyes.
"Ned,mon cher, you are very patient with me!"
Blake turned. "What do you mean?"
"What I say—that you are patient. Why is it?"
"Oh, I don't know. I'm fond of you, I suppose."
"I am, then, a good comrade?"
"The best."
"What is it you find in me?"
"I don't know! You are you."
"I amuse you?"
"You do—and more."
"More! In what way more?" Max drew nearer.
"Oh, I don't know! You're as amusing and spirited and generous as any boy I've known, and yet you're different from any boy. You sometimes fit into my thoughts almost like a woman might!" He hesitated, and laughed at his own conceit.
Max, with an odd little movement of haste, drew away again.
"Do not say that,mon ami! Do not think it! I am your good comrade, that is all."
"Of course you are! Sorry if I hurt your pride."
"You did not. It was not that." With an inexplicable change of mood Max drew near again, and suddenly slipped his hand through Blake's arm.
They laughed in unison at the return to amity, and then fell silent, looking into the fire, watching the blue spurt of the flames, the feathery curls of ash on the charred logs.
"Ned! Make me one of your stories! Tell me what you are seeing in the fire!"
Blake settled himself more comfortably.
"Well, boy, I was just seeing a castle," he began in the accepted manner of the story-teller, and in his pleasant, soothing voice. "A great big castle on the summit of a mountain, with a golden flag fluttering in the sunset; and I think it must be the 'Castle of Heart's Desire,' because all up the craggy path that leads to it there are knights urging their horses—"
"Good!" Max smiled with pleasure and pressed his arm. "Continue! Continue!"
"Well, they're all sorts of knights, you know," Blake went on in the dreamy, singsong voice—"fair knights and red knights and black knights, every one of them in glittering armor, with long lances, and wonderful devices on their shields—"
"Yes! Yes!"
"—wonderful devices on their shields, and spurs of gold and silver, and waving plumes of many colors; and the flanks of their horses—cream-colored and chestnut and black—shine in the light."
"Continue,mon cher! Continue! I can see them also!" Max, utterly absorbed, charming as a child, bent forward, staring into the heart of the fire.
"Well, they mount and mount and mount, and sometimes the great horses refuse the craggy path and rear, and sometimes a knight is unseated and the others look back and laugh at his discomfiture and ride on until they themselves are proved unfit; and so, on and on, while the way gets steeper and more perilous, and the company smaller and still smaller, until the sun drops down behind the mountain and the gold flag flutters as gray as a moth, and in all the windows of the castle torches spring up to greet the knight who shall succeed."
"And which is he—the knight who shall succeed?"
"Don't you see him?"
"No! Where is he? Where?"
"Why, there—riding first, on the narrowest verge of the craggy path! A very young knight with dark hair and a proud carriage and gray eyes with flecks of gold in them."
For an instant Max gazed seriously into the flames, then turned, blushing and laughing.
"Ah! But you are laughing at me! What a shame! For a punishment you shall go straight back to work." He jumped up and handed Blake his discarded hammer.
Blake looked reluctantly at the hammer, then looked back at the enticing flame of the logs.
"Oh, very well! Have it your own way!" he said, getting slowly to his feet. "But if I were you, I'd like to have heard what awaited the knight in the tapestried chamber of the castle tower!"