Since then the château was burned down, but the place has been haunted. I, myself, goodgentlemen, have heard ghostly music, and I swear to you—
"Oh, my God, listen, listen!"
"What pagan nonsense!" blurted out Michael.
I cautioned silence, and we all listened. The old man had slid off his chair, and his face was chalky white. Michael's ugly mouth was half opened in his black beard, and I confess that I felt rather chilly.
Music, faint, tinkling, we certainly heard. It came with the wind in little sobs, and then silence settled upon us.
"It's the Chevalier Gluck, and he is playing to his duchess out in the fields. See, I will open the door and show you," whispered the fat landlord.
He went slowly to the door, and we followed him breathlessly. The door was pushed open, and we peered out. The wind was still high, and the moon rode among rolling boulders of yellow, fleecy clouds.
"There, there, over yonder, look; Mother of Christ, look at the ghost!" the old man pointed a shaking hand.
Just then the moonlight was blackened by a big cloud, and we heard the tinkling music of a harpsichord again, but could see naught. The sounds were plainer now, and presently resolved into the rhythmic accents of a gavotte. But it seemed far away and very plaintive!
"Hark," said Michael, in a hoarse voice. "That's the gavotte from Pagliacci. Listen! Don't you remember it?"
"Pshaw!" I said roughly, for my nerves were all astir. "It's the Alceste music of Gluck."
"Look, look, gentlemen!" called our host, and as the moon glowed again in the blue we saw at the edge of the forest a white figure, saw it, I swear, although it vanished at once and the music ceased. I started to follow, but Michael and the old man seized my arms, the door was closed with a crash, and we found ourselves staring blankly into the fire, all feeling a bit shaken up.
It was Michael's turn to speak. "You may do what you please, but I stay here for the night, no sleep for me," and he placed his pistols on his knee.
I looked at the landlord and I thought I saw an expression of disappointment on his face, but I was not sure. He made some excuse about being tired and went out of the room. We spent the rest of the night in gloomy silence. We did not speak five words, for I saw that conversation only irritated my companion.
At dawn we walked into the sweet air and I called loudly for Arnold, who looked sleepy and out of sorts when he appeared. The fat old man came to see us off and smilingly accepted the silver I put into his hand for our night's reckoning.
"Au revoir, my old friend," I said as I pressed the unnecessary spur into my horse's flank. "Au revoir, and look out for the ghost of the gallant Chevalier Gluck. Tell him, with my compliments, not to play such latter-day tunes as the gavotte from Pagliacci."
"Oh, I'll tell him, you may be sure," said he, quite dryly.
We saluted and dashed down the road to Amboise, where we hoped to capture our rare prize.
We had ridden about a mile when a dog attempted to cross our path. We all but ran the poor brute down.
"Why, it's lame!" exclaimed Arnold.
"Oh, if it were but a lame man, instead of a dog!" fervently said the groom, who was in the secret of our quest.
A horrid oath rang out on the smoky morning air. Michael, his wicked eyes bulging fiercely, his thick neck swollen with rage, was cursing like the army in Flanders, as related by dear old Uncle Toby.
"Lame man! why, oddsbodkins, that hostler was lame! Oh, fooled, by God! cheated, fooled, swindled and tricked by that scamp and scullion of the inn! Oh, we've been nicely swindled by an old wives' tale of a ghost!"
I stared in sheer amazement at Michael, wondering if the strangely spent night had upset his reason. He could only splutter out between his awful curses:—
"Gluck, the rascal, the ghost, the man we're after! That harpsichord—the lying knave—that tune—I swear it wasn't Gluck—oh, the rascal has escaped again! The ghost story—the villain was told to scare us out of the house—to put us off the track. A thousand devils chase the scamp!" And Michael let his head drop on the pommel of his saddle as he fairly groaned in the bitterness of defeat.
I had just begun a dignified rebuke, for Michael's language was inexcusable, when it flashed upon me that we had been, indeed, duped.
"Ah," I cried, in my fury, "of course we were taken in! Of course his son was the lame hostler, the very prize we expected to bag! O Lord! what will we say to my lady? We are precious sharp! I ought to have known better. That stuff he told us! Langlois, pshaw, Berri—pouf! A Berri never married a Langlois, and I might have remembered that Gluck wasn't assassinated by a jealous duke. What shall we do?"
We all stood in the middle of the road, gazing stupidly at the lame dog that gave us the clue. Then Arnold timidly suggested:—
"Hadn't we better go back to the inn?"
Instantly our horses' heads were turned and we galloped madly back on our old tracks. Not a word was uttered until we reined up in front of the lonely house, which looked more haunted by daylight than it did the night before.
"What did I tell you?" suddenly cried Michael.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Over there, you blind bat!" he said, coarsely and impatiently; and pulling out his pistol he fired thrice, and a low, melodious sound followed the reports of his weapon. When the smoke cleared away I saw that he had hit an old harpsichord which stood against a tree, facing the house.
"The ghost!" we yelled, and then we laughed consumedly. But the shots that winged the old-fashioned instrument had a greater result. The fat host appeared on the edge of the forest, and he waved a large napkin as a flag of truce. With him was the lame hostler.
"Mercy, gentlemen, mercy, we beseech you!" he cried, and we soon surrounded both and bound them securely.
"You will pay dearly for the trick you put upon us, my man," said Michael, grimly, and, walking our horses, we went by easy stages toward the castle, towing our prisoners along.
When I fetched the lame man to my lady, her face glowed with joy, and her Parisian eyes grew brilliant with victory.
"So you tried to escape?" she cruelly asked of the poor, cowering wretch. "You will never get another chance, I'll warrant me. Go, let the servants put you to work in the large music room first. Begin with the grands, then follow with the uprights. Thank you, gentlemen both, for the courage and finesse you displayed in this desperate quest. I'll see that you are both suitably rewarded." I fancied that Michael regardedme sardonically, but he held his peace about the night's adventures.
We had indeed reason to feel flattered at the success of the dangerous expedition. Had we not captured, more by sheer good luck than strategy, the only piano-tuner in mediæval France?
It was not so high, the wall, as massive, not so old as moss-covered. After Rudolph Côt, the painter, had achieved celebrity with his historical canvas, The Death of the Antique World, now in the Louvre, he bought the estate of Chalfontaine, which lies at the junction of two highroads: one leading to Ecouen, the other to Villiers-le-Bel. Almost touching the end of the park on the Ecouen side there is a little lake, hardly larger than a pool, and because of its melancholy aspect—sorrowful willows hem it about, drooping into stagnant waters—Monsieur Côt had christened the spot: The Dark Tarn of Auber. He was a fanatical lover of Poe, reading him in the Baudelaire translation, and openly avowing his preference for the French version of the great American's tales. That he could speak only five words of English did not deter his associates from considering him a profound critic of literature.
After his death his property and investedwealth passed into the hands of his youthful widow, a charming lady, a native of Burgundy, and—if gossip did not lie—a former model of the artist; indeed, some went so far as to assert that her face could be seen in her late husband's masterpiece—the figure of a young Greek slave attired as a joyous bacchante. But her friends always denied this. Her dignified bearing, sincere sorrow for her dead husband, and her motherly solicitude for her daughter left no doubt as to the value of all petty talk. It was her custom of summer evenings to walk to the pool, and with her daughter Berenice she would sit on the broad wall and watch the moon rise, or acknowledge the respectful salutations of the country folk with their bran-speckled faces. In those days Villiers-le-Bel was a dull town a half-hour from Paris on the Northern Railway, and about two miles from the station.
The widow was not long without offers. Her usual answer was to point out the tiny Berenice, playing in the garden with her nurse. Then a landscape painter, one of the Barbizon group, appeared, and, as a former associate of Rudolph Côt, and a man of means and position, his suit was successful. To the astonishment of Villiers-le-Bel, Madame Valerie Côt became Madame Théophile Mineur; on the day of the wedding little Berenice—named after a particularly uncanny heroine of Poe's by his relentless French admirer—scratched the long features of her stepfather. The entire town accepted thisas a distressing omen and it was not deceived; Berenice Côt grew up in the likeness of a determined young lady whose mother weakly endured her tyranny, whose new father secretly feared her.
At the age of eighteen she had refused nearly all the young painters between Ecouen and Domaine de Vallières; and had spent several summers in England, and four years at a Lausanne school. She feared neither man nor mouse, and once, when she saw a famous Polish pianist walking on his terrace at Morges, she took him by the hand, asked for a lock of his hair, and was not refused by the amiable virtuoso. After that Berenice was the acknowledged leader of her class. The teachers trembled before her sparkling, wrathful black eyes. At home she ruled the household, and as she was an heiress no one dared to contradict her. Her contempt for her stepfather was only matched by her impatience in the company of young men. She pretended—so her intimates said—to loathe them. "Frivolous idiots" was her mildest form of reproof when an ambitious boy would trench upon her pet art theories or attempt to flirt. She called her mother "the lamb" and her stepfather "the parrot"—he had a long curved nose; all together she was very unlike the pattern French girl. Her favourite lounging place was the wall, and after she had draped it with a scarlet shawl and perched herself upon it, she was only too happyto worry any unfortunate man who presented himself.
The night Hubert Falcroft called at Chalfontaine Mademoiselle Élise Evergonde told him that her cousin, Madame Mineur, and Berenice had gone in the direction of the pool. He had walked over from the station, preferring the open air to the stuffy train. So a few vigorous steps brought to his view mother and daughter as they slowly moved, encircling each other's waist. The painter paused and noted the general loveliness of the picture; the setting sun had splashed the blue basin overhead with delicate pinks, and in the fretted edges of some high floating cloud-fleece there was a glint of fire. The smooth grass parquet swept gracefully to the semicircle of dark green trees, against the foliage of which the virginal white of the gowns was transposed to an ivory tone by the blue and green keys in sky and forest.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed, "paint in the foreground a few peacocks languidly dragging their gorgeous tails, and you have a Watteau or a Fragonard—no, a Monticelli! Only, Monticelli would have made the peacocks the central motive with the women and trees as an arabesque."
He was a portraitist who solemnly believed in the principle of decoration—character must take its chances when he painted. Falcroft was successful with women's heads, which he was fond of depicting in misty shadows framed by luxurious accessories. They called him the Master of Chiffon, at Julien's; when he threw overboard his old friends and joined the new crowd, their indignation was great. His title now was the Ribbon Impressionist, and at the last salon of the Independents, Falcroft had the mortification of seeing a battalion of his former companions at anchor in front of his picture, The Lady with the Cat, which they reviled for at least an hour. He was an American who had lived his life long in France, and only showed race in his nervous, brilliant technic and his fondness for bizarre subjects....
He had not stood many minutes when a young voice saluted him:—
"Ah, Monsieur Falcroft. Come, come quickly. Mamma is delighted to see you!" His mental picture was decomposed by the repeated waving of the famous shawl, which only came into view as Berenice turned. Hubert regretted that she had not worn it—the peacocks could have been exchanged for its vivid note of scarlet. Pretending not to have heard her speech, he gravely saluted the mother and daughter. But Berenice was unabashed.
"Mamma was wondering if you would visit us to-night, Monsieur Falcroft, when I saw you staring at us as if we were ghosts." A burst of malicious laughter followed.
"Berenice, Berenice," remonstrated her mother, "when will you cease such tasteless remarks!" She blushed in her pretty matronlyfashion and put her hand on her daughter's mouth.
"Don't mind her, Madame Mineur! I like to meet a French girl with a little unconventionality. Berenice reminds me now of an English girl—"
"Or one of your own countrywomen!" interrupted Berenice; "and please—Miss, after this, I am a grown young lady." He joined in the merriment. She was not to be resisted and he wished—no, he did not wish—but he thought, that if he were younger, what gay days he might have. Yet he admired her mother much more. Elaine Côt-Mineur was an old-fashioned woman, gentle, reserved, and at the age when her beauty had a rare autumnal quality—the very apex of its perfection; in a few years, in a year, perhaps, the change would come and crabbed winter set in. He particularly admired the oval of her face, her soft brown eyes, and the harmonious contour of her head. He saw her instantly with a painter's imagination—filmy lace must modulate about her head like a dreamy aureole; across her figure a scarf of yellow silk; in her hands he would paint a crystal vase, and in the vase one rose with a heart of sulphur. And her eyes would gaze as if she saw the symbol of her age—the days slipping away like ropes of sand from her grasp. He could make a fascinating portrait he thought, and he said so. Instantly another peal of irritating laughter came from Berenice:—
"Don't tell papa. He issojealous of the portrait he tried to make of mamma last summer. You never saw it! It's awful. It's hid away behind a lot of canvases in the atelier. It looks like a Cézanne still-life. I'll show it to you sometime." Her mother revealed annoyance by compressing her lips. Falcroft said nothing. They had skirted the pool in single file, for the path was narrow and the denseness of the trees caused a partial obscurity. When they reached the wall, the moon was rising in the eastern sky.
"L'heure exquise," murmured Madame Mineur. Berenice wandered down the road and Hubert helped her mother to the wall, where he sat beside her and looked at her. He was a big, muscular man with shaven cheeks, dark eyes, and plenty of tumbled hair, in which flecks of gray were showing. He had been a classmate of Théophile Mineur, for whose talents or personality he had never betrayed much liking. But one day at adéjeûner, which had prolonged itself until evening, Mineur insisted on his old friend—the Burgundy was old, too—accompanying him to Villiers-le-Bel, and not without a motive. He knew Falcroft to be rich, and he would not be sorry to see his capricious and mischievous stepdaughter well settled. But Falcroft immediately paid court to Madame Mineur, and Berenice had to content herself with watching him and making fun to her stepfather of the American painter's height and gestures. The visit had been repeated. Berenice was amused by a dinneren villeand a theatre party, and then Hubert Falcroft became a friend of the household. When Mineur was away painting, the visits were not interrupted.
"Listen," said Madame Mineur; "I wish to speak with you seriously, my dear friend." She made a movement as if to place her hand on his shoulder, but his expression—his face was in the light—caused her to transfer her plump fingers to her coiffure, which she touched dexterously. Hubert was disappointed.
"I am listening," he answered; "is it a sermon, or consent—to that portrait? Come, give in—Elaine." He had never called her by this name before, and he anxiously awaited the result. But she did not relax her grave attitude.
"You must know, Monsieur Falcroft, what anxieties we undergo about Berenice. She is too wild for a French girl, too wild for her age—"
"Oh, let her enjoy her youth," he interrupted.
"Alas! that youth will be soon a thing of the past," she sighed. "Berenice is past eighteen, and her father and I must consider her future. Figure to yourself—she dislikes young men, eligible or not, and you are the only man she tolerates."
"And I am hopelessly ineligible," he laughingly said.
"Why?" asked the mother, quietly.
"Why! Do you know that I am nearingforty? Do you see the pepper and salt in my hair? After one passes twoscore it is time to think of the past, not of the future. I am over the brow of the hill; I see the easy decline of the road—it doesn't seem as long as when I climbed the other half." He smiled, threw back his strong shoulders, and inhaled a huge breath of air.
"Truly you are childish," she said; "you are at the best part of your life, of your career. Yes, Théophile, my husband, who is so chary in his praise, said that you would go far if you cared." Her low, warm voice, with its pleading inflections, thrilled him. He took her by the wrist.
"And would it pleaseyou, if I went far?" She trembled.
"Not too far, dear friend—remember Berenice."
"I remember no one but you," he impatiently answered; and relaxing his hold, he moved so that the moonlight shone on her face. She was pale. In her eyes there were fright and hope, decision and delight. He admired her more than ever.
"Let me paint you, Elaine, these next few weeks. It will be a surprise for Mineur. And I shall have something to cherish. Never mind about Berenice. She is a child. I am a middle-aged man. Between us is the wall—of the years. Never should it be climbed. While you—"
"Be careful—Hubert. Théophile is your friend."
"He is not. I never cared for him. He dragged me out here after he had been drinking too much, and when I saw you I could not stay away. Hear me—I insist! Berenice is nice, but the wall is too high for her to climb; it might prove a—"
"How do you know the wall is too steep for Berenice?" the girl cried as she scaled the top with apish agility, where, after a few mocking steps in the moonlight, she sank down breathless beside Hubert, and laughed so loudly that her mother was fearful of hysteria.
"Berenice! Berenice!" she exclaimed.
"Oh, Berenice is all right, mamma. Master Hubert, I want you to paint my portrait before papa returns—that's to be in four weeks, isn't it?" The elder pair regarded her disconcertedly.
"Oh, you needn't look so dismal. I'll not tell tales out of school. Hubert and mamma flirting! What a glorious jest! Isn't life a jest, Hubert? Let's make a bargain! If you paint mamma, you paint me, also. Then—you see—papa will not be jealous, and—and—" She was near tears her mother felt, and she leaned over Hubert and took the girl's hand. She grazed the long fingers of the painter, who at once caught both feminine hands in his.
"Now I have you both," he boasted, and was shocked by a vicious tap on the cheek—Berenice in rage pulled her left hand free. Silence ensued. Hubert prudently began to roll another cigarette, and Madame Mineur retreated out of the moonlight, while Berenice turned her back and soon began to hum. The artist spoke first:
"See here, you silly Berenice, turn around! I want to talk to you like a Dutch uncle—as we say in the United States. Of course I'll paint you. But I begin with your mother. And if you wish me to like you better than ever, don't say such things as you did. It hurts your—mother." His voice dropped into its deepest bass. She faced him, and he saw the glitter of wet eyelashes. She was charming, with her hair in disorder, her eyes two burning points of fire.
"I beg your pardon, mamma; I beg your pardon, Hubert. I'll be good the rest of this evening. Isn't it lovely?" She sniffed in the breeze with dilating nostrils, and the wild look of her set him to wondering how such a gentle mother could have such a gypsy daughter. Perhaps it was the father—yes, the old man had been an Apache in his youth according to the slang of the studios.
"But you must paint me as I wish, not as you will," resumed Berenice. "I hate conventional portraits. Papa Mineur chills me with his cabinet pictures of haughty society ladies, their faces as stiff as their starched gowns."
"Oh, Berenice, will you never say polite things of your father?"
"Never," she defiantly replied. "He wouldn't believe me if I did. No, Hubert, I want to pose as Ophelia. Oh, don't laugh, please!" They could not help it, and she leaped to the grass and called out:—
"I don't mean a theatrical Ophelia, singing songs and spilling flowers; I mean Ophelia drowned—" she threw herself on the sward, her arms crossed on her bosom, and in the moonlight they could see her eyes closed as if by death.
"Help me down, Hubert. That girl will go mad some day." He reached the earth and he gave her a hand. Berenice had arisen. Sulkily she said:—
"Shall I step into the Dark Tarn of Auber and float for you? I'll make a realistic picture, my Master Painter—who paints without imagination." And then she darted into the shrubbery and was lost to view. Without further speech the two regained the path and returned to the house.
When Éloise was asked by Berenice how long Monsieur Mineur would remain away on his tour, she did not reply. Rather, she put a question herself: why this sudden solicitude about the little-loved stepfather. Berenice jokingly answeredthat she thought of slipping away to Switzerland for avacanceon her own account. Éloise, who was not agreeable looking, viewed her charge suspiciously.
"Young lady, you are too deep for me. But you'll bear watching," she grimly confessed. Berenice skipped about her teasingly.
"I know something, but I won't tell, unless you tell."
"What is it?"
"Will you tell?"
"Yes."
"When is he coming back, and where is he now?" she insisted.
"Your father, you half-crazy child, expects to return in a month—by the first of June. And if you wish to wire or write him, let me know."
"Now I won't tell youmysecret," and she was off like a gale of wind. Éloise shook her head and wondered.
In the atelier Hubert painted. Elaine sat on a dais, her hands folded in her lap; about her head twisted nun's-veiling gave her the old-fashioned quality of a Cosway miniature—the very effect he had sought. It was to be a "pretty" affair, this picture, with its subdued lighting, the face being the only target he aimed at; all the rest, the suave background, the gauzy draperies, he would brush in—suggest rather than state.
"I'll paint her soul, that sensitive soul of hers which tremulously peeps out of her eyes," he thought. Elaine was a patient subject. Shetook the pose naturally and scarcely breathed during the weary sittings. He recalled the early gossip and sought to evoke her as a professional model. But he gave up in despair. She was hopelessly "ladylike," and to interpret her adequately, only the decorative patterns of earlier men—Mignard, Van Loo, Nattier, Largillière—would translate her native delicacy.
For nearly four weeks he had laboured on the face, painting it in with meticulous touches only to rub it out with savage disgust. To transcribe those tranquil, liquid eyes, their expression more naïve than her daughter's—this had proved too difficult a problem for the usually facile technique of Falcroft. Give him a brilliant virtuoso theme and he could handle it with some of the sweep and splendour of the early Carolus Duran or the brutal elegance of the later Boldini. But Madame Mineur was a pastoral. She did not express nervous gesture. She was seldom dynamic. To "do" her in dots like thepointillistesor in touches after the manner of the earlier impressionists would be ridiculous. Her abiding charm was her repose. She brought to him the quiet values of an eighteenth-century eclogue—he saw her as a divinely artificial shepherdess watching an unreal flock, while the haze of decorative atmosphere would envelop her, with not a vestige of real life on the canvas. Yet he knew her as a natural, lovable woman, a mother who had suffered and wouldsuffer because of her love for her only child. It was a paradox, like many other paradoxes of art.
The daughter—ah! perhaps she might better suit his style. She was admirable in her madcap carelessness and exotic colouring. Decidedly he would paint her when this picture was finished—if it ever would be.
Berenice avoided entering the studio during these sittings. She no longer jested with her mother about the picture, and with Hubert she preserved such an air of dignity that he fancied he had offended her. He usually came to Villiers-le-Bel on an early train three or four times a week and remained at Chalfontaine until ten o'clock. Never but once had a severe storm forced him to stay overnight. Since the episode on the wall he had not attempted any further advances. He felt happy in the company of Elaine, and gazing into her large eyes rested his spirit. It was true—he no longer played with ease the rôle of a soul-hunter. His youth had been troubled by many adventures, many foolish ones, and now he felt a calm in the midway of his life and that desire for domestic ease which sooner or later overtakes all men. He fancied himself painting Elaine on just such tranquil summer afternoons under a soft light. And oh! the joys of long walks, discreet gossip, and dinners at a well-served table with a few chosen friends. Was he, after all, longing for the flesh-pots of the philistine—he, Hubert Falcroft, whohad patrolled the boulevards like other sportsmen of midnight!
At last the picture began to glow with that inner light he had so patiently pursued. Elaine Mineur looked at him from the canvas with veiled sweetness, a smile almost enigmatic lurking about her lips. Deepen a few lines and her expression would be one of contented sleekness.ThatHubert had missed by a stroke. It was in her eyes that her chief glory abided. They were pathetic without resignation, liquid without humidity, indescribable in colouring and form. Their full cup and the accents which experience had graven under them were something he had never dreamed of realizing. It was a Cosway; but a Cosway broadened and without a hint of genteel namby-pamby or overelaborate finesse. Hubert was fairly satisfied. Madame Mineur had little to say. During the sittings she seldom spoke, and if their eyes met, the richness of her glance was a compensation for her lack of loquacity. Hubert did not complain. He was in no hurry. To be under the same roof with this adorable woman was all that he asked.
The day after he had finished his picture, he returned to Chalfontaine for the midday breakfast. Berenice was absent—in her room with a headache, her mother explained. The weather was sultry. He questioned Elaine during the meal. Had Berenice's temper improved? They passed out to the balcony where their coffee was served, and when he lighted his cigarette, Madame Mineur begged to be excused. She had promised Cousin Éloise to pay some calls. He strolled over the lawn, watching the hummocks of white clouds which piled up in architectural masses across the southern sky. Then he remembered the portrait and mounted to the atelier. As he put his hand on the knob of the door he thought he heard some one weeping. Suddenly the door was pulled from his grasp and Berenice appeared. Her hair hung on her shoulders. She was in a white dressing-gown. Her face was red and her eyes swollen. She did not attempt to move. Affectionately Hubert caught her in his arms and asked about her headache.
"It is better," she answered in scarcely audible accents.
"Why, you poor child! I hope you are not going to be ill! Have you been racing in the sun without your hat?"
"No. I haven't been out of doors since yesterday."
"What's the matter, little Berenice? Has some one been cross with her?" She pushed him from her violently.
"Hubert Falcroft, when you treat me as a woman and not as a child—"
"But I am treating you as a woman," he said. Her dark face became tragic. She had emerged from girlhood in a few hours. And as he held her closer some perverse spirit entered into his soul. Her vibrating youth and beauty forcedhim to gaze into her blazing eyes until he saw the pupils contract.
"Let me go!" she panted. "Let me free! I am not a doll. Go to your portrait and worship it. Let me free!"
"And what if I do not?" Something of her rebellious feeling filled his veins. He felt younger, stronger, fiercer. He put his arms about her neck and, after a silent battle, kissed her. Then she pushed by him and disappeared. He could see nothing, after the shock of the adventure, for some moments, and the semi-obscurity of the atelier was grateful to his eyes. A picture stood on the easel, but it was not, he fancied, the portrait. He went to the centre of the room where hung the cords that controlled the curtains covering the glass roof. Then in the flood of light he barely recognized the head of Elaine. It was on the easel, and with a sharp pain at his heart he saw across the face a big crimson splash.
The dewy brightness of tangled blush roses had faded in the vague twilight; through the aisles of the little wood leading to the pool the light timidly flickered as Hubert and Elaine walked with the hesitating steps of perplexedpersons. They had not spoken since they left the house—there in a few hurried words he told her of the accident and noted with sorrow the look of anguish in her eyes. Without knowing why, they went in the direction of the wall.
There was no moon when they reached the highroad. It would rise later, Elaine said in her low, slightly monotonous voice. Hubert was so stunned by the memory of his ruined picture that he forgot his earlier encounter with Berenice—that is, in describing it he had failed to minutely record his behaviour. But in the cool evening air his conscience became alive and he guiltily wondered whether he dare tell his misconduct—no, imprudence? Why not? She regarded him as a possible husband for Berenice—but how embarrassing! He made up his mind to say nothing; when the morrow came he would write Elaine the truth and bid her good-by. He could not in honour continue to visit this home where resided the woman he loved—with a jealous daughter. Why jealous? What a puzzle, and what an absurd one! He helped Elaine to a seat on the wall and sat near her. For several minutes neither spoke. They were again facing the pool, which looked in the dusk like a cracked mirror.
"It is not clear yet to me," murmured Elaine. "That the unfortunate child has always been more or less morbid and sick-brained, I have been aware. The world, marriage, and activeexistence will mend all that, I hope. I fear she is a little spoilt and selfish. And she doesn't love me very much. She has inherited all her father's passion for Poe's tales. My dear friend, she is jealous—that's the only solution of this shocking act. She disliked the idea of my portrait from the start. You remember on this spot hardly a month ago she challenged you to paint her as the drowned Ophelia!—and all her teasing about Monsieur Mineur and his jealousy, and—"
"Our flirtation," added Hubert, sadly.
"Oh, pray do not say such a thing! She is so hot-headed, so fond of you. Yes, I saw it from the beginning, and your talk about the insurmountable wall of middle-age did not deceive me. I only hope that will not be a tragic wall for her, for you—or for me...."
Her words trailed into a mere whisper. He put his hand over hers and again they were silent. About them the green of the forest had been transformed by the growing night into great clumps of velvety darkness and the vault overhead was empty of stars. June airs fanned their discontent into mild despair, and simultaneously they dreamed of another life, of a harmonious existence far from Paris, into which the phantom of Théophile Mineur would never intrude. Yet they made no demonstration of their affection—they would have been happy to sit and dream on this moon-haunted wall, near this nocturnal pool, forever. Hubert picturedBerenice in her room, behind bolted doors, lying across the bed weeping, or else staring in sullen repentance at the white ceiling. Why had she indulged in such vandalism? The portrait was utterly destroyed by the flaring smear laid on with a brush in the hand of an enraged young animal. What sort of a woman might not develop from this tempestuous girl! He knew that he had mortally offended her by his rudeness. But it was after, not before, the cruel treatment of his beloved work. Yet, how like a man had been his rapid succumbing to transitory temptation! For it was transitory—of that he was sure. The woman he loved, with a reverent love, was next to him, and if his pulse did not beat as furiously at this moment as earlier in the day, why—all the better. He was through forever with his boyish recklessness.
"Another peculiar thing," broke in Elaine, as if she had been thinking aloud, "is that Berenice has been pestering Éloise for her father's address."
"Her father's address?" echoed her companion.
"Yes; but whether she wrote to him Éloise could not say."
"Why should she write to him? She dislikes him—dislikes him almost as much—" he was about to pronounce his own name. She caught him up.
"Yes, that is the singular part of this singular affair. She felt slighted because you paintedmy portrait before hers. I confess I have had my misgivings. You should have been more considerate of her feelings, Hubert, my friend." She paused and sighed. For him the sigh was a spark that blew up the magazine of his firmest resolves. He had been touching her hands fraternally. His arm embraced her so that she could not escape, as this middle-aged man told his passion with the ardour of an enamoured youth.
"You dare not tell me you do not care for me! Elaine—let us reason. I loved you since the first moment I met you. It is folly to talk of Mineur and my friendship for him. I dislike, I despise him. It is folly to talk of Berenice and her childish pranks. What if she did cruelly spoil my work,ourwork! She will get over it. Girls always do get over these things. Let us accept conditions as they are. Say you love me—a little bit—and I'll be content to remain at your side, a friend,alwaysthat. I'll paint you again—much more beautifully than before." He was hoarse from the intensity of his feelings. The moon had risen and tipped with its silver brush the tops of the trees.
"And—my husband? And Berenice?"
"Let things remain as they are." He pressed her to him. A crackling in the underbrush and a faint plash in the lake startled them asunder. They listened with ears that seemed like beating hearts. There was no movement; only a night bird plaintively piped in the distance and a clock struck the quarter.
Elaine, now thoroughly frightened, tried to get down from the wall. Hubert restrained her, and as they stood thus, a moaning like the wind in autumnal leaves reached them. The moon-rays began to touch the water, and suddenly a nimbus of light formed about a floating face in the pool. The luminous path broadened, and to their horror they saw Berenice, her hair outspread, her arms crossed on her young bosom, lying in the little lake. Elaine screamed:—
"My God! My God! It is Berenice!—Berenice, I am punished for my wickedness to you!" Hubert, stunned by the vision, did not stir, as the almost fainting mother gripped his neck.
And then the eyes of the whimsical girl opened. A malicious smile distorted her pretty face. Slowly she arose, a dripping ghost in white, and pointing her long, thin fingers in the direction of the Ecouen road she mockingly cried:—
"There is some one to see your portrait at last, dear Master Painter." And saying this she vanished in the gloom, instantly followed by her agitated mother.
Hubert turned toward the wall, and upon it he recognized the stepfather of Berenice. After staring at each other like two moon-struck wights, the American spoke:—
"I swear that I, alone, am to blame for this—" The other wore the grin of a malevolent satyr. His voice was thick.
"Why apologize, Hubert? You know that it has been my devoted wish that you marry Berenice." He swayed on his perch. Hubert's brain was in a fog.
"Berenice!" said he.
"Yes—Berenice. Why not? She loves you."
"Then—you—Madame Mineur—" stammered Hubert. The Frenchman placed his finger on his nose and slyly whispered:—
"Don't be afraid! I'll not tell my wife that I caught Berenice with you alone in the park—you Don Juan! Now to the portrait—I must see that masterpiece of yours. Berenice wrote me about it." He nodded his head sleepily.
"Berenice wrote you about it!" was the mechanical reply.
"I'll join you and we'll go to the house." He tried to step down, but rolled over at Hubert's feet.
"What a joke is this champagne," he growled as he was lifted to his tottering legs. "We had a glorious time this afternoon before I left Paris. Hurrah! You're to be my son-in-law. And, my boy, I don't envy you—that's the truth. With such a little demon for a wife—I pity you, pity you—hurrah!"
"I am more to be despised," muttered Hubert Falcroft, as they moved away from the peaceful moonlit wall.
I came not to send peace, but a sword.... I am come to send fire on the earth.
I came not to send peace, but a sword.... I am come to send fire on the earth.
Her living room was a material projection of Yetta Silverman's soul. The apartment on the north side of Tompkins Square, was small, sunny, and comfortable. From its windows in spring and summer she could see the boys and girls playing around the big, bare park, and when her eyes grew tired of the street she rested them on her beloved books and pictures. On one wall hung the portraits of Herzen, Bakounine and Kropotkin—the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost of the anarchistic movement, as she piously called them. Other images of the propaganda were scattered over the walls: Netschajew—the St. Paul of the Nihilists—Ravachol, Octave Mirbeau, Jean Grave, Reclus, Spies, Parsons, Engels, and Lingg—the last four victims of the Haymarket affair, and the Fenians, Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien, the Manchester martyrs. Among the philosophers, poets, and artists were Schopenhauer, Tolstoy, Max Stirner—a rare drawing—Ibsen, Thoreau, Emerson—the great American individualists—Beethoven, Zola, Richard Strauss, Carlyle, Nietzsche, Gorky, Walt Whitman, Dostoiēwsky, Mazzini, Rodin, Constantin Meunier, Shelley, Turgénieff, Bernard Shaw, and finally the kindly face and intellectual head of the lawyer who so zealously defended the Chicago anarchists. This diversified group, together with much revolutionary literature, poems, pamphlets, the works of Proudhon, Songs Before Sunrise, by Swinburne, and a beautiful etching of Makart's proletarian Christ, completed, with an old square pianoforte, the ensemble of an individual room, a room that expressed, as her admirers said, the strong, suffering soul of Yetta Silverman, Russian anarchist, agitator, and exile.
"Come in," she cried out in her sharp, though not unpleasant, voice. A thin young man entered. She clapped her hands.
"Oh, so you changed your mind!" He looked at her over his glasses with his weak, blue eyes, the white of which predominated. Simply dressed, he nevertheless gave the impression of superior social station. He was of the New England theological-seminary type—narrow-chested, gaunt as to visage, by temperament drawn to theology, or, in default of religious belief, an ardent enthusiast in sociology. The contracted temples, uncertain gaze, and absence of fulness beneath the eyes betrayed the unimaginative man. Art was a sealed book tohim, though taxation fairly fired his suspicious soul. He was nervous because he was dyspeptic, and at one time of his career he mistook stomach trouble for a call to the pulpit. And he was a millionnaire more times than he took the trouble to count.
"Yes," he timidly replied, "Ididchange my wavering mind—as you call that deficient organ of mine—and so I returned. I hope I don't disturb you!"
"No, not yet. I am sitting with my hands folded in my lap, like the women of your class—ladies, you call them." She accented the title, without bitterness. A cursory estimate of her appearance would have placed her in the profession of a trained nurse, or perhaps in the remotest analysis, a sewing woman of superior tastes. She was small, wiry, her head too large for her body; but the abounding nervous vitality, the harsh fire that burned in her large brown eyes, and the firm mouth would have attracted the attention of the most careless. Her mask, with its high Slavic cheek-bones and sharp Jewish nose, proclaimed her a magnetic woman. In her quarter on the far East Side the children called her "Aunt Yetta." She was a sister of charity in the guise of a revolutionist.
"You sit but you think, andmyladies never think," he answered, in his boyish voice. He seemed proud to be so near this distinguished creature. Had she not been sent to Siberia, driven out of France and Germany, and arrestedin New York for her incendiary speeches? She possessed the most extraordinary power over an audience. Once, at Cooper Union, Arthur had seen her control a crazy mob bent on destroying the building because a few stupid police had interfered with the meeting. Among her brethren Yetta Silverman was classed with Louise Michel, Sophia Perowskaia, and Vera Zassoulitch, those valiant women, true guardian angels, veritable martyrs to the cause. He thought of them as he watched the delicate-looking young woman before him.
Arthur was too chilly of blood to fall in love with her; his admiration was purely cerebral. He was unlucky enough to have had for a father a shrewd, visionary man, that curious combination of merchant and dreamer once to be found in New England. A follower of Fourier, a friend of Emerson, the elder Wyartz had gone to Brook Farm and had left it in a few months. Dollars, not dreams, was his true ambition. But he registered his dissatisfaction with this futile attempt by christening his only son, Arthur Schopenhauer; it was old Wyartz's way of getting even with the ideal. Obsessed from the age of spelling by his pessimistic middle name, the boy had grown up in a cloudy compromise of rebellion and the church. For a few years he vacillated; he went to Harvard, studied the Higher Criticism, made a trip abroad, wrote a little book recording the contending impulses of his pale, harassed soul—Oscillations was thetitle—and returned to Boston a mild anarch. Emerson the mystic, transposed to the key of France, sometimes makes bizarre music.
She arose and, walking over to him, put her hand nonchalantly on his shoulder.
"Arthur, comrade, what do you mean to do with yourself—come, what will all this enthusiasm bring forth?" He fumbled his glasses with his thumb and index finger—a characteristic gesture—and nervously regarded her before answering. Then he smiled at his idea.
"We might marry and fight the great fight together like the Jenkins crowd."
"Marry!" she exclaimed—her guttural Russian accent manifested itself when she became excited—"marry! You are only a baby, Arthur Schopenhauer Wyartz—Herrgott, this child bearssucha name!—and while I am sure the thin Yankee blood of the Jenkins family needed a Jewish wife, and a Slav, I am not that way of thinking for myself. I am married to the revolution." Her eyes dwelt with reverence on her new Christian saints, those Christs of the gutter, who had sacrificed their lives in the modern arena for the idea of liberty, who were thrown to the wild beasts and slaughtered by the latter-day pagans of wealth, and barbarians in purple. He followed her glance. It lashed him to jerky enthusiasm.
"I am not joking," he earnestly asserted, "so pardon my rashness. Only believe in my sincerity. I am no anarch on paper. I am devoted to your cause and to you, Yetta, to my last heart's blood. Do you need my wealth? It is yours. You can work miracles with millions in America. Take it all."
"It's not money we need, but men," she answered darkly. "Your millions, which came to you innocently enough, represent the misery of—how many? Let the multi-millionnaires give away their money to found theological colleges and libraries—myparty will have none of it. Its men are armed by the ideas that we prefer. I don't blame the rich or the political tyrants—the mob has to be educated, the unhappy proletarians, who have so long submitted to the crack of the whip that they wouldn't know what to do with their freedom if they had it. All mobs believe alike in filth and fire, whether antique slaves free for their day's Saturnalia, or the Paris crowds of '93. Their ideas of happiness are pillage, bloodshed, drunkenness, revenge. Every popular uprising sinks thepeopledeeper in their misery. Every bomb thrown discredits the cause of liberty."
Astonished by this concession, Arthur wondered how she had ever earned her reputation as the Russian "Red Virgin," as an unequivocal terrorist. Thus he had heard her hailed at all the meetings which she addressed. But she did not notice his perturbation, she was following another train.
"You Americans do not love money as much as the Europeans—who hoard it away, who worship it on their naked knees; but you do something worse—you love it for the sake of the sport, a cruel sport for the poor. You go into speculation as the English go after big game. It is a sport. This sport involves food—and you gamble with wheat and meat for counters, while starving men and women pay for the game. America is yet rich enough to afford this sport, but some day it will become crowded like Europe, and then, beware! Wasn't it James Hinton who said that 'Overthrowing society means an inverted pyramid getting straight'?
"And America," she continued, "bribes us with the gilded sentimental phrases of Rousseau, Mirabeau, and Thomas Paine woven into your national constitution, with its presumptuous declaration that all men are born free and equal—shades of Darwin and Nietzsche!—and that universal suffrage is a panacea for all evils. In no country boasting itself Christian is there a system so artfully devised for keeping thepoorfree and unequal, no country where so-called public opinion, as expressed in the press, is used to club the majority into submission. And you are all proud of this liberty—a liberty at which the despised serf in Russia or the man of the street in London sneers—there is to-day moreindividualliberty in England and Germany than in the United States. Don't smile! I can prove it. As for France or Italy—they are a hundred years ahead of you in municipal government. But I shan't talk blue-books at you, Arthur!"
"Why not, why not?" he quickly interposed. "You always impress me by your easy handling of facts. And why won't my money be of use to the social revolution?" Scornfully she started up again and began walking.
"Why? Because convictions can't be bought with cash! Why! Because philanthropy is the most selfish of vices. You may do good here and there—but you do more harm. You create more paupers, you fine gentlemen, with your Mission houses and your Settlement workers! You are trying to cover the ugly sores with a plaster of greenbacks. It won't heal the sickness—it won't heal it, I tell you." Her eyes were flaming and she stamped the floor passionately.
"We workers on the East Side have a name for you millionnaires. We call you the White Mice. You have pretty words and white lies, pretty ways and false smiles. Lies! lies! lies! You are only giving back, with the aid of your superficial fine ladies, the money stolen from the true money earners. You have discovered the Ghetto—you and the impertinent newspaper men. And like the reporters you come down to use us for 'copy.' You live here in comfort among us and then go away, write a book about our wretchedness and pose as altruistic heroes in your own silly set. How I loathe that word—altruism! As if the sacrifice of your personality does not always lead to self-deception, to hypocrisy! It is an excuse for the busybody-rich to advertise their charities. If they were as many armed as Briareus or theoctopus, their charity would be known to each and every hand on their arms. These sentimental anarchs! They even marry our girls and carry them off to coddle their conscience with gilded gingerbread. Yet they would turn their backs on Christ if he came to Hester Street—Christ, the first modern anarch, a destructionist, a proletarian who preached fire and sword for the evil rich of his times. Nowadays he would be sent to Blackwell's Island for six months as a disturber of the peace or for healing without a license from the County Medical Association!"
"Like Johann Most," he ventured. She blazed at the name.
"No jokes, please. Most, too, has suffered. But I am no worshipper of bombs—and beer." This made him laugh, but as the laugh was not echoed he stared about him.
"But Yetta,—we must begin somewhere. I wish to become—to become—something like you.—"
She interrupted him roughly:
"To become—you an anarch! You are a sentimental rebel because your stomach is not strong enough for the gourmands who waste their time at your clubs. If your nerves were sound you might make a speech. But the New England conscience of your forefathers—they were nearly all clergymen, weren't they?—has ruined your strength. The best thing you can do, my boy, is to enter a seminary and later goto China as a missionary; else turn literary and edit an American edition of Who's Who in Hell! But leave our East Side alone. Do you know what New York reminds me of? Its centre is a strip of green and gold between two smouldering red rivers of fire—the East and West Sides. If they ever spill over the banks, all the little parasites of greater parasites, the lawyers, brokers, bankers, journalists, ecclesiastics, and middle men, will be devoured. Oh, what a glorious day! And oh, that terrible night when we marched behind the black flag and muffled drums down Broadway, that night in 1887 when the four martyrs were murdered, the hero Lingg having killed himself. What would you have done in those awful times?"
"Try me," he muttered, as he pulled down his cuffs, "try me!"
"Very well, I'll try you. Like Carlo Cafiero, the rich Italian anarch, you must give your money to us—every cent of it. Come with me to-night. I address a meeting of the brethren at Schwab's place—you know, the saloon across the street, off the square. We can eat our supper there, and then—"
"Try me," he reiterated, and his voice was hoarse with emotion, his pulse painfully irregular.
Notwithstanding his vows of heroism, Arthur could not force himself to like the establishmentof Schwab, where the meeting was to take place. It was a beer-saloon, not one of those mock-mediæval uptown palaces, but a long room with a low ceiling, gaslit and shabby. The tables and chairs of hard, coarse wood were greasy—napkins and table-cloths were not to be mentioned, else would the brethren suspect the presence of an aristocrat. At the upper end, beyond the little black bar, there was a platform, upon it a table, a pianoforte, and a stool. Still he managed to conceal his repugnance to all these uninviting things and he sipped his diluted Rhine wine, ate his sandwich—an unpalatable one—under the watchful eyes of his companion. By eight o'clock the room was jammed with working-people, all talking and in a half dozen tongues. Occasionally Yetta left him to join a group, and where she went silence fell. She was the oracle of the crowd. At nine o'clock Arthur's head ached. He had smoked all his Turkish cigarettes, the odour of which caused some surprise—there was a capitalist present and they knew him. Only Yetta prevented disagreeable comment. The men, who belonged to the proletarian class, were poorly dressed and intelligent; the women wore shawls on their heads and smoked bad cigarettes. The saloon did not smell nice, Arthur thought. He had offered Yetta one of his imported cigarettes, but she lighted a horrible weed and blew the smoke in his face.
At ten o'clock he wished himself away. Buta short, stout man with a lopsided face showing through his tangled beard, stood up and said in German:—
"All who are notourfriends, please leave the house."
No one stirred. The patron went from group to group saluting his customers and eying those who were not. Whether any password or signal was given Arthur could not say. When the blond, good-natured Schwab reached him, Yetta whispered in his ear. The host beamed on the young American and gave him a friendly poke in the back; Arthur felt as if he had been knighted. He said this to Yetta, but her attention was elsewhere. The doors and windows were quickly shut and bolted. She nudged his elbow—for they were sitting six at the table, much to his disgust; the other four drank noisily—and he followed her to the top of the room. A babble broke out as they moved along.
"It's Yetta's new catch. Yetta's rich fellow. Wait until she gets through with him—poor devil." These broken phrases made him shiver, especially as Yetta's expression, at first enigmatic, was now openly sardonic. What did she mean? Was she only tormenting him? Was this to be his test, his trial? His head was almost splitting, for the heat was great and the air bad. Again he wished himself home.
They reached the platform. "Jump up, Arthur, and help me," she commanded. Hedid so. But his discomfiture only grew apace with the increased heat—the dingy ceiling crushed him—and the rows in front, the entire floor seemed transformed to eyes, malicious eyes. She told him to sit down at the piano and play the Marseillaise. Then standing before the table she drew from her bosom a scarlet flag, and accompanied by the enthusiastic shoutings she led the singing. Arthur at the keyboard felt exalted. Forgotten the pains of a moment before. He hammered the keys vigorously, extorting from the battered instrument a series of curious croakings. Some of the keys did not "speak," some gave forth a brazen clangour from the rusty wires. No one cared. The singing stopped with the last verse.
"Now La Ravachole for our French brethren." This combination of revolutionary lyrics—Ça Ira and Carmagnole—was chanted fervidly. Then came for the benefit of the German the stirring measures from the Scotch-German John Henry Mackay's Sturm:—