"I, TOO, IN ARCADIA"
If Riverton was his mother's house and England his grandmother's,
France was peculiarly his own. Peter Champneys felt that he had come
home, and even the fact that he couldn't speak understandable French
didn't spoil the illusion. Nobody laughed at his barbarous jargon;
people were patient, polite, helpful. He thought the French the
pleasantest people in the world, and this opinion he never changed.
Later, when he learned to know them better, he concluded that they
were very deliberately and very gallantly gay in order to conceal
from themselves and from the world how mortally sad they were at
heart. They eschewed those virtues which made one disagreeable, and
they indulged only in such vices as really amused them, and in
consequence they made being alive a fine art.
The Hemingways knew Paris as they knew London, and they smoothed his
path. In their drawing-room Peter met that dazzling inner circle of
Parisian society which includes talent and genius as well as rank,
beauty, and wealth. Then, Mrs. Hemingway having first seen to it
that he met those whom she wished him to meet, Peter was permitted
to meet those whom he himself wished to meet. He was introduced to
two deceptively mild-mannered young Englishmen, first cousins named
Checkleigh, students in one of the great ateliers, who were by way
of being painters; and to a shock-headed young man from California,
a sculptor, named Stocks. The Englishmen were closely related to a
large-toothed, very important Lady Somethingorother, high up in the
diplomatic sphere, and the Californian possessed a truly formidable
aunt. Hence the three young men appeared in fashionable circles at
decent intervals. Later, Peter learned to know their redoubtable
relatives as "Rabbits" and "The Grampus," and he once saw a
terrifyingly truthful portrait of "Rabbits" sketched on a skittish
model's bare back, and a movingly realistic little figure of "The
Grampus" modeled by her dutiful nephew in a moment of diabolical
inspiration. It was explained to him that God, for some inscrutable
purpose of his own, generally pleases himself by bestowing only the
most limited human intelligence upon the wealthy relatives of poor
but gifted artists; but that if properly approached, and at not too
frequent intervals, they may be induced to loosen their tight
purse-strings. Wherefore one must somehow manage to keep on good
terms with them. Witness, Stocks said, his forgiving--nay,
kindly--attitude toward The Grampus; see how he went to her house
and drank her loathly tea and ate her beastly little cakes, even
though she regarded a promising sculptor as a sort of unpromising
stone-cutter who couldn't hold down a steady job, and had
vehemently urged him to go in for building and contracting in
Sacramento, California. "And yet that woman has got about all the
money there is in our family!" finished Stocks, bitterly.
"Rabbits takes you aside and talks to you heart to heart," said the
younger Checkleigh, gloomily. The elder Checkleigh's face took on a
look of martyrdom.
"We have Immortal Souls," said he, in a tone of anguish and
affliction. "I ask you, as man to man: Is it our fault?"
It was these three Indians, then, who took Peter Champneys under
their wing, helped him find the pleasantest rooms in the Quartier,
helped him furnish them at about a third of what he would have paid
if left to his own devices, and also helped him to shed his skin of
a timid provincial by plunging him to the scalp in that bubbling
cauldron in which seethes the creative brain of France. Serious and
sad young men who were going to be poets; intense fellows who were
going to rehabilitate the Drama, or write the Greatest Novel;
illustrators, journalists, critics, painters, types in velvet coats,
flowing ties, flowing locks, and astonishing hats, sculptors, makers
of exquisite bits of craftsmanship, models, masters, singers of
sorts, actors and actresses, sewing-girls, frightful old concièrges;
students from the four corners of the earth driven hither by the
four winds of heaven, came and went in the devil-may-care wake of
Stocks and the Checkleighs and disported themselves before the
reflective and appreciative eyes of Peter Champneys. These gay
Bohemians laughed at him for what Stocks called his spinterishness,
but ended by loving him as only youth can love a comrade.
In six months he knew the Quartier to the core. He met men who were
utter blackguards, whose selfish, cold-blooded brutality filled him
with loathing; he met women with the soul of the cat. But the
Quartier as a whole was sound-hearted; Peter himself was too
sound-hearted not to know. He met Youth at work, his own kind of
work. They were all going to do something great presently,--and
presently many of them did. The very air he breathed stimulated him.
Here were comrades, to whom, as to himself, art was the one
supremely important thing in the universe. They, too, were climbers
toward the purple heights.
Shy young men who work like mules are as thick as hops in any art
center; but shy young men who are immensely talented, who have a
genius for steady labor, and who at the same time have not only the
inclination but the opportunity to be generous, are not numerous
anywhere.
Peter Champneys never talked about himself, made no parade, was so
simple in his tastes that he spent very little upon himself, and
while he could say "No" to impudence, he had ever a quick, warm
"Yes" for need. That he should be able to become an artist had been
the top of his dream; that by a very little self-denial he could
help others to remain artists, left him large-eyed at his own good
fortune. He experienced the glowing happiness that only the generous
can know.
On Sundays he went to see Emma Campbell, for whom he had found a
little house on the summit of Montmartre, on the very top of the
Butte. It had a hillside garden, with a dove-cote in it, and a
little kiosk in which Emma liked to sit, with the cat Satan on her
lap, and projeck at the strange world in which she found herself.
She shared the house with a scene-painter and his wife, and as the
scene-painter was an Englishman, Emma could talk to somebody and be
understood. Emma's idea of happiness was leisure to sew squares of
patchwork together for quilts. She had brought her cut-out quilt
scraps with her, and she sat in the kiosk and sewed little pieces of
colored calico together, while the big cat scampered about the
garden, or lay and blinked at her, and all Paris lay spread out far
below, the spires of Notre Dame showing as through a mist.
On Sundays she cooked for Peter,--old homely Riverton dishes,--and
waited on him while he ate. Because she couldn't read, she looked
forward to Peter's reading what she reverently called "de Book."
Peter had been reading the Bible to old darkies all his life, and he
accepted it as a matter of course that he should take the long
climb, and give up a part of his Sundays, to save Emma Campbell from
being disappointed now. Afterward, Emma spoke of his mother, and of
old, familiar things they both remembered. Then he went back to the
Quartier feeling as refreshed and rested as if he'd had a swim in
the river "over home."
At regular intervals he appeared at Mrs. Hemingway's, and kept up
his acquaintance with her friends. When she told him to accept an
invitation, he resignedly obeyed, looking, the elder of the
Checkleigh boys told him, as if he were doing it for God's sake. He
was beginning to speak French less villainously, and this made
things easier for him. He could carry on a simple conversation, by
going slowly; and he _almost_ understood about half of what
strangers said to him. He interested one or two fine ladies greatly,
and they were extremely gracious to him. Artists--that is, young and
unknown artists in the Quartier--are more or less pleasant to read
about in the pages of Mürger and others, but they are too often
beggarly and quite impossible persons in real life. But this young
American who lived in the Quartier was at the same time on a footing
of intimacy in the exclusive home of those so charming Hemingways,
who were, one knew, of the _grand monde_. Was it true that the
American painter was very wealthy? Yes? Ah, _cièl_! That droll young
man was then amusing himself by living in the Quartier? But what an
original! His family approved? He was an _orphan_? With no relations
save that old uncle whose heir he was? Ah, _mon Dieu_! That touched
one's heart! One must try to be very pleasant to that so lonely
young man! And that so lonely young man was extended mead and balm
in the shape of invitations to very smart affairs. To some of which
he found, at the last minute, he couldn't go, for the simple and
cogent reason that Checkleigh or Stocks had appropriated his dress
suit.
"It's infernally unlucky, Rabbits having an affair on to-night. But
you know how it is, Champ--she'd never forgive me if I didn't show
up. Big-wigs from home, and all that, and she feels it's her duty to
make me show 'em I haven't become an Apache. And my togs are out at
interest--one has to pay one's rent _sometimes_, you understand,"
explained Checkleigh, who was dressing before Peter's mirror. "_You_
don't have to care: _you_ aren't compelled to keep in her good
graces!"
"Oh, all right. I don't mind. I only accepted to please Mrs.
Hemingway."
"Mrs. Hemingway is my very good friend. At the first opportunity I
shall explain to her. She can readily understand that
"One may go without relatives, cousins, and aunts--
But civilized man can_not_ go without pants.
I wish you hadn't such deucedly long legs, Champ. Regular
hop-poles!" grumbled Checkleigh, ungratefully.
"They are poor things, but mine own," said Peter, mildly. "You will
find a five-franc piece in the waistcoat pocket, Checkleigh, if you
happen to want it. I keep it there for cab fare."
"If I happen to want it!" shrieked Checkleigh. "Oh, bloated
plutocrat, purse-proud millionaire, I always happen to want it!" He
waved an eloquent hand to the circumambient air. "He has five-franc
pieces in his waistcoat pocket--and no Rabbits in his family!" cried
Checkleigh. "Now, have you a presentable pair of gloves,
Croesus?--Oh, damn your legs, Champneys! Look at these beastly
breeches of yours, will you? I've had to turn 'em up until you'd
fancy I was wearing cuffs on the ankles, and still they're too
long!"
"You should have cut 'em off a bit--then you wouldn't look as though
you were poulticing your shins. And they'd fit me, too," commented
Stocks, who had sauntered in.
Checkleigh looked at Peter's watch--his own was "out at interest"
along with his dress suit--and shook his head dolefully.
"If you'd just suggested it sooner, I could have done it--now it's
too late." he lamented. "Your progeny will probably resemble herons,
Champneys, and serve 'em right!--Are those _new_ gloves? I _am_ a
credit to Rabbits!" And he rushed off.
"What a friend we have in Champ-neys,
All his gloves and pa-ants to wear!"
Stocks sang in a voice like the scraping of a mattock over flint;
one saw that he had been piously raised. Then he hooked his arm in
Peter's and the two went forth to join the joyous hordes surging up
the Boul' Miche, and to dine in their favorite restaurant, where the
waiters were one's good friends, and Madame the proprietress
addressed her Bohemians as "mes enfants." Having dined, one joined
one's brother workers who waged the battle of Art with jaws and
gestures. Bawling out the slang of the studios, they grimaced,
sneered, shrugged, praised, demolished. Nothing was sacred to these
young savages but the joy of the present. They had no past, and the
future hadn't arrived. They lived in the moment, worked, laughed,
loved, and, when they could, dined. When one had a handful of
silver, how gay the world was! How one wished to pat it on the back
and invite it to come and be merry with one!
In the full stream of this turbulent tide, behold Peter Champneys;
with a lock of his black hair falling across his forehead; his head
cocked sidewise; and his big nose and clear golden eyes giving him
the aspect of a benevolent hawk, like, say, Horus, Hawk of the Sun.
Those golden eyes of his saw tolerantly as well as clearly. This
quiet American worked like a fiend, yet had time to look on and
laugh with you while you played. He was gravely gay at his best, but
he didn't neglect the good things of his youth. And he had a genius
for playing impromptu Providence when you were down on your luck and
about all in. Maybe you hadn't dined for a couple of days, or maybe
you were pretty nearly frozen in your room, as you had no fire; and
you were wondering whether, after all, you weren't a fool to starve
and freeze for art's sake, and whether, all things considered, life
was worth living; and there'd be a gentle tap at your door, and
Peter Champneys would stick his thin dark face in, smilingly. He'd
tell you he'd been lonely all day, and would you, if you hadn't done
so already, kindly come and dine with him? He spoke French with a
South Carolina accent, in those days, but an archangel's voice could
not then have sounded more dulcet in your ears than his. Presently,
over your cigarettes, you found yourself telling him just how
things were with you. Maybe you slept on a lounge in his studio that
night, because it was warmer there. And next morning you could face
life and work feeling that God's in his heaven, all's right with the
world. That's what Peter Champneys meant to many a hard-pressed
youngster.
With his immense capacity for work, at the end of a year Peter
Champneys had made great strides. But he was troubled. Like Millet,
he couldn't take the ordered direction. He felt that he was merely
marking time, that he wasn't on the right track. His robust and
original talent demanded heartier food than was offered it.
Reluctantly enough, Peter withdrew from the official studio to which
he was attached, and went on his own. It was a momentous step.
One Sunday afternoon he said to Emma Campbell, seriously:
"You've never laid eyes on a goddess, Emma, have you? Or a nymph?
Well, neither have I. And I can't paint what I don't know." He
walked up and down the little graveled garden path. And he burst
out: "That is not life. It is not truth. I don't want gods. I only
see _men_! I don't want goddesses. I want _women_!"
Emma Campbell said in a scandalized voice:
"Dat ain't no kind o' way to talk! Leastwise," she compromised, "not
on Sundays."
Peter burst out laughing. Emma wore her usual Sunday cashmere, with
a snowy apron and head-handkerchief. Satan lay upon the small table
beside her, in the attitude of a sphinx, his black, velvety paws
stretched in front of him, his inscrutable eyes watching the
restless young man. Peter paused, and his eyes narrowed. Then he
snapped his fingers, as he had done when he was a little boy back in
Riverton and something had pleased him.
"I've got it!" he shouted. "Emma, you're It!"
No one ever had a more patient model. She couldn't exackly
understan' why Mist' Peter should want to paint a ole nigger like
her, but if Peter Champneys had wanted to bury her alive in the
ground, with only her head sticking out, Emma would have known it
had to be all right, somehow. So she sat for weary hours, while
Peter made rough sketches, and tried out many theories, before he
settled down to work in dead earnest.
And presently Emma saw herself as it were alive on a square of
canvas, so alive that she was more than a bit afraid. She said it
looked like her own ha'nt, and Emma wasn't partial to ha'nts. There
she sat in her plain black dress and her plain white apron and
head-handkerchief, and her gold hoop ear-rings. On the table beside
her were the vegetables she was to prepare. She had forgotten work
for the time being. Emma projecked, one hand resting idly on the
table, the other on the great black cat in her lap. She looked at
you, with the wistfully animal look of a negro woman, who is loving,
patient, kind, long-suffering, imbued with a terrible patience, and
of a sound, sly, earthy humor; and who at the same time is
childishly credulous, full of dark passions, and with the fires of
savagery banked in her heart. There she sat, that sphinx that is
Africa, who has seen the white races come, and who will probably see
them go; you could almost sense the half-slumbrous brain of her
throbbing under her head-handkerchief. She wasn't a mere colored
woman; she was a symbol and a challenge. And her eyes that had seen
so much and wept so much were as inscrutable as fate, as sphinx-like
as the cat's who watched you from her knee. The whole picture
breathed an amazingly bold and original power, and was so
arrestingly vital that it gripped and held one. Down in one corner,
painted with exquisite care and delicacy, was a Red Admiral.
The Quartier came, squinted through the fingers, and praised and
dispraised, after its wont. The Symbolists sneered and told Peter to
his teeth he was a Philistine; they said you can't boot-lick Nature:
you've got to bully her, demand her soul, _make_ her give you her
Sign! Quieter men came and studied Emma Campbell and her cat, and
clapped Peter on the back; the more exuberant Latins kissed him,
noisy, hearty, hairy kisses on both cheeks. Undoubtedly, it would be
accepted, they said!
It was, and hung conspicuously. There were always small groups
before it, for it created something like the uproar that Manet's
"Olympia" had raised in its time. Peter learned from one critic that
his technique was magnificent, his picture a masterpiece of
psychology and of portraiture, and that if he kept on he'd soon be
one of the Immortals. He learned from another that while he
undoubtedly had technique, his posing was commonplace, his subject
banal, his imagination hopelessly bourgeois; that he was a painter
of the ugly and the ordinary, without inspiration or imagination;
that the one pretty and delicate note in the whole canvas was the
butterfly in the lower left-hand corner, and that _that_ was
obviously reminiscent of Whistler, who on a time had used a
butterfly signature! But on the whole the criticisms were highly
favorable; it was admitted that a young painter of promise had
arisen.
Peter Champneys went about his business, indifferent to praise or
blame. _He_ knew he was a way-faring man whose business it was to
follow his own road, a road he had to hack out for himself; and
somewhere on the horizon were the purple heights.
The unbounded delight, the disinterested pride of the Hemingways,
couldn't have been greater had he been their son. Mrs. Hemingway
gave a brilliant entertainment in his honor, and he was fêted and
made much of. Young ladies who danced divinely found his stork-like
hopping pleasing, and his stammering French delightful. This
charming Monsieur Champneys, you see, was not only invested with the
glamour of art; he was the heir of an American millionaire! Ah, the
dear young man!
The picture was sold to a Spanish nobleman, who said it reminded him
of Velasquez's "Æsop"; he was so delighted with the painter's power
that he commissioned Peter to portray his own long, pale, melancholy
visage. Whereupon the two Checkleighs and Stocks called loudly for
a proper celebration, and Peter honored their clamorous demand. It
was a memorable affair, graced by the Quartier's darlingest models,
who had long since voted M'sieu Champnees a _bon garçon_. A Spanish
student, in a velvet coat and with long black hair, insisted upon
charcoaling mustachios and imperial upon his host's countenance, in
honor of his countryman who had distinguished himself as a patron of
art. Later, a laughing girl whose blue-black hair was banded
Madonna-wise around a head considerably otherwise, washed it off
with a table napkin dipped in wine. She sat on his knee to perform
the operation, scanned his clean face with satisfaction, and taking
him by the ears as by handles, kissed him gaily. Then she went back
to her own _chèr ami_, who wasn't in the least disturbed.
"It is like kissing thy maiden aunt, Jacques," she told him. "Now,
with thee--" They looked at each other eloquently, and Peter
Champneys, whose eyes had followed the girl, smiled crookedly. An
unaccountable gloom descended upon him. All these lusty young men
shouting and laughing around him, all these handsome, ardent young
women, snatched what joy from life they could; they lived their
hour, knowing how brief that hour must be. They ate to-day, starved
to-morrow; but they were rich because they loved, because they
laughed, because theirs was the passionate unforced comradeship, the
intoxicating joy of youth. Peter Champneys, whose good luck was
being celebrated, looked at his penniless, hilarious comrades, and
twisted a smile of desperate gaiety to his lips. He had never in
his life felt more utterly alone.
The affair ended at six o'clock the next morning, in a last glad,
mad romp up the Boul' Miche. Peter and Stocks waved good-by to the
last revelers, looking somewhat jaded in the fresh morning air. The
two young men, both rather tired, walked slowly. Venders in clacking
sabots pushed their carts ahead of them, shouting their wares.
Crowds of working-people poured through the streets. At a little
restaurant they knew, they had coffee and rolls. While they were
drinking, a girl came in. Peter looked up and saw Denise.
His first thought was that she would have been lovely if she hadn't
been so thin. Then he saw how shabby she was, and how neat. Nothing
could have been more charming than her chestnut hair, or her blue
eyes that had a look of innocence, or her fair and transparent
complexion, though one could have wished she were rosier. She did
not look around with the quick, alert, bright glance of the
Parisienne whom everything interests and amuses; she had the
abstracted and sad air of a child who suffers, and whom suffering
bewilders.
Stocks said, in a low voice, tinged with pity:
"_L'amie de Dangeau_."
Peter received that announcement with a shock of surprise and
distaste. Dangeau was such an utter brute! Handsome in his way,
without conscience or pity, Dangeau would have eaten his mother's
heart to satisfy his own hunger, or wiped his feet upon his
father's beard. The gifted, intellectual, and rapacious savage
seized whatever came near him that pleased his fancy or aroused his
curiosity, extracted the pith, and tossed aside what no longer
amused or served him. There was no generosity in him, only an
insatiable and ferocious demand that life should give him more,
always more! Peter, who both admired and detested him, was sorry for
this gentle creature fallen into his remorseless claws. And he
wondered, as decent men must, at the fatal fascination animals like
Dangeau seem to possess for women.
He saw her occasionally after that, always alone. Plainly, things
were not well with her. Her pale face grew paler and thinner; her
dress shabbier. The look of bewilderment was now a look of pain. Her
eyes were heavy, as if they wept too much. Peter watched her with a
troubled heart. One day Henri, the garçon, murmured confidentially,
as she left the café after a particularly slim meal:
"These thin little blondes, they do not last long. That one was like
a rose when I first saw her. _Pauvre enfant_!" And he looked after
her with a compassionate glance.
"She seems--different," said Peter. "It is not well with her?"
"Alas, no! She is from the provinces, Monsieur, come to Paris to
earn more. And so she wearied her _ami_. You know him, Monsieur; he
is a restless man, quickly tiring--that sculptor! Also, he feared
she would fall sick upon his hands--you see how frail she is, and he
abhors all that is not robust." And Henri made an expressive
gesture. He added: "_She_ is of the sort that love, Monsieur; and,
you understand, that is fatal!"
"And how does she manage now?" asked Peter.
Henri shrugged significantly. Peter drummed on the table and
scowled. A little girl, from the provinces! One understood now how
she had fallen into Dangeau's hands, and how, inevitably, he had
tired, and tossed her aside like a wilted flower. And now she was
facing slow starvation--Oh, damn!
Peter slipped some change into Henri's palm. "You are a man of
sense, Henri. Also, I see that you have a good heart," said he. "Now
we must see what we can do for this poor little Mademoiselle, you
and I. You will place before her the best the house affords--I leave
that to you. And when she protests you will say to her: 'Your
venerable godfather has arranged for it, Mademoiselle. His orders
are, that you come here, seat yourself, tap once with your
forefinger upon the table,--and your orders will be obeyed.'"
"And if she questions further, Monsieur?"
"Explain that you obey orders, but do not know her godfather," said
Peter, gravely.
"Trust me, Monsieur!" cried the delighted Henri. And from that
moment the kindly fellow adored Peter Champneys.
The little game began the next day. Denise gave her tiny order;
Henri came back with a loaded tray, whose savory contents he placed
before her. Out of the corner of his eye Peter could see the girl's
astonished face when Henri politely insisted that the meal was
hers--that her venerable godfather had ordered it for her! She
looked timidly and fearfully around; but nobody was paying the
slightest attention to her, and after deftly arranging the dishes,
Henri had whisked himself off. She waited for a few minutes; but
Henri hadn't come back. And then, because she was almost famished,
she ate what had been given her. Peter felt his eyes blur.
Henri came back to her presently with wine. He dusted the bottle
lovingly, and filled her glass with a flourish. She looked up with a
tremulous smile:
"My godfather's order, Henri?"
"Your venerable godfather's order, Mademoiselle," he replied
sedately. When she had finished her dinner, he glibly, and with an
expressionless countenance repeated Peter's instructions: she was to
come in, seat herself, tap with her forefinger, and give her orders,
which would be instantly obeyed! No, he did not know her godfather.
Nor did Monsieur le patron. No, he might not even take the sous she
offered him: all, all, had been arranged, Mademoiselle!
She hesitated. Then she called for pen and paper, and scribbled in
violet ink:
MONSIEUR MY GODFATHER,
I see that the good God still permits miracles. You are one.
Accept, then, a poor girl's thanks and prayers!
Thy godchild,
DENISE.
She gave this to Henri, who received it respectfully. Then she went
out, feeling very much better and brighter because of a sadly needed
dinner. She was bewildered, and excited; but she wasn't afraid. She
accepted her miracle, which had come just in the nick of time,
gratefully, with a childlike simplicity. But she used her blue eyes,
and one day they met Peter Champneys's, regarding her with a good
and kind satisfaction; for indeed she looked much better and
brighter, now that she was no longer half starved. Denise had
encountered other eyes, men's eyes; but none had ever met hers with
just such a look as she saw in these clear and golden ones. A flash
of intuition came to her. Only one person in the world could have
eyes like that--it must be, it was, he! And she watched him with an
absorbed and breathless interest.
In these small restaurants of the Quartier one sits so close to
one's neighbors, in a busy hour, that conversation isn't difficult;
it is, rather, inevitable.
"Monsieur," said the young girl, bravely and yet timidly, on an
occasion when they almost touched elbows, "Monsieur,--is it you who
have a god-daughter?"
"Mademoiselle," stammered Peter, who hadn't expected the question.
"I do not know your godfather!" And then he turned red to his ears.
Her face broke into a swift and flashing smile. She looked so like a
happy child that Peter had to smile back at her, and presently they
were chatting like old acquaintances. After that they always managed
to dine together.
They found each other delightful. That gloomy sense of loneliness
which had oppressed Peter vanished in the girl's presence. As for
Denise, no one had ever been so kind, so gentle, so generous to her
as this wonderful Monsieur Champneys. She grew quite beautiful; her
eyes were a child's eyes, her face like one of those little sweet
pinkish-white roses one sees in old-fashioned gardens.
She had no relations; neither had Peter. And so he took Denise into
his life, just as he had once taken a lost kitten out of the dusk on
the Riverton Road: there really was nothing else for him to do! He
had for her something of the same whimsical and compassionate
affection that had made him share his glass of milk with the little
cat. She belonged to him; there was nobody else.
She was rather a silent creature, Denise. She had none of that Latin
vivacity which wearies the listener, but her love for him showed
itself in a thousand gracious ways, in innumerable small services,
in loving looks. Just to touch him was a never-failing joy to her.
She delighted to stroke his face, to trace with her small fingers
the outline of his features. "That is the pattern on the inside of
my heart," she told him. She had a quick, light tread, pleasant to
listen to, and her rare and lovely laughter was always a delicious
surprise, as if one heard an unexpected chime of little bells.
Her housewifely ways, her pretty anxiety about spending money,
amused him tenderly. When she could perform some small service for
him, she hummed little hymns to the Virgin. Her ministrations
extended to Stocks and the Checkleighs, whose shirts she mended so
expertly that they didn't have to borrow so many of Peter's. She was
so happy that Peter Champneys grew happy watching her. It hadn't
seemed possible to Denise that anybody like him could exist; yet
here he was, and she belonged to him!
Nobody had ever loved Peter Champneys in quite the same way. She had
so real and true a genius for loving that she exhaled affection as a
flower exhales perfume. Loving was an instinct with Denise. She
would steal to his side, slip her arm around his neck, kiss him on
the eyes--"thy beautiful eyes, Pierre!"--and cuddle her cheek
against his, with so exquisite a tenderness in touch and look that
the young man's kind heart melted in his breast. He couldn't speak.
He could only gather her close, pressing his black head against her
soft young bosom.
Her cruel experience with Dangeau was not forgotten; but that had
been capture by force, and she remembered it as a black background
against which the bright colors of this present happiness showed
with a heavenlier radiance. Peter himself didn't guess how wholly
his little comrade loved him, though he did realize her utter
selflessness. She never asked him troublesome questions, never
annoyed him with irritating jealousy, made no demands upon him. Was
he not himself? Very well, then: did not that suffice? Denise didn't
think: she felt. She had the exquisite wisdom of the heart, and in
her small hands the flower of Peter Champneys's youth opened and
blossomed. He was young, he was loved, he was busy. Oh, but it was a
good world to be alive in! He whistled while he worked. And how he
worked! To this period belong those angelic heads, chestnut-haired,
wistfully smiling, with blue eyes that look deep into one's heart.
The airy butterfly that signs these canvases is not so much a symbol
as a prescience.
When was it he first noticed that for all his love and care he
wasn't going to be able to keep Denise? How did he learn that the
great last lover was wooing her away? She was not less happy. A deep
and still joy radiated from her, her eyes had the clear and
cloudless happiness of a child's. But he observed that on their
pleasant excursions into the country she tired quickly. Her little
light feet didn't run any more. She preferred to sit cuddled against
his side, holding his hand in both hers, her head pressed against
his shoulder. She didn't talk, but then, he was used to her silence;
that was one of her sweetest charms. Her cheek grew thinner, but the
rose in it deepened. Then the pretty dresses he loved to lavish upon
her began to hang loosely upon her little body.
It was a frightened young man who called in doctors and specialists.
But, as Henri had once told him, they do not last long, these frail
blondes. Also, she was of the sort that loves--and that, you
understand, is fatal!
Stocks, who had made a great pet of Peter's pretty sweetheart,
blubbered when he learned the truth, and the younger Checkleigh,
who delighted to sketch her, left off because his hand shook so, and
he couldn't see clearly. The Spanish student in the velvet coat, who
could sing lustily to a guitar, came and sang for her, not the
ribald songs the Quartier heard from him, but the beautiful and soft
love songs he had heard as a child in Andalusia--how love is an
immortal rose one carries through the gates of the grave into the
gates of paradise. And the Quartier, which knows so much sorrow as
well as so much joy, came with its gayest gossip to make her smile.
Peter himself lived in a sort of tormented daze.--It was Denise, his
little Denise, who was going!
Denise herself was the calmest and cheerfulest of them all. Her high
destiny had been to love Peter Champneys, and she had fulfilled it.
The good, the kind God had given her that which in her estimation
outweighed everything else. She had lived, she had loved. Now she
could go, and go content.
"It is better so," she told him, with that piercing good sense of
the French which is like a spiritual insight. "Very dear one,
suppose _I_ had been called upon to let _thee_ go: how could I have
endured that?" And she added, pressing his fingers, "Do not grieve,
my adored Pierre. Observe that I am but a poor little one to whom in
thy goodness of heart thou hast been kind: but thou art all my
life--all of me, Pierre."
He put his head against her side, and she stroked it, whispering,
"I had but a little while to stay, beloved. Because of thee, that
stay has been happy--oh, very, very happy!"
"You have given me all I ever had of youth and love," said Peter.
"Ah, but I am glad!" she said naïvely. "Because of _that_, I think
you must remember!" She looked at him with her blue eyes suddenly
full of tears. "It is only when I think you may forget that I am
afraid, it is then as if the dark pressed upon me," she said in a
whisper sharp with pain. "I lie still and dream how great you will
become, how much beloved--for who could fail to love you, Pierre?
And I am glad. It rests my heart, which is all yours. But when I
begin to remember how I have been but a little, little part of your
life, who have been all of mine, when I think you may forget, then I
am afraid, I am afraid!" And she looked at him like a frightened
child who is being left alone to go to sleep in the dark.
Peter picked her up, wrapped in the bedquilt, and held her in his
arms. She was very light. It was as if he held a little ghost. She
shook her bright hair over his shoulders and breast, and he hid his
quivering face in it, as in a veil. Presently, in a soft voice:
"Godfather!"
"Yes, my little sweetheart."
"Very dear and precious godfather,--a long, long time from now, when
_She_ comes, She whom you will love as I love you, tell her about
me."
"Denise, Denise!" cried poor Peter, straining her to him.
"Tell her I had blue eyes, and a fair face, and bright, bright
hair, Godfather. She will like to know. Say, 'Her whole wisdom lay
in loving me with all her heart--that poor Denise!' Then tell her
that she cannot love you more, my Pierre,--but that in my grave I
shall despise her if she dares to love you less."
"I--Oh, my God!" strangled Peter, and he felt as if his heart were
being wrenched out of his breast. He was in his twenties, and the
girl in his arms was all he knew of love.
Some six weeks later Denise died as quietly as she had lived, her
small cold hands clinging to Peter Champneys's, her blue eyes with
their untroubled, loving gaze fixed upon his face. When that beloved
face faded from her the world itself had faded from Denise.
He hadn't dreamed one could suffer as he was called upon to suffer
then. The going of little Denise seemed to have torn away a living
and quivering part of his spirit. She had loved him absolutely, and
Peter couldn't forget that. His gratitude was an anguish. It is not
the duration but the depths of an experience which makes its
ineffaceable impression upon the heart.
Mrs. Hemingway saw his changed looks with concern. If she and her
husband suspected anything, they did not torment him with questions;
they didn't even appear to notice that he was silent and abstracted.
"What on earth is the matter with the boy?" worried Mrs. Hemingway.
"John, do you think it's a--"
"Petticoat? What else should it be?"
"I can't bear to think of Peter getting himself into some sort of
scrape with possibly some miserable woman--who will prey upon him,"
murmured Mrs. Hemingway.
"Peter's not the sort that falls for adventuresses. He might fall in
love with some girl, and be cut up if she didn't reciprocate. That's
what's the matter with him now, if I'm not mistaken."
Hemingway took Peter fishing with him. It is a pleasant place, the
Seine near Poissy. Hemingway let Peter sit in a boat all day, and
didn't seem to observe that the line wasn't once drawn in. The river
was rippling, the sky bright blue, the wind sweet. All around them
were other boats, full of people who appeared to be happy. And
Hemingway's silent companionship was strong and kind and serene.
Insensibly Peter reacted to his surroundings, to the influence of
the shining day. When they were returning to Paris that evening, he
looked at his big compatriot gratefully. Then he told him. Hemingway
listened in silence. Then:
"I'm damned glad she had you," said he, and polished his eyeglasses,
and put his hand on Peter's shoulder with a consoling and
sympathetic touch. Hemingway understood. He was that sort.
Youth departs, love perishes, faith faints; but that we may never be
left hopeless, work remains and saves us. Peter's work came to his
succor. Just at this crucial time his Eminence the Austrian Cardinal
appeared, and Peter hadn't time to mope.
The cardinal had seen the picture of Emma Campbell and her cat. He
had seen an enchanting sketch of the Spanish student in the velvet
coat, recently purchased by a friend of his. And now his own
portrait must be painted. He was so great a cardinal, of so striking
a personality, that his own noble family had an immense pride in
him, and the Vatican, along with certain great temporal powers, took
him very seriously. So the painting of the cardinal's portrait
wouldn't be a light undertaking, to be given at random. This and
that great painter was urged upon him. But the astonishing portrait
of that old colored woman and her cat decided his Eminence, who had
a will of his own. Here was his artist! Also, he insisted upon the
cat.
The anticlerical press of Paris was insisting that the cardinal's
stay in the French capital was of sinister import. The cardinal
smiled, and Peter Champneys besought his gods to let him get that
smile on canvas. His Eminence was an ideal sitter. He spoke English
beautifully, and it pleased him to converse with the lanky young
American painter in his mother tongue. He felt drawn to the young
man, and when the cardinal liked one, he was irresistible. Peter was
so fascinated by this brilliant and versatile aristocrat, so deeply
interested in the psychology of a great Roman prelate, a prince of
the Church, that he forgot everything except that he was a creative
artist--and a great sitter, a man worthy of his best, was to be
portrayed.
He gave his whole heart to his task, and he brought to it a new
sense of values, born of suffering. When he had finished, you could
see the cardinal's soul looking at you from the canvas. The smile
Peter prayed to catch curves his lips, a smile that baffles and
enchants. He wears his red robes, and one fine, aristocratic hand
with the churchly ring on it rests upon the magnificent cat lying on
the table beside him. That superb "Cardinal with the Cat" put the
seal upon Peter Champneys's reputation as a great artist.
He knew what he had achieved. Yet his lips quivered and his eyes
were smileless when, down in the left-hand corner, he painted in the
Red Admiral.