VARIOUS MATTERS
And so Barnabas departed to Paris in the attempt to find some clue
regarding the scrap of humanity which the Fates had led to Miss Mason's
studio. It was not that Miss Mason cared in the smallest degree what
her parentage was. She was just a lonely little soul needing love,
and so Miss Mason had taken her into her arms and into her big heart.
Dan had once said of Miss Mason, and only shortly after making her
acquaintance:
"I veritably believe that woman has the biggest hands, the biggest
feet, and the biggest heart of any woman in Christendom." And the more
he knew of her the more convinced he felt of the truth of his statement.
But even a big heart is not entirely sufficient guarantee for taking
possession of a small girl. One can no more pick one up and keep
it than one can pick up a valuable ornament and place it on one's
mantelpiece. At any rate, if one did there would always be the
uncomfortable feeling that the rightful owner might one day walk
casually up to it and say:
"That is mine."
Barnabas understood this, and therefore he had gone off to Paris to see
if there were any likelihood of a rightful owner turning up one day to
claim Pippa. It was wiser that Miss Mason should not get too attached
to her possession before he had made sure on that point. Also there was
the memory of Philippe Kostolitz.
But while he was gone Miss Mason petted the child to her heart's
content, bought dainty undergarments and charming frocks, and played
that delightful game of "mother," which is a game all women have played
throughout eternity at some time in their lives, even if it is only
played with a rag doll wrapped in a shawl.
And while she was playing, and while Pippa was enjoying the game almost
as much as she was and revelling in frilly petticoats, long black
stockings, buckled shoes, and soft green frocks--green seemed to belong
to her, for some reason, as a matter of course--the other five artists
of the courtyard were living their lives, painting their pictures,
smoking their pipes, and being happy or miserable according to their
moods.
And it is perhaps safe to say, though a great pity to have to say
it, that Jasper's mood of the last six months had been one of utter
depression.
At first, when he had walked away from the ugly little house in
Chiswick, he had felt--in spite of the shock he had received at
Bridget's unexpected attitude towards him--a certain exultation in
the thought that duty would never compel him to take that route again.
He told himself that he rejoiced in his freedom, but after a day or so
he had found it necessary to emphasize that point to himself with a
certain degree of insistence. Phrases she had used began to return to
his mind at odd moments. In the midst of painting an angel's wing, or
trying to concentrate on the beatific expression of some saint's face,
he would suddenly hear her voice:
"I wanted to ask your help, to tell you what I had suffered. I could
not."
And again, when painting some piece of flame-coloured drapery, he would
hear the words:
"How did you try to help me? By talking calm platitudes through a kind
of moral disinfectant sheet which you held between us----"
And yet again, as he tried for the strength of courage in the face of
the warrior angel, he would hear her saying:
"You have not had the manhood to help me."
It angered him that she should come between him and his work. He had
loved it. He had felt a kind of mystical joy in it, in the knowledge
that his work would adorn the houses of God, and that the saints he
painted would look down upon the altar where the priest commemorated
the Great Sacrifice. Sometimes in his more intense moments he had
fancied himself an incarnation of one of the old painters who
portrayed for sheer love of God dancing saints garlanded with flowers.
He did not know that his own work lacked that child-like joy, and that
its asceticism was hard and cold.
But now the memory of the house in Chiswick, which he used to banish
easily from his thoughts, came again and again before his mind
to prevent him working. He began to leave his studio and go for
long walks, only returning when it was too dark to paint. And his
fellow-artists wondered what possessed him, and would have welcomed one
of his priggish speeches rather than this moody silence.
And Alan Farley, the other artist who fancied himself a mystic, painted
a few pictures when the inspiration was upon him, pictures which
remained to adorn his own studio walls, as they were incomprehensible
to any one but himself and to one other--a girl, Aurora Castleton, in
whom Alan found a kindred soul. They frequented each other's studios,
and talked of "the true spirit," and "the deeper meaning," and "the
virtue of symbolism," and lamented that the public were too blind
to realize the inner beauty which they were kindly interpreting for
them on canvas. They found, however, a great deal of consolation and
pleasure in each other's society. And a Small Boy with drooping wings
sat mournfully in a corner and heard them talk, knowing that he alone
could give them the true key to the meaning of Beauty--a key that the
most ignorant could understand. But they refused to look at him. Even
his arrows were useless, for the cloak of High Art with which the two
had surrounded themselves seems to be the one thing that is impervious
to them.
And Dan plodded on with his Messonier-like paintings and missed
Barnabas a good deal, in spite of the fact that he had been gone barely
three days. And Michael did wonderful line work, and wrote little
cynical essays for a small magazine that scoffed at love as sentimental.
But Paul was absorbed in his portrait of the Duchessa, and in the
wonderful music his heart heard, the meaning of which was beginning to
dawn on his soul.
The Duchessa had given him her own ideas regarding the portrait the
first morning she had come to the studio. She had told him about the
Casa di Corleone, and the courtyard with the golden oranges and marble
fauns and nymphs, and the gallery where her portrait was to hang.
"I want it," she had said, "to be a wee bit--just the weest bit in the
world--flaunting. The women of the House of Corleone are haughty and
disdainful. They are too proud to show their feelings. If they ever
loved the courtyard and the sunshine, they would have scorned to show
it. They have scorned me often for loving it. I have seen--you may
laugh at me if you like--their lips curl when my heart has danced for
joy as I have stood in the gallery and watched the sunlight stream
through the big hall door. I can't hang there meekly accepting their
scorn. I want to defy them. They may think the place theirs, and be
calmly satisfied in their possession of it, and they may look upon me
as an alien. But it is mine, mine, mine. I want them to know it--not
aggressively, you realize--but with just the tiniest bit of assurance
that there's no mistake at all."
And Paul had responded to her mood as a violin responds to the
master-hand that draws the bow across its strings. He had sketched her
in on the canvas almost as she had spoken the words, standing there
with her head just a trifle thrown back, a little gleam of fascinating
devilry in her eyes.
They had nearly come to loggerheads regarding her dress, however. She
wished it to be scarlet, in contrast to the black dresses and sombre
colours of the haughty ladies already in the gallery. Paul wished it to
be blue. In the end she had had her will. It was not often that Sara,
Duchessa di Corleone, failed in accomplishing it.
Perhaps the most noticeable characteristic of Sara was her vivid
magnetism. Every separate burnished hair of her head seemed to possess
it. Her eyes possessed it, her smile possessed it, her voice--a low
contralto--possessed it. Her presence dominated a room the moment she
entered it, even if she did not speak a word, and Sara possessed a
curious gift for silences. They were sudden and unaccountable silences,
more disconcerting and full of magnetism than speech. She lapsed into
them often with Paul. They came as a sudden and odd interruption to her
flow of sparkling talk. She had a trick of making the most ordinary
words sparkle. Water, after all, is only water, but it can look very
different in sunshine from beneath a grey sky.
And perhaps for the first time Paul found himself at a loss to read
the character she presented to him. Probably because he could not
appreciate it sufficiently calmly. The music in his heart distracted
him, and the tune was clearer and sweeter when she was near. He knew
its meaning now, and it filled him with happiness and pain--happiness
because it is the most beautiful music in the world to those who hear
it, and pain because it somehow seemed to emphasize his own loneliness.
And because he had always been lonely a certain feeling had come to him
of being not wanted. It was not exactly diffidence, not the outcome
of shyness, but merely a certainty that he made no difference to the
scheme of happiness in others; in fact, that it probably worked more
easily without him. He could not imagine himself as essential to
anyone, and never in his wildest dreams could he have imagined himself
as essential to the woman who had suddenly become the centre of his
universe.
* * * * *
One evening Barnabas returned and walked into Miss Mason's studio. He
came right over to the fire and sat down.
"Well?" she said, looking at him very anxiously. The game of "mother"
can gain an extraordinary fascination in a very few days.
"I have found out one thing," said Barnabas, "that is a curious
coincidence at all events. The child's real name is Philippa."
"Ah," said Miss Mason slowly.
"I went to different studios," went on Barnabas, "but the artists knew
nothing beyond the fact that the child had lived with Madame Barbin.
Then I went to the houses she had tenanted. The neighbours told me
she was a kind old soul, and two of them at least averred that they
remembered the advent of Pippa to the house when a baby of a few weeks
old. They declare that an English lady brought her to Madame Barbin,
and that Madame Barbin received money for the child's keep. Madame
Fournier was a relation of Madame Barbin's--a niece, they believed.
They did not know where her home was beyond that it was somewhere
in Brittany. She came occasionally to visit Madame Barbin, and was
with her when she died. Their theory is that Madame Fournier took
possession of the child in order to receive the allowance made for her.
It was sent to Madame Barbin, and she returned a receipt and statement
that the child was alive and well. That, at least, is the neighbour's
story. But they had no notion from whom the money came. The people
who sent it must certainly have trusted Madame Barbin implicitly.
According to the neighbours, she deserved the trust. Madame Fournier
no doubt took on the job and abandoned the child as soon as she could
conveniently do so. To receive the money without having to provide for
the child has evidently appealed to her mind as a method of procedure
more advantageous to herself."
Barnabas stopped.
"And how did you find out that the child's real name was Philippa?"
asked Miss Mason.
"A woman named Madame Paulet volunteered the information," said
Barnabas. "She told me that Madame Barbin had said that the child had
first been christened Philippa according to the rites of the English
Church. But being a devout Catholic, Madame Barbin evidently didn't
trust to an English baptism. She had the child re-baptized. I saw
the priest who performed the ceremony. She was then, he said, about
two months old. Madame Barbin had told him that she did not know the
name of the child's parents. She received money quarterly for her
maintenance. She did tell him the name of the woman who sent it, but as
it was told under the seal of confession he couldn't have given it to
me even if he had remembered it. But he had forgotten."
There was a short silence.
"Then," said Mason slowly, "Pippa is a Catholic."
"Yes," said Barnabas. "You are sorry?"
"I am old-fashioned," said Miss Mason. "But after all it is the same
God we worship."
"And if," said Barnabas, "she is Philippe's child, as I believe, he
would be glad. He was a devout Catholic with a strange mixture of
Paganism. I believe that for him the altars of Pan and Christ were
built side by side."
Miss Mason looked at Barnabas with a little twinkle in her eyes.
"You'll have to take her to church," she said.
Barnabas laughed. "You think that after all there may be some advantage
in her baptism?"
Again there was a silence. Then Barnabas spoke.
"If Philippe were her father, and I can't help feeling sure of it, he
must have died some months before her birth. Possibly before he knew
that she was even thought of."
And then Miss Mason put a question, one which had been in the minds of
both of them throughout that conversation at least, but, being a woman,
it was she who voiced it.
"I wonder," she said quietly, "who was her mother?"
"Exactly," said Barnabas.
And because he had loved Philippe Kostolitz he said no more. But his
eyes again grew sad. For Barnabas held very straight views on some
subjects, and he dreaded lest the whiteness of his friend's honour had
been in the smallest degree smirched.