THE FATA MORGANA
Phil prepared his colors. The ball was forgotten, and the Indian
costume was laid away for another year. Outside, the cries of the
plumber and old-clo’ man alternated, like a trombone after a fife; and
a barrel-organ was grinding below on the sidewalk. Phil, brushes in
hand, spoke now and then a word with Caracal, lying on the sofa.
“Here are my visitors,” said Phil, suddenly.
From the stairway came the sound of voices, the light tread of feet,
the swish of skirts.
The bell rang.
“I was waiting for you, M. le Duc,” said Phil, as he opened the door.
“Come in, I beg of you! Come in, Mlle. Helia!”
“I have brought you Mlle. Helia,” the duke said. “You know, she
consents to pose for you. Look! she’s not even tired after such a
night!”
“Oh, as for me, I’m used to it,” said Helia,—“a little more or a little
less!”
Caracal came bustling up, shaking hands energetically, as he always did.
“Show the duke your little gallery,” he said in a low tone to Phil.
“You’re too modest—you mustn’t hide your light under a bushel.”
“Pshaw! he wouldn’t appreciate it,” said Phil.
They stood before the Morgana painting. Helia, strongly impressed
by the luxury of the studio, looked around with astonishment. She
remembered Phil’s beginnings in his attic by the quays of the Seine.
The duke turned toward him: “Superb! It is very beautiful! Allow me to
congratulate you, Monsieur Phil!”
Phil bowed.
Conrad di Tagliaferro, Duke of Morgania, was a _grand seigneur_, who
left his duchy to take care of itself, and passed half his time in
his Paris mansion. His people believed him to be quite taken up with
politics, discussing _mordicus_ with the representatives of the Great
Powers, and securing support against the coming storm. For the duchy
was on the banks of the Adriatic, lower than Montenegro, and backed up
against Albania, where the clouds threatened. The duke, meanwhile, went
about with Caracal, his professor of elegant vice, and his handsome
presence was a part of _Tout-Paris_.
“Your picture is a masterpiece, Monsieur Phil,” the duke went on. “It
would be impossible to interpret better the legend of my ancestress,
Morgana. It will hang well in the great hall of the castle, above the
ducal throne—I see it from here. You have quite caught what I wished,
and I am grateful to you.”
The great painting took up a whole side of the studio, and its effect
was superb under the light, which fell in floods. It was a decorative
work, which, from the first, impressed the beholder by its look of
strangeness.
Phil was familiar with the mirage which is peculiar to the Adriatic
Sea, and which is known as the Fata Morgana.
In the morning oftenest, but sometimes at evening, you suddenly
perceive in the sky images of various things—of ruined towers and
castles, which crumble and change and take on prodigious shapes. The
dwellers of the coast call the phenomenon the Fata Morgana; their
superstitious ideas lead them to see in it the enchantments of a fairy
(_fata_), whereas it is simply an effect of the mirage caused by the
heating of the sea. This was the moment which Phil had chosen for his
picture.
The lower part of the canvas was in shadow, but the upper part was
resplendent with light; and towers seemed to rise and arches hang above
the abyss, while visions appeared between the clouds. The setting sun
lighted up with its dying fires the moving mists, whereon rainbow tints
were playing. At the horizon the sea mingled with the clouds. Morgana
rose from the waves which broke along the beach. Strange sea-flowers
clung to her hair and covered her shoulders. In the background, cliffs
fell straight down to the sea; and all along the shore an ecstatic
people acclaimed the return of their lady, the Duchess Morgana.
Phil had put all his talent into this picture. Months of implacable
labor were in it. The duke, who had not yet seen the finished canvas,
seemed delighted. Phil was paid for his labors.
The Duke of Morgania had a love for art and artists. He chatted in a
friendly way with Phil of the numerous studies which such a picture
demands.
“I should have liked to be a painter,” he said, smilingly. “I am
infatuated with the bohemian life!”
“It hasn’t been all amusement to me,” replied Phil. “Art is not easy,
_allez_!”
“It’s about the same in everything; nothing is easy,” Helia observed.
She entered into the conversation timidly. Accustomed as she had been
from childhood to brave a thousand eyes in the circus ring, Helia felt
herself embarrassed in the sumptuous studio where she found Phil,
friend of her childhood and youth—Phil, who had been so fond of her
then, and who doubtless loved her still. She would know soon,—when they
were alone,—if only by the way in which he would take her hand.
“It is the same in everything. You are right, mademoiselle,” the duke
answered. “Yours is an art also.”
Helia blushed with pleasure.
“Phil will be proud of me,” she thought.
“But she’s taking it seriously, the little mountebank,” Caracal
murmured to himself. “She is as big a fool as Phil, on my word!”
“_Mon cher ami_,” the duke said to Phil, “Mlle. Helia has a singular
resemblance to Morgana. For we have documents concerning the appearance
of Morgana—Sansovino’s statue at Ancona, for example, the Botticelli
of the Louvre, and the stained-glass window of the throne-room in the
ducal castle, as well as numberless pictures scattered through the
cottages of Morgania. There is an admitted classic type. You will only
have to finish the figure of my ancestress with Mlle. Helia, and your
picture will be perfect.”
“And what happiness for me!” said Helia. “Phil—Monsieur Phil will do my
portrait!”
[Illustration: The Great Canvas]
But Phil interrupted Helia to keep the duke, who was on the point of
departing:
“Wait a moment; Miss Ethel Rowrer is coming to see the picture. She is
over there in the students’ atelier. I’ll go and tell her.”
Phil went out; doors were heard opening and closing; and then he came
back with Miss Rowrer, whom he had found just quitting her work. She
was fastening a bouquet of Parma violets at her waist, and was ready to
come.
Miss Rowrer entered.
She was tall and pink and blonde. She had distinguished features,
with a wilful forehead and solid chin. Her beauty and her practice
of outdoor sports gave her a self-confidence which was superb, while
the prestige of the name of her father—the famous Chicagoan—and his
colossal fortune were as nothing when she looked you in the face with
her clear eyes, lighted up with intelligence. As soon as she entered
the studio there seemed to be no one else there.
Miss Rowrer nodded familiarly to Caracal and the duke, habitués of
the Comtesse de Donjeon’s teas, where she had made their acquaintance,
as well as that of Phil, some months previously. She cast a discreet
glance at Helia. As for Phil, whose pupil she was and whose talent she
admired, she treated him as a friend.
They began talking immediately. Miss Rowrer spoke of her brother Will,
of his yacht, still in the dock at Boston, but which was soon to sail
for France; of his autumn cruise in the Mediterranean; then, changing
the subject, she talked of art and literature, lightly, without pose.
“How can any one find time,” thought Helia, “to learn so many pretty
things!”
“Is that your Morgana picture?” Miss Rowrer asked Phil, pointing to
the great canvas. “That half-painted figure will doubtless be Morgana
herself—it is very beautiful. But,” she added, as she turned to the
duke, “explain it to me a little, will you? I am not acquainted with
the subject.”
“What, Miss Rowrer! You know everything, and you don’t know the legend
of Morgana!”
“Only by name,” said Miss Rowrer. “In my picture-books there used to be
Bluebeard and ogres and ugly wolves, who made me afraid—and the good
fairies Mélusine and Morgana, who delighted me. They did so much good
with their magic wands!”
“Morgana is my ancestress,” said the duke. “She is my good genius.
There is not a cottage in Morgania where her picture does not hang,
next to the icons of the Virgin. In the winter evenings, around the
fire, they recount her exploits and those of Rhodaïs and Bertha.
Children grow up with it in their blood; they no more think of their
country without its heroines than without its woods and mountains.”
“And what particular event have you chosen for this picture?” asked
Miss Rowrer. “Is it the coming of Morgana?”
“By the sea she departed,” said the duke, “and she has never come back.
Yet she will come, they say.”
“You laugh at it?”
“Not at all,” answered the duke. “Such things seen in the light of
Paris appear altogether ridiculous; but away in Morgania there are
thousands of good people—or thousands of foolish people, if you wish—”
the duke corrected himself, in terror of the mocking smile of Caracal,
his professor of skepticism—“thousands of foolish people who talk of
nothing else and await her return.”
“But when did she go away?” asked Miss Rowrer.
“Oh, ah!—well—a thousand years ago,” answered the duke.
“A thousand years ago!” exclaimed Miss Rowrer, amused by these stories
of fairy duchesses and poor mountaineers sitting by the sea and
watching from father to son for Morgana. “But who has foretold her
return?” she asked.
“An old sorceress who lives like an owl in the hollow of a rock.”
“Really!”
“Truly and really! People come to consult her from every quarter. She
makes her fire on three red stones, observes the sky and the stars,
traces serpents on the sand—and then this old woman foretells the
future. Now, according to her prediction, the cycle of time has swung
round and Morgana is coming, bringing in her arms the fortune of
Morgania. Events, we must acknowledge, seem to bear out the sorceress:
the country is deeply troubled; I shall soon be obliged to go back
myself—and you can imagine whether it is amusing for me? Oh, I wish I
were a simple citizen of Paris!”
“_Eh bien, monseigneur!_” said Miss Rowrer, “in that case, abdicate,
abdicate. But first tell me, I beg of you, the legend of Morgana.”
“It does not date from yesterday, as I have told you,” the duke went
on. “The duchy was already in existence, having been given to Hugh,
chief of the Franks, by the Emperor Theodosius; but it was only in
Morgana’s time that it came to a consciousness of itself. Morgana was
a poor sailor-girl, according to some—a king’s daughter, according
to others. Did she ever really exist? or is she only an ideal figure
created by a people in infancy, more inclined to poetry than to
reflection, and personifying in her all its great heroines?
“However that may be, the year, as your Edgar Poe says, ‘had been a
year of terrors.’ There was fighting along the frontiers. The duke,
selfish-hearted and weak, had lost two of his provinces. The people
were in despair. Morgana brought hope back to them. Her piety and her
beauty worked miracles. A light, it is said, followed her. She took
up arms for her country and worked wonders. The hordes of the enemy
thought her invulnerable—they had set a price on her head. One day,
in battle, she saved Duke Adhemar, when he was at the point of being
massacred; she leaped forward, with the great white-cross standard
in one hand and her battle-ax in the other, slashed her way through
the barbarians, and, her arms red with blood, brought back the duke
amid the acclamations of the people. Their enthusiasm was immense;
they prayed at Morgana’s feet. ‘What passed afterward?’ Had the duke
promised marriage to her, as some pretend—and, to obtain peace, did he
sell Morgana to the enemy? Our chronicles are uncertain on that point.
But Duke Adhemar compromised himself by some ugly deed or other—the
perjury of a coward. One evening the indignant Morgana came down to the
shore, followed by a whole people, who demanded her for their duchess
and scattered flowers before her. But she entered her bark alone.
‘Since the duke has sworn,’ she said, ‘let me save his honor. I go.
May my sacrifice redeem his race! And remember—not gold, but youth and
courage are a people’s strength!’ Then Morgana sailed away from the
shore and disappeared in the open sea, while the crowd still prayed
for her. The next day a strange mirage lighted up the country, and the
people said: ‘It is the soul of Morgana, virgin and martyr.’ Then the
people, in their indignation, drove Duke Adhemar from the throne. They
raised altars to her. To Morgana was given the title of duchess; she
became the protectress of Morgania—and of my house, whose honor she had
saved.”
“Let us hope she will come back,” said Miss Rowrer. “You are quite
right to believe in her!”
“I—” began the duke.
“Why, yes, monseigneur,” continued Miss Rowrer, who had remarked the
duke’s accent of conviction toward the end of his story. “Don’t deny
it—it is beautiful to believe in something! M. Caracal will pardon you
this time.”
“Willingly, Miss Rowrer,” said Caracal, with the pinching of the lips
which was his mode of smiling. “Willingly; but on one condition. Get
Monsieur Phil to show you his works.”
“Here they are, it seems to me,” Ethel said, pointing to the paintings
and sketches which filled the studio.
“No doubt,” Caracal insisted; “but—all his handiwork is not here. Come,
Monsieur Phil, show us the work which is really yours—what you paint
with your soul! Don’t be so modest; bring the light from beneath the
bushel!”
“Yes; show us, Phil,” said the duke.
“Monseigneur—” Phil began.
Caracal shot a triumphant glance at Phil.
“You will allow me, _cher ami_?”—and he opened the little gallery to
Miss Rowrer and the duke, while Helia, seated in the shadow, waited
impatiently for the visitors to leave.
Gay laughter was heard. Miss Ethel and the duke came back. “Ah,
charming! Couldn’t be more amusing,” said the duke. “A regular
art-trap! I must get one myself, to catch fools.”
All left the studio except Phil, and Helia, who was to pose for him.
They were already on the stairs, and Caracal, exasperated, went with
them, like the legendary devil who disappears into the earth, carrying
with him, instead of a soul, his cow painting under his arm. Behind
him, in place of the classical odor of brimstone, there was only the
fragrance of the Parma violets which Miss Rowrer let fall by accident
as she went away.
The noise ceased on the staircase—Phil was already seated on the sofa
beside Helia.