I
This all happened on the banks of the Seine, above St. Cloud--above
Suresne, in fact, or rather its bridge--the new one that has pieced out
the old one with the quaint stone arches that we love.
A silver-gray haze, a pure French gray, hung over the river, softening
the sky-line of the near-by hills, and making ghosts of a row of
gendarme poplars guarding the opposite bank.
On my side of the stream wandered a path close to the water's edge--so
close that I could fill my water-cups without leaving my
sketching-stool. Over this path, striped with shadows, big trees
towered, their gnarled branches interlaced above my head. On my right,
rising out of a green sward cleared of all underbrush, towered other
trees, their black trunks sharp-cut against the haze. In the distance,
side by side with the path, wound the river, still asleep, save where it
flashed into waves of silver laughter at the touch of some frolicsome
puff of wind. Elsewhere, although the sun was now hours high, it dozed
away, nestling under the overhanging branches making their morning
toilet in its depths. But for these long, straight flashes of silver
light glinting between the tree-trunks, one could not tell where the
haze ended and the river began.
As I worked on, my white umbrella tilted at the exact angle so that my
palette, hand, and canvas would be hidden from the inquisitive sun, a
group of figures emerged from a clump of low trees, and made their way
across the green sward--the man in an ivory-black coat, evidently a
priest, even at that distance; the woman in a burnt-umber dress with a
dot of Chinese white for a head--probably a cap; and the third, a girl
of six or eight in a brown madder dress and yellow-ochre hat.
An out-door painter, while at work, tumbles everything that crosses his
path or comes within range of his vision into the crucible of his
palette. The most majestic of mountains and the softest of summer clouds
are to him but flat washes of cobalt, and the loveliest of dimples on
the fairest of cheeks but a shadow-tone, and a high light made real by
pats of indigo and vermilion.
So in the three figures went among my trees, the priest in the
background against a mass of yellow light--black against yellow is
always a safe contrast; the burnt-umber woman breaking the straight line
of a trunk, and the child--red on green--intensifying a slash of zinober
that illumined my own grassy sward.
Then my interest in the group ceased. The priest, no doubt, was taking
his sister, or his aunt, or his mother, with their own or somebody
else's little girl, out for an airing, and they had come at the precise
moment when I had begun to long for just such a collection of people;
and now they could take themselves off and out of my perspective,
particularly the reddish-brown girl who kept on dancing in the sunniest
places, running ahead of the priest and the woman, lighting up and
accentuating half a dozen other corners of the wood interior before me
in as many minutes, and making me regret before the paint was half dry
on her own little figure that I had not waited for a better composition.
Then she caught sight of my umbrella.
She came straight toward me with that slowing of pace as she approached
the nearer, her curiosity getting the better of her timidity--quite as a
fawn or a little calf would have done, attracted by some bit of color or
movement which was new to it. The brown madder dress I now saw was
dotted with little spots of red, like sprays of berries; the
yellow-ochre hat was wound with a blue ribbon, and tied with a bow on
one side. I could see, too, that she wore slippers, and that her hair
was platted in two pig-tails, and hung down her back, the ends fastened
with a ribbon that matched the one on her hat.
She stood quite still, her face perfectly impassive, her little hands
clasped together, the brim of her hat shading her eyes, which looked
straight at my canvas.
I gave no sign of her presence. It is dangerous to break down the
reserve of silence, which is often the only barrier between an out-door
painter and the crowds that surround him. Persisted in, it not only
compels their respect, even to the lowering of their voices and the
tip-toeing in and out of the circle about you, but shortens the time of
their visits, a consummation devoutly to be wished. So I worked on in
silence, never turning toward this embodiment of one of Boutet do
Monvel's drawings, whose absorbed face I could see out of one corner
of my eye.
Then a ripple of laughter broke the stillness, and a little finger was
thrust out, stopping within a hair's-breadth of the dot of Chinese
white, still wet, which topped my burnt-umber figure.
"Très drôle, Monsieur!"
The voice was sweeter than the laugh. One of those flute-like,
bird-throated voices that children often have who live in the open all
their lives, chasing butterflies or gathering wild flowers.
Then came a halloo from the greensward. The priest was coming toward us,
calling out, as he walked:
"Susette! Susette!"
He, too, underwent a change. The long, ivory-black cassock, so
unmistakable in the atmospheric perspective, became an ordinary
frock-coat; the white band of a collar developed into the regulation
secular pattern, and the silk hat, although of last year's shape,
conformed less closely in its lines to one belonging exclusively to the
clergy. The face, though, as I could see in my hurried glance, and even
at that distance, was the smooth, clean-shaven face of a priest--the
face of a man of fifty, I should think, who had spent all his life in
the service of others.
Again came the voice, this time quite near.
"Susette! Susette!"
The child, without turning her head, waved her hand in reply, looked
earnestly into my face, and with a quick bending of one knee in
courtesy, and a "Merci, M'sieu; merci," ran with all her speed toward
the priest, who stretched wide his arms, half-lifting her from the
ground in the embrace. Then a smile broke over his face, so joyous, so
full of love and tenderness, so much the unconscious index of the heart
that prompted it, that I laid down my palette to watch them.
I have known many priests in my time, and I have never ceased to marvel
at the beauty of the tie which binds them to the little ones of their
flocks. I have never been in a land where priests and children were not
companions. These long-frocked guardians sit beside their playgrounds,
with noses in their breviaries, or they head processions of boys and
girls on the way to chapel, or they follow, two by two, behind a long
string of blue-checked aprons and severe felt hats, the uniform of the
motherless; or they teach the little vagrants by the hour--often it is
the only schooling that these children get.
But I never remember one of them carrying such a waif about in his arms,
nor one irradiated by such a flash of heavenly joy when some child, in a
mad frolic, saw fit to scrape her muddy shoes down the front of his
clean, black cassock.
The beatific smile itself was not altogether new to me. Anyone else can
see it who wanders into the Gallery of the Prado. It irradiates the face
of an old saint by Ribera--a study for one of his large canvases, and is
hung above the line. I used to stand before it for hours, studying the
technique. The high lights on the face are cracked in places, and the
shadows are blackened by time, but the expression is that of one who
looks straight up into heaven. And there is another--a Correggio, in
the Hermitage, a St. Simon or St. Timothy, or some other old
fellow--whose eyes run tears of joy, and whose upturned face reflects
the light of the sun. Yet there was something in the face of the priest
before me that neither of the others had--a peculiar human quality,
which shone out of his eyes, as he stood bareheaded in the sunshine, the
little girl in his arms. If the child had been his daughter--his very
own and all he had, and if he had caught her safe from some danger that
threatened her life, it could not have expressed more clearly the
joyousness of gratitude or the bliss inspired by the sense of possessing
something so priceless that every other emotion was absorbed.
It was all over in a moment. He did not continue to beam irradiating
beatitudes, as the old Ribera and the older Correggio have done for
hundreds of years. He simply touched his hat to me, tucked the child's
hand into his own, and led her off to her mother.
I kept at my work. For me the incident, delightful as it was, was
closed. All I remembered, as I squeezed the contents of another tube on
to my palette, was the smile on the face of the priest.
The weather now began to take part in the general agitation. The lazy
haze, roused by the joyous sun, had gathered its skirts together and had
slipped over the hills. The sun in its turn had been effaced by a big
cloud with scalloped edges which had overspread the distant line of the
river, blotting out the flashes of silver laughter, and so frightening
the little waves that they scurried off to the banks, some even trying
to climb up the stone coping out of the way of the rising wind. A cool
gust of air, out on a lark, now swept down the path, and, with lance in
rest, toppled over my white umbrella. Big drops of rain fell about me,
spitting the dust like spent balls. Growls of thunder were heard
overhead. One of those rollicking, two-faced thunder-squalls, with the
sun on one side and the blackness of the night on the other, was
approaching.
The priest had seen it, for he had the child pickaback and was running
across the sward. The woman had seen it, too, for she was already
collecting her baskets, preparing to follow, and I was not far behind.
Before she had reached the edge of the woods I had overtaken her, my
traps under my arm, my white umbrella over my head.
"The Châlet Cycle is the nearest," she volunteered, grasping the
situation, and pointing to a path opening to the right as she spoke.
"Is that where he has taken the child?" I asked, hurriedly.
"No, Monsieur--Susette has gone home. It is only a little way."
I plunged on through the wet grass, my eyes on the opening through the
trees, the rain pouring from my umbrella. Before I had reached the end
of the path the rain ceased and the sun broke through, flooding the wet
leaves with dazzling light.
These two, the clouds and the sun, were evidently bent on mischief,
frightening little waves and painters and bright-eyed children and good
priests who loved them!