On an unimportant cross street which cuts at right angles the
_Boulevard St. Michel_, that axis of art-student Paris, stands an old
and somewhat dilapidated house, built, after the same fashion as all
its neighbors, about a court, and entered by a door over which the
_concierge_ presides. This house has had other years in which it stood
pretentious, with the pride of a mansion, among its peers. Now, its
splendor is tarnished, its respectability is faded, and the face it
presents to the street wears the gloom that comes of past glory,
heightened, perhaps, by the dark-spiritedness of many tenants who have
failed to enroll their names among the great.
Yet, for all its forbidding frown, its front bespeaks a certain
consciousness of lingering dignity. A plate, set in the door-case,
announces that the great Marston painted here a few scant years ago,
and here still that more-or-less-distinguished instructor, Jean
Hautecoeur, tells his pupils in the second-floor _atelier_ how it was
done.
He was telling them now. The model, who had been posed as, "Aphrodite
Rising from the Foam," was resting. She sat on the dilapidated throne
amid a circle of easels. A blanket was thrown about her, from the
folds of which protruded a bare and shapely arm, the hand holding
lightly between two fingers the cigarette with which she beguiled her
recess.
The master, looking about on the many industrious, if not
intellectual, faces, was discoursing on Marston's feeling for values.
"He did not learn it," declared M. Hautecoeur: "he was born with it.
He did not acquire it: he evolved it. A faulty value caused him pain
as a false note causes pain to the true musician." Then, realizing
that this was dangerous doctrine from the lips of one who was
endeavoring to instill the quality into others, born with less gifted
natures, he hastened to amend. "Yet, other masters, less facile, have
gained by study what they lacked by heritage."
The room was bare except for its accessories of art. A few
well-chosen casts hung about the walls. Many unmounted canvases were
stacked in the corners, the floors were chalk-marked where
easel-positions had been recorded; charcoal fragments crunched
underfoot when one walked across the boards. From the sky-light--for
the right of the building had only two floors--fell a flood of
afternoon light, filtering through accumulated dust and soot. The door
upon the outer hall was latched. The students, bizarre and unkempt in
the bohemianism of their cult, mixed colors on their palettes as they
listened. In their little world of narrow horizons, the discourse was
like a prophet's eulogy of a god.
As the master, his huge figure somewhat grotesque in its long,
paint-smeared blouse and cap, stood delivering his lecture with much
eloquence of gesture, he was interrupted by a rap on the door. Jacques
du Bois, whose easel stood nearest the threshold, reluctantly took his
pipe from his teeth, and turned the knob with a scowl for the
interruption. For a moment, he stood talking through the slit with a
gentleman in the hall-way, his eyes meanwhile studying with
side-glances the lady who stood behind the gentleman. Then, he bowed
and closed the door.
"Someone wishes a word with M. Hautecoeur," he announced.
The master stepped importantly into the hall, and Steele introduced
himself. M. Hautecoeur declared that he quite well remembered monsieur
and his excellent painting. He bowed to mademoiselle with unwieldly
gallantry.
"Mr. Robert Saxon," began the American, "is, I believe, one of the
most distinguished of the followers of Frederick Marston. Miss Filson
and I are both friends of Mr. Saxon, and, while in Paris, we wished to
visit the shrine of the Marston school. We have taken the liberty of
coming here. Is it possible to admit us?"
The instructor looked cautiously into the _atelier_, satisfied himself
that the model had not resumed her throne and nudity, then flung back
the door with a ceremonious sweep. Steele, familiar with such
surroundings, cast only a casual glance about the interior. It was
like many of the smaller schools in which he had himself painted. To
the girl, who had never seen a life-class at work, it was stepping
into a new world. Her eyes wandered about the walls, and came back to
the faces.
"I have never had the honor of meeting your friend, Monsieur Saxon,"
declared the instructor in English. "But his reputation has crossed
the sea! I have had the pleasure of seeing several of his canvases.
There is none of us following in the footsteps of Marston who would
not feel his life crowned with high success, had he come as close as
Saxon to grasping the secret that made Marston Marston. Your great
country should be proud of him."
Steele smiled.
"Our country could also claim Marston. You forget that, monsieur."
The instructor spread his hands in a deprecating gesture.
"Ah, _mon ami_, that is debatable. True, your country gave him birth,
but it was France that gave him his art."
"Did you know," suggested Steele, "that some of the unsigned Saxon
pictures have passed competent critics as the work of Marston?"
Hautecoeur lifted his heavy brows.
"Impossible, monsieur," he protested; "quite impossible! It is the
master's boast that any man who can pass a painting as a Marston
has his invitation to do so. He never signs a canvas--it is
unnecessary--his stroke--his treatment--these are sufficient
signature. I do not belittle the art of your friend," he hastened to
explain, "but there is a certain--what shall I say?--a certain
individualism about the work of this greatest of moderns which is
inimitable. One must indeed be much the novice to be misled. Yet, I
grant you there was one quality the master himself did not formerly
possess which the American grasped from the beginning."
"His virility of touch?" inquired Steele.
"Just so! Your man's art is broader, perhaps stronger. That difference
is not merely one of feeling: it is more. The American's style was the
outgrowth of the bigness of your vast spaces--of the broad spirit of
your great country--of the pride that comes to a man in the
consciousness of physical power and currents of red blood! Marston was
the creature of a confined life, bounded by walls. He was
self-absorbed, morbid, anemic. To be the perfect artist, he needed
only to be the perfect animal! He did not understand that. He disliked
physical effort. He felt that something eluded him, and he fought for
it with brush and mahlstick. He should have used the Alpinstock or the
snow-shoe." Hautecoeur was talking with an enthused fervor that swept
him into metaphor.
"Yet--" Steele was secretly sounding his way toward the end he
sought--"yet, the latter pictures of Marston have that same quality."
"Precisely. I would in a moment more have spoken of that. I have my
theory. Since leaving Paris, I believe Marston has gone perhaps into
the Alps, perhaps into other countries, and built into himself the
thing we urged upon him--the robust vision."
The girl spoke for the first time, putting, after the fashion of the
uninitiated, the question which, the more learned hesitate to
propound:
"What is this thing you call the secret? What is it that makes the
difference?"
"Ah, mademoiselle, if I knew that!" The instructor sighed as he
smiled. "How says the English Fitzgerald? 'A hair perhaps divides the
false and true.' Had Marston had the making of the famous epigram, he
would not have said he mixed his paints with brains. Rather would he
have confessed, he mixed them with ideals."
"But I fear we delay the posing," suggested Steele, moving, with
sudden apprehension, toward the door.
"I assure you, no!" prevaricated the teacher, with instant readiness.
"It is a wearying pose. The model will require a longer rest than the
usual. Will not mademoiselle permit me to show her those Marston
canvases we are fortunate enough to have here? Perhaps, she will then
understand why I find it impossible to answer her question."
* * * * *
When Captain Paul Harris had set his course to France with a slow,
long voyage ahead, his shanghaied passenger had gone from stunned
unconsciousness into the longer and more complicated helplessness of
brain-fever. There was a brushing of shoulders with death. There were
fever and unconsciousness and delirium, and through each phase Dr.
Cornish, late of the Foreign Legion, brought his patient with studious
care--through all, that is, save the brain fog. Then, as the vessel
drew to the end of the voyage, the physical illness appeared to be
conquered, yet the awakening had been only that of nerves and bodily
organs. The center of life, the mind, was as remote and incommunicable
as though the thought nerves had been paralyzed. Saxon was like a
country whose outer life is normal, but whose capital is cut off and
whose government is supine. The physician, studying with absorbed
interest, struggled to complete the awakening. Unless it should be
complete, it were much better that the man had died, for, when the
vessel dropped her anchor at Havre, the captain led ashore a man who
in the parlance of the peasants was a poor "innocent," a human
blank-book in a binding once handsome, now worn, with nothing
inscribed on its pages.
For a time, the physician and skipper were puzzled as to the next
step. The physician was confident that the eyes, which gazed blankly
out from a face now bearded and emaciated, would eventually regain
their former light of intelligence. He did not believe that this
helpless creature--who had been, when he first saw him in Puerto Frio,
despite blood-discolored face and limp unconsciousness, so perfect a
figure of a man--had passed into permanent darkness. The light would
again dawn, possibly at first in fitful waverings and flashes through
the fog. If only there could be some familiar scene or thing to
suggest the past! But, unfortunately, all that lay across the world.
So, they decided to take him to Paris, and ensconce him in Captain
Harris' modest lodgings in the _Rue St. Jacques_, and, inasmuch as the
captain's lodgings were shared by no one, and his landlady was a
kindly soul, Dr. Cornish also resolved to go there. For a few weeks,
the sailor was to be home from the sea, and meant to spend his holiday
in the capital. As for the physician, he was just now unattached. He
had hoped to be in charge of a government's work of health and
sanitation. Instead, he was idle, and could afford to remain and study
an unusual condition. He certainly could not abandon this anonymous
creature whom fate had thrust upon his keeping. Now, six weeks after
his accident, Saxon sat alone in the modest apartment of the lodgings
in the _Rue St. Jacques_. Since his arrival in Paris, the walls of
that room and the court in the center of the house had been the
boundaries of his world. He had not seen beyond them. He had been
physically weak and languid, mentally void. They had attempted to
persuade him to move about, but his apathy had been insuperable.
Sometimes, he wandered about the court like a small child. He had no
speech. Often, he fingered a rusty key as a baby fingers a rattle. On
the day that Steele and Duska had gone to the academy of M.
Hautecoeur, Dr. Cornish and Paul Harris had left the lodgings for a
time, and Saxon sat as usual at a window, looking absently out on the
court.
In its center stood a stone _jardiniere_, now empty. About it was the
flagged area, also empty. In front was the street-door--closed. Saxon
looked out with the opaque stare of pupils that admit no images to the
brain. They were as empty as the stone jar. Possibly, the sun,
borrowing some of the warmth of the spent summer, made a vague appeal
to animal instinct; possibly, the first ray of mental dawn was
breaking. At all events, Saxon rose heavily, and made his way into the
area.
At last, he wandered to the street-door. It happened to be closed, but
the _concierge_ stood near.
"_Cordon?_" inquired the porter, with a smile. It is the universal
word with which lodgers in such abodes summon the guardian of the gate
to let them in or out.
Saxon looked up, and across the hitherto unbroken vacancy of his
pupils flickered a disturbed, puzzled tremor of mental groping.
He opened his thin lips, closed them again, then smiled, and said with
perfect distinctness:
"_Cordon, s'il vous plait._"
The _concierge_ knew only that monsieur was an invalid. In his next
question was nothing more than simple Gallic courtesy.
"_Est-ce que monsieur va mieux aujour d'hui?_"
Once more, Saxon's lips hesitated, then mechanically moved.
"_Oui, merci_," he responded.
The man who found himself standing aimlessly on the sidewalk of the
_Rue St. Jacques_, was a man clothed in an old and ill-fitting suit of
Captain Harris' clothes. He was long-haired, hollow-cheeked and
bearded like a pirate. At last, he hesitatingly turned and wandered
away at random. About him lay Paris and the world, but Paris and the
world were to him things without names or meaning.
His unguided steps carried him to the banks of the Seine, and finally
he stood on the island, gazing without comprehension at the square
towers of _Notre Dame_, his brows strangely puckered as his eyes
picked out the carvings of the "Last Judgment" and the _Galerie des
Rois_.
He shook his head dully, and, turning once more, went on without
purpose until at the end of much wandering he again halted. This time,
he had before him the _Pantheon's_ entrance, and confronting him on
its pedestal sat a human figure in bronze. It was Rodin's unspeakably
melancholy conception, "_le Penseur_," and it might have stood for
Saxon's self as it half-crouched with limbs tense and brows drawn in,
in the agony of brooding thought-travail.
Then, Saxon's head came up, and into his eyes stole a confused
groping, as though reason's tentacles were struggling out blindly for
something upon which to lay hold. With such a motion perhaps, the
prehistoric man-creature may have thrown up his chin at the bursting
into being of thought's first coherent germ. But from "_le Penseur_"
Saxon turned away with a futile shake of his head to resume his
wanderings.
Finally, in a narrow cross street, he halted once more, and looked
about him with a consciousness of vast weariness. He had traversed the
length of many blocks in his aimlessness, crossing and recrossing his
own course, and he was still feeble from long days of illness and
inertia.
Suddenly, he raised his head, and his lips, which had been half-parted
in the manner of lips not obeying a positive brain, closed in a firm
line that seemed to make his chin and jaw take on a stronger contour.
He drew his brows together as he stood studying the door before him,
and his pupils were deeply vague and perplexed. But it was a different
perplexity. The vacuity was gone.
Automatically, one thin hand went into the trousers-pocket, and came
out clutching a rusty key. For another moment, he stood regarding the
thing, turning it over in his fingers. Then, he laughed, and drew back
his sagging shoulders. With the gesture, he threw away all imbecility,
and followed the inexorable call of some impulse which he could not
yet fully understand, but which was neither vague nor haphazard.
At that moment, Dr. Cornish, chancing to glance up from his course a
block away, stopped dumfounded at the sight of his patient. When he
had gathered his senses, and looked again, the patient had
disappeared.
Saxon walked a few steps further, turned into an open street-door,
passed the _concierge_ without a word, and toilsomely, but with a
purposeful tread, mounted the narrow, ill-lighted stairs. At the
turning where strangers usually stumbled, he lifted his foot clear
for the longer stride, yet he had not glanced down.
For just a moment, he paused for breath in the hall, upon which opened
several doors identical in appearance. Without hesitation, he fitted
the ancient key into an equally ancient lock, opened the door, and
entered.
At the click of the thrown tumbler of the lock, some of the occupants
of the place glanced up. They saw the door swing wide, and frame
between its jambs a tall, thin man, who stood unsteadily supporting
himself against the case. The black-bearded face was flushed with a
burning fever, but the eyes that looked out from under the heavy brows
were wide awake and intelligent.
"But Marston will one day return to us," Monsieur Hautecoeur was
declaring to Steele and the girl, who, with backs to the door, were
studying a picture on the wall. "He will return, and then----"
[Illustration: {Saxon arrives at the atelier}]
The instructor had caught the sound of the opening door, and he
half-turned his head to cast a side glance in its direction. His words
died suddenly on his lips. His pose became petrified; his features
transfixed with astonishment. His rigid fixity of face and figure
froze the watching students into answering tenseness. Even the
blanket-wrapped model held a freshly lighted cigarette poised half-way
to her lips. Then, the man in the door took an unsteady step forward,
and from his trembling fingers the key fell to the floor, where in the
dead stillness it seemed to strike with a crash. The girl and Steele
wheeled. At that moment, the lips of the bearded face moved, and from
them came the announcement:
"_Me voici, je viens d'arriver._"
The voice broke the hypnotic suspense of the silence as a pin-point
snaps a toy balloon.
Hautecoeur sprang excitedly forward.
"Marston! Marston has returned!" he shouted, in a great voice that
echoed against the sky-light.
As the man stepped forward, he staggered slightly, and would have
fallen had he not been already folded in the giant embrace of the
lesser master.
Duska stood as white as the fresh sheets of drawing-paper at her feet.
Her fingers spasmodically clenched and opened at her sides, and from
her teeth, biting into the lower lip, her breathing came in gasps. The
walls seemed to race in circles, and it was with half-realization that
she heard Steele calling the man, wildly demanding recognition.
The newcomer was leaning heavily on Hautecoeur's arm. He did not
appear to notice Steele, but his gaze met and held the girl's pallid
face and the intensely anguished eyes that looked into his. For an
instant, they stood facing each other, neither speaking; then, in a
voice of polite concern, the tall man said:
"Mademoiselle is ill!" There was no note of recognition--only, the
solicitous tone of any man who sees a woman who is obviously
suffering.
Duska raised her chin. Her throat gave a convulsive jerk, but she only
caught her lip more tightly between her teeth, so that a moment later,
when she spoke, there were purplish indentations on its almost
bloodless line.
She half-turned to Steele. Her voice was an utterly hopeless whisper,
but as steady as Marston's had been.
"For God's sake," she said, "take me home!"
At the door, they encountered the excited physician, who stumbled
against them with a mumbled apology as he burst into the _atelier_.