When he turned back, a day later, from the turmoil of the station,
from the strenuous labor of weighing trunks, locating the compartment
in the train, subsidizing the guards, and, hardest of all, saying
good-bye to Duska with a seeming or normal cheerfulness, Steele found
himself irritably out of measure with the quick-step of Paris. Mrs.
Horton and the girl were on their way to the Riviera. He was left
behind to watch results; almost, it seemed to him, to sit by and
observe the post-mortem on every hope in the lives of three people.
Nice should still be quiet. The tidal wave of "trippers" would not for
a little while sweep over its rose-covered slopes and white beaches
and dazzling esplanades, and the place would afford the girl at least
every soothing influence that nature could offer. That would not be
much, but it would be something.
As for himself, he felt the isolation of Paris. On a desert, a man
may become lonely; in deep forests and on high mountains, he may come
to know and hate his own soul in solitude, but the last note of
aloofness, of utter exile, is that which comes to him who looks vainly
for one face in a sea of other faces, whose small cosmos lies in
unwept and unnoticed ruin in the midst of a giant city that moves
along its indifferent way to the time of dance-music. In the hotel,
there was the chatter of tourists. His own tongue was prattled by men
and women whose lives seemed to revolve around the shops of the _Rue
de la Paix_, or whose literature was the information of the
guide-books. He felt that everyone was invading his somberness of mood
with trivialities, until, in revulsion against the whole stage-setting
of things, he had himself and his luggage transported to the _Hotel
Voltaire_, where the life about him was the simpler life of the less
pretentious _quais_ of the Seine.
After his _dejeuner_, he sat for a time attempting to readjust his
ideas. He had told Saxon that he would never again speak of love to
Duska. Now, he realized how barren of hope it would ever be for him to
renew his plea. She had bankrupted his heart. He had buried his own
hopes, and no one except himself had known at what cost to himself. He
had taken his place in the niche dedicated to closest friend, just
outside the inner shrine reserved for the one who could penetrate that
far. Now, he was in a greater distress. Now, he wanted only her
happiness, and as he had never wanted it before. Now, he realized that
the only source through which this could come was the source that
seemed hopelessly clogged. There was no doubt of his sincerity. Even
his own intimate questioning acquitted him of self-consideration.
Could he at that moment have had one wish fulfilled by some magic
agency of miracle, that wish would have been that he might lead Robert
Saxon, as Robert Saxon had been, to Duska, with all his memory and
love intact, and free from any incumbrance that might divide them.
That would have been the gift of all gifts, and the only gift that
would drive the look of heart-hunger and despair from her eyes.
Steele was restless, and, taking up his hat, he strolled out along the
quay, and turned at last into the _Boulevard St. Michel_, stretching
off in a broad vista of cafe-lined sidewalks. The life of the "_Boule
Mich_" held no attraction for him. In his earlier days, he had known
it from the river to the _Boulevard Montparnasse_. He knew its
tributary streets, its lodgings, its schools and the life which the
spirit of the modern is so rapidly revolutionizing from Bohemia's
shabby capital to a conventionalized district. None of these things
held for him the piquant challenge of novelty.
As he passed a certain cafe, which he had once known as the informal
club of the Marston cult, he realized that here the hilarity was more
pronounced than elsewhere. The boulevard itself was for squares a
thread, stringing cafes like beads in a necklace. Each had its crowd
of revelers; its boisterous throng of frowsy, velvet-jacketed,
long-haired students; its laughing models; its inevitable brooding and
despondent _absintheurs_ sitting apart in isolated melancholy. Yet,
here at the "_Chat Noir_," the chorus was noisier. Although the
evening was chill, the sidewalk tables were by no means deserted. The
Parisian proves his patriotism by his adherence to the out-door table,
even if he must turn up his collar, and shiver as he sips his wine.
Listlessly, Steele turned into the place. It was so crowded this
evening that for a time it looked as though he would have difficulty
in finding a seat. At last, a waiter led him to a corner where,
dropping to the seat along the wall, he ordered his wine, and sat
gloomily looking on.
The place was unchanged. There were still the habitues quarreling over
their warring tenets of the brush; men drawn to the center of painting
as moths are drawn to a candle; men of all nationalities and sorts,
alike only in the general quality of their unkempt _grotesquerie_.
There was music of a sort; a plaintive chord long-drawn from the
violin occasionally made its sweet wail heard above the babel and
through the reeking smoke of the room. Evidently, it was some occasion
beyond the ordinary, and Steele, leaning over to the student nearest
him, inquired in French:
"Is there some celebration?"
The stranger was a short man, with hair that fell low on his neck and
greased his collar. He had a double-pointed beard and deep-set black
eyes, which he kept fixed on his absinthe as it dripped drop by drop
from the nickeled device attached to his _frappe_ glass. At the
question, he looked up, astonished.
"But is it possible monsieur does not know? We are all brothers
here--brothers in the worship of the beautiful! Does not monsieur
know?"
Steele did not know, and he told the stranger so without persiflage.
"It is that the great Marston has returned!" proclaimed the student,
in a loud voice. "It is that the master has come back to us--to
Paris!"
The sound of his voice had brought others about the table. "Does
monsieur know that the Seine flows?" demanded a pearly pretty model,
raising her glass and flashing from her dark eyes a challenging glance
of ridicule.
Steele did not object to the good-humored baiting, but he looked about
him, and was thankful that the girl on her way to Nice could not look
in on this enthusiasm over the painter's home-coming; could not see to
what Marston was returning; what character of devotees were pledging
the promotion of the first disciple to the place of the worshiped
master.
Some half-drunken student, his hand upon the shoulder of a model,
lifted a tilting glass, and shouted thickly, "_Vive l'art! Vive
Marston!_" The crowd took up the shout, and there was much clinking of
glass.
Steele, with a feeling of deep disgust, rose to go. The other _quais_
of the Seine were better after all. But, as he reached for his hat, he
felt a hand on his shoulder, and, turning, recognized, with a glow of
welcome, the face of M. Herve. Like himself, M. Herve seemed out of
his element, or would have seemed so had he also not had, like Steele,
that adaptability which makes some men fit into the picture wherever
they may find themselves. The two shook hands, and dropped back on the
cushions of the wall seat.
"I have heard the story," the Frenchman assured Steele. "Monsieur may
spare himself the pain of repeating it. It is a miracle!"
Steele was looking into his glass.
"It is a most unhappy miracle," he replied.
"But, _mon dieu_!" M. Herve looked across the table, tapping the
Kentuckian's sleeve with his outstretched fingers. "It makes one
think, _mon ami_--it makes one think!"
His vis-a-vis only nodded, and Herve went on:
"It brings home to one the indestructibility of the true genius--the
unquenchable fire of it! Destiny plays a strange game. She has here
taken a man, and juggled with his life; battered his identity to
unrecognizable fragments; set a seal on his past. Yet, his genius she
could not efface. That burned through to the light--sounded on
insistently through the confusion of wreck, even as that violin sounds
through this hell of noises and disorder--the great unsilenced chord!
The man thinks he copies another. Not so--he is merely groping to find
himself. Never have I thought so deeply as since I have heard this
story."
For a time, Steele did not reply. To him, the personal element drowned
the purely academic interest of the psychological phase in this
tragedy.
Suddenly, a new element of surprise struck him, and he leaned across
the table, his voice full of questioning.
"But you," he demanded, "you had studied under Marston. You knew him,
and yet, when you saw Saxon, you had no recognition."
M. Herve nodded his head with grave assent.
"That was my first incredulous thought when I heard of this miracle,"
he admitted; "yet, only for a moment. After all, that was inevitable.
They were different. Now, bearded, ill, depleted, I fancy he may once
more look the man I knew--that man whose hair was a mane, and whose
morbid timidity gave to his eyes a haunted and uncertain fire. When I
saw Saxon, it is true I saw a man wounded and unconscious; his face
covered with blood and the dirt of the street, yet he was, even so,
the man of splendid physique--the new man remade by the immensity of
your Western prairies--having acquired all that the man I had known
lacked. He was transformed. In that, his Destiny was kind--she gave it
not only to his body, but to his brush. He was before a demi-god of
the palette. Now, he is the god."
"Do you chance to know," asked Steele suddenly, "how his hand was
pierced?"
"Have you not heard that story?" the Frenchman asked. "I am
regrettably responsible for that. We sought to make him build the
physical man. I persuaded him to fence, though he did it badly and
without enthusiasm. One evening, we were toying with sharpened foils.
Partly by his carelessness and partly by my own, the blade went
through his palm. For a long period, he could not paint."
Frederick Marston was not at once removed from the lodgings in the
_Rue St. Jacques_. Absolute rest was what he most required. When he
awoke again, unless he awoke refreshed by sufficient rest, Dr. Cornish
held out no hope. The strain upon enfeebled body and brain had been
great, and for days he remained delirious or unconscious. Dr. Cornish
was like adamant in his determination that he should be left
undisturbed for a week or more.
Meanwhile, the episode had unexpected results. The physician who had
come to Paris fleeing from a government he had failed to overturn, who
had taken an emergency case because there was no one else at hand,
found himself suddenly heralded by the Paris press as "that
distinguished specialist, Dr. Cornish, who is effecting a miraculous
recovery for the greatest of painters."
During these days, Steele was constantly at the lodgings, and with
him, sharing his anxiety, was M. Herve. There were many callers to
inquire--painters and students of the neighborhood, and the greater
celebrities from the more distinguished schools.
But no one was more constantly in attendance than Alfred St. John. He
divided his time between the bedside of his daughter and the lodgings
where Marston lay. The talk that filled the Latin Quarter, and
furiously excited the studio on the floor below, was studiously kept
from the girl confined to her couch upstairs.
One day while St. John was in the _Rue St. Jacques_, pacing the small
_cour_ with Steele and Herve, Jean Hautecoeur came in hurriedly. His
manner was that of anxious embarrassment, and for a moment he paused,
seeking words.
St. John's face turned white with a divination of his tidings.
"Does she need me?" he asked, almost breathlessly.
Hautecoeur nodded, and St. John turned toward the door. Steele went
with him, and, as they climbed the steep stairs, the old man leaned
heavily on his support.
The Kentuckian waited in St. John's room most of that night. In the
next apartment were the girl, her father and the physician. A little
before dawn, the old man came out. His step was almost tottering, and
he seemed to have aged a decade since he entered the door of the
sick-room.
"My daughter is dead," he said very simply, as his guest paused at the
threshold. "I am leaving Paris. My people except for me have borne a
good name. I wanted to ask you to save that name from exposure. I
wanted to bury with my daughter everything that might shadow her
memory. For myself, nothing matters."
Steele took the hand the Englishman held tremblingly outstretched.
"Is there anything else I can do?" he asked.
St. John shook his head.
"That will be quite all," he answered.
Such things as had to be done, however, Steele did, and two days
later, when Alfred St. John took the train for Calais and the Channel,
it was with assurances that, while they could not at this time cheer
him, at least fortified him against all fear of need.
It was a week later that Cornish sent for the Kentuckian, who was
waiting in the court.
"I think you can see him now," said the physician briefly, "and I
think you will see a man who has no gaps in his memory."
Steele went with some misgiving to the sick-room. He found Marston
looking at him with eyes as clear and lucid as his own. As he came up,
the other extended a hand with a trembling gesture of extreme
weakness. Steele clasped it in silence.
For a time, neither spoke.
While Steele waited, the other's face became drawn. He was evidently
struggling with himself in desperate distress. There was something to
be said which Marston found it bitterly difficult to say. At last, he
spoke slowly, forcing his words and holding his features in masklike
rigidity of control.
"I remember it all now, George." He hesitated as his friend nodded;
then, with a drawing of his brows and a tremendous effort, he added,
huskily:
"And I must go to my wife."
Steele hesitated before answering.
"You can't do that, Bob," he said, gently. "I was near her as long as
could be. I think she is entirely happy now."
The man in the bed looked up. His eyes read the eyes of the other. If
there was in his pulse a leaping sense of release, he gave it no
expression.
"Dead?" he whispered.
Steele nodded.
For a time, Marston gazed up at the ceiling with a fixed stare. Then,
his face clouded with black self-reproach.
"If I could blot out that injury from memory! God knows I meant it as
kindness."
"There is time enough to forget," said Steele.
It was some days later that Marston went with Steele to the _Hotel
Voltaire_. There was much to be explained and done. He learned for the
first time the details of the expedition that Steele had made to
South America, and then to Europe; of the matter of the pictures and
St. John's connection with them, and of the mystifying circumstances
of the name registered at the Elysee Palace Hotel. That incident they
never fathomed.
St. John had buried his daughter in the _Cimetiere Montmartre_. After
the first mention of the matter on his recovery to consciousness,
Marston had not again alluded to his former wife, until he was able to
go to the spot, and place a small tribute on her grave. Standing
there, somewhat awestruck, his face became deeply grave, and, looking
up at his friend, he spoke with deep agitation:
"There is one part of my life that was a tremendous mistake. I sought
to act with regard for a misconceived duty and kindness, and I only
inflicted infinite pain. I want you to know, and I tell you here at a
spot that is to me very solemn, that I never abandoned her. When I
left for America, it was at her command. It was with the avowal that I
should remain subject to her recall as long as we both lived. I should
have kept my word. It's not a thing that I can talk of again. You
know all that has happened since, but for once I must tell you."
Steele felt that nothing he could say would make the recital easier,
and he merely inclined his head.
"I shall have her removed to England, if St. John wishes it," Marston
said. "God knows I'd like to have the account show some offsetting of
the debit."
As they left the gates for the omnibus, Marston added:
"If St. John will continue to act as my agent, he can manage it from
the other side of the Channel. I shall not be often in Paris."
Later, he turned suddenly to the Kentuckian, with a half-smile.
"We swindled St. John," he exclaimed. "We bought back the pictures at
Saxon prices." His voice became unusually soft. "And Frederick Marston
can never paint another so good as the portrait. We must set that
right. Do you know--" the man laughed sheepishly--"it's rather
disconcerting to find that one has spent seven years in self-worship?"
Steele smiled with relief at the change of subject.
"Is that the sensation of being deified?" he demanded. "Does one
simply feel that Olympus is drawn down to sea level?"
Shortly after, Marston sent a brief note to Duska.
"I shall say little," he wrote. "I can't be sure you will give me a
hearing, but also I can not go on until I have begged it. I can not
bear that any report shall reach you until I have myself reported. My
only comfort is that I concealed nothing that I had the knowledge to
tell you. There is now no blank in my life, and yet it is all blank,
and must remain blank unless I can come to you. I am free to speak,
and, if you give it to me, no one else can deny me the right to speak.
All that I said on that night when a certain garden was bathed in the
moon is more true now than then, and now I speak with full knowledge.
Can you forgive everything?"
And the girl reading the letter let it drop in her lap, and looked out
through her window across the dazzling whiteness of the _Promenade
des Anglais_ to the purple Mediterranean. Once more, her eyes lighted
from deep cobalt to violet.
"But there was nothing to forgive," she softly told the sea.