The roll-call was over at Julian’s and every place had been marked in
white chalk on the floor. The model in the first studio had profited
by the confusion attendant on the distribution of bread, colours and
canvasses, and, shuffling into his trousers and slippers, strolled into
the second studio of Boulanger and Lefevre to investigate the cause of
the uproar which had arisen and which continued with increasing violence.
The studio was packed with yelling students, some mounted on tabourets,
some on the old dust-chest by the door, others on the stove and
model-stand. From Doucet’s two studios a delegation had arrived, all of
the Sculptors and most of Bouguereau’s men were there, and the noise was
terrific. A big blond fellow wearing the uniform of a cuirassier seemed
to be directing things, and his bellows shook the windows and rattled the
bones on “Pierre,” the battered studio skeleton.
The clerk came in and remonstrated, but Clifford put him out and locked
the glass door, leaving him gesticulating and taking names as fast as he
could write. Then Jules peeped in, smiled sadly and beckoned to Boissy,
the cuirassier massier. Boissy opened the door and explained that they
were only “organising.” That was sufficient, and Jules and the clerk
withdrew.
When the classic halls of Julian’s echoed with demoniac screams,
cat-calls, and howls—when voices were uplifted in every language except
German, and the thickets of easels were mowed down in rows by some
playful boot-heel, it was generally an indication that the students were
“organising.” They had a passion for organising, and they seldom failed
to indulge it. Just now they were organising under the leadership of that
strange creature, Sara, also known as “La Rousse,” who was generally
the root of all mischief in the Quarter. She stood on the model-stand
beside Boissy, her fiery red hair coiled along her neck, her wonderful
white skin glistening, her mysterious face bathed in the sunshine which
streamed down from the glass roof above.
With an inscrutable smile she studied the massed faces below her.
Occasionally her eyes rested on some new man, who never failed to feel
uncomfortable and look at the floor until the grayish-green eyes swept
in another direction. Sara was haughty at best. In her sunniest smiles
lurked the lightning of scorn, and in all her brief “affairs,” the
caprice of passion never disturbed her astounding egotism, never lowered
the imperious head, never drove the shadow of irony from her scarlet lips.
Boissy shouted for silence, and banged on the floor with his spurred
heels, but nobody paid attention until the girl took a step forward and
held up both pink palms as if to shield her ears from the pandemonium.
That was sufficient.
Then with a nod to Boissy, who straightened his epaulettes and looked
fierce, she began very quietly.
“Messieurs il s’agit—” when an unlucky nouveau fell off a stool and
crashed to the floor carrying several easels with him. He was mobbed at
once amid cries of “Silence, cochon! Down with the Nouveau! Vive Sara!”
“C’est épatant,” observed Sara with superb scorn, “fiche moi cet nouveau
au clou!”
No sooner said than the unlucky youth was seized and hustled toward the
dust-chest amid cries of “au clou! au clou!”
Elliott opened the lid of the dust-chest and looked at Boissy.
“What’s his name,” growled Boissy.
“Freddie Fradley,” replied Elliott, “shall he go in?”
Fradley screamed and struggled, but at a sign from Sara they shoved
him in, and, inserting some mahl-sticks under the lid to give him air,
requested “Fatty” Carriere to sit on the top, which he did with alacrity.
Sara tossed her glittering hair and continued, undeterred by the faint
screams from the chest:
“Messieurs, you all know that on the night of the Mi-Carême, it is the
custom of our studio to go en masse, to the Bullier. Messieurs, the
massiers of all the studios have decided to honour me with an escort,
but—” laughing proudly, “that is the difficulty! All of you wish to go
with me, which you know very well is impossible. Are there not other
girls in the Quarter?”
“No!” shouted the students in a spasm of gallantry.
She opened her arms with a peculiarly graceful motion. “You know that I
adore you all,—all the Julian men, and I do not wish to show favouritism—”
“Vive Sara! Vive la Rousse!” came thundering from the students and was
echoed by stifled yells from the dust-chest.
“Fatty” Carriere banged on the lid and uttered awful threats against
Fradley’s health unless he ceased. Sara smiled. “No, no favouritism,” she
said—“mais—mais comment faire?”
“Take us all as escorts!” cried Clifford, and the Frenchmen understood
and took up the cry—“en choisisez pas! _nous voulons aller tous!_”
The girl’s eyes sparkled, and she shook her head at Clifford. “Monsieur
the incorrigible!”
Clifford waved his hat and cried,—“C’est entendu alors! Vive Sara!”
“Mais non, mon petit Clifford,” smiled the girl, “c’est impossible—”
“Not at all,” exclaimed Boissy with a reckless laugh, “Clifford and I—we
will arrange that!”
“Of course,” replied Clifford, “we’ll fix the police.”
Then bedlam broke loose, and impromptu quadrilles began, and “Fatty”
Carriere, unwilling to lose his share of the dance, hastily locked the
chest, punched some air-holes in the lid, oblivious of the danger which
Fradley would run if anybody sat down on them, and went lumbering and
gyrating about until his elephantine gambols shook the building.
Shortly afterward, the fatherly Monsieur Julian appeared, softly
suggesting that work should begin, and ten minutes later the seats were
full, the models posed in the various rooms, and the scrape of charcoal
and palette knife alone broke the quiet of the studio.
Clifford, who had missed the morning roll-call, roamed about looking for
a place. There appeared to be none. The lines of easels radiating in
circles from the model-stand were all occupied. He glared at the nouveaux.
“This is disgusting,” he observed to Elliott, “fancy a four-year man
hunting a place and those fool nouveaux squatting on the tabourets!”
“Come in time,—it’s the only way now,” replied Elliott.
“Here is a place, Mr. Clifford,” said Garland who was sitting in the
front row. Clifford threaded his way among the easels to his side.
“It’s very good of you,” he said; “whose name is that on the floor?”
“Fradley’s,” said Garland. Clifford rubbed it out and substituted his own
signature.
“This begins Fradley’s discipline,” he muttered, and called to Ciceri to
bring him his portfolio. Then he looked at Garland and was prepossessed
in his favor.
“You’re a nouveau, are you not?” he asked amiably; “what is your name?”
“Garland.”
“Mine is Clifford.”
“Oh, we all know that,” laughed Garland.
“Oh, you do!” said Clifford, “and how the devil do you know it?”
Garland did not think it prudent to mention the cab incident, and
Clifford picked up his charcoal and squinted at the model.
“I hear,” said Garland, “that you older men are going to discipline us.”
“We are,” said Clifford calmly.
“Why?”
“Well, you see, we usually receive a certain amount of respect and
deference from new men, and before you fellows came nobody ever heard of
a nouveau turning an old man out of his seat.”
Carrington looked up from his easel. “I am a nouveau,” he said, “and
I think, Mr. Clifford, you will find that the nouveaux respect the
traditions of the studio.”
“I think so, too,” insisted Garland.
Clifford looked at him coldly. “Didn’t you turn me out last week?” he
demanded.
“I,” cried Garland, “never!”
“Fradley did,” said Cary, “and I noticed it at the time and wondered why
you didn’t spank him, Clifford.”
“Well, by Jove!” exclaimed Clifford, “I thought it was you, Garland.”
“I know you did,” replied Garland indignantly, “and a pretty life I’ve
led with Rowden and Elliott and all the concour men making it hot for me.
I respect the traditions and always will.”
“Then I beg your pardon,” said Clifford cordially, “come and see me at my
studio.”
All the nouveaux knew what that meant. It indicated that Garland would
soon be released from menial work, and would find himself in the charmed
circle of the powers that be.
“By the way,” said Clifford, “there is that fellow Fradley in the
dust-chest. Hadn’t I better let him out?”
“Has he enough air?” asked Selby.
“Plenty. I bored some more holes just now and asked him how he felt. He
said I was no gentleman.”
“He says,” said Rowden, “that it’s a disgrace to his family and a blot
on his honour. He’s an excitable customer and screams like a cat when
addressed through the air-holes in the lid.”
“Oh, let him out,” said Clifford.
“No, he must be taught decency. He’s been here three months, and that’s
long enough for the studio to size him up.”
“Why did you put him in?” asked Garland.
“Because,” replied Elliott, “he made a racket trying to go out when Sara
was speaking.”
“He couldn’t help it, he fell off the stool; let him out,” said Clifford.
“No, he must understand that this studio won’t tolerate a sneak. Did you
know that he went to old Julian with tales of our doings and said that
for his part he never met such a rude and vulgar set of men before? He
said he had not come to Paris to listen to models make speeches, but had
expected to find a refined and elevating art atmosphere. He insisted that
he could not draw if the studio was noisy, and he asked old Julian to
stop the racket. Fancy the expression on Julian’s face!”
Clifford’s face was a study. “What impudence,” he said, “what did Julian
do?”
“He? Oh, he told him that he was not obliged to stay; that there were
other schools in Paris.”
Clifford turned to his drawing and shrugged his shoulders. “Let him sit
in the box then,” he muttered, steadying his plumb line with the end of
his pencil; “dust-chest discipline won’t hurt him!”
Clifford was a clever draughtsman. The nouveaux watched him in respectful
admiration as he constructed his study, indicated a shadow here and
there, and then, dusting the paper, rapidly sketched in the essential
outlines and began to model the head with a vigour and dash which did not
at all detract from its value as a serious academic study.
Mid-day struck, and there was a scramble for hats and a rush for the
stairs. Bouguereau’s men came trampling out of their atelier with the
studio band at their head and the studio mascot, a pale-eyed goat named
“Tapage,” bringing up the rear. Following Bouguereau’s atelier came
Doucet’s two rooms and behind them Chapu’s sculptors. The stairs were
jammed, and as Clifford was in a hurry to get his luncheon, he persuaded
“Tapage” to butt the passage clear, which the goat was only too glad to
do, for he smelled the appetising odour of brown paper and cabbage leaves
in the court below.
When Clifford had reached the restaurant on the corner of the boulevard
he remembered that Fradley was still in the dust-bin. “The deuce!” he
muttered, “I’ve got to go back and let the beggar out!”
Sara, who had been posing in the second studio for the concour men had
also forgotten Fradley, and it was only when she had finished dressing
and stood alone in the studio twisting up her burnished tresses, that a
rustling in the dust-chest behind her recalled Fradley’s existence to her
mind.
“B’en vrai!” she exclaimed, “I forgot you, my friend!” and she stooped
and drawing the bolt, lifted the heavy lid. Fradley was squatting in a
corner of the chest.
“Ah! mais ça—c’est trop fort!” she cried in self-reproach; “I am so
sorry.”
Fradley snarled.
The girl looked at him curiously for a moment and then began to laugh.
“To think that we all should have forgotten you, my poor friend! I shall
scold Boissy and Clifford—oh—they shall catch it! Do you know you are
very dusty?”
Fradley arose and surveyed his cuffs. Then he turned to the mirror and
grew giddy with rage. His long, artistically arranged hair was full of
straws, and his thin egotistical features bore little resemblance to
Byron’s at twenty, which he was confident they did when not smeared with
soot.
“The rude, ungentlemanly creatures! The horrid brutes!” he cried. “I will
complain to Julian, I will have them dismissed—”
“Comment?” said the girl.
Then Fradley plunged into the French language.
“Vooly voo donny moi—er—a—rest, or vooly voo pas! Je swee tray
fachy,—er—er—tray, tray fachy!”
“You are angry? Mais mon petit, tu as raison!”
Fradley eyed her with animosity. “C’est votre faut!” he said; “Je dirais
Musseer Julian toot sweet!”
“Comment?” inquired Sara.
“Wee! Wee!” he said with a venomous glance at her, “vooz avvy mis moi
dans cette boite!” She did not understand his accusation, but she laughed
wickedly and marched straight up to him. Before he knew what she was
about she had deliberately thrown her arms about his neck and kissed him.
“There,” she said calmly, “we must not be enemies, mon petit; now I
forgive you for making a racket when I was trying to speak, and you may
tell the whole atelier that Sara has kissed you.” Then with an imperious
nod she marched out of the studio leaving Fradley petrified.
A few moments later Clifford came in and found him still motionless,
gaping vacantly.
“Oh, you’re out, eh?” said Clifford. Fradley paid no attention to this
salute, but stared at the door through which Sara had disappeared.
Clifford eyed him for a moment and then sat down on the chest.
“Fradley,” he said, “you listen to me and I’ll give you a pointer or two
concerning this studio. Be manly and you’ll get along. Don’t kick against
tradition. Better men than either of us have conformed to the customs
here and filled the stove and searched for the ‘grand reflecteur’ on dark
days.”
He looked hard at Fradley. “You had better conform to custom or go
somewhere else. We seldom haze here,—we never haze a manly man, and if
you know anything about the École des Beaux Arts you will appreciate
what I say.”
Fradley was looking at him, but something in his eyes told Clifford he
was not listening.
Then Clifford rose, disgusted, and swung out through the hall and down
the stairs, leaving Fradley in an imbecile trance.