Five days later Brainard stood chatting with Herr Adolf Schneider and
Herr Nathan Schneider on the broad granite steps of the Crédit Lyonnais
in Paris. The transfer of all Krutzmacht’s papers, except the packages
of bonds, had just been completed within the bank, and receipts for them
had been given to the young American, together with drafts on New York
for two millions of dollars.
“May I inquire what you intend to do now?” Herr Nathan asked, simple
curiosity on his broad face.
“I’m going to put in one week more here, then pull out for San Francisco,
and try to hunt up my principal,” Brainard replied.
“You are not afraid to return to the States?” Herr Adolf inquired.
“Why should I be? Our people know when they are licked. Those crooks
won’t worry me any longer. More likely they’ll be after you now!”
Brainard laughed pleasantly.
“I think,” Herr Nathan observed complacently, “we can take care of them.”
“I hope so! I want to see those bonds make good some day.”
“Don’t be in a hurry to sell your bonds, young man. That is my best
advice,” the banker said gravely.
“I’ll tell Mel—my principal what you say,” Brainard laughed back. “Now
good day to you, gentlemen, and good hunting!”
Herr Adolf shook the young man’s hand cordially.
“If you ever want a business—after you have discovered this mysterious
heir to Mr. Krutzmacht—why, come over here to me, and I will make a
financier of you!”
“Thanks!”
* * * * *
Brainard sauntered slowly down the crowded boulevard. He had before him
seven more days of Paris—seven beautiful June days. For he had resolved
to give himself one week of pure vacation in Paris as payment for
services performed for his unknown principal. Thus seriously did he hold
himself to his mission.
At the end of the week he would take the first fast steamer for New York,
and begin the hunt for an heir for the money he had obtained from old
Krutzmacht’s property—for that shadowy Melody whose name so persistently
haunted his imagination. But now how best could he spend these last
precious hours of freedom and delight which he had well earned?
The young American with two million dollars in his pockets paused beside
the curb and watched the brilliant stream of Paris life flow past him for
many minutes. Then he beckoned to a cab, and drove to a steamship
office, where he engaged passage for that day week from Cherbourg. Next
he went to a tailor, and ordered clothes to replace his Chicago
ready-made suit, which no longer satisfied his aspirations in the way of
personal appearance. He did not mean to go shabby any longer, no matter
what fate might be in store for him at the close of his present
adventure.
These necessary duties performed, he betook himself to a famous
restaurant near the Madeleine, where he ordered an excellent breakfast.
While he ate, he laid his plans.
Brainard had made most of his journey through life without congenial
companions, but now he felt a desire for companionship. It was another
of those hitherto unsuspected capacities that had been stimulated by his
recent experiences. He bethought himself of the only human being he knew
in all Paris—the amiable Mme. Vernon, his friend of the _Toulouse_; so
after his breakfast he proceeded to the Frenchwoman’s hotel. Mme. Vernon
welcomed him cordially.
“I thought you had returned to America.”
“I have another week,” he explained, “and I want you to show me how to
spend it. Think of everything that a man twenty-eight years old, who has
never had a day’s real vacation in his life, would like to see and do in
Paris, and we’ll do it all together. That is, if you can give me the
time!”
The good-natured Frenchwoman, who had returned to her native country
after a long absence in “barbarian lands,” did not seem greatly occupied,
and was not averse to spending a few days with this _naïf_ American. She
smiled upon Brainard.
“It is a serious matter,” she said after meditation, wrinkling her placid
brow. “And you must see all?”
“Everything!”
“In one week!” she cried. “_Allons_—let us start!”
There began seven days of wonder and delight—enough to pay with good
measure for all the sordid years of struggle that the young man had
endured; enough to last him, if need be, for a lifetime of dull toil.
The amiable Frenchwoman entered into the spirit of her task with
enthusiasm and a high intelligence, and Brainard paid the way with
unquestioning liberality.
“It’s my commission on two millions,” he said to himself, entering the
items scrupulously in his little account book.
From gallery and church and restaurant to theater and opera and café they
trailed through the sunny days and the soft nights. They haunted the
theaters especially, for the young American—would-be dramatist—felt with
sure instinct that here he had discovered the pure gold of his art after
the sounding brass of Broadway. They went to the little theaters hidden
away in obscure corners, to the theaters of the people, as well as to the
stately stages of the Français and the Odéon and to the popular boulevard
playhouses.
Brainard was like a dry sponge that soaks and soaks but never satisfies
its thirst, so Mme. Vernon declared. With her help, the rapid dialogue
of the theater became easily comprehensible. For the young man’s ears
seemed attuned, his whole intelligence quickened. He was like one
arriving, after a long journey, at the promised land.
“You are an artist,” the Frenchwoman flattered, “and should stay here
with us in the land of artists!”
Brainard merely smiled, murmuring:
“We, too, are artists over there, in our way—artists of life!”
The last day came. At midnight the two companions emerged upon the busy
Place du Théâtre Français, beside the plashing fountain. It had been
“Phèdre,” and the Frenchwoman had yawned through the stately lines of
sublime passion. She would have preferred the farce at the Palais Royal,
or to prolong their last intimate dinner at Lavenue’s, which she loved so
well. But the young American had sat enthralled, and now he walked as in
a dream, with head erect.
In a few hours more this dream in which he had lived, this inspired world
of beauty and art, would have vanished from his sight, never again,
perhaps, to dazzle his eyes. Some careless god had taken him from his
dingy corner and had shown him what a wonderful place this world can be.
Now, after a week spent in the city of his desires, he must return to his
own little hole, and let the clouds of reality fall between him and his
vision.
“But why, oh, why,” he murmured aloud, “can’t we have something like
that? Why isn’t there a place in all America where poor devils like
myself could drop in for a few hours of paradise?”
“My poor poet!” the Frenchwoman exclaimed, guiding his footsteps gently
toward a lighted café. “If you like it so much, why dost thou leave thy
paradise?”
“Because it is so ordered,” he replied simply.
“By whom?”
And as he did not answer, she suggested with a slight smile:
“By that one of whom you spoke—that Mélodie?”
“By Melody!” he affirmed gravely.
For to-night, on the eve of his departure for America, that elusive
mistress seemed especially real and compelling, no mere figment of his
heated brain.
“Then, indeed,” said the Frenchwoman, with a touch of pique, “you must be
in love with your Mélodie!”
The young American laughed.
“Hardly. I don’t know her!”
“I do not understand.”
“Nor I!”
With two millions of ready money lying close to his heart in the drafts
of the Schneider Brothers, it never entered the young man’s mind that he
might prolong his vacation indefinitely.
“Stay with us another eight days,” urged his companion, laying a
caressing hand upon his arm. “Your Mélodie will wait for you!”
Brainard laughed, and for reply paid the waiter and rose from the table
where they sat. They walked out into the soft night, and passed through
the Tuileries Gardens, across the great square beyond, with its silent
monuments and gleaming lights. When they reached Mme. Vernon’s
apartment, the Frenchwoman urged him to enter.
“It is the last time,” she said sentimentally.
Brainard held out a friendly hand; but she would not let him go.
“I have not thanked you enough for this!” She pointed coquettishly to a
lovely pendant which she had admired in a window of the Rue de la Paix,
and which Brainard had bought for her.
“That’s nothing—just to remember me by!”
“I do not need it for that!”
“Good night,” he said, “and good-by—it has been a great week!”
And that was all.
“‘Good night and good-by—it has been a great week!’” The Frenchwoman
mimicked the young man’s words to herself. “_Ciel_, what manner of man
can he be? Or have I grown so old?” And she answered herself with a
sigh: “No, he’s only a poet, and he is in love with—an idea! Mélodie!
Foolish poet!”
So that was the final judgment of Mme. Vernon.
But out in the gentle June night, under the dark Paris sky, the poet was
sauntering beneath the dusky shadow of the Louvre, the music of the lines
he had heard that evening floating through his brain. He drifted on past
the empty courts of the old palace, toward the river, exalted by all that
he had seen and felt during these last seven wonderful days. The
spinning moments of his brief dream were too precious to waste in sleep.
As he went, he talked aloud to himself.
“We ought to have something like it over there. It _could_ be done, too!
Melody should do it for us, with a portion of all this loot that I am
bringing back to her. She should give something to America to justify
her name!”
If Mme. Vernon had heard these muttered words, she would doubtless have
qualified her judgment of the young American by adding:
“He is a crazy poet!”
Indeed there was something scarcely rational in the young American’s
enthusiasm, the glowing intoxication of spirit in which he enveloped
Paris. That too had been preparing for him through all the vicissitudes
of the past weeks,—by the sudden resolves to commit himself to the sick
man’s purpose, the growth of will as he met each fresh complication, the
physical and moral regeneration of the long trail into Mexico, above all
by the sense of triumph gained in his encounter with the Berlin banker.
The crust of his starved nature had broken, and at the magic touch of
Paris there appeared the better spirit of the man,—fearless,
enthusiastic, worshiping,—the spirit of the artist, as Mme. Vernon had
said. Even in his quixotic renunciation, his determination to turn away
from the happiness he had found, there was a glowing conviction that this
was not the end. The spirit would survive. ’Twas, indeed, but the
start, the preparation for another adventure, larger, more thrilling,
that loomed before him, across the ocean. Paris also was but revelation
and preparation; more was to come! . . .
The graceful lines of the Palace of the Louvre rose mysteriously into the
night, and recalled to Brainard the pages of old Dumas, from whom he had
learned to know France. Home of the past, of a great race, home of
beauty and art and romance, it called to him, young barbarian that he
was, cast by chance upon its shores!
Beneath the stone parapet on which he was leaning, a laden barge passed
stealthily over the black surface of the river. He followed it up the
quays, crossing the Pont Neuf, over which loomed the shadowy figure of
the king on horseback, on toward Notre Dame. All was still and silent
about the old cathedral as he paced under the shadows of the springing
buttresses. At last, while he lingered on the point of the island, out
of the east came a rosy light that touched the great gray towers of the
cathedral. It was the misty dawn.
“To think,” he murmured prayerfully, “that I might have died without
knowing all this!”
The old stone buildings along the winding river gradually emerged from
the gray mist of the dawn and hung as if suspended, floating before his
eyes. The thin branches of a tall poplar waved lightly above his head,
dropping to him a yellow leaf. A _gendarme_ who was patrolling the quay
looked interrogatively into the face of the young American, as if he were
suspicious of his proximity to the river at that hour of the morning.
“_Beau temps_,” he observed amicably to the loiterer.
“What do you say?” Brainard asked, coming a long way down to earth.
The officer repeated his innocent remark about the weather.
“Yes, the _temps_ is all right,” the young man agreed. “Fine!”
Evidently another of those foolish Americans, star-gazing in the early
dawn! The officer lingered near, cocking his eye on the stranger; but
Brainard had started for his hotel, talking to himself as he walked.
“There’s a whole lot, Melody, I can never pay you for, even with two
millions and a bunch of five-per-cent bonds! Where are you, Melody, in
all this wide world?”
Suddenly he stopped, and stood very still. Then, slapping his thigh, he
shouted into the dawn:
“Why, Monument! Monument, Arizona! That’s it! That’s what the old boy
was trying to say at the very end, when he was too far gone to make
himself clearly understood. He was trying to give me the address, of
course!”
The _gendarme_, thinking there must be something wrong with a young man
who acted in this fashion, followed Brainard to his hotel, whither, now
that he had solved his puzzle, he went at a brisk pace.