The studio was in darkness; the old leathern arm-chair was drawn close
to the window, and from its capacious depths Blake looked down upon the
lights of Paris, while Max, leaning over the balcony, looked upward at
the pale May stars clustering like jewelled flowers in the garden of the
sky.
They had finished dinner--a dinner cooked by Blake in the little kitchen
beyond the hall, and empty coffee-cups testified to a meal enjoyed to
its legitimate end. The sense of solitude--of an intimate hour--lay upon
the scene as intangibly and as definitely as did the darkness; but Max,
watching the pageant of the stars, resting his light body against the
iron railing, was filled with a mental restlessness, the nervous
reaction of the day's triumph. More than once he glanced at Blake, a
little gleam of uncertainty flashing in his eyes, and more than once his
glance returned to the sky, as if seeking counsel of its immensity.
Upon what point was Blake speculating? What were the thoughts at work
behind his silence? The questions tormented him like the flicking of a
whip, and he marked with an untoward jealousy the profundity of Blake's
calm--marked it until, goaded by a sudden loneliness, he cried his fear
aloud.
"Ned! You missed me in these weeks?"
Blake started, giving evidence of a broken dream. "Missed you, boy?" he
said, quietly. "I didn't know how much I missed you until I saw you
again to-day."
"And you have made no new friend?"
"Not a solitary one--man, woman, or child!"
The reply would have satisfied the most suspicious; and Max gave a
quick, deep sigh of relief.
"Ah! I thank God!"
In the darkness, Blake smiled, looking indulgently at the youthful
figure silhouetted against the sky. "Why are you so absurd, boy?" he
asked, gently. "Surely, I have proved myself!"
"Forgive me! I was jealous!" With one of his engaging impulses, the boy
straightened himself and came across the balcony. "I am a strange
creature, Ned! I want you altogether for myself--I want to know you
satisfied to be all mine!"
Blake looked up. "Do you know," he said, irrelevantly and a little
dreamily, "do you know that is just the speech I could imagine issuing
from the lips of your picture! Tell me something of this mysterious
sister of yours; I've been patient until now."
Max drew back into the darkness.
"Of my sister? There is nothing to tell!"
"Nonsense! There's always something to tell. It's the sense of a story
behind things that keeps half of us alive. Come! I've spun you many a
yarn." With the quiet air of the man who means to have his way, he took
out and lighted a cigar.
"Come, boy! I'm listening!"
Max had turned back to the railing, and once more he leaned out into the
night; but now his eyes were for the meshed lights of the city and no
longer for the stars, his restlessness had heightened to excitement, his
heart seemed to beat in his throat. The temptation to make confession,
to make confession here, isolated in the midst of the world, with the
friend of his soul for confessor, caught him with the urgency of an
embracing gale. To lay himself bare, and yet retain his garments! His
head swam, as he yielded to the suggestion.
"There is nothing to tell!" he said again.
"That's admitted! All the best stories begin that way."
Max laughed and took a cigarette from his pocket. His nerves were
tingling, his blood racing to the thought of the precipice upon which he
stood. One false step and the fabric of his existence was imperilled!
The adventurer awoke in him alive and alert.
"She intrigues you, then--Maxine?"
"Marvellously--as the Sphinx intrigues me! To begin with, why the name?
You Max! She Maxine!"
For an instant Max scanned the dark plantation with knitted brows; then
he looked over his shoulder with a peculiar smile.
"We are twins, _mon cher!_" he said, taking secret joy in the
elaboration of his lie. "My mother was a Frenchwoman, by name Maxine,
and when she died at our birth, my father in his grief bestowed the name
upon us both--the boy and the girl--Max and Maxine!" Very carefully he
lighted his cigarette. His whole nature was quivering to the dangers of
this masked confession--this dancing upon the edge of the precipice. "My
father was a man of ideas!" He carefully threw the match down into the
rue Müller.
"Your father, I take it, was a personage of importance?" Blake was
momentarily sarcastic.
"A personage, yes," the boy admitted, "but that is not the point. The
point is that he was a man of ideas, who understood the body and the
soul. A man who trained a child in every outdoor sport until it was one
with nature, and then taught it to entrap nature and bend her to the
uses of art. He was very great--my father!"
"He is dead?"
"Yes; he is dead. He died the year before Maxine married."
"Ah, she married?" Absurd as it might seem, there was a fleeting shadow
of disappointment discernible in Blake's voice.
"Yes, she married. After my father's death she went to my aunt in
Petersburg, and there she forgot both nature and art--and me."
"And who was the man she married?"
Max shrugged his shoulders to the ears. "Does it serve any purpose to
relate? He was very charming, very accomplished; how was my sister, at
eighteen, to know that he was also very callous, very profligate, very
cruel? These things happen every day in every country!"
"Did she love him?" Blake was leaning forward in his chair; he had
forgotten to keep his cigar alight.
"Love him?" With a vehemence electric as it was unheralded, Max's voice
altered; with the passionate changefulness of the Russian, indifference
was swept aside, emotion gushed forth. "Love him? Yes, she loved
him--she, who was as proud as God! She loved him so that all her pride
left her--all the high courage of my father left her--"
"And he--the man, the husband?"
"The man?" Max laughed a short, bitter laugh unsuggestive of himself.
"The man did what every man does, my friend, when a woman lies down
beneath his feet--he spurned her away."
"But, my God, a creature like that!"
Again Max laughed. "Yes! That is what you all say of the woman who is
not beneath your own heel! You wonder why I disapprove of love. That is
the reason of my disapproval--the story of my sister Maxine! Maxine who
was as fine and free as a young animal, until love snared her and its
instrument crushed her."
"But the man--the husband?" said Blake again.
"The man? The man followed the common way, dragging her with him--step
by step, step by step--down the sickening road of disillusionment--down
that steep, steep road that is bitter as the Way of the Cross!"
"Boy!"
"I shock you? You have not travelled that road! You have not seen the
morass at the bottom! You have not seen the creature you loved stripped
of every garment that you wove--as has my sister Maxine! You do well to
be shocked. You have not been left with a scar upon your heart; you have
not viewed the last black picture of all--the picture of your beloved as
a dead thing--dead over some affair of passion so sordid that even
horror turns to disgust. You do well to be shocked!"
"Dead?" repeated Blake, caught by the sound of the word. "He died,
then?"
"He killed himself." Max laughed harshly. "Killed himself when all the
wrong was done!"
"And your sister? Your sister? Where did she go--what did she do?"
"What does a woman do when she is thrown up like wreckage after the
storm?"
"She does as her temperament directs. I think your sister would go back
to nature--to the great and simple things."
With a tense swiftness the boy turned from his fixed contemplation of
the sky, his glance flashing upon Blake.
"One must be naked and whole to go back to nature! One fears nature
when one is wreckage from the storm!"
"Then she turned to art?"
"No, my friend! No! Art, like nature, exacts--and she had already given!
She was too frightened--too hurt to meddle with great things. She dried
her tears before they had time to fall; she hardened her heart, and went
back to the world that gives nothing and exacts nothing."
"Poor child!" said Blake. "Poor child!"
"She went back to the world--and the world poured oil on her wounds, and
soothed her fears and taught her its smiling, shallow ways."
"Poor child!"
The reiterated word had a curious effect upon the boy; his fierceness
dropped from him; he turned again to the railing and, looking upward,
seemed to drench himself in the coolness of the starlight.
"For years she lived her shallow life. She took lightly the light gifts
the world offered; among those gifts was love--"
"Stop!" cried Blake, involuntarily. "You are tarnishing the picture!"
"I am only painting in crude colors! Much love was offered lightly to
Maxine, and she took it--lightly; then one day her friend the world
brought for her consideration a suitor more powerful, more
distinguished, even less exigent than the rest--"
"Stop! Stop!" cried Blake, again. "I can't see her as this hard woman.
She frightens me!"
"She has sometimes frightened me," said Max, enigmatically, "but that is
outside the picture. She took, as I tell you, with both hands, smiling
very wisely to herself, holding her head very high. But when the head is
held too high, the feet sometimes fall into a trap. It came
suddenly--the trapping of my sister Maxine."
"Yes! Yes! Tell me!"
"I am telling you, my friend! The date of Maxine's marriage was fixed,
and she moved through her world content. One night a great court
function was held; she was present, her _fiancé_ was present, the
atmosphere was all congratulation--like honey and wine. When it was
over, the _fiancé_ begged the privilege of escorting her to her home,
and they drove together through the cold Russian night. They spoke
little; Maxine's thoughts skimmed lightly over the future, her hands lay
lightly in her _fiancé's_. All was unemotional--all was smooth and
undisturbed--until they reached the street where her house stood; then,
with the swiftness that belongs to mad moments, the being beside her
showed himself. Quick as a flash of lightning, the dignified,
distinguished, unexacting lover was effaced, and in his place was a
man--an animal--a passionate egoist! He caught her in his arms, and his
arms were like iron bands; his lips pressed hers, and they were like a
flame. In a flash, the fabric of her illusions was scattered. She saw
the truth. The world had cheated her, this second marriage was to be as
the first. Terror seized my sister Maxine--terror of life, terror of
herself. Her false calm broke up, as the ice breaks under the hand of
spring--wells of fear gushed in her heart. She dismissed her lover at
the gateway of her house; he guessed nothing--he knew nothing but that
her hands were shaking and that her face was white, but when he was gone
she rushed to her own room, cast off all her jewels, wrapped herself in
a fur cloak and commanded her sledge and her swiftest horses."
"Boy!" cried Blake. "What a situation!"
"She drove, drove for hours, feeling nothing of the biting cold, seeing
nothing of the imprisoning white world about her, goaded by one
idea--the terror of life--the terror of giving herself again--"
"She fled," cried Blake, with sudden intuition. "She never returned to
Petersburg!" He had risen from his chair; he was supremely, profoundly
interested.
"She never returned to her own house. Three days after that wild drive
she left Russia--left Russia and came--"
"To you!" cried Blake. "What a superb situation! She came back to
you--the companion of her youth--to you, adventuring here in your own
odd way! Oh, boy, it's great!"
"It is strange--yes!" said Max, suddenly curbing himself.
"Strange? It's stupendous!" Blake caught him by the shoulder, wheeling
him round, looking straight into his face. "Boy! You know what I'm going
to ask? You know what I'm wanting with all my heart and soul?"
The pressure of his hand was hard; he was the Blake of rare moments--the
Blake roused from nonchalant good-nature into urgency of purpose. Max
felt a doubt, a thin, wavering fear flutter across his mind.
"_Mon cher_," he stammered, "I do not know. How could I know?"
"It's this, then! With all my heart and soul I want to know this sister
of yours."