Who shall depict the soul of woman? As well essay to number the silk
hairs on the moth's wing, or paint truly the hues in the blown bubble!
The soul of woman dwells apart, subject to no laws, trammelled by no
precedent; mysterious in its essence, strong in its very frailty, it
passes through many phases to its ultimate end, working as all great
agents work, silently and in the dark.
With the passing of Blake, the spiritual Maxine entered upon a new
phase--was arbitrarily forced into a new phase of existence. The passing
of Blake was sudden, tremendous, devastating in its effect, leaving as
consequences a moral blackness, a moral chaos.
It was a new Maxine who wakened to the realization of facts; rather, it
was a new Max, for it was the masculine, not the feminine ego that
turned a set face to circumstance in the moment of desertion--that
sedulously wrapped itself in the garment of pride spun and fashioned in
happier hours.
'Now is the test! Now is the time!' Max insisted, drowning by insistence
the poignant cry of the heart; and to this watchword he marched against
fate.
With set purpose he faced life and its vexed questions in that bitter,
precipitate moment. Again it was the beginning of things; but it was the
rue Müller and not the Gare du Nord that was the scene of action; the
May sun fell burning on the Parisian pavements, while the blood of the
adventurer ran slow and cold. The illusions bred of the winter dawn had
been dispersed by the light of day; life was no glad enterprise--no
climbing of golden heights, but the barren crossing of a trackless
region where no hand proffered guidance and false signs misled the weary
eyes. One weapon alone was necessary in the pursuance of the gray
journey--a sure command--a sure possession of one's self!
This thought alone made harmony with the music of the past, and toward
its thin sound his ears were strained. Comradeship had come and
gone--love had come and gone--the fundamental idea that had lured him to
Paris alone remained, stark, colorless, but recognizable!
One must possess one's self! And to achieve this supreme good, one must
close the senses and seal up the heart, and be as a creature already
dead!
To this profound end, Max locked himself in his studio and sat alone
while the May morning waxed; to this profound end, moving as in a dream,
he at last rose at midday and left the _appartement_ in quest of his
customary meal. What that meal was to consist of--whether stones or
bread--did not touch his brain, for his mind was solely exercised with
wonder at the fact that his will could command the search for
food--could compel his dry lips to the savorless duty of eating.
As he left the little _café_, paying his score, he half expected to see
his wonder reflected on the good face of madame the proprietress, and
was curiously shocked to receive the usual cheerful smile, the usual
cheerful 'good-day!' that took no heed of his heavy plight.
It was that cheerful superficiality of Paris that can so delightfully
mirror one's mood when the heart is light--that can ring so sadly hollow
when the soul is sick. It cut Max with a bitter sharpness; and, like a
man fleeing from his own shadow, he fled the shop.
Outside in the dazzling glitter of the streets, the sun blinded him,
accentuating the scorching pain of unshed tears; the very pavements
seemed to rise up and sear him with their memories. Here in this very
street Blake and he had strolled and smoked on many a night, wending
homeward from the play or the opera, laughing, jesting, arguing as they
paced arm-in-arm up and down before the sleeping shops. The thought
stung him with an amazing sharpness, and he fled from it, as he had fled
from the _café_ and its smiling proprietress.
His descent upon Paris was a descent upon a region of beauty. The sense
of summer lay like a bloom upon the flowers for sale at the street
corners, and shimmered--a ribbon of silver sunlight--across the
pale-blue sky. The trees in the grand boulevards shone in their green
trappings; rainbow colors glinted in the shop windows; everywhere, save
in the heart of Max, was fairness and youth and joy.
Supremely conscious of himself, adrift and wretched, he passed through
the crowds of people--passed from sun to shade, from shade to sun--with
a hopeless eager haste that possessed no object save to outstrip his
thoughts.
It is a curious fact that, to the desponding, water has a magnetic call;
without knowledge, almost without volition, his footsteps turned toward
the river--that river which has so closely girdled Paris through all her
varied life. Smooth and pale, it slipped secretly past its quays as Max
approached, indifferent to the tragedies it concealed, as it was
indifferent to the ardent life that ebbed and flowed across its many
bridges. On its breast, the small, dark craft of the city nestled
lazily; to right and left along its banks, the sun struck glints of gold
and bronze from spire and monument; while, close against its sides, on
the very parapet of its quays, there was in progress that quaint book
traffic that strikes so intimate a note in the life of the quarter.
It is a charming thought that in the heart of Paris--Paris, the
pleasure city--there is time and space for the vender of old books to
set out his wares, to lay them open to the kindly sky, to tempt the
studious and idle alike to pause and dally and lose themselves in that
most fascinating of all pursuits--- the search for the treasure that is
never found. Max paused beside this row of tattered bookstalls, and
quivered to the stab of a new pain. Scores of happy mornings he had
wandered with Blake in this vicarious garden of delight, flitting from
the books to the curio shops across the roadway, from the curios back
again to the books, while Blake talked with his easy friendliness to the
odd beings who bartered in this open market.
It was pain inexpressible--it was loneliness made palpable--to stand by
the tressel stalls and allow his eyes to rest upon the familiar
merchandise; and for the third time in that black morning he fled from
his own shadow--fled onward into the darker, older Paris--the Paris of
tradition, where the church of Notre Dame frowns, silently scornful of
those who disturb its peace.
As he approached the great building, its sombre impressiveness fell upon
his troubled spirit mercifully as its shadow fell across the blinding
sunlight. He paused in the wide space that fronts the heavy doors, and
caught his breath as the fugitive of old might have caught breath at
sight of sanctuary.
Here was a place of shade and magnitude--- a place untouched by memory!
Blindly he moved toward the door, entered the church, walked up the
aisle. Few sight-seers disturbed the sense of peace, for outside it was
high noon and Paris was engrossed in the serious business of _déjeuner_;
no service was in progress; all was still, all dim save where a taper
of a lamp glowed before a shrine or the sun struck sharp through the
splendor of stained glass.
There are few churches--to some minds there is no other church--where
the idea of the profound broods as it does in Notre Dame. The sense of
dignity, the curious ancient scent compounded by time, the mystic colors
of the great windows breathe of the infinite.
Max, walking up the aisle, looked at the dark walls; Max--modern,
critical--looked up at the wondrous rose window, and felt the
overshadowing power of superhuman things. The modern world crumbled
before the impassive silence, criticism found no challenge in its
brooding spirit, for the mind cannot analyze what it cannot measure.
Max subscribed to no creed; but, by a strange impulsion, born of dead
ages, his eyes fell from the glowing window and turned to the high
altar. He did not want to pray; he rebelled against the idea of
supplication; but the circling thoughts within him concentrated
suddenly, he clasped his hands with a clasp so fierce that it was pain.
"Oh, God!" he said, under his breath. "God! God, let me possess myself!"
And as if some chord had snapped, relieving the tension in his brain, he
dropped upon his knees, as he had once done at the foot of his own
staircase and, crouching against a pillar, wept like a lost child.
PART IV
CHAPTER XXXVI
The last days of August in Paris! A deadly oppression of heat; a
brooding inertia that lay upon the city like a cloak!
In the little _appartement_ every window stood gaping, thirsting for a
draught of air; but no stir lightened the haze that weighed upon the
atmosphere, no faintest hint of breeze ruffled the plantation shrubs,
dark in their fulness of summer foliage. Stillness lay upon
Montmartre--upon the rue Müller--most heavily of all, upon the home of
Max.
It was an obvious, weighty stillness unconnected with repose. It seemed
as though the spirit of the place were fled, and that in its stead the
vacant quiet of death reigned. In the _salon_ the empty hearth hurt the
observer with its poignant suggestion of past comradeship, dead fires,
long hours when the spring gales had whistled through the plantation and
stories had been told and dreams woven to the spurt of blue and copper
flames. The place had an aspect of desertion; no book lay thrown, face
downward, upon chair or table; no flowers glowed against the white
walls, though flowers were to be had for the asking in a land that
teemed with summer fruitfulness.
This was the _salon_; but in the studio the note of loss was still more
sharply struck. Not because the easel, drawn into the full light,
offered to the gaze a crude, unfinished study, nor yet because a laden
palette was cast upon the floor to consort with tubes and brushes, but
because the presiding genius of the place Max--Max the debonair, Max the
adventurous--was seated on a chair before his canvas, a prey to black
despair.
Max was thinner. The great heat of August--or some more potent
cause--had smoothed the curves from his youthful face, drawn the curled
lips into an unfamiliar hardness and painted purple shadows beneath the
eyes. Max had fought a long fight in the three months that had dwindled
since the morning of Blake's going, and a long moral fight has full as
many scars to leave behind as a battle of physical issues. The saddest
human experience is to view alone the scenes one has viewed through
other eyes--to walk solitary where one has walked in company--to have
its particular barbed shaft aimed at one from every stick and stone that
mark familiar ways. All this Max had known, wrapping himself in his
pride, keeping long silence, fighting his absurd, brave fight.
'The first days will be the worst!' he had assured himself, walking back
from Notre Dame in the searching sun, heedless of who might notice his
red eyes. 'The first days will be the worst!' And this formula he had
repeated in the morning, standing uninspired and wretched before a blank
canvas. Then had come Blake's first message--a note written from Sweden
without care or comfort, importing nothing, indicating nothing beyond
the place at which the writer might be found, and tears--torrents of
tears--had testified to the fierce anticipation, the crushing
disappointment for which it was responsible.
He had sent no answer to the cold communication--no answer had been
desired, and calling himself by every name contempt could coin, he had
pushed forward along the lonely road, companioned by his work. But he
himself had once said: 'One must come naked and whole to art, as one
must come naked and whole to nature,' and he had spoken a truth. Art is
no anodyne for a soul wounded in other fields, and Art closed arms to
him when most he wooed her. He threw himself into work with pitiable
vehemence in those first black weeks. By day, he haunted the galleries
and attended classes like any art student; by night, he ranged the
streets and _cafés_, seeking inspiration, returning to his lonely room
to lie wakeful, fighting his ghosts, or else to sob himself to sleep.
His theory of life had been amply proved. Blake had prated of the soul,
but it had been the body he had desired! Again and again that thought
had struck home, a savage spur goading him in daytime to a wild plying
of his brushes, gripping him in the lonely darkness of the night-time
until his sobs were suspended by their very poignancy and the scalding
tears dried before they could fall.
He saw darkly, he saw untruly, but the world is according to the
beholder's vision, and in those sultry days, when summer waxed and Paris
emptied, opening its gates to the foreigner, all the colors had receded
from existence and he had tasted the lees of life.
And now to-day it seemed that the climax had been reached. Seated idly
before his canvas, the whole procession of his Paris life unwound before
him--from the first tumultuous hour, when he had entered the Hôtel
Railleux on fire for freedom, to this moment when, with dull resentful
eyes, he confronted the sum of his labors--an unfinished, sorry study
devoid of inspiration.
He stared at the flat canvas--the rough outline of his picture--the
reckless splashing on of color; and, abruptly, as if a hand had touched
him, he sprang to his feet, making havoc among the paint tubes that
strewed the floor, and turned summarily to the open window.
It was after eight o'clock, but the hazy, unreal daylight of a summer
evening made all things visible. He scanned the plantation, viewing it
as if in some travesty of morning; he looked down upon the city,
sleeping uneasily in preparation for the inevitable night of pleasure,
and a sudden loathing of Paris shook him. It seemed as if some gauzy
illusive garment had been lifted from a fair body and that his eyes,
made free of the white limbs, had discerned a corpse.
By a natural flight of ideas, the loathing of the city turned to
loathing of himself--to an unsatiable desire for self-forgetfulness, for
self-effacement. Solitude was no longer tenable, the walls of the
_appartement_ seemed to close in about him, stifling--suffocating him.
With a feverish movement, he turned from the window, picked up his hat
and fled the room.
On the landing he paused for a moment before the door of M. Cartel. He
had paid many visits to M. Cartel under stress of circumstances similar
to this, and invariably M. Cartel--and, moving in his shadow, the demure
Jacqueline--had proffered a generous hospitality--talking to him of
work, of politics, of Paris, but with a Frenchman's inimitable tact.
For all this unobtrusive attention he had been silently grateful, but
to-night he stood by the door hesitating; for long he hesitated,
honestly fighting with his mood, but at last the desperation of the mood
prevailed. Who could talk of work, when work was as an evil smell in the
nostrils? Who could talk of politics, when the overthrow of nations
would not stimulate the mind? He turned on his heel with a little
exclamation, hopeless as it was cynical, and ran down the stairs with
the gait of one whose destination concerns neither the world nor
himself.
CHAPTER XXXVII
Max swung down the Escalier de Sainte-Marie in as reckless a mood as
ever possessed being of either sex. Nothing of the sweet Maxine was
discernible in face or carriage; the boy predominated, but a boy
possessed of a callousness that was pathetic seen hand-in-hand with
youth.
For the first time he was viewing Paris bereft of the glamour of
romance; for the first time the Masque of Folly passed before him,
licentious and unashamed. Many an hour, in days gone by, he had
discussed with Blake this lighter side of many-sided Paris, and with
Blake's wise and penetrating gaze he had seen it in true perspective;
but to-night there was no sane interpreter to temper vision, to-night he
was bitterly alone, and his mind, from long austerity, long
concentration upon work, had swung with grievous suddenness to the
opposing pole of thought. He had no purpose in his descent from the rue
Müller, he had no desire of vice as an antidote to pain, but his
loathing of Paris was drawing him to her with that morbid craving to
hurt and rehurt his bruised soul that assails the artist in times of
misery.
The streets were quiet, for it was scarcely nine o'clock, and as yet the
lethargy of the day lay heavy on the air. The heat and the accompanying
laxity breathed an atmosphere of its own; every window of every house
gaped, and behind the casements one caught visions of men and women
negligent of attire and heedless of observation.
Romance was dead! Of that supreme fact Max was very sure. A hard smile
touched his lips, and hugging his cynicism, he went forward--crossing
the Boulevard de Clichy, plunging downward into the darker regions of
the rue des Martyrs and the rue Montmartre, where the lights of the
boulevards are left behind, and the sight-seer is apt to look askance at
the crude facts that the street lamps divulge to his curious eyes. To
the boy, these corners had no terrors, for in his untarnished friendship
with Blake all sides of life had been viewed in turn, as all topics had
been discussed as component parts of a fascinatingly interesting world.
To-night he went forward, mingling with the inhabitants of the district,
revelling with morbid realism in the forbidding dinginess of their
appearance. He was not of that quarter--that was patent to every rough
who lounged outside a _café_ door, as it was patent to every slovenly
woman who gave him a glance in passing. He was not of the quarter, but
he was an artist--and a shabby one at that--so the men accorded him an
indifferent shrug and the women a second glance.
Forward he went, possessed by his morbidity--forward into the growing
murkiness of environment until, association of ideas suddenly curbing
impulse, he stopped before the door of a shabby _café_ bearing the
fanciful appellation of the Café des Cerises-jumelles. Once, when bound
upon a night exploration in this same region, he and Blake had stopped
to smile at this odd name and wonder at its origin, and finally they had
passed through the portal to find that the twin cherries smiled upon
doubtful patrons. The vivid memory of that night smote him now as, drawn
by some unquestioned influence, he again entered the _café_, passing
through a species of bar to a long, low-ceiled eating-room set with
small tables. How Blake had talked that night! How thoughtfully, how
humanely and tolerantly he had judged their fellow-guests, as they sat
at one of these tables, rubbing shoulders with the worst--or, as he had
laughingly insisted, the best--of an odd fraternity!
The recollection was keen as a knife when Max entered the eating-room,
sat down and ordered a drink with the supreme indifference of
disillusion. Six months ago he would have trembled to find himself alone
in such a place; to-night he was beyond such a commonplace as fear.
He smiled again cynically, emptied his glass and looked about him. His
first experience of the place had been in the hours succeeding midnight,
when the quarter hummed with its unsavory life; but now it was early,
the lights were not yet at their fullest, the waiters had not as yet
taken on their nocturnal air of briskness. In one corner three men were
engrossed in a game of cards, in another a thin girl of fifteen sat with
her arm round the neck of a boy scarce older than herself, whispering
jests into his ear, at which they both laughed in coarse low murmurs,
while in the middle of the room, with her back turned to him, a woman in
a tight black dress and feathered hat was eating a meal of poached eggs.
In a vague way, absorbed in his own thoughts, Max fell to studying this
solitary woman, until something in her impassivity, something in the
sphinx-like calm with which she went through the business of her meal,
blent with his imaginings, and he suddenly found her placed beside Blake
in the possession of his thoughts--an integral part of their joint
lives. In a flash of memory the large black hat, the opulent figure took
place within his consciousness and, answering to a new instinct, he rose
and took an involuntary step in the woman's direction.
She changed her position at sound of his approach, her large hat
described new angles, and she looked back over her shoulder.
"What!" she said aloud. "The little friend of Blake! But how droll!"
She showed no surprise, she merely waved her hand to a chair facing her
own.
Max sat down; a hot and dirty waiter came forward languidly, and wine
was ordered.
Lize pushed aside the glass of green-tinted liquid that she had been
consuming through a straw, and waited for what was to come. Max, looking
at her in the crude light of a gas-jet, saw that her face was whiter,
her eyes more hollow than when her wrath had fallen on him at the Bal
Tabarin; also, he noted that a little dew of heat showed through the
mask of powder on her face.
Silence was maintained until the wine was brought; then she drank
thirstily, laid down her empty glass and turned her eyes upon him.
"You have parted with your friend, eh?"
The surprise of the question was so sharp that it killed speculation. He
did not ask how she had probed his secret--whether by mere intuition or
through some feminine confidence of Jacqueline's. The fact of her
knowledge swept him beyond the region of lucid thought; he accepted the
situation as it was offered.
"Yes," he said. "I have parted with my friend."
"And why? He is a good boy--Blake!" She looked at him with her
inscrutable eyes, and after many days he was conscious of the touch of
human compassion. He did not analyze the woman's feelings--he did not
even conjecture whether she knew him for boy or girl. All he
comprehended was that out of this sordid atmosphere--out of the lethargy
of the sultry night--some force had touched him, some force was drawing
him back into the circle of human things. Strange indeed are the
workings of the mind. He, who had shrunk with an agonized sensitiveness
from the sympathy of M. Cartel--from the tender comprehension of the
little Jacqueline--suddenly felt his reserve melt and break in presence
of this woman of the boulevards with her air of impassive _ennui_.
Theoretically, he knew life in all its harder aspects, and it called for
no vivid imagination to trace the descent of the fresh _grisette_ of the
_Quartier Latin_ to the creature who sought her meals in the Café des
Cerises-jumelles, yet hers was the accepted compassion.
"Madame!" he said, suddenly. "Madame, tell me! You knew him once?"
Lize wiped the dew of heat from her forehead; emptied a second glass of
wine. "A thousand years ago, _mon petit_, when the world was as young as
you!"
"In the _Quartier_?"
"In the _Quartier_--on the Boul' Mich'--at Bulliers--" She stopped,
falling into a dream; then, suddenly, from the farthest corner of the
room, came the sound of a loud kiss, and the boy and girl at the distant
table began to sing in unison--a ribald song, but instinct with the zest
of life. Lize started, as though she had been struck.
"They have it--youth!" she cried, with a jerk of her head toward the
distant corner. "The world is for them!" Then her voice and her
expression altered. She leaned across the table, until her face was
close to Max.
"What a little fool you are!" she said. "It is written in those eyes of
yours--that see too little and see too much. Go home! Think of what I
have said! He is a good boy--this Blake!"
Max mechanically replenished her glass, and mechanically she drank; then
she produced a little mirror and made good the ravages of the heat upon
her face with the nonchalance of her kind; finally, she looked at the
clock.
"Come!" she said. "We go the same way."
He rose obediently. He made no question as to her destination. He had
come to drown himself in the sordidness of Paris and, behold, his heart
was beating with a human quickness it had not known since the moment he
held Blake's first letter unopened in his hand; his throat was dry, his
eyes were smarting with the old, half-forgotten smart of unshed tears.
He followed her with a strange docility as she passed out of the
unsavory Cerises-jumelles into the close, ill-smelling street. In
complete silence they walked through what seemed a nightmare world of
unpleasant sights, unpleasant sounds, until across his dazed thoughts
the familiar sense of Paris--the sense of the pleasure-chase--swept from
the Boulevard de Clichy.
Lize paused; he saw her fully in the brave illumination--the large black
hat, the close-clad figure, the pallid face--and as he looked, she
smiled unexpectedly and, putting out her hand, patted him on the
shoulder.
"Good-bye, _mon enfant_! Go home! Youth comes but once; and this
Blake--he is a good boy!"
Before he could answer, before he could return smile or touch, she was
gone--absorbed into the maze of lights, and he was alone, to turn which
way he would.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
The fifth floor was dim and silent, the door of M. Cartel's
_appartement_ was closed; but Max, mounting the stairs two steps at a
time, was not daunted by silence or lack of light. Max was once again a
prey to impulse, and under the familiar tyranny, his blood burned--raced
in his veins, sang in his cars.
Without an instant's pause, he knocked on M. Cartel's door, and when his
knock was answered by Jacqueline--fair and cool-looking, oven in the
great heat--words rushed from him as they had been wont to rush when
life was a gay affair.
"You are alone, Jacqueline?"
Jacqueline nodded quickly, comprehending a crisis.
"Ah, I thank God!" He caught both her hands; he gave a little laugh that
ended in a sob; he passed into the _appartement_, drawing her with him.
"Oh, _la, la_!" she cried, hiding her emotion in flippancy, "you take my
breath away."
Max laughed again. "You see I've lost my own!"
She gave a scornful, familiar toss of the head. "Do not be foolish! What
has happened?"
"I have made a discovery, Jacqueline. Youth comes but once!"
"Indeed! You need not have left the rue Müller to learn that."
"It comes but once, and while it is with me I am going to look it in the
face." His words tumbled forth, pell-mell, and as he spoke he pulled
her forcibly into the living-room.
"Jacqueline, I am serious. I have been down in hell; I must see heaven,
or my faith is lost."
Jacqueline stood very still, making no effort to loose the hot clasp of
his hands, but all at once her gaze concentrated piercingly.
"You have sent for him!" she exclaimed.
"I have! Oh, I may be weak, but listen! listen! In the old days when the
world was religious and people observed Lent, there was always
_Mi-Carême_, was there not? Well, I have fasted, and now I must feast."
They gazed at each other; the one aglow with anticipation, the other
with curiosity.
"You have sent for him--at last?"
"I have sent a telegram with these words: 'Meet me at midday on Tuesday
in the Place de la Concorde.--MAXINE.'"
"And this is Friday," said Jacqueline. "In four days' time you will see
him again!"
"Again!" Max spoke the word inaudibly.
"And--when you meet?" Jacqueline's blue eyes were sharp as
needle-points.
Max colored to the temples. "_Ma chérie,_ I have not even thought! All I
know is that youth comes but once, and that youth is courage. I have
been a coward--I am going to be brave."
"You are going--to confess?"
Max said nothing, but with her woman's instinct for such things,
Jacqueline read assent in the silence.
"Then the end is assured! He will take you--with your will, or without!
Monsieur Max, or the princess!"
Max shook his head. "I do not think so. But that is outside the
moment--that is the afterward. First there must be midday and the Place
de la Concorde! First there must be my _Mi-Carême_--my hour!"
"Ah!" whispered the little Jacqueline, "your hour!" And who shall say
what memories glinted through her quick brain--what conjurings of the
first waltz with M. Cartel at the Moulin de la Galette, and the last
waltz at the Bal Tabarin, when she stepped through the tawdry doorway
into her paradise? "Your hour! And where will it be spent--madame?"
"Ah!" Max's eyes sought heaven or, in lieu of heaven, M. Cartel's
ceiling; Max's hands freed Jacqueline's and flew out in ecstatic
gesture. "Ah, that is for the gods to say, _chérie_! And the gods know
best."
CHAPTER XXXIX
Rapture gilded the world; rapture trembled on the air like the
vibrations of a chord struck from some celestial harp. Coming as a
divine gift, the first autumnal frost had lighted upon Paris; during the
night fainting August had died, and with the dawn, golden September had
been born to the city.
Blake, waiting at the foot of the Cours la Reine, consumed with
anticipation, drank in the freshness of the morning as though it were a
draught of wine; Maxine, crossing the Place de la Concorde, lifted her
face to the sky, striving to quiet her pulses, to cool her hot cheeks in
the wash of gentle air.
Her hour had arrived; none could hinder its approach, as none could mar
its beauty. She scarcely recognized the earth upon which she trod; the
fierce excitement, the melting tenderness of her moods warred until
emotion ran riot and the sifting of her feelings became a task
impossible.
She passed the spot where, eight months earlier, Max had saluted the
flag of France. Her heart leaped, her glance, flying before her,
discovered Blake waiting at his appointed place, and all her wild
sensations were suspended.
The violently beating heart seemed to stop, the blood moved with a sick
slowness in her veins, it seemed impossible that she should go forward,
and yet, by the curious mechanism of the human machine, her feet
carried her on until Blake's presence was tangible to all her
senses--until suspense was engulfed in actuality, and joy was singing
about her in the air, a song so triumphant, so penetrating that it
drowned all whispering of doubt--all murmurs of to-morrow or of
yesterday. Tears welled into her eyes, her hands went out to him.
Standing in the full light, she was a tall, slight girl, fastidiously,
if simply dressed--veiled, gloved, shod as befitted a woman of the
world; and as he gazed on her, one thought possessed Blake. She, who
typified all beauty--whose presence was a fragrance--had called to him,
chosen him. All the romance stored up through generations welled within
him; he would have died for her at that moment as enthusiastically as
his ancestors had died for their faith. Catching her hands, he kissed
them without a thought for passing glances.
"Princess!"
The sound of his voice went through her, she laughed to break the sob
that caught her throat, she looked up, unashamed of the tears trembling
on her lushes.
"Monsieur Ned!"
"Oh, why the 'monsieur'?"
"Why the 'princess'?"
They both smiled.
"Maxine!"
"_Mon ami! Mon cher ami_!" It thrilled her to the heart to say the
words; she glanced at him half fearfully, then broke forth afresh, lest
he should have time to think. "Ned, tell me! It is true--all this? I am
not asleep? It is not a dream?"
He pressed her hands. "Look round you! It is morning."
Her lips trembled; she obeyed him, looking slowly from the cool sky to
the tree-tops, where the heavy leaves were still damp with the night's
frost.
"Yes, it is morning!" she said. "We have all the day!"
Watching her intently, he did not add, as would the common lover, "we
have many days"; she seemed to him so beautiful, so naïve that her words
must compass perfection.
"We have all the day," he echoed. "How shall it be spent?"
Then she turned to him, all graciousness, her young face lifted to the
light. "Ah, you must decide! I do not wish even to think; the world is
so--how do you say--enchanted?"
He laughed in delight at her charming, pleading smile, her charming,
pleading hesitation; he caught her mood with swift intuition.
"That's it! The world is enchanted! Away behind us, is the Dreaming
Wood. What do you say? Shall we go and seek the Sleeping Beauty?"
She nodded silently. He was so perfectly the Blake of old--the Blake who
understood.
"Then the first thing is to find the magic coach! We must have nothing
so mundane as a carriage drawn by horses. A magic coach that travels by
itself!" He signalled to a passing automobile.
"Drive to the Pré Catelan--and drive slowly!" he directed; he handed her
to her seat with all the courtliness proper to the occasion, and they
were off, wheeling up the long incline toward the Arc de Triomphe.
They were silent while the chauffeur made a way through the many
vehicles, past the crowds of pedestrians that infest the entrance to the
Bois; but as the way grew clearer--as the spell of the trees, of the
green vistas and glimpsed water began to weave itself--Maxine turned and
laid her hand gently upon Blake's.
"_Mon cher_! How good you are!"
He started, thrilling at her touch.
"My dearest! Good?"
"In coming to me like this--"
He caught her hand quickly. "Don't!" he said. "Don't! It isn't right---
from you to me. You never doubted that I'd come? You knew I'd come?"
"Yes; I knew."
"Then that's all right!" He pressed her hand, he smiled, he reassured
her by all the subtle, intangible ways known to lovers, and it was borne
in upon her that he had altered, had grown mentally in his months of
exile--that he was steadier, more certain of life or of himself, than
when he had rushed tempestuously out of Max's studio. She pondered the
change, without attempting to analyze it; a deep sense of rest possessed
her, and she allowed her hand to lie passive in his until, all too soon,
their cab swept round to the left, sped past a bank of greenery and drew
up, with a creaking of brakes, before the restaurant of the Pré Catelan.
Everywhere was light, silence and, best boon of all, an unexpected
solitude--a solitude that invested the white building with a glamour of
unreality and converted the slight-stemmed, moss-grown trees into
spellbound sentinels.
"Here is the Castle!" said Blake. "Look! Even the waiters doze, until we
come to wake them!" He handed her to the ground, gave his orders to the
chauffeur, and as the cab disappeared into some unseen region, they
mounted the wide steps.
"Monsieur desires _déjeuner_?" A sleek waiter disengaged himself from
his brethren and came persuasively forward. At this early hour
everything at the Pré Catelan was soft and soothing; later in the day
things would alter, the service would be swift and unrestful, the swish
of motor-cars and the hum of voices would break the spell, but at this
hour of noon Paris, for some obscure reason, ignored the fruitful oasis
of the Bois, and peace lay upon it like balm.
"How charming! Oh, but how charming!" The exclamation was won from
Maxine as her glance skimmed the palms, the glittering glasses and the
white table-linen, and rested upon the spacious windows that convey the
fascinating impression that one whole wall of the room has been removed,
and that the ranged trees outside with their satiny green stems actually
commune with the _gourmet_ as he eats his meal.
"It's what you wanted, isn't it?" Blake's pleasure in her pleasure was
patent. Every look, every gesture manifested it.
"It is wonderful!" she said, gently.
"Good! And now, what is the meal to be? Dragon's wings _en casserole_?
Or Moonbeams _surprise_?"
She laughed, and a flash of mischief stole through the glance she gave
him.
"What do you say, _mon ami_, to _poulet bonne femme_?"
She watched for a gleam of remembrance, but he was too engrossed in the
present to recall the trivialities of the past. He gave the order
without a thought save to do her will.
Delay was inevitable, and while the meal was in preparation they
wandered into the open and visited the farm at the rear of the
restaurant, conjuring the farm-like traditions of the place after the
accepted custom--entering the sweet-smelling, shadowy cow-shed, stroking
the sleek, soft-breathing cows, amusing themselves over the antics of
the monkey chained beside the door.
It was all very pleasant, the illusion of Arcadia was charmingly
rendered, and they returned, happy and hungry, in search of their meal.
That meal from its first morsel was raised above common things, for was
it not the first time Blake had broken bread with Maxine? And what true
lover ever forgets the rare moment when all the joys of intimacy are
foreshadowed in the first serving of his lady with no matter what
triviality of meat or bread, or water or wine? The points of the affair
are so slight and yet so tremendous; for are they not sacramental--a
typifying of things unspeakable?
No intimate word was spoken, but at such times looks speak--more
poignantly still, hearts speak; and their gay voices, as they laughed
and talked and laughed again, held notes that the ear of the waiter
never caught, and their silences vibrated with meaning.
At last the meal was over; they rose and by one consent looked toward
the spacious world outside.
"Shall we go into the gardens?"
Blake put the question; Maxine silently bent her head.
Softly and assiduously their sleek waiter bowed them to the door, and
they passed down the shallow steps into the slim shadows of the trees as
they might have passed into some paradise fashioned for their special
pleasure.
It was a place--an hour--removed from the mundane world; passing out of
the region of the trees, they came upon a shrubbery--a shrubbery that
enclosed a lawn and flower-beds, and here, by grace of the gods, was a
seat where they sat down side by side and gave their eyes to the beauty
that encompassed them.
It was an exotic beauty, yet a beauty of intense suggestion. Summer lay
lavishly displayed in the shaven lawn, the burdened shrubs, the glory of
flowers, but over her redundant loveliness autumn had spun an ethereal
garment. No words could paint the subtlety of this sheath; it was
neither mist nor shadow, it was a golden transparency spun from nature's
loom--the bridal veil of the young season.
"How exquisite!" whispered Maxine, as if a breath might break the
spell. "Look at those yellow butterflies above the flowers! They are the
only moving things."
"It is the place of the Sleeping Beauty, sweet! It is the place of
love." Blake took her hands again and kissed them; then, with a gentle,
enveloping tenderness, he drew her to him, looking into her face, but
not attempting to touch it.
"My sweet, I have come back. What are you going to do with me?"
She did not answer; she lay quite still within his arms, her half-closed
eyes lingering on the garden--on the white roses, the clustering
mignonette, the hovering yellow butterflies.
"What are you going to do with me?"
She lifted her eyes, dewy with the beauty of the world.
"Wait!" she whispered. "Oh, wait!"
"I have waited."
"Ah, but a little longer!"
"But my love, my dear one--"
She stirred in his embrace; she turned with a swift passion of entreaty,
putting her fingers across his mouth.
"Ned! Ned! I know. But do this great thing for me! Shut your eyes and
your ears. Forget yesterday, think there will be no to-morrow. Hold this
one moment! Give me my one hour!"
She pleaded as if for life, her body vibrating, her eyes beseeching him;
and his answer was to press her hand harder against his lips, and to
kiss it fervently. He gave no sign of the struggle within him--the doubt
that encompassed him. Something had been demanded of him, and he gave it
loyally.
"There was no yesterday, there will be no to-morrow!" he said. "But
to-day is ours!"
It was the perfect word, spoken perfectly; Maxine's eyes drooped in
supreme content, her lips curled like a pleased child's.
"Ah, but God is good!" she said, and with a child's supreme sweetness,
she lifted her face for his kiss.
CHAPTER XL
The hour was sped, the day past; night, with its dark wings, covered the
eastern sky and, one by one, the stars came forth--stars that gleamed
like new silver in the light sharpness of the September air.
Having closed eyes to the world at the Pré Catelan, Maxine and Blake had
lengthened the coil of their dream as the day waxed. Three o'clock had
seen them driving into the heart of the Bois, and late afternoon had
found them wandering under the formal, interlaced trees in the gardens
of the Petit Trianon. At Versailles they dined, falling a little silent
over their meal, for neither could longer hold at bay the sense that
events impended--that all paths, however devious, however touched by the
enchanter's wand, lead back by an unalterable law to the world of
realities.
With an unspoken anxiety they clung to the last moment of their meal;
and when coffee had been partaken of, Maxine demanded yet another cup
and, resting her elbows on the table, took her face between her hands.
"Ned! Will you not offer me a cigarette?"
He was all confusion at seeming remiss.
"My dear one! A thousand pardons! I did not think--"
"--That I smoked? Are you disappointed?"
He smiled. "It is one charm the more--if there is room for one."
He handed her a cigarette and lighted a match, his eyes resting upon
her as she drew in the first breath of smoke with a quaint seriousness
that smote him with a thought of the boy.
"Dearest," he said, suddenly, "I have been so happy to-day that I have
thought of no one but ourselves, and now, all at once--"
Her eyes flashed up to his; she divined his thought, and it was as
though she put forth all her strength to ward off a physical danger.
"Oh, _mon cher_, and was it not your day--our day? Would you have marred
it with other thoughts?"
"No; but yet--"
"No! No!" She put out her hand, she pleaded with eyes and lips and
voice. "Look! Until this little cigarette is burned out!" She held up
the glowing tip. "When that is over, our day is over; then we return to
the world--but not until then. Is it--what do you say--a bargain?" Her
white teeth flashed, her glance flashed with the brightness of tears,
her fingers rested for a second upon his.
The restaurant was practically empty; a few summer tourists were dining
at tables close to the door, but Blake had chosen the farthest, dimmest
corner and there they sat in semi-isolation, living the last moments of
their day with an intensity that neither dared to express and that each
was conscious of with every beat of the heart.
Maxine laughed as she drew her second puff of smoke, but her laugh had a
nervous thinness. Blake filled their liqueur-glasses, but his gesture
was uneven and a little of the brandy spilled upon the cloth.
"A libation to the gods!" he said. "May they smile upon us!" He lifted
his glass and emptied it.
Maxine forced a smile. "The gods know best!" she said, but as she raised
her glass, her hand, also, trembled.
But Blake ignored her perturbation, as she ignored his. The coming
ordeal lay stark across their path, but neither would look upon it,
neither would see beyond the tip of Maxine's cigarette--the tiny beacon,
consuming even as it gave light!
A silence fell--a silence of full five minutes--then Blake, yielding
once more to the craving for the solace of contact, put his hand over
hers.
"Dear one, I know nothing of what is coming, but that I am utterly in
your hands. But let me say one thing. To-day has been heaven--the
golden, the seventh heaven!"
She said nothing, she did not meet his eyes, but her cold fingers
clasped his convulsively, and two tears fell hot upon their hands.
That was all; that was the sum of their expression. No other word was
spoken. They sat silent, watching the cigarette burn itself out between
Maxine's fingers.
She held it to the very last, then dropped it into her finger-bowl and
rose.
"Now, _mon cher_!" In the dim light she looked very tall and slight and
seemed possessed of a curious dignity. All the animation had left her
face, beneath the eyes were shadows, and in the eyes a tragic
sadness--the sadness that the soul creates for itself.
Blake rose also and, side by side, very quietly, they left the
restaurant. In the street outside, the cab that had assisted in the
day's adventures still waited their pleasure.
He handed her to her place and paused, his foot upon the step.
"And now, liege lady--where?"
She looked at him gravely and answered without a tremor, "To Max's
studio."
Surprise--if surprise touched him--showed not at all upon his face. He
gave the order quietly and explicitly, and took his place beside her.
Down the broad street of Versailles they wheeled, but both were too
preoccupied to see the lurking ghosts of a past _régime_ that lie so
palpably in the shadows, and presently Blake's hand found hers once
more.
"You are cold?"
She shook her head.
Through the cool night they drove, under the jewelled cloak of the sky,
rushing forward toward Paris as Max had once rushed in the mysterious
north express.
Blake did not speak or move again until the city was close about them;
then, with a gesture that startled her by its unexpectedness, he drew
from his hand the signet ring he always wore--a ring familiar to Max as
the stones of the rue Müller--and slipped it over her third finger.
"Oh, Ned!" She started as the ring slipped into place, and her voice
trembled with fear and superstition.
He pressed her hand. "Don't refuse it! The ring is the emblem of the
eternal, and all my thoughts for you belong to eternity."
No more was said; they skimmed through the familiar ways until Maxine
could have cried aloud for grace, and at last they stopped at the corner
of the rue André de Sarte.
She stood aside as Blake dismissed the cab, she knew that had speech
been demanded of her then she could not have brought forth a word, so
parched were her lips, so impotent her tongue.
Her ordeal confronted her; no human power could eliminate it now. To her
was the disentangling of knotted threads, the sorting of the colors in
the scheme of things. She averted her face from Blake as they mounted
the Escalier de Sainte-Marie, and her hand clung for support to the iron
railing.
Familiar to the point of agony was the open doorway, the dark hall of
the house in the rue Müller. Side by side they entered; side by side,
and in complete silence, they made the ascent of the stairs, each step
of which was heavy with memories.
On the fifth floor she went forward and opened the door of Max's
_appartement_. Within, all was dark and quiet, and Blake, loyally
following her, passed without comment through the tiny hall, on into the
little _salon_ where the light from the brilliant sky made visible the
pathetically familiar objects--the old copper vessels, the dower chest,
the leathern arm-chair.
This leather chair stood like a faithful sentinel close to the open
window, and as his eyes rested on it he was conscious of a pained
contraction of the heart, for it stood exactly where it had stood when
last he watched the stars and rambled through his dreams and ideals,
with the boy for listener. The thought came quick and sharp, goading him
as many a puzzled thought had goaded him in his months of solitude, and
as at Versailles, he turned to Maxine, a question on his lips.
But again she checked that question. Stepping through the shadows, she
drew him across the room toward the window. Reaching the old chair, she
touched his shoulder, gently compelling him to sit down.
"Ned," she said, and to her own ears the word sounded infinitely far
away. "I seem to you very mad. But you have a great patience. Will you
be patient a little longer?"
She had withdrawn behind the chair, laying both her hands upon his
shoulders, and as she spoke her voice shook in an unconquerable
nervousness, her whole body shook.
"My sweet!" He turned quickly and looked up at her. "What is all this?
Why are you torturing yourself? For God's sake, let us be frank with
each other--"
But she pressed his shoulders convulsively. "Wait! wait! It is only a
little moment now. I implore you to wait!"
He sank back, and as in a dream felt her fingers release their hold and
heard her move gently back across the room; then, overwhelmed by the
burden of dread that oppressed him, he leaned forward, bowing his face
upon his hands.
Minutes passed--how few, how many, he made no attempt to reckon--then
again the hushed steps sounded behind him, the sense of a gracious
presence made itself felt.
Instinctively he attempted to rise, but, as before, Maxine's hands were
laid upon his shoulders, pressing him back into his seat. He saw her
hands in the starlight--saw the glint of his own ring.
"Ned!"
"Dear one?"
"It is dim, here in this room, but you know me? Your soul sees me?" Her
voice was shaking, her words sobbed like notes upon an instrument strung
to breaking pitch.
"My dear one! My dear one!" His voice, too, was sharp and pained; he
strove to turn in his chair, but she restrained him.
"No! No! Say it without looking. You know me? I am Maxine?"
"Of course you are Maxine!"
"Ah!"
It was a short, swift sound like the sobbing breath of a spent runner.
It spoke a thousand things, and with its vibrations trembling upon her
lips, Maxine came round the chair and Blake, looking up, saw Max--Max
of old, Max of the careless clothes, the clipped waving locks.
It is in moments grotesque or supreme that men show themselves. He
sprang to his feet; he stared at the apparition until his eyes grew
wide, but all he said was 'God!' very softly to himself. 'God!' And then
again, 'God!'
It was Maxine who opened the flood-gates of emotion; Maxine who, with
wild gesture and broken voice, dressed the situation in words.
"Now it is over! Now it is finished--the whole foolish play! Now you
have your sight--and your liberty to hate me! Hate me! Hate me! I am
waiting."
"God!" whispered Blake again, not hearing her, piecing his thoughts
together as a waking man tries to piece a dream. 'God!'
The reiteration tortured her. She suddenly caught his arm, forcing him
into contact with her. "Do not speak to yourself!" she cried. "Speak to
me! Say all you think! Hate me! Hate me!"
Then at last he broke through the confusion of his mind, startling her
as such men will always startle women by their innate singleness of
thought.
"Hate you?" he said. "Why, in God's name, should I hate you?"
"Because it is right and just."
"That I should hate you, because I have been a fool? I do not see that."
"But, Ned!" she cried; then, suddenly, at its sharpest, her voice broke;
she threw herself upon her knees beside the chair and sobbed.
And then it was that Blake showed himself. Kneeling down beside her, he
put both arms about the boyish figure and, holding it close, poured
forth--not questions, not reproaches, not protestations--but a stream
of compassion.
"Poor child! Poor child! Poor child! What a fool I've been! What a brute
I've been!"
But Maxine sobbed passionately, shrinking away from him, as though his
touch were pain.
"My child! My child! How foolish I have been! But how foolish you have
been, too--how sweetly foolish! You gave with one hand and took away
with the other. But now it is all over. Now you are going to give with
both hands--- I am to have my friend and my love as well. It is very
wonderful. Oh, sweet, don't fret! Don't fret! See how simple it all is!"
But Maxine's bitter crying went on, until at last it frightened him.
"Maxine, don't! Don't, for God's sake! Why should you cry like this?
What is it, when all's said and done, but a point of view? And a point
of view is adjusted much more quickly than you think. At first I thought
the earth was reeling round me, but now I know that 'twas only my own
brain that reeled; and I know, too, that subconsciously I must always
have recognized you in Max--for I never treated Max as a common boy, did
I? Did I, now? I always had a queer--a queer respect for him. Dear one,
see it with me! Try to see it with me?"
His appeal was pathetic; it was he who was the culprit--he who
extenuated and pleaded. The position struck Maxine, wounding her like a
knife.
"Oh, don't!" she cried in her own turn. "Don't, for the sake of God!"
"But why? Why? My sweet! My love! My little friend! Max--Maxine!"
It was not to be borne. She wrenched herself free and sprang to her
feet, confronting him with a pale face down which the tears streamed.
"Because I am not your love! I am not your friend! I am not your
Max--or your Maxine!"
Swift as she, he was on his feet, his bearing changed, his manhood
recognizing the challenge in her voice, his instinct of possession alive
to combat it.
"Not mine?" he said; and to Maxine, standing white and frail before him,
the words seemed to have all the significance of life itself. Now at
last they confronted each other--man and woman; now at last the issue in
the war of sex was to be put to the test.
She had always known that this moment would arrive--always known that
she would meet it in some such manner as she was meeting it now.
"Not mine?" Blake said again.
She shook her head, throwing back her shoulders, clasping her hands
behind her, unconsciously taking on the attitude of defiance.
"And why not?"
It was curt, this question, as man's vital questions ever are; it was an
onslaught that clove to the heart of things.
She trembled for an instant, then met his eyes.
"Because I will belong to no one. I must possess myself."
He stared at her.
"But it is not given to any one to possess himself! How can you separate
an atom from the universal mass?"
"An atom may detach itself--"
"And fall into space! Is that self-possession? But, my God, are we going
to split hairs? Maxine! Maxine!" He came close to her and put out his
arms, but with a fierce gesture she evaded him; then, as swiftly, caught
his hand.
"Oh, Ned! Oh, Ned! Can't you see?"
"No!" said Blake, simply. "I cannot."
"Listen! Then listen! I know myself for an individual--for a definite
entity; I know that here--here, within me"--she struck her breast--"I
have power--power to think--power to achieve. And how do you think that
power is to be developed?" She paused, looking at him with burning eyes.
"Not by the giving of my soul into bondage--not by the submerging of
myself in another being. That night in Petersburg I saw my way--the hard
way, the lonely way! Oh, Ned!" She stopped again, searching his face,
but his face was pale and immobile--curiously, unnaturally immobile.
With a passionate gesture, she flung his hand from her. "Oh, it is so
cruel! Can't you see? Can't you understand? I left Russia to make a new
life; I made myself a man, not for a whim, but as a symbol. Sex is only
an accident, but the world has made man the independent creature--and I
desired independence. Sex is only an accident. Mentally, I am as good a
man as you are."
"Ten times a better man," said Blake, startingly. "But not near so good
a woman. For I know the highest thing--and you do not."
"The highest thing?"
"Love."
"Ah!" She threw up her hands in despair and walked to the window,
looking up blankly at the stars. Then, suddenly, she spoke again,
tossing her words back into the room.
"I suppose you think I am happy in all this?"
He was silent.
"I suppose you think I find this heaven?"
At last he answered. He came across to her; he stood looking at her with
his strange new expression of inscrutability.
"Oh, Maxine!" he said, "why must you misjudge me? Little Maxine, who
could be taken in my arms this minute and carried away to my castle,
like a princess of long ago--but who would break her heart over the
bondage! I haven't much, dear one, to justify my existence--but the gods
have given me intuition. I do not think you are in heaven."
He waited a moment, while in the sky above them the stars looked down
impartially upon the white domes of the church and the beacons of
pleasure in the city below.
"Maxine! Shall I say the things for you that you want to say?"
She bent her head.
"Well, first of all, God help us, the world is a terrible tangle; and
then you have a strange soul that has never yet half revealed itself.
You sent me away from you because you feared love; you called me back
because you feared your fear--"
"No! No! You are reasoning now, not justifying! You are entrapping me!"
"Am I?"
"Yes, and I refuse to be entrapped! I know love--I know all the specious
things that love can say; the talk of independence, the talk of
equality! But I know the reality, too. The reality is the absolute
annihilation of the woman--the absolute merging of her identity."
"So that is love?"
"That is love."
He stood looking at her with a long profound look of deep restraint, of
great sadness.
"Maxine," he said, at last, "you have many gifts--a high intelligence, a
young body, a strong soul, but in the matter of love you are a little
child. To you, love is barter and exchange; but love is not that. Love
is nothing but a giving--an exhaustless giving of one's very best."
She tried to laugh. "I understand! I should give!"
"No, sweet, you should not. You cannot know the privileges of love, for
you do not know love."
"Oh, Ned! How cruel! How cruel!"
"You do not know love," he spoke, very gently, without any bitterness,
"and I do know it; for it has grown in me, day by day, in these long
months away from you. I am not to be praised, any more than you are to
be blamed. But I do love you--with my heart and my soul--with my life
and my strength. I would die for you, if dying would help you; and as it
won't, I will do the harder thing--live for you."
Her lips were parted, but they uttered no sound; her eyes, dark with
thought, searched his face.
"Oh, Maxine!" He caught her hand. "How low you have rated me--to think I
would wrest you from yourself! Is it my place to make life harder for
you?"
Still she gazed at him. "I do not understand," she said, in a frightened
whisper.
"Never mind, sweet! It doesn't matter if you never understand. Just give
me credit for one saving grace."
He spoke lightly, as men speak when they are bankrupt of hope, then with
a sudden breaking of his stoicism, he caught her in his arms, straining
her close, kissing her mouth, talking incoherently to himself.
"Oh, Maxine! Little faun of the green groves! If you could know! But
what am I that I should possess the kingdom of heaven?"
His ecstasy frightened her; she struggled to free herself.
"What is it?" she asked. "What is it?"
"Just love--no more, no less! Good-bye! Take your life--make it what you
will; but know always that one man at least has seen heaven in your
eyes." Again he held her to him, his whole life seeming to flow out
upon his thoughts and to envelop her, then his arms relaxed and very
soberly he took, first one of her hands, and then the other, kissing
each in turn.
"Maxine!"
"Ned!" The word faltered on her lips.
"That's right!" he whispered. "I only wanted you to say my name.
Good-bye now! Don't fret for me! After all, everything is as it should
be."
She stood before him, the conqueror. All preconceptions had been
scattered; she had not even won her laurels, they had been placed at her
feet; and all the pomp and circumstance she could summon to her
triumphing was a white face, a drooping head, and speechless lips.
"Good-bye, Maxine!" The words cried for response, and by a supreme
effort she summoned her voice from some far region.
"Good-bye!"
He did not kiss her hand again, but bending his head, he solemnly kissed
his own ring, lying cold upon her finger.
CHAPTER XLI
All was finished. Mystery was at an end. The pilgrim's staff had been
placed in Maxine's hand, her feet set toward the great white road. She
leaned back against the window of the _salon_ and her mental eyes
scanned that road--the coveted road of freedom, the way of splendid
isolation--and in a vague, dumb fashion she wondered why the whiteness
that had gleamed like snow in the distance should take on the hue of
dust seen at close quarters. She wondered why she should feel so
absolutely numbed--why life, with its exuberances of joy and sorrow,
should suddenly have receded from her as a tide recedes.
There had been no battle; hers was a bloodless victory. Fate had been
exquisitely kind, as is Fate's way when she would be ironical. Maxine
could call up no cause for grief or for resentment, no cause even for
remorse. She had confessed herself; she had been shriven and blessed,
and bade to go her way!
Passing in review these phantom speculations, her eyes suddenly refused
the vision of the mythical white road, stretching away in
brain-sickening length, and her physical sight caught at the familiar
picture revealed by the balcony--the thrice-known, thrice-loved
shrubbery, where already the glossy holly leaves were stirring under
September's fingers, whispering one to the other of fine cold autumn
hours when gales would sweep the heights, bringing death to their
frailer brethren, while they themselves nestled snug and strong,
laughing at the elements. She traced the familiar outline of these
sturdy bushes, and her perfect triumph seemed like a winding sheet about
her limbs. She was above the world, removed from care, and all she knew
was that she would have given her heart for one moment of the hot human
grief that had seared her not four months ago.
She turned from the trees, turned from the stars and moved back into the
unlighted room. All was quiet and dim; she stumbled against the
arm-chair and recoiled as though a friend had touched her inopportunely;
then she passed blindly onward, finding the little hall, finding the
outer door with groping hands.
Outside was a deeper darkness, for here no starlight penetrated; but M.
Cartel's door was ajar, and through the opening came a streak of
lamplight and the hum of voices.
Pausing, Maxine caught the deep, humorous tones of M. Cartel himself,
broken first by an unknown voice, quick, tense, typically Parisian, then
by the light laugh of Jacqueline.
In her cruel perfection of triumph, she had no need to fear these
voices--these little evidences of sociability. They could not hurt her,
for was she not impervious to pain?
Another laugh, full and contented, came to her ear, then the opening of
the piano and the masterful striking of a chord.
A murmur of pleasure gave evidence of an audience, and instinctively she
moved forward, as a wanderer on a dark night draws near to a lighted
dwelling. Gaining the door, she softly pushed it open, as M. Cartel
executed a _roulade_, which melted into a brilliant piece of
improvization.
A bright lamp shone in the hall; but beyond, the open door of the
living-room displayed a half-lighted interior, with a handful of people
grouped about it. Foremost figure was M. Cartel seated at his music
within a radius of yellow light shed by four candles, while, beside him,
a tall thin boy, and, behind him, Jacqueline seemed enclosed in a
secondary, fainter circle of luminance. The rest of the room was in
shadow, and as Maxine entered, she scarcely noticed the three other
occupants--two men and a woman--who sat in a row close to the door,
their backs to the wall.
No one commented upon her entry. The little Jacqueline glanced round
once, smiling a quick welcome, but returned immediately to her
contemplation of M. Cartel; the younger of the two men by the door--an
Italian--paused in the lighting of a cigarette, but his companion--an
old Polish Jew with a classic head and long, gray beard--retained his
attitude of rapt attention, while the woman, who sat a little apart, and
whose large black hat hid her face, made no sign.
Treading softly, Maxine entered and crept into a seat opposite the trio,
realizing, with an indifference that surprised her, that the woman was
Lize of the Bal Tabarin and the Café des Cerises-jumelles.
The music poured forth, a glittering stream of sound. The young Italian
lighted cigarette after cigarette, smoking furiously and beating
soundless time upon the floor with his foot, the old Pole sat lost in an
emotional dream, tears gathering slowly in his eyes and trickling
unheeded down his cheeks, while Lize, in her moveless isolation, gazed
with fixed intensity at the wall above Maxine's head.
Time passed; time seemed of small account in that atmosphere--as the
outside world was of small account. Not one of the little audience
questioned how the other lived. It mattered nothing that in other hours
the artistic fingers of the young Italian were employed in the
manufacture of fraudulent antiques--that the enthusiast by the piano
wrote humorous songs at a starvation wage for an unsuccessful
_comique_--that Lize, finding humanity foolish, made profit of its
folly! 'What would you?' they would have asked with a shrug. 'One must
live!' For the rest, there were moments such as this--moments when the
artist was paramount in each of them--when pure enthusiasm made them
children again!
M. Cartel played on. He had forsaken improvization now, and was
interpreting magnificently; occasionally the boy by the piano threw up
his hands ecstatically, muttering incoherently to himself; occasionally
the young Italian broke silence by a sharp, irresistible '_Brava_'; but
for the most part respectful silence spoke the intensity of the spell.
Then at last Maxine, sitting in her corner, saw Jacqueline bend over the
shoulder of M. Cartel, her hair shining like sun-rays in the
candlelight--saw her whisper in his ear--saw him look up and nod in
abrupt acquiescence, and saw his square-tipped fingers lift for an
instant from the keys and descend again to a series of new chords.
A little murmur of interest passed over the listeners. The Italian threw
away his half-smoked cigarette and lighted another, the Pole smiled
tolerantly with half-closed eyes, as the old smile at the vagaries of
the young, and Maxine in her shadowed seat felt her heart leap
tumultuously as the little Jacqueline, her arm naïvely round the
shoulder of M. Cartel, her head thrown back, began to sing the first
lines of the duet in _Louise_:
'Depuis le jour où je me suis donnée, toute fleurie semble ma
destinée.
Je crois rêver sous un ciel de féerie, l'âme encore grisée de
ton premier baiser!'
And M. Cartel, lifting his head, broke in with the single electric cry
of Julian the lover:
'Louise!'
Then, as if answering to the personal note, Jacqueline melted into
Louise's sweet admission of absolute surrender:
'Quelle belle vie!
Ah, je suis heureuse! trop heureuse ... et je tremble délicieusement,
Au souvenir charmant du premier jour d'amour!'
The effect was instant. The youth by the piano smiled radiantly and
nodded in vehement approval; the young Italian puffed fiercely at his
cigarette; a flash of light crossed Lize's gaze, causing it to
concentrate.
Jacqueline had no extraordinary voice, but music was native to her, and
she sang as birds sing, with a true light sweetness exquisite to the
ear:
'Souvenir charmant du premier jour d'amour!'
The declaration came to the listeners with a pure sincerity, it abounded
in simplicity, in youthfulness, in conviction. A quiver ran through
Maxine, her numbed senses vibrated. By an acute intuition she realized
the composer's meaning; more, she appreciated the thrill called up in
the soul of M. Cartel. Her ears were strained to catch each note, each
phrase, with an intentness that astonished her; it suddenly appeared
that out of all the world, one thing alone was of significance--the
close following of this song, the apprehending of its purpose.
'Souvenir charmant du premier jour d'amour!'
The first night with Blake upon the balcony sprang back to memory, and
with it the wonder, the delight, the illimitable sense of kinship with
the universe. Again the spiritual sense lived in her, not warring with
the physical, but justifying, completing it. She sat upright
against the wall, suddenly fearful of this overwhelming mental
disturbance--fighting the cloud of memory almost as one fights a bodily
faintness.
The music grew in meaning; she heard Julian's ardent question:
'Tu ne regrette rien?'
and Louise's triumphant answer:
'Rien!'
The words, simply human, divinely just, assailed her ears, and by light
of the intuition--the superconsciousness that was dominating her--the
whole truth of this confessed love poured in upon her soul. She saw the
halo about the head of the little singer, she appreciated the sublime
giving of herself that cried in the music of the song. It was no mere
sentiment on the lips of this fair child, it was the proclamation of a
tremendous fact.
She leaned back against the wall, lips set, hands clasped. She clung to
the rock of her theories like a drowning man, and like the drowning man
she realized the imminence of the inundation that threatened her.
The music swelled, and now it was not Jacqueline alone who sang; M.
Cartel's voice rose, completing, perfecting the higher feminine notes,
blending with them as the music of wind or running water might harmonize
with the singing of a bird. It was not art but nature that was at work
in the words:
'Nous sommes tous les amants, fidèles a leur serment! Ah, le divin
roman!
* * * * *
Nous sommes toutes les âmes que brûle le sainte flamme du désire!
Ah, la parole idéale dont s'enivre mon corps tout entier!
Dis encore ta chanson de délice! Ta chanson victorieuse, ta chanson
de printemps!'
The duet wore on, enthralling in its closeness to common human life,
with its touches of tears, its touches of laughter, its hints of
tenderness and bursts of passion. Not one face but had softened in
comprehension as Louise painted the picture of her home--of the gentle
father, the scolding mother, the little daily frictions that wear
patience thin; not one heart but had leaped when passion broke a way
through the song, mounting, mounting as upon wings, until Louise in her
ecstasy of love and joy and incredulity exclaims:
'C'est le paradis! C'est une féerie!'
And Julian answers:
'Non! C'est la vie! l'Eternelle, la toute puissante vie!'
It was the supreme, the psychological moment! The duet continued, but
Maxine heard no further words. They echoed and re-echoed in her brain,
they obsessed her, lifting her to a sublimal state.
Across the room she saw the Italian throw away his cigarette and forget
to replace it; she saw Lize lean forward breathlessly, and she knew that
in fancy she was back in the Quartier Latin when life was young--when
love laughed, and her hair was wreathed with vine leaves. She saw her at
last as a living woman--felt the grape-juice run down her neck--felt the
kisses of the Jacque Aujet who was ten years dead!
This, then, was the sum of life! Not the holding of fair things, but the
giving of them!
She rose up; her limbs shook, but she paid no heed to physical strength
or weakness; she was on a plane where the soul moved free, regardless of
mortal needs. Neither Max nor Maxine had any place in her conceptions.
She saw Lize, broken but justified, because she had given when life
asked of her; she saw the little Jacqueline, with the halo of
candle-light turning her blonde hair to gold; in a distant dream she saw
the frail, steadfast Madame Salas, and in a near, poignant vision she
saw Blake, and her soul melted within her.
She conceived the world as one immense censer into which men and women
poured their all, and from which a wondrous white smoke, a scent
incredibly lovely, rose continually, enveloping the universe.
To give! To give without hope of recompense, without question, without
fear! That was the message of life.
She looked round the little room; she yearned to put out her arms, to
clasp each hand, to touch each forehead with the kiss of living
fellowship. Love consumed her, humility rilled her, she was a child
again, with all things to learn.
The music was reaching its climax, it was filling every corner of the
room, and as she glanced toward the piano in a last long look, the two
voices rose in unison.
Silently--none knowing the revolution within her soul--none seeing the
heights upon which she walked--Maxine moved to the door and slipped out
into the hall, the picture of the lovers before her eyes, in her ears
the symbolic cry:
'C'est la vie! l'Eternelle, la toute puissante vie!'
Like a being inspired, she passed back into her own _appartement_, and
there, with a strange high excitement that was yet mystically calm,
entered her little bedroom and lighted candles until not a shadow was
left in all the white circumscribed space; then, standing in the
illumination, like an acolyte who ministers to some secret rite, she
slowly unburdened herself of her boy's garments.
The task was brief; they fell from her lightly, leaving her fair and
virginal and untrammelled in body, as she was virginal and untrammelled
in mind; and with a sweet gravity she clothed herself, garment by
garment, in the dress of the morning.
Ardent and eager--yet restrained, as befitted a woman aware of her high
place--she left the room and passed down the Escalier de Sainte-Marie. A
rush of cool air came to her across the plantation, kissing her hot
cheeks, the holly bushes whispered their secrets--which were her secrets
as well, the eyes of the stars looked down, smiling into her eyes. She
observed no face in the thronging faces that passed her; she made her
steadfast way to the one point in the universe that was her goal by
right divine. Even in the hallway of Blake's house she did not stop to
question, but mounted the stairs and knocked upon his door, regardless
of the stormy beating of her heart, the faintness of anticipation that
encompassed her.
A moment passed--a moment or a century; then he was before her,
appealing to the innermost recesses of her being.
He stared at her, as one might stare upon a ghost.
"Maxine!"
Her lips parted, trembling with a pleading tenderness.
"Maxine!" he said again; and now his voice shook, as hers had shaken in
Max's little starlit studio.
It was the cry she had waited for--the confirmation of her faith. Her
hands went out to him; her soul suddenly poured forth allegiance in look
and voice.
"Ned! Ned! Take me! Take me and teach me! Take me away to your castle,
like the princess of old. Show me the white sky and the opal sea, and
the seaweed that smells like violets!"
His hands clasped hers, his incredulous eyes besought her. "Maxine, this
is some dream?"
"No; it is no dream. We are awake. It is life!"
THE END