Tales of Trail and Town Part 7

"It is a countryman of mine," said Helen simply.

"He certainly does not speak French," said mademoiselle mischievously.

"Nor think it," responded Helen with equal vivacity. Nevertheless, she wished she had seen him alone.

She thought nothing more of him that day in her finishing exercises. But the next morning as she went to open her window after dressing, she drew back with a new consciousness, and then, making a peephole in the curtain, looked over the opposite roofs. She had seen them many times before, but now they had acquired a new picturesqueness, which as her view was, of course, the reverse of the poor painter's sketch, must have been a transfigured memory of her own. Then she glanced curiously along the line of windows level with hers. All these, however, with their occasional revelations of the menage behind them, were also familiar to her, but now she began to wonder which was his. A singular instinct at last impelled her to lift her eyes. Higher in the corner house, and so near the roof that it scarcely seemed possible for a grown man to stand upright behind it, was an oeil de boeuf looking down upon the other roofs, and framed in that circular opening like a vignette was the handsome face of Major Ostrander. His eyes seemed to be turned towards her window. Her first impulse was to open it and recognize him with a friendly nod. But an odd mingling of mischief and shyness made her turn away quickly.

Nevertheless, she met him the next morning walking slowly so near her house that their encounter might have been scarcely accidental on his part. She walked with him as far as the Conservatoire. In the light of the open street she thought he looked pale and hollow-cheeked; she wondered if it was from his enforced frugality, and was trying to conceive some elaborate plan of obliging him to accept her hospitality at least for a single meal, when he said:--

"I think you have brought me luck, Miss Maynard."

Helen opened her eyes wonderingly.

"The two Russian connoisseurs who stared at us so rudely were pleased, however, to also stare at my work. They offered me a fabulous sum for one or two of my sketches. It didn't seem to me quite the square thing to old Favel the picture-dealer, whom I had forced to take a lot at one fifteenth the price, so I simply referred them to him."

"No!" said Miss Helen indignantly; "you were not so foolish?"

Ostrander laughed.

"I'm afraid what you call my folly didn't avail, for they wanted what they saw in my portfolio."

"Of course," said Helen. "Why, that sketch of the housetop alone was worth a hundred times more than what you"--She stopped; she did not like to reveal what he got for his pictures, and added, "more than what any of those usurers would give."

"I am glad you think so well of it, for I do not mean to sell it," he said simply, yet with a significance that kept her silent.

She did not see him again for several days. The preparation for her examination left her no time, and her earnest concentration in her work fully preoccupied her thoughts. She was surprised, but not disturbed, on the day of the awards to see him among the audience of anxious parents and relations. Miss Helen Maynard did not get the first prize, nor yet the second; an accessit was her only award. She did not know until afterwards that this had long been a foregone conclusion of her teachers on account of some intrinsic defect in her voice. She did not know until long afterwards that the handsome painter's nervousness on that occasion had attracted even the sympathy of some of those who were near him. For she herself had been calm and collected. No one else knew how crushing was the blow which shattered her hopes and made her three years of labor and privation a useless struggle. Yet though no longer a pupil she could still teach; her master had found her a small patronage that saved her from dest.i.tution. That night she circled up quite cheerfully in her usual swallow flight to her nest under the eaves, and even twittered on the landing a little over the condolences of the concierge--who knew, mon Dieu! what a beast the director of the Conservatoire was and how he could be bribed; but when at last her brown head sank on her pillow she cried--just a little.

But what was all this to that next morning--the glorious spring morning which bathed all the roofs of Paris with warmth and hope, rekindling enthusiasm and ambition in the breast of youth, and gilding even much of the sordid dirt below. It seemed quite natural that she should meet Major Ostrander not many yards away as she sallied out. In that bright spring sunshine and the hopeful spring of their youth they even laughed at the previous day's disappointment. Ah! what a claque it was, after all! For himself, he, Ostrander, would much rather see that satin-faced Parisian girl who had got the prize smirking at the critics from the boards of the Grand Opera than his countrywoman! The Conservatoire settled things for Paris, but Paris wasn't the world! America would come to the fore yet in art of all kinds--there was a free academy there now--there should be a Conservatoire of its own. Of course, Paris schooling and Paris experience weren't to be despised in art; but, thank heaven! she had THAT, and no directors could take it from her! This and much more, until, comparing notes, they suddenly found that they were both free for that day. Why should they not take advantage of that rare weather and rarer opportunity to make a little suburban excursion? But where? There was the Bois, but that was still Paris. Fontainebleau? Too far; there were always artists sketching in the forest, and he would like for that day to "sink the shop." Versailles? Ah, yes! Versailles!

Thither they went. It was not new to either of them. Ostrander knew it as an artist and as an American reader of that French historic romance--a reader who hurried over the sham intrigues of the Oeil de Boeuf, the sham pastorals of the Pet.i.t Trianon, and the sham heroics of a shifty court, to get to Lafayette. Helen knew it as a child who had dodged these lessons from her patriotic father, but had enjoyed the woods, the parks, the terraces, and particularly the restaurant at the park gates. That day they took it like a boy and girl,--with the amused, omniscient tolerance of youth for a past so inferior to the present.

Ostrander thought this gray-eyed, independent American-French girl far superior to the obsequious filles d'honneur, whose brocades had rustled through those quinquonces, and Helen vaguely realized the truth of her fellow pupil's mischievous criticism of her companion that day at the Louvre. Surely there was no cla.s.sical statue here comparable to the one-armed soldier-painter!

All this was as yet free from either sentiment or pa.s.sion, and was only the frank pride of friendship. But, oddly enough, their mere presence and companionship seemed to excite in others that tenderness they had not yet felt themselves. Family groups watched the handsome pair in their innocent confidences, and, with French exuberant recognition of sentiment, thought them the incarnation of Love. Something in their manifest equality of condition kept even the vainest and most susceptible of spectators from attempted rivalry or cynical interruption. And when at last they dropped side by side on a sun-warmed stone bench on the terrace, and Helen, inclining her brown head towards her companion, informed him of the difficulty she had experienced in getting gumbo soup, rice and chicken, corn cakes, or any of her favorite home dishes in Paris, an exhausted but gallant boulevardier rose from a contiguous bench, and, politely lifting his hat to the handsome couple, turned slowly away from what he believed were tender confidences he would not permit himself to hear.

But the shadow of the trees began to lengthen, casting broad bars across the alle, and the sun sank lower to the level of their eyes. They were quite surprised, on looking around a few moments later, to discover that the gardens were quite deserted, and Ostrander, on consulting his watch, found that they had just lost a train which the other pleasure-seekers had evidently availed themselves of. No matter; there was another train an hour later; they could still linger for a few moments in the brief sunset and then dine at the local restaurant before they left. They both laughed at their forgetfulness, and then, without knowing why, suddenly lapsed into silence. A faint wind blew in their faces and trilled the thin leaves above their heads. Nothing else moved. The long windows of the palace in that sunset light seemed to glisten again with the incendiary fires of the Revolution, and then went out blankly and abruptly. The two companions felt that they possessed the terrace and all its memories as completely as the shadows who had lived and died there.

"I am so glad we have had this day together," said the painter, with a very conscious breaking of the silence, "for I am leaving Paris to-morrow."

Helen raised her eyes quickly to his.

"For a few days only," he continued. "My Russian customers--perhaps I ought to say my patrons--have given me a commission to make a study of an old chateau which the princess lately bought."

A swift recollection of her fellow pupil's raillery regarding the princess's possible att.i.tude towards the painter came over her and gave a strange artificiality to her response.

"I suppose you will enjoy it very much," she said dryly.

"No," he returned with the frankness that she had lacked. "I'd much rather stay in Paris, but," he added with a faint smile, "it's a question of money, and that is not to be despised. Yet I--I--somehow feel that I am deserting you,--leaving you here all alone in Paris."

"I've been all alone for four years," she said, with a bitterness she had never felt before, "and I suppose I'm accustomed to it."

Nevertheless she leaned a little forward, with her fawn-colored lashes dropped over her eyes, which were bent upon the ground and the point of the parasol she was holding with her little gloved hands between her knees. He wondered why she did not look up; he did not know that it was partly because there were tears in her eyes and partly for another reason. As she had leaned forward his arm had quite unconsciously moved along the back of the bench where her shoulders had rested, and she could not have resumed her position except in his half embrace.

He had not thought of it. He was lost in a greater abstraction. That infinite tenderness,--far above a woman's,--the tenderness of strength and manliness towards weakness and delicacy, the tenderness that looks down and not up, was already possessing him. An instinct of protection drew him nearer this bowed but charming figure, and if he then noticed that the shoulders were pretty, and the curves of the slim waist symmetrical, it was rather with a feeling of timidity and a half-consciousness of unchivalrous thought. Yet why should he not try to keep the brave and honest girl near him always? Why should he not claim the right to protect her? Why should they not--they who were alone in a strange land--join their two lonely lives for mutual help and happiness?

A sudden perception of delicacy, the thought that he should have spoken before her failure at the Conservatoire had made her feel her helplessness, brought a slight color to his cheek. Would it not seem to her that he was taking an unfair advantage of her misfortune? Yet it would be so easy now to slip a loving arm around her waist, while he could work for her and protect her with the other. THE OTHER! His eye fell on his empty sleeve. Ah, he had forgotten that! He had but ONE arm!

He rose up abruptly,--so abruptly that Helen, rising too, almost touched the arm that was hurriedly withdrawn. Yet in that accidental contact, which sent a vague tremor through the young girl's frame, there was still time for him to have spoken. But he only said:--

"Perhaps we had better dine."

She a.s.sented quickly,--she knew not why,--with a feeling of relief. They walked very quietly and slowly towards the restaurant. Not a word of love had been spoken; not even a glance of understanding had pa.s.sed between them. Yet they both knew by some mysterious instinct that a crisis of their lives had come and gone, and that they never again could be to each other as they were but a brief moment ago. They talked very sensibly and gravely during their frugal meal; the previous spectator of their confidences would have now thought them only simple friends and have been as mistaken as before. They talked freely of their hopes and prospects,--all save one! They even spoke pleasantly of repeating their little expedition after his return from the country, while in their secret hearts they had both resolved never to see each other again.

Yet by that sign each knew that this was love, and were proud of each other's pride, which kept it a secret.

The train was late, and it was past ten o'clock when they at last appeared before the concierge of Helen's home. During their journey, and while pa.s.sing though the crowds at the station and in the streets, Ostrander had exhibited a new and grave guardianship over the young girl, and, on the first landing, after a scrutinizing and an almost fierce glance at one or two of Helen's odd fellow lodgers, he had extended his protection so far as to accompany her up the four flights to the landing of her apartment. Here he took leave of her with a grave courtesy that half pained, half pleased her. She watched his broad shoulders and dangling sleeve as he went down the stairs, and then quickly turned, entered her room, and locked the door. The smile had faded from her lips. Going to the window, she pressed her hot forehead against the cool gla.s.s and looked out upon the stars nearly level with the black roofs around her. She stood there some moments until another star appeared higher up against the roof ridge, the star she was looking for. But here the gla.s.s pane before her eyes became presently dim with moisture; she was obliged to rub it out with her handkerchief; yet, somehow, it soon became clouded, at which she turned sharply away and went to bed.

But Miss Helen did not know that when she had looked after the retreating figure of her protector as he descended the stairs that night that he was really carrying away on those broad shoulders the character she had so laboriously gained during her four years' solitude. For when she came down the next morning the concierge bowed to her with an air of easy, cynical abstraction, the result of a long conversation with his wife the night before. He had taken Helen's part with a kindly cynicism. "Ah! what would you--it was bound to come. The affair of the Conservatoire had settled that. The poor child could not starve; penniless, she could not marry. Only why consort with other swallows under the eaves when she could have had a gilded cage on the first etage?" But girls were so foolish--in their first affair; then it was always LOVE! The second time they were wiser. And this maimed warrior and painter was as poor as she. A compatriot, too; well, perhaps that saved some scandal; one could never know what the Americans were accustomed to do. The first floor, which had been inclined to be civil to the young teacher, was more so, but less respectful; one or two young men were tentatively familiar until they looked in her gray eyes and remembered the broad shoulders of the painter. Oddly enough, only Mademoiselle Fifine, of her own landing, exhibited any sympathy with her, and for the first time Helen was frightened. She did not show it, however, only she changed her lodgings the next day. But before she left she had a few moments' conversation with the concierge and an exchange of a word or two with some of her fellow lodgers. I have already hinted that the young lady had great precision of statement; she had a pretty turn for handling colloquial French and an incisive knowledge of French character. She left No. 34, Rue de Frivole, working itself into a white rage, but utterly undecided as to her real character.

But all this and much more was presently blown away in the hot breath that swept the boulevards at the outburst of the Franco-German War, and Miss Helen Maynard disappeared from Paris with many of her fellow countrymen. The excitement reached even a quaint old chateau in Brittany where Major Ostrander was painting. The woman who was standing by his side as he sat before his easel on the broad terrace observed that he looked disturbed.

"What matters?" she said gently. "You have progressed so well in your work that you can finish it elsewhere. I have no great desire to stay in France with a frontier garrisoned by troops while I have a villa in Switzerland where you could still be my guest. Paris can teach you nothing more, my friend; you have only to create now--and be famous."

"I must go to Paris," he said quietly. "I have friends--countrymen--there, who may want me now."

"If you mean the young singer of the Rue de Frivole, you have compromised her already. You can do her no good."

"Madame!"

The pretty face which he had been familiar with for the past six weeks somehow seemed to change its character. Under the mask of dazzling skin he fancied he saw the high cheek-bones and square Tartar angle; the brilliant eyes were even brighter than before, but they showed more of the white than he had ever seen in them.

Nevertheless she smiled, with an equally stony revelation of her white teeth, yet said, still gently, "Forgive me if I thought our friendship justified me in being frank,--perhaps too frank for my own good."

She stopped as if half expecting an interruption; but as he remained looking wonderingly at her, she bit her lip, and went on: "You have a great career before you. Those who help you must do so without entangling you; a chain of roses may be as impeding as lead. Until you are independent, you--who may in time compa.s.s everything yourself--will need to be helped. You know," she added with a smile, "you have but one arm."

"In your kindness and appreciation you have made me forget it," he stammered. Yet he had a swift vision of the little bench at Versailles where he had NOT forgotten it, and as he glanced around the empty terrace where they stood he was struck with a fateful resemblance to it.

"And I should not remind you now of it," she went on, "except to say that money can always take its place. As in the fairy story, the prince must have a new arm made of gold." She stopped, and then suddenly coming closer to him said, hurriedly and almost fiercely, "Can you not see that I am advising you against my interests,--against myself? Go, then, to Paris, and go quickly, before I change my mind. Only if you do not find your friends there, remember you have always ONE here." Before he could reply, or even understand that white face, she was gone.

He left for Paris that afternoon. He went directly to the Rue de Frivole; his old resolution to avoid Helen was blown to the winds in the prospect of losing her utterly. But the concierge only knew that mademoiselle had left a day or two after monsieur had accompanied her home. And, pointedly, there was another gentleman who had inquired eagerly--and bountifully as far as money went--for any trace of the young lady. It was a Russe. The concierge smiled to himself at Ostrander's flushed cheek. It served this one-armed, conceited American poseur right. Mademoiselle was wiser in this SECOND affair.

Ostrander did not finish his picture. The princess sent him a cheque, which he coldly returned. Nevertheless he had acquired through his Russian patronage a local fame which stood him well with the picture dealers,--in spite of the excitement of the war. But his heart was no longer in his work; a fever of unrest seized him, which at another time might have wasted itself in mere dissipation. Some of his fellow artists had already gone into the army. After the first great reverses he offered his one arm and his military experience to that Paris which had given him a home. The old fighting instinct returned to him with a certain desperation he had never known before. In the sorties from Paris the one-armed American became famous, until a few days before the capitulation, when he was struck down by a bullet through the lung, and left in a temporary hospital. Here in the whirl and terror of Commune days he was forgotten, and when Paris revived under the republic he had disappeared as completely as his compatriot Helen.

But Miss Helen Maynard had been only obscured and not extinguished. At the first outbreak of hostilities a few Americans had still kept giddy state among the ruins of the tottering empire. A day or two after she left the Rue de Frivole she was invited by one of her wealthy former schoolmates to a.s.sist with her voice and talent at one of their extravagant entertainments. "You will understand, dear," said Miss de Laine, with ingenious delicacy, as she eyed her old comrade's well-worn dress, "that Poppa expects to pay you professional prices, and it may be an opening for you among our other friends."

"I should not come otherwise, dear," said Miss Helen with equal frankness. But she played and sang very charmingly to the fashionable a.s.sembly in the Champs Elysees,--so charmingly, indeed, that Miss de Laine patronizingly expatiated upon her worth and her better days in confidence to some of the guests.

"A most deserving creature," said Miss de Laine to the dowager d.u.c.h.ess of Soho, who was pa.s.sing through Paris on her way to England; "you would hardly believe that Poppa knew her father when he was one of the richest men in South Carolina."

"Your father seems to have been very fortunate," said the d.u.c.h.ess quietly, "and so are YOU. Introduce me."