The History of David Grieve Part 54

'Well--perhaps--after the first,' she said, still laughing. 'But--I may as well warn you--the Merichat will be very uncivil to you if you don't manage to pay her for something. Hadn't you better explore? That thing in the middle is Dubois' easel, of course.'

David groped his way in, took some matches from his pocket, found a gas-bracket with some difficulty, and lit up. Then he and Louie looked round them. They saw a gaunt high room, lit on one side by a huge studio-window, over which various tattered blinds were drawn; a floor of bare boards, with a few rags of carpet here and there; in the middle, a table covered with painter's apparatus of different kinds; palettes, paints, rags, tin-pots, and, thrown down amongst them, some stale crusts of bread; a large easel, with a number of old and dirty canvases piled upon it; two chairs, one of them without the usual complement of legs; a few etchings and oil-sketches and fragments of coloured stuffs pinned against the wall in wild confusion; and, spread out casually behind the easel, an iron folding-bedstead, without either mattress or bed-clothes.

In the middle of the floor stood a smeared kettle on a spirit-stove, and a few odds and ends of gla.s.s and china were on the mantelpiece, together with a paraffin-lamp. Every article in the room was thick in dust.

When she had, more or less, ascertained these attractive details, Louie stood still in the middle of M. Dubois' apartment.

'What did he tell all those lies for?' she said to David fiercely.

For in the very last communication received from him, Dubois had described himself as having made all necessary preparations '_et pour la toilette et pour le manger._' He had also asked for the rent in advance, which David with some demur had paid.

'Here's something,' cried David; and, turning a handle in the wall, he pulled a flimsy door open and disclosed what seemed a cupboard.

The cupboard, however, contained a bed, some bedding, blankets, and was.h.i.+ng arrangements; and David joyously announced his discoveries.

Louie took no notice of him. She was tired, angry, disgusted. The illusion of Paris was, for the moment, all gone. She sat herself down on one of the two chairs, and, taking off her hat, she threw it from her on to the belittered table with a pa.s.sionate gesture.

The French girl had so far stood just outside, leaning against the doorway, and looking on with unabashed amus.e.m.e.nt while they made their inspection. Now, however, as Louie uncovered, the spectator at the door made a little, quick sound, and then ran forward.

'_Mais, mon Dieu!_ how handsome you are!' she said with a whimsical eagerness, stopping short in front of Louie, and driving her little hands deep into the pockets of her jacket. 'What a head!--what eyes! Why didn't I see before? You must sit to me--you _must!_ You will, won't you? I will pay you anything you like! You sha'n't be dull--somebody shall come and amuse you. _Voyons--monsieur!_' she called imperiously.

David came up. She stood with one hand on the table leaning her light weight backward, looking at them with all her eyes--the very embodiment of masterful caprice.

'Both of them!' she said under her breath, '_superbe!_'

Monsieur, look here. You and mademoiselle are tired. There is nothing in these rooms. Dubois is a scamp without a sou. He does no work, and he gambles on the Bourse. Everything he had he has sold by degrees. If he has gone to Brussels now to work honestly, it is for the first time in his life. He lives on the hope of getting money out of an uncle in England--that I know, for he boasts of it to everybody. It is just like him to play a practical joke on strangers. No doubt you have paid him already--_n'est-ce pas_?

I thought as much. Well, never mind! My rooms are next door. I am Elise Delaunay. I work in Taranne's _atelier_. I am an artist, pure and simple, and I live to please myself and n.o.body else. But I have a chair or two, and the woman downstairs looks after me because I make it worth her while. Come with me. I will give you some supper, and I will lend you a rug and a pillow for that bed.

Then to-morrow you can decide what to do.'

David protested, stammering and smiling. But he had flushed a rosy red, and there was no real resistance in him. He explained the invitation to Louie, who had been looking helplessly from one to the other, and she at once accepted it. She understood perfectly that the French girl admired her; her face relaxed its frown; she nodded to the stranger with a sort of proud yielding, and then let herself be taken by the arm and led once more along the corridor.

Elise Delaunay unlocked her own door.

'_Bien!_' she said, putting her head in first, 'Merichat has earned her money. Now go in--go in!--and see if I don't give you some supper.'

CHAPTER II

She pushed them in, and shut the door behind them. They looked round them in amazement. Here was an _atelier_ precisely corresponding in size and outlook to Dubois'. But to their tired eyes the change was one from squalor to fairyland. The room was not in fact luxurious at all. But there was a Persian rug or two on the polished floor; there was a wood fire burning on the hearth, and close to it there was a low sofa or divan covered with pieces of old stuffs, and flanked by a table whereon stood a little meal, a roll, some cut ham, part of a flat fruit tart from the _patissier_ next door, a coffee pot, and a spirit kettle ready for lighting. There were two easels in the room; one was laden with sketches and photographs; the other carried a half-finished picture of a mosque interior in Oran--a rich splash of colour, making a centre for all the rest. Everywhere indeed, on the walls, on the floor, or standing on the chairs, were studies of Algeria, done with an ostentatiously bold and rapid hand. On the mantelpiece was a small reproduction in terra cotta of one of Dalou's early statues, a peasant woman in a long cloak straining her homely baby to her breast--true and pa.s.sionate.

Books lay about, and in a corner was a piano, open, with a confusion of tattered music upon it. And everywhere, as it seemed to Louie, were _shoes!_--the daintiest and most fantastic shoes imaginable--Turkish shoes, Pompadour shoes, old shoes and new shoes, shoes with heels and shoes without, shoes lined with fur, and shoes blown together, as one might think, out of cardboard and ribbons. The English girl's eyes fastened upon them at once.

'Ah, you tink my shoes pretty,' said the hostess, speaking a few words of English, _'c'est mon dada, voyez-vous--ma collection!--Tenez_--I cannot say dat in English, Monsieur; explain to your sister. My shoes are my pa.s.sion, next to my foot. I am not pretty, but my foot is ravis.h.i.+ng. Dalou modelled it for his Siren. That turned my head. Sit down, Mademoiselle--we will find some plat es.'

She pushed Louie into a corner of the divan, and then she went over to a cupboard standing against the wall, and beckoned to David.

'Take the plates--and this potted meat. Now for the _pet.i.t vin_ my doctor cousin brought me last week from the family estate. I have stowed it away somewhere. Ah! here it is. We are from the Gironde--at least my mother was. My father was n.o.body--_bourgeois_ from tip to toe, though he called himself an artist. It was a _mesalliance_ for her when she married him. Oh, he led her a life!--she died when I was small, and last year _he_ died, eleven months ago. I did my best to cry.

_Impossible!_ He had made Maman and me cry too much. And now I am perfectly alone in the world, and perfectly well-behaved.

Monsieur Prudhomme may talk--I snap my finger at him. You will have your ideas, of course. No matter! If you eat my salt, you will hardly be able to speak ill of me.'

'Mademoiselle!' cried David, inwardly cursing his shyness--a shyness new to him--and his complete apparent lack of anything to say, or the means of saying it.

'Oh, don't protest!--after that journey you can't afford to waste your breath. Move a little, Monsieur--let me open the other door of the cupboard--there are some chocolates worth eating on that back shelf. Do you admire my _armoire?_ It is old Breton--it belonged to my grandmother, who was from Morbihan. She brought her linen in it. It is cherry wood, you see, mounted in silver. You may search Paris for another like it. Look at that flower work on the panels. It is not _ba.n.a.l_ at all--it has character--there is real design in it. Now take the chocolates, and these sardine--put them down over there. As for me, I make the coffee.'

She ran over to the spirit lamp, and set it going; she measured out the coffee; then sitting down on the floor, she took the bellows and blew up the logs.

'Tell me your name, Monsieur?' she said suddenly, looking round.

David gave it in full, his own name and Louie's. Then he walked up to her, making an effort to be at his ease, and said something about their French descent. His mode of speaking was slow and bookish--correct, but wanting in life. After this year's devotion to French books, after all his compositions with Barbier, he had supposed himself so familiar with French! With the woman from the _loge_, indeed, he could have talked at large, had she been conversational instead of rude. But here, with this little glancing creature, he felt himself plunged in a perfect quagmire of ignorance and stupidity. When he spoke of being half French, she became suddenly grave, and studied him with an intent piercing look. 'No,' she said slowly, 'no, at bottom you are not French a bit, you are all English, I feel it. I should fight you--_a outrance!

Grive_--what a strange name! It's a bird's name. You are not like it--you do not belong to it. But _David_!--ah, that is better. _Voyons_!'

She sprang up, ran over to the furthest easel, and, routing about amongst its disorder of prints and photographs, she hit upon one, which she held up triumphantly.

'There, Monsieur!--there is your prototype. That is David--the young David--scourge of the Philistine. You are bigger and broader.

I would rather fight him than you--but it is like you, all the same. Take it.'

And she held out to him a photograph of the Donatello David at Florence--the divine young hero in his shepherd's hat, fresh from the slaying of the oppressor.

He looked at it, red and wondering, then shook his head.

'What is it? Who made it, Mademoiselle?'

'Donatello--oh, I never saw it. I was never in Italy, but a friend gave it me. It is like you, I tell you. But, what use is that? You are English--yes, you _are_, in spite of your mother. It is very well to be called David--you may be Goliath all the time!'

Her tone had grown hard and dry--insulting almost. Her look sent him a challenge.

He stared at her dumbfounded. All the self-confidence with which he had hitherto governed his own world had deserted him. He was like a tongue-tied child in her hands.

She enjoyed her mastery, and his discomfiture. Her look changed and melted in an instant.

'I am rude,' she said, 'and you can't answer me back--not yet--for a day or two. _Pardon_! Monsieur David--Mademoiselle--will you come to supper?'

She put chairs and waved them to their places with the joyous animation of a child, waiting on them, fetching this and that, with the quickest, most graceful motions. She had brought from the _armoire_ some fine white napkins, and now she produced a gla.s.s or two and made her guests provide themselves with the red wine which neither had ever tasted before, and over which Louie made an involuntary face. Then she began to chatter and to eat--both as fast as possible--now laughing at her own English or at David's French, and now laying down her knife and fork that she might look at Louie with an intent professional look which contrasted oddly with the wild freedom of her talk and movements.

Suddenly she took up a winegla.s.s and held it out to David with a piteous childish gesture.

'Fill it, Monsieur, and then drink--drink to my good luck. I wish for something--with my _life_--my soul; but there are people who hate me, who would delight to see me crushed. And it will be three weeks--three long long weeks, almost--before I know.'

She was very pale, the tears had sprung to her eyes, and the hand holding the gla.s.s trembled. David flushed and frowned in the vain desire to understand her.

'What am I to do?' he said, taking the gla.s.s mechanically, but making no use of it.

'Drink!--drink to my success. I have two pictures, Monsieur, in the Salon; you know what that means? the same as your _Academie?

Parfaitement!_ ah! you understand. One is well hung, on the line; the other has been shamefully treated--but _shamefully!_ And all the world knows why. I have some enemies on the jury, and they delight in a mean triumph over me--a triumph which is a scandal. But I have friends, too--good friends--and in three weeks the rewards will be voted. You understand? the medals, and the _mentions honorables_. As for a medal--no! I am only two years in the _atelier;_ I am not unreasonable. But a _mention!

_--ah! Monsieur David, if they don't give it me I shall be very miserable.'

Her voice had gone through a whole gamut of emotion in this speech--pride, elation, hope, anger, offended dignity--sinking finally to the plaintive note of a child asking for consolation.

And luckily David had followed her. His French novels had brought him across the Salon and the jury system; and Barbier had told him tales. His courage rose. He poured the wine into the gla.s.s with a quick, uncertain hand, and raised it to his lips.

'_A la gloire de Mademoiselle!_' he cried, tossing it down with a gesture almost as free and vivid as her own.