Fairfax and His Pride Part 46

Touching her eyes, she added: "I thought of what Goethe said as I cried here--'Wer nie sein Brot mit Thraenen a.s.s'--only it's not the first bread and tears that have gone together in this room, I expect."

"No," returned Fairfax, "I reckon not, and you are lucky to have the bread, Mademoiselle. Some have only tears."

"I know," she returned softly, "and I have been most awfully lucky so far."

When they had finished he made the man clear away the things, and she spread out the contents of her portfolio before him, watching his face, as he felt, for every expression. He handled thoughtfully the bits of card-board and paper, seeing on them only the evidence of a mediocre talent, a great deal of feeling, and the indications of a sensitive nature. One by one he looked at them and turned them over, and put them back and tied up the green portfolio by its black tapes. Then he looked at her, saw how white her little face had grown, how big and blue her eyes were, how childlike and inadequate she seemed to life.

"You need not speak," she faltered. "You were going to say I'm no good.

I don't want to hear you say it."

Impulsively, he put out his strong hands and took hers that fluttered at her coat.

"Why should you care for what I say? You have your masters and your chiefs."

"Yes," she nodded, "and they have been awfully encouraging, all of them, until to-day."

Fairfax looked at her earnestly. "You must not mind if you feel that you have got it in you. Don't seek to hear others' opinions, just go boldly, courageously on. What I say has no meaning."

He dropped her hands and the colour came back somewhat into her face.

"What you say has importance, though," she answered. "I have the feeling that you are somebody. Anyhow, I have watched you every time you came. I think you know things. I believe you must be a great artist. I should believe you--I do believe you. I see you don't think I'm any good.

Besnard didn't think so when he came to-day. I don't want to go on being a fool."

As she spoke, from the other restaurant came the notes of a fiddle and a flute, for two wandering musicians, habitues of these smaller cafes, had wandered in to earn the price of their luncheon. They were playing, not very well, but very plaintively, an old French song, one in vogue in the Latin Quarter. The sun, still magnificently brilliant, had found its way around to the back of the place, and over the court with the ruined marbles the light streamed through the window and fell on Fairfax and the little girl.

"What do you say," he suggested abruptly, "to coming with me for the afternoon? Let's go on the top of a tram and ride off somewhere."

He rose, paid the man who came for his luncheon (the girl's score had already been settled), and stood waiting. She fingered the tapes of her closed portfolio, her lips still trembled. The sunlight was full on her, s.h.i.+ning on her hair, on her old worn cape, on the worn felt hat, on the little figure which had been so full of courage and of dreams. Then she looked up at Antony and rose.

"I will go," she said, and he picked up the portfolio, tucked it under his arm, and they walked out together, through the smoky larger room where part of the lunchers were joining in the chorus of the song the musicians played. And this little handful of the Latin Quarter saw the two pa.s.s out together, as two pa.s.s together often from those Bohemian refuges. Some one, as the door opened and shut on Antony and the girl, cried: "Vive l'amour!"

CHAPTER XII

On the way out to Versailles from the top of the tram, lifted high above Paris and the river, alongside of the vulgar head, alongside of the strange little English girl, Fairfax listened to the outpouring of her heart. She took his interest for granted. With an appreciative understanding of human nature, and as though she had been bearing a burden for years which she had never let slip, she rested it now, and her blue eyes on his, her hands in the old woollen gloves, which she had slipped on before they started, clasped in her lap, she talked to Fairfax. By the time the tram stopped before the Palace of Versailles, he had heard her story. She was the daughter of an Irish clergyman. Nora Scarlet was her name.

Nora and Molly!

But they were very different. This girl was as gay as a lark. She laughed frankly aloud, musically, and put her hand on his with a free "camaraderie." She made sparkling little faces at him and called him softly, "Ami."

"My name is Nora, Nora Scarlet, but I don't want you to tell me your name until the end of the day, please. It is just a silly idea, but I will call you 'Ami.' I daresay it is a great name you have got, and I would rather feel that I don't want to know it too soon."

She had shown talent in the school where she had started in Ireland, and had taken a scholars.h.i.+p and had come to Paris to study, to venture unprepared and quite wildly into the student life, to struggle on small means and insufficient food uphill toward art. She displayed in talking a touching confidence in herself and wors.h.i.+p of beauty, as well as a simple and loyal att.i.tude toward life in general. She occupied a furnished room near the studio and, as she expressed it, "fished for herself." She was the oldest of seven children, with a weight of responsibility on herself. Her father's salary was ridiculous, she told him, not enough to bring up one hungry child well, much less half a dozen.

"I thought that I could support myself with my art," she told Fairfax, "and that I should soon be _arrivee, lancee_, but to-day, when the criticism discouraged me and I knew that I should have to write home for money soon, well ... I'd not like to tell you what strange fancies came." She lifted up her finger and pointed at the river as it lay between its sh.o.r.es. "And now," she glanced at him, "when you tell me, too, that I am no good at painting!"

"I haven't said that," remonstrated Fairfax; "but don't let's talk about work now, what do you say? Let's have a holiday."

They walked up the Palace over the cobbles of the courtyard and paused to look back at the Route de Paris, that Miss Nora Scarlet might thoroughly picture the procession of the fish-wives and the march of the Paris populace up to Versailles, where the people swept its violent sea over the royal courts and the foam rose to the windows where royal faces whitened against the panes. Nora Scarlet and Fairfax wandered through the great rooms, part of the tourist crowd. The handsome man limped, a student's stoop across his shoulders, by the side of the small blond girl with her student cape and her soft hat, her hair like chrysanthemum petals. Fairfax took occasion in the portrait room to tell her that she looked like a Greuze. Nora Scarlet was an appreciative sightseer.

"Oh, if I could only paint," she murmured, "if I could only paint!" and she clasped her woollen gloves prayerfully before the portraits of the Filles de France. But the Nattiers and the Fragonards mocked her, and the green portfolio under Fairfax's arm mocked her still more. Side by side, they penetrated into the little rooms where a Queen lived, intrigued, loved, and played her part. And Fairfax had his envies before Houdon's head of Marie Antoinette.

The wide, sweet, leaf-strewn alleys were very nearly deserted where they stood, for the day had grown colder and the winter sunlight left early to give place to a long still winter evening. Their footsteps made no sound on the brown carpet of the park. Antony had not stopped to ask what kind of a woman the girl student was when he spontaneously left his lonely seat in the restaurant to take his place at her side, but everything she said to him revealed a frank, innocent mind. He saw that she had come with him without thinking twice, and he should have been touched by it. He drew her arm within his as they pa.s.sed the great fountain. The basin was empty and its curve as round and smooth as human lips.

"Now," he said, "the time has come to talk of you and what you want to do and can do, and how you can do it."

"That's awfully kind."

"No, those are just the questions that I have to ask myself every day and find on some days that I haven't got the answer. It's a riddle, you know. We don't every day quite find the answer to it. I reckon we would never go on if we did, but it's good sport to ask and try to find out, and, believe me, Miss Nora Scarlet, two are better than one at a riddle, aren't they?"

"Oh, very much." They went along leisurely and after a second she continued: "It's lonely in Paris for a girl who doesn't want to go in for lots of things, and I have been getting muddled. But the worst muddle is pounds, s.h.i.+llings and pence"--she laughed musically--"it's reduced to pence at last, but I don't find the muddle reduced a bit."

"You want to do portraits?" he asked.

"Yes, I haven't an idea about anything else."

The trees above their heads made leafy bowers in summer, but now between the fine bare branches, they saw the delicate wintry sky, pale with the fading light of what had been a rare January day.

"Suppose I get an order for you to paint a portrait and you are paid in advance."

She stopped, holding him back by the arm, and exclaimed, joyously--

"Oh, but you could not!"

"Suppose that I can. If I do succeed and you paint the portrait, will you do something for me?"

She looked up at him quickly. He was much above her. Nora Scarlet had seen Fairfax several times a week for many months. She knew him as well as any person can know another by sight--she knew his clothes, the way he wore them. It had been easy to study his face attentively, for he was so absorbed in general that he was unconscious of scrutiny. She had learned every one of his features pretty well by heart. Solitary as she was, without companions or friends except for her studio mates, she had grown to think as women do of a man they choose, to surround him with fancies and images. She had idealized this unknown artist, and her thoughts kept her company, and he had become almost part of her life already. She looked up at him now and blushed. He put his hand down over hers lightly.

"I mean that when the portrait is finished, we will have it criticized by the subject first, then by some one in whom you have great confidence, and if you are certain then that you have a vocation, we will see what can be done--some way will open up. There is always sure to be a path toward the thing that is to be. But if the criticism is unfavourable, I want you to promise me to go back to England and to your people, and to give up art as bravely as you can--I mean, courageously, like a good soldier who has fought well and lost the battle. Perhaps,"

Fairfax said, smiling, "if I were not an artist my advice would be worth less, but the place is too full of half-successes. If you can't be at the top, don't fill up the ranks. Get down as soon as you can and be another kind of success."

The advice was sound and practical. She listened to his agreeable voice, softened by the Southern accent. She watched him as he talked, but his face was not that of an adviser. It was charmingly personal and his smile the sweetest she had ever seen. She murmured--

"You are awfully kind. I promise."

"Good," he exclaimed heartily, "you are a first-rate sort; however it turns out, you are plucky."

The most delicious odours of moist earth, blessed with the day's unexpected warmth, rose on the winter air. Their footfalls were lost in the leaves. Far down at the end of the alley they could see other strollers, but where they stood they were quite alone. The excitement of the unusual outing, the pleasure of companions.h.i.+p, brought the colour to their cheeks, a light to their eyes. The girl's helplessness, the human struggle so like to his own, her admiration and her frankness, appealed to him greatly. His late agitation, useless, hopeless, perilous moreover, and which he felt he must overcome because it could have neither issue nor satisfaction, made Fairfax turn here for satisfaction and repose. They wandered slowly down the alley, her hand within his arm, and he said, looking down at her--

"Meanwhile, you belong to me."

The words pa.s.sed his lips before he realized what they meant, or their importance. He did so as soon as he spoke. He felt her start. She withdrew the hand from his arm. He stopped and said--

"Did I frighten you?" He took her little hand.

"A little," Nora Scarlet said. Her eyes were round and wide.