CHAPTER XII

ETHEL’S IDEA OF A MAN

As a consequence of their meeting, Ethel became Phil’s pupil. Having made his acquaintance at the Comtesse de Donjeon’s, she gave him a “chance,” as grandma had told her to do. She ordered from him two pictures according to ideas of her own: first, Eugénie young and beautiful, present in the emperor’s cabinet at the reception of Rowrer, the grandfather; then Miss Rowrer had him paint Eugénie aged and broken, seated by the window and looking far away on the empty Place of the Tuileries. Better and better satisfied, she ordered from him grandma’s and her own portrait. These orders were enough to “launch” Phil, as they say, and brought him other orders from the society frequented by Miss Rowrer.

Ethel, before she came to Phil, had been working in the École des Beaux-Arts; but there the studio seemed gloomy to her and she stifled in it. Moreover, she was already rather tired of the Latin Quarter on account of her fellow-countrymen whom she met there.

She had a grudge against some of them for imitating and even exaggerating the most foolish faults of a certain class of students. She did not approve their wearing their hair like a horse’s mane, their velvet trousers and knit-woolen jackets, and their way of carrying around with them boxes and brushes and canvases as if they were sign-painters. And when she saw them seated on the curbstone _terrasses_ before cafés, drinking in public and spitting everywhere and puffing the smoke of their cigarettes into the faces of the passers-by, it exasperated her. She had a desire to call out to them: “Up! and go to work!”

As she did not like the art academies of the Quarter, she decided for Phil’s studio. She had another reason for doing this. The École des Beaux-Arts was too near, and Ethel needed exercise. In spite of the enormous distance to Phil’s studio, she always went to it on foot—“to keep myself in training,” she said. She came back the same way—to give herself an appetite. Thus every morning she had four hours’ work and two hours’ walk—just to keep “in shape.”

Ethel, one morning, was at the studio with Mlle. Yvonne de Grojean. The model’s rest was over and they were beginning work again. The concierge—the old man “of my time” and former inspector of the Louvre roofs—mounted the table and posed before the girls dressed as a Louis Quinze marquis. There was a pushing about of easels and chairs, palettes were taken up, and at once the model was beset with remarks:

“Model—the head!”

“Model—the foot!”

“Model—smile!”

At this formal injunction the concierge bridled up, distorted his eyes, twisted his lips, and swelled out his neck like a goiter.

Ethel and Mlle. Yvonne were not working from the Louis Quinze model. Helia posed for them in a corner of the studio—the corner of “still life.” She happened to be free that morning, as the figure of Morgana which Phil was painting from her was nearly finished. Helia had come down to the pupils’ studio to please Ethel, who greatly desired to do a head of the Madonna from her.

Ethel and Mlle. Yvonne chatted together as they added touches to their water-colors. Ethel was relating to her friend, Yvonne de Grojean, the visit she had paid some time before to Phil’s private studio, where she had seen the Duke of Morgania. She had also described the magnificent decorative painting which Phil was finishing for the duke.

Their conversation was punctuated here and there by the remarks cried out around them to the Louis Quinze marquis:

“Model—the eye!”

“Model—the mouth!”

“Really,” said Ethel, “that concierge is incorrigible. Why does he persist in _not_ looking like the students’ drawings?”

Mlle. de Grojean at Ethel’s side laughed heartily.

“How droll you are!”

Helia smiled in spite of herself.

“The papers keep me in good humor,” Ethel answered. “I venture there’s something in them again about Richard the Lion-hearted,” she continued, pointing to a paper on the chair. “All sorts of bargains are offered to me ever since that story—usually old mummies. No; there is nothing about Richard to-day,” Ethel remarked, as she ran through the head-lines. But she received her “pin-prick” all the same. In an open letter some one attacked American society and the lack of solidity in its family ties—signed, “H. Ochsenmaulsalatsfabrikant.” This annoyed Miss Rowrer more than personal attack. She was amazed that people could have such thoughts about her country.

“In your country,” was the conclusion of the Salatsfabrikant, “the young men run after money and the young women after titles.”

“Personally I had the idea that titles were running after me,” thought Ethel, who had had reasons for believing so during the three months in which the duke had been paying her court.

She had already forgotten the open letter, but she kept on thinking of the subject it had started up in her mind.

Ah, certainly not! Titles were not to be her aim in life. Most of all, since her visit to the empress, she had promised herself to give worldly grandeurs only the esteem they deserve. A title! A title no more takes from a man’s qualities than it adds to them. The main thing for a man is, not to be a duke or prince; it is, first and foremost—to be a man!

Mlle. Yvonne was also painting a Madonna’s head from Helia. She wished to make a medallion of it as a present for her mother. Helia took pleasure in posing for these girls who were so kind to her.

Ethel, after seeing Helia at Phil’s the day after the Quat’z-Arts Ball, had met her several times, and felt a very sincere sympathy for her. She seemed to her to be “the right sort of girl.”

She had even proposed to send her to Chicago as a professor of physical training in the Women’s University founded by her father. The situation was brilliant, her future would be assured, and she would probably make a very good marriage before long. Helia thanked her effusively—but something kept her in Paris; and she added: “Paris alone gives the consecration to artistes!”

Ethel knew that Helia was preparing a number which was to make a sensation. Meanwhile, she had her little sister, and, so it seemed, was paying for the old clown Cemetery out of pure goodness of soul. For the time being she was pinched for money. Ethel would have been happy to do her a kindness; but she knew that Helia would never accept anything under any form whatsoever, not even a gift to Sœurette. A smile, yes! a kind word, yes! an obligation, no!

It was the same with Suzanne, the model who sometimes posed for pupils, and whose acquaintance Ethel had also made. This simplicity of manners, which was at the foundation of their race, touched Ethel. She pardoned the “pigmies” many things for the sake of these brave little hearts. An acrobat and a model—what matters it? Character is everything!

“Model—time! Rest!”

There was a noise of palettes laid aside and pupils rising in their places. The old marquis telescoped his neck into his laces and came down from the table.

“You who are collecting mummies,” Yvonne de Grojean said, laughing, to Ethel, “you ought to add the concierge; he is a type!”

“Don’t laugh, Yvonne,” said Ethel; “he would do very well in our hall in Chicago; he’d give it an air of the old régime; there are heaps of men like that in princely anterooms.”

Painting was over and they were now talking in the still-life corner. Of the other students some were walking two by two, some were standing, and others seated on the high stools; and some were grouped about Mlle. Yvonne and Ethel, who was, in a way, their leader, by the social position she held, and the prestige of her name. All around her they conversed as in a parlor, amusing themselves with a passing broil between the English Miss Arabella and Mlle. Yvonne.

“England should not allow it!” Miss Arabella had exclaimed, speaking of some performance of French politics.

“French affairs concern us alone!” Mlle. Yvonne, usually so timid, had retorted, as she raised her head whereon her hair was rolled like a helmet.

Miss Rozenkrantz, a Swede with spectacles, made peace, as if by chance, with her explanation of a new association in Stockholm—the “Women’s Anti-Marriage League.”

“What are its articles?” Miss Rowrer asked.

“Absolute indifference to men—woman by herself in all and for all—meetings—lectures to girls—mutual aid—unions.”

Conversation followed in which the Anti-Marriage League was discussed. On such subjects Mlle. Yvonne did not speak. She listened with astonishment to these young women from the countries of the North talking among themselves of things on which she never touched: marriage and anti-marriage—leagues—clubs—of all this she was ignorant.

Mlle. Yvonne was passing two months in Paris. It was the Comtesse de Donjeon, a friend of the Grojean family, who had introduced her to Miss Rowrer. The two young women were unlike both in education and ideas—and they at once became great friends. But Mlle. Yvonne was shortly to return to her old tranquil, provincial home, and she was enjoying her last weeks in Paris. To-day, especially, she was delighted to hear them talking freely before her, and, most of all, about marriage. For her it was the escapade of a school-girl looking over the wall at the fruits of a forbidden garden.

One thing, however, was troubling her. Her mother had not come back, as she always did, to take her home. Doubtless there was some unforeseen hindrance. She confided her disquiet to Ethel.

“Don’t worry; your mother will come. And even if she does not, you can go away alone, I suppose.”

“What!” said Yvonne, “cross Paris all alone? You wouldn’t think of it!”

“But I do it!”

“That is true,” Yvonne said, blushing.

They were speaking in a low tone; the others were not listening, but surrounded Miss Rozenkrantz.

“What is more natural than to go about alone?” Ethel said to Yvonne. “What harm is there, _voyons_? You slander your fellow-countrymen—the men of Paris are not tigers, I imagine. What danger is there?”

“Oh, none,” Yvonne admitted; “but they are said to be so gallant!”

“Gallant! An ill-bred fellow accosts you in the street and you say he is gallant?”

“Not exactly, no,” Yvonne hastened to say; “it’s just the contrary.”

“Men such as that,” said Ethel, “are not men—that’s all!”

There was a moment of silence.

“Men who are not men—that must be another of Miss Ethel’s pleasantries,” thought Yvonne.

Ethel looked at her water-color, throwing back her shoulders to judge better of the effect. What she did not understand was that a young woman like Yvonne should accommodate herself to such a state of affairs—Yvonne, who but now, during the squabble with Miss Arabella, had the decided air of some Gaulish Amazon. Why should she be so timid with regard to such insolent dogs? She felt really a lofty and protecting pity for this sister of an old country, nice as she was.

“Men such as that!” she began again, in a tone of contempt.

“Such as what?” Yvonne timidly asked. “Do you mean workmen, men with blouses—those of whom you were just speaking—those who are not—”

“Who said anything like that?” replied Ethel. “Dress has nothing to do with it.”

“It’s their profession, then?” Yvonne asked again; “or is it nationality? The Englishman is different from the Frenchman—the German—”

“Ochsenmaulsalatsfabrikant!” Ethel interrupted.

“All go to make up so many different types, I know,” Mlle. Yvonne continued.

“It’s nothing of all that!” said Ethel, seriously. “When I say _a man_ I speak neither of an officer nor of a lawyer nor of a doctor nor a workman nor a prince. Rich or poor, German, English, or French—it doesn’t matter!”

The students had gathered round. They asked one another what Miss Rowrer meant—who, then, is the _rara avis_ that is neither this nor that—not a workman, not a prince?

Helia kept silence and listened. Which man? She had known one who seemed to her frank and loyal, and gave her his word; and then—then he had forgotten it! What meaning, then, was there in Miss Rowrer’s words? But she understood perfectly, and she blushed for Phil when Ethel, to signify those qualities of uprightness, equity, and honor—that respect for one’s word once given—which she meant by “man,” repeated in a tone of deepest conviction:

“I say A MAN!”