CHAPTER VI

THE OLD, OLD STORY

An automobile, with Miss Rowrer’s brother Will conducting it himself, was rolling slowly along. Will had just arrived from America, to rest in France from the worries of business. He had bought for his sister this magnificent “forty-horse-power” machine; and, with a chauffeur to indicate the way for him, he had the pleasure of taking Ethel and grandma for a ride through Paris. That day, on the seats behind him, there were his sister and grandma, and, facing them, the Duke of Morgania alone.

“Oh, there’s Monsieur Phil!” Miss Rowrer said, as the auto stopped at a crossing thronged with hucksters and good-wives in morning undress.

“Good day, Monsieur Phil!”

Phil was on the sidewalk, two steps from Miss Rowrer. He was in his studio dress, a short coat over his sweater. He had come out to buy something and was going home with a package done up in paper in his hand. Hearing his name, he raised his head, recognized Miss Rowrer, bowed, and then approached in visible embarrassment. The vizor of his cap ill concealed the eye which Socrate had chanced to blacken with his fist the night before.

“Our friend Phil does his own marketing,” Ethel said, laughing. “He is right. I’ve heard from the Hon. Mr. Charley that nothing is equal to a good beefsteak as a plaster for a black eye.”

“Well, I suppose I must tell you,” said Phil, not wishing that Miss Rowrer should think he had fought with a lamp-post. “This is how it happened: I got it last night while punishing a rough fellow for ill-treating a poor dog.”

“Really? Then get in here with us, I beg of you,” said Ethel.

Phil excused himself,—his dress, his black eye.

“You’re all right as you are,” Ethel replied. “You’ll really oblige me by coming with us”—and she seated him beside the duke.

“Your dress doesn’t trouble us, since it pleases you,” she continued. “Be yourself, and look out at the world from the neck of a sweater—there’ll always be people enough to look loftily over a choker. If I were a man I would always defend the weak and pay no attention to the rest. You’re all right as you are, Monsieur Phil.”

Phil listened to Ethel with intense satisfaction. The duke chatted with grandma. The good-fellowship which he saw growing up between Miss Rowrer and Phil did not bother him. It was only the ordinary relations between an American girl and boy—only the friendship of fellow country people. The duke had for Phil that distant regard which nobles by race have for professionals. To handle a tool, even such as the painter’s brush or sculptor’s chisel,—to do something with one’s hands, be it even a masterpiece,—lowers a man somewhat in their consideration. Consequently Phil might defend strong or weak, or dog-martyrs, if it amused him—it was a matter of no importance. The duke gave himself up to the noble occupation of a cicerone of mark, who knew his Paris thoroughly; and, as they passed, he pointed out the monuments to grandma.

Phil, on his side, talked with Ethel _en camarade_, as the duke said. What a pleasure such talks were to him! Where were now his fine resolutions no longer to make himself the champion of Miss Rowrer, and even to stop seeing her? He drifted along under the charm of her words. From the day when, in the duke’s company, he had first met her at the Comtesse de Donjeon’s, he had become one of the faithful at her tea-parties. He often went to the Rue Servandoni; and, after the commission for the empress’s portrait and Ethel’s entrance as a pupil in his studio, they had had the most friendly relations.

Phil told her stories from bohemia that amused her. He narrated his adventures in the provinces, including the little Saint John, with his arrival in Paris and his visit to Poufaille and Suzanne; the “comrades,” and Socrate, and the Deux-Magots; his reception at the studio; and the welcome on the model’s table; and many other things besides. But he said little about Helia’s stay in Paris when he was a student. For that matter, he thought of it seldom; his memory was a mist concerning it—it all seemed so far away to him.

With what pity he recalled the environment in which he had lived! There were all his chance friends. Suzanne, who was really good, and skeptical only because she had seen too early the bad side of life. Poufaille was too simple; to have made an intimate friend of him would have been to tie a cannon-ball to one’s leg. Charley was too much of a bluffer. As to Helia—ah, Helia! He was grateful to her from the bottom of his heart for the simple love which he had once had for her—a love whose remembrance had protected him all through his first years in Paris. For him it had been a romance, without reproach, candid and loyal, and not a passion that would follow him through life like a remorse. His romance—Phil was sure of it—had nothing in it that was not noble. Yes, Helia would always have a place apart in his heart; she would be a sweet memory. Forever, all through his life, she would be his friend and he would forever be a brother to her.

But time had passed. Helia herself had changed. He saw it clearly during her visit to him in his studio on the morrow of the Quat’z-Arts Ball. Ah, how far away were the days when she had been his sweetheart—how many things had passed since then! Now Ethel ruled in his life. He felt himself very little in her presence. For her he had the same admiration which Helia once had for him.

Miss Rowrer was the first society girl whom he had known; for he had led a solitary life in the Chesapeake manor, and in Europe his over-timidity had always held him socially aloof. During his years as a student he had neither opportunity nor leisure. It was only now that he began to understand the charm of the social world. The instincts of his good breeding were awakened. Life seemed beginning for him; he felt like a man back from exile. Contact with Miss Rowrer refined him, and even his art was idealized. It was no longer physical beauty alone which attracted him: there was the moral side; for Ethel put character far above talent, and the two together above everything else.

After this automobile ride which his black eye had earned for him, others followed. Usually Will, the brother, was himself the conductor, as a matter of prudence. That intoxication of speed which gives weak minds the illusion of energy was unknown to him. Once, however, he got into the auto with them and allowed the mechanician to take charge. It was a day when Mme. de Grojean and Mlle. Yvonne, her daughter, had accepted the invitation to take a ride with them. After that Mlle. Yvonne and her mother returned to their province, so that the most part of the time Ethel and grandma had the company only of the duke or Phil, and now and then of M. Caracal.

They saw Auteuil and Chantilly, and took part in an automobile gymkhana for polo at the Bois de Boulogne. At the Longchamps races Miss Rowrer, like a great favorite, was the target of the field-glasses. It was there she met Charley, faultlessly correct, having stripped himself for the day of his bohemian clothes. Charley, who knew Ethel, passed in vain near her again and again to have her recognize him.

The automobilists were seen everywhere from Versailles to Vincennes. The trip around the world was too commonplace. They made the trip around Paris, passing its fifty-seven gates, past its ten railways, its two waterways, through its two forests and more than thirty _quartiers_, which sum up the luxury and industries of all the cities of the world—London at La Râpée, Chicago at La Villette, Antwerp at the Canal de l’Ourcq.

At St. Denis Caracal gave them the history of what they were seeing. He showed them the effigies of kings mutilated in the Revolution, at the time when Choisy-le-Roi changed its name to Choisy-sur-Seine and Montmorency to Etienne, since there were no longer kings or nobles—“two things they would have done better to keep,” the duke observed.

“They would probably still be here if they had been worth keeping,” answered Ethel.

They dined in a tree at Robinson and rode on donkeys at Romainville. The outings of Parisians in villages with charming names—Marne-la-Coquette, Fontenay-aux-Roses, Les Lilas—were pleasing to Ethel.

“Space opens up ideas! You will find it so, Monsieur le Duc, and you too, Phil, if you do us the pleasure to hunt the moose on our Canadian lands. How free one feels there—not a hedge, not a barrier between us and the north pole!”

Caracal, for his part, cared little about space. He regretted the days when the Boulevard was the only promenade. Tramways and railroads seemed to him high treason against Paris—something like an invasion of the coarse air of fields and woods into the artistic atmosphere of cafés.

“No, no!” Miss Rowrer answered. “Leave things as they are—a little pure air does no harm.”

“To be sure!” said grandma.

Caracal refused to be consoled.

“If this goes on,” he said, “Paris will soon be Paris no longer—that something indefinable and apart; that hothouse which has made us the neurasthenic and dislocated skipjacks that we are.”

“Well, if that’s your manner of loving Paris!” Ethel said, laughing. “Really, you see things worse than they are!”

Caracal, perceiving he was on the wrong tack, stopped short.

“Just the contrary, you ought to be glad for something that is worth more than hygiene—moral health,” Miss Rowrer continued. “Why should people stay piled together when there is so much empty space around? Tempers are embittered and bodies weakened. Give it space and air and your Paris will cease to be what you would wish it to remain—a hothouse full of dislocated skipjacks and _neurasthéniques_—such as our up-to-date people are, according to you.”

“That’s a good one on Caracal,” thought Phil to himself.

Will, who was not conducting the auto that day, interrupted Ethel. He spoke little, but he thought and then went straight to the point.

“Let us pardon Frenchmen because of Frenchwomen,” he said.

“You are right, Will,” replied Ethel. “I admire Frenchwomen—they seem so superior to the men; for among the men there are some so mean. Think of Vieillecloche printing such outrageous things in his newspaper! Really, in his place I should be ashamed of myself! Who is Vieillecloche, anyway?”

“He’s a remarkable duelist,” answered Caracal. “There are already five dead men in his trail.”

“What a coward!” said Ethel. “I would wager that if he were hit with a check, he would apologize to us!”

“Oh, let him alone!” said Will. “He does us no harm—the barking dog doesn’t bite.”

“He’s annoying, all the same.”

“If it were my own case I would silence him!” Caracal declared.

“But could you do it?” asked Ethel. “It would be very kind of you to do so. I can’t go anywhere at all without hearing ‘Richard the Lion-hearted’ with smiles all around me. It haunts me. It almost spoils my stay in Paris. Can you rid me of it, Monsieur Caracal?”

“I shall do so!” declared Caracal.

“I thank you!” said Miss Rowrer.

Caracal had just had a bright thought. He knew his friend Vieillecloche would do whatever he wished, since the blackmailing scheme against the Rowrers had not succeeded and no check had come or would come to close his mouth. It would be just as well to look for something else. Caracal would have himself attacked—he would turn aside the storm to himself by taking up the defense of foreigners, to the apparent indignation of Vieillecloche. In this noble combat against calumny he would stand forth as a hero in the eyes of Ethel, like a St. George slaying the dragon. The duke and Phil would have to look out for themselves. He would know how to cover them with ridicule—them and their Helia—in some good little newspaper _chronique_, sweet as honey, which Ethel might read. For that matter, Phil had already a shot in his wing—he would find it out in a few days and remember his cow painting!

“I will arrange all that this evening with Vieillecloche,” thought Caracal. “I shall be well able to pay for a service like that if I marry Miss Ethel.” Then aloud: “I shall do so—you can count on me, Miss Rowrer!”

All this was but one of a thousand incidents of their trips.

“I have heard of _le dernier salon où l’on cause_ [the last salon for conversation],” Ethel remarked. “I suppose it has disappeared, it is so long since people began talking about it. Well, our auto takes its place—it is the first auto _où l’on cause_.”

“When one listens to you, Miss Rowrer, one can say that wit runs the streets,” added Caracal, gallantly.

Every moment some new observation sprang, bringing out individual character.

For instance, a cab passed them noisily, the horse pounding along the street and the driver lashing him.

“What a noise!” Will said. “Why are people so obstinate with their hippomobiles? Why not put rubber on the wheels first, and then on the horses’ shoes?”

Will calculated the chances of a company to be organized for this purpose—so many horses in Europe, so many horseshoes rubbered, investment of capital so much, revenue so much.

“They are ’way behind,” said grandma. “What an idea, to be driven about in such dust-boxes!”

“What a picture to make!” said Phil. “That horse just now reared under the rein with a movement as superb as any of the Parthenon. Behind him was that theatrical poster representing a woman with her hair floating—with her and the horse you might imagine a troupe of Amazons under the blue sky of Greece! Only artists can enjoy things. They know how to see!”

“The poor beast has lost a shoe, and the collar wounds him and the cabman lashes him,” Ethel interrupted. “Poor animal, it makes me ill to see him!”

Phil thought to himself, “That is what I ought to have seen!”

Apart from these excursions, he gave to Miss Rowrer, also, whatever leisure was left him by his great picture of Morgana. At her request, he accompanied her with Will and grandma in their visits to museums and to the shops where they wished to buy pictures of the masters for their palace on the Lake Shore Drive in Chicago.

Will had first visited the artists’ studios, thinking he would find there a world free from the atmosphere of business. But the landscape man tried to get him away from the portrait-painter, and professional jealousy showed its teeth. They tried to pass off their “old stock” on him; they spoke only of money. “For such a price I will do so and so.” “If it is larger it will be dearer.” “A landscape without trees is worth so much—with trees, twice as much!”

“If I’ve got to talk business,” Will thought, “I’d rather do it with business men”; and he left the artists alone.

He liked best to choose for himself at the Hôtel Drouot—that big collecting-sewer of art, rolling pell-mell in its dusty waves masterpieces and daubs. The salesrooms, heaped from ceiling to floor, gave him the feeling that he might sometime make a discovery there like the cock who found pearls in a dunghill.

“What horrors!” Will said one day, as they were passing in front of a hall full of plaster statues and unframed paintings. “It must be from the studio of some poor devil whom they are selling out at auction.”

There were casts from nature—arms and legs and feet; there were formless sketches, canvases hung on the wall; for some, it was impossible to see what they represented, as they had been hung head downward. There was a tub, some bottles, a few chairs, a mattress, and a rickety table, all heaped up in a corner. Two monstrous statues seemed to keep watch over the confusion. On the pedestal of one was inscribed “Liberty,” and she raised arms and head furiously; the second, “Fraternity,” lay on the ground in fragments, turning enormous haunches to the public.

“What are those mastodons there?” Will asked.

“That,” said Phil, with surprise, “that must be from a sculptor whose name is Poufaille; yes, look at the sign over the door—_Vente Poufaille_.”

“Poor Poufaille!” said Phil to himself; “he must have been unable to pay his rent—the landlord has come down on him. If I had known, I might have helped; but it is so long since I have seen him.”

What he saw recalled the day when he entered the sculptor’s place on his arrival in Paris. He remembered the gay laughter of Suzanne from the top of her ladder, and the pork fried with garlic. Those statues, those pictures worthy to figure in a collection of horrors,—how much more ugly and more lamentable still it all seemed to him in the presence of the crowd of indifferent passers-by!

“Poufaille?” Ethel asked with interest. “Is it the Poufaille of whom you used to tell me? Why, he has no talent; he’d do better as a farmer.”

The sale began and they heard the auctioneer above the confusion of the throng: “Magnificent statues—‘Liberty’—‘Fraternity’—give me a bid!”

“Forty sous!”

“Forty sous? There’s half a ton of plaster there! Come, now, a higher bid!”

A silence, and then some one called, “Fifty sous!”

“Bid it up a thousand francs, Will!” Ethel said to her brother.

“Really, now, Ethel,” Will answered, “even at fifty sous it’s dear. I’ll buy something else from M. Poufaille, some other time.”

So many years of toil and want, and all his poor dreams of the future soon to be scattered and ground to mortar—yet Poufaille was right! He had followed his dream, he had tried his fortune; it had tumbled to the ground, but what a beautiful dream it had been all the same! And Phil thought, with a thrill at his heart, that there was one thing which justified every effort; one thing which broke down distinctions and made a poor artist the equal of a reigning duke, of a king even; something which would put him on a level with Ethel; something which he would reach, had he to kill himself in the struggle for it!

Ethel came up to Phil as they were going out of the hall.

“Tell me, Phil, what can induce a man like Poufaille to try art? Isn’t it sheer folly?”

“No, Miss Rowrer. It is true Poufaille has not succeeded, but that matters little. He has tried to reach the only thing which makes life worth living.”

“What is that, Phil?”

“Fame!”