Chapter 3

"He is not like the rest," she said. "He knows nothing of the world. He is one of the good. He cares only for his art. How simple, and kind, and pure! The little room is like a saint's cell." And then, suddenly, she flung her arms out wearily, with a heavy sigh. "Ah, _Dieu_!" she said, "how dull the day is! The skies are lead!"

A few days later she gave a sitting to an old artist whose name was Masson, and she found that he had heard of what had happened.

"And so you sit to the American," he said.

"Yes."

"Well--and you find him--?"

"I find him," she repeated after him. "Shall I tell you what I find him?"

"I shall listen with delight."

"I find him--a soul! You and I, my friend--and the rest of us--are bodies; he is a soul!"

The artist began to whistle softly as he painted.

"It is dangerous work," he said at length, "for women to play with souls."

"That is true," she answered, coldly.

The same day she went again to the room on the sixth floor. She again sat through an hour of silence in which the American painted eagerly, now and then stopping to regard her with searching eyes.

"But not as the rest regard me," she said to herself. "He forgets that it is a woman who sits here. He sees only what he would paint."

As time went by, this fact, which she always felt, was in itself a fascination.

In the chill, calm atmosphere of the place there was repose for her. She found nothing to resent, nothing to steel herself against, she need no longer think of herself at all. She had time to think of the man in whose presence she sat. From the first she had seen something touching in his slight stooping figure, thin young face and dark womanish eyes, and after she had heard the simple uneventful history of his life, she found them more touching still.

He was a New Englander, the last surviving representative of a frail and short-lived family. His parents had died young, leaving him quite alone, with a mere pittance to depend upon, and throughout his whole life he had cherished but one aim.

"When I was a child I used to dream of coming here," he said, "and as I grew older I worked and struggled for it. I knew I must gain my end some day, and the time came when it was gained."

"And this is the end?" she asked, glancing round at the poor place. "This is all of life you desire?"

He did not look up at her.

"It is all I have," he answered.

She wondered if he would not ask her some questions regarding herself, but he did not.

"He does not care to know," she thought sullenly. And then she told herself that he did know, and a mocking devil of a smile settled on her lip and was there when he turned toward her again.

But the time never came when his manner altered, when he was less candid and gentle, or less grateful for the favor she was bestowing upon him.

She scarcely knew how it was that she first began to know the sound of his foot upon the stairway and to listen for it. Her earliest consciousness of it was when once she awakened suddenly out of a dead sleep at night and found herself sitting upright with her hand upon her heavily throbbing heart.

"What is it?" she cried in a loud whisper. But she spoke only to herself and the darkness. She knew what it was and did not lie down again until the footsteps had reached the top of the last flight and the door above had opened and closed.

The time arrived when there was scarcely a trifling incident in his everyday life which escaped her. She saw each sign of his poverty and physical weakness. He grew paler day by day. There were days when his step flagged as he went up and down the staircase; some mornings he did not go out at all. She discovered that each Sunday he went twice to the little American chapel in the Rue de Berri, and she had seen in his room a small Protestant Bible.

"You read that?" she asked him when she first saw it.

"Yes."

She leaned forward, her look curious, bewildered, even awed.

"And you believe in--God?"

"Yes."

She resumed her former position, but she did not remove her eyes from his face, and unconsciously she put her hand up to her swelling throat.

When at length the sitting was over and she left her chair he was standing before the easel. He turned to her and spoke hesitantly.

"Will you come and look at it?" he asked.

She went and stood where he bade her, and looked. He watched her anxiously while she did so. For the first moment there was amazement in her face, then some mysterious emotion he could not comprehend--a dull red crept slowly over brow and cheek.

She turned upon him.

"Monsieur!" she cried, passionately. "You mock me! It is a bad picture."

He fell back a pace, staring at her and suddenly trembling with the shock.

"A bad picture!" he echoed. "_I_ mock you--_I?_"

"It is my face," she said, pointing to it, "but you have made it what _I_ am not! It is the face of a good woman--of a woman who might be a saint! Does not _that_ mock me?"

He turned to it with a troubled, dreamy look.

"It is what I have seen in your face," he said in a soft, absent voice. "It is a truth to me. It is what _I_ have seen."

"It is what no other has seen," she said. "I tell you it mocks me."

"It need not mock you," he answered. "I could not have painted it if I had not felt it. It is yourself--yourself."

"Myself?" she said. "Do you think, Monsieur, that the men who have painted me before would know it?"

She gave it another glance and a shrill laugh burst from her, but the next instant it broke off and ended in another sound. She fell upon her knees by the empty chair, her open hands flung outward, her sobs strangling her.

He stood quite near her, looking down.

"I have not thought of anything but my work," he said. "Why should I?"

* * * * *

The following Sunday night the artist Masson met in going down-stairs a closely veiled figure coming up. He knew it and spoke.

"What, Natalie?" he said. "You? One might fancy you had been to church."

"I have been," she returned in a cold voice,--"to the church of the Americans in the Rue de Berri."

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Has it done you good?" he asked.

"No," she answered, and walked past him, leaving him to look after her and think the matter over.

She went to her own apartment and locked herself in. Having done so, she lighted every candle and lamp--flooding the place with a garish mockery of brightness. She sang as she did it--a gay, shrill air from some _opéra bouffe_. She tore off her dark veil and wrappings. Her eyes and cheeks flamed as if touched by some unholy fire. She moved with feverish rapidity here and there--dragging a rich dress from a trunk, and jewels and laces from their places of safe keeping, and began to attire herself in them. The simple black robe she had worn to the chapel lay on the floor. As she moved to and fro she set her feet upon it again and again, and as she felt it beneath her tread a harsh smile touched her lips.

"I shall not wear you again," she stopped her song once to say.

In half an hour she had made her toilette. She stood before her glass, a blaze of color and jewels. For a moment she sang no more. From one of the rooms below there floated up to her sounds of riotous merriment.

"_This_ is myself," she said; "_this_ is no other."

She opened her door and ran down the staircase swiftly and lightly. The founder of the feast whose sounds she had heard was a foolish young fellow who adored her madly. He was rich, and wicked, and simple. Because he had heard of her return he had taken an apartment in the house. She heard his voice above the voices of the rest.

In a moment she had flung open the door of the _salon_ and stood upon the threshold.

At sight of her there arose a rapturous shout of delight.

"Natalie! Natalie! Welcome!"

But instantaneously it died away. One second she stood there, brilliant, smiling, defiant. The next, they saw that a mysterious change had seized upon her. She had become deathly white, and was waving them from her with a wild gesture.

"I am not coming," she cried, breathlessly. "No! No! No!"

And the next instant they could only gaze at each others' terror-stricken faces, at the place she had left vacant,--for she was gone.

She went up the stairs blindly and uncertainly. When she reached the turn of the fourth floor where the staircase was bare and unlighted, she staggered and sank against the balustrades, her face upturned.

"I cannot go back," she whispered to the darkness and silence above. "Do you hear? I cannot! And it is you--you who restrain me!"

But there were no traces of her passion in her face when she went to the little studio the next day as usual. When the artist opened the door for her, it struck him that she was calm even to coldness.

Instead of sitting down, she went to the easel and stood before it.

"Monsieur," she said, "I have discovered where your mistake lies. You have tried to paint what you fancied must once have existed, though it exists no longer. That is your mistake. It has never existed at all. I remember no youth, no childhood. Life began for me as it will end. It was my fate that it should. I was born in the lowest quarter of Paris. I knew only poverty, brutality, and crime. My beauty simply raised me beyond their power. Where should I gain what you have insisted in bestowing upon me?"

He simply stood still and looked at her.

"God knows!" he answered at length. "I do not."

"God!" she returned with her bitter little laugh. "Yes--God!"

Then she went to her place, and said no more.

But the next Sunday she was at the American chapel again, and the next, and the next. She could scarcely have told why herself. She did not believe the doctrines she heard preached, and she did not expect to be converted to belief in them. Often, as the service proceeded, a faint smile of derision curved her lips; but from her seat in the obscure corner she had chosen she could see a thin, dark face and a stooping figure, and could lean back against the wall with a sense of repose.

"It is quiet here," was her thought. "One can be quiet, and that is much."

"What is the matter with her?" the men who knew her began to ask one another. But it was not easy for them to discover how the subtle change they saw had been wrought. They were used to her caprices and to occasional fits of sullenness, but they had never seen her in just such a mood as she was now. She would bear no jests from them, she would not join in their gayeties. Sometimes for days together she shut herself up in her room, and they did not see her at all.

The picture progressed but slowly. Sometimes the artist's hand so trembled with weakness that he could not proceed with his work. More than once Natalie saw the brush suddenly fall from his nerveless fingers. He was very weak in these days, and the spot of hectic red glowed brightly on his cheek.

"I am a poor fellow at best," he would say to her, "and now I am at my worst. I am afraid I shall be obliged to rest sooner than I fancied. I wish first I could have finished my work. I must not leave it unfinished."

One morning when he had been obliged to give up painting, through a sudden fit of prostration, on following her to the door, he took her hand and held it a moment.

"I was awake all last night," he said. "Yesterday I saw a poor fellow who had fallen ill on the street, carried into the Hôtel Dieu, and the memory clung to me. I began to imagine how it would be if such a thing happened to me--what I should say when they asked for my friends,--how there would be none to send for. And at last, suddenly I thought of you. I said to myself, 'I would send for her, and I think she would come.'"

"Yes, Monsieur," she answered. "You might depend upon my coming."

"I am used to being alone," he went on; "but it seemed to me as I lay in the dark thinking it over, that to die alone would be a different matter. One would want some familiar face to look at--"

"Monsieur!" she burst forth. "You speak as if Death were always near you!"

"Do I?" he said. And he was silent for a few seconds, and looked down at her hand as he held it. Then he dropped it gently with a little sigh. "Good-bye," he said, and so they parted.

In the afternoon she sat to Masson.

"How much longer," he said to her in the course of the sitting,--"how much longer does he mean to live--this American? He has lasted astonishingly. They are wonderful fellows, these weaklings who burn themselves out. One might fancy that the flame which finally destroys them, also kept them alive."

"Do you then think that he is so very ill?" she asked in a low voice.

"He will go out," he answered, "like a candle. Shall I tell you a secret?"

She made a gesture of assent.

"He starves! The _concierge_ who has watched him says he does not buy food enough to keep body and soul together. But how is one to offer him anything? It is easy to see that he would not take it."

There was a moment of silence, in which he went on painting.

"The trouble is," he said at last, "that a man would not know how to approach him. It is only women who can do these things."

Until the sitting was over neither the one nor the other spoke again. When it was over and Natalie was on the point of leaving the room, Masson looked at her critically.

"You are pale," he remarked. "You are like a ghost."

"Is it not becoming?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Then why complain?"

She went to her own room and spent half an hour in collecting every valuable she owned. They were not many; she had always been recklessly improvident. She put together in a package her few jewels, and even the laces she considered worth the most. Then she went out, and, taking a _fiacre_ at the nearest corner, drove away.

She was absent two hours, and when she returned she stopped at the entrance, intending to ask the _concierge_ a question. But the man himself spoke first. He was evidently greatly disturbed and not a little alarmed.

"Mademoiselle," he began, "the young man on the sixth floor--"

"What of him?" she demanded.

"He desires to see you. He went out in spite of my warnings. Figure to yourself on such a day, in such a state of health. He returned almost immediately, wearing the look of Death itself. He sank upon the first step of the staircase. When I rushed to his assistance he held to his lips a handkerchief stained with blood! We were compelled to carry him up-stairs."

She stood a moment, feeling her throat and lips suddenly become dry and parched.

"And he asked--for me?" she said at last.

"When he would speak, Mademoiselle--yes. We do not know why. He said, in a very faint voice, 'She said she would come.'"

She went up the staircase slowly and mechanically, as one who moves in a dream. And yet when she reached the door of the studio she was obliged to wait for a few seconds before opening it. When she did open it she saw the attic seemed even more cold and bare than usual; that there was no fire; that the American lay upon the bed, his eyes closed, the hectic spots faded from his cheeks. But when she approached and stood near him, he opened his eyes and looked at her with a faint smile.

"If--I play you--the poor trick of--dying," he said, "you will remember--that the picture--if you care for it--is yours."

After a while, the doctor, who had been sent for, arrived. Perhaps he had been in no great hurry when he had heard that his services were required by an artist who lay in a garret in the Latin Quarter. His visit was a short one. He asked a few questions, wrote a prescription, and went away. He looked at Natalie oftener than at the sick man. She followed him out on to the landing, and then he regarded her with greater interest than before.

"He is very ill?" she said.

"Yes," he answered. "He will die, of course, sooner or later."

"You speak calmly, Monsieur," she said.

"Such cases are an old story," he replied. "And--you are not his wife?"

"No."

"I thought not. Nevertheless, perhaps you will remain with him until--"

"As Monsieur says," she returned, "I will remain with him 'until--'"

When the sick man awoke from the sleep into which he had fallen, a fire burned in the stove and a woman's figure was seated before it.

"You are here yet?" he said faintly. She rose and moved toward him.

"I am not going away," she answered, "if you will permit me to remain."

His eyes shone with pathetic brightness, and he put out his hand.

"You are very kind--to a poor--weak fellow," he whispered. "After all--it is a desolate thing--to lie awake through the night--in a place like this."

When the doctor returned the next morning, he appeared even a shade disconcerted. He had thought it quite likely that upon his second visit he might find a scant white sheet drawn over the narrow bed, and that it would not be necessary for him to remain or call again; but it appeared that his patient might require his attention yet a few days longer.

"You have not left him at all," he said to Natalie. "It is easy to see you did not sleep last night."

It was true that she had not slept. Through the night she had sat in the dim glow of the fire, scarcely stirring unless some slight sound of movement from the bed attracted her attention. During the first part of the night her charge had seemed to sleep; but as the hours wore on there had been no more rest for him, and then she had known that he lay with his eyes fixed upon her; she had felt their gaze even before she had turned to meet it. Just before the dawn he became restless, and called her to his side.

"I owe you a heavy debt," he said drearily. "And I shall leave it unpaid. I wish--I wish it was finished."

"It?" she said.

"The picture," he answered, "the--picture."

Usually he was too weak for speech; but occasionally a fit of restlessness seized upon him, and then it seemed as if he was haunted continually by the memory of his unfinished work.

"It only needed a few touches," he said once. "One day of strength would complete it--if such a day would but come to me, I know the look so well now--I see it on your face so often." And then he lay watching her, his eyes following her yearningly, as she moved to and fro.

In the studios below, the artists waited in vain for their model. They neither saw nor heard anything of her, and they knew her moods too well to be officiously inquisitive. So she was left alone to the task she had chosen, and was faithful to it to the end.

It was not so very long it lasted, though to her it seemed a life-time. A few weeks the doctor made his visits, and at last one afternoon, in going away, he beckoned her out of the room.

He spoke in an undertone.

"To-night you may watch closely," he said; "perhaps toward morning--but it will be very quiet."

It was very quiet. The day had been bitter cold, and as it drew to a close it became colder still, and a fierce wind rose and whistled about the old house, shaking the ill-fitting windows and doors. But the sick man did not seem to hear it. Toward midnight he fell into a deep and quiet sleep.

Before the fire Natalie sat waiting. Now and then a little shudder passed over her as if she could not resist the cold. And yet the fire in the stove was a bright one. She had smiled to herself as she had heaped the coal upon it, seeing that there was so little left.

"It will last until morning," she said, "and that will be long enough." Through all the nights during which she had watched she had never felt the room so still as it seemed now between the gusts and soughing of the wind. "Something is in the air which has not been in it before," she said.

About one o'clock she rose and replenished the fire, putting the last fragment of coal upon it, and then sat down to watch it again.

Its slow kindling and glowing into life fascinated her. It was not long before she could scarcely remove her eyes from it. She was trying to calculate--with a weird fancy in her mind--how long it would last, and whether it would die out suddenly or slowly.

As she cowered over it, if one of the men who admired her had entered he might well scarcely have known her. She was hollow-eyed, haggard and pallid--for the time even her great beauty was gone. As he had left her that day, the doctor had said to himself discontentedly that after all, these wonderful faces last but a short time.

The fire caught at the coal, lighted fitful blazes among it, and crept over it in a dull red, which brightened into hot scarlet.

And the sick man lay sleeping, breathing faintly but lightly.

"It will last until dawn," she said,--"until dawn, and no longer."

When the first cinder dropped with a metallic sound, she started violently and laid her hand upon her breast, but after that she scarcely stirred.

The fitful blazes died down, the hot scarlet deepened to red again, the red grew dull, a gray film of ashes showed itself upon it, and then came the first faint gray of dawn, and she sat with beating heart saying to herself,

"It will go out soon--suddenly." And the dying man was awake, speaking to her.

"Come here," he said in a low, clear voice. "Come here."

She went to him and stood close by the bedside. The moment of her supreme anguish had come. But he showed no signs of pain or dread, only there was a little moisture upon his forehead and about his mouth.

His eyes shone large and bright in the snowy pallor of his face, and when he fixed them upon her she knew he would not move them away.

"I am glad--that it is--finished," he said. "It did not tire me to work--as I thought it would. I am glad--that it is--finished."

She fell upon her knees.

"That it is finished?" she said.

His smile grew brighter.

"The picture," he whispered--"the picture."

And then what she had waited for came. There was a moment of silence; the wind outside hushed itself, his lips parted, but no sound came from them, not even a fluttering breath; his eyes were still fixed upon her face, open, bright, smiling.

"I may speak now," she cried. "I may speak now--since you cannot hear. I love you! I love you!"

But there came to her ears only one sound--the little grating shudder of the fire as it fell together and was dead.

* * * * *

The next morning when they heard that "the American" had at last fulfilled their prophecies, the _locataires_ showed a spasmodic warmth of interest. They offered their services promptly, and said to each other that he must have been a good fellow, after all--that it was a pity they had not known him better. They even protested that he should not be made an object of charity--that among themselves they would do all that was necessary. But it appeared that their help was not needed--that there was in the background a friend who had done all, but whom nobody knew.

Hearing this they expressed their sympathy by going up by twos and threes to the little garret where there was now only icy coldness and silence.

Not a few among them were so far touched by the pathos they found in this as to shed a tear or so--most of them were volatile young Frenchmen who counted their sensibilities among their luxuries.

Toward evening there came two older than the rest, who had not been long in the house.

When they entered, a woman stood at the bed's head--a woman in black drapery, with a pale and haggard face which they saw only for a moment.

As they approached she moved away, and going to the window stood there with her back toward them, gazing out at the drifted snow upon the roof. The men stood uncovered, looking down.

"It is the face of an Immortal," said the elder of the two. "It is such men who die young."

And then they saw the easel in the shadow of the corner, and went and turned it from the wall. When they saw the picture resting upon it, there was a long silence. It was broken at last by the older man.

"It is some woman he has known and loved," he said. "He has painted her soul--and his own."

The figure near them stirred--the woman's hand crept up to the window's side and clung to the wooden frame.