Chapter 6

"Well, they didn't say nothin' for a while, 'cept to walk round the stone once or twice and slap it with their hands, as if they wanted to make sure it was all there. My men were all over it now, and we was gettin' things in shape to finish up. I tell ye the boys were mighty glad, and so was I. It had been a long pull of six months' work, and we were out of most everything, and as soon as the big stone was down in the brig's hold, and warped back and stowed with the others--and that wouldn't take but a day or two more--we would clean up, get our money, and light out for home.

"All this time the Colonel and the Major were buzzin' each other off by the other rail. Pretty soon they both come over to where I stood, and the Colonel reached out his hand.

"'Cap'n Brandt,' he says--and he had a look in his face as if he meant it--and he did, every word of it--'it would give Major Severn and myself great pleasure if you would dine with us to-night at the Canteen. The Admiral is coming, and some brother officers who would be pleased to know you.'

"Well, I was struck all of a heap for a minute, knowing what kind of clo'es I had to go in, and so I says:

"'Well, gentlemen, that's very nice of you, and I see you mean it, and if I had anything fittin' to wear there's nothin' I would like better; but ye see how I'm fixed,' and I lifted my arms so he could see a few holes that he might a-missed before, and I motioned to some other parts of my get-up that needed repairs.

"'That don't make no difference, Cap'n, what kind of clo'es you come in. We dine at eight o'clock.'

"Of course I knew I couldn't go, and I didn't want 'em to think I intended to go when I didn't, so I says, rather positive-like:

"'Very much obliged, gentlemen, but I guess I'll have to get you to count me out this time.' I knowed I warn't fittin' to sit at anybody's table, especially if that old Admiral was comin'.

"The Colonel see I was in earnest, and he stepped up, quick-like, and laid his hand on my shoulder.

"'Captain Brandt,' he says, 'we ain't worryin' 'bout your clo'es, and don't you worry. You can come in your shirt, you can come in your socks, or you can come without one damned rag--only come!'"

The Captain stopped, shook the ashes from his cigar, slowly raised himself to his feet, and reached for his hat.

"Did you go, Captain?" I asked.

The Captain looked at me for a moment with one of those quizzical glances which so often light up his face when something amuses him, and said, as he blew a cloud of smoke to the ceiling:

"Well, I didn't forget my manners. When it got dark--dark, mind ye--I went up and sat on the piazza and had a smoke with 'em--Admiral and all. But I didn't go to dinner--not in them pants."

A PROCESSION OF UMBRELLAS

I

This all happened on the banks of the Seine, above St. Cloud--above Suresne, in fact, or rather its bridge--the new one that has pieced out the old one with the quaint stone arches that we love.

A silver-gray haze, a pure French gray, hung over the river, softening the sky-line of the near-by hills, and making ghosts of a row of gendarme poplars guarding the opposite bank.

On my side of the stream wandered a path close to the water's edge--so close that I could fill my water-cups without leaving my sketching-stool. Over this path, striped with shadows, big trees towered, their gnarled branches interlaced above my head. On my right, rising out of a green sward cleared of all underbrush, towered other trees, their black trunks sharp-cut against the haze. In the distance, side by side with the path, wound the river, still asleep, save where it flashed into waves of silver laughter at the touch of some frolicsome puff of wind. Elsewhere, although the sun was now hours high, it dozed away, nestling under the overhanging branches making their morning toilet in its depths. But for these long, straight flashes of silver light glinting between the tree-trunks, one could not tell where the haze ended and the river began.

As I worked on, my white umbrella tilted at the exact angle so that my palette, hand, and canvas would be hidden from the inquisitive sun, a group of figures emerged from a clump of low trees, and made their way across the green sward--the man in an ivory-black coat, evidently a priest, even at that distance; the woman in a burnt-umber dress with a dot of Chinese white for a head--probably a cap; and the third, a girl of six or eight in a brown madder dress and yellow-ochre hat.

An out-door painter, while at work, tumbles everything that crosses his path or comes within range of his vision into the crucible of his palette. The most majestic of mountains and the softest of summer clouds are to him but flat washes of cobalt, and the loveliest of dimples on the fairest of cheeks but a shadow-tone, and a high light made real by pats of indigo and vermilion.

So in the three figures went among my trees, the priest in the background against a mass of yellow light--black against yellow is always a safe contrast; the burnt-umber woman breaking the straight line of a trunk, and the child--red on green--intensifying a slash of zinober that illumined my own grassy sward.

Then my interest in the group ceased. The priest, no doubt, was taking his sister, or his aunt, or his mother, with their own or somebody else's little girl, out for an airing, and they had come at the precise moment when I had begun to long for just such a collection of people; and now they could take themselves off and out of my perspective, particularly the reddish-brown girl who kept on dancing in the sunniest places, running ahead of the priest and the woman, lighting up and accentuating half a dozen other corners of the wood interior before me in as many minutes, and making me regret before the paint was half dry on her own little figure that I had not waited for a better composition.

Then she caught sight of my umbrella.

She came straight toward me with that slowing of pace as she approached the nearer, her curiosity getting the better of her timidity--quite as a fawn or a little calf would have done, attracted by some bit of color or movement which was new to it. The brown madder dress I now saw was dotted with little spots of red, like sprays of berries; the yellow-ochre hat was wound with a blue ribbon, and tied with a bow on one side. I could see, too, that she wore slippers, and that her hair was platted in two pig-tails, and hung down her back, the ends fastened with a ribbon that matched the one on her hat.

She stood quite still, her face perfectly impassive, her little hands clasped together, the brim of her hat shading her eyes, which looked straight at my canvas.

I gave no sign of her presence. It is dangerous to break down the reserve of silence, which is often the only barrier between an out-door painter and the crowds that surround him. Persisted in, it not only compels their respect, even to the lowering of their voices and the tip-toeing in and out of the circle about you, but shortens the time of their visits, a consummation devoutly to be wished. So I worked on in silence, never turning toward this embodiment of one of Boutet do Monvel's drawings, whose absorbed face I could see out of one corner of my eye.

Then a ripple of laughter broke the stillness, and a little finger was thrust out, stopping within a hair's-breadth of the dot of Chinese white, still wet, which topped my burnt-umber figure.

"Très drôle, Monsieur!"

The voice was sweeter than the laugh. One of those flute-like, bird-throated voices that children often have who live in the open all their lives, chasing butterflies or gathering wild flowers.

Then came a halloo from the greensward. The priest was coming toward us, calling out, as he walked:

"Susette! Susette!"

He, too, underwent a change. The long, ivory-black cassock, so unmistakable in the atmospheric perspective, became an ordinary frock-coat; the white band of a collar developed into the regulation secular pattern, and the silk hat, although of last year's shape, conformed less closely in its lines to one belonging exclusively to the clergy. The face, though, as I could see in my hurried glance, and even at that distance, was the smooth, clean-shaven face of a priest--the face of a man of fifty, I should think, who had spent all his life in the service of others.

Again came the voice, this time quite near.

"Susette! Susette!"

The child, without turning her head, waved her hand in reply, looked earnestly into my face, and with a quick bending of one knee in courtesy, and a "Merci, M'sieu; merci," ran with all her speed toward the priest, who stretched wide his arms, half-lifting her from the ground in the embrace. Then a smile broke over his face, so joyous, so full of love and tenderness, so much the unconscious index of the heart that prompted it, that I laid down my palette to watch them.

I have known many priests in my time, and I have never ceased to marvel at the beauty of the tie which binds them to the little ones of their flocks. I have never been in a land where priests and children were not companions. These long-frocked guardians sit beside their playgrounds, with noses in their breviaries, or they head processions of boys and girls on the way to chapel, or they follow, two by two, behind a long string of blue-checked aprons and severe felt hats, the uniform of the motherless; or they teach the little vagrants by the hour--often it is the only schooling that these children get.

But I never remember one of them carrying such a waif about in his arms, nor one irradiated by such a flash of heavenly joy when some child, in a mad frolic, saw fit to scrape her muddy shoes down the front of his clean, black cassock.

The beatific smile itself was not altogether new to me. Anyone else can see it who wanders into the Gallery of the Prado. It irradiates the face of an old saint by Ribera--a study for one of his large canvases, and is hung above the line. I used to stand before it for hours, studying the technique. The high lights on the face are cracked in places, and the shadows are blackened by time, but the expression is that of one who looks straight up into heaven. And there is another--a Correggio, in the Hermitage, a St. Simon or St. Timothy, or some other old fellow--whose eyes run tears of joy, and whose upturned face reflects the light of the sun. Yet there was something in the face of the priest before me that neither of the others had--a peculiar human quality, which shone out of his eyes, as he stood bareheaded in the sunshine, the little girl in his arms. If the child had been his daughter--his very own and all he had, and if he had caught her safe from some danger that threatened her life, it could not have expressed more clearly the joyousness of gratitude or the bliss inspired by the sense of possessing something so priceless that every other emotion was absorbed.

It was all over in a moment. He did not continue to beam irradiating beatitudes, as the old Ribera and the older Correggio have done for hundreds of years. He simply touched his hat to me, tucked the child's hand into his own, and led her off to her mother.

I kept at my work. For me the incident, delightful as it was, was closed. All I remembered, as I squeezed the contents of another tube on to my palette, was the smile on the face of the priest.

The weather now began to take part in the general agitation. The lazy haze, roused by the joyous sun, had gathered its skirts together and had slipped over the hills. The sun in its turn had been effaced by a big cloud with scalloped edges which had overspread the distant line of the river, blotting out the flashes of silver laughter, and so frightening the little waves that they scurried off to the banks, some even trying to climb up the stone coping out of the way of the rising wind. A cool gust of air, out on a lark, now swept down the path, and, with lance in rest, toppled over my white umbrella. Big drops of rain fell about me, spitting the dust like spent balls. Growls of thunder were heard overhead. One of those rollicking, two-faced thunder-squalls, with the sun on one side and the blackness of the night on the other, was approaching.

The priest had seen it, for he had the child pickaback and was running across the sward. The woman had seen it, too, for she was already collecting her baskets, preparing to follow, and I was not far behind. Before she had reached the edge of the woods I had overtaken her, my traps under my arm, my white umbrella over my head.

"The Châlet Cycle is the nearest," she volunteered, grasping the situation, and pointing to a path opening to the right as she spoke.

"Is that where he has taken the child?" I asked, hurriedly.

"No, Monsieur--Susette has gone home. It is only a little way."

I plunged on through the wet grass, my eyes on the opening through the trees, the rain pouring from my umbrella. Before I had reached the end of the path the rain ceased and the sun broke through, flooding the wet leaves with dazzling light.

These two, the clouds and the sun, were evidently bent on mischief, frightening little waves and painters and bright-eyed children and good priests who loved them!

A PROCESSION OF UMBRELLAS

II

Do you happen to know the Châlet Cycle?

If you are a staid old painter who takes life as he finds it, and who loves to watch the procession from the sidewalk without any desire to carry one of the banners or to blow one of the horns--one of your three-meals-a-day, no heel-taps, and go-to-bed-at-ten-o'clock kind of a man, then make a note of the Cycle. The melons are excellent; the omelets are wonders, and the salads something to be remembered. But, if you are two-and-twenty, with the world in a sling and both ends of the sling in your hand, and if this is your first real outing since your college days, it would be just as well for you to pass it by and take your coffee and rolls at the little restaurant over the bridge, or the one farther down the street.

Believe me, a most seductive place is this Châlet Cycle, with its tables set out under the trees!

A place, at night, all hanging lanterns and shaded candles on _tête-à-tête_ tables, and close-drawn curtains about the kiosks. A place, by day, where you lunch under giant red and white umbrellas, with seats for two, and these half-hidden by Japanese screens, so high that even the waiters cannot look over. A place with a great music-stand smothered in palms and shady walks and cosey seats, out of sight of anybody, and with deaf, dumb, and blind waiters. A place with a big open gateway where everybody can enter and--ah! there is where the danger lies--a little by-path all hedged about with lilac bushes, where anybody can escape to the woods by the river--an ever-present refuge in time of trouble and in constant use--more's the pity--for it is the _unexpected_ that always happens at the Châlet Cycle.

The prettiest girls in Paris, in bewitching bicycle costumes, linger about the music-stand, losing themselves in the arbors and shrubberies. The kiosks are almost all occupied: charming little Chinese pagodas these--eight-sided, with lattice screens on all sides--screens so tightly woven that no curious idler can see in, and yet so loosely put together that each hidden inmate can see out. Even the trees overhead have a hand in the villany, spreading their leaves thickly, so that the sun itself has a hard time to find out what is going on beneath their branches. All this you become aware of as you enter the big, wide gate.

Of course, being quite alone, with only my battered old umbrella for company, I did not want a whole kiosk to myself, or even half of a giant umbrella. Any quiet corner would do for me, I told the Maître d'Hôtel, who relieved me of my sketch-trap--anywhere out of the rain when it should again break loose, which it was evidently about to do, judging from the appearance of the clouds--anywhere, in fact, where I could eat a filet smothered in mushrooms, and drink a pint of _vin ordinaire_ in peace.

"No, I expected no one." This in answer to a peculiar lifting of the eyebrows and slight wave of his hand as he drew out a chair in an unoccupied kiosk commanding a view of the grounds. Then, in rather a positive tone, I added:

"Send me a waiter to take my order--orders for _one_, remember." I wanted to put a stop to his insinuations at once. Nothing is so annoying when one's hair is growing gray as being misunderstood--especially by a waiter.

Affairs overhead now took a serious turn. The clouds evidently disapproving of the hilarious goings-on of the sun--poking its head out just as the cloud was raining its prettiest--had, in retaliation, stopped up all the holes the sun could peer through, and had started in to rain harder than ever. The waiters caught the angry frown on the cloud's face, and took it at its spoken word--it had begun to thunder again--and began piling up the chairs to protect their seats, covering up the serving-tables, and getting every perishable article under shelter. The huge mushroom-umbrellas were collapsed and rushed into the kiosks--some of them into the one where I sat, it being the largest; small tables were turned upside down, and tilted against the tree-trunks, and the storm-curtains of all the little kiosks let down and buttoned tight to the frames. Waiters ran hither and thither, with napkins and aprons over their heads, carrying fresh courses for the several tables or escaping with their empty dishes.

In the midst of this mêlée a cab dashed up to the next kiosk to mine, the wheels cutting into the soft gravel; the curtains were quickly drawn wide by a half-drowned waiter, and a young man with jet-black hair and an Oriental type of face slipped in between them.

Another carriage now dashed up, following the grooves of the first wheels--not a cab this time, but a perfectly appointed coupé, with two men in livery on the box, and the front windows banked with white chrysanthemums. I could not see her face from where I sat--she was too quick for that--but I saw the point of a tiny shoe as it rested for an instant on the carriage-step and a whirl of lace about a silk stocking. I caught also the movement of four hands--two outstretched from the curtains of the kiosk and two from the door of the coupé.

Of course, if I had been a very inquisitive and very censorious old painter, with a tendency to poke my nose into and criticise other people's business, I would at once have put two and two together and asked myself innumerable questions. Why, for instance, the charming couple did not arrive at the same moment, and in the same cab? or why they came all the way out to Suresne in the rain, when there were so many cosey little tables at Laurent's or at the Voisin, on the Rue Cambon, or in the Café Anglais on the Boulevard. Whether, too, either one were married, and if so which one, and if so again, what the other fellow and the other woman would do if he or she found it all out; and whether, after all, it was worth the candle when it did all come out, which it was bound to do some day sooner or later. Or I could have indulged in the customary homilies, and decried the tendencies of the times, and said to myself how the world was going to the dogs because of such goings-on; quite forgetting the days when I, too, had the world in a sling, and was whirling it around my head with all the impetuosity and abandon of youth.

But I did none of these things--that is, nothing Paul Pryish or presuming. I merely beckoned to the Maître d'Hôtel, as he stood poised on the edge of the couple's kiosk, with the order for their breakfast in his hands, and, when he had reached my half-way station on his way across the garden to the kitchen, stopped him with a question. Not with my lips--that is quite unnecessary with an old-time Maître d'Hôtel--but with my two eyebrows, one thumb, and a part of one shoulder.

"The nephew of the Sultan, Monsieur--" he answered, instantly.

"And the lady?"

"Ah, that is Mademoiselle Ernestine Béraud of the Variété. She comes quite often. For Monsieur, it is his first time this season."

He evidently took me for an old _habitué_. There are some compensations, after all, in the life of a staid old painter.

With these solid facts in my possession I breathed a little easier. Mademoiselle Ernestine Béraud, from the little I had seen of her, was quite capable of managing her own affairs without my own or anybody else's advice, even if I had been disposed to give it. She no doubt loved the lambent-eyed gentleman to distraction; the kiosk was their only refuge, and the whole affair was being so discreetly managed that neither the lambent-eyed gentleman nor his houri would be obliged to escape by means of the lilac-bordered path in the rear on this or any other morning.

And if they should, what did it matter to me? The little row in the cloud overhead would soon end in further torrents of tears, as all such rows do; the sun would have its way after all and dry every one of them up; the hungry part of me would have its filet and pint of St. Julien, and the painter part of me would go back to the little path by the river and finish its sketch.

Again I tried to signal the Maître d'Hôtel as he dashed past on his way to the kiosk. This time he was under one of the huge umbrellas which an "omnibus" was holding over him, Rajah-fashion. He had a plump melon, half-smothered in ice, in his hands, to protect it from the downpour, the rain making gargoyles of the points of the ribs of the umbrella. Evidently the breakfast was too important and the expected fee too large to intrust it to an underling. He must serve it himself.

Up to this Moment no portion of my order had materialized. No cover for one, nor filet, nor _vin ordinaire_, nor waiter had appeared. The painter was growing impatient. The man inside was becoming hungry.

I waited until he emerged with an empty dish, watched him grasp the giant umbrella, teeter on the edge of the kiosk for a moment, and plunge through the gravel, now rivers of water, toward my kiosk, the "omnibus" following as best he could.

"A thousand pardons, Monsieur--" he cried from beneath his shelter, as he read my face. "It will not be long now. It is coming--here, you can see for yourself--" and he pointed across the garden, and tramped on, the water spattering his ankles.

I looked and saw a solemn procession of huge umbrellas, the ones used over the _tête-à-tête_ tables beneath the trees, slowly wending its way toward where I sat, with all the measured movement and dignity of a file of Eastern potentates out for an airing.

Under each umbrella were two waiters, one carrying the umbrella and the other a portion of my breakfast. The potentate under the first umbrella, who carried the wine, proved to be a waiter-in-chief; the others bearing the filet, plates, dishes, and glasses were ordinary "omnibuses," pressed into service as palanquin-bearers by reason of the storm.

The waiter-in-chief, with the bottle, dodged from under his bungalow, leaving it outside and still open, like a stranded circus-tent, stepped into my kiosk, mopped the rain from his coat-sleeves and hands with a napkin, and, bowing solemnly, pointed to the label on the bottle. This meeting my approval, he relieved the rear-guard of the dishes, arranged the table, drew the cork of the St. Julien, filled my glass, dismissed the assistants and took his place behind my chair.