Stories by American Authors Volume III Part 2

But the American, notwithstanding he had been in the house for months, had never become one of them. He had been seen in the early spring going up the stairway to his room, which was a mere garret on the sixth story, and it had been expected among them that in a day or so he would present himself for inspection. But this he did not do, and when he encountered any of their number in his out-goings or in-comings he returned their greetings gently in imperfect French. He spoke slowly and with difficulty, but there was no coldness in his voice or manners, and yet none got much further than the greeting.

He was a young fellow, scarcely of middle height, frail in figure, hollow-chested, and with a gentle face and soft, deeply set dark eyes.

That he worked hard and lived barely it was easy enough to discover.

Part of each day he spent in the various art galleries, and after his return from these visits he was seen no more until the following morning.

"Until the last ray of light disappears he is at his easel," said a young student whom a gay escapade had temporarily banished to the fifth floor. "I hear him move now and then and cough. He has a villainous cough."

"He is one of the enthusiasts," said another. "One can read it in his face. What fools they are--these enthusiasts! They throw away life that a crown of laurel may be laid upon their coffins."

In the summer some of them managed to leave Paris, and the rest had enough to do to organize their little excursions and make the best of the suns.h.i.+ne, shade and warmth. But when those who had been away returned and all settled down for the winter, they found the "American" as they called him, in his old place. He had not been away at all; he had worked as hard as ever through midsummer heat and autumn rain; he was frailer in figure, his clothes were more worn, his face was thinner and his eyes far too hollow and bright, but he did not look either discouraged or unhappy.

"How does he live?" exclaimed the _concierge_ dramatically. "The good G.o.d knows! He eats nothing, he has no fire, he wears the clothing of midsummer--he paints--he paints--he paints! Perhaps that is enough for him. It would not be for me."

At this time--just as the winter entered with bleak winds and rains and falls of powdery snow--there presented herself among them an arrival whose appearance created a sensation.

One night on his way up-stairs, the American found himself confronted on the fourth floor by a flood of light streaming through the open door of a before unoccupied room. It was a small room, meagerly furnished, but there was a fire in it and half a dozen people who laughed and talked at the top of their voices. Five of them were men he had seen before,--artists who lived in the house,--but the sixth was a woman whom he had never seen and whose marvellous beauty held him spell-bound where he stood.

She was a woman of twenty-two or three, with an oval face whose fairness was the fairness of ivory. She was dark-eyed and low-browed, and as she leaned forward upon the table and looked up at the man who spoke to her, even the bright glow of the lamp, which burned directly before her face, showed no flaw in either tint or outline.

"Why should we ask the reason of your return?" said the man. "Let us rejoice that you are here."

"I will tell you the reason," she answered, without lowering her eyes.

"I was tired."

"A good reason," was the reply.

She pushed her chair back and stood upright; her hands hung at her side; the men were all looking at her; she smiled down at them with fine irony.

"Who among you wishes to paint me?" she said. "I am again at your service, and I am not less handsome than I was."

Then there arose among them a little rapturous murmur, and somehow it broke the spell which had rested upon the man outside. He started, s.h.i.+vered slightly and turned away. He went up to the bare coldness of his own room and sat down, forgetting that it was either cold or bare.

Suddenly, as he had looked at the woman's upturned face, a great longing had seized upon him.

"I should like to paint you--I," he found himself saying to the silence about him. "If I might paint you!"

He heard the next day who she was. The _concierge_ was ready enough to give him more information than he had asked.

"Mademoiselle Natalie, Monsieur means," he said; "a handsome girl that; a celebrated model. They all know her. Her face has been the foundation of more than one great picture. There are not many like her. One model has this beauty--another that; but she, _mon Dieu_, she has all. A great creature, Mademoiselle."

Afterward, as the days went by, he found that she sat often to the other artists. Sometimes he saw her as she went to their rooms or came away; sometimes he caught a glimpse of her as he pa.s.sed her open door, and each time there stirred afresh within him the longing he had felt at first. So it came about that one afternoon, as she came out of a studio in which she had been giving a sitting, she found waiting outside for her the thinly clad, frail figure of the American. He made an eager yet hesitant step forward, and began to speak awkwardly in French.

She stopped him.

"Speak English," she said, "I know it well."

"Thank you," he answered simply, "that is a great relief. My French is so bad. I am here to ask a great favor from you, and I am sure I could not ask it well in French."

"What is the favor?" she inquired, looking at him with some wonder.

He was a new type to her, with his quiet directness of speech and his gentle manner.

"I have heard that you are a professional model," he replied, "and I have wished very much to paint what--what I see in your face. I have wished it from the first hour I saw you. The desire haunts me. But I am a very poor man; I have almost nothing; I cannot pay you what the rest do. To-day I came to the desperate resolve that I would throw myself upon your mercy--that I would ask you to sit to me, and wait until better fortune comes."

She stood still a moment and gazed at him.

"Monsieur," she said at length, "are you so poor as that?"

He colored a little, but it was not as if with shame.

"Yes," he answered, "I am very poor. I have asked a great deal of you, have I not?"

She gave him still another long look.

"No," she said, "I will come to you to-morrow, if you will direct me to your room."

"It is on the sixth floor," he replied; "the highest of all. It is a bare little place."

"I will come," she said, and was turning away when he stopped her.

"I--I should like to tell you how grateful I am--" he began.

"There is no need," she responded with bitter lightness. "You will pay me some day--when you are a great artist." But when she reached the next landing she glanced down and saw that he still stood beneath watching her.

The next day she kept her word and went to him. She found his room poorer and barer even than she had fancied it might be. The ceiling was low and slanting; in one corner stood a narrow iron bedstead, in another a wooden table; in the best light the small window gave his easel was placed with a chair before it.

When he had opened the door in answer to her summons, and she saw all this, she glanced quickly at his face to see if there was any shade of confusion upon it, but there was none. He appeared only rejoiced and eager.

"I felt sure it was you," he said.

"Were you then so sure that I would come?" she asked.

"You said you would," he answered. He placed her as he wished to paint her, and then sat down to his work. In a few moments he was completely absorbed in it. For a long time he did not speak at all. The utter silence which reigned--a silence which was not only a suspension of speech but a suspension of any other thought beyond his task--was a new experience to her. His cheek flushed, his eyes burned dark and bright; it seemed as if he scarcely breathed. When he turned to look at her she was conscious each time of a sudden thrill of feeling. More than once he paused for several moments, brush and palette in hand, simply watching her face. At one of these pauses she herself broke the silence.

"Why do you look at me so?" she asked. "You look at me as if--as if--"

And she broke off with an uneasy little laugh.

He roused himself with a slight start and colored sensitively, pa.s.sing his hand across his forehead.

"What I want to paint is not always in your face," he answered.

"Sometimes I lose it, and then I must wait a little until--until I find it again. It is not only your face I want, it is yourself--yourself!" And he made a sudden unconscious gesture with his hands.

She tried to laugh again,--hard and lightly as before,--but failed.

"Myself!" she said. "_Mon Dieu!_ Do not grasp at me, Monsieur. It will not pay you. Paint my flesh, my hair, my eyes,--they are good,--but do not paint _me_."

He looked troubled.