The Second Class Passenger Part 20

THE MASTER

Papa Musard, whenever he felt that he was about to die, which happened three times a year at least, would beckon as with a finger from the grimy Montmartre tenement in which he abode and call Rufin to come and bid him farewell. The great artist always came; he never failed to show himself humble to humble people, and, besides, Papa Musard had known Corot--or said that he had--and in his capacity of a model had impressed his giant shoulders and its beard on the work of three generations of painters.

The boy who carried the summons sat confidently on the kerb outside the restaurant at which Rufin was used to lunch, and rose to his feet as the tall, cloaked figure turned the corner of the street and approached along the sunlit pavement.

"Monsieur Musard said you would be here at one o'clock," he explained, presenting the note.

"Then it is very fortunate that I am not late," said Rufin politely, accepting it. "But how did you know me?"

The boy--he was aged perhaps twelve--gave a sophisticated shrug.

"Monsieur Musard said: 'At one o'clock there will approach an artist with the airs of a gentleman. That is he.'"

Rufin laughed and opened the note. While he read it the boy watched him with the admiration which, in Paris, even the rat-like gamin of the streets pays to distinction such as his. He was a tall man splendidly blonde, and he affected the cloak, the slouch hat, the picturesque amplitude of hair which were once the uniform of the artist. But these, in his final effect, were subordinate to 'a certain breadth and majesty of brow, a cast of countenance at once benign and austere, as though the art he practiced so supremely both exacted much and conferred much. He made a fine and potent figure as he stood, with his back to the bright street and the gutter-child standing beside him like a familiar companion, and read the smudged scrawl of Papa Musard.

"So Musard is very ill again, is he?" he asked of the boy. "Have you seen him yourself?"

"Oh yes," replied the boy; "I have seen him. He lies in bed and his temper is frightful."

"He is a very old man, you see," said Rufin. "Old men have much to suffer. Well, tell him I will come this afternoon to visit him. And this"--producing a coin from his pocket--"this is for you."

The gamin managed, in some fas.h.i.+on of his own, to combine, in a single movement, a s.n.a.t.c.h at the money with a gesture of polite deprecation. They parted with mutual salutations, two gentlemen who had carried an honorable transaction to a worthy close. A white- ap.r.o.ned waiter smiled upon them tolerantly and held open the door that Rufin might enter to his lunch.

It was in this manner that the strings were pulled which sent Rufin on foot to Montmartre, with the sun at his back and the streets chirping about him. Two young men, pa.s.sing near the Opera, saluted him with the t.i.tle of "maitre;" and then the Paris of sleek magnificence lay behind him and the street sloped uphill to the Place Pigalle and all that region where sober, industrious Parisians work like beavers to furnish vice for inquiring foreigners. Yet steeper slopes ascended between high houses toward his destination, and he came at last to the cobbled courtyard, overlooked by window-dotted cliffs of building, above which Papa Musard had his habitation.

A fat concierge, whose bulged and gaping clothes gave her the aspect of an over-ripe fruit, slept stonily in a chair at the doorway. Rufin was not certain whether Musard lived on the fourth floor or the fifth, and would have been glad to inquire, but he had not the courage to prod that slumbering bulk, and was careful to edge past without touching it. The grimy stair led him upward to find out for himself.

On the third floor, according to his count, a door looked like what he remembered of Musard's, but it yielded no answer to his knocking.

A flight higher there was another which stood an inch or so ajar, and this he ventured to push open that he might look in. It yielded him a room empty of life, but he remained in the doorway looking.

It was a commonplace, square, ugly room, the counterpart of a hundred others in that melancholy building; but its window, framing a saw- edged horizon of roofs and chimneys, faced to the north, and some one, it was plain, had promoted it to the uses of a studio. An easel stood in the middle of the floor with a canvas upon it; the walls were covered with gross caricatures drawn upon the bare plaster with charcoal. A mattress and some tumbled bedclothes lay in one corner, and a few humble utensils also testified that the place was a dwelling as well as a workshop.

Rufin looked back to be sure that no one was coming up the stairs, and then tiptoed into the room to see what hung on the easel.

"After all," he murmured, "an artist has the right."

The picture on the easel was all but completed; it was a quarter- length painting of a girl. Stepping cautiously around the easel, he came upon a full view of it suddenly, and forthwith forgot all his precautions to be unheard. Here was a thing no man could keep quiet!

With his first glance he saw--he, himself a painter, a creator, a judge--that he stood in the presence of a great work of art, a vision, a power.

"But here!" he exclaimed amazedly. "Of all places--here!"

The painted face looked out at him with all the sorrowful wisdom that is comprised in a life sharpened on the grindstone of a remorseless civilization. It was a girl such as one might find anywhere in that neighborhood, she had the hardy prettiness, the alertness, the predatory quality which belong to wild creatures civilized by force.

It was set on the canvas with a skill that made Rufin smile with frank pleasure; but the skill, the artifice of the thing, were the least part of it. What was wonderful was the imagination, the living insight, that represented not only the shaped product of a harsh existence, but the womanhood at the root of it. It was miraculous; it was convincing as life is convincing; it was great.

Rufin, the painter whose fame was secure, upon whom Art had showered gifts, gazed at it, absorbed and reverent. He realized that in this picture his age had achieved a masterpiece; he was at least the contemporary of an immortal.

"Ah!" he said, with an impulse of high indignation. "And while he paints here and sleeps on the floor, they buy my pictures!"

He stepped back from the easel. He was equal to a great gesture, as to a great thought. As though he had greeted a living princess, he swept his hat off in a bow to the work of this unknown fellow.

Papa Musard in his bed, with his comforts--mostly in bottles-- arranged within his reach, found it rather shocking that a distinguished artist should enter the presence of a dying man like-- as he remarked during his convalescence--a dog going into a pond. He sat up in astonishment.

"Musard," demanded Rufin abruptly, "who is the artist who lives in the room below this?"

"Oh, him!" replied Papa Musard, sinking back on his pillow. "M'sieur Rufin, this is the last time I shall appeal to you. Before long I shall again be in the presence of the great master, of Corot, of him who----"

Rufin, it seemed, had lost all respect both for Corot and death. He waved an imperious arm, over which his cloak flapped like a black wing.

"Who is the artist in the room below?" repeated Rufin urgently. "Do you know him?"

"No," replied Papa Musard, with emphasis. "Know him--an Italian, a ruffian, an apache, a man with hair on his arms like a baboon! I do not know him. There!"

He was offended; a dying man has his privileges, at least. The face, gnarled and tempestuously bearded, which had been perpetuated by a hundred laborious painters, glared from the pillow at Rufin with indignation and protest.

Rufin suppressed an impulse to speak forcibly, for one has no more right to strip a man of his pose than of his s.h.i.+rt. He smiled at the angry invalid conciliatingly.

"See how I forget myself!" he said apologetically. "We artists are all alike. Show us a picture and our manners go by the board. With you, Musard, need I say more?"

"You have said a lot," grumbled the ancient of days. "Coming in roaring like a bull! What picture has upset you?"

"A picture you have not seen," said Rufin, "or you would be grasping my hand and weeping for joy--you who know pictures better than us all!" He surveyed the invalid, who was softening. Musard knew no more of pictures than a frame-maker; but that was a fact one did not mention in his presence.

"Since Corot," sighed Musard, "I have seen few pictures which were-- en effet--pictures."

"You have great memories," agreed Rufin hastily. "But I have just seen a picture--ah, but a picture, my friend!"

The old cunning face on the pillow resisted the charm of his manner, the gentleness of his appeal.

"Not his?" demanded Papa Musard. "Not in the room underneath? Not one of the daubs of that a.s.sa.s.sin, that cut-throat, that Italian?"

Rufin nodded, as though confirming a pleasant surprise. "Is it not strange," he said, "how genius will roost on any perch? It is true, then, that he is a person who offends your taste? That is bad. Tell me about him, Musard."

He reached himself a chair and sat down near the foot of the bed.

"You are always making a fuss of some worthless creature," grumbled Musard. "I do not even know the man's name. They speak of him as Peter the Lucky--it is a nickname he has on the streets, an apache name. He has been in prison, too, and he bellows insults at his elders and betters when they pa.s.s him on the stairs. He is a man of no soul!"

"Yes," said Rufin. "But did you say he had been in prison?"

"I did," affirmed Musard. "Ask anyone. It is not that I abuse him; he is, in fact, a criminal. Once he threw an egg at a gendarme. And yet you come to me--a dying man--and declare that such a creature can paint! Bah!"

"Yes," said Rufin, "it is strange."

It was clearly hopeless to try to extract any real information from Papa Musard; that veteran was fortified with prejudices. Rufin resigned himself to the inevitable; and, although he was burning with eagerness to find the painter of the picture he had recently seen, to welcome him into the sunlight of fame and success, he bent his mind to the interview with Papa Musard.

"I have had my part in the development of Art," the invalid was saying at the end of three-quarters of an hour. "Perhaps I have not had my full share of recognition. Since Corot, no artist has been magnanimous; they have become tradesmen, shopkeepers."

"You are hard on us, Musard," said Rufin. "We're a bad lot, but we do our best. Here is a small matter of money that may help to make you comfortable. I'm sorry you have such an unpleasant neighbor."