CHAPTER X

It was nine o'clock when he entered the salle-à-manger , and one sharp glance brought the satisfying conviction that it was deserted save for the presence of the assiduous young waiter, who came hurrying forward as though no span of hours and incidents separated yesterday's meal from to-day's.

His attentive attitude was unrelaxed, his smile was as deferential as before, but this morning he found a less responsive guest. Max was filled with a quiet assurance that debarred familiarity; Max, in fine, was bound upon a quest, and the submissive young waiter, the bare eating-room, Paris itself, formed but the setting and background in his arrogant young mind to the greatness of the mission.

The thought—the small seed of thought that was responsible for the idea had been sown last night, as he leaned over the parapet fronting the Sacré-Coeur, looking down upon the city with its tangle of lights; and later, in the hours of darkness, when he had tossed on his heavy bed, too excited to lure sleep, it had fructified with strange rapidity, growing and blossoming with morning into definite resolve.

He drank his coffee and ate his roll in happy preoccupation, and, having finished his meal, left the room and went quietly down the stairs and through the glass door of the hotel.

The frost still held; Paris still smiled; and, buttoning up his coat, he paused for a moment on the doorstep to turn his face to the copper-red sun and breathe in the crisp, invigorating air; then, with a quaintly decisive manner that seemed to set sentiment aside, he walked to the edge of the footpath and hailed a passing fiacre .

"To the church of the Sacré-Coeur," he commanded.

The cocher received the order with a grumble, looked from his unreliable horse to the frosty roadway, and was about to shake his head in definite negation when Max cajoled him with a more ingratiating voice.

"The rue Ronsard, then? Will you take me to the corner of the rue Ronsard?"

The man grumbled again, and shrugged his shoulders until his ears disappeared in the shaggy depths of his fur cape; but, when all hope seemed fled, he laconically murmured the one word " Bon! " whipped up his horse, and started off with a fine disregard of whether his fare had taken his seat or been left behind upon the footpath.

To those who know Montmartre only as an abode of night—a place of light and laughter and folly—Montmartre in the day, Montmartre at half-past nine in the morning, comes as a revelation. The whole picture is as a coin reversed. The theatres, the music-halls, the cabarets all lie with closed eyes, innocently sleeping; the population of pleasure-seekers and pleasure-mongers has disappeared as completely as if some magician had waved his wand, and in its place the streets teem with the worker—the early, industrious shopkeeper and the householder bent upon a profitable morning's marketing. Max, gazing from the fiacre with attentive eyes, followed the varying scenes, while his horse wound a careful and laborious way up the cobble-paved streets, and noted with an artist's eye the black, hurrying figures of the men, cloaked and hooded against the cold, and the black, homely figures of the women, silhouetted against the sharp greens and yellows of the laden vegetable stalls at which they chattered and bargained.

It was all noisy, interesting, alive; and us he watched the pleasant, changing pictures, his courage strengthened, his belief in his own star mounted higher; the decision of last night stood out, as so few nocturnal decisions can stand out, unashamed and justified in the light of day.

At the corner where the rue André de Sarte joins the rue Ronsard he dismissed his cab, and with a young inquisitiveness in all that concerned the quarter, paused to look into the old curio shop, no longer closed as on the previous night, but open and inviting in its dingy suggestion of mysteries unsolved.

Now—at this moment of recording the boy's doings—the curio shop no longer exists at the corner of the rue André de Sarte; it has faded into the unknown with its coppers and brasses, its silver and tinsel, its woollen and silk stuffs; but on that January morning of his first coming it still held place, its musty perfumes still conjured dreams, its open doorway, festooned with antique objects, still offered tempting glimpses into the long and dim interior, where an old Jew, presiding genius of the place, lurked like a spider in the innermost circle of his web.

Max lingered, drawn into self-forgetfulness by the blending of faded hues, the atmosphere of must and spices, the air of age indescribable that veiled the place. He loitered about the windows, peeped in at the doorway, would even have ventured across the threshold had not a ponderous figure, rising silently from a heap of cushions upon the floor of the inmost room, sent him hastening round the corner, guiltily conscious that it was new lamps and not old he was here to light.

The interest of his mission flowed back, sharpened by the momentary break, and it was with very swift steps that he ran up the Escalier de Sainte-Marie to the rue Müller; there, in the rue Müller, he paused, his back to the green plantation, his face to the row of houses rising one above the other, each with its open doorway, each with its front of brick and plaster, its iron balcony from which hung the inevitable array of blankets, rugs, and mattresses absorbing the morning air.

To say that, in the mystic silence of the previous night and restless hours of the dawn, Max had vowed to himself that here in the rue Müller he would make a home, and to add that, coming in the light of day, he found a door open to him, sounds at the least fabulous; yet, as he stood there—eager, alert, with face lifted expectantly, and bright gaze winging to right and left—fable was made fact: the legend ' Appartement à louer ' caught his glance like a pronouncement of fate.

It sounds fabulous, it sounds preposterous, and yet it obtains, to be accounted for only by the fact that in this curious world there are certain beings to whom it is given to say of all things with naïve faith, not 'I shall seek,' but 'I shall find.'

Max had never doubted that, if courage were high enough to undertake the quest, absolute success awaited him. He read the legend again, ' Appartement à louer 5ième étage. Gaz: l'eau,' and without hesitation crossed the rue Müller and passed through the open door.

The difference was vast between his nervous entry thirty-six hours ago into the Hôtel Railleux and the boldness of his step now. The difference between secret night and candid morning lay in the two proceedings—the difference between self-distrust and self-confidence. Then he had been a creature newly created, looking upon himself and all the world with a sensitive distrust; now he was an individual accepted of others, assured of himself, already beginning to move and have his being in happy self-forgetfulness.

He stepped into the hallway of the strange house and paused to look about him, his only emotion a keen interest that kept every nerve alert. The hallway round which he looked displayed no original features: it was a lofty, rather narrow space, the walls of which—painted to resemble marble—were defaced by time, by the passing of many skirts and the rubbing of many shoulders. In the rear was a second door, composed of glass, and beyond it the suggestion of a staircase of polished oak that sprang upward from the dingy floor in a surprising beauty of panelled dado and fine old banister.

Max's eyes rested upon this staircase: in renewed excitement he hurried down the hall and, regardless of the consequence, beat a quick tattoo with his knuckles upon the glass door.

Silence greeted his imperative summons, and as he waited, listening intently, he became aware of the monotonous hum of a sewing-machine coming through a closed door upon his left.

The knowledge of a human presence emboldened him; again he knocked, this time more sharply, more persistently. Again inattention; then, as he lifted his hand for the third time, the hum of the machine ceased abruptly, the door opened, and he turned to confront a small woman with wispy hair and untidy clothes, whose bodice was adorned with innumerable pins, and at whose side hung a pair of scissors large as shears.

"Monsieur?" Her manner was curt—the manner of one who has been disturbed at some engrossing occupation.

Max felt rebuffed; he raised his hat and bowed with as close an imitation as he could summon of Blake's ingratiating friendliness.

"Madame, you have an appartement to let?"

"True, monsieur! An appartement on the fifth floor—gas and water." There was pride in the last words, if a grudging pride.

"Precisely! And it is a good appartement ?"

"No better in Montmartre."

"A sufficiency of light?"

'Light?' The woman smiled in scorn. 'Was it not open to the skies—with those two windows in front, and that balcony?'

Max's excitement kindled.

"Madame, I must see this appartement ! May I mount now—at once?"

But the matter was no such light one. Madame shook her head. 'Ah, that was not possible!'

'Why not?'

'Ah, well, there was the concierge ! The concierge was out.'

'But the concierge would return?'

'Oh yes! It was true he would return!'

The little woman cast a wistful eye on the door of her own room.

'At what hour?'

'Ah! That was a question!'

'This morning?'

'Possibly!'

'This afternoon?'

'Possibly!'

'But not for a certainty?'

'Nothing was entirely certain.'

Anger broke through Max's disappointment. Without a word he turned on his heel and strode down the hall with the air of an offended prince.

The woman watched him with an expressionless face until he reached the door, then something—perhaps his youth, perhaps his brave carriage, perhaps his defiant disappointment—moved her.

"Monsieur!" she called.

He stopped.

"Monsieur, if it is absolutely necessary that you see the appartement —"

"It is. Absolutely necessary." Max ran back.

"Then, monsieur, I will conduct you up-stairs."

The suggestion was greedily seized upon. This appartement on the fifth floor had grown in value with each moment of denial.

"Thank you, madame, a thousand times!"

"Shall we mount?"

"On the moment, if you will."

Through the glass door they went, and up the stairs, mounting higher and ever higher in an unbroken silence. Half way up each flight of stairs there was a window through which the light fell upon the bare oak steps, proving them to be spotless and polished as the floor of a convent. It was an unexpected quality, this rigid cleanliness, and the boy acknowledged it with a mute and deep satisfaction.

Upon each landing were two doors—closed doors that sturdily guarded whatever of secrecy might lie behind, and at each of these silent portals Max glanced with that intent and searching look that one bestows upon objects that promise to become intertwined with one's daily life. At last the ascent was made, the goal reached, and he paused on the last step of the stairs to survey the coveted fifth floor.

It was as bare, as scrupulously clean as were the other landings; but his quick glance noted that while the door upon the left was plain and unadorned as the others he had passed, that upon the right bore a small brass plate engraved with the name 'L. Salas.'

This, then, was his possible neighbor! He scanned the name attentively.

"This is the fifth floor, madame?"

"The fifth floor, monsieur!" Without ceremony the little woman went forward and, to his astonishment, rapped sharply upon the door with the brass plate.

Max started. "Madame! The appartement is not occupied?"

The only reply that came to him was the opening of the door by an inch or two and the hissing whisper of a conversation of which he caught no word. Then the lady of the scissors looked round upon him, and the door closed.

"One moment, monsieur, while madame throws on a garment!"

A sudden loss of nerve, a sudden desire for flight seized upon Max. He had mounted the stairs anticipating the viewing of empty rooms, and now he was confronted with a furnished and inhabited appartement , and commanded to wait 'while madame threw on a garment'! A hundred speculations crowded to his mind. Into what milieu was he about to be hurled? What sordid morning scene was he about to witness? In a strange confusion of ideas, the white face of the woman Lize sprang to his imagination, coupled with the memory of the empty champagne bottle and the battered tray of the first night at the Hôtel Railleux. A deadly sensitiveness oppressed him; he turned sharply to his guide.

"Madame! Madame! It is an altogether unreasonable hour to intrude—"

The reopening of the door on the right checked him, and a gentle voice broke across his words:

"Now, madame, if you will!"

He turned, his heart still beating quickly, and a sudden shame at his own thoughts—a sudden relief so strong as almost to be painful—surged through him.

The open door revealed a woman of forty-five, perhaps of fifty, clothed in a meagre black skirt and a plain linen wrapper of exquisite cleanliness. It was this cleanliness that struck the note of her personality—that fitted her as a garment, accentuating the quiet austerity of her thin figure, the streaks of gray in her brown hair, the pale face marked with suffering and sympathy and repression.

With an instinctive deference the boy bared his head.

"Madame," he stammered, "I apologize profoundly for my intrusion at such an hour."

"Do not apologize, monsieur. Enter, if you will!" She drew back, smiling a little, and making him welcome by a simple gesture. "We are anxious, I assure you, to find a tenant for the appartement ; my husband's health is not what it was, and we find it necessary to move into the country."

He followed her into a tiny hall; and with her fingers on the handle of an inner door, she looked at him again in her gentle, self-possessed way.

"You will excuse my husband, monsieur! He is an invalid and cannot rise from his chair."

She opened the inner door, and Max found himself in a bedroom, plain in furniture and without adornment, but possessing a large window, the full light from which was falling with pathetic vividness on the shrunken figure and wan, expressionless face of a very old man who sat huddled in a shabby leathern arm-chair. This arm-chair had been drawn to the window to catch the wintry sun, and pathos unspeakable lay in the contrasts of the picture—the eternal youth in the cold, dancing beams—the waste, the frailty of human things in the inert figure, the dim eyes, the folded, twitching hands.

The old man looked up as the little party entered, and his eyes sought his wife's with a mute, appealing glance; then, with a slight confusion, he turned to Max, and his shaking hand went up instinctively to the old black skullcap that covered his head.

"He wishes to greet you, monsieur, but he has not the strength." The woman's voice dropped to tenderness, and she stooped and arranged the rug about the shrunken knees. "If you will come this way, I will show you the salon ."

She moved quietly forward, opening a second door.

"You see, monsieur, it is all very convenient. In summer you can throw the windows open and pass from one room to the other by way of the balcony."

She moved from the bedroom into the salon as she spoke, Max and the lady of the pins following.

"See, monsieur! It is quite a good room."

Max, still subdued by the vision of age, went forward silently, but as he entered this second room irrepressible surprise possessed him. Here was an atmosphere he had not anticipated. A soft, if faded, carpet covered the floor; a fine old buffet stood against the wall; antique carved chairs were drawn up to a massive table that had obviously known more spacious surroundings; while upon the walls, from floor to ceiling, were pictures—pictures of all sizes, pictures obviously from the same hand, on the heavy gold frames of which the name 'L. Salas' stood out conspicuously in proof of former publicity.

"Madame!" He turned to the sad-faced woman, the enthusiasm of a fellow-craftsman instantly kindled. "Madame! You are an artist? This is your work?"

The woman caught the sympathy, caught the fire of interest, and a faint flush warmed her cheek.

"Alas, no, monsieur! I am not artistic. It is my husband who is the creator of these." She waved her hand proudly toward the walls. "My husband is an artist."

"A renowned artist!"

It was the woman of the pins and scissors who spoke, surprising Max, not by the sudden sound of her voice, but by her sudden warmth of feeling. Again Blake's words came back—'These are the true citizens of the true Bohemia!'—and he looked curiously from one to the other of the women, so utterly apart in station, in education, in ideals, yet bound by a common respect for art.

"It is my loss," he said, quietly, "that I did not, until to-day, know of M. Salas."

"But no, monsieur! What would you know of twenty years ago? It is true that then my husband had a reputation; but, alas, time moves quickly—and the world is for the young!"

She smiled again, gently and patiently, and a sudden desire seized Max to lift and kiss one of her thin, work-worn hands. The whole pitiful story of a vogue outlived, of a generation pushed aside, breathed in the silence of these fifth-floor rooms.

"They must be a great pride to you, madame—these pictures."

"These, monsieur—and the fact that he is still with me. We can dispense with anything save the being we love—is it not so? But I must not detain you, talking of myself! The other rooms are still to see! This, monsieur, is our second bedroom! And this the kitchen!"

Max, following her obediently, took one peep into what was evidently her own bedroom—a tiny apartment of rigid simplicity, in which a narrow bed, with a large black crucifix hanging above it, seemed the only furniture, and passed on into the kitchen, a room scarce larger than a cupboard, in which a gas-stove and a water-tap promised future utility.

"See, monsieur! Everything is very convenient. All things are close at hand for cooking, and the light is good. And now, perhaps, you would wish to pass back into the salon and step out upon the balcony?"

Still silent, still preoccupied, he assented, and they passed into the room so eloquent of past hours and dwindled fortunes.

"See, monsieur! The view is wonderful! Not to-day, perhaps, for the frost blurs the distances; but in the spring—a little later in the year—"

Crossing the room, she opened the long French window and stepped out upon the narrow iron balcony.

Max followed, and, moving to her side, stood gazing down upon the city of his dreams. For long he stood absorbed in thought, then he turned and looked frankly into her face.

"Madame," he said, softly, "it is a place of miracle. It is here that I shall live."

She smiled. She had served an apprenticeship in the reading of the artist's heart—the child's heart.

"Yes, monsieur? You will live here?"

"As soon, madame, as it suits you to vacate the appartement ."

Again she smiled, gently, indulgently. "And may I ask, monsieur, whether you have ascertained the figure of the rent?"

"No, madame."

"And is not that—pardon me!—a little improvident?"

Max laughed. "Probably, madame! But if it demanded my last franc I would give that last franc with an open heart, so greatly do I desire the place."

The quiet eyes of the woman softened to a gentle comprehension.

"You are an artist, monsieur."

The color leaped into the boy's face, his eyes flashed with triumph.

"Madame, how did you guess?"

"It is no guessing, monsieur. You tell me with every word."

"Ah, madame, I thank you!" With a charming, swift grace he bent and caught her hand. "And, madame"—he hesitated naïvely and colored again. "Madame, I would like to say that when my home is here it will be my care never to desecrate the atmosphere you have created." He bent still lower, the sun caressing his crisp, dark hair, and very lightly his lips touched her fingers.

" Adieu , madame!"

" Adieu , monsieur!"

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