下载掌阅APP，畅读海量书库
立即打开
The Irishman looked into his burning face, and a curious unnamable feeling thrilled him—a sense of enthusiasm, of profound sadness, of poignant envy.
"You're not only seeking the greatest thing in the world," he said, slowly, "but the cruellest. Failure may be cruel, but success is crueller still. The gods are usurers, you know; they lend to mortals, but they exact a desperate interest."
The boy's hand, still lying unconsciously in his, trembled again.
"I know that; but it does not frighten me."
"A challenge? Take care! The gods are always listening."
"I know that. I am not afraid."
"So be it, then! I'll watch the duel. But what road do you follow—music? literature? Art of some sort, of course; you are artist all over."
Again the fire leaped to the boy's eyes. He snatched his hand away in quick excitement.
"Look! I will show you!"
With the swiftness of lightning he whipped a pencil from his pocket, pushed aside his coffee-cup, and began to draw upon the marble-topped table as though his life depended upon his speed.
For ten minutes he worked feverishly, his face intensely earnest, his head bent over his task, a lock of dark hair drooping across his forehead; then he looked up, throwing himself back in his chair and gazing up at his companion with the egotistical triumph—the intense, childish satisfaction of the artist in the first flush of accomplished work.
"Look! Look, now, at this!"
The Irishman laughed sympathetically; the artist, as belonging to a race apart, was known by him and liked, but he rose and came round the table with a certain scepticism. Life had taught him that temperament and output are different things.
He leaned over the boy's chair; then suddenly he laid his hand on his shoulder and gripped it, his own face lighting up.
"Why, boy!" he cried. "This is clever—clever—clever! I'm a Dutchman, if this isn't the real thing! Why on earth didn't you tell me you could do it?"
The boy laughed in sheer delight and, bending over the table, added a lingering touch or two to his work—a rough expressive sketch of himself standing back from an easel, a palette in his left hand, a brush in his right, his hair unkempt, his whole attitude comically suggestive of an artist in a moment of delirious oblivion. It was the curt, abrupt expression of a mood, but there was cleverness, distinction, humor in every line.
"Boy, this is fine! Fine! That duel will be fought, take my word for it. But, look here, we must toast this first attempt! Madame! Madame!" He literally shouted the words, and madame came flying out.
"Madame, have you a liqueur brandy—very old? I have discovered that this is a fête day."
"But certainly, monsieur! A cognac of the finest excellence."
"Out with it, then! And bring two glasses—no, bring three glasses! You must drink a toast with us!"
Madame bustled off, laughing and excited, and again the Irishman gripped the boy's shoulder.
"You've taken me in!" he cried. "Absolutely and entirely taken me in! I thought you a slip of a boy with a head full of notions, and what do I find but that it's a little genius I've got! A genius, upon my word! And here comes the blessed liquor!"
His whole-hearted enthusiasm was like fire, it leaped from one to the other of his companions. As madame came back, gasping in her haste, he ran to meet her, and, seizing the brandy and the glasses, drew her with him to the table.
"Madame, you are a Frenchwoman—therefore an artist. Tell me what you think of this!"
In his excitement he spoke in English, but madame understood his actions if not his words. Full of curiosity she bent over the boy's shoulder, peered into the sketch, then threw up her hands in genuine admiration.
'Ah, but he was an artist, was monsieur! A true artist! It was delicious—ravishing!' She turned from one of her customers to the other. 'If monsieur would but put his name to this picture she would never again have the table washed; and in time to come, when he had made his big success—'
"Good, madame! Good! When he has made his big success he will come back here and laugh and cry over this, and say, 'God be with the youth of us!' as we say in my old country. Come, boy, put your name to it!"
The boy glanced up at him. His face was aglow, there were tears of emotion in his eyes.
"I can say nothing," he cried, "but that I—I have never been so happy in my life." And, bending over his sketch, he wrote across the marble-topped table a single word—the word 'Max.'
The Frenchwoman bent over his shoulder. "Max!" she murmured. "A pretty name!"
The Irishman looked as well. "Max! So that's what they call you? Max! Well, let's drink to it!" He filled the three glasses and raised his own.
"To the name of Max!" he said. "May it be known from here to the back of God's speed!" He swallowed the brandy and laid down his glass.
"To M. Max!" The Frenchwoman smiled. "A great future, monsieur!" She sipped and bowed.
Of the three, the boy alone sat motionless. His heart felt strangely full, the tears in his eyes were dangerously near to falling.
"Come, Max! Up with your glass!"
"Monsieur, I—I beg you to excuse me! My heart is very full of your kindness."
"Nonsense, boy! Drink!"
The boy laughed with a catch in his breath, then he drank a little with nervous haste, coughing as he laid his glass down. The cognac of the Maison Gustav was of a fiery nature.
The Irishman laughed. "Ah, another peep behind the mask! You may be an artist, young man—- you may have advanced ideas—but, for all that, you're only out of the nursery! It's for me to make a man of you, I see. Come, madame, the addition , if you please! We must be going."
For a moment madame was lost in calculation, then she decorously mentioned the amount of their debt.
The Irishman paid with the manner of a prince, and, slipping his arm again through the boy's, moved to the door; there he looked back.
"Good-day, madame! Many thanks for your charming hospitality! Give my respects to monsieur, your husband—and kiss the little Léon for me!"
They passed out into the rue Fabert, into the fresh and frosty air, and involuntarily the boy's arm pressed his.
"How am I to thank you?" he murmured. "It is too much—this kindness to a stranger."
The Irishman paused and looked at him. "Thanks be damned!—and stranger be damned!" he said with sudden vehemence. "Aren't we citizens of a free world? Must I know a man for years before I can call him my friend? And must every one I've known since childhood be my friend? I tell you I saw you and I liked you—that was all, and 'twas enough."
Max looked at him with a certain grave simplicity. "Forgive me!" he said.
Instantly the other's annoyance was dispelled. "Forgive! Nonsense! Tell me your plans, that's all I want."
"My plans are very easy to explain. I shall rent a studio here in Paris—and there I shall work."
"As a student?"
"No, I have had my years of study; I am older than you think." He took no notice of the other's raised eyebrows. "I want to paint a picture—a great picture. I am seeking the idea."
"Good! Good! Then we'll make that our basis—the search for the idea. The search for the great idea!"
Max thrilled. 'The search for the idea! How splendid! Where must it begin? Not in fashionable Paris! Oh, not in fashionable Paris!'
"Fashionable Paris!" The Irishman laughed in loud disdain. "Oh no! For us it must be the highways and the byways, eh?"
Max freed his arm. "Ah yes! that is what I want—that is what I want. The highways and the byways. It is necessary that I am very solitary here in Paris. Quite unknown, you understand?—quite unnoticed."
"The mystery? I understand. And now, tell me, shall it be the highways or the byways—Montmartre or the Quartier Latin?"
Max smiled decisively. "Montmartre."
"You know Montmartre?"
"No."
The Irishman laughed again. "Good!" he cried. "You're a fine adventurer! You have the right spirit! Always know your own mind, whatever else you're ignorant about! But I ought to tell you that Montmartre swarms with your needy fellow-countrymen."
The boy looked up. "My needy fellow-countrymen will not harm me—or know me."
"Good again! Then the coast is clear! I only thought to warn you."
"I appreciate the thought." For an instant the old reserve touched the voice.
"Now, Max! Now! Now!" The other turned to him, caught his arm again, and swung him out into the Esplanade des Invalides. "You're not to be doing that, you know! You're not! You're not! I see through you like a pane of glass. Sometimes you forget yourself and get natural, like you did in the café this time back; then, all of a sudden, some imp of suspicion shakes his tail at you and says, 'Look here, young man, put that Irishman in his place! Keep him at a respectable arm's length!' Now, isn't that gospel truth?"
The boy laughed, vanquished. "Monsieur," he said, naïvely, "I will not do it again."
"That's right! You see, I'm not interesting or picturesque enough to suspect. When all's said and done, I'm just a poor devil of an Irishman with enough imagination to prevent his doing any particular harm in this world, and enough money to prevent his doing any special good. My name is Edward Fitzgerald Blake, and I have an old barracks of a castle in County Clare. I have five aunts, seven uncles, and twenty-four first cousins, every one of whom thinks me a lost soul; but I have neither sister nor brother, wife nor child to help or hinder me. There now! I have gone to confession, and you must give me absolution and an easy penance!"
Max laughed. "Thank you, monsieur!"
"Not 'monsieur,' for goodness' sake! Plain Ned, if you don't mind."
"Ned?" The slight uncertainty, coupled with the foreign intonation, lent a charm to the name.
"That's it! But I never heard it sound half so well before. Personally, it always struck me as being rather like its owner—of no particular significance. But I must be coming down to earth again, I have an appointment with our friend McCutcheon at three o'clock." He drew out his watch. "Oh, by the powers and dominations, I have only two minutes to keep it in! How the time has raced! I say, there's an auto-taxi looming on the horizon, over by the Invalides; I must catch it if I can. Come, boy! Put your best foot foremost!"
Laughing and running like a couple of school-boys, they zigzagged through the labyrinth of formal trees, and secured the cab as it was wheeling toward the quais .
"Good!" exclaimed Blake. "And now, what next? Can I give you a lift?" His foot was on the step of the cab, his fingers on the handle of the door, his face, flushed from his run and from the cold, looked pleasantly young. The boy's heart went out to him in a glow of comradeship.
"No, I will remain here. But I—I want to see you soon again. May I?"
"May you? Say the word! To-morrow? To-night?" The cab was snorting impatience; Blake opened the door and stepped inside.
The boy colored. "To-night?"
"Right! To-night it shall be! To-night we'll scale the heights." He held out his hand.
Max took it smilingly. "You have not asked me where I live."
"Never thought of it! Where is it?"
"The Hôtel Railleux, in the rue de Dunkerque."
"Not a very festive locality! But sufficient for the day, eh? Well, I'll be outside the door of the Hôtel Railleux at nine o'clock."
"At nine o'clock. I shall be awaiting you."
"Right again! Good-bye! It's been a good morning."
Max smiled, a smile that seemed to have caught something of the sun's brightness, something of the promise of spring trembling in the pale sky.
"It has been a good morning. I shall never forget it."
Blake laughed. "Don't say that, boy! We'll oust it with many a better."
He released the boy's hand and gave the address to the chauffeur. There was a moment's pause, a rasp and wrench of machinery, and the willing little cab flew off toward the nearest bridge.
Max stood watching it, obsessed by a strange sensation. This morning he had been utterly alone; this morning the fair, cold face of Paris had been immobile and speculative. Now a miracle had come to pass; the coldness had been swept aside and the beauty, the warm, palpitating humanity had shone into his eyes, dazzling him—fascinating him.