FAME-SEEKERS ALICE WOODS YOU LOOK AT ME AS IF I WERE JUST AXOTHER BLUE PLATE" FAME-SEEKERS BY ALICE WOODS AUTHOR OF "EDGES" WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY MAY WILSON PRESTON NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY Copyright, 1912, By George H. Doran Company CONTENTS PAGE I LOUISA, GLEASON AND THE CROW ... 1 II AT MARY'S . . 13 III BLACK COFFEE 26 IV INTO THE RUE FALGUIERE 34 V WOMEN WHOM MEN DO NOT FEAR ... 41 VI AMONG THE BOOK-BINDERS ... . . 45 VII HAZARD 55 VIII DUSK .60 IX MARCH SNOW 67 X INVASION .....,.,.. . 73 XI A WHITE LIE . . 88 XII CLOTHES . 94 XIII THE DINNER 106 XIV IN THE BEGINNING . 121 XV MORE BEGINNINGS 127 XVI THE UNEXPECTED 135 XVII A WIRE HAIRPIN 143 XVIII WHILE A CITY SLEEPS 151 XIX CONFUSION 173 XX THE CABLE 182 XXI BOOKS AND BINDINGS . .186 2138883 CONTENTS PAGE XXII THE GIRL AND THE STAR 197 XXIII THE COMIC-OPERA VALET ,., , .. ,. . 205 XXIV HARBOUR AND CITY . ... . ... ... ... .216 XXV THE VICTOR , ... ,. ,. 220 XXVI NATHALIE CORSON . . ., ,., . .. . 228 XXVII LOUISA GARTH . ., ... 244 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE " YOU LOOK AT ME AS IP I WERE JUST ANOTHER BLUE PLATE " . .... Frontispiece SHE CHALLENGED HIM. " LET'S MAKE ROME BURN !"..., 44 " THE CHANGE IN HER IS AS SUBTLE AS SHE IS HERSELF " ,.. . 80 " NOW THAT I'VE HAD A GOOD MEAL I THINK EVEN BETTER OF IT " , . 212 PREFACE DISENCHANTMENT MODERN life has produced nothing more interest- ing, more charming, or more alarming, than the American girl. She holds about all that there seems to be of art and moral in her capable young hands. Each year now she goes over to Paris a thousand or more of her to study : to go in seriously for music, painting, literature. Seriously! No mat- ter what her station or her circumstances may be, she aims now to be professional. She doesn't own the aim, even to herself, but there it lives at the back of her eyes to peer out in cryptic cleverness. She'll talk it all over with you she'll talk just about anything all over with you in five o'clock tea- clinic ! For that is the way she dissipates, gets rid of herself in tea and talk. She cuts out sex, treating men as she says she likes to be treated; she gives over love, and she tells you why in the well-conducted terms of modern arm-chair science. The one thing she loves is going to school. One stares, dazed and saddened, across the tea-table and through the grey-toned walls of her rooms to where the tender light of sundown hangs upon the ix PREFACE neglected Dream. One shudders before the possi- ble presence of things of Art, conceived in tea, carved of cake-knife and made to stand with an en- ergy that has smilingly put away everything but thinking. Up to a certain point she is more capable than the young man of her own age, from her own or any other country. Bewitching, precocious, promising, she makes her stir. Then she comes to the " cer- tain point," and it is as if a black frost had passed. She scarcely lifts her head again. Not that she should not go over to Paris. She should : the more, the better if she will not permit us to say " the merrier." If she'd but go more lightly, go for a lark in learning; go without pre- tence, without the disturbing confounding of mere good taste with talent. It makes for disillusion- ment, and it means coming back to a home grown dull. If she " ends " by marrying, heaven help the man, for it is with the secret gnawing of compromise or condescension. If she goes over to study music, it is with the image of a Mary Garden or a Mrs. Stevens in the tail of her eye; if it is for painting, she feeds her soul upon the vision of a Mary Cassatt; if it is for lit- erature, she gives her sighs to the lurking half- taught thought of supplying the national gap with the martyred spectacle of an American Georges Sand. An imitation, be it never so appreciative, DISENCHANTMENT xi does not conduct to the Star-Zone. If she'd only let the Star-Zone be, and recognise herself for the charming human being that she is ! It has a treacherous climate the Star-Zone. It is a ter- rible journey there, and there is no way back. If she has the genius to help her, she must still find her own way to the station, she must secure her own ticket and pay for it herself; she must check her own baggage and find the right train; and, all of that done, she must realise the soul-sickening fact that the other passengers will not help her, will even hinder and mislead her all along the way. And, once arrived, there is, curiously, the old hard ques- tion of the cost of living. It costs infinitely more, in coin visible and invisible, to live in the Star-Zone than it does even upon the trying earth. Infinite things must carry their infinite burdens. And when, across the infinite loneliness, the girl who goes meets a Star who has clung a little to her habit of human speech, the girl will never be able to forget the in- finite look out of her eyes, and if she listens she will hear that it is all very hard work, and that Stars are often, very often, homesick. CHAPTER I LOUISA, GLEASON AND THE CROW TOWARDS the end of a late August afternoon a man and a young woman were idling along a Connecti- cut country road. The weed-edged way trailed pleasantly over white-railed bridges, between mead- ows and grain-fields, then on, tunnel-like, through a grove of tall trees. A high cleared space among the trees was marked by the grey gables and red chimneys of a prosperous country home. The two paused at the edge of the grove to stare, enchanted, through the leaf-lined tunnel into the globe of sun- lighted world beyond. A crow perched upon a fence-rail near by, his swaggering awkwardness giv- ing humour to the drowsy moment, his black coat lending the dark note to the high-keyed landscape and his beady eye glinting the warning that the devil is not away even from the heart of thrift and peace. The girl was tall and very slight; thick, bright brown hair shadowed her small face, and her eyes were of a grey that changed with the colour of her clothes. Her clothes were experimental but not unconventional; they were merely compatible with a gentlewoman's love of ease. Her mouth was 2 FAME-SEEKERS smaller than the ideas it gave speech to. Her chin was round, her nose straight enough and her head was well-set upon a really beautiful throat. Her name was Louisa Louisa Garth. The man was rather less than forty, was florid and well built, and from the shade of his wide, limp hat his shrewd eyes laughed back at the crow on the fence with the tempered reflection of the beady glint which every man who is half a man shares with His Majesty in Black Feathers. His name was William Gleason. " So, Louisa-mine," and Gleason stuffed his pipe, " in one short week I shall be playing at being a bachelor again ? " " You've no one but yourself to blame," hummed Louisa. " I'll send you back your wife as soon as I am able ; never fear, Billy ! " " And how she'll be welcome ! " " She does not want to go, you do not want her to go, I do not want her to go. Nevertheless, she must go. It is, really, perfectly absurd ! " " Possibly, but necessary, by the light of my lamps," and Gleason touched his brow solemnly. Louisa took him in with long-suffering endurance. " Your lamps! But, Billy, I'm not a baby." "Aren't you?" " You pretend to be so modern, and you are, really, hopelessly old-fashioned. Don't you know that there are almost as many dull and entirely LOUISA, GLEASON AND THE CROW 3 proper Americans living in Paris as there are in America ? " " All of whom you have carefully cut out of your present plan." Louisa laughed, gave in for a moment's rest, then, with an air of patience, began again : " Grace is a dear girl and all the sister I have, but she doesn't understand me in the very least. She doesn't un- derstand anyone, not even you, Billy Gleason! She's never thought of such a thing in all her life. She was born knowing what to do, what to say, what to expect." " Grace adores you," Gleason reminded her. " And you : without as much as one idea why for the two of us." " Umm ? " Gleason fondled his pipe. " I fancy, 'Wisa-mine, that I shall just go on accepting what- ever adoration comes my way without too much probing." Louisa spent upon him a gaze of lavish toler- ance. " It's a fine thing to be a woman like Grace," went on Gleason. " It's a marvellous thing," Louisa agreed ardently. " All the same," and her voice broke into a spicy laugh, " you like having me about the house to liven things up, don't you ? " " I do indeed," Gleason admitted fully. They were leaning against the wooden fence that skirted 4 FAME-SEEKERS the grove, and with a chuckle Gleason faced her. " It's no matter of amazement to me, my dear girl, that you want a fling in Paris minus apron-strings. Who doesn't? Unfortunately it isn't the thing to own up to our flings, and my acquiescence wouldn't be worth a drop in the bucket." " I do not want a fling." Louisa was indignant. " If I did I'd certainly not be held back by any leaky old oaken bucket full of drivelling opinions." Gleason folded his arms and took her in as an elephant might have taken in an enraged kitten. " A fling," sighed Louisa, " would be only too easy, and nothing in it when I got it. Why won't you see, Billy, that I'm in earnest ? " " Do you mean about this book-binding fad ? " asked Gleason curiously. " Isn't all that just a new name for fling? I'm not artistic," he laughed, " but I like looking at a pretty pair of hands, and I'm not one bit for consenting to the spoiling of a pair like yours, to no purpose. What's the sense in it? You can't want to make money for you al- ready have more than you can conveniently spend. I don't suppose there is any money in it, anyway? And if it is just to make Christmas presents, why not select something easier? " Louisa ignored him, then, after a pause : " And so, poor old Gracious-Goodness must be martyred, too, just because I happen to have chosen a thing that you had never considered, and, just because she LOUISA, GLEASON AND THE CROW 5 is married, poor dear, she must make a journey she detests and see me started on my downward way in all propriety ! " Gleason eyed her with renewed amusement. " Be- ing married, my dear 'Wisa, gives the most com- monplace women advantages dozens of 'em ! over the smartest girl a-going. If," and Gleason grinned, " you finally decide to stay single, and if, for consolation, you ever take to pipes, just stuff one with that bit of wisdom and think of your dot- ing brother-in-law while you smoke it down to the cinders." Louisa wore a slightly heightened colour. " Well," she sighed, *' no doubt I'll finish by getting married. Everybody does, sooner or later. But even if I prove, by giving in, not to have had the courage of my ignorance, there will always be left me the back- ground of a worthy modesty. I shall hang fast to that. It isn't from conceit that I want to avoid the old way, it's only that I find the way so dull ! " She dared him a moment then smiled wistfully be- fore her. " I know my shallow self so well ! I'll come back, and I'll get married; and I'll smile, as blissful as another. I'll very nearly believe in my own smiles ! " " Then why all this temporising? " " It's no use arguing with you." " You flatter me." " I didn't mean to," she shot him a glance, " so 6 FAME-SEEKERS there is no occasion to boast about it. You," she hesitated, giving him time to follow the swerve, " you have all kinds of faith in Nathalie Corson. You know that she, at least, is really in earnest. You know that I am going straight to her. Why not spare Grace the miserable voyage across, and rely upon Nathalie? I promise," she laughed, " to ask her to conduct my very breathing." " Bah ! " Gleason returned the laugh. " I know as well as you do that you can take very good care of yourself in half a dozen languages. It's the look of the thing that matters." " That's hypocritical. It should not matter." " But it does, it does. I can't help it ! " " You can. It's just the silly giving-in of men like you too lazy, you are, to change anything that it goes on mattering." Gleason fumed and smoked. " Nathalie works, if you like, Billy. And she is the happiest person I have ever known." " Happy ? I'm sure I don't know, child. Nath- alie is a charming girl, certainly, but that argues nothing for you. She," he laughed her down, " is not charming in the delightfully dangerous way that you are charming. That very * happiness ' that you so admire excludes her from the large protectiveness of man. You, my dear 'Wisa, give us no such impression. We'd like, one and all, to look after you. Do you see ? " LOUISA, GLEASON AND THE CROW 7 " Nat's not so awfully self-sufficient. She's as sweet as she can be." " Damn it, I didn't say anything about her sweet- ness. I don't know anything about it. I do know you. And I'll bet there's a lot of temper in Natha- lie Corson's temperament. Hang your tempera- ments, Louisa. They scare an honest man to death." " I'd rather be too alarming than too honest," Louisa shot him a glance. " You'd better think it over," Gleason paid inter- est on her glance. " Billy Gleason," and Louisa fairly challenged him, " now, just for one minute tell me the truth. If it weren't for your business interests, if there was nothing in your life but this peace, idleness, comfort and Grace, wouldn't you be dull unto death?" The crow rose from the fence, cawing and flap- ping himself away, and Gleason lifted his hat in mock ceremony, then he gave all of his attention to Louisa. " A live man's life is, of course, composed of more than one game." " You are trying to disarm me by conceding. It's a trick that any woman knows, Billy." " Maybe," he considered her. " You see, dear girl," and he became as serious as she liked, " I know all about work, and the time has been when I knew little enough about being idle. And it has earned for me all the fighting a profound contempt 8 FAME-SEEKERS for dabbling. It would be absolutely impossible for you, Louisa, to do other than dabble. It isn't your fault; it's simply your fact. Why, look at your hands. Hold 'em up to the daylight and look at 'em! Go over to Paris, go to the moon if you like, and play all you please, but don't try to bam- boozle me about work." Louisa held forth her hands and looked at them in dismay. " Oh," she moaned over them, " what are such weak things to make of themselves ! " The confession of weakness stirred the big man in all of his strength and he took one of the condemned hands and laid it on the palm of his own. " It's the very devil, of course, for a girl like you, with a brain in your pretty head. It's the worst sort of head-ache there is, isn't it? And when you look at me like that sort of a mixture of Joan of Arc and a doe looking into the wrong end of a gun I'm all yours to command. I'm selfish, too, about your going. Grace will come back, and it will be at once as if she had never been away. But you will never come back to stay. If you do come, you'll have outgrown us." Louisa flushed again in the glow of her pink sun-hat. " I'll have to do a great deal of growing, Billy, before that happens ! " " You see," and Gleason dropped the hand, star- ing at it for an absent moment where it hung, lax, among the folds of her linen dress, " I can't help LOUISA, GLEASON AND THE CROW 9 thinking you'd be happier if you'd just chuck all the ideas and get married." " What a picture of marriage ! How tempting, Billy! 'Chuck all the ideas'! And, if I did, to whom? " Gleason gave her an injured look. " I like that. At least seven of 'em have been consistently ruining my health with attentions more or less liquid for the last two years of my life. And mighty little sym- pathy they, or I, have got from you." Louisa was the picture of depression. " And what a seven, Billy ! " She bent towards him, her eyes aglow. " Why on earth didn't you spare me all this botheration by simply having a twin brother? " " You'd have seen any twin of mine in Halifax, that I know," smiled Gleason, puffing hard at his Pipe- Then came a tap-tapping of hoofs upon the hard road, and they turned to peer under their hands into the flaring west. " It's dear old Gracious-Goodness," said Louisa. " She's coming in earlier than usual. How she does love a horse ! " Then, slowly, " She is superb, Billy. Marble thing that she is ! " Grace Gleason, saw them, waved her hand and drew up near them. She was perfect of poise and habit, unruffled in spite of the heat of the day. The red light played splendidly upon her tall, firm figure 10 FAME-SEEKERS and the brown-coated horse. Her thick hair was wound in a great brown braid about her head and a sailor hat shaded her quiet eyes. Her profile was exquisite, her skin delicately flushed. A smile scarcely disturbed her repose before it had slipped by. She bent a little while Gleason stroked the arched neck of her horse. " Still dawdling about, you two? I'd have fancied you deep in shade, and arm-chairs, and juleps!" " Confess, dear girl, that you haven't thought of us at all ! " smiled Louisa. Grace smiled serenely. " I don't think much when I ride," she owned. " Come in and I'll make you something cool to drink for my penance. The dust is choking, isn't it? " and with a nod over her shoulder she rode on, turning in at a wide gate half way down the drive through the grove. Gleason straightened his coat and put his pipe away. " Shall we go in ? " he suggested absently, staring down the leafy tunnel, enchanted anew with the restfulness of the quiet, aimless woman. " Why not ? " agreed Louisa. " Bewitched of men!" They moved along the shady drive. Once Glea- son glanced at Louisa, ready to go on with their dis- cussion, but her profile was turned from him and her eyes were fixed upon the disc of sun-glowing world at the other end of the grove, enchanted by some- thing they saw, too ! LOUISA, GLEASON AND THE CROW 11 They turned in at the gate in silence. Louisa stopped at the flower-beds on the lawn, and picked a spray of heliotrope. " It may not be so bad, you know, Billy, for your wife to see a bit of the world along with me." Her eyes dared him a little. "Bad for her? Bless her." Gleason laughed boy- ishly. " She'd get quite as much out of a journey around her own flower-beds! Oh, no, it won't be bad for her." Louisa moved slowly, studying the purple of the heliotrope against the white of her hand. Gleason looked on from the door, smiling, and holding the screen open for her patiently. She took her own time, for so it amused her to do, and so she knew that it amused Gleason. " You are fond of heliotrope, Billy ? " She stopped on the very sill of the door, wonderfully preoccupied. " I don't hate it," conceded Gleason, gently allow- ing the screen to swing to, to force her on into the shadowy hall. She cast a sidelong glance of indignation upon the screen, brushed its invisible dust from her sleeves, spent a sigh upon the sweetness of the heliotrope, then went slowly upstairs to take off her hat. " Billy," she paused half way up, laughing down at him. "'Wisa?" " Oh," she gave in to a change of whim, " just nothing ! " And she ran up the rest of the way. 12 FAME SEEKERS " That's what I think about it too ! " Gleason shot the taunt after her arrow-like. And even so, one more fair, bright-eyed girl with a little more than enough of brain to allow her to be contented in the tranquil life she'd been born to, went wilfully forward to hurry the slow unfolding of her panorama ; went with a bit of heliotrope in one hand and the other free to attend to the hurry- ing. Should both hands be necessary for the hur- rying she can always hold the heliotrope in her teeth. That's the way she thinks it out. CHAPTER II AT MARY'S IN a students' restaurant in the Montparnasse quar- ter of Paris, a small, green-painted place, with Mary's (not Mane's, flattered Saxons were pleased to note) written up on the green-curtained window in flowing white porcelain letters, Keating sat alone at a corner table waiting for his friend Burroughs. That it was too early for anyone to dine, that Bur- roughs was not due to arrive for another half-hour, were details that Keating chose to ignore. He had taken the corner table from habit ; not that he liked corners, but that he preferred grim pleasures to no pleasures at all ; because he was a talented beggar who loved life but could not pay the admission fees ; because, from a near-by solitude he knew how to steal from gaiety, knew how to even amuse himself at playing the sombre part of outsider to the careless game. From this particular corner, at this par- ticular moment, and out of this particularly effec- tive solitude he was able, with a dignity that soothed Burroughs was actually coming to appreciate Mary at her desk. Mary was conveniently preoccupied with what 13 14 FAME-SEEKERS had been written into the pages of an enormous ledger. God alone ever knows the statistics of a Mary at a ledger, but the Keatings know that her preoccupations are nothing if not skin-deep. The wise thief knows the wise thief, and though he doesn't go in for catching, he gets his own sort of fun out of the secret flapping of his sinister little flags. Keating and Mary knew perfectly well how to put in their idle half-hour. The restaurant and Mary expressed their asso- ciation! in art-nouveau. Mary was fundamentally traditional, and she knew how to nurse her " stu- dents " through their maladies of art, herself im- mune. As far as symptoms had to do with adorn- ment, she accepted them even as the reasonable leopard accepts a certain number of spots. Mary had the advantage of a certain prospect of change, and it is change that makes a stoic of a Mary. Her eyes were fixed upon deeper things than the fads and follies of arts and artists. Her eyes were grey and dark, and her great soft knot of dark hair was held in place by the newest things in imitation shell. She wore a black dress, light tan shoes, a high and polished linen collar and an absurd little art-nou- veau apron, with pockets that helped to keep her hands and pencils together. The restaurant business had taught Mary a few small facts about many great people. She had learned that professional women eat very little and AT MARY'S 15 pay at once, that professional men eat a great deal and pay when they must. She reasoned, woman- wise, that if a great many young men came con- stantly to the restaurant the women would not be slow to follow, and the women would pay. Clearly the thing was to fill the place with big, noisy, tal- ented young men. The aspect of that would be suc- cess, and with the most becoming of wrinkles upon her brow, she concluded that such an aspect would be about as fascinating as success itself. She knew better than anybody that a house built upon art- nouveau had not long to stand, and that it might as well be a gay life if a short one. Hence the ledger. It was an October night, and raining ; a slanting, splashing, lukewarm rain such as washes Paris bright every now and then the year around. By seven o'clock the restaurant was filling up, the air hazing over, the dampness, umbrellas and mud-tracks deepening the wrinkle in Mary's white brow. Burroughs had long since outgrown the enchant- ment of cheap, mysterious food; but he realised the convenience of credit to Keating, and he came along without much grumbling. Burroughs came in as the distorted little clock creaked seven, put his um- brella in a rack where he could keep an eye upon it, gave Mary a nod, then joined Keating, accepting his place with his back to the crowd with the in- difference of a man who has helped get up a show or two himself. 16 FAME-SEEKERS " Hello, Keating. I just received a telegram from Miss Corson. She asks me to bring you down to-night for some music. She says some cattish things about your being able to put up with my ac- companying her, but other than that the invitation is charming." He spoke rapidly, nodding over his shoulder at people he knew, avoiding Keating's eye. Keating smiled drily, made no response, called the waitress and applied himself to ordering his dinner. Burroughs ordered, too, and the waitress left them. Keating folded his arms upon the table and looked Burroughs in the eyes, and Burroughs, looking back, saw that he was pallid. Keating laughed, recklessly shattering the tension. " Paris is too much for me," he said. " I'm too green for the old place to swallow, I guess. I can't get to work, and just to think of paint makes me sick. I could smell paint to-day for the first time in my life." " Eating regularly ? " demanded Burroughs, with man's unvarnished kindness. "Regularly?" he laughed. "Too regularly, thanks to the angel-Mary and her foolishness. It's not that. I'm so damnably self-conscious. I im- agine that everybody's staring at me, and I'm hurt like a fool-girl if they don't. I'm all hands and feet, and too heavy to get out of the way. Don't know where to get to when I do move. Don't know what I want." Burroughs took him in humorously. " You are AT MARY'S 17 much too big, my son, to fit into new quarters without bruising. You see, you've tumbled off the lap of a perfectly organised mother-land into an intricately gardened play-ground where they think of mothers not at all." He paused a moment to tap his piece of meat with a doubting fork and to shake his head sadly at Mary. Mary looked on at all things that happened between seven and nine o'clock with croco- dile slumber in her eye. " I know what's the trouble, Keating ; so does anybody who has tried. You want to know where you are, and not believing everything you hear, you've got to find out for yourself. You suspect every corner of hiding something choice, and when you butt into it you find it as empty and dusty as all the other old corners. Being a man you won't take my word for it. Better find a girl any little goose in petticoats to show you about. I don't mean that I'd have you bring her here to Mary's to dine. You'd soon lose your credit ! Besides, it isn't your mission to instruct the all-seeing girl-student in our higher ethics. They overestimate its im- portance, and they have painfully good memories. The thing is," and Burroughs dropped all the banter out of his voice, " having crossed the seas to come to Paris, do not be an idiot and sit down for ever among the Americans. Get out of this quarter into the real thing. You'll find that in Paris they take this quar- ter for a tragic jest. Maybe they are wrong; I even think they are, but it's an instructive fact to 18 FAME-SEEKERS get into one's head. Mary doesn't fool a French- man any more than she gives him credit. We think we fool everybody, and we only fool ourselves. Don't take yourself too seriously. Leave that to the girls. It's becoming to them and it keeps 'em out of mischief* Let paint go hang for a while, give it a snubbing, and it will come back a-begging. So far as you are concerned, you are simply tired." After a silence he asked irrelevantly, " Are you coming with me down to Miss Corson's to-night? " Keating looked at Burroughs as if he'd only half heard, then he laughed. " Oh," he made an off- hand gesture, " I'm going, this time ! No need of being uneasy or tactful. My time has come, and I intend to die. You won't let me be, you and those girls, so I am going along from now on just to get rid of you." " Put it any way you like, just so you go," said Burroughs. " I don't mind telling you, Keating, that if you had refused to go to-night I was ready to lay before you a very crude piece of my mind. It wouldn't have been good for you after Mary's food, either. There's no reason in carrying resent- ment, or sensitiveness, or pride, or whatever you want to call your mulishness, to such a point. The troublesome incident on ship-board was unfortunate, but it would have died a natural death in all mem- ories concerned if you hadn't kept on rattling its silly bones." He doubled for a moment in an AT MARY'S 19 amused laugh. " If genius will cross in the steer- age, and will skylark with a brown throat in a cash- mere shawl through a dusk that isn't quite dark ! It's a known fact that genius can't hide, and if the right girl in the cabin de luxe gets wind of the gen- ius in the steerage, she'll go to him if he may not come to her! The girl in the first cabin glories in condescension even as the genius in the steerage hopes in climbing. I do not believe that the modern girl in the first cabin imagines the genius in the steerage * sits apart.' By Jove, Keating, if Miss Garth can stand catching you with your arm about that little Italian, and can forget it, you ought to be able to forget it, too." " I don't care much for your girls who can stand things, and forget them," said Keating. " I've been making excuses for you for just about ten weeks now. I don't mean about the girl in the grey shawl. I mean about your not coming to them. But, my tact is beyond repair. When a man wears out his tact he likes having a hand in the profits, and I don't see where I come in in lying for you. She's a mighty nice girl, and you won't be sorry." " I like Miss Corson very much," said Keating grimly. "Who doesn't?" agreed Burroughs. "What has she got to do with it? " " As for Miss Garth " Keating lighted a cig- 20 FAME-SEEKERS arette, then he gave Burroughs the benefit of an open glance that made him think of the great prairies that had mothered and nourished him. " I am a fool and a weakling to walk into her trap. You have forced me to talk about her, so now listen to me, for I am going to talk, once and for all. That she's gifted, and out of the ordinary, and a beauty, I don't need to be told. I'm a bumpkin off a farm, but I came off some time ago, and a line of art-schools all the way from St. Louis to Philadelphia is likely to teach even a bumpkin things about women, * girls,' if you like that better. Blundering ass that I am, I do know that there's no safety for me in the neighbourhood of a girl with the trick of looking as she does. I know all about their tricks, but I let 'em fool me over again every time. It's the mystery trick, and it's a blamed sight less square and more harmful than the game of a gamin like that girl Mary up there at her desk. And Burroughs," he stopped and laughed curiously, " there's something about my brutal awkwardness that draws 'em, and makes 'em come after me. I don't have to try ; I just sit around in a corner, and they come. Do you think I've got time for that sort of thing? I have to conduct myself with common-sense, I tell you. I don't want any of their hand-holding, star-gazing trifling. I can't afford it. Damn it, Burroughs," he broke off savagely, " I want to go with you ! She doesn't paint, she didn't learn her tricks in an AT MARY'S 21 art school, she may be better than the run of 'em. She may do me good, but, man. alive," his voice caught, " what earthly good can I do her? " Burroughs stared across the table at Keating as if he had never seen him till that moment. " But, Keating," he spoke carefully, " you are taking Miss Garth rather seriously, don't you think? I confess, I don't altogether follow you." "You don't want to follow me!" declared Keat- ing angrily. " I mean," and he bent across the ta- ble and spoke almost brutally, " that I am more than half in love with the girl. And as I have been in love with a good many in the same way before " He broke off suddenly with a look of self-disgust. " If I go down there and see her, I shall not be able to stay back in my class! I am as good as she is, and I know a great deal more, but I am not of her class. And the humiliation of finding it out every day through some idiotic awkwardness on my part will do my painting no good. It is unfair, it makes me hate and rage, but I can't beat it. We have a great deal too much in common Miss Garth and I. We've got to have all the rest, to keep us out of disaster. It took more than the question of class between us on ship-board to keep us from finding that out. It gets into the very air! But two ways of living could not have less in common than our two ways. You don't realise these things because you don't have to. I mean the little things, 22 FAME-SEEKERS Burroughs ; the habits, the nonsense, the tricks. I'm not quite the same fool that ran away from my father's farm. I know now that habits, and non- sense, and tricks matter very much indeed. Do you suppose that an elephant likes having a talent? Do you suppose that when I'm invited to tea I like feel- ing as if all the small bric-a-brac had been put away and the furniture covered for the occasion? It's fierce being an occasion. I'm poor, and, so far as I can see, there is nothing ahead of me but more poverty. I dare not count upon success at all, for this same clumsiness will probably defeat me. I can't afford to know women like Miss Garth, and," he brought his open hand down upon the cloth with a force that set the glasses to jangling, " I have, first and last, my work to do! It has cost me a good deal more than money to come this far with it, and ever since I started in at St. Louis I've had humilia- tion from girls like this one. And, understand me, Burroughs: no matter how much I cared for a woman, or how much she cared for me, if she got in the way of the work I'd put her out ! " He laughed unevenly and dropped his burnt-out cigarette beside his coffee-cup. " I have done my best to keep away, to keep out of it. You don't understand, because you have your life aside from your painting. Why, Burroughs, look at the way you can play, can read music ! You have a skill in music that I can't learn in my paint, and you don't care anything about it. AT MARY'S 23 You were born into something, and I "he laughed a little, " I was born outside of everything, even my own class, for I'm spoilt for even that with this beastly wanting to do something. I'm tainted, every way I turn. With a girl like that you can take your ground for granted: you've got families, and homes, and habits, and you've got your money. You are a sophisticated pair, and I envy you to the bottom of my heart. Do you think I like feeling like that? It's nobody's fault. But I know that work is my only way and that I've got to keep the way swept mighty clean of rich and cul- tured women, and their clever experimenting upon the heart of the elephant. I know it better than ever. But you won't let me be. You have all fairly hounded me, as you say, for almost ten weeks. I imagine that I know the length of time, inch for inch, even better than you or Miss Garth." " I understand you, Keating ; and I can see what you mean, and I'm not sure you aren't right. But the question is, aren't you taking Miss Garth a good deal for granted? " " I am not taking her for granted ! I know her better than you do. What has chattering with a woman got to do with what a man knows about her ? " Keating was flushed and brusque. " It's one of the smart tricks of the { first-cabin ' world to pretend that sort of superiority and all the time to be edging up experimentally to) some danger. You drag me down to their place and I'll prove it to you. I won't be able to help myself ! " He laughed miserably. " Let's get out of here. The air is vile!" Keating rose from the table and came out of his corner. He went to Mary at her desk and recited to her the list of what he had eaten for his dinner, and she wrote it, item for item, under his name in the ledger. She scarcely glanced at him. She was not in the least upon his mind, and she knew it. It was the busy hour. The sinister little flags were all put away. Burroughs, looking on, gathered the curious fact that favours from Mary gave Keating no humiliation. She'd been mothered and nour- ished on some equivalent to Keating's prairies, and that made all of the difference! It was usually Burroughs' part to lead the way, but to-night he followed Keating out into the rain. They walked along in silence with a kind of ab- stracted drunken care, over the pavements, reflected light and water rilling, theatrical little dangers, all about them. Two girls came out of a restaurant, its windows revealing by clock and mural sign, to say nothing of the coiffure of the person at the desk, a tendency to cling to Louis Quinze. " Why, hello ! " sang out the two faces, one fresh, the other tired, gleaming in the wet night under hat brim and umbrella. "Want to come home with us?" sang the fresh AT MARY'S 25 voice. " Nice fire, cushions, cigarettes, and some- thing fizzy," added the tired voice. The two men slipped by in the darkness, casual, polite and indifferent. " It's all hellish, isn't it? " Keating muttered. " For them," Burroughs conceded. " Well, anyway," grumbled Keating, " they think they're square as square ! " " Who doesn't? " Burroughs laughed, but an imp- ish gust of wind lifted and tossed his hat and broke his laugh. " I'm sorry for them," he added, " but they'd be the last to see why." CHAPTER in BLACK COFFEE " You know, Nat," >and Louisa Garth put on the air of a young woman at half-truth-telling, " I ac- tually have stage-fright over meeting this odd, re- luctant person. So much has been made of nothing or of next to nothing " she laughed, " that no room is left for manners." Nathalie Corson opened her eyes wide to deluge Louisa with amused unbelief. " I hope it's true, for fright, if anything, will make a man of you, my dear girl!" They were having coffee in an alcove, roofed over by a balcony that crossed one end of the studio. Louisa sat near the lamp, her arms folded upon the polished table, and Nathalie was stretched full-length upon a couch that ran along the wall. Nathalie Corson was small, dark, round, gay and easy-going something of the gladness of the well- scrubbed boy about her. Her mouth was red and fully modelled, her eyes were very dark and clear, and were finely circled by a bluish tone that ran through the shadows of her hair. She had a quan- tity of long, fine black hair and she wore it wound M BLACK COFFEE 27 about her head and across her forehead in a great flat braid. " You look disgracefully tired, Louisa," Nathalie told her. Louisa lifted her head and looked attentively at herself in the mirror above the couch. " I'm more muddled than tired," she smiled self-accusingly. " Divert yourself with that sort of play-acting if you like, but don't count upon my being taken in ! You and Keating will get on like anything if you'll only take one another like a pair of human beings. He's more afraid of you than you were ever afraid, even in a bad dream. My sympathy is all for Keat- ing. You are a trial to men, anyway, Louisa; you mix 'em all up. Of course, I don't mean to stand for the way Keating has sulked, and just because he got caught in mischief. I even confess that if I were a Keating, and I'd had to cross in the steerage, and something slim and Italian in a pretty shawl had given me the chance, I'd have flirted, too. I can't see why he keeps on simmering over it, I'm sure. It's really awfully funny." " Funny ? " Louisa ruminated. " It was not funny, Nat. It was harder on me than it was on Mr. Keating. To condescend and retreat by one stairway in less than three minutes is the sort of thing that brings wrinkles. I shall never get my- self in for that again ! " " Too bad," laughed Nathalie. " Enough of the 28 FAME-SEEKERS same sort of thing and you'd be a pretty good sort." Louisa smiled absently. " Nat, why is it that I was only too happy to go down to the steerage to meet a man even quarrelled with my sister to accomplish it but the mere thought of contact with a girl from the steerage gave me nerves, and annoyed me? " Nathalie laughed and made herself more comfort- able. " That, dear infant, is only to be answered by the illuminating fact that while Keating was en- chanted to play with a girl in the steerage he'd never have thought of talking with her brother." " But, that's sickening, Nat." " Is it? I've never been able to decide. It doesn't worry me a bit. I wouldn't have bothered my head with either the girl or her brother, and I'm glad I'm not a Keating, or any other kind of a man, so," she sat up and punched a cushion or two, " I just put the whole everlasting question on the shelf with the other everlasting things that aren't any of my business, and I hope they'll be at peace with the dust they gather ! " " Wisest of Nathalie's ! " Louisa considered her. " Wise ? It's worse than wise. It's self-preser- vation," declared Nathalie, her eyes fixed upon the gleam the lamp-light drew from her shoe-buckles. " I seem to know less and less every day just how much of a man's life is * any of a woman's busi- ness,' " said Louisa. BLACK COFFEE 29 " Glory, but you are glum ! Be serious if you like. It's a good thing to be. I'm serious," Natha- lie laughed. " But be serious about all things, ex- cept men. I know, 'Wisa, because I've tried. I'm twenty-seven now and three solemn times have I been serious about men. By the regular and ener- getic application of ethical massage I have succeeded in getting rid of the scars and wrinkles they gave me, and I still have my sense of humour intact. I'm not boasting, mind you, and I've got my fingers crossed all the time, but I'm hopeftd." When Nathalie was amused, or stirred, her voice, or laugh, had a way of breaking softly. " The thing is to work, do something for just as many hours of the day as you possibly can sit up, then you at least won't fall in love just for something to do. There is nothing I fear as I do myself leading a lazy, good-for-noth- ing life." " You have really been in love, Nat? " and Louisa was absorbed and earnest above impertinence. Nathalie lifted herself and solemnly considered Louisa. Her mouth twitched and her eyes shone in the lamp-light. " I was nine years old the first time; he was eleven. Of course, there had been flir- tations before that, but nothing that really mattered. He was shy and I wasn't. I don't know what has become of him. The second time I was sixteen. That lasted through three summers, then he liked somebody else better and sent me about my prac- 30 FAME-SEEKERS tising in something like earnest. How I suffered! I was twenty-two the last time, and he was old- fashioned. I was like some fever to him that he knew he'd ' catch ' if he came near me. He stayed away. He died of some other fever two years ago. I have earned my sense of humour, you see, for I've been in love three times, but no man has ever been in love with me! I've had an education, but have taken no prizes." She went back to her place among the cushions and lay staring out into the shadowy studio. " The last two years I have really worked. I've been here night and day, and it has been fine, though there were times when loneliness ate me up. Sometimes I've just cried of a longing for that sweet, dull place called home. I haven't got a home any more and the longing is as absurd as it is inevitable. I've fiddled and fiddled, till I could think of the arm-ache instead of the heart-ache. When it is a question now of some new man upon the scene I give myself a look-at in the mirror with the full light of nine o'clock in the morning upon me. Men are fine and, having loved one or two of them is good, but if there's work to do the only way is to cut 'em out." " I didn't know, Nat," said Louisa. Nathalie turned her head and gave Louisa a curi- ous smile. " You don't know now. 7 am sound as can be. All the three men are dead as door-nails and I'm not mourning for a single one of 'em. That BLACK COFFEE 31 I did care doesn't bother me. It's that I sometimes want to. A woman's only half a creature, and that's the truth about her, and " she laughed again, " it's sorl; of awkward doing a whole job when you are only half a creature and not a man at all. I think," she shot Louisa a glance, " it would be a mighty good thing if you were to fall in love. No matter who the man, just so you fall hard enough. It's made me heaps nicer. I can even tell it myself. As to this eternal question of Keating, and his sulks and your stage-fright anyway it's not you I'm sorry for, but I could cry over poor old shabby Keating. Heigho ! " she slipped back on the couch, " it is comfy here ! I'd purr if I knew how. You have made the old studio over into a wonderful place, Louisa. I couldn't have imagined anything better. It must be wonderful to be rich: when you see a fine chair, or want a new piano, or anything, to just drop in and buy it. It is I who have profited by your coming. You've made me feel like a Cinderella." " Dear child alive," and Louisa smiled back at her, " I don't care for the chairs, and curtains, and carpets. I love the blessed space, and air, and the peace of it ! " " It is glorious," agreed Nathalie happily. " But give me chairs and curtains and carpets along with my * space and air and peace ' ! Aren't you going to dress, Louisa? " she asked suddenly. 32 FAME SEEKERS " Oh, yes," sighed Louisa. " I must go and dress up to my part." " Poor Keating ! " smiled Nathalie. Louisa had chosen the balcony-room for her own and she moved indolently towards the little spiral stairway that pierced a corner of the alcove ceiling. " It may interest you to know that I have been over to see the book-binders, and that I begin work on Tuesday," she said, sitting a moment on the first step of the stairs. " Bravo ! " and Nathalie sat up, her voice break- ing all to pieces with enthusiasm. " I am so glad ! Now, my dear girl, if you will only come in at a de- cent hour I'll regard you as a desirable human com- panion. Really, you should not stay out unneces- sarily late in this quarter. I don't do it myself, when I can avoid it." " As for that," Louisa looked stubborn, " you see I've never known anything but the Ritz and boarding-schools. And now there are the side- streets and the river to be discovered. The river ! There is nothing like the Seine slipping through Paris. AncT it is so wonderful in the dusk, Natha- lie!" " Oh, dear, I do know," Nathalie sighed. " I was like that, too, my first free year over here. But, mark me, it's just by the mood for river, side- streets and dusk that you'll walk off the edge of things into the state of being in love. Go your own BLACK COFFEE 33 way; you will, anyway. Only don't expect me to worry about you. I haven't got time. You'll have no use for me, anyway, until the breaking's over and you want to be mended. Go along and dress! They'll be coming any minute." " You think they'll come ? " Louisa queried, half way up the stairs. " I don't know. I shan't move till they do ! " Louisa stood in the balcony looking down over the rail into the studio. Above her head the rain was pelting on the great skylight, and the glass of the north window opposite was rilled and blurred with the downpour. The curtains were all drawn back and the big, high room was filled with the pearly night light, the lamp-light from the alcove catching warmly upon the polished black surface of Nathalie's piano, giving reason to the place. Just at that moment Keating and Burroughs were wading among the cabs and cars at the crossing of the Boulevards a few blocks away. Louisa, watch- ing the rain, wondered where they were. " He'll not come, I know," she thought, " but it won't be the rain that will keep him away." Louisa dressed absently, scarcely looking at her- self in the glass even. Then she sat on a stiff chintz- covered chair in a corner of the little badly lighted bedroom and stared before her, her fingers nervously trailing over her scarf nearly tearing the frail stuff when the bell j ingled in the hall below. CHAPTER IV INTO THE RUE FALGUIERE As the two men walked down the Boulevard through the night, and the rain, Burroughs stole a glance at Keating. The man from the prairies had given him his glimpse into the troubled spaces, had let him realise how life may, or may not be, com- fortable, and the rain and the shifting lights of the city night helped to drive home the baffling lesson. " I'll come around to your place to-morrow, Keat- ing, and help you put things in order," he broke the heavy silence. " You'll feel more like work with your curtains up and the stove going." " The curtains are up," said Keating. " I got 'em from the other poor devil who has just moved out. He said he could better afford to trust me for their value than to pay for having the stuff moved out. The artist can wait. The other fel- low, the man at the hand-cart, never can ! " They bent together to meet the slanting force of a fresh downpour. It caught them as they were threading their way through the tangle of trams, buses and autos in the great open space before the Montparnasse station. They emerged from the rain 34 INTO THE RUE FALGUIERE 35 and the tangle the other side of the station into a new quarter where the dominance of the foreigner was at an end and the face of things was French again. As they moved along Keating, of changing mood, held himself straighter and began to hum. Burroughs knew how the boy in him was laughing out of his eyes in the dark, the hurt man sent back for a while. " By Jove, Keating, I'm happy to see you in a good humour again, but would you mind singing something else? The world still believes in the Ninth Symphony as it was written, you know." Without comment, almost without pause, Keating swung away into a negro chant; something he had kept from the fields on his father's farm. " You do that better," declared Burroughs thank- fully. " And, Keating, before we go down there to- night I want to say just one thing. You don't quite realise that people who have money, and all that money means, may care, and very sincerely, to be something, to do something. As to Miss Garth, I know that she cares. I was a witness of her ar- rival, with her sister, Mrs. Gleason, in the Rue Fal- guiere. I saw scenes and heard her defend herself. Her sister, Keating, is one of the most hopeless and conventional of prigs, and she has, oddly, exactly your view of what Miss Garth ought, and ought not, to do. She's worse than a prig, for she actually doesn't realise that there can be two sides to a ques- 36 FAME-SEEKERS tion. Mrs. Gleason, as a human being, would fill you with revolt and horror and you and she think out the poor girl together and to the same end! There's something wrong with your sharing of views, isn't there? In fact, Keating, I'm just about sure that the rich and cultured man or woman has about as much trouble to arrive, from the other way around, as does the poor man or woman. She has to make good with the professional snob. The professional snob is worse, as propositions go, than the money-snob, for the man who lives by thinking ought to know better. Left about face ! " he com- manded with a happy veer to gaiety. " Man, your hat off! Behold the Rue Falguiere! " All at once Keating began to laugh : a big, noisy, boyish laugh that told how something had hit home. " Well, Miss Garth seems to have successfully made her way clear down to the steerage this time ! " He glanced keenly ahead at the two rows of sordid lit- tle shops, a river of mud between and heaven only knew what of struggling humanity behind their looming walls; walls that masked, night and day, the sluggish life and thought of the shop- keepers and their kind. Wares and their owners were spilling over onto the sidewalks, making it dif- ficult to move along, idlers and working-people jos- tling one another none too gently for a slippery footing. " Is it just more condescension, or does she really like it ? " he demanded with another laugh. INTO THE RUE FALGUIERE 37 Without comment Burroughs took him by the arm and turned him aside through a great iron gateway over which was blazoned in white enamel : " Villa Gabriel." Keating stepped out from Burroughs' umbrella to have a look about. " What is the place? A new Arabian Nights? " he queried. Gusts of teasing wind and rain swept down upon them. It was as if they'd fallen into some vast well of house-walls. The water, at flood, and rushing in the gutters at the edges of the cobbled court, caught and played with what light there was, add- ing its silly dangers to the effect of depths and un- certainty, and over and through it all the big rain- drops pattered their fugue upon the studio win- dows that patterned the north walls from top to bot- tom of the well. Lights burnt behind many of the windows, here and there the wavering shadow of a man or woman showing upon a glimpse of inner- wall or curtain. In one window without curtains stood a plaster cast of a man drawing a bow, and back of the tall figure ladders and scaffolding, and mysterious masses of drapery, made spots and lines across the lamp-light. " What a place ! " Keating commented. " By night," admitted Burroughs, " it is about as dramatic as other studio walls and windows." " Windows and owls'-eyes only wise by night ? " Keating chuckled. With an unprintable comment 88 FAME-SEEKERS he jumped a pool of water lying like a trap in the dark. " I can't quite imagine Miss Garth jumping puddles in her fine clothes ! " he remarked. Burroughs answered with a monosyllable and led the way down to a turn in the court. " I suppose," Keating went on cynically, " that it is only a variety of the slumming instinct which brings decent girls into such places to live. Or is she going to devote her fortune to rebuilding the place with bath-tubs and a co-operative restaurant? In that case," he gave in to amusement again, " they'll have plenty of running water to begin with!" At that moment a young creature came hurrying down a stairway there were at least a dozen stairways giving upon the place, and marked in the eternal white enamel which shines so curiously clear in the darkest night out into the court, and full- tilt into Keating. She had a vivid face, as gleam- ing as the letter over the door, and she was frowsy, and she responded none too gently to Keating's flustered apology ; then, with a lawless laugh, she was off like a rag on the wind. Keating turned about slowly and stared into the night in the direction the girl had gone. Burroughs stood waiting for him in the door of another stair- way. Though they had neither of them voiced it, the nearness of Louisa and Nathalie, in their studio above, had brought disquiet back. The wind and INTO THE RUE FALGUIERE 39 rain died down for a moment and the night grew uncomfortably still. " Are you coming, Keating? " Keating did not move, did not answer. " What's the matter with you ? " Burroughs de- manded impatiently. " Was that girl some long- lost acquaintance?" Keating faced about and came to the doorstep. He looked into the hallway where a befogged oil lamp was doing its dull best to live up to the leases which read " stairways lighted" " I am not going in," he declared doggedly. " You are not going in ? " Burroughs echoed. Keating came to the doorstep and Burroughs turned about to stare down upon him, to understand him. A long, slim black cat slipped along the wall, down the stairway and past Burroughs. Keating lifted it, deftly and gently, upon his foot and helped it a little upon its way, the cat stealing a caress, after the canny manner of cats, out of insult and injury. He took off his hat and peered upward into Burroughs' face, and a smile which was somehow disconcerting to the man above him crossed his mouth, though his eyes were stubborn enough. It was as if life had slipped up and written something new upon Keating's face while he had been passing from the light of one lamp to another. " No," he repeated, " I am not going in." " Why not, Keating? " and Burroughs visibly held down an outraged temper. 40 FAME-SEEKERS " No need of going over all that again, is there? I have had enough. I don't like it down here. This court and the Rue Falguiere have been my wet blankets. I'm in a bad humour, and if I went in- side I'd probably break the crockery. Give me a cigarette, Burroughs, and let me off ! " He laughed and held out his hand and Burroughs slowly got out his silver case, opened it and held it towards Keating. " And what excuse am I to make to Miss Corson? " Burroughs demanded, watching Keating as he took the lamp off its rickety stand and lighted a cigarette over the dusty chimney. Keating raised his eyes and grinned across the murky light. " Why go on troubling yourself with excuses? There aren't any. Tell her the truth " if you have the courage. She won't mind it. Tell her that if she were living alone I'd have come with pleasure. Good-night," he said with a laugh almost as high-keyed and lawless as had been the girl's of the moment just by, then he vanished into the dark, even as she had vanished. CHAPTER V WOMEN WHOM MEN DO NOT FEAR BUREOUGHS climbed the draughty stairs thinking over their absurd polish in the general murkiness. He was in a womanish humour, sensitive to inanimate paradox, toiling upward through the scene a little tired of aimless seeing, feeling and living. At least Keating, though out in the cold and the rain, was getting an emotion out of his very vagrancy! Nathalie met Burroughs at the studio door. " And Keating? " she asked, giving him her hand. " He is not coming? " " Bolted at the frontier," said Burroughs. They stood by the piano and Burroughs looked about for Louisa. Nathalie made a gesture to- wards the balcony, then in a low tone he told her of Keating's surrender, and of his retreat. " Well," Nathalie smiled, " I've always had a kind of haunted admiration for suicides and bolters. They have their own desperate sort of courage. I'd die of the fear of running away, and if that's not suicide I don't know what is." Her dark eyes fixed on the rain-blurred window, her round arms folded and rested on the piano. " You see, it's just a question of veneer. If Louisa'd but been 41 42 FAME-SEEKERS dowdy she might have gone from end to end of that miserable boat without annoying anybody. Keat- ing would never have dreamed of taking the trouble to sulk for a dowdy Louisa Garth. He'd have taken her for granted, as he'd take rain or shine, as he took that wretched little Italian in hoop earrings and a grey shawl, or," she sighed comically, " as he has always taken me ! " " Keating really wants to see you, Nathalie," said Burroughs. " Even Keating hasn't any doubts about that." " I know," she agreed frankly. " My dear Bur- roughs " (Nathalie always spoke in the mannish way, and no man had ever been known to mind, or find her brazen) " it's a truly doleful thing to be a woman whom men do not fear. There isn't an- other mixed joy like it. I know perfectly well that if I were living here alone nothing would or could keep Keating away, and he'd be as bliss- fully without thought of Grundy-eyes from upper windows as he'd be of the value of my time. The place was very comfy, even before Louisa came to dress it up with affluent velvet and easy chairs. One of the prevailing traits of Americans of Keating's bringing up or, growing up is to take all that they can get of the time and the comforts of the women whom they do not fear. And they don't mean anything by it, but a very generous sharing of their own absorbing society. Me and my un- WOMEN WHOM MEN DO NOT FEAR 43 speakable charms (that is to say, the shell and the look of me) for your arm-chairs and your precious time. Of course, it is meant for praise, but how it does faintly damn us ! Of course," and Nathalie crossed her hands in a manner self-accusing, " we'd rather have them come in all their joy-blurred, un- afraid egotism than not to have them come at all. We know our place ; but a woman's a woman in spite of her profile. What Keating fears in Louisa is just clothes. If Louisa could only learn fear of her clothes something might be accomplished ! " " Why don't you hunt Keating out and dress him down?" suggested Burroughs. "He'd take it from you, if you went about it in your own funny way. He's passed out of my hands." " I'd thought of doing just that," she owned. " But it isn't good enough. It's an idea that might have popped into any woman's head, and I have a natural distrust of any- woman's ideas." " It wouldn't do," Burroughs smiled down upon her. " It would be merely sending one peril as an- tidote for another." " That's nice of you, Burroughs. I'm not often either taken, or mistaken, for a peril." Louisa, charmingly dressed, came quietly down the little spiral stairway and into the studio. " Why in the lonesome dark, you two ? " She gave Burroughs her hand, then moved about the big place, lighting the candles and touching the little silk 44. FAME-SEEKERS shades into order. She glanced at them over her shoulder and laughed. " So Mr. Keating did not come after all ! " She dropped down in the corner of a couch and looked up at one and then the other. They stood, tongue-tied. " He would not come," said Burroughs bluntly. " But," and Louisa drew a long, heavy scarf about her shoulders, " if he does not care to come why on earth trouble about him ? " Nathalie stood with her back to the light and for a moment her dark eyes played sharply after the truth upon Louisa's face. " You see, Louisa, Keat- ing is one of those men that one does trouble about!" " Really? Of course I have no way of knowing." " Oh," said Nathalie, her voice breaking, " you'll come into your way of knowing, never fear ! " Louisa looked more amused than concerned. Nathalie opened the piano and got out her violin with a very business-like air. " Let's play, Bur- roughs," she challenged him. " Let's make Rome burn!" SHE CHALLENGED HIM. "LET'S MAKE ROME BURN!" CHAPTER VI AMONG THE BOOK-BINDERS DOING something is an affair of moods, and work's as much a mood as play. Nothing worth while ever got itself done without all the moods thrown in, and mere sense of duty without its fervent source of hope, never has, or ever will, set up a thing of art. Louisa Garth was tired out and depressed, and one November afternoon she sat among the book- binders at the long work-table, and confessed to her- self that another hour in the place would be unen- durable. A small volume of old English verse lay before her, an amusing and suggestive little book that she had picked up in one of the stalls along the Seine. She had set out to rebind it as she believed it deserved. The book was tattered and had re- quired to be resewn, and Louisa's fingers ached. Wandering among the real old book-lovers who haunt the stalls in the shadows between the Institute and the Louvre had forced Louisa to admit the ter- rifying fact that she who had chosen to bind books knew next to nothing about them. That a tailor is not expected to wear the clothes he makes was scarcely consoling. In the book-binders' work- 45 46 FAME-SEEKERS room she was nobody, the self-same nobody she had fled from in Connecticut, and the newness of life there had gone as flat as ever. A trade is no toy, for all that the making of toys is a trade. Out of her faithful first weeks of trying she'd got but faint praise, a backache and the bitter first drops of dis- enchantment. It seemed a lifetime since the mild September night when the boat had steamed towards Bou- logne, and she had stood by Burroughs, after their happy chance-meeting at sea and the rapid intimacy that had come of it, watching the play of lights across the night, the scientific persiflage that flares and gleams across the dark channel between the sun- downs and the dawns. Burroughs had taken her seriously, and in the pride of that she had looked ahead to the shadowy line of land and the big night sky with its stars and stars, and near the earth its potent flush from the lights of towns. She had come ashore dazed, and with a heart full of unde- fined belief in herself and her chosen world. Her world surely, if she chose, and she had chosen. With eyes wide, if not wise, she had come to live and breathe in the symbolic air of Paris. She had gone to work in the opalescent climate, getting out of it about what a light reader gets of a poem the scent and use of the flower to the woman who knows no gardening. She'd been stirred and thrilled in all AMONG THE BOOK-BINDERS 47 the beginnings, and now came her dawn of small fears. Nathalie had told her, in her gay, off-hand way, to live in the day, to bury yesterday and ignore to- morrow. But there are days and days, and one woman's days are not necessarily like another's. The greater number of the women, young or youngish, working in the studio of Monsieur Avril were Russian or French. There was a something which dominated the atmosphere of the place that Louisa realised but turned her eyes away from. But suspicion, tough-skinned suspicion, kept her restless, alert ; rendered her timid and self-conscious. She had come there to learn about book-binding, but the craft was as nothing compared with what she was gathering about life. She faced it every day, but felt as blind as in the beginning. She could take in the facts, but she could not accept the gaiety. The simple precepts of her American bringing up had irritated her at home, but here they seemed, to her bewilderment, to be old-fashioned without even the dignity of being downright primitive, and, dazed and hurt, she clung to herself with sadly shaken faith. Many of these women did good work, and they were all al it in simple earnest. They were fairly well and always interestingly dressed, they had read a great deal, they knew pic- tures, they went constantly to hear good music, they 48 FAME-SEEKERS held the key, in short and carelessly, as if to hold it were a matter of course to a phase of artistic intimacy from which she felt herself more and more shut out. Among the students at Avril's was one woman who drew Louisa more than she alarmed her. She was a Swede; a tall, quiet creature, with wide light-blue eyes and an abundance of cool gold hair that was coiled about her head in numberless braids. Her forehead was broad and the gold hair was allowed to droop away from it, of its own precious weight, upon her neck, almost to her slightly bent shoul- ders. Her figure was " boyish," more boyish than Nathalie's, but it was gracious, after the lofty man- ner of the women from the North, and she was self- possessed and sophisticated. She was always beau- tifully dressed, interesting in texture and line, with a great deal of savage-coloured embroidery about the low-cut necks. She was like the women Louisa had seen in allegorical paintings from the North; pictures of women walking over green slopes of grass, among trees with fine little leaves but never enough of them to cast a shadow and flowers, like eyes, upon the flat green grass. The designs upon the painted women's robes were always like their eyes and the flowers upon the grass, mysteriously alike and star-like, all gleaming, it seemed, as in- evitably, as unconsciously, as the very stars them- selves. The woman puzzled Louisa just as the pic- AMONG THE BOOK-BINDERS 49 tures had puzzled her, but she seemed so real that she gave her no more fear than did the stars she set her to thinking of. The Swede's work was very fine, and the books came forth from her strong white hands hands always heavy with their curious rings in free ampleness of line and form. Louisa studied her books with an aching interest. Her own always came forth so small and tight. And though the girl often glanced at the Swede with a half-admitted hope that she might meet her eyes, might some day even talk with her, she noticed Louisa no more than she noticed the rest. The other students were interested in her, too, Louisa had observed, and even Monsieur Avril treated her with a friendly distinction, as if her work com- manded his interest rather than his criticism. As Louisa sat with her hands clasped upon her book, listening vaguely to the noises from the streets below, feeling a little giddy, in her fatigue, with the sense of height the glimpses of roofs and chimneys and flying smoke gave outside the windows about the big, low room, the words of two young French women at work at a press just behind her slowly made their way into her mind. Louisa stiffened from the shock and gripped the edge of the table at either side of her book. The Swede was, then, the mistress of Monsieur Avril ! Fascinated, Louisa slowly turned her eyes towards the corner where, beneath a window, the tranquil 50 FAME-SEEKERS woman always worked. The light of the north winter sky was resting upon the coils of gold braid and the active white hands. Terror lest she should, at last, meet the deep blue eyes made Louisa's heart beat fast, but she could not force herself to look away. And the Swede did raise her eyes! She looked back at Louisa a little puzzled, then she smiled frankly and very sweetly. And, with an im- pulse which crowded out censure, Louisa returned the smile. Quietly the Swede lowered her eyes and became as absorbed as before in her work. Louisa's hands fluttered the leaves of her little faded volume of verse, her pulse kept pace with the fluttering, and her eyes realised the wonder of the late afternoon light upon the Swede's gold hair. And in the strength that comes to women in bewilderment Louisa's sound young heart made one of those splendid leaps towards kindness in judgment that the mind takes so much plodding to follow after. Silence settled upon the room a silence potent of its own weight and faces became lost in the shadow of drooping hair as heads bent over hands at work. A girl went to a press ; the great arms whirled, and every one stirred a little. Suddenly the door opened and, on a gust of wintry air, Mon- sieur Avril came in. "Bon jour, Mesdames!" and he glanced keenly about as he laid aside his hat and overcoat. Louisa's eyes flew to the Swede again. The gold head lifted and the two smiled at one an- AMONG THE BOOK-BINDERS 51 other. It was, certainly, a smile to think over! Louisa sighed. Avril had a way of coming to the studio when he was least expected, and now Louisa thought that she knew what brought him, knew the secret of his devotion to his class! Louisa shud- dered to realise how little ignorance gets from the landscape it lives in. Avril's was an interesting personality. That the students found him so they left no room for doubt: that Louisa found him so irritated and hu- miliated her. Life between the Rue Falguiere and the little street back of the Madeleine where Avril had his studio, where rents and lessons in all the arts cost so little that they wore the look of cost- ing nothing at all, was costing Louisa a great deal of something vastly more difficult to get, or to re- place, than money. Avril had taken a certain in- terest in her progress from the start. She had been flattered and encouraged. But to-day, since she had overheard these two young women laughing about his weakness for fair hair and white hands, her faith in man's interest in woman for her talents had gone low. To-day she sickened at the thought of the whiteness of her hands hands that William Gleason had condemned as " idle-born." Who really cared whether they ever learned to tool a faultless thread of gold across a plane of leather or of silk? What did it really matter whether she bound one book or a hundred, or no books at all ! 52 FAME SEEKERS To-day Avril came to her work first. His talk was light, charming, effulgent, and seemed to hover over the work rather than to touch upon it. As he leaned upon the table at her side and bent the lit- tle volume about in his strong, thin hands, Louisa caught a significant smile, which slipped across the eyes of the young women just behind them, and she flushed and glanced nervously at the Swede in her corner. But the gold head was bent and the eyes that Louisa feared more than anything were taken up with the work before them. Vaguely Louisa realised that it was not the woman's sin that baffled her ; it was the sinning woman's tranquillity. "Mademoiselle is not too industrious to-day?" Avril bent upon the table beside her and smiled around upon her. " No, I am not industrious." Slowly Louisa raised her eyes and looked into the young French- man's face. " I hate work to-day, and everything else." " You Americans," he laughed, " waste so much of your precious time in tragic hating. It is very amusing." " Amusing? " " Yes, that. It is because you do not see that it is amusing is it not? Ah, well," he folded his hands and looked out the window, " it is Novem- ber, and the only way to be well amused in No- vember is to be a little bit grey, and sad! Like AMONG THE BOOK-BINDERS 53 the weather we must always be to really be amused." Then he moved on towards another's work, but as he passed her chair his hand brushed her arm, and she knew a woman always knows that it had not been accidental. She put her book away and got into her wraps. Avril seemed already to have forgotten her existence, was chatting away with a cryptic-eyed young Russian girl about Ana- tole France's last book. The girl was thin and flat- chested, and they were laughing together over some- thing France had said about thin women. Louisa slipped out and closed the door with pain- ful care, perhaps because she so realised that she might have banged it off its hinges for all that any- body cared. She cared ! She gave thanks to have a closed door between herself and the room and its human mysteries. She hurried recklessly down the three flights of worn steps (steps she felt and re- sented in their very unevenness), and gave a grate- ful sigh to reach the fresh air and the high skies out of doors. It seemed to Louisa as the clean cold air touched her face that she had never felt any thing so re- assuring. She had come away from everything she belonged to and the blessed out-of-doors was the only thing she'd brought along that had not utterly de- serted her. It was good to have left behind their door the bookbinders and their complacency. Curi- ous, musk-sweet, paradox-loving, old-world creatures 54 FAME-SEEKERS with their glib tongues, their acrobatic imaginations and their amazing gifts. It was as if they had tried everything, suffered all torture, and gone through all joy, only to blow away a thought of it in a light kiss, only to gain their cryptic glance of everything and nothing mixed, as paths crossed once and mo- mentarily. And the only rule was to keep the kiss light, and not to care that the paths would certainly never cross again. She gave a sigh that made her laugh at herself; a big sigh of thankfulness for the clean-minded friendliness of men in her own world, of men like Burroughs or Billy Gleason. Then came the quick taunting thought " Per- haps I do not understand them either. Perhaps " she jostled a little girl with a great flowered hat- box on her arm in her absent mindedness and got a retort as variegated as could have been the arti- ficial flowers on the hat inside the box. Louisa laughed into the girl's eyes and knew that the girl had stopped to look after her, was grinning after her, her head full of flippant comment for " les Americaines." CHAPTER VII HAZARD IT was that delicate moment between afternoon and evening when mood is neither dead nor yet new-born, when the mind, not knowing what to think, rests for a while, eyes and their peering keeping life alive. The fountains in the Place de la Concorde were play- ing the passing of the exquisite hour, their spray breaking in trickling, bluish brilliance upon the shallow basin of amber-toned water, rippling and blurring over the dark polished bronzes. The wide spaces of pavement were astir with traffic, frivolous and commercial, what was left of the day's business mingling in democratic indifference with what had begun of the night's entertainment ; faces of drivers, drawn and pointed in fatigue, going by, pace by pace, with painted beauties all vivid in expectancy. Every city's every day spectacle, but so poignant, so touching in the limpid hour which is neither of night nor of day. Louisa came down the Rue Royale and into the wide Place with eyes and heart open, and fairly grateful in her sense of deliverance. No doubt the equivalent of each book-binder, of Avril, of the gold- 55 56 FAME-SEEKERS haired Swede, of Nathalie, Keating and the rest were represented, many times over, in the home-going throng, but out here in the open they could not trouble her, meant no 'more to her than she to them. Here she was lost and ignored, but with a complete- ness that was repose in itself. Nothing, absolutely nothing, was expected of her here; she was free to be as proudly insignificant as her confessing woman's nature longed to be. She was tired to death of ear- nestness, and suspicious of all earnest people. She had heard Avril and the Russian girl, quoting their Anatole France, laughing that from pole to pole effort was either for food or for love. They sickened her! Nathalie and her eternal hopefulness exhausted her. She tossed her furs back and walked aimlessly among the silvery, winter-clad trees of the Champs Elysees, she thought with an entirely new patience of William Gleason and his easy-going philosophy ; of her sister, Mrs. William Gleason, and her comfortable, gentle life, and lukewarm amuse- ments. She laughed to herself as Gleason's words crossed her memory : " Just chuck all the ideas and get married." She lifted her eyes when she laughed and unconsciously took in the beauty of life and movement out in the gathering dusk. And the laugh, and the sudden look of her, told that Louisa was growing up, that, a profit sad maybe, but a profit had come to her from her weeks of Nathalie and her energy, the gold-haired Swede and her wise HAZARD 57 tranquillity, the book-binders and their careless humour, for she was able, all at once, to come back to her own part of the world, to walk along with the well-dressed idlers, and to see that they had their meaning and a trend as much as had the workers. Louisa caught, with a new laugh in her eyes, the spice of sophistication which is the very life and death of the Paris air. But the throng was thinning out. Babies and nurses under the trees were being replaced by young men in top-hats and skirts that showed gay high heels at their narrow edges. Something rather more than sophistication was creeping about in the shadows. The curtain was slipping up on the Paris evening: Sophistication Applied was the name of the short, one-act curtain-raiser, and with a smile that mixed with resignation Louisa hurried, owning to herself that it was high-time to go to shelter, time to go home to Nathalie. Well, she'd go ! But she'd walk across the river! She could not resist that. Then she'd take a taxi-auto and make up the lost time from there on. She made her way across the wide Avenue with its brilliant and intricate come-and-go of convey- ance, then hesitated, looking before her. The two Palaces loomed on either hand, piles of stone, window- jewelled, silent and darkened now, no sort of salon going on. The tall pillars with their gilded horses guarded the Pont Alexandre just before her, beyond 58 FAME-SEEKERS that more trees and pavement, then the silhouette of the Invalides against the delicate sky. It was nearly too much of art, of meaning, for one moment's frame, and Louisa, feeling the sting of sheer beauty as she had never done before, turned away from it all down the quiet Cour la Reine. She'd loiter there for a little while, then cross by the bridge below. She'd " steal " one more bridge ! Who'd know, or care ! To-morrow night she'd be a " good girl " and go home early, and directly. Nothing ever had hap- pened to anyone she knew. What sense could there be in going through one's days afraid of the most beautiful hour of all the dusk. She threw back her furs to feel the cool air upon her throat, then, clasping her hands in her muff, she leaned upon the river wall. The wall dropped down to the quays, and the old trees that grew at its base bent about her, making their marvel of winter tracery against the pallid sky. She could almost put out her hands and touch the branches, so near, so friendly, was the screen they put about her. The arches of the great bridge threw their deep shadows upon the stone quays and the shifting river, and lights on the boats slipping by, and all along the banks and over the city were beginning their dance as the after-glow faded out. Behind her there was little traffic, and only scattered passers-by; then the curb, and sward, and shrubs, and paths, up to the splendid stone walls of the Palace of Art. Louisa glanced over her shoulder. It was so still, HAZARD 59 so beautiful, the music of the life of the Champs Elysees coming only faintly. What a pity to be a woman; always afraid, always in danger of lurk- ing ugliness ! She rested her cheek against her muff and thought of it all, her eyes following the shifting river. A man was walking below on the quay. He had come from beneath the bridge; was standing there watching the water and looking about him. He was free, free to go where he liked, to look on unmolested ! The man turned, idly, and crossed the quay, com- ing towards the foot of the steps. Louisa realised suddenly that she was standing just at the head of the stairs that lead, through an opening in the wall, down from the street to the boat-landing. She thought of moving, but stubborn all at once, would not stir. Why should she go, if she cared to stay? She could hear his steps, coming up, nearer and nearer. He stopped once, no doubt to look about him. Her heart beat a litle faster, for the place was lonely. Vaguely she thought of flight, but she did not stir. Her hands clasped tight together in her muff. As he came up to the level of the street she glanced at him, and he raised his eyes and saw her. The two victims of life's little pastime, of coincidence, gazed at one another unbelievingly under the light of a street- lamp, and hazard, and the ugly ill-trimmed lamp per- formed the ceremony of presentation that any amount of clever device had failed to bring about. CHAPTER VIII DUSK A SAVING little smile slipped from one amazed face to the other; shadow-like it was and full of startled alarm, but a smile that saved, then Keating pulled off his wide black hat and bowed. The bow was tardy and made them smile again, this time more freely. They were a little stiff and absurd, and they knew it, and they saved themselves again by con- fessing in a laugh. The laugh tottered, but was a laugh all the same. Then Keating gave in to one of his outbursts of enjoyment that always so irri- tated Burroughs. Lousia did not know that Keat- ing's laugh annoyed Burroughs, but it annoyed her, too or amazed her, made something within her step back quickly, as if some untamed, let-loose thing had passed. They put an end to the chaotic business by shaking hands, then they found them- selves leaning, side by side, upon the river-wall, and the boats went on mechanically slipping by, and the limpid evening beauty was scarcely deepened, for all that it pretended so to be, by the whole amazing in- cident ! Keating put out his stick and touched the branches 60 DUSK 61 before them with absent, appreciative attention to their trend. His lightness of touch made the girl forget his laugh. He turned towards Louisa and took her in thoughtfully. He had the situation better in hand than she had. " Why are you over here, so late and alone, Miss Garth? " he asked her. " It isn't the sort of quarter I've been led to believe that you affect." Louisa glanced around at him in amusement. She felt, someway, that she could afford to be amused with him now that she had actually met him face to face. She'd manage now, to keep him ! She did her best to hold her voice at the level of inconsequences. " I'd never have thought of calling a river-bank a ' quarter ' ! Besides, do people ' affect ' quarters ? And you, Mr. Keating? You are as far away from home here as I am, don't you think so? You are the last person that I'd have dreamed of meeting over here." Keating glanced in the direction of the Grand Palais, and smiled cynically. " The Salon, of course," said Louisa quickly. " I had forgotten. One of these days this will be your very-own quarter, won't it? I used to live over there," and she made a little gesture towards the Champs Elysees. " Yes, I know," said Keating. " You have run away from the place, and I want to break in. You care for the river? " he took her in curiously. 62 FAME-SEEKERS " But, doesn't everyone care for the Seine ? " She looked at him again, thinking little enough of what she was saying, telling herself she must go home, that Nathalie would be worried. " No doubt," Keating laughed. " It's a sort of a looking-glass, after all ! " " You think that is it ? " Louisa laughed more easily than she'd have believed possible. " I like it," she ventured, " because it is friendly, and thinks as I think. And, of course, that's the way of mirrors! It's especially beautiful to me," she chatted on to cover her own sense of strangeness, " just here, with the Invalides off there. The dome in this light looks so like one of Napoleon's Sunday hats, the sort one sees in the museums, under glass. I'm always imagining his stubborn, disillusioned, vain little ghost peering at me from beneath it; scorning me, too ! And that's good for me ! " Keating was silent for a moment, unconcerned seemingly and tranquil. Then he turned his back to the wall and tapped the pavement with his stick. " Shall I tell you what I am thinking about Na- poleon ? " He turned his head and smiled down upon her. The light was behind him, and his face was in shadow, but the brightness fell directly upon Louisa's startled face. " Why yes ? " she quivered. " I am not thinking of Napoleon at all ! Nor of the river, nor of the night, except as they make a DUSK 63 background for you and me. I am thinking of nothing but the amazement of being just here, and talking like this, with you! " Louisa told herself again, monotonously, that she must go, but she only stood looking up at Keating's shadowed face. " Do you remember the first time that we ever saw one another? " Keating went on. " It was later than this, but not as dark as now because it was summer-time. You troubled me then, and you have troubled me ever since: you trouble me now and you will always trouble me ! " He smiled down upon her sternly. " But " Louisa faltered, " I would not do that! " She stood very straight and she did her best to steady her voice. Keating gave a great sigh, looked at her closely, then folded his arms and stared before him. " Why not take me just as I am, place me as I am, and let me be? I don't want to hurt you, or offend you. Try to realise that much at least! I've avoided you, and now a mere chance throws me in your way. Why do you live in the Rue Falguiere? Why don't you go back to your own life and let such places be in their own sort of peace? You disturb the neighbourhood of working people just as you dis- turb me. That's my class, you know! Do you imagine that because you are amiable and sweet that you do not do harm, even harm, to the laundry- 64 FAME-SEEKERS girls next door to your studio who work all day in the cold and the wet? Do you think they are indif- ferent to your beautiful clothes and your beautiful manners? They are not! A drudge knows how to be happy in her own way, but you don't know her way and you can't help her. I hate a slumming woman! Can't you see how you look to them? They'd be able to forget you if they did not see you ! And I'm just as badly off as they are, and my disadvantages are as crude as theirs. Yours is the power to go away. Why don't you go? I'll no more be able to keep away from you now than those girls will be able to get better clothes and flub-dubs because you pass them every day dressed up in yours. Do you know," and he laughed again, " that you and I can do a great service for one another? " He paused, compelling and holding her eyes. " We can let one another be ! " Louisa, bewildered and hurt, peered about her for something to take her home but, by fatality, as strong for one sort of chance as another, there was nothing passing. " Do you know your way home? " asked Keating. "Shall I take you there?" "I know my way very well," said Louisa. Her own voice startled her. It was as if in the last few minutes she'd outgrown her own manner of speech. They walked in silence towards the bridge and Keating hailed an auto. Louisa climbed in blindly, DUSK 65 Keating helping her. She gave the direction and turned mechanically to give him her hand. He had left her ! She saw him, a deeper and more dense shadow for the red of life in him, than the shadow-like trees that in a moment had absorbed him. He did not hesitate, nor glance back. He was stub- bornly following his chosen way. And that was away from her, as far as he was able to take himself ! She gave the driver her address and told him to hurry. She sat far back in a corner and put her head against the cushions and closed her eyes. She was cold, and shocked, and hurt. She had been roughly treated for the first time in her life. But the thought crept over her with its strange, warm thrill why had he been rough like that? Like that! She might, she ought to go back and find him! He was more hurt than she. She sat straight, her hand at her throat, and opened her eyes wide. What she saw was the face of a clock, that ticked away upon the wall of a little restaurant above the heads of coachmen eating their dinners, their horses in line, along the curb, swinging their nose-bags. The hands pointed to twenty minutes to eight. She sat back and smiled. It was one of those myriad small, tragic smiles the dark buries in its own quiet way. Louisa never forgot that clock. The inevitable hour comes, the mile-post marking it, when the Louisas realise the meanings of things as well as of people. The glorious, warm habit of 66 FAME-SEEKERS considering only that which is warm and gloriously alive gets itself, at last, intermingled with the subtle hurts and joys that lurk in the touch, the associa- tion of inanimate things. Things crowd in more and more, and console and heal, with their silent persis- tence, as noisy laugh and rushing impulse grow into smiles and second thoughts. So the cheap, plain- faced little clock played mile-post for Louisa Garth. CHAPTER IX MARCH SNOW THE winter was slipping by, and the students, the vast army of wilful martyrs, were stirring out of their industrious coma. Enthusiasm had worn through to ambition, talent had put on the austere inches that come of a little instruction. Recom- pense was unchained in the place, was worrying young hope even as the first stirring of sap was worrying the earth. Bliss had given in to utility and, tottering under the weight of common-sense, the youngsters were all blinking after the annual prizes. Nathalie and Louisa were working regularly at the music and the book-binding ; Nathalie, with the pros- pect of playing for an influential concert manager, and Louisa for reasons best known to herself. She talked no more about her work, had fallen into silence about all personal things. Work had seem- ingly captivated her. In the beginning Nathalie had looked on at her restlessness, wondering if such a girl could work. Then, one day, something had happened; a mystery that Nathalie had never been able to fathom. Louisa had been out very late, and 68 FAME-SEEKERS Nathalie had waited, nervous, then angry, then alarmed. When she came in at last Nathalie had scolded, and roundly. Louisa had listened meekly, then baffled and swept Nathalie's anger away with downright penitence. She had promised of her own accord not to stay out late again, furthermore she had lived up to her promise. All the evening, after this mysterious event, Louisa had been gay and gentle by turns, moods rushing about her. When she had talked at all it had been more with the lamp-shade than with Nathalie. She had slipped away early to bed in her balcony room with a glance so deep that Nathalie had felt as if she'd been allowed to look through the very doors of space. And Nathalie had tried, during all the preoccupied weeks that followed, to think it out. From that day, Louisa had kept her word, had come in at a regular hour and had worked as only a girl who has been brought up to do nothing at all can, or will, work when the frenzy takes her. It was all very well for Louisa to work, but she was one of those creatures who inspire responsibility, and Nathalie found herself troubling more about the over-working than she'd ever done about the over- idling. For the habit of work was crowding out something else, seemed to be getting the better of the lightness that had made Louisa lovable. A cer- tain power she had of concentrating her eyes upon whatever interested her, and a kind of fragile bent MARCH SNOW 69 she expressed in her tall slight lines, were becoming too evident, and there were times when Nathalie thought that she looked positively ill. Nathalie tried a plunge into distractions, wasted her own time in tea-rooms and theatres, invited people to come to them. Louisa was always charming but remote, always veiled off with her own thoughts, and she seemed to forget places and people as soon as they had passed. Burroughs came constantly to the studio and played the part of " big brother " to the two girls with a tact that was enhanced by his genuine affection for them. Burroughs was a distinguished young man. His talent was variegated if not bot- tomless, he played about as well as he painted, wrote delightful letters, read and talked discriminatingly about books. He was gifted, and in his place, im- portant. The best thing about him was that he knew his place, and that he had the worldliness to stay in it and to seem to be contented. Burroughs and Nathalie played through many of the long winter evenings, and Louisa sat in an arm- chair near the fire, listening, or seeming to listen. Others came occasionally, but Burroughs was nearly always there. Of Keating they had almost ceased to talk, unless, now and then Burroughs brought some news of him. For Keating was getting on, or, getting known : at any rate he was making his stir among the students and at the Clubs, was build- 70 FAME-SEEKERS ing the foundation of his own particular God-knows- what. Sometimes Nathalie talked with Burroughs of the changes she felt in Louisa, and they'd watch her, anxiously, together. " Maybe it is just Louisa's way of growing up," Nathalie suggested. " Then," said Burroughs, " I'd rather not see a Louisa grow up!" One stormy afternoon in March Nathalie was alone in the studio. For three hours she had been giving all the energy of her firm small person to her violin and there was that fine glow of fatigue upon her which is the sunset-light of work well done. But, with the relaxing came thoughts of Louisa and a quarter-hour went by on random bits played me- chanically, fingers thinking alone. Then she forgot to play at all and stood with her violin at her side and her face turned up to the skylight, seeing nothing. It was snowing, and the wind was rattling at the glass. She stared at Louisa's chair by the fire, and she wondered that in one short winter less even than that Louisa Garth could have actually come into a chair! What in the world did she think about, sitting there through long hours while she and Bur- roughs played? Louisa did not deeply care for books though she often held one and read a little, and some- times Nathalie was sure that the music tired her. And, absurd as it seemed, the ghost of Keating al- ways haunted Nathalie's preoccupation for Louisa. MARCH SNOW 71 That she had ever met him, or had talked with him, Nathalie did not dream. The snow was flying and the skylight was blanketed softly. The room was growing dark too dark to see the music though it was only four o'clock. Nathalie wondered, as she often wondered, what sort of place Keating lived in, and she smiled at herself as the idea of going to see him came again into her mind. It could do no harm! Even Bur- roughs had given him up a little, and Keating had made new friends among the painters. She could take him as she found him, could act accordingly. If he misunderstood? If he thought she was run- ning after him? What did it matter what he thought, as long as she was square with herself. She flushed, and she set her red mouth and drew a great rich chord out of her violin, then put it gently away in its velvet-lined case. She was going, and that was the end of it. She loved being out in the snow! She wrapped herself in a long brown coat, put on a black hat and a brown veil, and black furs. She considered herself bravely in a mirror while she drew on her gloves. They were thick one-button gloves, absurd in their combined smallness and mannishness. That she liked Keating very much she had never de- nied to herself for a moment, and with a little laugh at herself, tempered by the brown veil, she told her- self that routing him out was a game " worth the 72 FAME-SEEKERS candle." Then, like any other sensible woman who is launching into an act about which the " small voice " whispers " reckless," she hurried, hurried too fast for even her woman's way of thinking to keep the pace with her. CHAPTER X INVASION NATHALIE knew where Keating had his studio and she had often passed that way with side-long glances into the court. It was a depressing court, amaz- ingly empty for so small a space, and sordid in neg- lect. She hoped, always, that he did not live too badly. She knew a good deal about the hard side of painters' lives and she knew that the winter-time opened their days with the breaking of ice on the buckets, and the warming of dead stoves, till hands that must do delicate things were roughened and stiff. But Nathalie had a level head and she was not sentimental over a half-hour of hardship. She knew that the joy of the evenings was worth the morning's discomfort. But to-day, the cold and the steady snow made her afraid, made her hope against hope that she'd find Keating with a good fire and a chair to offer her. Not that Nathalie cared whether she sat upon a Louis XV arm-chair or a store-box. It was Keating's pride she cared about. She climbed the three flights of draughty stairs with a serious face, and in the cold and darkness of his landing she peered for his card on the door. 73 74 FAME-SEEKERS When she heard Keating moving across the floor towards her panic caught her up, and she wished she'd not come, wished there was time to run. The opened door disclosed him, palette, brushes, paint- rags in his hands and he peered to find her just as she had to find his card. Once found, he opened the door wide with a genuineness that broke her panic and made her thankful to have come. So much for a woman's anticipations and her arrivals! Keating's studio could scarcely have been called " furnished," but the tone of the room was beautiful and one corner was amusingly arranged with a shelf, bits of still-life and old prints, and was warmed with a glowing, if rusty, old stove. Keating tumbled " back-grounds " and books off a chair for Nathalie, but she shook her head and sat on the model-stand near the fire. " Don't trouble, I like it here," and she threw off her furs with a little air of having come in to stay a while. " I have come," she paused and gave him a wide amused look, " to ask you why you have chosen to treat me so abominably ? " Keating's manner indicated a mixed state of mind. He was, evidently, even frankly, glad to see her, but he seemed uncomfortable, kept glancing over his shoulder towards the closed door of a room that gave upon the studio. Nathalie's eyes instinctively fol- lowed the direction of his and she was interested to hear someone moving about the other side the door. At the same time her eyes were caught and held by INVASION 75 an old grey cashmere shawl which had been care- lessly tossed across a chair near the door. " My model is in there getting dressed to go," said Keating stubbornly. He stood with his back to her getting the tea-pot and cups off the shelf to make her a cup of tea, so she dared watch him as keenly and with as much amusement as she liked. " So you've got a model ! Luxurious young man ! " " Nothing very luxurious about her," Keating laughed frankly. It wanted so little to trap him into frankness ! The proximity of a model did not greatly interest Nathalie for she had somehow ac- quired, or absorbed, an attitude of mind towards the models in the lives of her young painter friends. They existed, a class unique; were often clever and amusing and beautiful; often made marks, good or bad, upon the young men's careers, but, definitely, she had concluded that they were no concern of hers. She passed them mentally with the same amiable un- concern with which she passed other strangers in the street. But the old shawl ? It was an alluring tone, and it seemed to stir something in Nathalie's memory. " You can't get out of answering me by any change of subject, you know, Keating," she said, facing him fairly. Keating was standing over the kettle as if he might force it to boil. Nathalie watching him, gave in to a gay laugh. " Keating," she told him, " I've never known anybody who had his own way of doing everything as you have! Let that kettle be. 76 FAME-SEEKERS It's the business of the fire to boil the water. Give your attention to me, please ! " " I've been hard at work this winter," he said ab- sently. " Life's given me a lot of trouble since I used to see you in Philadelphia." " Work ! The sins that exhausted little word is stretched to cover ! Life and letters are full of it ! So have we been at work. We have not, therefore, ceased to be sympathetic human beings. I fancy we have robbed our work of more time to keep an ac- count of you than you of us." ** You really think so ? " and Keating smiled. " I know a little of what you do." "Seriously, Keating, we have been so happy at your successes." " My successes ! " he laughed shortly. " I have sold nothing." " The selling always comes last, doesn't it ? I have several years' worth of scales and exercises to match all your brushes and paint-tubes," she sighed. " I know all about that. But you look very tired and thin, Keating." She bent forward with her chin on her hand and observed him kindly. " You are ever so much more gaunt, than when I knew you in Philadelphia. It is a pity," she sighed, " that you and Louisa Garth are not more like me or like Burroughs. Louisa is really becoming ill from too much work and too everlastingly thinking about it. You people waste your nerves so. You use them up INVASION 77 for every detail. I flatter myself I have an excel- lent and rather high-keyed set of nerves myself, but I take precious care to fatten them up and keep them intact for the times that count. Work doesn't hurt me somehow; it's my favourite food, and I am only ill without it. Poor Louisa! She is just the sort of girl to be victimised by the whole gamut of artistic epidemics. Avril, with whom she works, is enthusiastic about her progress. I suppose he's fallen in love with her. Most men do. Not that it interests her. Nothing stirs her but leather and little gold lines. She's getting shockingly thin. No woman would work as hard as she does if she were working for pay. The trouble is that she has forgotten herself, takes no care of herself, goes trail- ing out in all sorts of weather and sits all day long in that studio where the air must be poisoned with musty old books, leather, greasy presses, and the group of the aristocrats of the great un-washed who have chosen the way of binding books. The best thing about music is that you are not required to work with musicians ! " Keating made no comment, and Nathalie, feeling a little flat, got up and walked to his easel. Upon it was the study of a dark rough-haired girl, her pro- file silhouetted against the light and the grey shawl about her shoulders. All at once the identity of the shawl came home to Nathalie and she straightened. For once in a way, she watched for the passing of 78 FAME-SEEKERS a model with lively interest. Was it, possibly, the steerage girl that Louisa, venturing, had caught Keating rather more than talking with? The bedroom door opened brusquely and the girl came out and walked across the studio to the hall door. She returned Nathalie's nod curtly and stood a moment with her dark eyes upon Keating. " Come to-morrow at the usual time," he called over his shoulder. The kettle had boiled and he was pour- ing the water over the tea-leaves. The girl nodded and went out closing the door sharply behind her. Nathalie absorbed Keating's canvas in silence. " Interesting head you have made of her, Keating," she said at last. " It is always a marvel to me how you painters arrive at anything when I see your models. You've certainly got the trick of making something out of nothing. Being a rank outsider I'm not able to be very democratic about picture sub- jects." She paused flushing to think what Bur- roughs would say to her if he were to hear her " breaking silence before art." But Nathalie wasn't talking art as much as she was talking woman and she went on in spite of her convictions, or of the ac- cusing vision of Burroughs. " I've heard more than once, Keating, that no one but a painter has any business having opinions about painting. But all women have opinions about all things and we've got to speak 'em before we can get rid of them. We really don't count upon being impressive. Bur- INVASION 79 roughs tells me that musicians always have excruciat- ing taste in pictures but it seems to me that there is just the same difference between a well-painted picture of a peasant and a well-painted picture of a woman of culture that there is good gracious ! " she spread her hands and raised her shoulders. " I have gotten in deep ! " She hesitated, acting a little to give herself time to think. Keating's evident poverty gave her small concern ; that had come and would go; but the picture of the peasant girl with her drooping under-lip dangerously veering to the sentimental, had startled her. She was determined to put the young woman and her old shawl where they belonged in Keating's estimation if she could. She had seen more than one young man grow old in his youth from having fallen into the deadly groove of the peasant-picture trade. Every Salon with its mile on mile of peasant-pictures had convinced Nathalie that in the saving of young painters was, had been, and would always be the fine hand of some woman as fine, or finer, than himself. " You see," she laughed as she took her cup of tea and sat again on the model stand, " I can't see why a man of brain should any more choose to eternally paint the peasant than he should choose to eternally have her around ! " Just what was she daring to talk about ? she asked herself. " I should think they'd bore a man so ! You are calling me a Philistine, and no doubt, I am ! What are you sending to the Salon 80 FAME-SEEKERS this year? " she asked suddenly with an interested swerve away from the canvas on the easel which adroitly excluded it from her consciousness as a pos- sibility. " I hardly know," he answered, watching her with a rather disconcerting smile. " Supposing," he sug- gested, " that the painter himself is a peasant ? There was Millet ! " " Ah, yes," Nathalie agreed with a return of the enigmatical smile, " there was Millet. What of it ? " She enjoyed a fight with Keating and she faced him squarely across her teacup. " How do you know what Millet wanted, even if he had anything to do with the case. I certainly," she laughed, " wouldn't want to fiddle my family, or my family's family." "Will you pose for me?" demanded Keating. " I will pose for you, if you like, but I should think you would like to paint Louisa," answered Nathalie, with a disarming absence of any sentiment in her mildly pitched voice, except her natural modesty and her genuine appreciation of her friend's superior qualities in the way of beauty, and of clothes. Keating gasped, could not even pretend to con- ceal his gasping. He took Nathalie's cup which she held towards him for more tea and absently put it in its place on the shelf. " Dear me, Keating ! " Nathalie chuckled. " Do you ever wash them? Beside, I want another cup. Better leave out the sugar," she suggested, " because "THE CHANGE IN HER IS AS SUBTLE AS SHE IS HERSELF" INVASION 81 jour next guest might not like her tea with sugar." Keating obediently took the cup down again and smiled at her banter so remotely that she saw it had only half reached him. " Is Miss Garth really ill ? " he demanded, suddenly raising his eyes to hers. It was Nathalie's turn to start. So this reticent young man had ears after all. She moved along the model-stand till she sat quite near him, then she bent towards him, putting into the movement and her voice all of the charm of a young woman intimately talking something over that it would be as well not to talk of at all. " It is pretty difficult to tell you what I mean about Louisa, because the change in her is as subtle as she is herself. All through the au- tumn and the first of the winter she did nothing but prowl about in places she had no business to be alone, and at hours that drove me into terror. I thought she had given up the idea of work altogether. Of course, it was just ignorance, and her own sweet- ness, that made her so foolish and fearless. Then, one night, after she had been working a little while at Avril's, and was, I suspected, pretty tired of it, she came home very late to dinner. She came in like a lamb, Keating, and by her penitence took all the wind out of my tempest. Something, I've not the ghost of an idea what, had happened to her. She was pale and aglow all at the same time, if that makes sense. And, from that night, she has fairly worked herself down to the bone. No one could in 82 FAME-SEEKERS justice accuse her of dabbling any more. I'm ear- nest and industrious, but I do care for my dinners and my diversions. She may be human, but she is ceasing to look it. She was always sort of flower- like and tall-stemmed, and that's charming, but now she's breakable and she does worry me ! " " She has no business to work at all," said Keat- ing brusquely. He put a lump or two of coal on the fire with the care of a fixed habit of economy that stirred Nathalie's attention and drew her mind a moment from Louisa, then he sat back in his chair and stared moodily into the fire over folded arms. " But, why ? " Nathalie demanded after a mo- ment. " Why ? " and Keating shot her a glance. " Be- cause to do anything well means going through hell first. It's hard enough, and to spare, for a man. Her beauty's her talent ; let her take care of it. Let her guard it for us poor devils to look for- ward to. A man wants something more or less than the sake of work to slave for, doesn't he ? " His words came out like hammer-strokes; without vio- lence, but steadily, as if he had thought of them a long time and had no more doubt. Nathalie winced under the stroke of realising anew what mere beauty gains for a woman with a man, then gave her mind back to Keating's situation. She eyed Keating as if he were a discovery, treated him with gay amusement. " Keating, you are a INVASION 83 musty, old-fashioned man. Of course she may work if she likes ; though I don't believe I'd like, if I were as good-looking as Louisa ! " She thought seriously for a moment, then lifted her eyes to his. " I wish you would persuade her to pose for you," she said as if the idea had for the first time actually taken hold of her. " She'd scarcely refuse you if you let her understand how it would help you to send a tell- ing portrait to the Salon, and it would serve the double purpose of keeping her away from her work. Her Salon book is almost ready and half a day is quite as much as she needs for practice. I could even speak to Monsieur Avril and tell him that we are concerned about her. She has bewitching clothes ; wonderful things for painting I should think. Louisa's one of the women with money who select the clothes the money pays for with her individual feel- ing." Keating's eyes were upon Nathalie, but she real- ised that he was scarcely listening, some sentence she had uttered holding him, and she did not know which one. " Is she Salon-mad, too ! " Keating looked dis- mayed. As she talked a dark flush had risen over his neck and face. He bent over his pipe and stuffed in the tobacco with a threatening force, then all at once he searched Nathalie's face with a glance like steel. " Does Miss Garth know that you are here this afternoon ? " 84 FAME-SEEKERS Nathalie flushed as dark as he and her voice shook in her effort to control her indignation. " That," she declared, " is very nearly stupid of you, Keat- ing." " I'm sorry," said Keating doggedly, " but my position is a little awkward - and it was the natural thing to wonder. I am not tamed enough to have kept it to myself." " Now that you have said a thing like that I don't in the least mind telling you what I think." Nathalie put down her cup, for her hands were unsteady. " You have treated her and me, outrageously. You have avoided people who would have done you no harm at all. Quite the contrary. To me it does not so much matter, though you have been equally un- kind. You see, we plain women gain a consoling second-sight. We come to see through your forget- fulness very sharply. While you are forgetting us you give yourselves away to us ! I am perfectly able to see that your seeming negligence and indifference has a very flattering lining." Keating scrutinised her in comical distress. " But," he blurted, " you aren't plain ! " " Christopher Columbus, discoverer of hidden beauty ! " she bowed to him tartly, but flushed all the same. " A girl like Louisa Garth has a right to another sort of treatment," she insisted. " A right ! I'm hanged if she has," and Keating sent a cloud of pipe smoke around his head. INVASION 85 Nathalie stood and began pulling on her gloves. " Pretending's no good, Keating. Certainly Louisa has a right to be treated differently. She is differ- ent." She put on her coat and her furs, and glanced at the window where the light had greyed into dusk, where the bare branches and the sky, and the quietly falling snow shut them in like a beautiful decoration, seemed made, for the moment, for the quiet grey room. " I must go. I don't like Louisa to get in ahead of me. I can't bully her then ! " " You are angry with me ? " Keating got to his feet and faced her impulsively. " I am ! " she smiled as she lowered her veil. " May I have a chance to make up for my bad behaviour ? " he asked. " You must be good enough to see that it isn't easy to ask after all this time." Nathalie held out her hand. "That," she con- fessed, " is just what I came for." She moved to- wards the door, Keating walking by her side. " If you don't mind, I'd rather Louisa should not know that I have been here this afternoon. It wasn't so easy to come, you know," she laughed. " It has taken me all the winter to make up my mind. But Burroughs has vowed not to ask you again, so what else was there to do? I suppose that it took just such a stormy day as this to give me the courage at last! Women like their chosen tasks to be as hard, and dramatic, as possible ! I hate getting wet, and 86 FAME-SEEKERS going out in storms. So, I came just to-day! I'm nothing if not logical." She paused a moment star- ing down at a crack in the dark floor, a crack en- riched with bits of paint left by more than one gen- eration of trying and talent. " It must be man- aged, and to manage you two trying people, you and Louisa Garth, wants all of one person's tact and talent. You'd be the death of any perfectly hon- est, nice person." She laughed at him, and gave her own place in the circumstance all of her sympathy. " I'll tell you how ! To-night Burroughs is coming down to go over some new music with me. I'll fib to them. It won't be quite the first time, so I suppose I can go through with it. I'll say that you happened to be taking the air in the Luxembourg Gardens just as I happened to be taking the air " They gazed at the storm-bound windows and laughed together. Keating squared his shoulders. " I can humble myself when I must," he said. " It really seems to me that it is about time for me to shoulder a little of the responsibility." Nathalie looked at him and shook her head in real concern. " You had better keep still, Keating, and leave it to me. You'd make a porridge of it! Louisa would go away from me to live and we'd never speak to one another again, any of us! Good- night," she laughed, shaking hands. " I'll let you know what story I tell so you needn't spoil it with INVASION 87 another. I'll write you to-morrow," and she hur- ried across the landing, down the stairs, and out into the soft snowy dusk, Keating watching her from the landing. CHAPTER XI A WHITE LIE THE snow had whirled away and had left one of those deep, winter-locked nights when consciousness of the cold outside makes of a fire, arm-chairs and congenial people about the best thing in the world. It was growing late and Burroughs, realising that he must soon go home, slipped deeper into his chair that he might get the very best of his last moments. Louisa was as remote of mood as the night outside and Burroughs considered her through the smoke of his pipe with a deepening concern. Certainly she had changed very much during the winter. As for Louisa, she accepted Burroughs' nearly daily presence in the place as naturally as she accepted the steady fire, or any other agreeable or convenient thing which there seemed no reason for rejecting. Nathalie, in the corner behind the piano, watched them furtively while she put her music away. She knew better than the average young woman of her age that practice makes perfect in more ways than the mere way of music, and, frank little person that she was, she considered the lie she was about to tell with terror. She could set it going, could keep it 88 A WHITE LIE 89 consistent through the telling, but what if Bur- roughs stayed to talk it over? What if they ques- tioned her? When Burroughs stirred to go she knew that the time had come and with a smile at her own expense she came out of her corner and draw- ing a low chair up between them, she sat upon it with her back to the light. She became overly cosy, and Burroughs considered her, for hers was the manner which is to the wise man among women al- ways to be suspected. " I have been waiting till just the right moment to tell you two something very interesting ! " she be- gan. Burroughs' attentiveness deepened. "Why, just the right moment?" Louisa smiled drowsily. Nathalie made a gesture so wide that it all but unbalanced her. " Because what I have to tell is really surprising, and I wanted to make my effect ! Who, who, do you two suppose that I saw this after- noon ? " Burroughs eyed her keenly, amusement dancing in his eyes. " Are we to guess ? " " No, no," Nathalie laughed, " we are much too old to play guessing-games. I " she looked bra- zenly from one to the other " I met Keating ! " " The devil you did," said Burroughs. " I beg your pardon," he glanced at Louisa. Louisa stiffened and her hands held tight to one 90 FAME-SEEKERS another in the folds of her dress. Her small face seemed all eyes as she absorbed Nathalie. " You met Mr. Keating? " Nathalie plunged ahead full-tilt. She nodded vigorously, that being less difficult than the speak- ing of the lie. " And if you are able to believe me, he was glad to see me, and meek as Mary's little lamb. He really was ! And before he left me," she had the grace to gulp over the twisted truth, " he asked me if there was any chance of our for- giving him, if we'd let him in ungracious as he had been out of the cold ! There is a triumph for us, if you like ! " Louisa slipped back into her chair, and resting her chin on her hand she stared, with a curious smile, into the fire. She said nothing. " Poor old Keating," Burroughs sighed abstract- edly. " Did it strike you," he bent forward and looked seriously into Nathalie's eyes, " that he looked especially hard up, or shabby ? " Nathalie caught herself. " No," she said care- fully, " he was warmly dressed : the same old over-coat, to be sure! Of course there wasn't much time. It was a stormy afternoon, you know." Burroughs gave in to a great laugh, then he pulled at his moustache and looked very solemnly at Nathalie. " Yes, I know. It was a stormy after- noon." Do what she would Burroughs' mirth caught A WHITE LIE 91 Nathalie, and for an instant got the better of caution. Louisa looked from one to the other, puzzled, then with a smile she let their laughing pass without comment. Nathalie smoothed her braids and rearranged a comb before she spoke again. Clothes serve a sort of end in giving little things to do to embarrassed hands. " I told him," her voice broke in an after-wave of laughing, " that for me his snubbing had been as water on a duck's back, but that I'd have to ask Louisa ! " " Your mode of speech," Burroughs remarked, " is nothing less than primitive to-night. First we had Mary's lamb, and now we have the duck out in the wet. You deeply interest me ! " he stared her down. " I'm so glad," and Nathalie gave him a gay if guilty smile. " I told Keating that Louisa was giv- ing herself body and soul to her books, so I'd have to talk it over with her. I added that if she'd for- give him too, he might begin his penitence by din- ing with us next Saturday night. I'm sure I don't know why I said Saturday except for an in-born notion that one never does know what to do with a Saturday night." " And now," chuckled Burroughs, " we are about to add the mother-tub to the lamb and the duck. This," he considered her broadly, " is babbling sec- ond childhood! Are you sure that you really saw Keating? " 93 FAME-SEEKERS Louisa broke in on the banter with her quiet voice. " I'm really glad that he is coming," she said. " You both like him, and it's too bad that he should have been kept away for a mere notion. We three have been sitting here so long in our stove-tropics, and in such utter harmony, that we've grown rather vapid, have we not? It's a dear old stove," she smiled and spread her hands towards the glow. " It is even the only stove that I have ever loved, but that is no reason for being selfish about it. But do you know that I nearly dread having our peace dis- turbed. We'll never quite find it again, will we? " She put her head back and looked up at the great shadowy skylight where the dull glow of the fire and rose-shaded lamps were turning the snow-covered glass into the warm, deep greys of a cameo. Nathalie pressed her hands together in relief. The thing was actually done with no questions, no incredulity from Louisa! Of course Burroughs had seen through her, had been uncomfortably amused, but that did not matter. " I'll write him to-morrow morning," she said, and was appalled at the glibly added little lie. The letter was written, stamped even, and waiting at the moment under her pin-cush- ion to be posted. She gave a warm hand to Bur- roughs but avoided his eyes. " It will be Saturday night then. And please, Burroughs, be prompt. It must be a fatted calf, of course, and you know our cooking-stove is no bigger than a walking hat." A WHITE LIE 93 Burroughs considered her gravely. " And now to the lamb, the duck and the mother-tub we add the f atted-calf ! " Then he got out and left Nathalie to get through her own good-nights with Louisa. She accomplished a hasty retreat and left Louisa, the last one by the stove. Nathalie could hear her, a few minutes later, moving about and putting out the lights, then climbing up the little spiral stair- way, and, to save her, she could not gather whether Keating's coming was welcome to Louisa or not. CHAPTER XII CLOTHES IT was Saturday afternoon and nearly six o'clock. The table was arranged in the alcove, was charming too a charming promise done in damask, rose- shaded light and tea-roses. Nathalie and Louisa were idling by the fire a while before going to their rooms to dress. Louisa had been at home all day, reading, or lying on the couch while Nathalie prac- tised. The weather was stormy and the studio seemed to fold them in in comfort. It was the first time since Louisa's mysterious plunge into work that she had stayed away from Avril's, and by way of reason she had simply said " I'm lazy." She looked fresher and more human, Nathalie thought, than for weeks past, and she was more than ever lovely in a smoky sort of silk stuff too artful to be called a mere dress that was held to her slim figure more by " eternal fitness " between Louisa and the stuff than by its close girdle of silvery satin. Nathalie considered her, and appreciated her as a work of art, but she wondered and wondered if Louisa were not, in clothes and other things, more artful than artistic. " Shall you pose for Keating, Louisa, if he asks you to? " 94 CLOTHES 95 " I shall," Louisa smiled. " That is nice of you ! " and Nathalie felt, as she looked, flustered by this complete giving in. Louisa considered her, amused. " I shall not pose for Mr. Keating as his friend, but I'm going to order a portrait then I think that I'll give it to you for a birthday present. Yes ? " Nathalie gasped. " When have you thought all that out? What a beautiful idea! It will help him as much as it will please me. But " she stared at Louisa curiously, " I wonder if he'll do it that way? " " Why not ? " Louisa looked amazed. " Oh," Nathalie's voice broke and slipped over the hopelessness of making Louisa understand the char- acter of an unusual man, " you don't realise Keating one bit, my dear girl ! " " But," Louisa laughed, then grew serious, " aren't painters open to orders ? " Nathalie shook her head. " No, they aren't," she declared. " If you ask him, and if he paints you, what shall you wear? " She veered to the seemingly trivial question with a seriousness that drew another laugh from Louisa. Nathalie held herself tight. " You see," and she took in the line of Louisa's soft dress, " I imagine that Keating doesn't know much about women's clothes. Do try to understand what I am driving it, 'Wisa. You see, it takes a thief to catch a thief. That's easy, isn't it? Well, it takes 96 FAME-SEEKERS a swell to catch a swell! Now, that thing you have on is a dream, and a sophisticated dream, but if it were painted without its worldliness of flow and line it would merely look like some art student's higherly- educated paint-apron, wouldn't it? It is so ab- surdly important ! " she sighed. " It seems to me that if Keating could get a really stunning thing of you it might just about make him. He won't realise it, so we must, don't you see? They never realise anything painters ! They only paint. Burroughs does because he's as much of a dozen other things as he is a painter. I don't suppose he's ac- tually much of a painter. Anyway, 'Wisa, do you think that a portrait of you in a subtle dress that he might not quite understand would do as much for Keating, would get him orders, I mean, as would something oh, dear, what an unholy question ! " Nathalie dabbed the poker into the fire till the sparks glittered. " I loathe myself for such talk, such ut- terly disrespectful plotting. I seem to have no more veneration for art than any ordinary Philistine. As for Keating himself " She spread her hands, then put the poker back in the rack. " I'm afraid I'm ridiculous ! " Louisa looked on. "What sort of dress do you think I should wear to be painted in, Nat? " " One thing I know. If Keating sees you in a thing like that he'll want to paint it. Then he'll miss it. I mean that he'd be more likely to get CLOTHES 97 something stirring out of a more frankly stirring frock. Don't you see ? " She faced Louisa. " It must get to the line in the Salon, and it must be marked * loaned J and it must look as if it cost about a thousand dollars to the square inch. It's all wrong, of course, but so are a lot of other things all wrong, and there's nothing more all wrong than the ideas of the people who get their portraits painted. Keating wouldn't bother with them, he'd tell them to go hang, so it's up to us to bother for him." Louisa put her arms over her head and smiled quietly into the fire. " Do you suppose, Nat," she said suddenly, giving her eyes frankly to Nathalie, " that I haven't thought of all that? " " Have you ? " said Nathalie slowly. Then, be- cause the moment had grown somehow too intimate for easy breathing she wandered off up on a platitude. " Isn't it too stupendous the power that money might have along with good taste ! " Louisa did not answer. She looked at the clock, then stood by the stove. " It's time to dress, Nat. But," she spread her hands to the warmth, " I don't mind telling you that I've been thinking those same things over ever since I got the idea of having a portrait. I've been plotting with clothes for the making of Mr. Keating ! It is absurd. But it seems to me that women have a good many absurd things to do. The thing is, no doubt, to keep still about them!" 98 FAME-SEEKERS " He'd riddle us if he knew," said Nathalie. " I'm not so sure," said Louisa. " They know, they must know. I think they don't even mind, as long as we keep still." " Cynic ! " grumbled Nathalie. " Not yet," sighed Louisa, " but I'm afraid I'm going to be. A good, a real cynic always laughs, doesn't he, Nat? The fact is, that I am going to put on the dress to-night in which I want to be painted. I," she laughed, " I am going to be per- fectly dazzling. I am going to be all the revelations in one dress. I shall, of course, be shockingly over- dressed. Will Burroughs will think I've lost both mind and manners. I should have written him an explanation, a warning. When I think of our one servant, or our domestic stock I blush for the dress that is this moment lying on my bed up in that balcony." Nathalie looked frightened. " I think it's going to be rather funny, don't you, Nat? I have a motive to give me courage. When I think of the failure Keating's career would in- evitably be except for wise you and me ! Do you imagine that he'd appreciate our plotting? Per- haps he'll never realise it the faintest bit; just take the pleasant consequences, and their profit, unto himself without thinking at all about it. That would be man-like ! " " I know some serene failures men, too, Louisa CLOTHES 99 who would mightily resent our meddling," Natha- lie sighed. Louisa smiled down upon Nathalie. " All the fail- ures, serene or discontented, have gone cloud-chasing in their beginnings, haven't they, Nat? " Nathalie considered her. " You've made sad strides this winter, 'Wisa ! " she said curiously. " I have," agreed Louisa. " I have also come into a certain serenity not denied even to certain fail- ures ! " " I don't know, I'm sure," said Nathalie. " I do know that nine out of ten of the so-called ' portraits * in the Salon get on my nerves. They are either models trying to look as if they were used to their clothes, or they are the painter's wives, their made- over clothes disguised under colour effects, and al- ways so dowdy, and so tired-eyed." " Well, we shall do better for him than that," de- clared Louisa. " I wonder," said Nathalie slowly, " if Keating has any evening clothes ? " " But," Louisa stared, " of course he has. How absurd ! " " But," Nathalie insisted, " I know any number of men who have not, and it isn't absurd at all." Nathalie gazed stubbornly into the fire and with an ardour that women wisely confess only to the flames. Louisa dropped her eyes. " That would be awkward," She laughed dizzily, then looked at 100 FAME-SEEKERS Nathalie as if to be sure that she was serious. " Really, it is too ridiculous to consider," she de- clared, a coolness slipping across her voice. " If he has none it is certainly time that he realised the necessity of getting some. Why, my dear child, evening clothes are as much to be taken for granted as napkins at the table! Will Burroughs always dresses when he comes to dine with us." " Burroughs ! " Nathalie grumbled. " Of course he does. What has that to do with it I'd like to know ? " She imagined Keating's parental dinner- table, probably covered with checkered oilcloth, and if napkins at all, coloured ones. " Of course," she said after a rather uncomfortable pause, " it is only fair to remember that we have forced him to come." " Forced him ? " Louisa looked indignant. Nathalie felt the stinging of the little white lie and caught herself. " Indirectly we have," she said stoutly. " Burroughs fairly hounded him to come down here for weeks, and I haven't the least doubt that it was lack of the right clothes to come in, an absurd feeling of inequality, that has kept him away so long. It's a horrid thing to feel outclassed." " What nonsense," said Louisa firmly. " If a man wants something from the world he must conform to it. I haven't much patience with wilful eccentricity of dress and manners." "Wilful?" sighed Nathalie. " 'Wisa," she said CLOTHES 101 sadly, " you are talking just as your sister, Mrs. William Gleason, would talk ! " Her heart had gone heavy. What had she done in bringing these two people together? She could not see the end of her well meant little lie. " After all, we are but sup- posing," she temporised. *' I might follow in worse footsteps than my sis- ter's," said Louisa. " We are only supposing, Nathalie, but supposing with that sort of roof-line under one's eyes," and she glanced out the window where tumble-down roofs and sagging curtains told of the near-by abode of working-people, " is edu- cational ! I think that if I must be educated I shall be content to take it out largely in supposing." " Don't you see, Louisa, that a man of talent who has his future to make, has a perfect right to make the most of his time and, for the time, to ignore such questions? It isn't fair, it isn't even possible, to understand him by the standard of your world." It was the first time since they had lived together that Louisa's world had been acknowledged as a thing apart. They both felt it and looked away from one another's eyes. " Possibly you are right," said Louisa, then sharply, though she tried to hold herself, "but he should let other sorts of people be then. Certainly he does not require evening clothes in the student's restaurants 1 " 102 FAME-SEEKERS " And that," said Nathalie quietly, " is no doubt what Keating thinks, would even have told you for the asking." A slow flush spread over Louisa's face as she re- membered that he had said as much to her that night in the Cour la Reine. Nathalie took the flush for anger and she looked away and spoke conciliatingly. " Talented friends are a responsibility," she remarked. She was sorry for Louisa, for she knew the hurt of living in an un- familiar atmosphere, but with Louisa's point of view she felt not a jot of sympathy. Nathalie was not as much a young woman of views as she was one of heart. Her life had been too full of hard work to have left much room for views, and now, as she glanced at the pretty table in the alcove, the twi- light catching on the white cloth, the glass and silver, and considered all the beautiful and com- fortable things that Louisa's purse had brought into the studio, it seemed, all of it, to take on a sinister glint. Her glimpse into the heights of Louisa's pride had amazed her, but had sent her, without hesi- tation, to Keating's side. " I'd rather Keating came in his painting-coat and a flannel shirt than not at all," she declared. Louisa took her in with a little laugh that brought a flush to Nathalie's face. " Of course, my dear girl, I'd not have him stop away ; but I do insist that if he wishes to be a portrait painter and wishes to CLOTHES 103 know the people whom he paints, if he has no evening clothes the kindest thing we can do is to immediately make him feel the need of them." To Nathalie's own embarrassment she laughed aloud. The idea of Keating's going without paint- ing materials that he might buy clothes in which to deck himself struck out the voice of her sense of humour. " You know, evening clothes are pretty expensive," she smiled, controlling herself the best she could. " Of course, Louisa, you have never known a dozen poor people in all your life, and not one of them intimately. I am poor compared with you, but I always have enough for the necessities so you learn nothing of the reality of being poor from me. You could not have known them for the sim- ple reason that they could not have afforded to know you. They could no more afford to know you than they could afford to go to your dressmaker. You see," she laughed, " your riches cut you out of all that. Poor you! But nonsense aside," though she knew it was far from nonsense to them both, " a free man may, after all, think for himself, and a silly question of clothes can scarcely enter in if there is the brain and the talent to make him worth his fight." " You are hopelessly an artist yourself," Louisa laughed, resorting for poise to a manner of great in- dulgence. " You need looking after nearly as badly as Mr. Keating does. Really," she swept Natha- 104 FAME-SEEKERS lie with a keen glance, " you should furnish the rest of us with the spectacle of the two of you taking care of one another ! " " I wouldn't have Keating sacrificed," Nathalie said in a voice she did her best to hold at the level of good-natured banter. " Shall you dress to dazzle, too? " asked Louisa. " I think I shall stay just as I am," Nathalie said with a sudden impulse to be arbitrary. She gave Louisa a long level look into her offended eyes. The moment had not been possible between them a year ago. What was this ungovernable thing that was creeping in between them ? Louisa was amused. " As you like. You will only make me gleam the more ! " " Oh," and Nathalie swerved wearily, " I'll dress ! " " I have never heard that it is perfect tact to break one's habits by dressing down to an eccentric guest," remarked Louisa. " I should want no one to do it for me." " A precious hard time they'd have doing it," Nathalie nearly snapped. " It won't matter what I wear. I have nothing very splendid." Louisa moved across the floor to the stairway and, picking up her grey skirts, she ran up the steps, then, in a moment, bent over the balcony rail with a win- some smile. " Look your best, Nat. There's a dear!" CLOTHES 105 Nathalie looked up at Louisa, her face working. " Darn it," she sighed comically, " I always look about alike, don't I?" " You do, blessed girl that you are," Louisa agreed warmly. Nathalie made an indefinable sound and gesture, then she went into her room. With scarcely a glance into her mirror she got out of one brown dress into another. " No matter what, just so I change it ! " and viciously she shook the discarded dress as she hung it with the care that comes to a woman who has had to economise upon two hooks along the wall. The curtain that kept the dust off her clothes was drawn back and showed a row of dresses, brown, or grey, or green. She considered them with a friendly little smile as she fastened the one she was wearing. " All that feeling about clothes ! Only," she drew the curtain, " it wasn't all about clothes ! " CHAPTER XIII THE DINNER THE bell rang and Nathalie hurried into the studio, tugging at the last hook of her dress. She waited, standing near the fire, trying to quiet her nerves, trying not to care what sort of figure was about to present itself at the door. The door opened and Burroughs came in. He was in a dinner jacket, and Nathalie read the jacket to be a compromise between Louisa's demands and Keating's deficiencies. She sent a sigh backward to the winter before when he had often dined with her and had come just as he had happened to be. They had been gay dinners, and good ones, the eth- ics all in the talk. " Keating not here yet! " Burroughs took Natha- lie's hand and spoke low. " No. Louisa is dressing." She echoed the pitch of his voice, looking up at him inquisitively. " Is something wrong? " " I don't know," said Burroughs. " He was around at my place this afternoon and I've never seen him in such a state of mind. He said he was coming here to-night because he had promised, but 106 THE DINNER 107 it was the last time that he'd be dragged into any such thing. He threatened to give up his studio and go into the country. The Salon and the Fu- ture might go hang together. He didn't want a career. He said there was nothing in it worth the disgust of the getting of it." Burroughs consid- ered Nathalie intently. " I say, Nat, have Keating and Louisa quarrelled? " "Quarrelled?" Nathalie echoed. "But, Bur- roughs, they've never even met! " " Are you sure of that? " "But where? When?" Burroughs made a gesture with his arm that drew an all-holding circle. " They are both free, and this is Paris, isn't it? One never knows." " I don't believe Louisa oh, dear me, / don't know! She wants him to do her portrait now, and she's giving it to me for my birthday. She's going to put on the dress she wants him to paint her in to-night, and she means to tell him about it. Oh, Burroughs," she collapsed into a chair, " I have made mischief! I hadn't sense enough to realise that Keating must go his own way, must be let alone. I hope he doesn't come at all ! " Burroughs smiled at her dejection, but he was as concerned as she. " So you are in the story, too? " " You know as well as I do that I am," she went on cheerlessly. " I deliberately went and hunted him out. I adroitly let him think that Louisa was ill, 108 FAME-SEEKERS was working herself to death. And to-day Louisa is blooming like a rose ! I never saw her look better, or lovelier, than she does to-day! Keating will think" The bell jangled again. " I believe," said Burroughs hurriedly, " that Keating is hard pressed for money." " But surely he's used to being that.' " The quicker Miss Garth knows Keating the bet- ter," said Burroughs, as steps came down the hall. " Don't do anything to interfere with that ! " Nathalie gave him a fervent glance. " I shall never again interfere with anything that is ! " she de- clared. The door opened and revealed Keating hesitating on the threshold. Keating's coat was a cut-away. It was a rusty, very long-tailed cut-away and it had been worn and brushed till it shone at every joint and seam. It was narrow in the shoulders and short in the sleeves. When he gave Nathalie his hand she had a discon- certing glimpse of something dark to which the white cuffs had been attached and the coat was buttoned about him with that distressing bravery which in- sists tragically upon ignoring deficiency of founda- tion. The door of the balcony-room opened and closed and there came the click of Louisa's heels upon the polished steps of the little spiral stairway. THE DINNER 109 At the first glimpse of her slippers and the hem of her dress Nathalie longed to run away that she might be saved the sight of Keating's bewilderment. But she was forced to stand and watch it all, fasci- nated. And when she actually saw Louisa stand- ing there in the great, softly-lighted room, perfect in grace and self-possession she gave a deep breath of admiration, forgot Keating and herself. For Louisa was, verily, a work of art, that, till you caught the breathing, detached itself from things about. The dress was a sort of love affair between heavy stuffs and delicate handling. It was daringly nar- row about the ankles and as daringly free about the shoulders. It was brilliant and of colour at the top and dark and shadowy at the hem. And there, in the shadow, were her small feet in beautiful slippers, and stockings like a web. Nathalie, looking on, realised suddenly that one such dress, one such fantastic and beautifully exe- cuted idea, would have cost more money than Keat- ing would have had to live upon for a year out of his life. The dress was splendid, and right for Louisa. And so was Keating splendid, and right. Hers had been the strange blindness in forcing them together. As Louisa gave Keating her hand, she took him in and her eyes opened very wide, then narrowed and grew dark. As for Keating, he was swept off his 110 FAME-SEEKERS feet. When she spoke to him, giving her hand to him and standing near him, he sent Burroughs a miserable glance, shook her hand till she winced, then rubbed his handkerchief across his forehead and retreated precipitately to the chair by the fire and sank into it, always staring at her, and leaving the rest of them standing. Nathalie caught the new, hard smile that slipped across Louisa's face as she turned away to Bur- roughs, and, full of indignation and pity, she sat down by Keating and talked to him till dinner was announced. She might have talked into the air for all the impression she made upon him. He sat with his chin on his hand, staring over her head to where he could watch Louisa chatting with Burroughs in the curve of the grand piano. And as they took their places at the table, she saw the servant observe Keating with all the contempt of her stupid class upon her thoughtless face. " Where does the clever-poor man belong? " she asked herself, and she realised as never before that he must make his own place in the world. Louisa, perhaps to hide her nervousness, went madly to the extreme of her advantages. She seemed bent on making more of what was already too much. She moved her beautiful hands and arms about adjusting the candle-shades, while the lights played impishly over her spangles, her shoulders, her bright hair and eyes. She laughed at them THE DINNER 111 across the light and Keating smiled upon her like a man who had been drugged. " I wish that I knew how to paint," said Nathalie, feeling that the dress must be explained into its place, that something must be said to clarify the air. She sent a supplicating glance across the candle- light to Louisa. " Louisa and that dress should be painted; they might almost be played. Shall we try after dinner, Burroughs ? " and she got her de- served groan from Burroughs for her banality. Louisa smiled, but her brows were lifted coolly, and she said nothing. " I don't know," said Keating, looking remotely at Nathalie, as if he were being awakened, " I don't know much about clothes," he spoke simply, " but I think it would be too much of a good thing for a canvas. I may be wrong about it, but I shouldn't know how to paint it." Nathalie felt the earth slipping from beneath her feet and Louisa laughed aloud : " I had thought of having a portrait painted in this dress!" she said, looking at him. " All that gold stuff? " Keating wondered, tak- ing her in with his head back and with a laughing glance at Burroughs. " It would be great on a drop-curtain, wouldn't it, Burroughs?" He turned suddenly to Nathalie. " Now, that brown stuff would be beautiful to paint. You promised to pose for me, Miss Corson. There is just time for a try 112 FAME-SEEKERS at it for the Salon. I've nothing that I really care about sending. Will you pose for me now ? to- morrow? " He was eager, and unaware of any abruptness. " But " Nathalie began her protest, gazing helplessly from Louisa to Burroughs, and blushing. Burroughs wore a look of strained self-control, and Nathalie felt that if he laughed she'd as certainly cry. The servant served the soup, then moved briskly about the table with a small Dresden basket of toasted bread. Keating seemed suddenly to awaken, fairly plunged in a spasm of anxiety to seem at his ease, and he took the basket out of the servant's hands and held it towards Louisa. Again Louisa's eyes opened wide but with a well-controlled smile she ac- cepted a piece of bread then, with a firmness Natha- lie had never seen in her before, she took the basket out of Keating's hands and gave it back into the hands of the sharp-eyed girl. And then it was that the incredible thing happened: no one quite knew how it happened, least of all poor Keating himself. Perhaps a button on his coat sleeve caught in Louisa's lace. The plate of hot soup before Louisa, slipped and tipped, and in another moment Louisa was standing by her chair, looking in bewilderment upon the pink bisque flowing down the front of her dress. Nathalie, Burroughs and the servant were on their knees in a moment, doing what they could THE DINNER 113 to allay disaster with serviettes, but Keating could only stand back, paralysed, helpless, crimson and humble, staring in fright at the thing he had done. " Your beautiful dress ! " he gasped. " It must have cost a fortune. How can I ever make it up to you? " " Don't be absurd ! " said Louisa. She was pale, but with all the courage she had left she gave him a smile. " It is nothing but a dress after all ! " Suddenly Keating came towards her with a look of horror upon his face. " Did it burn you? " he asked in a voice hardly more than a whisper. " No, no, no," Louisa laughed hysterically. " Let the dress be ! " she said to the others. " The cleaners will make it like new. I'll run up and slip into something else. Go on with the dinner," she commanded, in a tone the servant girls even are wont to obey. " I'll be down in two minutes." And she went up to her room, the satin slippers and the hem of the rich dress retreating, less gaily, than they had come down. Then Nathalie, her poise re-found in the amazing climax, took things firmly in hand. She told Keat- ing of Louisa's idea of having a portrait painted and that it was to be a gift to herself. She sug- gested the advantages to him in exhibiting a por- trait of that sort, and of a young woman with as many friends as Louisa had. Keating listened, the flush slipping away from his FAME-SEEKERS face, and the gaunt look that Nathalie had noticed in his studio came back. " I'd rather paint you," he said stubbornly. " That's like you, old mule that you are," laughed Burroughs, leaguing with Nathalie. " But, in something simpler ? " ventured Nathalie, desperately. " If 7 could paint I'd be on pins and needles to paint Louisa." " Do you know," and Keating took her in in comical solemnity, " I think it's a pretty good thing that you can't paint ! " Keating laughed suddenly in his boyish way. " Plotter ! " he called her, then gave his attention with a thoroughness that made Nathalie wonder again if his funds had gone too low to his dinner. It is a racking thing to be hostess to a guest who, though a genius, is hungry. " Anyhow," he said simply, " she hasn't asked me. It's nine to ten that she won't now." And he chuc- kled, with a piece of meat and an equally large piece of potato upon his lifted fork. When Louisa paused, a quarter of an hour later, in the shadow of the balcony rail on her way back to the dinner-table to see if she might catch the tone of the talk below, she heard Keating talking, of paint and painters she had no doubt, in a voice more happy than before that evening. She frowned a little, she could not have said just why, to hear the three of them laughing together. Perhaps the un- happy situation had passed; perhaps the falling of THE DINNER 115 the plate of bisque had been merely the climax of some crazy dream. Certainly there could be noth- ing more awkward to come! She went down quietly and took her place again, Burroughs quick to be at her chair, approval in his eyes. " That's more like it," said Keating, taking her in, impersonally, as only painters dare to do, though they do it without any daring, nor even knowing that they do it. " Yes ? " Louisa smiled. She had slipped into the condemned dress of the afternoon. " By Jove ! I could paint that ! " he said en- thusiastically, then flushed as he remembered the ru- moured order. " Will you do a portrait of me in this for Natha- lie's birthday ? " she asked him frankly. "No," said Keating slowly. "But I'll do one for the fun of doing it." " But that," Louisa flushed, " isn't a fair reason." " It's a funny thing," murmured Keating, " how few women have any idea about fair rea- sons. Take my word for it, wanting to is the only reason for painting anything! If I paint a por- trait of you it will be for my fun. You " he laughed, a boyishness making his face look all the more gaunt, " you don't come in at all on that. After it's done maybe I'll give it to you. Maybe ! " The dinner moved along to the end without more actual disaster. There were details knives and 116 FAME-SEEKERS forks left stacked on plates like arms at rest and last drops of Angeline's excellent sauces absorbed by means of broom-like bits of bread but there was nothing that could not be ignored. And Keating; having done a thing much worse than he could pos- sibly have foreseen, having come through the incred- ible incident with his victim still in a good homour, having been hungry and cold and being now amply fed and warm, big child that he was, he contrived to believe that the thing had not been so bad after all, and gradually he became as serene as, during the first part of the evening, he had been ill at ease. And he held sway in word and spirit, going on about paint and painters, the only subjects, he profoundly believed, worth talking over after a good warm dinner. Nathalie served the coffee from a low table near the fire. " Is there to be music, Nathalie? " and Burroughs fondled his pipe questioningly. " There is," she said firmly. Louisa was standing while Keating considered her dress and talked of how he would paint her. Then they came to the fire for their coffee. Louisa slipped back into her arm-chair and listened vaguely while Keating talked. He told stories, and good stories, which savoured not so much of the farm as of what the man who had run away from the farm had learned by looking back upon it. THE DINNER 117 " But, why don't you play? " he interrupted him- self suddenly, looking at Nathalie. " I'd like to," Nathalie smiled. Burroughs went to the piano and Keating followed him, watching his hands move over the keys while Nathalie got out her violin. " It's marvellous to me," said Keating, " how a man can do all sorts of things as well as you do without any grind." " She carries me over the hard places," and Bur- roughs sent Nathalie a smile. " She'll carry a whole orchestra of better men than me one of these days." " A fiddle's a pretty thing," said Keating, stand- ing back and looking on. He had never heard Nathalie play and he watched her handling her violin with delight. He crossed the room and made himself extremely comfortable upon Nathalie's couch. He wanted to look and listen completely. For the moment Louisa Garth was not ignored, but forgotten as blissfully as her presence was included in the general charm and comfort. To Nathalie the moment was an opportunity. Though Burroughs, who was very musical, appreci- ated her art from a side which was closed to Keat- ing, there was, after all, something of the rough- hewn natural man about Keating which it stirred her to think of moving. She took her place in the centre of the great room, space and soft light all about her and a rich carpet under her feet, and she 118 FAME-SEEKERS played till they watched her in amazement, played with her dark face bent above her violin in a com- mon harmony and eloquence, played till her hands seemed to move with a mind of their own, with a skill almost clairvoyant. Time slipped by. One thing was played after an- other, no question voiced of stopping or going on. Keating had become nearly lost to view in cushions, smoke and comfort. There came a pause while Nathalie hunted for some misplaced music, and with a gesture of determination Louisa rose, crossed the room and stood looking down upon Keating. " I want to talk a little about the portrait," she said. " Sit down ! " and Keating cordially invited her to a cushion at the other end of the couch. " By George, but that mite of a girl can play her fiddle ! " and he looked over at Louisa with glowing en- thusiasm. " Yes, she does indeed," Louisa agreed absently. She sat beside him and stared before her for a mo- ment before speaking. " It was at Nathalie's sug- gestion that I decided to ask you to do my portrait. I know, of course, that I am annoying to you. I'd not have thought of asking you myself. She thinks it may be of advantage to you, and I am more than glad if she is right. But, I want to ask a favour of you? " " What can I do for you ? " murmured Keating, THE DINNER 119 taking her in attentively, a threat of his annoying laugh in his eyes. " I want you to promise me that you will take me like any other stranger who might come to you and order a portrait in a professional way." Keating smiled and there was something of the masterfulness upon him that had dominated their other talk together in the Cour la Reine. " It's mighty good sense, all that, but I don't believe that it will work ! " " It must work," she said firmly. " Must? Must is a little bit of a word with every- body livin' in it! She's beginning," he cautioned her. " Why don't you sit here ? " She shook her head impatiently and went back to her chair by the fire. The music began and it seemed to her tired nerves to fill the great room to suffocation. She put her head back and half-closed her eyes. She felt that she had had about as much of music as she could well endure. She could not gather her senses together, she could not " hear her- self think." She started suddenly and looked around to find Burroughs' eyes upon her from across the piano. He was watching her while he played. She flushed a little but returned his smile, then set her- self to endure the music for a while longer. Surely it was late; it could scarcely last much longer. But Keating was ecstatic and unaware of the hour. He was watching her there by the fire, sit- 120 FAME-SEEKERS ting in the great arm-chair with her head upon her hand and her face lost and pearl-like in the shadow of her heavy hair. He was wishing that women would be content with portraits painted like that, would realise the importance of shadows. And Nathalie! She was playing again, playing for him. He knew that well enough, and he watched her as keenly as he listened to her. What a curious pair of women to be living together! Keating would have stayed on till coffee and rolls if Bur- roughs had not taken him away. " Hasn't it been awful ! " said Nathalie to Bur- roughs as they put the music away. " Partly, I admit it ; a veritable surgical opera- tion, but " he laughed, getting out his pipe, " it has probably saved two lives. As for you, I've never heard you play before ! " CHAPTER XIV IN THE BEGINNING LOUISA stood punching the long gold pins in and out of her hat, and glancing from time to time at the face of the remorseless clock which was ticking around towards two. " Nathalie," she turned about desperately, " won't you go with me, just this first time? " " But, my dear girl, I cannot. I have a lesson at half-past two and my harmony at five. Why all this panic? You know Keating as a professional man. You are not a child, and Keating is not an ogre. Paris is neither Philadelphia nor a New Eng- land village." She laughed at Louisa. " You are going for a purpose and, I take it, not merely to pass the time. It is really amusing to see you in such a flutter ! " '*" It isn't ' amusing ' to be in * such a flutter,' * sighed Louisa. She stood with bent head, thinking, listening. Lately Nathalie had changed, was easily irritated, seemed given over to some covert antag- onism, was not only critical but cynical, and very hard upon Louisa for not understanding things she had had no way of learning. Nathalie was working 121 122 FAME-SEEKERS every hour that she could find, and Burroughs was playing with her in the evenings. No doubt her nerves were stretched and every hope of her at ten- sion before her coming audition. But could tired nerves alone have brought so much of change ? Wil- liam Gleason had warned her it seemed a thou- sand years ago that two women could not keep the peace in narrow quarters, that the price of her year would be, inevitably, a broken friendship. She had laughed him down. She flushed as she remem- bered her own strutting certainty. This state of affairs, this restlessness and irritation, had crept in so stealthily that she did not know when it had be- gun. She had been at fault too, had grown more and more secretive, but after all, each woman has her secrets and the right to keep them. She had tried more than once to tell Nathalie of her strange talk with Keating that evening by the river-wall, but some coldness of manner, or a laugh at the wrong moment, or a bit of Nathalie's gay cynicism had put her off. Nathalie would have treated the strange in- cident with the glare of her common-sense. " You are sure, Nathalie, that it isn't odd, go- ing alone to pose? " " Well, yes," said Nathalie impatiently, " it is odd, if you insist. But," she lifted her shoulders, " it is done that way over here. It's done that way in New York, in Philadelphia, everywhere, among professional people, isn't it ? " IN THE BEGINNING 123 " No doubt ! " Louisa looked hopeless. " But I'm not a professional person, and I never shall be. I almost think," she smiled faintly, " that I do not want to be." " You are perfectly right. You aren't strong enough, I think, to * carry ' over the footlights ! But that's a big question, and," she laughed, " this is a little incident. For the time you have chosen to live in a world-apart, you know. Of course, if Keating were a banker, and if your object in visiting him were merely to get stock-market news, it wouldn't do at all." She fastened the catch of her violin-case with a nearly profane little click, then slipped her arms into her coat sleeves. " But as Keating is no banker he won't think it odd in the least. My dear child, he'll even accept your coming as he'd accept the milk-man or the coal-man. Keating is only a painter, and a perfectly simple person." " I might take Angeline and say that she has come to help me with my dress ? " Louisa suggested. Nathalie's mellow voice and her patience broke to- gether. " Take her, by all means, but Keating will make a mess of his work, and will bless you for it ! " " But why ? " ventured Louisa, aghast at Natha- lie's hardness. " Why ? " echoed Nathalie. " Because Keating is an earnest workman, my dear girl, and his one idea in wanting you to pose for him is to get a good canvas out of you. You, like everybody else, are 12* FAME-SEEKERS taking the painter's profession as a pastime! You think he wants you for yourself. He does not. It's for what you look to him. He isn't used to compli- cated women, like you, with wonderful clothes and chaperones. A maid would annoy him just as your dress disturbed him the other night, and the whole thing would seem just theatricals to him. He'd more than likely laugh, and," she paused and smiled to take Louisa in, " you'd not like having Keating laugh at you. As for going alone the thing is done every day, all over the Quarter. The students all pose for one another. It saves money, and makes interesting canvases. So, go ahead in peace! And, unless you stumble and blush on the stairway, no one will take the smallest notice of you." Louisa pinned on her hat, looking from the reflec- tion of her own eyes to the reflection of Nathalie. Nathalie was preoccupied with getting her music ready. " I suppose," she said absently, " that you can't understand how I feel about it, Nat." She was trapped by utter abstraction into stumbling. Nathalie winced, then turned about and looked at Louisa. ** Yes, I can understand," she said quietly. " We both came out of the same sort of world, you know, in the beginning! But I have been able to outgrow the point of view. I'm off," she said and her voice was too light, " Good-bye ! " and with a nod she went out, closing the door softly. IN THE BEGINNING 125 Louisa heard the hall-door close, too, then the iron gate bang to down in the court. Nathalie had let herself go at the iron gate ! Temper, really temper ! She leaned against the tall mirror and looked about the beautiful studio. It was turning out, then, like her old life, her other friends ; even Nathalie ! They were all to disappoint her sooner or later. She had come very little in contact with the student's life, though Nathalie knew it so well. Now Nathalie had no time for its half-work, half-play pastimes, and had made of her studio a world-apart. But she was able to accept its standards because she knew them through and through. Knowing it so well she was able to be above it, to do as she pleased in self- confidence and poise, and she expected Louisa to take her word for it, to fall into the Quarter manners without having been through its schools. It was not that Louisa wanted to be like the rest, that she en- vied them any more. She'd been learning her own lessons at Avril's, but Natalie never took that into consideration. But the book-binders were, or seemed to be, so much older than the Americans in " the Quarter." The book-binders came from the four corners of the earth, and they met in a gay, business- like way there, talkative, and wise, and simple, and it didn't matter to them about having tea together, or evenings. They met there as they'd meet by chance in a cafe, and they made no great fuss about it. She moved near the stove, slowly putting on 126 FAME-SEEKERS her jacket. She'd been almost happy in their " stove-tropics " during the long evenings while Nathalie and Burroughs played. But their world had narrowed in too close. Keating's coming had crowded out peace, would crowd her out in the end. She wondered sharply when and where she'd go! CHAPTER XV MORE BEGINNINGS ONCE started on her way to Keating's studio, Louisa rushed blindly, like a baby first crossing an ocean of floor. She arrived at his gate with a self-accusing thankfulness that she had encountered no one whom she knew. She sent a little smile in spite of her lifted head an apology of a smile to the old con- cierge knitting by her fire in the lodge at the gate. She followed Burroughs' directions, crossed the court, then climbed the three flights of stairs, and she was ashamed all the way of being ashamed, and her heart pounded persistently, out of all time with the silence, the circumstances, and the simple surroundings. When she heard Keating walking across his floor to open the door she drew herself up sharply and met his grave face with a smile which seemed casual enough. Then, somehow, she was inside the place, and the door was shut and the world was safely out- side! She was dazed at first by the sense of space. The big place was, undeniably, bare but it was so tran- quil, so restful and so beautiful in tone ! She moved over to the stove and stood looking about her with 191 128 FAME-SEEKERS her hands held towards the warmth. So Keating has his oasis too, his own stove-tropics. The serious easy-going peace of a well-mannered work-shop that is charming in its sense of home as well, the charm of the real studio, came home to her for the first time. "You don't mind my looking about?" She was able this time to smile naturally. " You see, I haven't been in this sort of real studio before." " Have you never been to Burroughs' ? " " Oh, yes, but his is as * furnished ' as ours ! It isn't a real work-shop like this." " I could use some more furniture here," said Keat- ing laconically. " I believe that I really like it as it is," she in- sisted. From beneath the edge of a high shelf, which ran around the stove corner, all the way to the base- board, Keating had tacked up drawings in colour by Steinlin, from old numbers of Gil Bias, and the mel- lowing of the fire had toned them till they looked like fine old tiles. On the shelf were the tea things for the sturdiest painter likes to cut the long afternoons in two with a cup of tea a cracked blue and white plate or two, and here and there a twin- kling, if inconsequential, bit of brass or copper. An unpainted table with a piece of fine-coloured stuff thrown across it was backed with books, and upon the corner away from the fire stood a small yellow vase of Chinese porcelain with a few flowers MORE BEGINNINGS 129 in it. The vase was nicked like the plates on the shelf, but it was lovely in form and in colour, and the flowers drew Louisa's eyes again and again. A tin kettle which was coated in a very anarchy of un- washed iridescence steamed cheerily away upon the stove. A high packing box was drawn into the cor- ner and served three purposes: a storing place for old canvases, a partition which made a warm corner possible in the coldest weather, and a back for a couch which stood against it. A grey and blue cur- tain covered the box and the couch, and against the side towards the room rested a framed canvas by Burroughs. It was a charmingly quiet study of a young girl standing between the drawn curtains of a room, looking out. A glimpse of sky and roof be- tween the curtains gave an extraordinary sense of height, and of intimacy. " Good, isn't it," commented Keating, looking at the canvas over her shoulder. " It is so odd about Will Burroughs," said Louisa. " One forgets that he does anything at all, and he seems actually to do a great many things very well. I'm afraid one likes him and is amused by him, even uses him, more than one appreciates him." " He paints because he likes to, just as he plays, or," he smiled, " as he talks to a woman. Bur- roughs has a natural-born facility which might take a hard worker anywhere. I wish I had it," he con- sidered her absently. " I have decided to paint you 130 FAME-SEEKERS by the fire. The greyish dress will be very fine there. I have put the box your cook brought in the bed- room there." He indicated the room off the studio. " I am very much afraid you will find the room cold to dress in, though I have had the door open all day trying to get the chill off." " I shall not mind," declared Louisa. " I shall dress quickly. " We'd better get to work," suggested Keating, " for the afternoons are short." Louisa hurried precipitately into the little room and closed the door behind her. It was Keating's room, of course! She glanced about her timidly as she took the pins out of her hat. A sudden thought of her sister brought the red surging over her face. To Mrs. Gleason, Louisa's presence there could have been regarded as nothing less than an escapade. The room was very small and narrow, and one wall sloped over till it met the other, telling the story of the roof just above. The wall-paper was yellowed and cracked, the flower-trel- lis design all but faded away. The wash-stand was a pine table converted by means of a piece of oil- cloth and a " set " of cheap crockery. Above it hung a small mirror on a nail, a distorting glass which caught dizzily at the light. A nondescript cotton curtain hung from the edge of a board shelf to the floor and bulged all along in lines so human that they made Louisa flush again. She wondered MORE BEGINNINGS 181 which human line stood for the old cut-away coat! And the bed? Louisa's eyes came back to that again and again. It was so curiously out of key with the wash-stand and the one rickety chair. It was an Empire bed, mahogany and bronze, and over it was spread a fine old embroidered crepe shawl. It was, to be sure, the sort of bed which is to be found, two or three times over, in every antique shop from the Seine to the Observatoire, and for very little money. But it was big and pretentious and an intriguing occupant of the sordid little room. Above the bed, and caught by four pins to conquer the slope of the wall, was an engraving of a decoration by Boucher, a florid and a gracious thing of women and drapery, treated with that wise airiness which is lost in our modern directness ; the airiness of the scholarly dandy permitting himself a talented lark on canvas. Louisa tugged at the cord about her dress-box and blushed again at the disconcerting row of shoe-toes protruding beneath the cotton curtain over Keat- ing's clothes. She hurried with her dress, looking out of the window as she fastened the silvery belt. There was a frail iron balcony outside the French window and through the design of the grilling she could see tree-tops, the garret windows opposite with their empty flower-boxes and sagging curtains, and over it all the cold winter sky. The curtains in Keating's room were of coarse white stuff, but they were beautifully clean. Over the bed was another 132 FAME-SEEKERS window, a tiny square of light, like a prison win- dow. There was a white curtain at that too. Cer- tainly Keating was a good housekeeper. She took a deep breath and went into the studio, closing the door behind her carefully, as if to close in safely some new and disturbing experience. Louisa felt thoroughly awkward and self-conscious for almost the first time in her life, and the selecting of the pose tortured her. But Keating had plunged his mind into the business in hand, and she found herself in the amazing position of being treated like a chair, or any other piece of furniture. "You," she hesitated, then laughed, " you look at me as if I were just another blue plate!" She felt a little ease from the daring. " By Jove, I wish you were ! " grumbled Keating critically. " It's a funny thing. A woman floats around like a feather and you ask her to pose and right off she's stiff as a poker ! " Louisa gasped. She found an unexpected confi- dence at last in an awakened desire to help, saw that something even depended upon her sympathy and her subservience. That helped her, and the after- noon flew by, as the first afternoon always does, the time more than filled with finding the pose, placing the figure on the canvas, the drawing and the lay- ing-in of the first colour. The daylight was gone before they realised that the work had actually be- gun. MORE BEGINNINGS 133 Keating posed her with the chimney-corner as a background ; not too near, but with her slim figure silhouetted against the creamy tone of the prints on the wall. " I must keep the corner silvery and let all of the light burst," he laughed, " upon your head ! Think you'll be able to stand that ? " " I'm not afraid," she smiled. She stood beside him looking at the start. " Isn't it ghostly ! " she shuddered a little, glancing up at him. " It's a promise ! " said Keating. " Good starts are all good promises, nearly all of 'em, mine at least, broken promises in the end ! " He sorted out his brushes, putting the clean ones carefully aside. " I'll wash them while you dress. They'll be dry by to-morrow then." He went to the stove and took the steaming kettle, then to the sink in the corner where the comfort of " running water " made small pretence at being also decorative. He looked around at her as the steam rose from the hot water. " I'm gloriously tired, aren't you ? " " A little," said Louisa ambiguously. " I'll put on fresh water. Go ahead and dress, then we'll have some tea." Louisa nodded and went into the little room again. She could hear Keating whistling like a boy. He rattled the tea-dishes and shook the stove down so noisily that she laughed into the wobbly little mir- ror just to hear him. Evidently, " work " made him 184 FAME-SEEKERS happy! She came out again with her hat on and her jacket and furs over her arm. They had tea at the corner of the table where stood Keating's books and the little Chinese vase of flowers. Louisa's dress was a shadowy blue cloth, her hat was a soft drooping felt, and a thick black feather fell across it and upon her bright hair. Her dark furs hung over the chair at her back. As she turned the little yellow vase about in her hand and bent her head over the flowers now and then, Keat- ing sighed to see what a wealth of pictures she em- bodied, and he told her so, so frankly, that she for- got to be embarrassed. She remembered with a little smile how she had asked Keating to treat her as a client, and how she had meant to be reserved and careful. Keating needed one half-hour of work to make him forget everything else, to make him as happy and impervious to mere manners as some king in a land without law. Louisa walked home light as air. She tossed back her furs and she held up her head, and from his door to Nathalie's she thought not once of whether she had met, or would meet, any one whom she knew. So much for the pride of one well-conducted, indus- trious afternoon! CHAPTER XVI THE UNEXPECTED ALL glory to the pride of mere doing, but the way to glory is a hard one, and the mere man who toils that way must also live. Keating was a plodder. He was a man of slow force, sensitive and of great heart; a man with whom gruffness was a mask for tenderness, and noisiness a voice for embarrassment. Each step he had gained ahead had been paid for as it had been gained. Opportunity might have hur- ried him on, but opportunity so seldom seeks out a workshop in a by-way. Besides, if opportunity had come to Keating he'd have had, simply, to toil the deeper to do thoroughly again all the inches of a long step ahead. He was no pretender, and he loved work as lighter men love pastimes. The portrait of Louisa Garth was the most important canvas that he had ever undertaken, and it so held him, nerve and muscle, that, while he worked, he realised no effort. Keating's days had always been full, each of its own problems, and he'd kept something of the boy's way of living all for the moment. In the twilights, after Louisa had gone, he looked a long time, and deeply, into the portrait ; and he knew that it was going 135 136 FAME-SEEKERS well, he even hoped something from it towards the future. The far future, no doubt! The immediate future he dared not, would not, face, till the canvas was done. He had made up his mind to that. Louisa, catching Keating's intensity, had posed faithfully and seriously. Not that Keating appre- ciated, or even seemed to realise, either her effort or fatigue. She began to understand that here was a man, a workman, who took faithfulness and serious- ness for granted from another even as he took them for granted in himself. Louisa's pride was going through a strange experience, and her judgment was widening its eyes before new wonders. For Keat- ing, the man of crude manners, the man who had shocked her and humbled her, was another creature at his work, was as gentle with his paint as she was used to seeing men be gentle with women, and a very few days' posing gave her back her first impression of him. It was as if a veil had been drawn over the time between that evening at sea when she had seen him for the first time, standing with Burroughs, out- side the dining-saloon window among the steerage passengers, watching, obliviously, a sunset. She remembered how she had eagerly asked Burroughs who his steerage friend was when he had come in to dinner. She'd asked it lightly ! Keating, in his own studio, occupied, in his working clothes and among his own things, justified himself completely. She sighed over the disconcerting fact that all hours were THE UNEXPECTED 137 not working-hours and that Keating at play was not yet justified. His teachers of play would de- mand high wages, she even glimpsed that, and they'd fail probably in the end ! It would be Keating who'd laugh, and take them in hand. Above all it was Keating, the painter, that baffled and humbled her. Watching him sent the blood into her face again and again, made her remember things she'd said to Nathalie, that Nathalie had said to her, their impertinent concern for the simple man and his unfitness before the mystery of women's clothes ! For, to her bewilderment, Keating had so entirely grasped the character of the subtle, smoky dress, had so adroitly controlled its flowing lines, had so cleverly gathered all the loose ends of the stuff into their in- tended form and style with his beautiful drawing of the wrinkled belt of silver cloth, that Louisa was ready to confess herself beaten. Slowly it was dawning upon her; that mystic, that impenetrable, that su- preme gift of the born painter, that precious compass of his for the appearance of things, that painter's vision which serves him in the place of experience, which guides him till experience has had time to come, which in the end makes of experience a thing worth the pain of it. One afternoon Keating sat boyishly back in his chair a moment. " How much did that lovely rag- tag you've got on cost, hey? " he asked her. Louisa stared down at her sleeve. " Seven hundred 138 FAME-SEEKERS francs," she told him and in spite of herself felt as if at confession. His face went blank and he sat farther back, then he laid down his palette and brushes and came to- wards her, fascinated. " Gee whiz ! " he whispered, taking a bit of the stuff in his hand. " It's silver- lined ? " And he worked no more for an hour, walk- ing about, thinking it over, scowling and laughing by turns. Louisa had heard that many women lied about the price of their clothes in order to save trouble. She felt that such a lie might be justifiable! During the mornings among the book-binders, while Louisa's head was bent above her work, and while her hands taking on the wise little movements now of women's hands that have gained skill in one sort of doing or another were busy with her books, her thoughts played keenly over the prospect of the afternoon, gone or to come, of posing. And, curi- ously, the book-binders, with their sharp eyes and ful- some chatter, had about ceased to annoy her as they had used to do. She even listened with a kind of amusement to the strange tales they had to tell of " well-known " people. And, for the gold-haired Swede, she achieved cordial good-mornings and good- nights with scarcely a thought for the mystery of the hours between day's work and day's work. Louisa was glimpsing the camaraderie that surfaces all the professional world, that hides away the snowy peaks of class, helps on the high-born gifted to profit THE UNEXPECTED 139 by the beauty there may be in bending down, that lifts the low-born talented ones out of dreariness, and makes of all the working hours a life apart from the lives at home. And her hardest lesson here had been as it had with Keating that, for all her self- confidence, they'd been so slow to take her in. They had never taken her in. She could not pretend that they had. They accepted her and ignored her. They thought her a prig, or a fraud, and they laughed at her with good-humoured disgust. One stone had been thrown to ripple the quiet surface of the days of posing. Keating had a passion for verse, liked taking his lessons in life from the philosophers who'd been artists as well, could he owned it get at a man's book when the man him- self would have " scared " him. " Poets are awful dogs, I guess," he had put it one day to Louisa. Then, one unguarded afternoon, Louisa had, im- pulsively and in all sweetness, offered to rebind his dog-eared volumes of Browning. Keating, his face working in frank alarm, had gathered his two old books to him and had flatly refused. That had hurt, but a woman will forgive rather than lose. There was nothing to be gained in arguing with Keating. He'd only have laughed. One afternoon Louisa came in to pose, fresh and gay, and with all the spice of the fine wintry air clinging to her clothes and gleaming upon her face and hair. She found Keating standing before his easel looking, over his folded arms, at his canvas, 140 FAME SEEKERS and a very storm of shadows upon his face. He had not even stirred to let her in, but had called out to her to "come in." "Are you ill?" she hurried to him, looking into his eyes in concern. " Yes," he said shortly, " I'm love-sick." Terror caught her. She tried to draw her hand away. She laughed aloud, and strangely. " Don't you like the portrait after all?" she asked in aimless terror. " I like it altogether too well," he held her hand tight. " The trouble is that the painting is nearly over; that the picture, the excuse for your coming here, is all but gone. I'll have to eat my heart out and learn to do without you all over again." The painted face with smiling eyes and mouth looked down upon! them seeing nothing, telling noth- ing, the painted mouth as banal as a butterfly pinned to a card. Louisa's heart leaped and fell. Everything was falling about her. She took frantic refuge in banter. " Why not paint more slowly ! " Shame drowned her, and flippancy fell flat. Without warning unless the too even mood of all the afternoons of work were in themselves a warn- ing Keating caught her and dragged her to him. He bent her head back and looked into her face, his hand disregarding her hat and hair. " Why won't you let me be? " he whispered roughly. "But I have let you be! Oh, don't!" and she struggled to get away from him. THE UNEXPECTED 141 " Why not ? " he demanded, holding her closer. Slowly the colour slipped out of her face. She re- laxed and stared back into his eyes, the question echoing back and forth from one face to the other. "I do not know why not," she sighed and closed her eyes. Keating laughed, and turning her about so that he stood with his back to the portrait, he kissed her again and again, her utter frailty driving him on. He let all the mockery of his eyes gleam straight into hers. With all her strength concentrated in one effort, she dragged herself away from him and stood holding fast to his wrists with her small hands. He lifted his arms and looked at her straining fingers and he laughed, then he loosened her fingers one at a time and pretended to shake himself free of her. " You are right," he said shortly, " we are here to paint! " He turned to his canvas and stared at it stubbornly, his head low and forward. " I must go," she said brokenly, and moved towards the door. " No, no ! " said Keating, lifting his head and facing her squarely. " You must not do that ! The portrait is worth more than all the rest, to me. And should be to you ! " he added with an insistent gesture. Louisa was white. " I have scarcely been allowed to keep to my standard ! " she reminded him. 142 FAME-SEEKERS " Oh," he moved his arm with a gesture of fatigue, "don't bluff! There's no need. It's not a bit of use with me." He stiffened his shoulders and Louisa saw, and thought of it later, how loosely his coat hung about him. He wheeled about angrily. " Will you kindly get ready to pose? " For a long moment they looked at one another, then Louisa, too woman-wise to be afraid of the man, but in terror of the tears that were choking her, turned and went for the last time, she vowed it ! into Keating's room to dress. The little room had grown very familiar to her, the colour of the old wall-paper and the light through the simple curtains having gained way in her mind over the crudities and inconsistencies. Now he had spoilt it for her, and had made her timid and afraid again. But where was her dress? Usually it was upon the chair at the foot of the bed. She glanced at the bulging curtain underneath which hung Keat- ing's clothes and her face flushed hotly. It was there, just at the end. She could see a bit of the silver belt gleaming against the yellowed paper. With an unsteady hand she took the dress down off the hook and her heart stumbled as the back of her hand brushed against Keating's clothes. She heard Keat- ing walking up and down the floor in the studio and she started guiltily and dropped the curtain, and carried her dress to the other end of the room. CHAPTER XVII A WIRE HAIRPIN LOUISA was standing, head bent and hands struggling with the hooks at the back of her dress, when all at once her eyes were caught and held by something on the wash-stand. Her hands dropped, her dress sagged off her shoulders again, her lips parted and her eyes grew dark and hard. Slowly she lifted a hand and with one finger drew the thing forth from where it was half hidden under the bowl. It was nothing but a wire hairpin ; an ordinary thing with a little patent quirk in the wire to prevent it from falling out. She had never owned a hairpin like that in all the days of her life! She knew that it had not been there the day before, because she had gotten paint on her hands and had washed them in the bowl. Her eyes could be trusted not to have missed seeing it if it had been there when she had emptied the water from the bowl. Keating was painting no one else. He had told her so himself. Pain, humiliating pain, caught her tight and held her. She must get away, away, anywhere so that she need never see the man or the place he lived in again ! 143 144? FAME-SEEKERS When she came into the studio Keating was stand- ing near the stove putting fresh paint upon his palette. She went straight to him. " We have blundered once more," she said, in a hard, dry voice and with no sign of tears in her eyes. " No doubt it has been as much my fault as yours. But it must not happen again. If it does happen again I shall stay away altogether. If you want to finish the por- trait you must help me to see that it does not happen again. Will you please go to work? Because I must, I want to go home early to-day." Keating looked at her over his palette with a mirthless laugh. " You honestly want to go ? " She shrank back and caught her breath, she stared at him a moment as if something had threatened her, then she spoke, with determination at least. " I hon- estly want to." " I don't believe you," he said with a dogged smile. " But you are right, and you shall go. It is the best thing you can do, to-day. Then to-morrow " he laughed, " we'll begin all over again ? " Louisa did not answer and they went to work in silence. As he painted she watched Keating warily. He was white, and his face was set, and as he lifted his brush to the canvas she noticed that his wrists were thin. This time she forgot even to notice the absence of cuffs. Louisa's eyes deepened over the thought that he might be suffering, was doing with- out things that a big-framed young man should hare A WIRE HAIRPIN 145 in order to do his work well, to have his paints, and canvases and the rest. She felt it all with a con- fession of utter weakness, so it seemed to her, felt it above his brutality, over the hurt of that wretched little wire hairpin and the ugly thoughts it stirred. She looked away from the thoughts. She did not want to listen, to know; it hurt so to know! She forced all her thoughts towards the wondering if life was, as Burroughs had told her and Nathalie that he suspected, being hard upon Keating. Poverty ! She had never been shut into a room with a person in possible poverty, in want, before. " Don't frown, please," said Keating, frankly an- noyed. Louisa looked at him, smiled curiously, then went on with her thoughts. " Perhaps," she suggested remotely, " it would be a good idea to work on my dress to-day." Keating did not answer except by a prolonged look through stubborn eyes at her hair, her throat, her face. She was able, in spite of all that had happened, to be momentarily amused with his obstinacy. She went on in her thoughts trying to understand his situation. There had always been a good fire and plenty of coal in the box in the corner. There had always been good tea and fresh little tea-cakes. Details, which a year before had not existed in Louisa's catalogue of life's signs of things, now loomed large and kept her eyes alert. She tried, as she stood there, Keating watching her 146 FAME-SEEKERS mercilessly, to put back her anxiety for his circum- stances, to let her anger have sway. But the anger would not quite rise. Her eyes went on searching, her heart went on fluttering, and the jealousy twisted and hurt her, but anger would not stay. If things were worse than usual then he knew how to hide all that was tell-tale except his own gaunt pallor, and the curious gaze of loneliness that clamours for the man who will not, or cannot, speak for himself. The trouble lives in his eyes and it is the one thing he cannot hide, or smooth over: any hunger whether of body or of mind, does, sooner or later, get up and cry out above its victim's pride. For Louisa the afternoon dragged. They did not talk, there was too much to say ; they were even sul- len. The studio became oppressively silent. At last Keating laid down his brushes and said that he had had enough of it. Without daring to glance at him, Louisa hurried into the little room. She was hurt, she was angry, she was tired beyond words. Her eyes fell upon the little hairpin and with an impulse of very fury she swept her hand over the oil-cloth and threw it upon the floor, then she walked far around it, and did not look that way again. The temper shamed her, but it eased her too, and she came back to the studio, composed and able to look at Keating without a change of colour. " Shall you need me many more times ? " she asked, standing a moment by the door. A WIRE HAIRPIN 147 Keating crossed the room and stood before her. " Don't be afraid," he smiled as she stood, with white face, close against the door. " I've learned my lesson this time. Do you imagine that it is any great treat to me to have you here like this? It will take about two more poses, and you can trust me to finish in one if I'm able to." " Yes ? " she said in a voice she did not hear as her own. " Shall you want me to-morrow ? " " Yes, to-morrow," said Keating. " Very well. At two o'clock to-morrow then." She smiled inconsequentially and with a " Good- night " that was lifeless as paper she got out of the place, Keating closing the door after her. If Keating could have seen her hesitating, looking at his door after he had closed it, things might have turned madly enough for the two of them. So much for the blank, voiceless, saving part that the closed door plays in life. A woman will walk straight into tragedy with a man's hand holding hers more easily than she will reopen a door that his hands have closed. Pride and the closed door are saving con- spirators; admitting that it's worth while being saved ! Keating went back to his canvas, stood looking into it with his own mask off. He was face to face with more than his portrait, for, the girl once out of the place, his problems came forward, more urgent, too, than any question of the girl herself. 148 FAME-SEEKERS He went to the table where their untouched tea was arranged. The cakes lay upon an old blue plate, and they tempted him, for he had eaten no luncheon. Since the beginning of the portrait he had gotten up late that coffee and rolls might serve him for lunch- eon and breakfast. He made himself a pot of tea and drank it, strong and clear, but he put the cakes carefully away in a tight tin box. He counted them as he laid them in one at a time. " If I let them be they'll hold out two more days. They'll be a littl* dry perhaps, but it is the best that we can do ! " The tea warmed him and he wheeled the easel about and looked at his canvas from the length of the room. " It's good," he sighed, and hope crept over him again and soothed him. He washed his brushes at the sink in the corner and as he laid them on the zinc under the stove to dry, he fell into his habit of absent-minded whistling. Keating was used to tight corners, to low food and cold. With the utmost care he covered the live coals in the stove under a blanket of ashes. One idea pos- sessed him and stirred all his stubborn determination to watchfulness. Louisa Garth should never suspect that he was out of money! As for dinner, it was to be a gala night, for Bur- roughs had invited him to dine with a couple of jour- nalists at an old cafe on the Quais where the cooking was good enough to be almost wasted on a too-hungry man. Afterwards he had made up his mind, though A WIRE HAIRPIN 149 he hated It, to have a talk with Burroughs. Keating had found out the fact that a man can't pick up work in Paris as he can in his own country, that the will to work won't can't, even find work for him to do. He glanced out of the window to guess at the time, for his watch had gone away after the vagrant fash- ion of watches in liberal Quartiers where living is so largely hoping. He'd go outside and walk about till time to meet Burroughs at the cafe. He went into his room to put on a warmer coat. Louisa's dress was lying over the chair at the foot of the bed. He picked it up by the collar as if it might have been a pet puppy. With a kind of rough gen- tleness he smoothed the soft stuff and considered the colour. Then he hung it out of the way of dust on a peg at the end of the shelf under the curtain. He chanted a Southern melody as he thrust his arms into his coat, three tries in and out of one sleeve before he came successfully through the tattered lin- ing. He peered into his mirror, regarding himself absently, then, as he bent his head to get his brush and comb out of the wash-stand drawer, his eyes fell upon the hairpin lying on the floor where Louisa's small, angry hand had swept it. The singing stopped. " She's dropped a hairpin ! " He stooped and picked it up, he turned it about and laid it on the palm of his hand examining the little patent quirk with interest. Then once more his inexperience 150 FAME-SEEKERS tripped him up. It would never have occurred to Keating that different sorts of women might be rep- resented by different sorts of hairpins, and, whistling again, he stuck the little wire hairpin into a crack in the wall-paper just beneath the mirror where Louisa would be certain to see it when she came again the next day. CHAPTER XVIII WHILE A CITY SLEEPS MOON and stars were spraying Paris with a silvery mist, melting the face of things back to the fabric of some fantastic dream. Towers lifted into the still skies like ecclesiastical fingers velvet-clad, and be- tween the fingers of the dramatic hand writhed and slipped the Seine, its rippling scales changed by the witchery of the moon into a million stars. Tardy river-craft crept through the bridges, away into shad- owy, lightly-rocking moorings, shaking off trails of light as they passed more stars ! The edges of all things drifted off into the mirrored spaces, and life, above and below, was sunk in its hour of intro- spection, deep in its midnight. Burroughs and Keating had left the two men with whom they had dined, and they came away from the river and up the Boulevard St. Michel together, walking briskly through the frosty air. They skirted the gardens of the Luxembourg, looking in on the trees through the high grille as they passed. The old trees were as still behind the locked garden-gates, as the babies who came every day to play beneath them were still behind the locked gates of their dream- 151 16* FAME-SEEKERS land, or as the great men, who had played beneath them long ago, were still behind the locked gates of the Pantheon on the crest of the hill near by. The potency and rhythm of city-sleep held them silent. As they passed beneath a cluster of lights near one of the garden gates, Burroughs was shocked again to realise the change the last six months had wrought in Keating, and in their silence he sensed sharply, as one does out in the still night, the impenetrable isola- tion of every man, the walls that loom between the best of friends. At a corner a little further on where their ways separated Keating stopped and faced Bur- roughs. " If you aren't in a hurry about turning in, Burroughs, I'd like to go up to your place and have a talk. It's too cold out here in the streets, and I can't stand a cafe any more after midnight." " Come along," said Burroughs, and he led the way at a fair pace. For Keating to complain of the night air fell upon Burroughs like the advancing shadow of what Keating might have to tell him. They rang more than once at Burroughs' gate be- fore the sleep-drugged concierge pulled the cord. The jangling of the bell fell like blasphemy upon the stillness. The stairs creaked under their feet, and the key grated in the lock. They got inside and closed the door with a sense of thankfulness, the slightest noises had grown so enormously out of pro- portion in the quiet of the night. Burroughs' studio was a beautiful place, and com- WHILE A CITY SLEEPS 153 fortable. He had had it for years, and it had none of the look of transiency and make-shift that have the places of the painters who come for a season. The floor was dark and polished till it looked deep as a lake, the roof was very high and crossed with beams. A great sky-light with a white curtain on rings and cords gave almost the effect of being in a sail-boat. The south wall was hung with a fine old tapestry, a lady on a white horse, surrounded by the traditional forest, castle, rocks and sky, making by no means a bad sort of shore to sail by ! A big stove in the cor- ner attended faithfully to the climate. Burroughs lighted a lamp and after a glance at Keating's face he carefully lowered the red shade, then he shoved two comfortable chairs near the fire. Keating sat in his overcoat, letting his soft hat slip down on the floor beside him. He'd grown haggard, and he slipped low into the cushions, with his hands gripping the arms of the chair. " What's up, man ? " and Burroughs frowned down upon him. " Better smoke. You look fagged. Have you your pipe? Here's some tobacco." Keating got out his pipe and with fingers that fumbled he stuffed in the tobacco, then accepted the light Burroughs held towards him. " The fact is," Keating looked up at Burroughs with a misery in his eyes which he was too proud to let into his voice, " for the first time in my life, Bur- roughs, I've got to borrow money. I can't get 154 FAME-SEEKERS around it, for I can't stop my portrait to go to work. Can you let me have a hundred francs, Burroughs, without putting yourself out ? " His voice had sunk to a whisper, and naming the sum was a kind of dying to him. Burroughs had to make an effort to steady his own voice. " Is that all ! Are you sure, Keating, that you don't need more than that? It isn't much." He took out his bill-book and gave Keating a moment to ask for more if he would. Keating shook his head, staring hungrily at the leather book. " More ! My God ! " and he handled the note and pressed it in his fingers. " It seems like a fortune to me ! I'd like just to tell you how I'm fixed," he said, searching for a business-like tone, " so that you will understand if you aren't in a hurry to turn in ? " " Never felt less like sleep," declared Burroughs frankly. " I often sit out here half the night, even when I am alone." He felt his blood rise and flush over his neck and face in the darkness. The deep night stillness so shut them in that intimacy was forced into confession, confession into deplorable nakedness of thought. Of course it was Keating who had the worst of it. Each man settled into his chair. Keating had put the money away and he drew at his pipe with a great sigh. " It is the portrait which has drained me out," he said. WHILE A CITY SLEEPS 155 " I'm not surprised," and the smile seemed to slip from Keating's face across Burroughs' a smile that all painters of women have in common. *' I have painted a few ' portraits of fair women ' myself ! It's a business, like any other, and requires something to go upon, to keep up the stock in trade." Keating turned his pipe about in the palm of his hand. " It takes more money than none at all, at any rate." For a moment they were quiet, resting and taking in the soothing starry-blue of the night sky which shone down upon them through the top- light. " You see, Burroughs," he went on again in a voice which was steady, but fine and low as the voice is always of one who has just lived through some racking experience, " my good old mother left me all that she had. It wasn't very much two houses in a village at the end of the farm. I have the rents now and will have the houses when my father dies. My father gave them to her. But I have to care for them and assume all the responsibility by way of earn- ing my rents. It brings me, in all, thirty dollars a month. She had saved a little money, mother had. That brought me across and furnished my studio. How I'll get back again the devil only knows. I don't much care. Fortunately I feel in no hurry to go back. My rents ! " he laughed, turning the words out slowly. " It sounds well." He smoked, staring into the fire, in his favourite pose of folded arms. 156 FAME-SEEKERS " Wouldn't your father help you out if he knew? " Burroughs looked into the fire, too. " My father believes me to be a fool. The wise old man ! He would give me his last cent if I'd crawl to him, if I'd tell him how wise he is, if I'd ask him to forgive me, if I'd hoe corn all the rest of my days. I like him for it," he smiled, " but I can't crawl." " After all," said Burroughs, " thirty dollars a month is something to start with." " It's riches," said Keating sincerely. " But one tenant has just died and the other house is also empty," he laughed grimly. " It needs a new roof. Leaky roofs make a lot of trouble in this world!" The money in Keating's pocket was like wine to a hungry man ; the red colour burnt in spots under his eyes and he talked fast and nervously. " I could have gotten through this, but it's the frame for the portrait that I can't meet. I hardly know how I have crawled through the last month." He sat forward in his chair to strike his pipe against the fender. " Except for that little white-faced Mary and her easy method of running a restaurant, I'd have about starved. As it is I have not imposed upon her more than I had to. I have had one meal a day for God knows how long, and, Burroughs, I've been caving in. I'm a big brute and I need food terribly. Of course, except for the chance I know there is in the portrait, I'd have shut up my paints and dug WHILE A CITY SLEEPS 157 trenches weeks ago. A man can always get his food if he tries, if he'd honestly rather try than starve. But everybody tells me that I have a good chance of being made a member if I just get the right thing in. There hasn't been an American taken in for a couple of years. The thing is that it would dazzle my father, old blunderbuss ! as ten years of honest paint- ing couldn't do. You see, Burroughs, a man is his own best critic. I know that the portrait is the best thing I have ever done and I am going to finish it as I want to, and give the girl her cakes and her tea through to the end if I have to eat palette-scrapings to do it." " By Jove, I'm sorry. Hang it, man, why didn't you tell me? " " Because telling is harder for me than starving ! To starve in silence is not without dignity." Keating laughed, getting to his feet and looking down upon Burroughs. " I have had time, and occasion, to think it out like that." He walked about the studio ab- sently regarding a canvas here and there where they stood on the easel or along the wall, pinching and fingering bits of fine stuff, and coming up by the lamp to stare in abstraction at the red Japanese shade. " Did you finish that thing you had going of Clothilde in her shawl? " Burroughs asked, putting his hands under his head and his feet on the fender. Keating shook his head. " Not yet. It is put 158 FAME-SEEKERS aside for the moment. So is the girl," Keating bent in sudden mirth. " You should have seen Nathalie Corson stick knives into that canvas, the girl too ! Women are funny! You can read 'em! I told Clo' that I had a big order and that she must let me be for a week or two. She came in whimper- ing last night and I hadn't the heart to turn her out in the cold. She's a regular little fury. I'm afraid to leave her alone in the room with the portrait. Women are queer. I don't know a bit where that mite of two nations picks up her living. Cer- tainly she gets precious little from me. She knows how little I have to give. But when a woman takes it into her head to care about a man, the things she will put up with and the things she'll make out of nothing are a miracle! She," he hesitated, leaning against the wall and surrounding himself with smoke, " is the sort of girl I ought to marry." " You ought not to marry at all," said Burroughs firmly, watching Keating where he stood. " That's the whole of the truth," agreed Keating, " but I'm doomed ; I shan't be able to help myself. I'll marry from sheer weakness. It is easier to get married than not to get married." " I'm not an expert," Burroughs smiled quietly, " but what of that canvas ? I thought it pretty good." " It's good, it's all-fired good," said Keating. WHILE A CITY SLEEPS 159 " But I've been afraid the shawl might sing out in the memory of Miss Garth! I don't mind owning that there are times when I'm afraid of Miss Garth. She's as pretty as a blue-bell, but she's got the tem- per of a cat. I'm not as afraid of her temper, how- ever, as I am of her high-minded attitude towards girls in woolen shawls. I haven't forgotten ! " Burroughs shifted in his chair but said nothing. " If I had the sand I'd send 'em both in," Keating laughed. " They'd show one another off, those two canvases, and make me feel as set up as a Sultan. But I don't think it would pay. I'd lose both girls ! Clo' is a nice little thing, and sweet when the sun shines and when she isn't jealous. She is used to the cold and to low rations, and she does my mending, darning and washing with a conscience which might be put to a better use. She has work now. I gave her the idea of washing dishes in a restaurant for her food. I may have to take the place and di- vide the food with her ! " Burroughs turned his eyes upon Keating and took him in keenly. He wondered what it was about him that drew women of all classes to him; a something which made the girl in the old shawl come " whimper- ing," which turned Louisa Garth into a " cat," which got Keating credit without the asking, from a Mary, the madonna of the Ledger. " Keating," and Burroughs sat up and turned so 160 FAME-SEEKERS he could see the man squarely, " do you mind telling me if there is anything between you and Miss Garth? " Keating laughed, but the laugh sank as he realised the scene with Louisa of the afternoon just gone by. " Who am I that there should be anything between us ? " he asked brusquely. Burroughs put out his hand and straightened a tack in a print on the wall. " Does she perfectly understand you, you are sure, Keating? " " What are you driving at ? " and Keating came near Burroughs, staring down upon him as if he were fascinated. " By Jove, Keating, you shouldn't play with a woman like that ! " Burroughs got out of his chair and paced up and down the polished floor. " Be- sides, think, man ; be practical as well as square. What a life she might give to you! " " I haven't played with her ! " said Keating stub- bornly. " I couldn't afford to play with her. She has played with me, though, till there is not much left of me." " What do you mean by ' can't afford '? " " What have I just been telling you ? Haven't you just given me a hundred francs? She," he laughed roughly, " pays seven times that for an cvery-day, rag-tag dress ! " " But, man alive, Louisa Garth is above that point of view. Do you imagine that she would look upon WHILE A CITY SLEEPS 161 her money, or your lack of it, as any barrier between you if she cared for you? She knows your circum- stances : she is neither blind nor stupid." " She hasn't the faintest idea of what my circum- stances are," declared Keating. " She could not have. If she knew that I have lived on thirty dollars a month she wouldn't believe it. I'll have to live on less than that for some time to come," he sighed. Keating hung his head in the night, for a new con- fusion was upon him, a new realisation of Burroughs' life apart from his, of Burroughs' attitude towards the women of his own world. Class, always class! After all, why should he tell this man, or any other man, whether he loved her or not? Why must they all come meddling with his affairs? His life was hard enough without that. He was, as much as Bur- roughs, his own master. " You all hounded me till you trapped me," he broke out sullenly. " No doubt she likes me; women generally do." He spoke slowly, the words forcing themselves out more than half against his will, but he could not resist the de- fence of his silly boast. His face burnt till it hurt him in the shadowy room. " Life runs away with a man when a woman as beautiful as she is takes him up. But as for asking her to marry me that would be beyond even me ! " The whole air seemed shaken and demoralised, for the borrowing had unmanned Keat- ing, and he'd spoken before he had had time to find himself again. 162 FAME SEEKERS Burroughs considered him a moment, then he paced the floor again, speaking in a held-in voice. " My dear Keating, you must be careful. The same sort of treatment does not do with all sorts of women. You must not let yourself forget that in Miss Garth's way of life certain things mean but one thing, and a man who knows you both as well as I do, who sees you often, understands you both, and cares very much, Keating can read at a glance that you, to say the least, disturb one another." " I have always said that the ways of our lives are different," said Keating stubbornly. " I have told her so more than once." Burroughs stopped in his pacing, frowning, turn- ing Keating's words over in his mind. He had be- lieved that Louisa had seen Keating and talked with him before the posing began. " You have told her so ? " he echoed. " Look here, Keating, Miss Garth isn't a village girl who has come abroad merely to continue a series of pastorals in new fields. I don't know what has happened between you, nor do I want to know. I never told a more absolute truth than that ; take my word for it. But, it is not too fine, you know the two of them like that, in and out of your studio and your mind. With the other girl and her everlasting shawl no doubt you know your own way, but with Miss Garth you are being rather a brute. I have never," he added, with a saving swerve to generalities, " had much sympathy with the WHILE A CITY SLEEPS 163 man who thinks that any independent girl is fair game." Keating looked back at Burroughs in amazement. " So ! " he laughed roughly. Burroughs stopped walking suddenly and dropped into his chair by the stove. He put back his head and smoked in silence. " Keating," he said, and quietly, " this is degrad- ing, all of this talk. I hate it, and I suppose that you do too. It is much too intimate to be endurable. But we have got into deep water and we must get out of it with what dignity we can. I am even going to add a little to the confessing. This is the way the situation looks to me. As for you; I've been down at their studio every day the winter through, I saw you through all that silly affair on the boat, and I know perfectly well that you have played havoc with her peace of mind. As for me ; I want to marry Miss Garth, and now that I know your mind, I shall, from to-night on, take advantage of every opportunity that comes my way. It's not exactly pleasant, all this open-house talk, but it puts us straight. Your frankness deserves mine." Keating was stunned. He had not dreamed of in- volving himself in anything really serious ; he'd known any number of girls who'd have cared, maybe, but treated it as a lark. What was all this sudden fuss about? Then, in the big dark room he saw, as he'd never seen in any daylight, that she was not of his 164 FAME-SEEKERS world, and that, were she to marry him even, were she to come and beg him to take her, she could never belong to him. The man always goes into dark- ness to get his revelations. " I couldn't marry a girl with all that money, no matter who cared," he mut- tered. " If you care for her and she cares for you, then that is not only stupid, but crueL The absurdity of refusing to make a woman happy when she has money enough for herself and half a dozen men like you! Take care, Keating, or you'll bring all her pride down on your head," he smiled. " She'll understand you sooner or later, better than you'll ever allow yourself to understand her." " I'd make her life a daily hell ! " said Keating. " I guess," he laughed, " I must have been cut out to make 'em that." " Then there is nothing more to say about it now," said Burroughs. Keating was standing against the wall near the stove. He turned his head slowly and took Bur- roughs in. The man's profile was fine; the long nose, the well-trimmed beard, the forehead only slightly lined, the well-formed head, and it all re- minded him of Louisa Garth. Not because there was any actual resemblance, but for that other subtle something, that indelible mark of manner and habit. His eyes wandered over Burroughs' clothes and rested upon his hand where it lay upon the arm of the chair. WHILE A CITY SLEEPS 165 With a sullen smile he raised his own hand and clenched it till the cords and muscles were strained. Then he relaxed painfully and spread both his hands to the warmth of the stove. He was horribly tired, and always being driven, driven, from one effort to another. He longed to escape from it. Where did he rightly belong? Where would they tell him, if they dared, that they thought he ought to go? Back to his prairies, no doubt, with their endless skies, and stillness, and emptiness. No, he'd not go ! " The truth is," he said slowly, and there was something of the boy who has been punished about him which caught at Burroughs' sympathy, " that I do not, that I never did, want to marry her. I resign ! " his voice gave a little and his fingers nervously straight- ened the tack that Burroughs had already straight- ened. " But, Burroughs," he said forcibly, " for God's sake let me be till the portrait is finished ! I have staked everything on that and I want to see it through." " Let you be ! " echoed Burroughs. " My dear Keating, no one wants you to succeed with that por- trait more than I do. Do you take me for a man of ice? I know what it means to you. Paint her ; paint her as long as she lives ! That is a question only of * Are you able to paint her ? ' Keating seemed to break and his head sunk between his shoulders. " Painting is hard work for a man like me. I want so much that I do not quite under- 166 FAME-SEEKERS stand. I have a sense of what beauty in life and in work means, but I wasn't born into it. I'm clumsy ! I can't even put the wish into the best words, though it is the very best of me. How I want it ! I blunder and blunder every time I raise my hands. They are so horribly heavy. I hurt everything I want to be kind to, and I hurt myself the most of all. Well," he gave a great sigh, " one of these days, after a little more trying, I'll just clear out! I'll just go away outside where I belong and fall over off the edge of things ! " " Sit down, man ! " said Burroughs impulsively. He went to the corner and got a bottle of whiskey and a syphon from a shelf under the window. He drew up a small table between their two chairs. " Take off your overcoat, Keating, and make a night of it. I should have asked you sooner. There are plenty of blankets and cushions. You may have the couch and the studio to yourself." Mechanically Keating gave in to the comfortable prospect. Resistance seemed so futile. He threw off his coat and sank into the low chair, and sipped gratefully at the tingling drink. " I don't want anything to come between us, Bur- roughs," he said after a while, resting his head on the back of his chair and closing his eyes for a mo- ment. " I'd rather see you married to every girl I have ever loved ! " He laughed. " You can't un- derstand, I suppose, how you are just about all I have WHILE A CITY SLEEPS 167 that I know how to count on. I'm always putting it on, and posing, with the dabblers I meet about here, and makin' a lot of noise whistling in the dark. But I hate it, and I hate myself for it. You see, you know all about me from manger to studio and it's a comfort to know that I'm not going to take your breath away with a slump, or clumsiness. You don't stare at me as if I were some sort of should-be- extinct animal. And I believe you can see, if you'll think about it, what a temptation a girl like that would be to a man like me. She fools me and flatters me with her tact, is it? till I forget what a dolt I am. I did try to fight you all off! " He sat up and bent eagerly towards Burroughs. " You know that I tried, Burroughs. You can't deny that ! " There was a desolation back of Keating's eager voice which thrilled across Burroughs' nerves and set him to pacing the floor again. He pitied Keating, and he hated pitying him as he would have hated be- ing pitied. He came to the stove-corner again and stood looking abstractedly down upon the man. " What I really believe, Keating, is that she is not for any of us. I want to marry her and I shall do my best; but that is what I honestly believe. Cer- tainly I have nothing to base any hope upon. She simply accepts me about the place because I do not disturb her, or get in her way. But that is not just what I mean. It doesn't matter now, at least." The two men regarded one another. " Let's agree that 168 FAME-SEEKERS we believe that, and drop the subject, except when it is natural to speak of her. We don't want to make a ghost of her to stand between us." Burroughs smiled. " I detest talking a woman over. She's actually a sad mite, Keating. Don't you see it? She got tired of her hot-house home and ran away, and we must not take advantage of her. Why, my dear fellow, from the other way around, she is quite as ignorant of the world, and as awkward, as you are, only one doesn't mind because she is a woman and beautiful, because she is grace itself. But she's a lost child, and I suppose about the best thing a decent man can do is to show her the way back home! I know so well what her life has been. I came out of the same sort of hot-house. It is no great harm for a man to get lost now and then, to run away from one thing after another, but it is death to a woman, and disillusionment to a girl. Now, Keating, we understand one another better. Let's drop the subject. What are you doing about a frame for your portrait ? " For a moment Keating did not answer, had lost himself, it seemed, in reverie and smoke. " I sup- pose," he said curiously, " that money does actually make it hard for brains. I can't quite get that through my noddle! As for the frame," he got up and shook himself, running his hand through his longish rough hair, " it's ordered. It will cost me sixty francs. That leaves forty francs for tea, and WHILE A CITY SLEEPS 169 coal, and paint. I must pay Mary a little, too, whatever there is left. In another week the thing will be done, in less time," he laughed shortly at some thought, " if I work as fast as I can. Then, I'll obliterate myself till I know what the picture has done for me. I must get some work, real work, to do at once. I thought, Burroughs, that if I should find something to do, and wanted to disappear for a while, that you'd probably not mind looking after the sending-in day for me? If I should go to the country, or something of that sort, I might send the canvas over here and Lefebvre could get it when he calls for your things? I am trying to rent my studio for the spring and summer terms. Is it diffi- cult to rent a furnished place ? " " Yes, in this quarter, for this time of the year, and for what it is worth," said Burroughs frankly and fully. Keating got up and wandered about the studio restlessly. His foot slipped on a newspaper and it skidded across the polished floor before him. He followed it absently, stooped and picked it up, then mechanically he opened it to the page of advertise- ments. He moved near to the lamp and scanned the column of " Wanted " with cynicism scarcely veiling his interest. " Here's somebody who wants an English-speaking man-servant," he laughed. " By George ! He says he's a painter, and that the man would be principally 170 FAME-SEEKERS occupied in the studio. I could do that sort of thing like rolling off a log! Binnington is the name. Sounds English, doesn't it?" "That's odd," commented Burroughs. "What's the address ? " Keating read the address aloud, then glanced at Burroughs curiously. "Why odd?" Burroughs stirred the fire, smiling comfortably. The air of the place seemed to have cleared with the storm of frankness. " Binnington's an American whom, I heard only to-day, you may have reason to fear ! He's rich, lives on the other side of town, cuts out the ' Club ' and the life over here in the quarter, and goes in for wire-pulling. My dear man, they say that he's made up his mind, and his wires, to be elected this year to the Beaux Arts. He's your ri- val, for the two of you can scarcely make it in one and the same year. They're very good to the Ameri- cans over here, but not often as good as all that ! " " That's funny, isn't it ? " and Keating stared before him with the paper hanging limp in his hand. " It's too funny," said Burroughs grimly. " It savours of the practical joke. But," he sighed, " it's just Paris, after all! " Keating folded the paper and came back to his chair. They had another drink and talked for a while of Paris and its high and by-ways, then Bur- roughs lighted his candle to go up to bed. He WHILE A CITY SLEEPS 171 piled cushions and covers on the couch for Keating to arrange as he liked best. " I shall miss my little Empire crib," Keating laughed, as he spread the blankets over the couch. Burroughs put a candle near the couch, and with a *' Good-night," climbed up to his balcony room. Burroughs slept badly, dreaming and tossing, wor- ried vaguely by shadow-like troubles. At last he opened his eyes and gave over trying to sleep, amused himself with watching the dawn creeping in among the wooden beams. The stars were still shin- ing and he looked on through the sky-light at the coming of the day. All at once he heard Keating groan, heard him throw back the covers and move softly across the studio. Then there was a rustling of paper. He heard him move back to the couch, heard the springs give. Then there was the scratch- ing of a match, and the candle-light did its best to climb up to the edge of the daylight. Without asking himself why, Burroughs crept softly out of bed and peered down into the studio through the balcony-rail. Keating was sitting, half-dressed and in his stock- ing-feet, on the edge of the couch. The candle stood on a chair drawn close beside him. Over his knees was spread a map of Paris, the sort of small folding map the stranger carries in his pocket. In his hand he held the newspaper and he was looking from the address in the " Wanted " column to the map on his 172 FAME-SEEKERS knees, tracing slowly and carefully with his finger, straining his eyes over the fine print in the uneven light. Burroughs felt guilty, as if he'd stooped to read another man's letter. But he stood still, staring down, fascinated. The half-light obliterated all but the essentials and the big forms, and it was as if he looked upon a cartoon of Keating and his trouble. The heavy, bent head, the big-boned, badly-nourished frame, the curious affiliation of awkwardness and deftness in the movement of his hands, the tragedy, the paradox of a man bent on living a life into which he'd not been born. Burroughs' eyes fixed on the coarse, grey woollen socks that made Keating's feet look enormous. The socks seemed to tell the whole, fine, hard story! Chilled through, Burroughs crept back to bed. Poverty and Class, the enemies of the simple man of gifts ! Burroughs slept into the broad daylight and when he wakened suddenly and jumped out of bed he looked down into an empty studio. The couch where Keating had slept was in order, the chairs in place and a bright fire burning in the stove. CHAPTER XIX CONFUSION LOUISA was a half-hour late. Keating had every- thing ready for work, and the tea things all laid ready, that none of the precious daylight need be wasted in ceremony. All day he had brooded over his portrait and his problems, and his nerves were getting the upper hand. He was impatient now to be through with the thing, free of it and all that it stood for. But his long talk with Burroughs had, after all, found him his own ground again. Put- ting his situation into words' had stirred all the dregs, but had let him see to the bottom. And his egotism, talent's faithful crutch, had helped him across the hours, till he was able to believe once more that that which he might not have he did not want. At least, he'd found what comfort there might be in a look beyond his moment. Louisa be- ing late, he went to work on the background, not daring to think that she might fail him. Suddenly there came a hurrying step up to his door, and, after a rapid tap-tap, Nathalie Corson burst into the place. She was pallid and out of breath, and she looked as if ghosts had chased her up the stairway. 173 FAME-SEEKERS " Keating ! " she gasped, " I've come to tell you that Louisa can't come. She's had dreadful news from America ! " Keating collapsed with so frankly dismayed a first-thought for his canvas that Nathalie was forced into a shocked laugh. " I'm damned," he whispered. " What has hap- pened now ? " " It's Louisa's sister, Mrs. Gleason. She's been thrown from her horse ! " " Killed? " " No, but I guess it's pretty bad. They have cabled Louisa to wait for news. She was a fine horse-woman, and, I suppose, too venturesome. It happened in Virginia, where they were spending a month with friends. Mrs. Gleason is much older than Louisa, and had finished school and was mar- ried when Louisa and I began. I scarcely knew her at all. It has been simply awful, Keating. They sent the cable to me, and I had to tell her. I feel as if I'd been thrown, too! Mrs. Gleason is the only near relative Louisa has at least, the only one she seems to care about." Keating crossed the room and sat on a straight chair against the wall near his bedroom door. He wanted room to think in wanted space in which to get a focus upon this new calamity. Nathalie's eyes followed him, searched over him, and finally surrounded him in a concern that almost CONFUSION 175 forgot about Louisa. It was as if she had in- stantly shut Louisa's troublesome spirit out and had locked the door. Nathalie saw the change in Keat- ing, sitting there against the wall, shocked, and all the early-afternoon light full upon him. " Of course, this means a lot to you, Keating. You've got to finish that portrait." Keating did not answer. There seemed nothing to say. Nathalie went to him and leaned against the wall beside him, and together they looked at the canvas. " It's perfectly beautiful," she said at last. " I know it," agreed Keating. " And I know that you know it," Nathalie smiled. " That's something, isn't it? " " It's about all," said Keating. Sympathy and appreciation, Nathalie's own par- ticular sun and moon, had brought the glow back to her face. " Keating," she spoke simply, " are you hard up? " " Always," he told her. And Louisa, for all her trouble, had no place at all for the moment in their thoughts. Artists are all as selfish as children, and often as childish as they are selfish. " Not more just now than always?" Nathalie was firmly insistent. " And what if I am ? " Keating asked her. " Simply, that I am not" she said, " and I hope you won't forget it." She turned away from him 170 FAME-SEEKERS and went to the canvas, looking closely into the painting. " Do you know," she said impersonally, " I'm not sure that I like smiling portraits. It's rather frightening ; a face always smiling, smil- ing! Keating," she wheeled about, direct again, and earnest, " you have no more right to starve a work of art than you have to starve a baby. Re- member that ! " Keating paled, but his mouth set. He went to the window and stood with his arms on the ledge, looking out at the March sky. Nathalie sighed and studied his back, then she looked out over his shoulder. " Everything seems to happen at once over here, doesn't it? That seems to be what the month of March is for! It's certainly the chosen month of the * survival of the fittest,' " she smiled. " No doubt the sky and the trees are as troubled as we are; if that's a consola- tion! Of course, I'm certain that Louisa will buy the canvas from the Salon, as you have refused to treat it as an order. It is all that she can do." She spoke carefully, and with a little manner of prac- ticality. " That'll help out." Keating turned about and gave her a look. "Help out?" " What are you driving at ? " Nathalie asked sharply. Keating stiffened and looked savage. " Do you think I'd touch her money? " CONFUSION 177 Nathalie stared at him, fascinated. Her colour slipped back and left her as pale as when she had come in. "I didn't know," she said unevenly. " Didn't know what? " Keating scowled. " I only mean that I feel like that about it. I can't take money from a woman from her when I need it ! Can't you understand? " " Why not treat it like an order, like any other order? " " Because it isn't like that, and you know that it isn't." " I don't at all, know what I know, Keating," Nathalie smiled faintly. " Have you fallen in love with Louisa?" She did her best to speak lightly. " No ! " Keating thundered it at her. Nathalie smiled and took him in. " You are a baby, Keating. Do you imagine that you can lie to me? The portrait was to have been a present to me, to hang in my studio, to have after Louisa has gone. Do you hate me, too?" She shot him a glance, amusement and patience mixed. " You shall have it after I've exhibited it," said Keating. " I'll give it to you. I shan't have room for it here." Nathalie imitated his self-supporting pose of lightly folded arms. " I shall like it, even better, that way," she said. " When is sending-in day for the New Salon? " 178 FAME-SEEKERS " I've another week, but it must dry, and I want to look it over." Nathalie stood a moment, considering the tea- table. Absently she took a cake off the plate and ate it, Keating watching her and wondering cynically if she'd eat them all. The cake was stale, and she found it hard to eat it. Having begun, she gulped the last of it. She buttoned her coat absently, pulled out a hat-pin, considered it, and put it in again, woman-wise, then she faced Keating with reso- lution. " No matter what happens, Louisa has got to finish posing for you. There are no two ways about it. She must pose ! " Keating lifted his head and looked at her as if she might have been a vision. " But, will she ? " Used to being beaten, he had already resigned him- self. " Won't she go home if her sister dies ? " " Home ? Why, Keating, if her sister dies, Louisa will be as homeless as you are, or as I am." " You are homeless ? " Nathalie nodded. " I've chosen to be, and got used to the shock of being allowed to be ! That's about the most homeless homelessness there is, I guess. Sometimes I mind. I used to. I used to have times when I fairly broke my heart with wish- ing that my father and brothers would come and handcuff me and lock me up in a room full of com- fort and girlish things, Keating. But I never CONFUSION 179 owned up to it. I'm broken in now, and glad that they let me have my way. At least I oh, yes, I am glad! I look glad, don't I? We all look glad, we fame-seekers ! " For a moment the two stared out of the window, the confession of disenchantment having filled the room, too full for mere words. " We seem to be in the same boat," said Keating remotely. " I must be off," said Nathalie firmly, avoiding his eyes. " I dare not miss a lesson now. I have my audition three weeks from to-day ! If it weren't for my lesson I'd go down to the studio and bring her back with me now. But, if you must have her this afternoon, I can send her a ' bleu ' on my way." " Does she care much for her sister? " asked Keating. "I don't know," said Nathalie. "It isn't my idea of caring to go months without speaking peo- ple's names even, then having hysterics when some- thing goes wrong." Keating looked at her curiously. " Women are hard on one another," he commented. " Oh, I suppose we are." Nathalie winced, then squared her shoulders. " It's all too easy like that, isn't it? It seems to me as if Louisa is so ve- neered, that feelings can't get either in or out. Per- haps I'm wrong. I'm afraid this winter of ours to- gether has scarcely been a success for Louisa and 180 FAME-SEEKERS me. She irritates me so, and I'm ashamed of things I've said to her lately. I've no business to try liv- ing with anyone when I'm working as hard as I have been forced to do this winter. Work like that makes a woman hard, too, and gives her a veneer from the other way around. Louisa may care very much, and it may be that I've grown so far away from her point of view that I can't judge her justly any more. Do you want her to-day?" Keating looked alarmed. " Maybe to-morrow. Is she much upset ? " Nathalie was standing against the door where Louisa had stood yesterday just before going out. " Her eyes are red," she smiled. " Men can't en- dure tears, can they? " " I don't want to paint 'em ! " declared Keating. " I'll send her to-morrow, then, without fail," said Nathalie, and she had her hand on the door- knob when Keating called her back. " Yes? " she queried. Keating hesitated, then he spoke, rapidly for him, " When I've got through with this portrait, I'm thinking of going to the country for a while, maybe a few weeks. I'd like to rent my place while I'm gone, of course. If you hear of anyone looking for a studio, will you tell them of this one? n Nathalie caught the strained tone of his voice and wondered. " Of course I will," she told him. " I'd like it myself, to finish my next three weeks CONFUSION 181 of pegging up in peace. But that would hurt Louisa's feelings." M You women never take one another seriously," commented Keating. " Imagine a man having his feelings hurt by a thing like that ! " " That's the very root and breath of our trouble," Nathalie sighed. " Instead of worrying that men are not fair to us we've got to learn to be fair to one another. I must run, Keating, or I'll be late," and with a strong hand grip she hurried out. " Sandy kid," smiled Keating at the closed door. Then he carefully blanketed the red coals with ashes, ate the remaining tea-cakes and made himself strong tea. CHAPTER XX THE CABLE " EVEEY little sound startles me," Louisa sighed, and she pushed her hair back with a gesture of fa- tigue. " Nathalie promised to come right over if a cable came for me. I suppose I might as well have tea here, if you want me to. It's fearful, this un- certainty ! " Louisa's trouble had wiped out her consciousness of her own affairs and surroundings, and she counted upon the utter sympathy and in- terest of all those about her just as she'd have done in her own world where she'd always been considered and spoilt. The portrait was practically finished. The pos- ing had come to an end. Louisa had folded her dress and put it in the box to leave ready for the maid to call for. There was that curious discom- fort that always comes with the end of a piece of important work, and Keating felt it even as Louisa felt her trouble. It made almost necessary some sort of ceremony, a prolonging, for manners' sake, of what one is really thankful to have finished. It was as if one said to oneself, " It's good to have finished, but what on earth will there be to do to- morrow, this big thing done? " 182 THE CABLE 183 They got through the idle, the suspended moment by attention to all sorts of small things that came in their way, and to Keating at least, talk about Louisa's book-binding was one of these small, but momentarily useful things. That she really deeply cared about it, he never for a moment believed. Why on earth should she? That was Keating's way. Two volumes wrapped in tissue paper lay upon the corner of the table. Keating lifted them and looked at them again. He feared a word about the real trouble that haunted her as any boy fears ghosts. " You know," he said, looking around at her frankly, " I can see that they are awfully well done, but I don't like 'em a bit! You see, a book is a book to me, something to read, to carry around in your pocket and hold in your hands, sort of an intimate friend. With all that gold stuff and design they seem sort of dressed up. I couldn't read one of 'em to save me! I couldn't think of anything but trying not to spoil it." " I don't feel that way," Louisa wondered slowly. *' No, of course, you don't," Keating laughed. " Because you don't care, never even think, what things cost. You see," he added simply, " that pre- vents you from understanding what work means, or even putting any great value on it. That's why your sort of people always waste so much work, and go in so much for fiddle-faddles and things that don't matter." Keating was not arguing, nor was FAME-SEEKERS there a trace of complaint in his voice or manner. He was merely stating what he believed to be facts. Louisa drank her tea, then took her two little volumes in her hands. " They have one value that I do understand, though," she smiled, and there was a wistfulness about the smile that spoke eloquently of the distress at the back of her mind. " I've learned many, many things outside of books while doing them ! " She stood to go, wrapping the soft paper about them with slow moving fingers. Suddenly she laid them back on the table carefully, then stiffened, and the colour slipped away from her face. Someone was coming up the stairs ; it was a woman's step, and coming slowly, as if carrying something heavy. Keating stood too, and they watched the door, tense, listening, waiting together. It was Nathalie, and the heavy thing she had to carry was the bit of blue, typed paper the cable. She opened it and gave it to Louisa, and stood with her arm across her shoulder while she read it. " Grace died this morning. Wait in Paris for im- portant letter. " WILLIAM GLEASON." Louisa slipped down upon the lounge and stared into the fire with her hands clasped tight. Mechan- ically, Keating went about making Nathalie a cup of tea. A man must do something. Nathalie drank THE CABLE 185 the tea as mechanically. Such things are bridge- builders over bottomless moments, and no one is able to build them out of talking. No one who isn't made of ice or manners. Louisa looked around at them, and her lips trembled. " I'll get my coat, Nathalie, and we'll go home, if you don't mind. I left it in the other room." She walked across the big floor, the two watching her dumbly. She put on her coat and hat and looked unseeingly into the uneven little mirror, her own face shocking her. Then for the first time her eyes fell upon the little hairpin that Keating had stuck into the wall- paper where she'd be sure to see it! A wonder slipped over her mind that life would torture her like that with a hideous, mean, small thing. She took the bit of rusty bent wire in her fin- gers, and she went to the window and opened it, then she flung it out and shut the window very softly. She turned about, and the little room held and filled her eyes. She was so tired that she could stand no more, and there was the door open ! More goading! She was not even allowed to be alone. In a moment all things, and pride, went down within her, and, flinging herself face down upon Keating's bed, she cried as only women and children may cry. Nathalie came in to her and closed the door. " Oh, Nathalie," she moaned at last, " it's wrong, wrong of us to come to live so far away from the ones who care about us ! " CHAPTER XXI BOOKS AND BINDINGS KEATING tossed across a troubled night into the dawn of his hard day. Yesterday he had been a painter, had arrived at being a painter by a way so uncertain, so toilsome, that he could scarcely believe in it at all; yesterday he had finished a portrait of Louisa Garth. To-day he was a penniless man, sit- ting in his overcoat by a cold stove, staring across the big room at the portrait, finished only yesterday, as a stranger might have done. And he had kept his promise to himself. That was something to his credit, though it did little enough towards cheer or warmth. Since the night actually but a few days ago when he had bor- rowed money of Burroughs, and they had had their strange midnight talk together, and Burroughs had told him that he hoped to marry Louisa Garth, not one incident had occurred between them that Bur- roughs himself might not have shared. The humili- ation of that night had sunk Keating's spirit to the depths. But he'd caught at something new in the darkness, had realised his own lack of sophistica- tion, and had decided once and for all that the so- 186 BOOKS AND BINDINGS 187 phisticated world was not for him; that he did not want it! The long talk had been racking, coming, as it had, upon the heels of borrowing, but for all that he had profited. The night would stand like a ghost between him and Burroughs always. Ghosts are made, more than less, of humiliation, and if they are ever laid it is because of a new pride that comes of their oppressing presence, pride slipping in when oppression is worn out, and growing like the staunch weed it is, once there. Keating bent over with his elbows resting on his knees, stuffing the tobacco into his pipe, anxiously looking into his pouch to see how much of the conso- lation there was left to him. In the crude, early afternoon light his clothes looked as shabby as they were, and his head and hands as rough as they were. The moment was given over to reality, to fact. Alone with need, in the fireless room, with his mask off, Keating's face was as bitter as the life tasted in his mouth. And Louisa Garth he laughed to think of it was in her studio in the Rue Falguiere, mourning for a sister she probably had never really known, wait- ing for letters, a hundred of which would not change the simple fact of death, eating her heart out for the things all her money could neither buy her nor mend for her. The death of Louisa's sister had saved Keating much and Louisa, too, no doubt; had carried 188 FAME-SEEKERS them over a crisis that, let alone, they'd scarcely have seen a way to bridge. The portrait had been finished in spite of everything. And now he was rid of the girl for ever ! He declared to himself that that was the way he felt about it. Keating, though he'd have resented being told so, was in the habit of being in love. It had never gone deep with him, but it had served to decorate his long, hard way. Till to-day he'd never felt any shame in it; had never reasoned about it at all. But Burroughs, with his considerations, had forced him to see that there were two ways. He wondered, flushing, alone and in the biting cold, if they all re- membered him, all the girls he'd known. The friendly egotism moved, and he looked at his can- vas, and vowed that, sooner or later, he'd put pride into their various memories of him ! He walked up and down the room. It was sharper there in the studio than out of doors. He was free till four o'clock. He could have gone to a cafe, but there'd be other men about, certain to be someone or other who'd know him, and there was no talk in Keating for that hour. So he walked his hour by, back and forth, over the floor. The fireless place and the finished por- trait had as little intimacy for him during that hour of waiting as would have had the benches and post- ers in some railway station, with a strange city out- side its windows. The hour did come to an end, BOOKS AND BINDINGS 189 and for one moment he stood with his hand on the door, a hurt smile about his mouth, and something he'd have allowed no one to see in his eyes. Then, mechanically, he went outside, locked his door and started down the stairs, holding the key in his hand, that he might give it into the care of the concierge. Half way down the last flight of stairs Keating stopped and stared over the high blank walls for a hiding-place. Louisa Garth was coming up ! Louisa was moving slowly, and her shoulders drooped as if she were tired out. She looked up suddenly and saw Keating standing above her against the wall. She smiled faintly and came on to him. " I've come for my books," she said. " I'm just in time! I left two of them the last time I was here on the shelf in the studio. They are tied up in a package. Didn't you see them? But," she smiled, " perhaps you haven't dusted your shelf ! " " But," and Keating blocked the way stubbornly, " I have been out all day, and it is cold up there." " Ah ! " she smiled again. " What does it mat- ter? It certainly can be no colder than it is here, and not as draughty." Keating stood with his hat in his hand consider- ing her as she stood against the light. The wintry air and colour filtered up about her from the bot- tom of the well of stairs, drawing her slender sil- houette in a strangely bright line. Keating thought of an old drawing he had seen in a museum, a draw- 190 FAME-SEEKERS ing of a lady done in fine outline, and her heart painted in, in bright flat red, on the breast of her white dress, and fine points of colour in her eyes. " You are very inhospitable." She moved by him and above him, then glanced at him over her shoul- der. Her smile was mirthless, but it had all the sweetness of a woman who has been suffering as deeply as she knows how to suffer and has succeeded in getting back her habits of life, falling again into the saving way of routine. Keating, dumb and clumsy, followed her, unlock- ing his door, fumbling the key. " It is cold in here ! " She laughed a little to see her breath upon the frosty air, and she tucked her hands deep in her muff with an exaggerated shud- der. She went over to the corner where she had left her books. They were lying on the shelf, untouched. She turned the little yellow Chinese vase about in her black-gloved hand a moment: it was half-full of blackened water, and the flowers were lying on top of the ashes under the stove. " How dreary it is here to-day ! " She turned about, standing against the table and looking around the studio and at Keat- ing. " I wish you'd tell me the whole truth about something ! " She bent towards him as if she'd com- pel the truth, as if she could compel it. " Will you tell me why it is that I antagonise you all so ? " Keating was mentally painting her as she stood there, slim and wonderful in her black dress and furs BOOKS AND BINDINGS 191 against the light-toned corner. " What ? " he said vaguely. " Antagonise who ? " He was won- dering if she'd ever care for Burroughs. " Yes," she said, her voice a little hard. " You are all almost unkind to me. You leave me out of everything that matters. Even Will Burroughs, when he talks with Nathalie about this precious ' work ' you are all so lost in, leaves me out, forgets that I am in the room, takes my lack of intelligence for granted, as if I were a child only a little too old to be sent quite out of the room. Do you think me so incapable ? You know there are people who think I do rather well at my work. You don't know them, so you do not consider that." Keating smiled faintly, then he took the books out of her hand, and, untying the paper, looked at them curiously. " You see," he said slowly, " it's hard for me to put things into words, but," he looked from her to the books, " but these aren't books to me at all, and I suppose, in the same way, your clothes and flubdubs keep me from really believing that you are a human being. I'd end by tearing the cover off, I guess, or I'd give up reading! I guess that's it." " I see," Louisa smiled. " And you suppose that I do not realise that nothing would be lost to the book if you did tear the cover off? May I tell you what you all seem to me? Snobs." She spoke quietly, no trace of unkindness or resentment in her 192 FAME-SEEKERS voice, but as if she were merely getting at a truth, even a little amused over it. Keating laughed for answer. " One has to learn to live among you, just as one must do in any foreign country. You are selfish and you are difficult. Much more so than the sort of snobs I'm used to. I suppose it is your armour ; I suppose you must be like that in order to keep up your dignity when luck isn't good. But," she smiled, " you are dreadful people for a mere human being to live with." " If," said Keating seriously, " you'd have said these things any other day than to-day, I'd have been happy to argue with you. I'm rather tired of even my own sort of snobs to-day. There are days when life is too real for banter, Miss Garth." " Snob ! " she flashed at him with a laugh that was more spirited than any he'd heard from her in a long time. Keating stood silent. He was late, he'd have to tell her in a moment that he must go. He wondered if he'd ever talk with her alone again. What she was saying didn't much matter, but Louisa had gone over near her portrait and stood considering it. She turned about and looked at Keating earnestly. " Of course, I know that you have been troubled lately. I can see right through all my money, you know! Don't you realise that I BOOKS AND BINDINGS 193 did not earn my money; that it was left to me? that I did not either ask to be born, or ask for money? Why won't you let me buy my own por- trait?" Keating looked back at her across the cold light. " Because I do not wish to sell it. Because the one luxury I have is in my free opinions, and I have opinions about " " Oh," Louisa broke in impatiently, " you think I do not appreciate it, that I want it because of vanity and sentimentality, and all that! Opinions! You are hopeless, all of you. I honestly want the portrait, and I know a little, for all that you think I do not know, about the priceless side of things. Do you know," and she lifted her head, " you and Nathalie have taught me much, but I've been learn- ing from others, too. I think that you'd have something to learn from them, and their sort. I've been going every day, for months, to a bookbinder's studio, and I am the only American there. They have not taken me in, either ; but they are," she hesitated, " at least, they are grown up and of their world worldly. They play fair, these Europeans, and though they dabble in their small sins, they aren't hypocritical about it. And they aren't pre- tentious. Grown-up ! " She spoke slowly, smiling as she turned the word over. " I think that is what I mean. They play fair ; they are frank and not too 194. FAME-SEEKERS tragic. They have all the wisdom of the old world in their eyes and ways. I think you make a mistake living here among Americans. It keeps you young. Yes," she said thoughtfully, " that's it, I do believe. You paint well, and play well, but you trifle with life, and trifle with all the big things that are nt directly of your paint or of your music. I," she smiled and picked up her books and tucked them into her muff, " am going away. And, though I don't mean one bit to be unkind, I am not sorry to go, and I hope that nothing ever induces me to come back again ! " Keating's face was aflame and his thoughts came blurred and stupefied. " Are you going to America? " he asked her. " No, I'm not going back there now. There is no reason for going. My brother-in-law thinks I should stay on here for the present. I have grown to know Paris this winter, and I shall stay on, but certainly not in the Rue Falguiere. I shall go and live on the other side of the river, among the rest of the unwise, unstriving world! Don't you think I'll do better over there ? They " she laughed, a lit- tle catch in her voice, " will be glad to see me, and they'll think my book-covers quite wonderful! At least," she laughed, " I, too, have been growing up, and a little praise won't deceive me." Keating's hand went up and he laughed brusquely. He was tempted to shock her into a yet deeper real- BOOKS AND BINDINGS 195 ity. " That's odd ! I'd thought of going over there a while to live myself ! " "Really?" Louisa looked at him curiously, star- tled. " I shall hope to profit by it, if I go," said Keat- ing sharply. Louisa turned her eyes back to the little yellow vase. " I hope / haven't seemed brusque, in say- ing all these things. I did not mean to be in the least ill-natured, or unkind. It only seemed worth while to me to get at the facts about us all. One must talk about mere facts once in a while ! " She walked across the room and looked for a long mo- ment at the portrait, at her painted self, and into her painted eyes. " I hope you will have a real success with the canvas," she smiled at him sincerely. " I shall have news of you through Nathalie. I must go," she said suddenly, with a brisk little formal air. She came to Keating and gave him her hand, and in an another moment, an incredibly brief moment, she had gone ! Louisa Garth, in her new black clothes, and with her two elaborately bound books under her arm, had gone. She'd never go through that door again, either in or out, and they both knew it. Keating tried his best to like his own part in the scene just lived through. He suddenly realised what the slipping time might be losing for him, and once more the old grey door was opened and closed. This time the grey room had its while of gather- 196 FAME-SEEKERS ing dust and utter stillness, for it was a long time before Keating came back to demand his key of the concierge. Even she never came up, nor disturbed anything. She knew better than anybody that there was nothing to be found worth while in a poor man's studio. CHAPTER XXII THE GIRL AND THE STAB " I'M nervous," confessed Nathalie, huddling down in an arm-chair in the middle of Burroughs' big studio. They had just come in together, and Burroughs glanced at her across the lamp he was lighting, then he tipped the shade carefully so that it screened her eyes. " Well, there is an hour at least in which to quiet down before Keating can possibly get over here. I'm a little nervous myself, if that is any comfort to you ! " He brought some soft pillows for her arm- chair. The cold weather had suddenly broken and spring warmth seemed to have arrived in a night, a night that had set in cold enough. All day long the air had been murky, and .the clouds flying low. Since dusk the rain had set in, gusty storms of big, warm, pattering drops, and impish draughts were playing everywhere, fluttering the lamp flame, shaking pa- pers, raising dust and clattering doors and windows. " Perhaps Keating won't be able to come," Nath- alie suggested. 197 198 FAME-SEEKERS " He'll come," said Burroughs. Nathalie's sigh admitted that pretending was no use. Keating had written that he would come, and there was nothing to do but expect him. " He probably hasn't a car-fare in his pocket, and it's a long walk across town," said Burroughs. " Valets aren't paid in advance, you know. He wrote that he would be late. Poor old Keating! No one will ever be able to accuse him of being afraid to work." " Keating's not the first man I've known who has been forced down to that sort of thing," said Natha- lie. She had her head back on the cushions, and her eyes were following the scurrying clouds above the sky-light. " It's harder than anyone knows for an American over here, no matter how honestly he wants work. I've seen so much of it, men and women, too. I knew one man, Burroughs, a man with a will, and courage, and no end of talent. Something went wrong with his money, I don't know just what, and he walked the streets hunting work till he very nearly starved. He could have been helped back home, but it meant everything to him to stay. The people who are ready and able to help nearly always insist upon helping back. They let him build fires and be janitor at the Little Tin Church, and he kept his body and soul together like that sort of basted together. And somebody thought he'd ' helped ' an artist ! It takes an artist THE GIRL AND THE STAR 199 to help an artist," Nathalie sighed. " In the end he had to let them help him some more, help him back to America, because his health gave out. Not long after I saw some beautiful drawings of his in a magazine. Then nothing more, ever. He may have gone under; I don't know. One has to give up so many, many interesting people in the crowd of them over here. Oh, Burroughs," her voice quivered, and she sat forward, her face vivid in the shadowy light, " this life wracks me so sometimes. Everybody suf- fers so ! You and Louisa think me a poor mite, no doubt, and I am, compared with you, but I can never tell you how thankful I am that I have money enough to pay my way. I've had enough for my lessons, my piano and my violin ; and after this, I'll have enough to pay for my continuous freedom. I shall always be able to own my own soul and body. Music has its by-paths, its ways and means, Bur- roughs ! If one can't pay then one must either take a by-path or give up." " I know," said Burroughs, watching her quietly. " The horror of it is that nine out of ten of them who can't pay, and try the by-paths, haven't either the voice, or the fingers, to make good." " Then one comes along like you," Burroughs smiled. " You'll make good, Nat." For a long moment Nathalie let Burroughs see straight into her dark eyes, then she gave a comical little sigh. " It's simply awful to be counted upon 200 FAME-SEEKERS like that! Do you imagine that I am never tired, or weak? " " I know that you are, very often," said Bur- roughs. " You are a very human little being. You couldn't play worth a fiddle string if you weren't. You are an all-around person, my girl, and that's why you'll win. All-talent doesn't win any more than does all-head." There was a sound on the landing, and they both stared at the door. " It was just the tapestry lady sighing," smiled Burroughs. " She often does when it's stormy ! " Nathalie huddled back in her chair. " I dread his coming so ! " she confessed. " I'm all afraid. Afraid to see him ! " " It's no good being afraid with Keating, Nat. He's gone through harder places than masquerading as man-servant to a painter." " If we could only be sure of what all this has done to Keating's sense of humour," Nathalie groaned. " And it is all very romantic if he wins ; but, Bur- roughs if he fails ! " " He daren't fail," said Burroughs grimly. " The picture is the best he's done. There isn't another man of his age who could have painted it. I'm looking after sending it in. Everything is be- ing done that anyone could do. It goes with my stuff to-morrow." " You've been a brick," said Nathalie. " I don't know what he'd have done without you. How friends THE GIRL AND THE STAR 201 do count in this striving, fame-seeking part of the world!" " More than in other parts, you think, Nat? " Nathalie gave in to an unbefooled little laugh. " I do love to hear myself talk ! " "Keating painted his own picture," remarked Burroughs. " I wanted to help him," Nathalie said, her arms under her head and her voice sunk to the low tone of thinking aloud. *' I even meddled with the paint- ing of his picture ! But what on earth can a woman do for a man like Keating? " " Only play the deuce with him, my dear girl," said Burroughs frankly. " A man may do very lit- tle. He's self-reliance itself, and help glances off him as if he were a man of iron." " I know," said Nathalie. " Accept a push ahead and you spend the rest of your life catching up with yourself. You can't push talent; it's a growing- thing. Nothing so plays the dickens with talent as being hurried by one's kind friends. I'm so glad," she veered the subject and turned her head sideways on her cushion to look at him, " so more than glad, that Louisa is away ! I suppose you wouldn't have come for me at all, wouldn't have told me even, if she'd been here? I do wish," she said slowly, " that I could understand her going like that ; all in a min- ute. She puzzled me almost as much as she re- lieved me ! " Burroughs laughed, then he spoke rapidly, as if 202 FAME-SEEKERS to get through with something disturbing. " Day before yesterday, Nat while you were off at your lesson, I went 'down to your place and asked Louisa to marry me." " Why, Will Burroughs ! " " She wouldn't, and she never will. She left me no room for doubt. I knew she wouldn't anyway. But we had a long talk about many other serious things besides me. She promised never to send any books to any Salon, to let the professional end of things be. I convinced her that there are danger- flags at the door of all professions and that mighty few who go through are immune to the depressing disease that lives there. And I asked her to go away and let you be alone, at least till your audition is over. Because, for all that you are the sandiest girl I've ever known, you are worried and fagged. You are the one star among us, Nathalie, and I made her see that it is up to us to help you shine. Louisa was not only reasonable but very sweet about it. So reasonable, that I suspect she had arrived at the same conclusions by her own round-about way. Louisa touches me very much since her sister's death." " Oh, I don't know what to say first," and Nathalie sat gazing at him. " Let it all go unsaid, then." " One thing you are mistaken about, and that's me," she smiled. " So far as the music is concerned THE GIRL AND THE STAR 203 nothing ever throws me off, or will ever keep me back. I'm not * fagged ' or * worried ' so far as that goes." She spoke quietly, but there was a ring of pure as- surance through her voice that thrilled them both. " It is a force a great deal bigger, and stronger, and finer, than I. When my time comes there is only one thing to do : get up and play. It's a mystery to me, more than it can be to anyone else. I can break my heart over other things, but they do not touch the music. When I may play, all the other things, good or bad, lump up together; seem to sit back and let me be in peace, and I don't give a hang about anything, anything ! " Nathalie got up and walked about the big room, then she came back to Burroughs and bent down, resting her hands on the arm of his chair. A boyish, gamin-like gleam shot across her face. " I've got to say it, Will Bur- roughs, or I'll smother. I'm as glad as I can be that Louisa wouldn't have you ! " Burroughs stared at her for a moment of right- eous amazement, then he gave in to a great laugh. " Want me yourself, Nat? " " Horrors, no ! " She stepped back from him, laughing, too. " But I mean it. You may call me a cat, anything you like ; I shan't care. Why, man alive, think what a life you have now. She'd do away with just everything!" and she gave an inclusive wave of her arm about the place, letting him fill in the circle. 204 FAME-SEEKERS " That," said Burroughs, gravely again, " is ex- actly what Louisa told me herself ! " Nathalie slipped back into her chair and sat very still through a long silence. " Asleep ? " ventured Burroughs at last. " Not much ! " she groaned. " I was only think- ing about myself." " Coincidence," Burroughs smiled. " Do you know I don't feel like joking," said Nathalie, her elbows on her knees and a practical little manner, that Burroughs liked her best in, upon her. " I believe I've grown hard, Burroughs. I've eaten, lived and slept my music till I've lost some- thing, what is it? to pay for the selfishness. I've not lost my feelings about many things, goodness knows ; but I've got so into the habit of putting them back that I've been a little unfair to other people's. That's the way of the work-a-day world, isn't it? It's got its head in the clouds, but it is rough-shod. Burroughs," she seemed to break a little, " I don't want to grow hard, and too self-reliant, and pro- fessional ! " " Haven't I just been telling you that you are a very human " A sharp tap at the door brought them both to their feet, self put back instantly, ready to face a trouble that seemed greater for its nearness than any of their own. CHAPTER XXIII THE COMIC-OPERA VALET BEFORE Burroughs could cross the room the door opened and Keating, in an ill-fitting dress-suit, fur- nished no doubt out of Binnington's cast-offs, with a handkerchief across his arm, stood with head low and back bent double before them. " Dinner is served," he announced gravely. As he lifted his head his eyes fell upon Nathalie and all the mockery slipped off his face. Nathalie came straight to him. " It's no use re- senting me, Keating," she said warmly. " I knew you were delving at something and I worried poor Burroughs to tell me till he had no other way. He brought me with him to-night to get rid of me. We are quite alone," she said, noting his glance searching about the place. " No one else knows : no one! And I didn't come to argue, to tell you to give up your job," she laughed a little and as bravely as she could. " I just came to see you and hear your adventures." Keating's face worked and he dropped her hand quickly. He picked up his hat and coat from the landing and laid them on the floor inside. Bur- 305 206 FAME-SEEKERS roughs closed the door and brought him to the cen- tre of the room, then hung his overcoat upon a chair. They stood him off and looked him over critically, they laughed and turned him about, and they did all of the gentle-rough things to him that human beings have a way of doing to one another when feelings crowd the moment. " You, Keating! you don't mean to say that you actually served that donkey Binnington his dinner ! " " And I haven't upset the soup yet," laughed Keat- ing. Nathalie beamed upon him, and they all laughed and laughed, and everything sounded a great deal louder than they had intended it should sound. " But Binnington's not a donkey at all," said Keating, and to hide his unsteadiness he put him- self among the cushions far back on the couch. " He's a pretty square sort, and he pays well. He wants the dinners I give him as much as I want the money he's going to give me. So far as that goes Binnington and I are quits." They drew their chairs up close to the couch. Burroughs offered him a cigarette and held the match. " Now," said Nathalie, " tell us everything ! Keating, when you are famous this will make the greatest * copy ' ! Tell us ! " Burroughs had no words left. He could not bear to look at Keating in his ill-fitting habit of service. " It's the women who help me every time," said THE COMIC-OPERA VALET 207 Keating after a long look that searched for reassur- ance about the great quiet studio. " If it hadn't been for Binnington's mother I'd never have made it at all. The poor old lady can't speak a word of French ; doesn't want to speak it. She hates it, the way she hates everything French. When I applied I thought I was just to be Binnington's man, to look after the studio, Binnington, his paint-brushes and all that. But their maid was caught with something in her pocket that didn't belong there, and they sent her off the very hour I got there. So for the time I'm house-maid, too! It raises the pay, so I don't give a hang. The cook does the marketing and I know enough French to answer the door-bell! Bin- nington Senior seems to be absent. Probably died hearing his son talk art. There is a little sister a nice little porcelain thing. She looks a baby but she knows how to make the money fly. She can talk French all around any of 'em. She spells her name M-a-e. I know, because it is a heavy part of my present work to give her her letters. I give 'em to her on a little scallopy silver tray. I bet they'd make good reading M-a-e's letters ! " " I know her, a little," smiled Burroughs. " I've met her and her mother at teas," said Natha- lie. " I thought her mother was sweet." " That she is," said Keating warmly. " She and I did a dramatic scene between us the other morning when I applied. She was as frightened as I was, and 308 FAME-SEEKERS we ticked at one another like two rusty old clocks wound up too tight. Then she asked me for my ref- erences. I thought I was done for. I'd forgotten all about 'em, though the ad. mentioned them plain enough. I might have said I'd bring them in an hour, or that I'd misplaced them, then come over to you to cook 'em up for me, but I blurted out that I hadn't any. She made a gently cynical remark about my having asked for high wages for a man without references. I don't know just what I said, but I let go and told the old lady that I had to have work and that I'd do my level best to please her if she'd try me. I am on trial for a week. I've got Binnington landed, for I know what he wants, and I can wash brushes. Mae doesn't much care for the way I do her room, and I don't much care for the way she orders me about. She's a corker for her size!" " You actually do house-work, Keating? " Nathalie gave in to a genuine laugh. Keating laughed with her. " You ought to j ust see me! They don't expect any style from me and it's not so bad, after all. I've had luck about break- ing things thus far. I studied up table-service once for some illustrations some angel art-editor any- way he's an angel-one by this time ! gave me to do. It was a scene that took place in a dining-room. I had a model for the waiter, a strange, dug-up, half- starved devil who'd been an actor and was willing THE COMIC-OPERA VALET 209 enough to be again, and he had done the part of a waiter. He showed me how the thing is done behind the lamps. I thought then that it was by way of illustrating that story that I had the luck to find him ; now I know that it was Providence looking after me. I " his jesting stopped and he stared at his cigarette, " I waited in a Chicago restaurant once, for my food. It was a vile hole, but I learned to hold on to a hot plate without making faces." He was quiet a moment, smoking and resting among the cushions. " The Binningtons' cook is an angel. I'd not have gone far in this world without the con- solation of the gentler sex." " We'll trip you up one day," threatened Nathalie, interrupting him. " This angel-cook? " She took him in broadly. " She's from London, and she looks like a deep- sea fish. But her heart is warm and she knows her trade. She gave me a beautiful dinner to-night ! " He leaned back and smiled from one to the other. " Soup, fish, roast, salad, pudding and coffee ! " " And Binnington himself? " queried Burroughs. " Binnington? He's rich, and he looks it. I could pass him in the street and never know it. What a studio ! That, I'll never forget." " Why? " asked Nathalie absently. " It's art-nouveau. It's just like Mary's restau- rant only it cost more, and there's a piano. There are screens, and a whole ballet of unholy lamp- 210 FAME-SEEKERS shades. Every jar in the room is filled with expen- sive fancy brushes, and the corners are full of hand- made frames. There is a stuffed bird on a funny little bracket against the wall, and it looks like the hat of a street-walker. When I've had enough of it and want to be fired I'm going in there with a feather duster and have it out with that bird ! " Keating sat forward all at once, tense and alert. " I've seen his Salon pictures, Burroughs. He showed them to me with a little off-hand air when he was explaining the work to me. Women, they are, satin and dia- monds and things. I know now that I should have painted Miss Garth in that other rig of hers, the show-one I spoilt for her. Binnington's things are showy all right. Of course I really don't hope to be made a member. If I get in and am not placed like a flying-machine I'll be glad. Then when I've got a couple of months' wages ahead I'll sneak off to the country and hammer out some honest landscapes for next year. This portrait business makes me sick. It's all mixed up with human beings. I had the pleasure of hearing Binnington talking over his chances to-night at dinner," he laughed shortly. " He's pretty sure he's all right. I've picked up a good deal of useful information though, and by the time I've done with him I'll be a regular walking- book of Artists' Tips. There's a lot of politics mixed up in the game over here, and Binnington seems to know it all. It is sickening ! " THE COMIC-OPERA VALET " It is," agreed Burroughs. " But you've got to keep that down. Art is one thing and money-making another, and if you go in for making money out of art you've got to keep your art and yourself to- gether and attend to business with whatever of brain is required and no more. I have never yet met a happy portrait painter. If I were you, of course I'd paint, and send my things to picture shows and let business come as it happens. You'll never be able to prune yourself down to a tradesman. Your pic- tures will take care of you. Don't get results into your head at all. They'll muddle you. I'd not give a thought to this membership business if I were you. I honestly believe Binnington will get in. And it hasn't a thing, or mighty little, to do with merit." " Binnington is the sort of clever ass that brays at you till he sends your good sense into deafness and you try to stand on four legs and bray back ! " " He needs all his money, no doubt," smiled Natha- lie. " Why ? " demanded Keating bluntly. " Has he so much else? " " Don't fool yourself about that," said Keating. " He's got just about all he'd know how to use." He shifted about and pulled hard at his cigarette. " Do you mind telling us what pay you get, old man?" asked Burroughs. " Ninety francs a month, ten for wine, ten for washing, food, clothes and a room. Then I buy the 212 FAME-SEEKERS fruit and cheese and all the shoe-polish and things, and I get my ' sou the franc.' It adds up very well." " That might be worse," said Nathalie. " It might indeed," said Keating. " I can save it, about all of it." ' His head hung back and he sighed, then he looked straight at them. " But it is earned, every sou of it ! My name is * Jenkins ' now. I must get well into harness and try to keep the place, for it's a God-send. I don't know when I shall be able to come over here again. I have every other Sunday afternoon off. You might meet me and we could put the time in at the Louvre? No danger of Binnington showing up anywhere on the people's day! It'll be about three weeks before I know whether I get my pictures in or not, won't it? Then another time of ' nothing doing ' till the show opens and I know if I'm skied. If I get in! If I don't make it, then " he flecked the ash off his cigarette. It fell in a little heap between his feet and he sat staring at the grey spot. Suddenly he placed his foot over the bit of ash and spread it viciously, car- ing neither for Burroughs' floor nor for what they might think. He raised his head and laughed to see both of them staring at his foot. " Let's have a look at my picture, Burroughs," he suddenly changed the subject. "Would you mind pulling the thing out into the light for me? I've," he laughed glumly, " I've got * house-maid's knee ' ! " The picture was drawn out and lifted to the easeli NOWTHAT I'VE HAD A GOOD MEAL I THINK EVEN BETTER OF IT' THE COMIC-OPERA VALET 213 Nathalie helping, and Keating lookingi on like an owl. Burroughs brought the lamp and set it on a table near by, then they stood back looking from Keating to the portrait. Keating took it in with care for every detail, then he gave a great sigh of relief. It had stood the change of setting, was just as fine in Burroughs' beautiful studio as it had been in the barn-like room in which it had been painted ! " Now that I've had a good meal I think even better of it ! " he smiled happily. " And the frame is all right, Burroughs," he rambled on, basking for the happy moment in the presence of all that he pos- sessed. " Binnington be hanged ! " he whispered ec- statically. " That's right," said Burroughs, leaning against the wall near him. " You need not worry about it. It will take precious good care of itself, from now on." Keating got up and went close to the canvas. He touched a spot here and there with the flat of his thumb to see how the varnish had caught and his hand moved intimately over the surfaces of the paint where some bit of brush-work amused him or pleased him. He dropped his hands at last and looked into the painted face. " You were right, Nathalie ! " he turned his head about and glanced at her. " It's good, and like her, but I'll never paint another woman smiling." He left the portrait without another glance, and took 214 FAME SEEKERS up his hat and coat. Burroughs was glad when the overcoat covered the loose dress-suit. Keating looked anxiously up at the sky-light. He dreaded the long walk across town through the rain. " Here you are," said Burroughs, giving him an umbrella out of a tall jar in the corner. " I've got two others. Bring it back next time you come." " Thanks," said Keating, absently examining the handle. " I'll just depend on you, Burroughs, to see that the picture goes in. And if you have anything to tell me, either of you, write to Jenkins, care of Binnington. But don't write post cards ! " And then he got precipitately out of the place. An hour later Burroughs, having taken Nathalie home, let himself into his studio again. He poured himself out a drink, and drew up a chair and sat for a long time with Keating's portrait of Louisa Garth. The glass empty and the stillness telling the late hour, he drew out his own two canvases, the two he was sending in to the Salon. He stood them in the light and looked at them contentedly. " Some of these days we'll try a big thing ourselves ! " He stretched out in his chair and smoked another ciga- rette, then, with a comfortably unapologetic yawn, he went off to bed, thinking of Keating and his chances ; of Keating, the man to whom debt or bor- rowing was more impossible than menial work. It was hard for a man like Burroughs to follow the principle all its way. He was spoilt, no doubt, with THE COMIC-OPERA VALET 215 comfort, or with the compensating fact that at a lift of his hand he could have comfort. That made doing without, seem, if not trivial, at least endurable, and decorative. Certainly the quarter life is noth- ing but discomfort when it is not decorative. CHAPTER XXIV HABBOUR AND CITY IT was a fine spring morning, with a sky like a great bowl of blue, purplish at the rim, the sun was warm and stirring, and only in the deepest of the shadows was there any trace left of the chill of yesterday's winter. Rows of unsuspected awnings were unfurl- ing to take up their long look into the east, flower- boxes were putting on fresh coats of green paint, and little stacks of flower-pots that had been stand- ing in the window corners all the winter long were being sorted and made ready for their new gerani- ums. All over Paris the flower-markets were abloom. It was a brand new Paris day, a young day of sighs, smiles and more sighs, the sort of spring day to draw all the inner-lights right up to the eyes, to tempt feet into by-paths, to garb any wonder or mad whim in the mask of a possibility. To-morrow Nathalie was to have her audition, and she was on her way to an extra hour of work. Out in the soft spring air she felt ready to confess that she was glad that the long winter of steady work was at an end. She was not afraid of work, nor of herself, nor of any impresario that ever made earth 916 HARBOUR AND CITY 217 tremble with his power. She knew that, she'd find the right manager sooner or later. Meantime she'd enough to go on living. As she came out of the Rue Falguiere into the wide boulevard, the warm sunlight fell upon her, and she lifted her small dark head in a pride that was all her own, a pride that made no compromises. As she climbed up on a bus-top with her violin case, she smiled whimsically at her own reflection in a tall mirror at the front of a shop, and she did make concession, for the fleeting moment, to a very human little wish that she might have been given one grain less of talent and one grain more of beauty. So much for the glowering of impresarios ! And the spring morning trio the sigh, the smile and the other sigh flickered across her face, making her prettier than she knew. What a curious life she was leading all alone, among the hosts of people ; or was the curious life leading her? If she succeeded to-morrow she would soon be go- ing away; would be making the journey back, with her violin, to that great, versatile, volatile, success- mad land of her birth. In a little while she and Louisa Garth would have taken up their opposite ways, their studio in the Rue Falguiere would have served its purpose for them, would be dismantled and swept out for new furniture and new creatures. Under no circumstances would she ever again share 218 FAME-SEEKERS a studio. It required, no doubt, all sorts of people to make a world, but a studio was too small a world for any but single-blessedness 1 A keen smile played in her eyes as she looked about her, appraising her fellow-passengers on the bus-top and the people swarming in the street below. It was all vivacious and astir, and it touched her as would have a beautiful work of art. How the sweet air made her mind move! It was splendid just to breathe, to be a part of it all. She swept her eyes over the crowd, searching, and she smiled to see how for all the extravagance of light and colour and action there was not a single face that bore distinction, that wore, or seemed to care to wear, the look of success. It was the rabble, the busy, gay, jostling crowd, and if they had troubles they had chosen to leave them locked in at home. All at once Nathalie thrilled to imagine playing to them; imagined getting to her feet and taking out her violin, and playing up there on the bus-top, till they should all turn towards her to stop and listen. She'd love to do just that! She folded her hands on the end of the black violin case, and the light half closed her eyes, the swaying of the bus soothed her. She'd soon be going home! It came upon her with a sting- ing joy. She imagined steaming, on a big, gleaming white liner, into the brilliant harbour she knew so well; into the harbour of harbours, where the sun- light flashes upon lively waters, where the sky-line, HARBOUR AND CITY 219 the city life-line, is like no other sky-line all the wide world over. " Oh, I want to go home ! " She caught herself, ready to speak it aloud, to tell the very morn- ing all about it. She'd not had time to realise it till just then, when the year's work was about over. She had had enough of Paris! And even as she owned it, fully, ready to cry it out and cry about it like some small girl, the impish spring-day trio, the sigh, the smile, and the other sigh, the trio that lives best in Paris, came tripping across the iridescence, and Nathalie, herself smiling and sighing, owned that she'd come back she'd long to come back one day, to their Paris, just as she now wanted to go home. She'd come back from her harbour of harbours to their city of cities. CHAPTER XXV THE VICTOR THE traditional glimpse of spring was followed by the equally traditional return of winter, and Paris gave in glumly to its modern habit of a freezing April and May. Shivering humanity went about occupy- ing its mind that it might forget its body. Nath- alie's audition had been achieved with distinction, and she had gained by it a promising engagement for a concert-tour to begin in New York in the coming November. Keating's picture had been accepted and was excellently hung. He had gone on working for Binnington, as being " excellently hung " is no banker. He was supposed by his admirers to be off in the country happily painting spring land- scape. Binnington WHS better hung, both canvases on the line and in the same room. Louisa had spent all of April in a certain Convent-pension at Ver- sailles, where fashionable Parisians go to rest and to stroll becomingly through periods of idleness in gar- dens that touch the Palace Park. She was back now with Nathalie in the Rue Falguiere, and was ar- ranging to spend her summer in Northern Italy with friends. She intended to spend the autumn in Si- 9SO THE VICTOR 221 enna, for more book-binding; but she kept that to herself. Burroughs' pictures had been accepted, too, and were hung well enough, as they had been for the last three or four years. It was late afternoon, and Burroughs and half a dozen Americans were in the billiard room of a pros- perous cafe that stands in the angle of the two Quarter boulevards. Burroughs played an excellent game, and he and a big-throated, keen-eyed young Westerner were finishing a close match, amusing a circle of on-lookers, and themselves, till the dinner hour should send the cues to their rack. A young woman, slim and small, dressed in black, very high- heeled " American " shoes, a small, round, black hat, with two long garish quills upon her black hair, and gifted with the staccato manner of a cricket, kept as right-minded crickets do to a corner. A young man in a chair tipped dramatically against the fireless stove was making the corner less dull for the cricket. The billiard-room was at the back of the cafe, and was divided from it by a wooden partition and a big green baize door. The windows gave upon a dull, cobbled, peasant-faced side-street. The room was silent except for the chirping of the Cricket, the rich click of the ivory balls, and the occasional jolting- by of the milk-cart. By the clatter of wheels and milk-cans, the carts seemed to pass through the very room. It was dark because of the fog, the room was 222 FAME-SEEKERS heavy with pipe and cigarette smoke, and the lights above the table were blurred and murky. The play- ers' eyes were narrowed as if they were annoyed with something at the back of their minds. Every face about the place, except the two in the corner, was as set and dull as the weather outside. Suddenly the green baize door swung back, and in a silence of utter amazement, Nathalie Corson came inside and let the door swing to behind her. Elo- quently the other two legs of the chair in the corner clattered to the floor, and the Cricket made a sound unknown to Crickets. Nathalie looked too tired to care for any mere wave of amazement, and her eyes sought and rested upon Burroughs' with an absorp- tion that left the others out. Though the billiard- room was one of the places that the American girl students do not invade, Nathalie showed no trace of timidity. It was more than clear that she had not come there to amuse herself. Burroughs stared back at her, speechless and ap- prehensive. Cigarettes fell, pit-pat, to the floor, and everyone moved a step nearer. The Cricket, left alone in her corner, clicked her tongue against her cheek, dropped into the deserted chair, and finished her cigarette in a mood of peppery inattention. Burroughs found his voice at the end of the infinite moment. " What on earth has brought you here ? " " I came to find you." Nathalie moved nearer to him, and the excitement of her voice penetrated every THE VICTOR 223 listening on-looker. She waited, tense and annoyed, while an inopportune cart clattered by. " Bur- roughs," her voice broke, " they have elected you ! They've made you an ' associate ' ! You are the only American they have taken in ! " Burroughs' hand closed tightly about the cushion of the billiard-table, and his cue clattered to the floor. " I've they've what ? " he echoed stupidly while the circle closed in a little closer and faces began to light up. " It's perfectly true," she said. " I met a man in the gardens an hour ago, and he had just lunched with one of the committee. You'll hear it officially in a few days ! " The frank note of woe in Nathalie's voice as she gave Burroughs his news news that invariably heralds in days of hilarity and toasting puzzled the circle and delayed the outburst. Burroughs never talked much of either himself or his work, and they had considered him as a possi- bility no more than he had considered himself. It wanted readjustment to take Burroughs profession- ally, though no one had ever dreamed of taking him lightly. For a noisy moment they swept up and surrounded him. Nathalie stood back, waiting, look- ing on, a cynical, patient smile in her eyes. Then, because of her, with hats in their hands, but deviltry in their eyes, giving Burroughs slaps on the shoulder and hand-grips that threatened to find him later and FAME-SEEKERS do by him as the occasion demanded, they filed out of the billiard-room into the cafe, the hubbub of their news coming back over the screen-partition. The Cricket sat for an unconcerned moment on the chair in the stove-corner; then she arose indolently, took Nathalie in across her cigarette, as if she had not realised before that she was there, then with her consummate art of impudence she went out after the others, rolling a billiard-ball the length of the table as she sauntered by. Nathalie watched her exit with a smile of appre- ciation, then promptly forgot her, after her usual rule. " Poor old Keating ! " Burroughs looked his con- sternation. " I don't want the thing ! I never even thought of it. I'd rather not have sent in at all ! " " I know," Nathalie agreed with him. " It's Keat- ing we've got to think of. What are we to do? Something must be done at once." " First, we must get out of here," and Burroughs took his hat and coat off the hooks along the wall. " I'm sorry, Burroughs," said Nathalie, a blush spreading warmly over her face. She laughed a lit- tle. " I'm afraid I've a way of forgetting myself, and my manners ! " " Your manners and yourself take very good care of themselves," said Burroughs, his own colour higher as he held the door open for her to pass out. For Nathalie's speaking of forgetting herself had re- THE VICTOR 225 minded Burroughs of himself, and, do what he would to remember Keating, he was stirred. Success, whether sought after or gift-wise, carries its inti- mate charm ! As they crossed the cafe and the terrace congratu- lations were hurled at Burroughs from every side. " I'll come back," he told them and gave the gar9on a conciliatory order for drinks all-around. Then he got Nathalie out to the sidewalk. " Burroughs," she faced him. " It's awful the way I've brought you the news. I might as well have given you an invitation to a funeral. I'm ashamed of myself!" " Do you know how it happened ? " asked Bur- roughs. " A little," she sighed. " It began, just as every- body thought it would, between Binnington and Keat- ing. The vote tied, or didn't do whatever it has to do. I don't know their system. It was luncheon time, and the committee was hungry! Someone pro- posed you, and they rushed you through. You were the dark horse, Burroughs ! I know what it will mean to you when you have had time to think. And I am glad as glad can be. And Louisa will be glad. When we have got our minds at rest about Keating, you must dine with us, and you and I will wear our laurel-wreaths and be as conceited as we please. But, now? What are we to do ?" " We must get at Binnington, One thing is cer- 226 FAME-SEEKERS tain, Keating can't go on playing valet. It has ceased to be mere masquerade, after this, and really must end." " I know," said Nathalie. " As he hasn't taken them by storm, he may have to try again and again. Poor Keating!" " Come and dine with me," suggested Burroughs. " Will Louisa worry about you if you don't come home? " Nathalie gave him an eloquent glance. " Louisa and I are under contract never to worry about one another again ! It's a good idea to dine together, then we'll think over what to do." " What a farce," groaned Burroughs. Nathalie looked back at the buzzing cafe terrace while Burroughs called an auto. " Couldn't I man- age about all this ? " she queried. " You should go back and have your fun. They'll mob me if I take you away ! " " My fun will keep," said Burroughs. The taxi rolled up by the curve, Burroughs helped Nathalie in, then he gave the address and told the chauffeur to go fast. He jumped in and the machine started. They were followed by howls of disappoint- ment and threat, the Cricket gaily leading the riot, her satanic quills and her thin white hands a glass in one and someone's walking-stick in the other lifted among the men's sticks and waving soft felt hats, her shrill voice high above the clatter. THE VICTOR 227 " Pm so sorry to take you away." Nathalie looked back then gave him a penitent glance. " It isn't as if I'd * been born yesterday,' you know, Nat! We'll have a glass of something spar- kling all by ourselves and the crepe on my conscience won't be shown to the crowd. Crowds jeer crepe even when they get drunk, my dear girl, and that crowd back there has made up its mind to get drunk." CHAPTER XXVI NATHALIE CORSON NATHALIE held to the back of her seat on the top of a swaying stage and peered beneath her free hand at the cuddling grey roofs and blunt church-spire of a little town ahead. It was the town to which Keating had fled in order that he might get away from himself and his friends. Nathalie had told Louisa that she would be across town rather late with some friends, but to Burroughs she had posted a note just before leaving. Both the venture into Keating's lair and the note to Burroughs were impulses. In large things Nathalie was wont to plunge, counting on her common-sense to guide her through the detail as it came along. This was her letter to Burroughs : "Dear Burroughs: " I'm off to the county for an hour's chat with Keating. I am no doubt very mad to go, but, wise or unwise, the whim has me, and I'm going! I shall be back about nine o'clock. The trains conspire beautifully with my whim. " Come in to tea to-morrow, if you like. I engaged NATHALIE CORSON 229 my passage home this morning for the last of the month. " As ever, " NATHALIE." The old yellow stage-coach rolled along a hard, straight road right into the west, and it passed all the way between fields swept with the rich greens of young grain. The country rolled gently to the clear summer sky, and here and there an orchard or a walled and gabled farm added the deeper note of thrift. Nathalie drank in the air, washing away gratefully the dry taste of the city in summer. She thought there must have been a shower, the air was so fresh and sweet. The sky was cloudless. With the usual snapping of the whip, the horses plunged into their smart entrance into the village street, children, dogs, ducks and chickens scattering and adding to the dramatic din. They drew up with a perilous swerve at the curb of the Inn, and Nath- alie, the sole passenger, climbed down. Madame Polidore, " La Patronne," met her at the door of the little bar-billiard-room, considering her demand for Keating's whereabouts with a slow smouldering of eye that drove the colour into Nathalie's cheeks. Keating was stopping there; had, in fact, engaged one of the most desirable rooms for the entire sea- son. At the moment he had gone for a walk in the woods. Madame could not not say at what hour he would come in, but she could, and would, point the 230 FAME SEEKERS way to the woods. " He is alone? " Nathalie asked with as much unconcern as she could manage. " For the present he is quite alone, Mademoiselle ! " and the wicked amusement in the Inn-keeper's wise eyes and smooth voice stirred Nathalie's fury. But she knew the futility of hoping that a Madam Polidore would ever give over taking things for granted. As Nathalie walked away from the Inn, she won- dered indignantly at what age she might hope to have got over her guiltless blushing, and she felt, from her ears to her heels, the worldly flourish of La Patronne's apron as she crossed her awninged ter- race on her way back to the bar, where she would, certainly, talk her over with the hatchet-faced girl who tended the bar and made cotton crochet-lace be- tween other people's drinks. Nathalie threaded her way down the winding little street, and from nearly every window that she passed eyes peered out at her, sometimes child's eyes, but oftener old eyes incredibly old and wise eyes, dis- quieting points of light burning on in the dark, low- roofed peasant rooms. At the end of the street the path went on its way as a lane, first through a scraggy, neglected group of old apple trees, then be- tween grain fields. Ahead lay the woods; a soft, thrilling line of tender greys and greens, as motion- less as the sky, birds holding sway above and below. The sun had crossed to the west, but the evening colour had not yet begun. NATHALIE CORSON 231 As Nathalie's gloveless, vagrant hands touched the bending grain and the light air moved over her face, she realised what getting away from a city into the country must mean to a man like Keating. His had been, after aH, a compensating retreat. First, a farmer boy had run away from his prairies to the city, and now a painter, a man, had run away to the country, to the sophisticated fields and woods and skies and inn of the gay-eyed Madame Polidore ! She smiled to think how it might all have been another thing if circumstances had forced his going back to his home instead of here. Madame Polidore made all things easy, took genius for granted along with other things, but Keating's toiling, hard-handed, silent old father would have waited on to be con- vinced. What a beautiful place ! She looked about her as she entered the path into the wood, and she stepped softly. The small butterfly-leaves of the birches and the deeper green of the beech and oak, the grey and purple branches, the clear, quiet sky, the deep green moss and the fallen leaves of the au- tumn before, the mottled trunks of the older trees, the flickering sun-spots, like a spangled veil over it all, enchanted her. It was a world apart, a world of small bird-notes and fine growing things. Nathalie stooped to wonder over the ferns, their autumn glory all curled into tiny spirals very little taller than the starry moss. Just before her the path 232 FAME-SEEKERS sank downward through a shimmering forest of young birches, and through their branches and silver- lined leaves she could see a valley with roofs and a church-spire, and cattle grazing, all in sunlight. There was a cross-path, too, that followed the crest of the hill, wider and more trodden than the path through the birches. She wondered which path Keat- ing would have chosen, given that he were walking merely to amuse himself; but nearly every thought, and every moment, were broken by discoveries of frail white and yellow violets half-hidden in the moss and brown leaves. And all the time at the back of Nath- alie's mind was a dread which she would not admit, a dread that Keating might not be glad to see her. Keating came at last, up the hill through the birches, and singing at the top of his lungs : "Oh, I went down South, For to see my Sal, Singin' . . . Polly wolly doodle Dolly day!" Nathalie heard him first away down the valley, and the commotion the song made among the birds as he came along made her laugh aloud. At sight of her Keating stood, and a tremendous note broke in two. After a moment of amazement, he hurried to her with hat off and hand outstretched. The worry slipped away from Nathalie's mind, and NATHALIE CORSON 233 her eyes glowed as she met him. Keating had never yet failed to be glad to see her ! " Come after me again ? " He laughed down upon her. " Yes ! " she admitted fully with an answering laugh, but the laugh gave way to a puzzled smile, and the smile faded and left her face wholly mysti- fied. " You do look well, Keating ! " she said, ab- sorbing him. " The country agrees with you." There was something new upon the man, an inde- pendence, a touch of reserve, even when he was noisy or laughing, that usually comes after a taste of suc- cess. The very quality he had always lacked seemed all at once to have caught up with him ; or was it that he was at home out here in the woods and fields? " The country? Yes," he cast a gleam of amuse- ment to her out of his eyes. " Partly the country, no doubt. You see, I've had a fall from a high place and hit rock bottom. Couldn't fall any lower, and it didn't quite shake the life out of me, so things have decided to look up. I've actually had a streak of luck!" " Luck? " Nathalie queried. " Might as well tell the end first," said Keating, with the wonder of the thing still in his voice. " I'm to do portraits full-lengthers, too, Nathalie of Binnington's mother and sister, in the autumn ! " " How perfectly fine ! " said Nathalie, with a deep, glad breath. 284 FAME-SEEKERS " We have turned out to be very good friends, Binnington and I," he went on, the pride as frank as it would have been in a boy's voice. " I don't like the way he paints, but neither does he, so it's no use bothering over that. The master and the man have hit it off! You see, we failed together, so we are going to pick up and get over it together. He has tact! " and Keating looked around at her with droll slowness. " He has handled me ! He's got a new idea into my block-of-a-head to begin with. You, Nathalie, made a noble effort to drive in the same idea one day when you warned me that I had no more right to starve a work of art than I had to starve a baby." He laughed a little, watching her. " You looked like a little exclamation point when you said it, and, of course, I simply turned mule. But I see now, thanks to Binnington's pounding at me, that a man has no business to go down, that a man with an art has no right to go trench-digging and serving. I've got it through my head that there is such a thing as borrowing honestly. I'm glad, though," he hesi- tated seriously, " that I've only just come to see it. I can make good now, right along. I've begun my new career by accepting the money for one of the portraits in advance. A cool thousand dollars ! " His voice sank respectfully at the naming of the sum. " I'll have a glorious summer, of air, space, thinking and working, and books ; then I'll go back to Paris in October like new. Binnington is going NATHALIE CORSON 235 to take his family to the sea-shore ; then he's coming down here for a month or two. He's had a lesson, too, and," he laughed, " thinks of giving up politics and going in for painting ! There's a studio to let in the village, an old made-over stable. He says that nearly any known French village can produce a stu- dio. We'll share it and live at the Inn. I left him the key of my place in town, and he's painting some- thing over there to try the light." Keating's eyes twinkled. " He'll never be able to breathe in his own place again. By the time Binnington and I have finished with one another, I believe we'll both have turned out fairly well ! " Keating leaned against a tree, his arms folded in their favourite pose, and he took Nathalie in through the smoke of his pipe. " Your brown clothes and shoes and hat and eyes, are very becoming to the trees," he remarked. " Did Binnington send you out here ? " " Not he ! " Nathalie laughed. " I got your ad- dress by telling him I wanted to write you. Even Burroughs didn't know. I just thought of coming, and came." " Have you seen Burroughs ? " " Of course. Last night." " I hope he'H come down a while. He was more cut up than I was over his success. You don't think he imagines that I feel it, do you ? " " No. Will Burroughs has a grown-up imagina- tion. He's the squarest ever." 236 FAME-SEEKERS " I passed him in a cab on my way down to the station. I was late, and hadn't time to stop. He didn't see me because he isn't in the habit of looking for me in passing cabs ! " Keating gazed humor- ously through his pipe smoke. He moved to a fallen tree and sat upon it, and Nathalie perched among the branches on the other end, her small feet clear of the ground. " Did you come down for anything in par- ticular? " asked Keating. " Just to say good-bye," said Nathalie. " I'm sailing the last day of the month. I shall be gone perhaps a whole year." " I shall miss you next winter," said Keating simply. " I must go and conquer my native land," Nathalie said largely. Keating considered her. " You look so darned little just a kid," he laughed. " Sort of a ' Little me, and my Big Fiddle ! ' " " Just that ! " Nathalie agreed with him. Upon their two fine irregular faces, there in the veiled forest light, shone the reserve, the wistfulness, the wise-gaiety of people idling, but people who have fought or paid for every inch of their way. Wisdom went even farther, for there was a potency in the moment from which they knew enough to look away. And so, these two, who might have gained no one knows what of happiness by being everything to one another, spent their one summer afternoon in the NATHALIE CORSON 237 woods in talk about luck and success, about hope and work. An hour later Nathalie stood by Keating at the curb of the Inn terrace. The old yellow stage was drawn up ready to go back to the station. Nathalie faced Keating, suddenly resolute. Saying good-bye between two people to whom the year has meant about everything, two people so very far from home, one of them going home, is always trying, always wants some whistling in the dark. The thought lurks more over the lost and given up other days than work-days. They know that in gaining their worlds they have lost their islands. " Keating," she said gently, " I want to say, just once and for all, that I'm sorry as can be for the silly part I played in your uncomfortable winter. My only consolation is so threadbare! I did mean well!" *' I needed cauterising," Keating smiled gravely. " Possibly," agreed Nathalie. " But that isn't my trade, is it ? I only meddled ! " Keating straightened his shoulders. " We got a good picture on the line out of it. I believe it has paid. And we have had a glorious afternoon! Haven't we? " " We have," she answered sincerely, her eyes rest- ing on the little tubbed shrub that stood by the awn- ing-pole at his back. " Keating, shall you try to see Louisa before she goes away? " 238 FAME-SEEKERS " No," said Keating firmly. " There is no earthly reason why I should see her." Nathalie considered him, and a gleam of amuse- ment shot across her brown eyes. " I don't know that I referred particularly to earthly reasons." Keating flushed, then laughed. " Earthly reasons are the safest ones for me, aren't they ? " " You really think so ? " She smiled her disbelief. " I wonder why it is that when one has to face a good-bye one always lapses into twaddle ! " " When is Miss Garth going? " Nathalie spread her hands. " I don't exactly know. Louisa doesn't exactly know. And," she laughed with a touch of light malice, " she doesn't ex- actly care, Keating just so it is away! " " America ? " " No. That much she knows. She doesn't want to go back. Italy for the summer, and back to Paris next winter. But not to the Rue Falguiere! Her plans are vague, as vague as she." " You mean what she says of them is vague? " Nathalie shot him a puzzled look; then she gave him a broad, solicitous smile. " Keating, you get on well, always, with women, but the beautiful reason is that you don't know them one little bit." " Is that more twaddle, Nathalie ? " The driver swung himself to the box, clicked his watch suggestively and gathered up the reins. Keat- ing helped Nathalie up the steep steps to the top of NATHALIE CORSON 239 the stage again, and she bent down and gave him her hand. " Do you know," she smiled wistfully, look- ing at him and about him, " that whatever I have to remember of France will always be in one corner or another associated with the image of little shrubs in green tubs. What a green they paint them!" Keating nodded. "Even the furniture factories * paint well ' in France ! Don't go and forget me just because you get your public by the ears over there. You and your fiddle ! " " I shan't be able to forget you. You are going to make a bit of noise in the world yourself ! " " Good-bye ! " "Good-bye!" As they rounded the curve in the village street youngsters, dogs, chickens and ducks entering again into their scene Keating waved his hat, and Na- thalie, kneeling on the seat, waved her hand. And at Keating's back, the row of shrubs in their green tubs, Madame, the chef, and an absorbent group of bonnes ruminated over Nathalie's early departure with un-moral regret. She was an American, and Americans are all so prosperous ! Nathalie recrossed the fields, dazed and quieted. She had had her afternoon. She lost her sense of time, and was startled to realise the little station again, though her eyes must have been upon it for the last mile or two. 240 FAME SEEKERS The train from Paris was due five minutes before her train was scheduled to arrive. She paced the long platform, breathing in a store of the sweet coun- try air to take back to the dusty city with her. A red and purple sunset was going on over and above the quiet rolling fields, and her eyes followed the road back across the land as she thought of her perfect afternoon. She was glad that she had come! It was splendid to carry away the thought of Keating, happy and serene, in the quiet of the country and the woods. Her eyes gave out a wealth of kindness to everything they shone upon, from weeds pushing through the cracked boards to the train-men stirring about. The bell jangled, the crossing-gates closed, and she thrilled to sense as if for the first time in her life, it is always so keen the marvel of trains coming and going across the country fields, passing to and from Paris. She watched the curve in the track as the engine came thundering in, blinding and deafening her with its noise and smoke, giving her glory in her very smallness. The door of a third-class compartment swung open, and a young woman, with dark, rough hair, small hoop ear-rings, and a very new straw hat, leaned out and looked at the name on the station, dove back, then emerged borne down with badly-tied bundles and boxes in both her arms. " Bon jour, Mademoiselle!" and the driver of the old yellow stage rushed to help her, NATHALIE CORSON Nathalie, all the light of kindness gone out of her face, slipped back into the sordid little waiting-room. Through the murky, square-paned windows she watched the two of them, joking over the bundles as they put them into the stage. Then Clothilde climbed up on top, and the coachman leaned against the steps to chat with her till the train for Paris should have come and gone. As they passed the open door of the waiting-room Nathalie had seen that one of her bundles was tied up with an old grey shawl, and she heard the driver saying to the girl : " But Monsieur Keating did not expect you to arrive till eight o'clock. I had instructions " The Paris train rushed in, and mechanically Na- thalie climbed on board. She sat far back in a cor- ner, her eyes fixed upon the small framed map above the opposite seat, her mind running wild. " Clothilde again ! The steerage girl. But, she posed for Keat- ing ; she had come down to pose for him ! All paint- ers take a model to the country. They must! Oh, men's lives ! We are fools, fools, fools, to know too much about them ! " Alone in the corner of the swaying train, blind to the fields and trees and sky, Nathalie went through her hard hour of self-discovery. When the hour was by she realised confession upon confession ! that till that moment she had not actually put life aside and taken up her career, that, at the back of her mind, even through all the hard work, had lurked 242 FAME SEEKERS a possibility, a hope of release! It was not just the incident of that brainless girl in her new hat that so flaunted Keating's new prosperity. She could have put that away, out of her thoughts, where it be- longed. It was Keating's silence during the long afternoon in the woods ! She had to admit that he had not felt it as their cross-roads, that no hope to match hers had lurked at the back of his mind. Al- ways disappointed! Well, she'd work! With lips apart and wide eyes, alone in the compartment of the rushing train, she knew her loneliness. What was this creature that life was forcing her to be ? A pro- fessional woman ! "Hello, Nat!" It was Burroughs, waiting for her on the platform in the great Paris station. " I got your note just as I was going out to dinner, so I came down and got an aperatif across the street to kill time till your train came in. Come and dine with me, won't you ? " " I will ! " she smiled gratefully upon him. " How good of you to come like this! Is there time," she hesitated, "to go across town for our dinner? Be- cause," she smiled, " it will save me a fib if we can." " There's always time for everything if one can but put aside the childish recognition of mere daylight and darkness," said Burroughs largely. " But, am I all right ? " she glanced down at her dress. " You know my impresario's in town, and if I met him, dining like this ? " NATHALIE CORSON 243 " Damn your impresario all impresarios ! " said Burroughs profoundly. " Oh," she looked into his eyes, " thank you for saying it ! " Then they rolled away into Paris, in a taxi-auto. CHAPTER XXVII LOUISA GARTH LOUISA, tired but driven by excitement into a feverish energy, climbed into the old stage which was drawn up back of the railway station in the shade of a big drooping elm. It was a yellow, side-seated stage, that had given its youth, and would give what was left of its creaking and complaining age, to doing country service over the hill-lands dotted with sum- mer homes that lie around any Connecticut country town. She tossed her travelling-coat and her bag upon one seat, then made herself as comfortable as possible in the corner of the other, for she had a long hour's ride before her. Her coat fell into a look and a line so like herself that in a tempest of impatience she bent forward, shook it, then let it lie in a punished heap, neck down and sleeves hanging. They jogged out of the town and into the country, the gold of sunlight and the gentle blue of shadow making Louisa catch her breath as the memory of its quiet beauty stirred through her. Nothing had changed : a new roof here and there, perhaps, and a deepened and enriched sense of the thrift and peace of farm-land touching farm-land, but it was almost M LOUISA GARTH 245 as if she'd been there but yesterday. And the gen- tleness and quietness of it hurt her incredibly. Why had she ever wanted to go away? And a strange home-coming she had made for her- self ; uninvited, unexpected, and jogging out, wilfully, in this shabby old stage. She gave it all up with a sigh: she only knew that she was tired of herself, tired even more of all the world she'd gone away from Connecticut to live in. Everything had gone flat, everything; and she had come back blindly, desper- ately, not daring to think what the coming might be. One thingi she knew and did not allow her doubts to touch or tarnish: she'd find Gleason unchanged. He'd be deepened, perhaps, like these hills he lived among. He had never changed, since she had first known him. Dear old Billy, with his frank " Of course, I don't know anything about art and all that." How glad she was that he did not ! She was so weary of the people who knew all about every- thing. He would find her changed, though, and she dreaded that. She wondered if it had been hard for Gleason to adjust himself to life after her sister's death. He had written her regularly during the two years since she had gone away, but for a long time they had not talked much of Grace, after life's sav- ing way of looking forward. She felt the loss of her sister through the stirring touch of association, of going over the ground they had both known well, as 246 FAME SEEKERS she had scarcely felt it before, and she realised what it must mean to Gleason, how lonely he must have been, living on there by himself, the very air breath- ing memories to him. The sunlight danced through a mist for a moment, and she smiled at herself for the new sentimentality the place was putting upon her. It was a wistful smile enough. Then, utterly stilled, she had her first glimpse from the crest of a hill of the grey gables and red chimneys in the grove of tall trees. As they rattled down the hill, it came over her that her visit might be untimely, that Gleason might have his house full of guests. He had used to threaten to fill it up with " other lonely men " when Grace went away, even for a few days ! They rumbled over the last of the white-railed bridges, the rushes stirring and the brook rippling, as they always did at a step upon the bridge. From there the road sloped gently upwards to the grove. The horse was tired, and he crept over the last inches, and every slow jogging step ahead tortured Louisa and added to the timidity that, at sight of the gate in the grove, fairly overwhelmed her. She could still go back ! But the driver would think her mad, and she was almost too tired to endure the thought of driving again over the dusty way. " You need not drive in, I'll walk from the gate," she told the man absently. Then she paid him and gave him a fee that straightened his back and lifted LOUISA GARTH 247 the hat off his dull head. She took her coat and bag and went in through the small gate by the side of the wide one across the drive. She watched the stage drive away with a growing sense of aloneness. She had burnt her bridges : there was nothing to do now but to go on to the house and ask to be taken in. Because of a turn in the drive through the grove she could not see the house, nor could she be seen. Just at the turn there was a stone bench against a great tree, and she went to it, to rest, to think, to argue with her drooping courage. What perfect silence and peace ! A long hot Au- gust had turned the leaves early and loosened their stems, and they were falling, slowly and infrequently, gold and copper flakes across the silvery trees. The moss they fell upon was thick and green, an almost unearthly green in the shadowy light. The sun was going down. She could not stay there till dark. She must go on ! The house, with its lawn and flower-beds, its broad awninged verandah, screened doors and windows and low steps, came upon her, framed in the trees and leaves at the end of the drive. She choked and her eyes filled again. How had she dared to deliberately turn away from all of this to go into a world that had wanted her not at all ! But the place wore a new look, a strange look. She had not felt it in the grove, but here in the gar- den the flowers were there, the same sorts of gar- 248 FAME SEEKERS den flowers there had always been ; but everything had gone a little wild, the grass had not been cut for some time, there were weeds in the brick paths, and weather had streaked the awnings. Louisa bent over the flowers to keep the sharp moment away, and, without thinking, she broke off a sprig of heliotrope. Would she find Gleason like the garden and the rest ? He had always seemed so self-reliant, so orderly. Had all of that been due to Grace, or did he really like things better, running wild? And she stopped again and again, pulling a weed out of the walk, touching the flowers, temporising, pretending that all of these things mattered, but watching, watching for a sign of life. She did not see Gleason till she had arrived at the verandah steps. He was there, deep in an arm-chair, his hands back of his head, surrounded by newspa- pers, and, on a table beside him, his hat and a letter. She knew at a glance that it was her letter, and the last one that she had written him. His back was turned towards the light and towards her. And when she saw him there before her, all the timidity slipped away, and with no more thought of herself she went straight to him. " You aren't very cordial, Billy ! " Gleason slowly dropped his hands and turned his head, then he peered at her unbelievingly. " Is it you?" She held out her hand. " See if it isn't ! " LOUISA GARTH 249 His hands closed about hers. " It's real," he agreed. " You know," he took her in incredulously, " you were playing with a piece of that flower the last day we talked together here." She looked down at the heliotrope in her free hand. " And very nice of you to remember it," she glanced at him. " I almost wish it were the same flower, Billy. I am so glad to be back ! " " But I don't understand." Gleason stood off to see her the better. Suddenly he realised that she looked tired and dusty, and he made her sit in his arm-chair, ordered off her hat, and laid it down on the table with a kind of clumsiness that never loses a man anything in a woman's eyes. " How on earth did you get here? Just walked over on the spur of the moment? " Louisa gave a little smile of contentment, closed her eyes, and murmured, " It is so good to be here ! I came on a magic carpet. It doesn't matter how I came, Billy. Can't you see that? I've forgotten! The important thing is that I am here. Isn't it? " " It is, indeed," Gleason agreed promptly. " But, child alive, you are tired ! " " Do I really look tired ? " she smiled up at him. " I was, but I'm not tired now." Gleason studied her, and his mouth tightened. She sat very still, her hands limp and her eyes closed, and let him have his opportunity. All at once she opened her eyes and considered him. " Billy," she said. 250 FAME-SEEKERS " you look your two years older. And I ? You find me changed? " There was a little catch in her voice that she had not expected, and she lifted the helio- trope to hide behind it for a moment's breath. " You ? I don't know yet," said Gleason brusquely. " Have you no baggage, Louisa ? " He fell into new bewilderment. " Dear me," she imitated his tone for an instant, then sank back into her chair indifferently. " I must have forgotten to bring any ! ' Gleason towered over her, his hands upon the arms of her chair. " Why didn't you let me know, let me meet you, give me time to get ready for you ? " She gave a pretentious little shudder. " You al- ways were best in a rage," she remarked with amuse- ment. " But I'll tell you why," she added quietly enough. " I came like this, Billy, because it pleased me to come without warning, because I had a childish desire to amaze you into looking really glad to see me. Because I've been homesick, and it is a dread- ful thing to be homesick and to have no place to go home to. So, I just came straight out here, and you really must let me * make believe ' home for a little while. I want to go all over the place and sit in the chairs, and look out of the windows, and touch all of the friendly things. Do you understand ? " Gleason left her and took a turn or two up and down the verandah. He stopped before her. " I'm LOUISA GARTH 251 a mere man, Louisa, and I need facts to go upon, or I'm likely to be unsteady. When did you sail? How did you come out here from town? " Louisa was unable to answer for a minute before the kindliness of him. " From Cherbourg," she an- swered with a gentleness the mere words in nowise merited. " I landed yesterday in New York. I telephoned down town, and they told me you were here. I came straight out, and down here in the stage. That's all." " All ? " echoed Gleason. " And your baggage ? " " Is in New York. I haven't come," she laughed, " to stay for ever ! " Then she flushed slowly over the strange sound and sense of her own thoughtless words. " My coat and hand-bag," she went on un- evenly, for Gleason had taken up his pacing of the verandah again, " are on the stone bench at the turn in the drive." " I'll be back again in a minute," said Gleason, and disappeared into the house. Louisa sat straight in her chair, staring at her re- flection in a big square window before her, terrified at the thought her words had sent running across her senses. Gleason came back, but he waited by the door, holding the screen open for her. She came to him at once, her hat in one hand and the flower she seemed unable to get away from in the 252 FAME-SEEKERS other. He had waited for her at the door the last time they had been there together, and she had taunted him, dawdled, and kept him waiting. "Your room is just about as you left it," said Gleason, following her into the hall. " Just do as you like about everything, and rest till dinner time, then to-night we'll talk of everything. The house- keeper will be up in a moment. She is new: nearly everyone about the place is changed since you were here. I'll get your things and have them sent right up to you. Run along, and rest now ! " Louisa turned on the first step of the stair, her hand, with the flower, holding to the rail. " Billy," she said with all the courage she could gather to- gether, " I really didn't think of it, but I realise now that I should not have come down here to you, like this ! It was stupid " She did her best to meet his eyes frankly. Gleason came to the stairway, and, because she was standing upon the step, their eyes were almost upon a level. He lifted his hand and quietly took the heliotrope out of her fingers, then dropped it, boy- ishly, into the pocket of his flannel jacket. " That's mine," he said laconically. Then he folded his arms and looked into her eyes. " You think you should not have come to me? You should come straight to me at any time, and from anywhere, and under any circumstances. Now," he smiled, folding his arms more tightly, " go and rest, but don't forget what I LOUISA GARTH 253 have told you till I have had time to make you un- derstand that I mean it. I will tell you one other thing now, if I may? " Louisa lifted her hand to brush back her hair, but the hand was unsteady and with a self-accusing gmile she put it back upon the stair-rail. " When you came a little while ago, I had just been re-reading your letter. It came three days ago. I was planning to go over to ask you to come back here when " I came without being asked? " Gleason smiled. " Does that make it right? " he insisted. " Right ! " she echoed hopelessly. " I don't know ! " " You do know ! " declared Gleason, putting his hands upon her shoulders and compelling her to look at him. " Louisa," he said firmly, " don't ever tell lies to yourself, or to me, again. Now," he laughed, unevenly too, and let her go, " go to your room. I want to think. And to-night ! Dear girl ! " Precipitately she ran up a few steps, then she turned and looked down upon him, gaiety and wist- fulness playing through her voica. " I think, Billy, that, if it is moonlight, or if you've a lantern about the place, that we'd better begin by weeding the gar- den!" THE END University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. EGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A 000129028 7