His voice sank. She shook her head again, but as she drew herself gently away she was stabbed by the haggardness of the countenance, the pleading pathos of the eyes. His gust of speech had shaken her too--revealed new points in him. She bent forward quickly and laid her soft lips to his, for one light swift moment.
"Poor boy!" she murmured, "poor poet!"
"Ah, that was enough!" he said, the colour flooding his cheeks."
That healed--that made all good. Will you hide nothing from me, Elise--will you promise?"
"Anything," she said with a curious accent, "anything--if you will but let me paint."
He sprang up, and put her things in order for her. They stood looking at the sketch, neither seeing much of it.
"I must have some more cobalt," she said wearily, "Look, my tube is nearly done."
Yes, that was certain. He must get some more for her. Where could it be got? No nearer than Fontainebleau, alas! where there was a shop which provided all the artists of the neighbourhood. He was eagerly ready to go--it would take him no time.
"It will take you between two and three hours, sir, in this heat.
But oh, I am so tired, I will just creep into the fern there while you are away, and go to sleep. Give me that book and that shawl."
He made a place for her between the spurs of a great oak-root, tearing the brambles away. She nestled into it, with a sigh of satisfaction. "Divine! Take your food--I want nothing but the air and sleep. _Adieu, adieu!_"
He stood gazing down upon her, his face all tender lingering and remorse. How white she was, how fragile, how shaken by this storm of feeling he had forced upon her! How could he leave her?
But she waved him away impatiently, and he went at last, going first back to the village to fetch his purse which was not in his pocket.
As he came out of their little garden gate, turning again towards the forest which he must cross in order to get to Fontainebleau, he became aware of a group of men standing in front of the inn. Two of them were the landscape artists already slightly known to him, who saluted him as he came near. The other was a tall fine-looking man, with longish grizzled hair, a dark commanding eye, the rosette of the Legion of Honour at his b.u.t.tonhole, and a general look of irritable power. He wore a wide straw hat and holland overcoat, and beside him on the bench lay some artist"s paraphernalia.
All three eyed David as he pa.s.sed, and he was no sooner a few yards away than they were looking after him and talking, the new-comer asking questions, the others replying.
"Oh, it is she!" said the stranger impatiently, throwing away his cigar. "Auguste"s description leaves me no doubt of it, and the woman at the house in the Rue Chantal where I had the caprice to inquire one day, when she had been three weeks away, told me they were here. It is annoying. Something might have been made of her.
Now it is finished. A handsome lad all the same!--of a rare type.
_Non!--je me suis trompe--en devenant femme, elle n"a pas cesse d"etre artiste!_"
The others laughed. Then they all took up their various equipments, and strolled off smoking to the forest. The man from Paris was engaged upon a large historical canvas representing an incident in the life of Diane de Poitiers. The incident had Diane"s forest for a setting, but his trees did not satisfy him, he had come down to make a few fresh studies on the spot.
David walked his four miles to Fontainebleau, bought his cobalt, and set his face homewards about three o"clock. When he was halfway home, he turned aside into a tangle of young beech wood, parted the branches, and found a shady corner where he could rest and think.
The sun was very hot, the high road was scorched by it. But it was not heat or fatigue that had made him pause.
So far he had walked in a tumult of conflicting ideas, emotions, terrors, torn now by this memory, now by that--his mind traversed by one project after another. But now that he was so near to meeting her again, though he pined for her, he suddenly and pitifully felt the need for some greater firmness of mind and will.
Let him pause and think! Where _was_ he with her?--what were his real, tangible hopes and fears? Life and death depended for him on these days--these few vanishing days. And he was like one of the last year"s leaves before him, whirled helpless and will-less in the dust-storm of the road!
He had sat there an unnoticed time when the sound of some heavy carriage approaching roused him. From his green covert he could see all that pa.s.sed, and instinctively he looked up. It was the Barbizon _diligence_ going in to meet the five o"clock train at Fontainebleau, a train which in these lengthening days very often brought guests to the inn. The _correspondance_ had been only begun during the last week, and to the dwellers at Barbizon the afternoon _diligence_ had still the interest of novelty.
With the perception of habit David noticed that there was no one outside; but though the rough blinds were most of them drawn down he thought he perceived some one inside--a lady. Strange that anyone should prefer the stifling _interieur_ who could mount beside the driver with a parasol!
The omnibus clattered past, and with the renewal of the woodland silence his mind plunged heavily once more into the agonised balancing of hope and fear. But in the end he sprang up with a renewed alertness of eye and step.
_Despair?_ Impossible!--so long as one had one"s love still in one"s arms--could still plead one"s cause, hand to hand, lip to lip. He strode homewards--running sometimes--the phrases of a new and richer eloquence crowding to his lips.
About a mile from Barbizon, the path to the Bas Breau diverges to the right. He sped along it, leaping the brambles in his path. Soon he was on the edge of the great avenue itself, looking across it for that spot of colour among the green made by her light dress.
But there was no dress, and as he came up to the tree where he had left her, he saw to his stupefaction that there was no one there--nothing, no sign of her but the bracken and brambles he had beaten down for her some three hours before, and the trodden gra.s.s where her easel had been. Something showed on the ground. He stooped and noticed the empty cobalt-tube of the morning.
Of course she had grown tired of waiting and had gone home. But a great terror seized him. He turned and ran along the path they had traversed in the morning making for the road; past the inn which seemed to have been struck to sleep by the sun, past Millet"s studio on the left, to the little overgrown door in the brick wall.
No one in the garden, no one in the little _salon_, no one upstairs; Madame Pyat was away for the day, nursing a daughter-in-law. In all the house and garden there was not a sound or sign of life but the cat asleep on the stone step of the kitchen, and the bees humming in the acacias.
"Elise!" he called, inside and out, knowing already, poor fellow, in his wild despair that there could be no answer--that all was over.
But there was an answer. Elise was no untaught heroine. She played her part through. There was her letter, propped up against the gilt clock on the sham marble _cheminee_.
He found it and tore it open.
"You will curse me, but after a time you will forgive. I _could_ not go on. Taranne found me in the forest, just half an hour after you left me. I looked up and saw him coming across the gra.s.s. He did not see me at first, he was looking about for a subject. I would have escaped, but there was no way. Then at last he saw me. He did not attack me, he did not persuade me, he only took for granted it was all over,--my Art! I must know best, of course; but he was sorry, for I had a gift. Had I seen the notice of my portrait in the "Temps," or the little mention in the "Figaro"?
Oh, yes, Breal had been very successful, and deserved to be. It was a brave soul, devoted to art, and art had rewarded her.
"Then I showed him my sketch, trembling--to stop his talk--every word he said stabbed me. And he shrugged his shoulders quickly; then, as though recollecting himself, he put on a civil face all in a moment, and paid me compliments. To an amateur he is always civil. I was all white and shaking by this time. He turned to go away, and then I broke down. I burst into tears--I said I was coming back to the _atelier_--what did he mean by taking such a cruel, such an insolent tone with me? He would not be moved from his polite manner. He said he was glad to hear it; mademoiselle would be welcome; but just as though we were complete strangers.
_He_ who has befriended me, and taught me, and scolded me since I was fourteen! I could not bear it. I caught him by the arm.
I told him he _should_ tell me all he thought. Had I really talent?--a future?
"Then he broke out in a torrent--he made me afraid of him--yet I adored him! He said I had more talent than any other pupil he had ever had; that I had been his hope and interest for six years; that he had taught me for nothing--befriended me--worked for me, behind the scenes, at the Salon; and all because he knew that I must rise, must win myself a name, that when I had got the necessary technique I should make one of the poetical impressionist painters, who are in the movement, who sway the public taste. But I must give _all_ myself--my days and nights--my thoughts, and brain, and nerves. Other people might have adventures and paint the better.
Not I,--I was too highly strung--for me it was ruin. _"C"est un maitre sevire--l"Art,_" he said, looking like a G.o.d. "_Avec celui-la on ne transige pas. Ah! Dieu, je le connais, moi!_" I don"t know what he meant; but there has been a tragedy in his life; all the world knows that.
"Then suddenly he took another tone, called me _pauvre enfant_, and apologised. Why should I be disturbed? I had chosen for my own happiness, no doubt. What was fame or the high steeps of art compared even with an _amour de jeunesse?_ He had seen you, he said,--_une tete superbe--des epaules de lion!_ I was a woman; a young handsome lover was worth more to me, naturally, than the drudgeries of art. A few years hence, when the pulse was calmer, it might have been all very well. Well! I must forgive him; he was my old friend. Then he wrung my hand, and left me.
"Oh, David, David, I must go! I _must._ My life is imprisoned here with you--it beats its bars. Why did I ever let you persuade me--move me? And I should let you do it again. When you are there I am weak. I am no cruel adventuress, I can"t look at you and torture you. But what I feel for you is not love--no, no, it is not, poor boy! Who was it said "A love which can be tamed is no love"? But in three days--a week--mine had grown tame--it had no fears left. I am older than you, not in years, _mais dans l"ame_--there is what parts us.
"Oh! I must go--and you must not try to find me. I shall be quite safe, but with people you know nothing about. I shall write to Madame Pyat for my things. You need have no trouble.
"Very likely I shall pa.s.s you on the way, for if I hurry I can catch the _diligence_. But you will not see me. Oh, David, I put my arms round you! I press my face against you. I ask you to forgive me, to forget me, to work out your own life as I work out mine. It will soon be a dream--this little house--these summer days! I have kissed the chair you sat in last night, the book you read to me. _C"est deja fini! Adieu! adieu!"_
He sat for long in a sort of stupor. Then that maddening thought seized him, stung him into life, that she had actually pa.s.sed him, that he had seen her, not knowing. That little indistinct figure in the _interieur_, that was she.
He sprang up, in a blind anguish. Pursuit! the _diligence_ was slow, the trains doubtful, he might overtake her yet. He dashed into the street, and into the Fontainebleau road. After he had run nearly a mile, he plunged into a path which he believed was a short cut. It led through a young and dense oak wood. He rushed on, seeing nothing, bruising himself and stumbling. At last a projecting branch struck him violently on the temple. He staggered, put up a feeble hand, sank on the gra.s.s against a trunk, and fainted.
CHAPTER X
It was between five and six o"clock in the morning. In the Tuileries Gardens flowers, gra.s.s, and trees were drenched in dew, the great shadow of the Palace spread grey and cool over terraces and slopes, while beyond the young sun had already shaken off all c.u.mbering mists, and was pouring from a cloudless sky over the river with its barges and swimming-baths, over the bridges and the quays, and the vast courts and facades of the Louvre. Yet among the trees the air was still exquisitely fresh, the sun still a friend to be welcomed. The light morning wind swept the open, deserted s.p.a.ces of the Gardens, playing merrily with the dust, the leaves, the fountains. Meanwhile on all sides the stir of the city was beginning, mounting slowly and steadily like a swelling tone.
On a bench under one of the trees in the Champs-Elysees sat a young man asleep. He had thrown himself against the back of the bench, his cheek resting on the iron, one hand on his knee. It was David Grieve; the lad"s look showed that his misery was still with him, even in sleep.
He was dreaming, letting fall here and there a troubled and disconnected word. In his dream he was far from Paris--walking after his sheep among the heathery slopes of the Scout, climbing towards the grey smithy among the old mill-stones, watching the Red Brook slide by over its long, shallow steps of orange grit, and the Downfall oozing and trickling among its tumbled blocks. Who was that hanging so high above the ravine on that treacherous stone that rocked with the least touch? Louie--mad girl!--come back. Ah!
too late--the stone rocks, falls; he leaps from block to block, only to see the light dress disappear into the stony gulf below. He cries--struggles--wakes.
He sat up, wrestling with himself, trying to clear his torpid brain. Where was he? His dream-self was still roaming the Scout; his outer eye was bewildered by these alleys, these orange-trees, these statues--that distant arch.
Then the hideous, undefined cloud that was on him took shape. Elise had left him. And Louie, too, was gone--he knew not where, save that it was to ruin. When he had arrived the night before at the house in the Rue Chantal, Madame Merichat could tell him nothing of Mademoiselle Delaunay, who had not been heard of. Then he asked, his voice dying in his throat before the woman"s hard and cynical stare--the stare of one who found the chief savour of life in the misfortunes of her kind--he asked for his sister and the Cervins.