Peter slipped some change into Henri"s palm. "You are a man of sense, Henri. Also, I see that you have a good heart," said he. "Now we must see what we can do for this poor little Mademoiselle, you and I. You will place before her the best the house affords--I leave that to you. And when she protests you will say to her: "Your venerable G.o.dfather has arranged for it, Mademoiselle. His orders are, that you come here, seat yourself, tap once with your forefinger upon the table,--and your orders will be obeyed.""
"And if she questions further, Monsieur?"
"Explain that you obey orders, but do not know her G.o.dfather," said Peter, gravely.
"Trust me, Monsieur!" cried the delighted Henri. And from that moment the kindly fellow adored Peter Champneys.
The little game began the next day. Denise gave her tiny order; Henri came back with a loaded tray, whose savory contents he placed before her. Out of the corner of his eye Peter could see the girl"s astonished face when Henri politely insisted that the meal was hers--that her venerable G.o.dfather had ordered it for her! She looked timidly and fearfully around; but n.o.body was paying the slightest attention to her, and after deftly arranging the dishes, Henri had whisked himself off. She waited for a few minutes; but Henri hadn"t come back. And then, because she was almost famished, she ate what had been given her. Peter felt his eyes blur.
Henri came back to her presently with wine. He dusted the bottle lovingly, and filled her gla.s.s with a flourish. She looked up with a tremulous smile:
"My G.o.dfather"s order, Henri?"
"Your venerable G.o.dfather"s order, Mademoiselle," he replied sedately. When she had finished her dinner, he glibly, and with an expressionless countenance repeated Peter"s instructions: she was to come in, seat herself, tap with her forefinger, and give her orders, which would be instantly obeyed! No, he did not know her G.o.dfather.
Nor did Monsieur le patron. No, he might not even take the sous she offered him: all, all, had been arranged, Mademoiselle!
She hesitated. Then she called for pen and paper, and scribbled in violet ink:
MONSIEUR MY G.o.dFATHER, I see that the good G.o.d still permits miracles. You are one.
Accept, then, a poor girl"s thanks and prayers!
Thy G.o.dchild, DENISE.
She gave this to Henri, who received it respectfully. Then she went out, feeling very much better and brighter because of a sadly needed dinner. She was bewildered, and excited; but she wasn"t afraid. She accepted her miracle, which had come just in the nick of time, gratefully, with a childlike simplicity. But she used her blue eyes, and one day they met Peter Champneys"s, regarding her with a good and kind satisfaction; for indeed she looked much better and brighter, now that she was no longer half starved. Denise had encountered other eyes, men"s eyes; but none had ever met hers with just such a look as she saw in these clear and golden ones. A flash of intuition came to her. Only one person in the world could have eyes like that--it must be, it was, he! And she watched him with an absorbed and breathless interest.
In these small restaurants of the Quartier one sits so close to one"s neighbors, in a busy hour, that conversation isn"t difficult; it is, rather, inevitable.
"Monsieur," said the young girl, bravely and yet timidly, on an occasion when they almost touched elbows, "Monsieur,--is it you who have a G.o.d-daughter?"
"Mademoiselle," stammered Peter, who hadn"t expected the question.
"I do not know your G.o.dfather!" And then he turned red to his ears.
Her face broke into a swift and flashing smile. She looked so like a happy child that Peter had to smile back at her, and presently they were chatting like old acquaintances. After that they always managed to dine together.
They found each other delightful. That gloomy sense of loneliness which had oppressed Peter vanished in the girl"s presence. As for Denise, no one had ever been so kind, so gentle, so generous to her as this wonderful Monsieur Champneys. She grew quite beautiful; her eyes were a child"s eyes, her face like one of those little sweet pinkish-white roses one sees in old-fashioned gardens.
She had no relations; neither had Peter. And so he took Denise into his life, just as he had once taken a lost kitten out of the dusk on the Riverton Road: there really was nothing else for him to do! He had for her something of the same whimsical and compa.s.sionate affection that had made him share his gla.s.s of milk with the little cat. She belonged to him; there was n.o.body else.
She was rather a silent creature, Denise. She had none of that Latin vivacity which wearies the listener, but her love for him showed itself in a thousand gracious ways, in innumerable small services, in loving looks. Just to touch him was a never-failing joy to her.
She delighted to stroke his face, to trace with her small fingers the outline of his features. "That is the pattern on the inside of my heart," she told him. She had a quick, light tread, pleasant to listen to, and her rare and lovely laughter was always a delicious surprise, as if one heard an unexpected chime of little bells.
Her housewifely ways, her pretty anxiety about spending money, amused him tenderly. When she could perform some small service for him, she hummed little hymns to the Virgin. Her ministrations extended to Stocks and the Checkleighs, whose shirts she mended so expertly that they didn"t have to borrow so many of Peter"s. She was so happy that Peter Champneys grew happy watching her. It hadn"t seemed possible to Denise that anybody like him could exist; yet here he was, and she belonged to him!
n.o.body had ever loved Peter Champneys in quite the same way. She had so real and true a genius for loving that she exhaled affection as a flower exhales perfume. Loving was an instinct with Denise. She would steal to his side, slip her arm around his neck, kiss him on the eyes--"thy beautiful eyes, Pierre!"--and cuddle her cheek against his, with so exquisite a tenderness in touch and look that the young man"s kind heart melted in his breast. He couldn"t speak.
He could only gather her close, pressing his black head against her soft young bosom.
Her cruel experience with Dangeau was not forgotten; but that had been capture by force, and she remembered it as a black background against which the bright colors of this present happiness showed with a heavenlier radiance. Peter himself didn"t guess how wholly his little comrade loved him, though he did realize her utter selflessness. She never asked him troublesome questions, never annoyed him with irritating jealousy, made no demands upon him. Was he not himself? Very well, then: did not that suffice? Denise didn"t think: she felt. She had the exquisite wisdom of the heart, and in her small hands the flower of Peter Champneys"s youth opened and blossomed. He was young, he was loved, he was busy. Oh, but it was a good world to be alive in! He whistled while he worked. And how he worked! To this period belong those angelic heads, chestnut-haired, wistfully smiling, with blue eyes that look deep into one"s heart.
The airy b.u.t.terfly that signs these canvases is not so much a symbol as a prescience.
When was it he first noticed that for all his love and care he wasn"t going to be able to keep Denise? How did he learn that the great last lover was wooing her away? She was not less happy. A deep and still joy radiated from her, her eyes had the clear and cloudless happiness of a child"s. But he observed that on their pleasant excursions into the country she tired quickly. Her little light feet didn"t run any more. She preferred to sit cuddled against his side, holding his hand in both hers, her head pressed against his shoulder. She didn"t talk, but then, he was used to her silence; that was one of her sweetest charms. Her cheek grew thinner, but the rose in it deepened. Then the pretty dresses he loved to lavish upon her began to hang loosely upon her little body.
It was a frightened young man who called in doctors and specialists.
But, as Henri had once told him, they do not last long, these frail blondes. Also, she was of the sort that loves--and that, you understand, is fatal!
Stocks, who had made a great pet of Peter"s pretty sweetheart, blubbered when he learned the truth, and the younger Checkleigh, who delighted to sketch her, left off because his hand shook so, and he couldn"t see clearly. The Spanish student in the velvet coat, who could sing l.u.s.tily to a guitar, came and sang for her, not the ribald songs the Quartier heard from him, but the beautiful and soft love songs he had heard as a child in Andalusia--how love is an immortal rose one carries through the gates of the grave into the gates of paradise. And the Quartier, which knows so much sorrow as well as so much joy, came with its gayest gossip to make her smile.
Peter himself lived in a sort of tormented daze.--It was Denise, his little Denise, who was going!
Denise herself was the calmest and cheerfulest of them all. Her high destiny had been to love Peter Champneys, and she had fulfilled it.
The good, the kind G.o.d had given her that which in her estimation outweighed everything else. She had lived, she had loved. Now she could go, and go content.
"It is better so," she told him, with that piercing good sense of the French which is like a spiritual insight. "Very dear one, suppose _I_ had been called upon to let _thee_ go: how could I have endured that?" And she added, pressing his fingers, "Do not grieve, my adored Pierre. Observe that I am but a poor little one to whom in thy goodness of heart thou hast been kind: but thou art all my life--all of me, Pierre."
He put his head against her side, and she stroked it, whispering,
"I had but a little while to stay, beloved. Because of thee, that stay has been happy--oh, very, very happy!"
"You have given me all I ever had of youth and love," said Peter.
"Ah, but I am glad!" she said navely. "Because of _that_, I think you must remember!" She looked at him with her blue eyes suddenly full of tears. "It is only when I think you may forget that I am afraid, it is then as if the dark pressed upon me," she said in a whisper sharp with pain. "I lie still and dream how great you will become, how much beloved--for who could fail to love you, Pierre?
And I am glad. It rests my heart, which is all yours. But when I begin to remember how I have been but a little, little part of your life, who have been all of mine, when I think you may forget, then I am afraid, I am afraid!" And she looked at him like a frightened child who is being left alone to go to sleep in the dark.
Peter picked her up, wrapped in the bedquilt, and held her in his arms. She was very light. It was as if he held a little ghost. She shook her bright hair over his shoulders and breast, and he hid his quivering face in it, as in a veil. Presently, in a soft voice:
"G.o.dfather!"
"Yes, my little sweetheart."
"Very dear and precious G.o.dfather,--a long, long time from now, when _She_ comes, She whom you will love as I love you, tell her about me."
"Denise, Denise!" cried poor Peter, straining her to him.
"Tell her I had blue eyes, and a fair face, and bright, bright hair, G.o.dfather. She will like to know. Say, "Her whole wisdom lay in loving me with all her heart--that poor Denise!" Then tell her that she cannot love you more, my Pierre,--but that in my grave I shall despise her if she dares to love you less."
"I--Oh, my G.o.d!" strangled Peter, and he felt as if his heart were being wrenched out of his breast. He was in his twenties, and the girl in his arms was all he knew of love.
Some six weeks later Denise died as quietly as she had lived, her small cold hands clinging to Peter Champneys"s, her blue eyes with their untroubled, loving gaze fixed upon his face. When that beloved face faded from her the world itself had faded from Denise.
He hadn"t dreamed one could suffer as he was called upon to suffer then. The going of little Denise seemed to have torn away a living and quivering part of his spirit. She had loved him absolutely, and Peter couldn"t forget that. His grat.i.tude was an anguish. It is not the duration but the depths of an experience which makes its ineffaceable impression upon the heart.
Mrs. Hemingway saw his changed looks with concern. If she and her husband suspected anything, they did not torment him with questions; they didn"t even appear to notice that he was silent and abstracted.
"What on earth is the matter with the boy?" worried Mrs. Hemingway.
"John, do you think it"s a--"
"Petticoat? What else should it be?"
"I can"t bear to think of Peter getting himself into some sort of sc.r.a.pe with possibly some miserable woman--who will prey upon him,"
murmured Mrs. Hemingway.