She stood quite still, her face perfectly impa.s.sive, her little hands clasped together, the brim of her hat shading her eyes, which looked straight at my canvas.
I gave no sign of her presence. It is dangerous to break down the reserve of silence, which is often the only barrier between an out-door painter and the crowds that surround him. Persisted in, it not only compels their respect, even to the lowering of their voices and the tip-toeing in and out of the circle about you, but shortens the time of their visits, a consummation devoutly to be wished. So I worked on in silence, never turning toward this embodiment of one of Boutet do Monvel"s drawings, whose absorbed face I could see out of one corner of my eye.
Then a ripple of laughter broke the stillness, and a little finger was thrust out, stopping within a hair"s-breadth of the dot of Chinese white, still wet, which topped my burnt-umber figure.
"Tres drole, Monsieur!"
The voice was sweeter than the laugh. One of those flute-like, bird-throated voices that children often have who live in the open all their lives, chasing b.u.t.terflies or gathering wild flowers.
Then came a halloo from the greensward. The priest was coming toward us, calling out, as he walked:
"Susette! Susette!"
He, too, underwent a change. The long, ivory-black ca.s.sock, so unmistakable in the atmospheric perspective, became an ordinary frock-coat; the white band of a collar developed into the regulation secular pattern, and the silk hat, although of last year"s shape, conformed less closely in its lines to one belonging exclusively to the clergy. The face, though, as I could see in my hurried glance, and even at that distance, was the smooth, clean-shaven face of a priest--the face of a man of fifty, I should think, who had spent all his life in the service of others.
Again came the voice, this time quite near.
"Susette! Susette!"
The child, without turning her head, waved her hand in reply, looked earnestly into my face, and with a quick bending of one knee in courtesy, and a "Merci, M"sieu; merci," ran with all her speed toward the priest, who stretched wide his arms, half-lifting her from the ground in the embrace. Then a smile broke over his face, so joyous, so full of love and tenderness, so much the unconscious index of the heart that prompted it, that I laid down my palette to watch them.
I have known many priests in my time, and I have never ceased to marvel at the beauty of the tie which binds them to the little ones of their flocks. I have never been in a land where priests and children were not companions. These long-frocked guardians sit beside their playgrounds, with noses in their breviaries, or they head processions of boys and girls on the way to chapel, or they follow, two by two, behind a long string of blue-checked ap.r.o.ns and severe felt hats, the uniform of the motherless; or they teach the little vagrants by the hour--often it is the only schooling that these children get.
But I never remember one of them carrying such a waif about in his arms, nor one irradiated by such a flash of heavenly joy when some child, in a mad frolic, saw fit to sc.r.a.pe her muddy shoes down the front of his clean, black ca.s.sock.
The beatific smile itself was not altogether new to me. Anyone else can see it who wanders into the Gallery of the Prado. It irradiates the face of an old saint by Ribera--a study for one of his large canvases, and is hung above the line. I used to stand before it for hours, studying the technique. The high lights on the face are cracked in places, and the shadows are blackened by time, but the expression is that of one who looks straight up into heaven. And there is another--a Correggio, in the Hermitage, a St. Simon or St. Timothy, or some other old fellow--whose eyes run tears of joy, and whose upturned face reflects the light of the sun. Yet there was something in the face of the priest before me that neither of the others had--a peculiar human quality, which shone out of his eyes, as he stood bareheaded in the sunshine, the little girl in his arms. If the child had been his daughter--his very own and all he had, and if he had caught her safe from some danger that threatened her life, it could not have expressed more clearly the joyousness of grat.i.tude or the bliss inspired by the sense of possessing something so priceless that every other emotion was absorbed.
It was all over in a moment. He did not continue to beam irradiating beat.i.tudes, as the old Ribera and the older Correggio have done for hundreds of years. He simply touched his hat to me, tucked the child"s hand into his own, and led her off to her mother.
I kept at my work. For me the incident, delightful as it was, was closed. All I remembered, as I squeezed the contents of another tube on to my palette, was the smile on the face of the priest.
The weather now began to take part in the general agitation. The lazy haze, roused by the joyous sun, had gathered its skirts together and had slipped over the hills. The sun in its turn had been effaced by a big cloud with scalloped edges which had overspread the distant line of the river, blotting out the flashes of silver laughter, and so frightening the little waves that they scurried off to the banks, some even trying to climb up the stone coping out of the way of the rising wind. A cool gust of air, out on a lark, now swept down the path, and, with lance in rest, toppled over my white umbrella. Big drops of rain fell about me, spitting the dust like spent b.a.l.l.s. Growls of thunder were heard overhead. One of those rollicking, two-faced thunder-squalls, with the sun on one side and the blackness of the night on the other, was approaching.
The priest had seen it, for he had the child pickaback and was running across the sward. The woman had seen it, too, for she was already collecting her baskets, preparing to follow, and I was not far behind.
Before she had reached the edge of the woods I had overtaken her, my traps under my arm, my white umbrella over my head.
"The Chalet Cycle is the nearest," she volunteered, grasping the situation, and pointing to a path opening to the right as she spoke.
"Is that where he has taken the child?" I asked, hurriedly.
"No, Monsieur--Susette has gone home. It is only a little way."
I plunged on through the wet gra.s.s, my eyes on the opening through the trees, the rain pouring from my umbrella. Before I had reached the end of the path the rain ceased and the sun broke through, flooding the wet leaves with dazzling light.
These two, the clouds and the sun, were evidently bent on mischief, frightening little waves and painters and bright-eyed children and good priests who loved them!
A PROCESSION OF UMBRELLAS
II
Do you happen to know the Chalet Cycle?
If you are a staid old painter who takes life as he finds it, and who loves to watch the procession from the sidewalk without any desire to carry one of the banners or to blow one of the horns--one of your three-meals-a-day, no heel-taps, and go-to-bed-at-ten-o"clock kind of a man, then make a note of the Cycle. The melons are excellent; the omelets are wonders, and the salads something to be remembered. But, if you are two-and-twenty, with the world in a sling and both ends of the sling in your hand, and if this is your first real outing since your college days, it would be just as well for you to pa.s.s it by and take your coffee and rolls at the little restaurant over the bridge, or the one farther down the street.
Believe me, a most seductive place is this Chalet Cycle, with its tables set out under the trees!
A place, at night, all hanging lanterns and shaded candles on _tete-a-tete_ tables, and close-drawn curtains about the kiosks. A place, by day, where you lunch under giant red and white umbrellas, with seats for two, and these half-hidden by j.a.panese screens, so high that even the waiters cannot look over. A place with a great music-stand smothered in palms and shady walks and cosey seats, out of sight of anybody, and with deaf, dumb, and blind waiters. A place with a big open gateway where everybody can enter and--ah! there is where the danger lies--a little by-path all hedged about with lilac bushes, where anybody can escape to the woods by the river--an ever-present refuge in time of trouble and in constant use--more"s the pity--for it is the _unexpected_ that always happens at the Chalet Cycle.
The prettiest girls in Paris, in bewitching bicycle costumes, linger about the music-stand, losing themselves in the arbors and shrubberies.
The kiosks are almost all occupied: charming little Chinese paG.o.das these--eight-sided, with lattice screens on all sides--screens so tightly woven that no curious idler can see in, and yet so loosely put together that each hidden inmate can see out. Even the trees overhead have a hand in the villany, spreading their leaves thickly, so that the sun itself has a hard time to find out what is going on beneath their branches. All this you become aware of as you enter the big, wide gate.
Of course, being quite alone, with only my battered old umbrella for company, I did not want a whole kiosk to myself, or even half of a giant umbrella. Any quiet corner would do for me, I told the Maitre d"Hotel, who relieved me of my sketch-trap--anywhere out of the rain when it should again break loose, which it was evidently about to do, judging from the appearance of the clouds--anywhere, in fact, where I could eat a filet smothered in mushrooms, and drink a pint of _vin ordinaire_ in peace.
"No, I expected no one." This in answer to a peculiar lifting of the eyebrows and slight wave of his hand as he drew out a chair in an unoccupied kiosk commanding a view of the grounds. Then, in rather a positive tone, I added:
"Send me a waiter to take my order--orders for _one_, remember." I wanted to put a stop to his insinuations at once. Nothing is so annoying when one"s hair is growing gray as being misunderstood--especially by a waiter.
Affairs overhead now took a serious turn. The clouds evidently disapproving of the hilarious goings-on of the sun--poking its head out just as the cloud was raining its prettiest--had, in retaliation, stopped up all the holes the sun could peer through, and had started in to rain harder than ever. The waiters caught the angry frown on the cloud"s face, and took it at its spoken word--it had begun to thunder again--and began piling up the chairs to protect their seats, covering up the serving-tables, and getting every perishable article under shelter. The huge mushroom-umbrellas were collapsed and rushed into the kiosks--some of them into the one where I sat, it being the largest; small tables were turned upside down, and tilted against the tree-trunks, and the storm-curtains of all the little kiosks let down and b.u.t.toned tight to the frames. Waiters ran hither and thither, with napkins and ap.r.o.ns over their heads, carrying fresh courses for the several tables or escaping with their empty dishes.
In the midst of this melee a cab dashed up to the next kiosk to mine, the wheels cutting into the soft gravel; the curtains were quickly drawn wide by a half-drowned waiter, and a young man with jet-black hair and an Oriental type of face slipped in between them.
Another carriage now dashed up, following the grooves of the first wheels--not a cab this time, but a perfectly appointed coupe, with two men in livery on the box, and the front windows banked with white chrysanthemums. I could not see her face from where I sat--she was too quick for that--but I saw the point of a tiny shoe as it rested for an instant on the carriage-step and a whirl of lace about a silk stocking.
I caught also the movement of four hands--two outstretched from the curtains of the kiosk and two from the door of the coupe.
Of course, if I had been a very inquisitive and very censorious old painter, with a tendency to poke my nose into and criticise other people"s business, I would at once have put two and two together and asked myself innumerable questions. Why, for instance, the charming couple did not arrive at the same moment, and in the same cab? or why they came all the way out to Suresne in the rain, when there were so many cosey little tables at Laurent"s or at the Voisin, on the Rue Cambon, or in the Cafe Anglais on the Boulevard. Whether, too, either one were married, and if so which one, and if so again, what the other fellow and the other woman would do if he or she found it all out; and whether, after all, it was worth the candle when it did all come out, which it was bound to do some day sooner or later. Or I could have indulged in the customary homilies, and decried the tendencies of the times, and said to myself how the world was going to the dogs because of such goings-on; quite forgetting the days when I, too, had the world in a sling, and was whirling it around my head with all the impetuosity and abandon of youth.
[Ill.u.s.tration: I saw the point of a tiny shoe.]
But I did none of these things--that is, nothing Paul Pryish or presuming. I merely beckoned to the Maitre d"Hotel, as he stood poised on the edge of the couple"s kiosk, with the order for their breakfast in his hands, and, when he had reached my half-way station on his way across the garden to the kitchen, stopped him with a question. Not with my lips--that is quite unnecessary with an old-time Maitre d"Hotel--but with my two eyebrows, one thumb, and a part of one shoulder.
"The nephew of the Sultan, Monsieur--" he answered, instantly.
"And the lady?"
"Ah, that is Mademoiselle Ernestine Beraud of the Variete. She comes quite often. For Monsieur, it is his first time this season."
He evidently took me for an old _habitue_. There are some compensations, after all, in the life of a staid old painter.
With these solid facts in my possession I breathed a little easier.
Mademoiselle Ernestine Beraud, from the little I had seen of her, was quite capable of managing her own affairs without my own or anybody else"s advice, even if I had been disposed to give it. She no doubt loved the lambent-eyed gentleman to distraction; the kiosk was their only refuge, and the whole affair was being so discreetly managed that neither the lambent-eyed gentleman nor his houri would be obliged to escape by means of the lilac-bordered path in the rear on this or any other morning.
And if they should, what did it matter to me? The little row in the cloud overhead would soon end in further torrents of tears, as all such rows do; the sun would have its way after all and dry every one of them up; the hungry part of me would have its filet and pint of St. Julien, and the painter part of me would go back to the little path by the river and finish its sketch.
Again I tried to signal the Maitre d"Hotel as he dashed past on his way to the kiosk. This time he was under one of the huge umbrellas which an "omnibus" was holding over him, Rajah-fashion. He had a plump melon, half-smothered in ice, in his hands, to protect it from the downpour, the rain making gargoyles of the points of the ribs of the umbrella.
Evidently the breakfast was too important and the expected fee too large to intrust it to an underling. He must serve it himself.