Max

by Katherine Cecil Thurston

  CHAPTER V

  So the step was taken, and two souls, drawn together from differentcountries, different races, touched in a first subtle fusion. With anease kindled by the fine and stinging air, stimulated by the crispsummons of the flutes and the martial rattle of the drums, they bridgedthe thousand preliminaries that usually hedge a friendship, and arrivedin a moment of intuition at that consciousness of fellowship that is themost divine of human gifts.

  As though the affair had been prearranged through countless ages, theyturned by one accord and forced a way through the crowd that stillencompassed them. Across the Place de la Concorde they went, past thewhite statues, past the open space through which the soldiers were stilldefiling like a dark stream in a snowbound country. Each was drawninstinctively toward the Cours la Reine--the point from whence thestream was pouring, the point where the crowd of loiterers was sparsest,where the bare and frosted trees caught the sun in a million dancingfacets. Reaching it, the boy looked up into the stranger's face with hisfascinating look of question and interest.

  "Monsieur, tell me something! How did you know me again? And why did youspeak to me?"

  The question was grave, with the charming gravity that was wont to crosshis gayety as shadows chase each other across a sunlit pool. His lipswere parted naively, his curious slate-gray eyes demanded the truth.

  TWO SOULS, DRAWN TOGETHER, TOUCHED IN A FIRST SUBTLEFUSION]

  The Irishman recognized the demand, and answered it.

  "Now that you put it to me," he said, thoughtfully, "I'm not sure that Ican tell you. There's something about you--" His thoughtfulnessdeepened, and he studied the boy through narrowed eyes. "It isn't thatyou're odd in any way."

  The boy reddened.

  "It isn't that you're odd," he insisted, "but somehow you're such a slipof a boy--" His voice grew meditative and he recurred to his nativetrick of phrasing, as he always did when interested or moved.

  "But why did you speak to me? I'm not interesting."

  "Oh yes, you are!"

  "How am I interesting?" There was a flash in the gray eyes that revealednew flecks of gold.

  The Irishman hesitated.

  "Well, I can't explain it," he said, slowly, "unless I tell you that youthrow a sort of spell--and that sounds absurd. You see, I've knockedabout the world a bit, east and west, but at the back of everything I'man Irishman; I have a fondness for the curious and the poetical and themysterious, and somehow you seemed to me last night to be mysteryitself, with your silence and your intentness." He dropped his voice tothe meditative key, unconsciously enjoying its soft, half-melancholycadences, and as he spoke the boy felt some chord in his own personalityvibrate to the mind that had asked for no introduction, demanded nocredentials, that had decreed their friendship and materialized it.

  "No," the Irishman mused on, "there's no explaining it. You were mysteryitself, and you fired my imagination, because I happen to come from acountry of dreams. We Irish are born dreamers; sometimes we never wakeup at all, and then we're counted failures. But, I tell you what, whenall's said and done, we see what other men don't see. For instance,what do you think my two friends saw in you last night?"

  The boy shook his head, and there was a tremor of nervousness about hismouth.

  "They saw something dangerous--something to be avoided. Yet Mac is amillionaire several times over, and Billy is distinctly a diplomatistwith a future."

  The boy forced a smile; he was beginning to shrink from the pleasantscrutiny, to wish that the vaporous fog of last night might dim thesearching light of the morning.

  "What did they see?" he asked.

  The Irishman looked at him humorously. "I hardly like to tell it toyou," he said, "but they marked you for an anarchist. An anarchist, forall the world! As if any anarchist alive would travel first-class inthird-class clothes! You see, I'm blunt."

  The boy, studying him, half in fear, half in doubt, laughed suddenly inquick relief and amusement.

  "An anarchist! How droll!"

  "Wasn't it? I told them so. I also told them--"

  "What?"

  "My own beliefs."

  "And your beliefs?"

  "No! No! You won't draw me! But I'll tell you this much, for I've toldit before. I knew you were no common creature of intrigue; I acceptedyou as mystery personified."

  "And now you would solve me?" In his returning confidence the boy's eyesdanced.

  "God forbid!" The vehemence of the reply was comic, and the Irishmanhimself laughed as the words escaped him. "Oh no!" he added, soberly."Keep your mask! I don't want to tear it from you. Later on, perhaps,I'll take a peep behind; but I can accept mysteries and miracles--I wasborn into the Roman Catholic Church."

  "And I into the Greek."

  "Ah! My first peep!"

  "And what do you see?"

  "Do you know, I see a queer thing. I see a boy who has thought. You havethought. Don't deny it!"

  "On religion?"

  "On religion--and other things; you acknowledge it in one look."

  The boy laughed, like a child who has been caught at some forbiddengame.

  "Perhaps it was your imagination."

  "Perhaps! But, look here, we can't stand all day discoursing in theCours la Reine! Where shall we wander--left or right?" He nodded firstin the direction of the river, then toward the large building that facedthem on the right, from the roof of which an array of small flagsfluttered an invitation.

  The boy's eyes followed his movement. "Pictures!" he exclaimed. "Ididn't know there was an exhibition open."

  "Live and learn! Come along!"

  Together they stepped into the roadway, where the frosty surface wasscarred by the soldiers' feet, and together they reached the doorway ofthe large building and read the legend, "_Soctiete Peintres etSculpteurs Francais_."

  The Irishman read the words with the faintly humorous, faintly scepticalglance that he seemed to bestow upon the world at large.

  "Remember I'm throwing out no bait, but I expect 'twill be value for acouple of francs."

  They entered the bare hall and, mounting a cold and rigid staircase,found themselves confronted by a turnstile.

  The Irishman was in the act of laying a two-franc piece in the hand ofthe custodian when the boy plucked him by the sleeve and, turning, hesaw the curious eyes full of a sudden anxiety.

  "Monsieur, pardon me! You know Paris well?"

  "I live here for five months out of the twelve."

  "Then you can tell me if--if this exhibition will be well attended. Iwant with all my heart to see the pictures, but I--I dislikecrowds--fashionable crowds." His voice was agitated; it was as if he hadsuddenly awakened from his pleasant dream of Bohemian comradeship to aremembrance of the Paris that lay about him.

  The Irishman expressed no surprise: his only reply was to move nearer tothe guardian of the turnstile.

  "Monsieur," he said in French, "have the goodness to inform me how manypersons have passed through the turnstile this morning?"

  The man looked at him without interest, though with some surprise. 'Notmany of the world were to be seen at such an hour,' he informed him.'So far, he had admitted two gentlemen--artists, and threeladies--American.'

  The Irishman waved his hand toward the turnstile.

  "In with you! The world forgetting, by the world forgot!"

  His ease of manner was contagious. Whatever misgivings had assailed theboy were banished with this reassurance, and his confidence flowed backas the custodian took the two-franc piece and the turnstile clickedtwice, making them free of the long, bare galleries that opened in frontof them.

  Inured as he was to cold, he shivered as they passed into the first ofthese long rooms, and involuntarily buried his chin in the collar of hiscoat. The chill of the place was vaultlike; the cold, gray light thatpenetrated it held nothing of the sun's comfort, while the small, blackstove set in the middle of the room was a mere travesty of warmth.

  "God bless my soul!" began the Irishman, "this is art for art
's sake--"

  But there he stopped, for his companion, with the impetuosity of histemperament, had suddenly caught sight of a picture that interested him,and had darted across the room, leaving him to his own reflections.

  The boy was standing perfectly still, entirely engrossed, when he camesilently up behind him, and paused to look over his shoulder. They werealone in the vast and chilly room save for one attendant who dozed oversome knitting in a corner near the door. Away into the distancestretched the other rooms, bound one to the other like links in a chain.From the third of these came the penetrating voices of the Americanladies, descanting unhesitatingly upon the pictures; while in the secondthe two artists could be seen flitting from one canvas to another with arestless, nervous activity.

  These facts came subconsciously to the Irishman, for his eyes and histhoughts were for the boy and the subject of the boy's interest--apicture curiously repulsive, yet curiously binding in its realism ofconception. It was a large canvas that formed one of a group of five orsix studies by a particular artist. The details of the picture scarcelyheld the mind, for the imagination of the beholder was instantly caughtand enchained by the central figure--the figure of a great ape, paintedwith cruel and extraordinary truth. The animal was squatting upon theground, devouring a luscious fruit; its small and greedy eyes werealight with gluttony; in its unbridled appetite, its hairy fingerscrushed the fruit against its sharp teeth, while the juice dripped fromits mouth.

  The intimate, undisguised portrayal of greed shocked thesusceptibilities, but it was the hideous human attributes patent in thebrute that disgusted the imagination. With a terrible cunning of mindand brush the artist had laid bare a vice that civilization cloaks.

  For two or three minutes the boy stood immovable, then he looked backover his shoulder, and the man behind him was surprised at theexpression that had overspread his face, the sombre light that glowed inhis eyes. In a moment the adventurer was lost, another being had comeuppermost--a strange, unexpected being.

  "What do you think of this picture?"

  The Irishman did not answer for a moment, then his eyes returned to thecanvas and his tongue was loosed.

  "If you want to know," he said, "I think it's the most damnable thingI've ever seen. When the Gallic mind runs to morbidity there's nothingto touch it for filth."

  "Why filth?"

  "Why filth? My dear boy, look at this--and this!" He pointed to theother pictures, each a study of monkey life, each a travesty of somehuman passion.

  The boy obeyed, conscientiously and slowly, then once more his eyeschallenged his companion's.

  "I say again, why filth?"

  "Because there is enough of the beast in every man without advertisingit."

  "You admit that there is something of the beast in every man?"

  "Naturally."

  "Then why fear to see it?" The boy's face was pale, his eyes stillchallenged.

  The other made a gesture of impatience. "It isn't a question of fear;it is a question of--well, of taste."

  "Taste!" The boy tossed the word to scorn.

  "What would you substitute?"

  "Truth." There was a tremor in his voice, a veil seemed to fall upon hisyouth, arresting its carelessness, sobering its vitality.

  The Irishman raised his brows. "Truth, eh?"

  "Yes. It is only possible to live when we know life truly, see it andvalue it truly."

  "There may be perverted truth."

  "You say that because this truth we speak of displeases you; yet this isno more a perversion of the truth than"--he glanced round thewalls--"than that, for example; yet you would approve of that."

  He waved his hand toward another painting, a delicate and charmingconception of a half-clothed woman, a picture in which the flesh-tints,the drapery, the lights all harmonized with exquisite art.

  "You would approve of that because it pleases your eye and soothes yoursenses, yet you know that all womankind is not slim and graciou--thatall life is not lived in boudoirs."

  "Neither is man all beast."

  "Ah, that is it! If we are to be students of human nature we must not beswayed in one direction or the other; and that is the difficulty--to bedispassionate. Sometimes it is--very difficult!"

  It came with a charm indescribable, this sudden admission of weakness,accompanied by a deprecating, pleading glance, and the Irishman wasfilled with a sudden sense of having recovered something personal andprecious.

  "What are you?" he cried. "It's my turn to seek the truth now. What areyou, you incomprehensible being?"

  The boy laughed, the old careless, light-hearted laugh of the creatureinfinitely free.

  "Do not ask! Do not ask!" he said. "A riddle is only interesting whileit is unsolved."