Ainslee's Magazine/Foreign Exchange/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
It was an ideal spot which chance had led Jack Hardy to stumble upon for his artistic pursuits in France. The north he knew well and loved, but this was the first time he had made any prolonged stay in the south, and he was enchanted with the land of the Basque and the Béarnais, with its hardy mountaineers and the Spanish remnant of the old Romany tribes.
The medieval tower which he had leased, built of smooth stone blocks, mellow gray in tint, stood in a green and fertile valley, just below the Château De Savergne. On the other side was an unsurpassed view, where the Pyrenees reared their royal crests, snow-crowned in winter, in summer wrapped in a sunshine as radiant and glorious as the gateway of heaven. Dancing waterfalls and sparkling streams rushed through their gorges end down their rocky sides.
The interior of the tower Hardy had fitted up in a most artistic manner. It had been a labor of love with him. The largest of the three or four rooms he had selected as his studio. It contained an old-fashioned fireplace of rough stone, about which were wooden settles of quaint design. The door leading to the outside porch was Gothic in architecture and crudely carved. Similar doors led to his sleeping room and the tiny kitchen. The ceiling showed rough-hewn wooden beams, a rich brown with age. On one side was a good breach, which Hardy had partially filled in with stucco and rubble to make a highly satisfactory studio window. An iron bracket projecting from a jut near the fireplace had been made to do service as the support of a large modern lamp. The walls were hung with tapestries, which the artist in his wanderings had collected; while all about were easels, canvases, finished and unfinished, and all the paraphernalia of a painter's work.
Hardy glanced about him with satisfaction and a sense of well-being, as he lounged back at a little table drawn up close to the blazing fire and finished his coffee. A phonograph on another table was pouring forth the sweet strains of the “Chanson De Bohème.”
During the late afternoon a dense vapory mist had floated down the valley, filling it and obscuring it. And now a thunderstorm had broken out. As Hardy listened to the peals of thunder and the heavy downpour of the rain outside, he felt doubly comfortable and grateful for being so well housed, so well protected from the wind and weather.
He touched a little bell on the table, and in a moment or two there entered from the kitchen an old, stout, gray-haired peasant woman, wearing a faded blue dress and spotless white apron and cap. This was Hardy's entire staff of servants, and very well satisfied he was with the arrangement, for the old woman took excellent care of him.
He told Celestine in French that he had finished, and while she was clearing away the table and putting things to rights, he proceeded to fill his pipe.
“Well,” he began, addressing the old servant in English, as was his wont. It amused him, and it produced no effect upon her, as she did not understand a single word. “Well, we'll have our little evening chat. What!” Celestine shrugged her shoulders and smiled hopelessly, while still continuing her work. “Yes, I see what you think. I am a crazy American. But, Lord, a man must talk to somebody sometimes. All the better if the person he talks to doesn't understand, especially if he wants to tell her secrets.”
He lit his pipe, took one or two luxurious puffs, and then continued with his monologue, evidently enjoying it.
“I take the greatest pleasure in opening my heart to you. What I really want to talk to you about is this lady here.” He walked over to an easel on which was a portrait of a young woman, with masses of dark hair, lustrous eyes like Russian violets bathed in dew, and an exquisite, clear brunette complexion. “I can't talk to the phonograph, can I? And you certainly understand I've got to talk about her to somebody. The lady on the easel, Celestine, the fair unknown, you comprehend, is she, the one mysterious, well-beloved she. You think there are only three of us in this eccentric family, you and the phonograph and I; but you're wrong. There are four; and the fourth, who has never been here, is the most here of us all. She is the first with me, this fourth! I saw her again to-day. She passed me as I came through the village. She did not see me; she looked as always, very sad and lonely and far away.”
He paused a moment, gazing steadfastly at the lovely face before him, and then resumed dreamily:
“I think I've caught that here. Yes, I've got that pretty well. I'd like to have followed her to see where she lives. Do you think she stays at that wretched little hotel, Celestine?”
From the rising inflection of his voice the old peasant knew that he had asked a question, but she could only ejaculate an impotent “Monsieur!” with the same hopeless shrug and smile.
Hardy laughed gleefully. “Evidently you do not wish to commit yourself! Yes, they'd call it a 'haunting face' in the storiettes. Ah, my dear,” with a long sigh, “you've haunted me! It's rather a ghostly love affair of mine, isn't it, Celestine? Saying pretty things to a memory sketch that can't understand, and talking about her to you who can't understand, in this lonely old tower of ours—ah, not lonelier than her eyes say she is. You know, I always suspected something like this would happen to me some day, that I'd see a face and at the very first sight of it I'd say: 'That's my lady—it's she or nobody for me!' Oh,” suddenly facing Celestine, “I understand that shake of the head, madame, and your muttered peasant dialect. All Americans are insane; they talk to themselves, eh? Vanish, pessimist!” For Celestine had finished her work, and, with many a shake of her gray, white-capped head, was retreating to the kitchen.
Hardy went to the settle by the fire, and stretched himself out comfortably, puffing at his pipe and listening to the phonograph. He had changed the cylinder, and it was now sending forth the sweet-sad notes of “Way Down Upon the Suwanee River.”
In spite of his enthusiastic rhapsody in front of the picture, it would scarcely be true to say that he had fallen in love with the fair original, and yet At all events, his happiest hours were spent, as now, in dreaming of her and of the moment they should meet; for he had determined that, somehow, that meeting should be brought about.
The storm grew worse. The wind was now a howling blast, and the rain dashed more and more in angry defiance against the window. Suddenly Hardy's reflections were disturbed by the honk-honk of an automobile which rose above the tumult without. The car must be very near, just outside of the door of the tower, in fact. He rose hastily, shut off the phonograph, and turned toward the Gothic doorway. But, struck by a sudden thought, he paused; and, retracing his steps, took the portrait from the easel and placed it on the floor, with its face to the wall. Then he drew back the heavy bolt of the door, and half opened it. Beyond was a narrow, dark stone passageway leading to the porch.
Again the siren wailed, and then Hardy heard a voice from the passageway inquiring in French if any one was at home. The artist threw the door wide open, and in another moment there appeared on the threshold a tall, thin figure in a long coat and a black slouch hat, both dripping with rain.
The newcomer advanced into the room and threw aside his coat and hat. Although he had never met him personally, Hardy was familiar with the saturnine, lantern-jawed face, the phenomenally thin lips, and the beady eyes under the beetling brows, and knew that he was in the presence of the Prince De Savergne, his landlord.
“So!” exclaimed the prince, turning toward the artist, and speaking with the greatest ease and unction. “It is Monsieur Hardy, I am sure. And I am the Prince De Savergne. Ah, ha, my young friend, we show you some real Boulognese weather. O—o—o—f! What a villainous time! This window of yours, the one light in the whole valley—it looks hospitable. I would wager you have already had some lost wanderers inquiring the way to-night.”
All the time he was speaking, he was examining the apartment with a sharp but furtive glance, and this was not lost upon the keen-eyed artist.
“I don't believe even the foxes are out to-night,” replied Hardy pleasantly, stifling the inward repulsion with which his visitor involuntarily inspired him. “Won't you come to the fire?”
“You have had nobody to seek shelter from the storm?” insisted the prince, but drawing a little nearer to the fire as he had been requested. “Not even a foolish lady who might have been tempted out on a foolish quest?”
Hardy could not refrain from looking the surprise he felt at these questions, but he answered collectedly:
“Not even a tramp. Are you looking for some one?”
“I am looking for” He broke off suddenly, changing the subject with a smile. “My dear young friend, I do not wonder you are surprised that I should visit you to-night. But all my life I have been the victim of impulse. To-night an impulse came. I said: 'To the devil with the weather! I will go to see Mr. Hardy.'”
“Indeed!” said Hardy, politely incredulous.
The prince's eyes were still roving here and there, from one object to another, and Hardy watched him, more and more mystified.
“Ah, it is good to be near art once more,” observed the prince blandly. “And you are a collector, I see, also.”
“Collector? I? No.”
“But that is a very fine old screen,” advancing toward the object in question, which was an unusually large one.
“Oh, that tapestry”
“A very fine piece, I should say,” bending forward to examine it. “Very good, indeed. And the lining, the other side? Is that tapestry also?”
“No, plain cloth.”
“Ah, Mr. Hardy,” exclaimed the prince, with a waggish shake of his head, “I fear you are modest in your possessions. Permit me. I will look for myself.” He suited the action to the word, and passed around behind the screen, only to reappear again instantly. “No, you are right. Still, it is a very good screen.”
He strolled about, touching a little some of the canvases. “How I wish I might look at these!”
Hardy advanced toward the lamp. “I can give you more light, if you wish,” he offered.
But the prince waved the idea aside. “No, no, daytime for pictures always.” He crossed to Hardy and placed a talonlike, but well-kept, hand upon his shoulder. “My young friend, I envy you,” he said genially. “If I had not been so unfortunately born as to be obliged to take up the responsibilities of the head of a house, I should have been a painter and led this free and happy life of art. How charming to come and paint here in this old tower? When I was a little boy and it was all ruinous, I played here such happy games of childhood. Yonder was the old guardroom—quite a large room.”
“I use that for my bedroom,” explained Hardy.
“I fear it must be damp.”
“No, it's dry enough,”
“The rain does not come in?” persisted the prince, taking a candle from among those on the mantelpiece as he spoke.
“Not at all.”
The Prince De Savergne moved toward the door of the bedroom. “As your landlord,” he said, with an ingratiating smile, “you will allow me to see. Young people are very careless, but when we grow older we pay for the cold and wet of our youth.”
He opened the door, and, lifting the candle, peered around the bedroom. Then he returned and replaced the candle on the mantelpiece.
“It seems you have done wonders. It is, as you say, quite dry. Ah, what childhood games we played here so long ago, in these three rooms of the old tower! If I do not forget, that is the only other door?” indicating the third exit from the apartment.
“Yes,” agreed Hardy, a little stiffly. “I made a kitchen of that.”
“Ah, that is droll,” laughed the prince. “In my ancestors' time it was a little cell for prisoners. I must see it as a kitchen.”
He crossed over, without asking permission, and opened the third door, devoting to the kitchen the same scrutiny that he had bestowed upon the bedroom,
“It is comic,” he said, returning to the fireplace. “There is your good servant at work where my great-great-great-grandfather walled up his daughter-in-law alive. Poor woman! That must have been a curious sensation, eh, to see the stones go in one by one, so close to you, till finally”
He finished with a gesture, as if he felt himself surrounded by stone, and smiled at Hardy. But the latter was perplexed and a little angry. Even if he were his tenant, why should this prince come and make a search of his quarters? For search it was. Why, the one might have been a government official by his actions, and the other suspected of being a counterfeiter or running an illicit still! With an effort, however, Hardy thrust aside his irritation and answered evenly:
“Your great-great-great-grandfather must have been a cheerful old body.”
The prince smiled. “Don't you suppose the lady must have been very irritating to put him to such an extreme?” he suggested rather gruesomely. “I think the old régime was very convenient.”
“For your great-great-great-grand-father's daughter-in-law?” questioned the artist satirically. The more he saw of this prince and listened to his conversation, the less he liked him.
“No, for my great-great-great-grand-father.” The tone was quite serious.
“Nowadays, of course”
“We still have our means of argument,” finished the prince significantly.
Hardy cast a keen glance at him.
“I dare say.” And the words were more fraught with meaning than showed on the surface.
“Of course, walling up, as one argument,” continued the prince lightly, “had to be abandoned after our eligible young men discovered America.”
“I learned to-day,” said Hardy slowly, “that your nephew is one of these modern discoverers.”
The prince waved his hand with airy deprecation,
“Yes, we are in the fashion. We have an American in the family—charming like all Americans. Perhaps you have met my niece.”
“I don't think I have ever seen her,” Hardy replied quite truthfully.
“She is not a woman to forget, once having seen.”
Hardy smiled reminiscently.
“Her mother told me to-day that the Comtesse De Savergne is the happiest woman in the world.”
The prince returned the smile, but its motive was different.
“She is, though she has moments when she looks the most unhappy—a deceptive look; at such times she will probably be planning a game of tennis. It masks—that look—a spirit of too much self-reliance. She has, perhaps, too much of that good characteristic of your good race—she is too likely to act for herself.”
These words were not spoken lightly. The prince hoped they would sink in and be remembered if by chance this American artist should ever hear anything about the differences in the Savergne family.
“Now, my dear young friend,” he concluded cordially, extending his hand in the most courteous manner, with no touch of condescension in it, “I like to think of some one living down here in our lonely tower, and I wish myself the pleasure of another little call on you some time when there is daylight to see your pictures.”
Hardy forced himself to take the hand—it was odd how repugnant he found it to be—and to say with a show of regret: “You seem to be in a hurry.”
“The time for pleasant things is always short with me. To be quite frank,” as though an afterthought had struck him, “it was partly that self-reliance of my niece, Madame De Savergne, which has brought me out to- night. You will think me foolish, but we have lost a little dog from the château, a most valuable little animal, belonging to the comtesse, and she is so fond of it I hoped to find it for her, for I feared unless it were found she might be tempted to come and look for it herself.”
Hardy could with good will have struck the suave aristocrat for this insult to his intelligence, but he had sense enough not to make a scene, and forced himself to say:
“Not on a night like this?”
The prince shrugged his shoulders. “Your countrywomen are charming, but they are self-willed, Mr. Hardy. I resume my search. I must embrace this devil of a weather and take him for a companion in my wanderings.”
“I hope you'll find the dog.”
“Thanks. Au revoir.”
“Good night.”
Hardy accompanied his self-imposed guest to the door and closed it behind him. Then he slowly and meditatively refilled his pipe. What did all this mean? The prince without doubt had come to the tower on the chance of finding there some one or something he was in search of. A lost dog? Bah! But what then? Whom then? It was a mystery greater than the riddle propounded to Œdipus by the Sphinx. Well, it was no affair of his.
Hardy was startled from his reflections by the quick opening and shutting of the outside door. As if moved by a galvanic shock, he leaped to his feet, and then stood rooted in amazement, not daring to believe the evidence of his senses. On the threshold was a figure, wet, bedraggled, woebegone—but the most beautiful vision that could have appeared to him. It was the lady of his dreams, here in flesh and blood, in his own studio!
“It's you! It's you!” he murmured breathlessly, choking. “You've come here!”
She was trembling and evidently greatly exhausted, but she managed to say weakly in French: “I beg your pardon, sir.”
He took a step toward her and paused irresolute. “You may speak your own language to me,” he said encouragingly.
“I'm sorry to bother you,” she faltered. “I've lost my way, and I—I fell in that last ravine. I—I saw your light.”
She swayed uncertainly. In an instant he was at her side and supporting her with his arm. He led her gently to the settle, and, after she was ensconsed as comfortably there as the circumstances would allow, he deftly helped her to remove her wet outer garments; and, pouring out a glass of wine, insisted upon her drinking it.
Presently, a slight flush stole into her cheeks. “I will soon be all right,” she said, giving him a grateful look, “if you will let me sit by your fire just a moment.”
Hardy's heart throbbed madly. “You'll have to stay longer than that, I think,” he rejoined determinedly.
“I can't. I can't spare more than five minutes. I am afraid I took the wrong road altogether.”
He was gazing at her with adoring, incredulous eyes. “I think it was the right road for me,” he said in low, tense tones. “It isn't a miracle, is it, that the real you should come here—should be here to-night?”
“The real me?” she repeated, not in the least understanding.
“IT suppose it is a little puzzling. Of course, you couldn't know that I made believe you had been keeping a lonely man company in a lonely old tower ever since the first time he saw you.”
Her pretty dark eyebrows went up in perplexity. “I don't think I know what you're talking about,” she said a little petulantly, “and I'm not sure that you do, either.”
But he was still under the enchantment of her ravishing presence, still a little bewildered by the miracle which had been wrought.
“Then I think I'll show you,” he cried, his voice vibrating with excitement. He hurried across the room and laid his hand upon the portrait which, earlier in the evening, he had turned with its face to the wall.
She was paying but scant attention to him. “I'm just a woman who has lost her way,” she said. “I am the Comtesse De Savergne.”