Perceval Gibbon

“ Those two days were placid and full of peace, quiet with the lull of emptiness. But in them Truda did not forget. She was realizing herself, and her capacity to deal with a situation that would not be devised to show her talents. She felt that she stood, for the first time, on the threshold of brisk, perilous, actual life, of that life which was burlesqued, exaggerated, in the plays in which she acted. It was expectancy that softened her eyes and lit her face with dreams—expectancy and exhilaration.
She was about to be born into the world. ”

“ Rufin signed the little man to be silent. The truth, if he had but given it entertainment, had offered itself to him from the first. All he had heard of the man, Papa Musard's slanderous-sounding complaints of him, the fat concierge's reports of his violence, had gathered towards this culmination. He had insisted upon thinking of him as a full-blooded man of genius, riotously making little of conventions, a creature abounding in life, tinctured a little, perhaps, with the madness that may spice the mind of a visionary and enrage his appetites. ”

“ His eyes traveled across her to Rufin.
"They told me you would come. Say—is it because of my picture?"
"Yes," said Rufin. "I have done all that I could to save you because of that. But——"
"I know," said the other. "They have told me. You like it, then—my poor 'Mona Lisa' of Montmartre?"
Rufin stepped closer. It was not easy to utter all he desired to say under the eyes of those uniformed men, with the sad, attentive priest in the background.
"Monsieur," he said, "your picture is in my studio. Nothing shall ever hang in its place, for nothing will be worthy." ”

“ Audiences, like other assemblies of people, have their racial characteristics; it was the task of Truda to get the range, as it were—to find the measure of their understanding; and before the first act was over she had their sympathy. The rest was but the everyday routine of the stage, that grotesque craft wherein delicate emotions are handled like crowbars, and only the crude colors of life are visible. It was a success—even a great success, and nobody save Truda had an inkling that there was yet something to discover in the soul of a Russian audience. ”

“ Regnault moistened his lips, breathing hard.
"Really," said O'Neill, "I don't quite know how to answer you,
Regnault."
Regnault put the empty phrase from him with a movement of impatience.
"Go to her," he said again, and his brows creased in effort. "Is it because she is religious that you hesitate! You think I am an offence to her religion? O'Neill, I will offer it no offence. I have myself an instinct that way now. It is true. I have."
"Wait," said O'Neill. He was thinking confusedly. "You know you're like a spoiled child, Regnault. You'd die for a thing so long as some one denied it you. ”

“ Carrick, behind the chair, saw that his head drooped, and came round to look at him. He seemed to slumber with his eyes half open, and his plump hands, white and luxurious, were clasped in his lap. Carrick considered him and then crossed to his desk to get his pipe. He expected to have to wait for some time.
But it was less than five minutes before Mr. Newman stirred like a man who moves in his-sleep and emitted a long gusty sigh. His hands unclasped; he drove up to consciousness like a diver who shoots up through strangling fathoms of water to the generous air above. Life was compelling him ”

“ Rufin stilled him with an upraised hand and fetched a chair for the girl. She rested an arm on the back of it, but did not sit down. She did not understand why she had been brought to this room, and stared with hard, preoccupied eyes at the tall man with the mild, still face.
"I recognized you by a picture I saw some months ago in a room in
Montmartre," said Rufin.
"It was a great picture, the work of a great man."
"Ah!" The girl let her breath go in a long sigh. "Monsieur knows him, then? And knows that he is a great man? For he is—he is a great man!" ”

“ From the hood of a bernouse there looked out at me, pale and delicate still, the face of Madame Bertin."
"In my bewilderment and my—my joy, I caught at both her hands and held them for a moment. She smiled and freed herself gently, and her eyes mocked me. She was the same as ever, impregnably the same; stress of mind, sorrow, exile, loneliness—they could not avail to stir her from her pedestal of composure. That manner—it is the armor of the woman of the world." ”

“ The slush-lamp swung and stank and made the shadows wander. From the other side of the bulkhead he could hear stirrings and a murmur of voices as the starboard watch grew aware that something had happened on deck. Conroy, with his oilskin coat half off, paused to listen for comprehensible words. The opening of the door behind him startled him, and he spun round to see Slade making a cautious entry. He recoiled.
"Leave me alone," he said, in a strangled voice, before the other could speak. "What are you following me for? You want to make me out a murderer. I tell you I never touched him." ”

“ Still, imagine to yourself how such a malady sits upon a man like Regnault. It is a fetter upon the most sluggish; for him, with all his vivacity of temperament, his ardor, his quickness, it is a rack upon which he is stretched. You do not know the studio he has now, Senora! It is a great room, with walls of black panels and a wide window in the slope of the roof. Here and there are statues in marble, suits of armor—the wreck and debris of dead ages. And in one corner hangs a picture which the world values, Senora. ”

“ VII THE MASTER Papa Musard, whenever he felt that he was about to die, which happened three times a year at least, would beckon as with a finger from the grimy Montmartre tenement in which he abode and call Rufin to come and bid him farewell. The great artist always came; he never failed to show himself humble to humble people, and, besides, Papa Musard had known Corot—or said that he had—and in his capacity of a model had impressed his giant shoulders and its beard on the work of three generations of painters. ”

“ Fortune, my dear Cobb, is a pendulum; the higher it rises on the side of happiness, the further it returns on the side of disaster. And with me, who cannot take your arm for a promenade along the pavement without a tightness in the neck and a flutter of my heart, who may not go upstairs quicker than a step a minute, disaster has only one shape. ”

“ David and his Kafirs built the house, such a house as you see only when the man who is to make his home in it puts his hand to the building. David knew but one architecture, that of the great hills and the sky, and when all was done, the house and its background clove together like a picture in a fit frame, the one enhancing the other, the two being one in perfection. It was thatched, with deep eaves, and these made a cool stoep and cast shadows on the windows; while the door was red, and took the eye at once, as do the plumes of the aloes. ”

“ O'Neill continued. "A great, splendid room, Senora, uncanny with echoes. And in the middle of it, like a little white island, there is a narrow bed where he lies through the days and nights, camping on the borders of the grave. There are some of us that share the watches by his bedside, to be ready with the drug that holds him to life; and I can tell you that it is sad there, in the hush and the shadows, with the noises of Paris rising about one from without." ”

“ On the whole, he thought, such a marriage was what one would have looked for in Regnault; as Buscarlet said, one might almost have guessed. He, with his genius and his restlessness, his great fame and his infamy, the high achievement of his art and the baseness of his relaxations, he was just such another as Lola.
Friendship, or even the mere forms of friendship, are the touchstone of a man. O'Neill was credited in his world with the friendship of Regnault. It had even been to him a matter of some social profit; there were many who deferred willingly to the great man's intimate. ”

“ Thereafter, life for David and Christina was no longer a single phenomenon, but a series of developments. It was like sailing in agreeably rough water. No pensive mood could survive the sight of mighty Frikkie gambolling like a young bull in the company of Paul; nor could quiet hours impart a melancholy while the welkin rang with the voice of the kleintje bullying the adoring Kafirs. Where before life had glided, now it steeplechased, taking its days bull-headed, and Paul grew to the age of four as a bamboo grows, in leaps. ”

“ It seemed to him, too, that some of the men in the doorway were in uniform; he could see them only in outline, mere black silhouettes against the interior lights; but there was about them the ominous cut of the official, that Russian bird of ill-omen. And then, while yet he doubted, there sounded the very keynote of disaster. From somewhere within the silversmith's shop a woman screamed, sudden and startling.
"Now, now!" said Robert Lucas, at his window, grasping his flute nervously. And, as though in answer to his remonstrance, there was again that guttural, animal laughter. He frowned. ”

“ She spoke as though he were yet a child, for a mother knows nothing of manhood when her son lies helpless. The arts that made him a man shall keep him a man; so she coaxed the closed eyes and the dumb mouth.
But Frikkie would not drink, heard nothing, gave no sign. Christina laid drenched cloths to his forehead, deftly cleansed and bandaged the gaping rent in the base of the skull whence the life whistled forth, and talked to her boy all the while in the low crooning mother voice. David never moved from the foot of the bed, and never loosed his drawn brows. ”

“ The room filled with smoke, and Dawson, staggering unhurt, but with his face stung with powder, did not see the man fall. As the German drew the revolver clear, the woman knifed him in the neck, and he collapsed on his face, belching blood upon the boards of the floor. The woman stood over him, the knife still in her hand, looking at Dawson with a smile.
"My God!" he said as he glanced about him. The tall man was lying at his feet, huddled hideously on the floor. The room stank of violence and passion. "My God!" and he stooped to the body. ”

“ He was lying on his back, with closed eyes, and his keen aquiline face upturned to the pallor of the "light" in the roof. The white hair tumbled on the pillow, and the long, beautiful hands that lay on the coverlet were oddly pathetic in contrast to the potency of the unconscious face. Even in sleep it preserved its cast of high assurance, its note of ideals outworn and discounted. It was the face of a man who had found a bitter answer for most of life's questions. By the bed sat Truelove, his servant, ex-corporal of dragoons. He rose noiselessly as O'Neill approached. ”

“ O'Neill took a chair where he could continue to see her face.
"Senora," he said, "I must tell you, first of all, that M. Regnault is ill beyond anything you can picture to yourself. He sends this message, in truth, from his last bed, the bed he is to die on. And that may be at any moment. His is a disease that touches the heart; any emotion or quick movement—anything at all, Senora, may cut off the very source of his life. ”

“ The cool of the room was grateful to O'Neill after the heat of the road. He set his hat on the small table and took a seat, marking the utter stillness that reigned in that great Moorish house. Save for the purr of the fountain no sounds reached him in all that nest of cool chambers. The thought of it awoke in him new speculation as to the woman he had come to see, who had buried the ashes of her fiery youth in this serene retreat. ”

“ Regnault opened his eyes and looked up sharply. He stretched out one long slender hand in a sudden gesture of urgency. His face, upon the moment, recovered its wonted vivacity.
"Go to her," he said. "Go to her, O'Neill; you are young and long- legged; you have the face of one to whom adventures are due. She will receive you. Speak to her; tell her—tell her of this gloomy room and its booming echoes and the little white bed in the middle of it. Make your voice warm, O'Neill, and tell her of all of it. ”

“ He gazed absently at the child, and shook his head. "Ah, Madame," he said, "if only one could cut an actress's heart out! The worst of them is, they are all woman, even the greatest."
Truda smiled a little. "That is inconvenient, no doubt," she suggested.
"Inconvenient!" He hoisted his shoulders in a mighty shrug. "It is devastating, Madame. See now! Here is this city—a beastly place, it is true, but with much money, and very busy exterminating Jews. Which will you, Madame—its money or its Jews? You see the choice! But I will weary you no longer; the child will assuredly be claimed." ”

“ Dawson took it thankfully from the Greek, and made suitable remuneration in small silver.
"Bimeby rain," repeated the Greek, as he opened a door for him again.
"Well, I'm not made of sugar," replied Dawson, and set off.
It was night now, for in Mozambique evening is but a brief hiatus between darkness and day. It lasts only while the sun is dipping; once the upper limb is under the horizon it is night, full and absolute. As Dawson retraced his steps the sky over him was velvet- black, barely punctured by faint stars, and a breeze rustled faintly from the sea. ”

“ Of the wrath and bewilderment of her manager there is no need to speak; a long experience of famous actresses and singers had not exhausted that expert's capacity for despair. His pessimism gained some color that evening, when Truda had to face a house that was plainly willing to be unsympathetic; applause came doubtfully and in patches, till she gained a hold of them and made herself their master by main force of personality. Monsieur Vaucher, the manager, was still a connoisseur of art. ”

“ The man sat under all those fascinated eyes impatiently; his tired and whimsical face was tense and drawn; he was plainly putting a strong constraint upon himself. The great shoulders, the huge arms, all the compressed strength of the body, made the effect of some strong animal fettered and compelled to tameness.
"Rufin?" he said hesitatingly.
The painter nodded. "Yes, it is Rufin."
The girl glided past him toward the seated man. "And I, Pietro," she said.
He made a gesture with his hand as though to move her aside, for she stood between him and Rufin. ”

“ He was bland and terrible; and they hated him after their several manners, some with dull tear, one or two—and Slade among them—with a ferocity that moved them like physical nausea.
He had left his coat on the wheel-box to go to his work, and was manifestly unarmed. The belief which had currency in the forecastle, that he came on watch with a revolver in his coat-pocket, did not apply to him now; they could have seized him, smitten him on his blaspheming mouth, and hove him over the side without peril. ”

“ But, mingled with her contempt for his helplessness, Miss Gregory felt a certain softening. His homing instinct, as blind as that of a domestic animal, his rejoicing in his return, his childish plan for taking his mother by surprise, even his loyalty to the tramcars and all the busy littleness of Clapham Junction—these touched something in her akin to the goodness of motherhood. It occurred to her that perhaps he had been better off under the lights of the cafe than alone on his way to his bed ”

“ Still, whatever he had seen wrongly, there was still the picture. Apache, murderer, and all the rest—the fellow had painted the picture. No one verdict can account for both art and morals, and there was reason to fear, it seemed, that the law which executed a murderer would murder a painter at the same time—and such a painter!
"No," said Rufin, unconsciously speaking aloud—"no; they must not kill him."
"Ah, M'sieur!" It was a cry from the girl, whose composure had broken utterly at his words. "You are also an artist—you know!" ”