DISSOLVING VIEW.
That he might not meet with his own countrymen, Ralph halted at Milan, and in the great deserted gallery of the Brera went steadily to work. If, as it often happened, Suzette's pale face got between him and the canvas, he mentioned his own name and said "renown," and took a turn in the remote corridor where young Raphael's Sposializo hung opposite that marvel of Guercino's—poor Hagar and her boy Ishmael driven abroad. These adjuncts and the fiercer passion of self had their effect.
He never wrote to Suzette, but sent secretly for his baggage, and was well pleased with the consciousness that he could forget her. After three months he set out for Florence and studied the masterpieces of Andrea del Sarto, and tried his hand at the Flora of Titian.
He went into society somewhat, and was very much afraid his unworthy conduct in Paris might be bruited abroad. Indeed, he could hardly forgive himself the fondness he had known, and came to regard Suzette as a tolerably bad person, who had bewitched him. He burned all her letters, and a little lock of hair he had clipped while she was asleep once, and blotted the whole experience out of his diary. The next Sunday he went to hear the Rev. Mr. Hall preach, and felt quite consoled.
The summer fell upon Val d'Arno like the upsetting of a Tuscan Scaldino, and Ralph Flare regretfully took his departure northward. All the world was going to Paris—why not he? Was he afraid? Certainly not; it had been a great victory over temptation to stay away so long. He would carry out the triumph by braving a return.
In accordance with his principles of economy, he took a third-class ticket at Basle. He could so make better studies of passengers; for, somehow, your first-class people have not character faces. The only character you get out of them is the character of wine they consume.
He left the Alps behind him, and rolled all day through the prosaic plains of France; startling the pale little towns, down whose treeless streets the sun shone, oh! so drearily, and taking up boors and market-folks at every monastic station. There was a pretty young girl sitting beside Ralph in the afternoon, but he refused to talk to her, for he was schooling himself, and preferred to scan the features of an odd old couple who got in at Troyes.
They were two old people of the country, and they sat together in the descending shadows of the day, quite like in garb and feature, their chins a little peakish, and the hairs of both turning gray. The man was commonplace, as he leaned upon a staff, and between their feet were paniers of purchases they had been making, which the woman regarded indifferently, as if her heart reached farther than her eyes, and met some soft departed scene which she would have none other see.
"She has a good face," said Flare. "I wish she would keep there a moment more. By George, she looks like somebody I have known."
The old man nodded on his staff. The rumble of the carriages subdued to a lull all lesser talk or murmurs, and the sky afar off brought into sharp relief the two Gallic profiles, close together, as if they were used to reposing so; yet in the language of their deepening lines lay the stories of lives very, very wide apart.
"The old girl's face is soft," said Ralph Flare. "She has brightened many a bit of Belgian pike road, and the brown turban on her head is in clever contrast to the silver shimmer of her hairs. How anomalous are life and art! How unconscious is this old lady of the narrow escape she is making from perpetuation! Doubtless she works afield beside that old Jacques Bonhomme, and drinks sour wine or Normandy cider on Sundays. That may be the best fate of Suzette, but it must be an amply dry reformation for any little grisette to contemplate. For such prodigals going home there is no fatted calf slain. No fathers see them afar off and run to place the ring upon their fingers. They renounce precarious gayety for persistent slavery. The keen wit of the student is exchanged for the pipe and mug and dull oath of the boor. I wish every such girl back again to so sallow a fate, and pity her when she gets there."
And so, with much unconscious sentimentality, and the two old market people silent before him, Ralph Flare's eyes half closed also, and the lull of the wheels, the long lake streaks of the sedative skies, the coming of great shadows like compulsions to slumber, made his forehead fall and the world go up and down and darken.
It was the old woman who shook him from that repose; she only touched him, but her touch was like a lost sense restored. He thrilled and sat stock still, with her withered blue hand on his arm, and heard the pinched lips say, unclosing with a sort of quiver:
"Baby!"
He looked again, and seemed to himself to grow quite old as he looked, and he said,
"Enfant perdu!"
The turban kept its place, the peaked chin kept as peaked; there seemed even more silver in the smooth hair, and the old serge gown drooped as brownly; but the sweet old face grew soft as a widow's looking at the only portrait she guards, and a tear, like a drop of water exhumed, ran to the tip of her nostril.
"Suzette!" he said, "my early sin; do you come back as well with the turning of my hairs? Has the first passion a shadow long as forever? Why have we met?"
"Not of my seeking was this meeting, Ralph. Speak softly, for my husband sleeps, and he is old like thee and me. If my face is an accusation, let my lips be forgiveness. The love of you made my life dutiful; the loss of you saddened my days, but it was the sadness of religion! I sinned no more, and sought my father's fields, and delayed, with my hand purified by his blessing, the residue of his sands of life. I made my years good to my neighbors, the sick, the bereaved. I met the temptations of the young with a truer story than pleasure tells, and when I married it was with the prelude of my lost years related and forgiven. With children's faces the earnestness and beauty of life returned; for this, for more, for all, may your reward be bountiful!"
There is no curse like the dream of old age. Ralph Flare felt, with the sudden whitening of each separate hair, the sudden remembrance of each separate folly; and the moments of grief he had wrung from the little girl of the Quartier Latin revived like one's mean acts seen through others' eyes.
"Pardon you, child, Suzette?" he said; "to me you were more than I hoped, more than I wished. I asked your face only, and you gave me your heart. For the unfaithfulness, for the wrath, for the unmanliness, for the tyranny with which I treated you, my soul upbraids me."
"How thankful am I," she answered; "the terror to me was that you had learned in the Quartier lessons to make your after-life monotonous. I am happy."
Their hands met; to his gray beard fell the smile upon her mouth; they forget the Quartier Latin; they felt no love but forgiveness, which is the tenderest of emotions. The whistle blew shrilly; the train stopped; Ralph Flare awoke from sleep; but the old couple were gone.
He went to Paris, and, contrary to his purpose, inquired for her. She had been seen by none since his departure. He wrote to the Maire of her commune, and this was the reply:
"Ralph, Merci! Pardonne!
"Suzette."
He felt no loss. He felt softened toward her only; and he turned his back on the Quartier Latin with a man's easy satisfaction that he could forget.
THE PIGEON GIRL.
On the sloping market-place,
In the village of Compeigne,
Every Saturday her face,
Like a Sunday, comes again;
Daylight finds her in her seat,
With her panier at her feet,
Where her pigeons lie in pairs;
Like their plumage gray her gown,
To her sabots drooping down;
And a kerchief, brightly brown,
Binds her smooth, dark hairs.
All the buyers knew her well,
And, perforce, her face must see,
As a holy Raphael
Lures us in a gallery;
Round about the rustics gape,
Drinking in her comely shape,
And the housewives gently speak,
When into her eyes they look,
As within some holy book,
And the gables, high and crook,
Fling their sunshine on her cheek.
In her hands two milk-white doves,
Happy in her lap to lie,
Softly murmur of their loves,
Envied by the passers-by;
One by one their flight they take,
Bought and cherished for her sake,
Leaving so reluctantly;
Till the shadows close approach,
Fades the pageant, foot and coach,
And the giants in the cloche
Ring the noon for Picardie.
Round the village see her glide,
With a slender sunbeam's pace!
Mirrored in the Oise's tide,
The gold-fish float upon her face;
All the soldiers touch their caps;
In the cafés quit their naps
Garçon, guest, to wish her back;
And the fat old beadles smile
As she kneels along the aisle,
Like Pucelle in other while,
In the dim church of Saint Jacques.
Now she mounts her dappled ass—
He well-pleased such friend to know—
And right merrily they pass
The armorial château;
Down the long, straight paths they tread
Till the forest, overhead,
Whispers low its leafy love;
In the archways' green caress
Rides the wondrous dryadess—
Thrills the grass beneath her press,
And the blue-eyed sky above.
I have met her, o'er and o'er,
As I strolled alone apart,
By a lonely carrefour
In the forest's tangled heart,
Safe as any stag that bore
Imprint of the Emperor;
In the copse that round her grew
Tiptoe the straight saplings stood,
Peeped the wild boar's satyr brood,
Like an arrow clove the wood
The glad note of the cuckoo.
How I wished myself her friend!
(So she wished that I were more)
Jogging toward her journey's end
At Saint Jean au Bois before,
Where her father's acres fall
Just without the abbey wall;
By the cool well loiteringly
The shaggy Norman horses stray,
In the thatch the pigeons play,
And the forest round alway
Folds the hamlet, like a sea.
Far forgotten all the feud
In my New World's childhood haunts,
If my childhood she renewed
In this pleasant nook of France;
Might she make the blouse I wear,
Welcome then her homely fare
And her sensuous religion!
To the market we should ride,
In the Mass kneel side by side,
Might I warm, each eventide,
In my nest, my pretty pigeon.