CHAPTER XXII
OF all the ills that circumstance forces upon man, separation from a beloved object is, perhaps, the most salutary. Separation is the crucible wherein love undergoes the test absolute; in the fire of loss, grief softens to indifference or hardens to enduring need.
The pale blue sky of May smiled upon Montmartre. The shrubs in the plantation shimmered forth in green garments, the news-vender by the gate, the little old Basque peasant woman telling her beads in the shade of a holly-tree, even the children screaming at play on the gravelled pathway, were touched with the charm of the hour. Or so it seemed to Max—Max, debonair of carriage—Max, hastening to a rendezvous with fast-beating heart and nerves that throbbed alternately to a wild joy of anticipation and a ridiculous, self-conscious dread.
How he had counted upon the moment! How he had loved and feared it in ardent, varying imagination! And now, that it had at last arrived, how hopelessly his prearranged actions eluded him, how humanly his rehearsed sentences failed to marshal themselves for speech! As he climbed up the plantation, dazzled by the sun, intoxicated by the budding summer, he felt the merest unsophisticated youth—the merest novice, dumb and impotent under his own emotions.
Then, suddenly, all self-distrust—even all self-consciousness—was reft from him and he stood quite still, the blood burning his face, a strange sensation contracting his throat.
"At last! After a hundred thousand years!"
The first impression that fled across his mind was the intense familiarity of Blake's voice—the delightful familiarity of Blake's phrasing; the second, the brimming joy of regained companionship.
"Mon ami! Cher ami!"
His hands went out and were caught in Blake's; and all existence became a mirror to the blue, smiling sky.
No further word was said; Blake took possession of his arm in the old, accustomed fashion, and silently—in that silence which makes speech seem poor—they turned and began to pace up and down the gravelled path.
There was nothing beautiful in the plantation of the Sacré-Coeur; the shrubs, for all their valor of green, were slight things if one thought of forest trees, the grass was a mere pretence of grass. But the human mind is a great magician, weaving glories from within, and neither Blake nor Max had will for anything but the moment set precisely as it was.
For the gift of the universe, Blake could not have told why the mere holding of the boy's arm, the mere regulating of his pace to his, filled him with such satisfaction; nor, for the same magnificent bribe, could Max have explained the glow—the all-sufficing sense of fulfilment, born of the physical contact.
For long they paced up and down, wrapped in their cloak of content; then some look, some movement brought the world back, and Blake paused.
"What a selfish brute I am! What about the work? Tell me, is it done?"
Max looked up, the sun discovering the little flecks of gold in his gray eyes; Max laughed from sheer happiness.
"Mon ami! But absolutely I had forgotten! Figure it to yourself! I came out of the house, hot and cold for my poor picture, and immediately we met—" He laughed again. "Mon ami! What a compliment to you!"
"It is done then—the great work?"
"Yes; it is finished."
"Then I must see it this minute—this minute—this very minute!"
The definiteness of the tone was like the clasp of the arm, and Max glowed anew. By a swift, emotional effort, he conjured up the longings that had preyed upon him in his self-imposed solitude—conjured them for the sheer joy of feeling them evaporate before reality.
"It awaits you, mon ami!" He made a sweeping gesture, as though he laid the world at his friend's feet. And Blake, noting this, noted also with an odd little sense of gratification, that Max's English was a trifle more halting—a trifle more stilted for the break in their companionship.
Still arm in arm, they passed down the sloping pathway to the gate, where the children still played shrilly and the old Basque peasant still drowsed over her rosary beads. As they passed her, Blake put his hand in his pocket and slipped a silver coin into her fingers.
"They're so like my own people—these Basque peasants!" he said, by way of excuse. "They always give me a warm feeling about the heart."
The old woman looked up surprised, and both were attracted by the picture she made against the dark holly-trees—- the brown withered face, the astonishingly bright eyes like the eyes of a bird, the spare, bent figure with its scrupulous cleanliness of dress.
"The blessing of the good God rest upon you, monsieur!" she said, solemnly. "And may He provide you with your heart's desire!"
"And for me, bonne mère?" Max broke in. "What for me?"
The small bright eyes scanned the young face thoughtfully. "The good God, monsieur, will take you where He means that you should go!" Her thin lips closed, and she fell again to the telling of her beads, her inner vision doubtless weaving the scenes of her youth—the grave brown hills and sounding sea of her native country.
"For the moment it would seem that the good God points a way to the studio!" said Max, as they turned away. "Mon ami, I burn and tremble at once! Suppose it is of no use—my picture?" He stopped suddenly by the gate, to gaze with unpremeditated consternation at Blake; and Blake, touched by the happy familiarity of the action, laughed aloud.
"The same Max!" he cried. "The same, same Max! It's like turning back to the first page of my little book. Come along! I have spirit for anything to-day—even to tell you that you've made a failure. Come along, boy! It's a great world, when all's said and done! Come along! I'll race you up the steps!"
Laughing like a couple of children, they ran up the Escalier de Sainte-Marie, smiled upon indulgently by the careless passers-by, and entering the house, the race was continued up the polished stairs.
At the door of the appartement Max came level with Blake, his face glowing with excitement, his laughter broken by quick breaths.
"Oh, Ned, no! No! You must not enter! I am to go first. I have arranged it all. Ned, please!" He pulled Blake back and, opening the door, passed into the little hall and on into the bare, bright studio.
To Blake, following closely, the scene bore a striking resemblance to another scene—to the occasion upon which Max had blocked in, and then destroyed, his cabaret picture—save that now the light was no longer the silvery light of spring, but the pale gold radiance of a youthful summer.
The impression came, but the impression was summarily erased, for as he crossed the threshold, Max flew to him, his exuberance suddenly dead, the trepidation of the artist enveloping him again, chasing the blood from his cheeks.
"Oh, Ned! Dear Ned! If it is bad?" He caught and clung to Blake's arm, restraining him forcibly. "Do not look! Wait one moment! Just one little moment!"
Very gently Blake disengaged the clinging hands. "What a child he is, after all! He shuts himself away and works like a galley-slave and then, when the moment of justification comes—! Nonsense, boy! I'm not a critic. Let me see!"
As in a dream, Max saw him walk round the easel and pause full in front of it; in an agony of apprehension, a quaking eagerness, he lived through the moment of silence; then at Blake's first words the blood rushed singing to his ears.
"It's extraordinary! But who is it?"
"Extraordinary? Extraordinary?" In a wild onset of emotion, Max caught but the one word. "Does that mean good—or does it mean bad? Oh, mon cher, all that I have put into that picture! Speak! Speak! Be cruel! It is all wrong? It is all bad?"
"Don't be a fool!" said Blake, harshly. "You know it's good. But who is it? That's what I'm asking you. Who is it?"
Heedless, unstrung—half laughing, half crying—Max ran across the room. "Oh, mon ami, how you terrified me—I thought you had condemned it!"
But Blake's eyes were for the picture; the portrait of a woman seated at a mirror—a portrait in which the delicate reflected face looked out from its shadowing hair with a curious questioning intentness, a fascinating challenge at once elusive and vital.
"Who is it?"
He spoke low and with a deliberate purpose; and at his tone recklessness seized upon Max.
"A woman, mon ami! Just a woman!" He stiffened his shoulders, threw up his head, like a child who would dare the universe.
"Yes, but what woman?" With amazing suddenness Blake swung round and fixed a searching glance upon him. "She's the living image of you—but you with such a difference—"
He stopped as swiftly as he had begun, and in the silence Max quailed under his glance. Out of the unknown, fear assailed him; it seemed that under this mastering scrutiny his mask must drop from him, his very garments be rent. In sudden panic his thought skimmed possibilities like a circling bird and lighted upon the first-found point of safety.
"She is my sister," he said, in a voice that shook a little. "She is my sister—Maxine."
Blake's eyes still held his.
"But you never said you had a sister."
Max seized upon his bravado, flinging it round him as a garment.
"Mon ami," he cried, "we are not all as confiding as you! Besides, it is not given to us all to possess five aunts, seven uncles, and twenty-four first cousins! If I have but one sister, may I not guard her as a secret?"
He spoke fast; his eyes flashed with the old light, half pleading, half impertinent, his chin was lifted with the old defiant tilt. The effect was gained. Blake's severity fell from him, and with a quick gesture of affection he caught him by the shoulder.
"I'm well reproved!" he said. "Well reproved! 'Twas quite the right way of telling me to mind my own affairs. And if she were my sister—" He turned again to the picture, but as his eyes met the mirrored eyes with their profound, inscrutable look, his words broke off unaccountably.
"Yes, mon ami? If she were your sister—?" Max, with eager, stealthy glance, was following his expressions.
But he did not answer; he stood lost in contemplation, speculating, he knew not why, upon the question in the mirrored face.