Then they all three laughed. And in the laugh Miss Mason forgot that she was trying to hide her shyness, for it suddenly disappeared, and there was nothing left to hide. She forgot that she had never set eyes on the men till ten minutes ago. She was no longer a hostess trying to feel at ease with strangers. She was just a happy woman talking to two happy men, the difference in age forgotten. Such a magic god is laughter.
And before an hour was over Miss Mason felt that she knew all about them. Not the things in which some people consider the knowledge of their fellow-men to consist—their father’s profession, their mother’s family, their relationship to various grandees, the towns in which they have lived, the schools at which they have been educated, the number of their brothers and their sisters, all of which, if you come to think of it, are pure accidents, and have nothing to do with the man himself.
It was none of these things Miss Mason learnt. She found out that Barnabas had a universal love for nature and his fellow-men, in fact, for everything alive; and that his heart was as sunny as his laugh. And that Dan’s rather gruff manner hid a heart as tender as a woman’s. There were a thousand minor characteristics she would discover by and by, but these were the salient facts, and showed the true man.
When they said good-bye it was with a promise from her to visit their studios, and with an assurance from them that the other four men were going to call on her.
They did—Jasper Merton the next day alone; Paul, Alan, and Michael on the Tuesday. Barnabas and Dan had broken the ice for her, and Miss Mason received them with little trepidation. Having come once they came again.
And not one of them guessed in what a curious way the influence of the quaint old lady was to be woven into the lives of at least three of them. For the Three Fates, who sit all day long spinning in three great black chairs, are strange and ancient dames, and they saw in Miss Mason a kindred spirit. In fact, they laughed to think of her likeness to them as she sat in the carved oak chair in her studio with her knitting in her hands.
And Miss Mason took one and all of the six artists of the courtyard to her heart and loved them spontaneously as a mother loves her sons. But Jasper she guessed was unhappy, and she was sorry for him, and she was a tiny bit afraid of Michael’s tongue and Alan she did not quite understand, and Paul she was as proud of as if he were truly her son, and Dan gave her a delightful feeling of being protected, he was so big, but Barnabas—though she loved them all—took the first place in her heart.
CHAPTER X
THE CASA DI CORLEONE
“CHRISTOPHER, darling,” said the Duchessa di Corleone in honeyed accents, “I want you to find an artist for me.”