Part 16 (1/2)

”You wouldn't think it, but she does,” said Leighton,--”inside.”

CHAPTER XIX

”My boy,” said Leighton to Lewis two days later, as they were threading a narrow street in the shadow of Montmartre, ”you will meet in a few moments Le Brux, the only living sculptor. You will call him _Maitre_ from the start. If he cuffs you or swears at you, call him _Mon Matre_.

That's all the French you will need for some months.”

Leighton dodged by a sleepy concierge with a grunted greeting and climbed a broad stone stairway, then a narrower flight. He knocked on a door and opened it. They pa.s.sed into an enormous room, cluttered, if such s.p.a.ce could be said to be cluttered, with casts, molding-boards, clay, dry and wet, a throne, a couch, a workman's bench, and some dilapidated chairs. A man in a smock stood in the midst of the litter.

When Lewis's eye fell upon him as he turned toward them, the room suddenly became dwarfed. The man was a giant. A tremendous head, crowned with a ma.s.s of grayish hair, surmounted a monster body. The voice, when it came, did justice to such a frame. ”My old one, my friend, Letonne!

Thou art well come. Thou art the saving grace to an idle hour.”

Once more Lewis sat for a long time listening to chatter that was quite unintelligible. But he scarcely listened, for his eyes had robbed his brain of action. They roamed and feasted upon one bit of sculpture after another. Casts, discarded in corners, gleamed through layers of dust that could not hide their wondrous contour. Others hung upon the wall.

Some were fragments. A monster group, half finished, held the center of the floor. A ladder was beside it.

Leighton got up and strolled around. ”What's new?” he asked. His eyes fell on the cast of an arm, a fragment. The arm was outstretched. It was the arm of a woman. So lightly had it been molded that it seemed to float. It seemed pillowed on invisible clouds.

”_Matre”_, said Leighton, ”I want that. How much?”

Le Brux moved over beside the cast. As he approached it, Lewis stared at his bulk, at his hairy chest, showing at the open neck of his smock, at his great, nervous hands, and wondered if this could be the creator of so soft a dream in clay.

”Bah! That?” said Le Brux. ”It is only a trifle. Take it. It is thine.”

”I'll tell you what we'll do,” said Leighton. ”You lend me the arm, and I'll lend you a thousand francs.”

”Done!” cried Le Brux, with a laugh that shook heaven and earth. ”Ah, rascal, thou knowest that I never pay.”

As they went the rounds of the atelier, Lewis saw that his father was growing nervous. Finally, Leighton drew from his pocket the little kid and its two broken legs. He held the lot out to Le Brux. The fragments seemed to dwindle to pin-points in Le Brux's vast hand.

”Well,” he asked, ”what's this?”

Leighton nodded toward Lewis,

”My boy made that.”

Le Brux glanced down at his hand. A glint of interest lighted his eyes and pa.s.sed. Then a tremendous frown darkened his brow.

”A pupil, eh? Bah!” With his thumb and forefinger he crushed the kid to powder. ”I'll take no pupil.”

Lewis gulped in dismay at seeing his kid demolished, but not so Leighton. He had noted the glint of interest. He turned on Le Brux.

”You'll take no pupil, eh? All right, don't. But you'll take my son. You shall and you will.”

”I will not,” growled Le Brux.

”_Maitre”_ began Leighton--”but whom am I calling _Matre_? What are you? D'you know what you are?” He shook his finger in Le Brux's face.

”You think you're a creator, but you're not. You're nothing but a palimpsest, the record of a single age. What are your works but one man's thumb-print on the face of time? Here I am giving you a chance to _be_ a creator, to breed a live human that will carry on the torch--that will--”