Part 42 (1/2)

Pinched and haggard, his hands in his pockets, the young fellow watched the sculptor. Fairfax skilfully released his statue from the mould. He had been working on this, with other things, for a month. He unprisoned the little figurine, a little nude dancer, her arms above her head, the face and smile faun-like.

”Pleine de malice,” said Dearborn, ”extremement fine, my dear Tony. As an object of 'luxe' I find it as exquisite as an article of food, if not as satisfying. It's not good enough to _eat_, Tony, and those are the only standards I judge by now.”

Fairfax turned the figure between his fingers lovingly--lily-white, freshly cold, bits of the mould clinging to it, small and fine, it lay in the palm of his shapely hand.

”If you don't want the boots, Bob,” he said, ”I think I'll go out in them.”

The legal owner of the boots went out in them into the damp, bitter cold. His big figure cut along through the mist and he limped over the Pont des Arts towards the Louvre. All Paris seemed to him blue with cold. The river flowed between its banks with suppressed intent and powerful westward rush, and its mighty flow expressed indifference to the life and pa.s.sion of existence along its sh.o.r.es.

He leaned a moment on the bridge. Paris was personal to him and the river was like its soul. He was faint from lack of food and overstrain.

In the Louvre, other men of conglomerate costumes as well as he sought the warm rooms. Tramps, vagrants in pitiful rags, affected interest in the works of art, resting their worn figures on the benches, exulting in the public welcome of the museum. Fairfax was more presentable, if as poor. He wore a soft black hat of good make and quality, bought in a sporting moment by Dearborn early in his career. Tony wore his own clothes, retained because they were the newest and a soft black scarf, the vogue in the quarter, was tied under his collar in rather an extravagant bow. He wandered aimlessly through the rooms, glanced at the visitors and saw that they were many, and when he had become thoroughly warm, screwed his courage to the sticking point and went out of the front entrance. A little way from the guides he took his place, and from his pocket his figurine. It showed quite as a lily in the foggy light, pale and ashamed. Its nudity appealed more to the sculptor because of this wanton exposure to the vulgar herd. He trembled, began to regret, but offered it, holding it out for sale.

Some dozen people pa.s.sed him, glanced at him and his small statue, but he would have pa.s.sed unnoticed had a lady not come slowly down the steps and seen him, stopped and looked at him, though he did not see her until she had approached. He flamed scarlet, covered his statuette and wished that the cobbles of the pavement would open and swallow him.

She was--he thought of it afterward a hundred times--a woman of singular tact and an illumined sympathy, as well as a woman of exquisite comprehension.

”Mr. Rainsford!” she exclaimed. ”You have something to sell?” she added, and simply, as though she spoke to an ordinary vendor, yet he saw that as she spoke a lovely colour rose in her cheek under her veil, and he found that he was not ashamed any more.

She put out her hand. It came from a mantle of velvet and a cuff of costly fur--he couldn't have dreamt then how costly. He lifted his hat, bareheaded in the cold, and laid the little figure in her hand.

”How perfectly charming!” she murmured, holding it. And the dryad-like figure, with its slender arms above its head and the faun-like, brilliant little face, seemed perfection to her. She said so. ”What a perfect thing! Of course, you have the clay original?”

Fairfax could not speak. The sight of this woman so worldly, elegant, sumptuous, at the first praise of his little statue, he realized that he was selling it, and it struck him as a crime--his creation, his vision, hawking it as a fish-wife might hawk crabs in the public street!

He felt a great humiliation and could have wept--indeed, tears did spring to his eyes and the cold dried them.

Two ”sergents de ville” came up to them.

”Pardon, Monsieur,” asked one of them, ”have you a license?”

Fairfax started, but the lady holding the little statue turned quickly to the officials--

”A license? _Pourquoi faire, mes amis?_”

”It is against the rules to sell anything in the streets of Paris without a license,” said the policeman.

”Well,” she exclaimed, ”my friend has just made me a gift. This gentleman is a friend of mine for whom I am waiting to take me to my carriage. Allez vous en,” she smiled at them, ”I will excuse you, and so will Monsieur.”

She was so perfectly mistress of the situation that he had nothing to do but leave himself in her hands.

”You will let me take you home,” she said, ”in whatever direction you are going,” and he followed her to her little carriage, waiting before the curb.

She got in, gave the address of his studio to her coachman, and the next thing he knew was that he was rolling over the pavement he had so painfully traversed a few hours before.

She talked to him of the master, Cedersholm, and Antony listened. She talked enthusiastically, admiringly, and he parried her questions as to when and where he had worked with the Swedish sculptor. The statuette lay on her lap.

At the studio door, when Fairfax left her, she said, taking up the self-same gold purse that he had restored to her in the Louvre seven months ago--

”I hope that I have enough money to pay for this treasure, Mr.