Part 43 (2/2)

”But why,” cried the Pole, ”why behead a lady? As for a profile, it is destruction to the human face.” He turned to Fairfax. ”You think I am a pagan. In France they have an impolite proverb, 'Stupid as a musician,'

but don't think it is true. We see harmony and melody in everything.”

Apparently Potowski's lunacy had suggested something to Fairfax, for he said seriously----

”Perhaps Mrs. Faversham will let me make a figure of her some day”--he hesitated--”in the entirety,” he quoted; and the words sounded madness, tremendously personal, tremendously daring. ”A figure of her standing in a long cloak edged with fur, holding a little statuette in her hand.”

”Charming,” gurgled Potowski--he had a grape in his mouth which he had culled unceremoniously from the fruit dish. ”That is a very modern idea, Rainsford, but I don't understand why she should hold a statuette in her hand.”

”For my part,” said the hostess, ”I only understand what I have been taught. I am a common-place public, and I prefer a cla.s.sic bas-relief, a profile, just a little delicate study. Will you make it for me, Mr.

Rainsford?”

The new name he had chosen, and which was never real to him, sounded pleasantly on her lips, and it gave him, for the first time, a personality. His past was slipping from him; he glanced around the oval room with its soft lights and its warm colouring. It glowed like a beautiful setting for the pearl which was the lady. The dinner before him was delicious. It ceased to be food--it was a delicate refreshment.

The perfume of the flowers and wines and the cooking was intoxicating.

”You eat and drink nothing,” Mrs. Faversham said to him.

”No,” exclaimed Potowski, sympathetically, peering across the table at Rainsford. ”You are suffering perhaps--you diet?”

Antony drank the champagne in his gla.s.s and said he was thinking of his bas-relief.

Potowski, adjusting a single eye-gla.s.s in his eye, stared through it at Rainsford.

”You should do everything in its entirety, Mr. Rainsford. Eat, drink, sculpt and sing,” and he swam out again gently toward Rainsford and Mrs.

Faversham, ”and love.”

Antony smiled on them both his radiant smile. ”Ah, sir,” he said, ”is not that just the thing it is hard for us all not to do? We mutilate the rest, our art and our endeavours, but a young man usually once in his life loves in entirety.”

”I don't know,” said the Pole thoughtfully, ”I think perhaps not.

Sometimes it's the head, or the hands, or the figure, something we call perfect or beautiful as long as it lasts, Mr. Rainsford, but if we loved the entirety there would be no broken marriages.”

Mrs. Faversham, whom the musician entertained and amused, laughed softly and rose, and, a man on each side of her, went into the drawing-room, to the fire burning across the andirons. Coffee and liqueurs were brought and put on a small table.

”Potowski is a philosopher, is he not, Mr. Rainsford? When you hear him sing, though, you will find that his best argument.”

Potowski stirred six lumps of sugar into his small coffee cup, drank the syrup, drank a gla.s.s of liqueur with a sort of cheerful eagerness, and stood without speaking, dangling his eyegla.s.s and looking into the fire.

Mrs. Faversham took a deep chair and her dark, slim figure was lost in it, and Antony, who had lit his cigarette, leaned on the chimney-piece near her.

She glanced at him, at the deformed shoe, at his shabby clothes. He had made his toilet as carefully as he could; his linen was spotless, his cravat new and fas.h.i.+oned in a big bow. His fine, thoughtful face, lit now by the pleasure of the evening, where spirit and courage were never absent if other marks were there; his fine brow with the slightly curling blond hair bright upon it, and the profound blue of his eyes--he was different from any man she had seen, and she had known many men and been a great favourite with them. It pleased her to think that she knew and understood them fairly well. She was thinking what she could do for this man. She had wondered this suddenly, the day Fairfax had met her and left her in the Louvre; she had wondered more sincerely the evening she left him at his door. She had asked him to her house in a spirit of real kindness, although she had already felt his charm. Looking at him now, she thought that no woman could see him and hear him speak, watch him for an hour, and not be conscious of that charm. She wondered what she could do for Mr. Rainsford.

”Sit there, won't you?”--she indicated the sofa near her--”you will find that a comfortable place in which to listen. Count Potowski is the one unmaterial musician I ever knew. Time and place, food or feast, make no difference to him.”

Potowski, without replying, turned abruptly and went toward the next room, separated from the salon by gla.s.s doors. In another moment they heard the prelude of Bohm's ”Still as the Night,” and then Potowski began to sing.

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