SO the step was taken, and two souls, drawn together from different countries, different races, touched in a first subtle fusion. With an ease kindled by the fine and stinging air, stimulated by the crisp summons of the flutes and the martial rattle of the drums, they bridged the thousand preliminaries that usually hedge a friendship, and arrived in a moment of intuition at that consciousness of fellowship that is the most divine of human gifts.

As though the affair had been prearranged through countless ages, they turned by one accord and forced a way through the crowd that still encompassed them. Across the Place de la Concorde they went, past the white statues, past the open space through which the soldiers were still defiling like a dark stream in a snowbound country. Each was drawn instinctively toward the Cours la Reine-the point from whence the stream was pouring, the point where the crowd of loiterers was sparsest, where the bare and frosted trees caught the sun in a million dancing facets. Reaching it, the boy looked up into the stranger's face with his fascinating look of question and interest.

"Monsieur, tell me something! How did you know me again? And why did you speak to me?"

The question was grave, with the charming gravity that was wont to cross his gayety as shadows chase each other across a sunlit pool. His lips were parted na?vely, his curious slate-gray eyes demanded the truth.

TWO SOULS, DRAWN TOGETHER, TOUCHED IN A FIRST SUBTLE FUSION

The Irishman recognized the demand, and answered it.

"Now that you put it to me," he said, thoughtfully, "I'm not sure that I can tell you. There's something about you-" His thoughtfulness deepened, and he studied the boy through narrowed eyes. "It isn't that you're odd in any way."

The boy reddened.

"It isn't that you're odd," he insisted, "but somehow you're such a slip of a boy-" His voice grew meditative and he recurred to his native trick of phrasing, as he always did when interested or moved.

"But why did you speak to me? I'm not interesting."

"Oh yes, you are!"

"How am I interesting?" There was a flash in the gray eyes that revealed new flecks of gold.

The Irishman hesitated.

"Well, I can't explain it," he said, slowly, "unless I tell you that you throw a sort of spell-and that sounds absurd. You see, I've knocked about the world a bit, east and west, but at the back of everything I'm an Irishman; I have a fondness for the curious and the poetical and the mysterious, and somehow you seemed to me last night to be mystery itself, with your silence and your intentness." He dropped his voice to the meditative key, unconsciously enjoying its soft, half-melancholy cadences, and as he spoke the boy felt some chord in his own personality vibrate to the mind that had asked for no introduction, demanded no credentials, that had decreed their friendship and materialized it.

"No," the Irishman mused on, "there's no explaining it. You were mystery itself, and you fired my imagination, because I happen to come from a country of dreams. We Irish are born dreamers; sometimes we never wake up at all, and then we're counted failures. But, I tell you what, when all's said and done, we see what other men don't see. For instance, what do you think my two friends saw in you last night?"

The boy shook his head, and there was a tremor of nervousness about his mouth.

"They saw something dangerous-something to be avoided. Yet Mac is a millionaire several times over, and Billy is distinctly a diplomatist with a future."

The boy forced a smile; he was beginning to shrink from the pleasant scrutiny, to wish that the vaporous fog of last night might dim the searching light of the morning.

"What did they see?" he asked.

The Irishman looked at him humorously. "I hardly like to tell it to you," he said, "but they marked you for an anarchist. An anarchist, for all the world! As if any anarchist alive would travel first-class in third-class clothes! You see, I'm blunt."

The boy, studying him, half in fear, half in doubt, laughed suddenly in quick relief and amusement.

"An anarchist! How droll!"

"Wasn't it? I told them so. I also told them-"

"What?"

"My own beliefs."

"And your beliefs?"

"No! No! You won't draw me! But I'll tell you this much, for I've told it before. I knew you were no common creature of intrigue; I accepted you as mystery personified."

"And now you would solve me?" In his returning confidence the boy's eyes danced.

"God forbid!" The vehemence of the reply was comic, and the Irishman himself laughed as the words escaped him. "Oh no!" he added, soberly. "Keep your mask! I don't want to tear it from you. Later on, perhaps, I'll take a peep behind; but I can accept mysteries and miracles-I was born into the Roman Catholic Church."

"And I into the Greek."

"Ah! My first peep!"

"And what do you see?"

"Do you know, I see a queer thing. I see a boy who has thought. You have thought. Don't deny it!"

"On religion?"

"On religion-and other things; you acknowledge it in one look."

The boy laughed, like a child who has been caught at some forbidden game.

"Perhaps it was your imagination."

"Perhaps! But, look here, we can't stand all day discoursing in the Cours la Reine! Where shall we wander-left or right?" He nodded first in the direction of the river, then toward the large building that faced them on the right, from the roof of which an array of small flags fluttered an invitation.

The boy's eyes followed his movement. "Pictures!" he exclaimed. "I didn't know there was an exhibition open."

"Live and learn! Come along!"

Together they stepped into the roadway, where the frosty surface was scarred by the soldiers' feet, and together they reached the doorway of the large building and read the legend, "Soctiété Peintres et Sculpteurs Fran?ais."

The Irishman read the words with the faintly humorous, faintly sceptical glance that he seemed to bestow upon the world at large.

"Remember I'm throwing out no bait, but I expect 'twill be value for a couple of francs."

They entered the bare hall and, mounting a cold and rigid staircase, found themselves confronted by a turnstile.

The Irishman was in the act of laying a two-franc piece in the hand of the custodian when the boy plucked him by the sleeve and, turning, he saw the curious eyes full of a sudden anxiety.

"Monsieur, pardon me! You know Paris well?"

"I live here for five months out of the twelve."

"Then you can tell me if-if this exhibition will be well attended. I want with all my heart to see the pictures, but I-I dislike crowds-fashionable crowds." His voice was agitated; it was as if he had suddenly awakened from his pleasant dream of Bohemian comradeship to a remembrance of the Paris that lay about him.

The Irishman expressed no surprise: his only reply was to move nearer to the guardian of the turnstile.

"Monsieur," he said in French, "have the goodness to inform me how many persons have passed through the turnstile this morning?"

The man looked at him without interest, though with some surprise. 'Not many of the world were to be seen at such an hour,' he informed him. 'So far, he had admitted two gentlemen-artists, and three ladies-American.'

The Irishman waved his hand toward the turnstile.

"In with you! The world forgetting, by the world forgot!"

His ease of manner was contagious. Whatever misgivings had assailed the boy were banished with this reassurance, and his confidence flowed back as the custodian took the two-franc piece and the turnstile clicked twice, making them free of the long, bare galleries that opened in front of them.

Inured as he was to cold, he shivered as they passed into the first of these long rooms, and involuntarily buried his chin in the collar of his coat. The chill of the place was vaultlike; the cold, gray light that penetrated it held nothing of the sun's comfort, while the small, black stove set in the middle of the room was a mere travesty of warmth.

"God bless my soul!" began the Irishman, "this is art for art's sake-"

But there he stopped, for his companion, with the impetuosity of his temperament, had suddenly caught sight of a picture that interested him, and had darted across the room, leaving him to his own reflections.

The boy was standing perfectly still, entirely engrossed, when he came silently up behind him, and paused to look over his shoulder. They were alone in the vast and chilly room save for one attendant who dozed over some knitting in a corner near the door. Away into the distance stretched the other rooms, bound one to the other like links in a chain. From the third of these came the penetrating voices of the American ladies, descanting unhesitatingly upon the pictures; while in the second the two artists could be seen flitting from one canvas to another with a restless, nervous activity.

These facts came subconsciously to the Irishman, for his eyes and his thoughts were for the boy and the subject of the boy's interest-a picture curiously repulsive, yet curiously binding in its realism of conception. It was a large canvas that formed one of a group of five or six studies by a particular artist. The details of the picture scarcely held the mind, for the imagination of the beholder was instantly caught and enchained by the central figure-the figure of a great ape, painted with cruel and extraordinary truth. The animal was squatting upon the ground, devouring a luscious fruit; its small and greedy eyes were alight with gluttony; in its unbridled appetite, its hairy fingers crushed the fruit against its sharp teeth, while the juice dripped from its mouth.

The intimate, undisguised portrayal of greed shocked the susceptibilities, but it was the hideous human attributes patent in the brute that disgusted the imagination. With a terrible cunning of mind and brush the artist had laid bare a vice that civilization cloaks.

For two or three minutes the boy stood immovable, then he looked back over his shoulder, and the man behind him was surprised at the expression that had overspread his face, the sombre light that glowed in his eyes. In a moment the adventurer was lost, another being had come uppermost-a strange, unexpected being.

"What do you think of this picture?"

The Irishman did not answer for a moment, then his eyes returned to the canvas and his tongue was loosed.

"If you want to know," he said, "I think it's the most damnable thing I've ever seen. When the Gallic mind runs to morbidity there's nothing to touch it for filth."

"Why filth?"

"Why filth? My dear boy, look at this-and this!" He pointed to the other pictures, each a study of monkey life, each a travesty of some human passion.

The boy obeyed, conscientiously and slowly, then once more his eyes challenged his companion's.

"I say again, why filth?"

"Because there is enough of the beast in every man without advertising it."

"You admit that there is something of the beast in every man?"

"Naturally."

"Then why fear to see it?" The boy's face was pale, his eyes still challenged.

The other made a gesture of impatience. "It isn't a question of fear; it is a question of-well, of taste."

"Taste!" The boy tossed the word to scorn.

"What would you substitute?"

"Truth." There was a tremor in his voice, a veil seemed to fall upon his youth, arresting its carelessness, sobering its vitality.

The Irishman raised his brows. "Truth, eh?"

"Yes. It is only possible to live when we know life truly, see it and value it truly."

"There may be perverted truth."

"You say that because this truth we speak of displeases you; yet this is no more a perversion of the truth than"-he glanced round the walls-"than that, for example; yet you would approve of that."

He waved his hand toward another painting, a delicate and charming conception of a half-clothed woman, a picture in which the flesh-tints, the drapery, the lights all harmonized with exquisite art.

"You would approve of that because it pleases your eye and soothes your senses, yet you know that all womankind is not slim and graciou-that all life is not lived in boudoirs."

"Neither is man all beast."

"Ah, that is it! If we are to be students of human nature we must not be swayed in one direction or the other; and that is the difficulty-to be dispassionate. Sometimes it is-very difficult!"

It came with a charm indescribable, this sudden admission of weakness, accompanied by a deprecating, pleading glance, and the Irishman was filled with a sudden sense of having recovered something personal and precious.

"What are you?" he cried. "It's my turn to seek the truth now. What are you, you incomprehensible being?"

The boy laughed, the old careless, light-hearted laugh of the creature infinitely free.

"Do not ask! Do not ask!" he said. "A riddle is only interesting while it is unsolved."

* * *

Download Book