Folle Farine Part 61

He smiled and bent his head.

"Fairly rebuked. But say is this all you came for? Wherever you came from, is this all that brought you here?"

She looked awhile in his eyes steadily, then she brought the sketches from their hiding-place. She placed them before him.

"Look at those."

He took them to the light and scanned them slowly and critically; he knew all the mysteries and intricacies of art, and he recognized in these slight things the hand and the color of a master. He did not say so, but held them for some time in silence.

"These also are for sale?" he asked at length.

She had drawn near him, her face flushed with intense expectation, her longing eyes dilated, her scarlet lips quivering with eagerness. That he was a stranger and a n.o.ble was nothing to her: she knew he had wealth; she saw he had perception.

"See here!" she said, swiftly, the music of her voice rising and falling in breathless, eloquent intonation. "Those things are to the great works of his hand as a broken leaf beside your gardens yonder. He touches a thing and it is beauty. He takes a reed, a stone, a breadth of sand, a woman's face, and under his hand it grows glorious and gracious. He dreams things that are strange and sublime; he has talked with the G.o.ds, and he has seen the worlds beyond the sun. All the day he works for his bread, and in the gray night he wanders where none can follow him; and he brings back marvels and mysteries, and beautiful, terrible stories that are like the sound of the sea. Yet he is poor, and no man sees the things of his hand; and he is sick of his life, because the days go by and bring no message to him, and men will have nothing of him; and he has hunger of body and hunger of mind. For me, if I could do what he does, I would not care though no man ever looked on it. But to him it is bitter that it is only seen by the newt, and the beetle, and the night-hawk. It wears his soul away, because he is denied of men. 'If I had gold, if I had gold!' he says always, when he thinks that none can hear him."

Her voice trembled and was still for a second; she struggled with herself and kept it clear and strong.

The old man never interrupted her.

"He must not know: he would kill himself if he knew; he would sooner die than tell any man. But, look you, you drape your pictures here with gold and with purple, you place them high in the light; you make idols of them, and burn your incense before them. That is what he wants for his: they are the life of his life. If they could be honored, he would not care, though you should slay him to-morrow. Go to him, and make you idols of his: they are worthier G.o.ds than yours. And what his heart is sick for is to have them seen by men. Were I he, I would not care; but he cares, so that he perishes."

She s.h.i.+vered as she spoke; in her earnestness and eagerness, she laid her hand on the stranger's arm, and held it there; she prayed, with more pa.s.sion than she would have cast into any prayer to save her own life.

"Where is he; and what do you call him?" the old man asked her quietly.

He understood the meaning that ran beneath the unconscious extravagance of her fanciful and impa.s.sioned language.

"He is called Arslan; he lives in the granary-tower, by the river, between the town and Ypres. He comes from the north, far away--very, very far, where the seas are all ice and the sun s.h.i.+nes at midnight.

Will you make the things that he does to be known to the people?

You have gold; and gold, he says, is the compeller of men."

"Arslan?" he echoed.

The name was not utterly unknown to him; he had seen works signed with it at Paris and at Rome--strange things of a singular power, of a union of cynicism and idealism, which was too coa.r.s.e for one-half the world, and too pure for the other half.

"Arslan?--I think I remember. I will see what I can do."

"You will say nothing to him of me."

"I could not say much. Who are you? Whence do you come?"

"I live at the water-mill of Ypres. They say that Reine Flamma was my mother. I do not know: it does not matter."

"What is your name?"

"Folle-Farine. They called me after the mill-dust."

"A strange namesake."

"What does it matter? Any name is only a little puff of breath--less than the dust, anyhow."

"Is it? I see, you are a Communist."

"What?"

"A Communist--a Socialist. You know what that is. You would like to level my house to the ashes, I fancy, by the look on your face."

"No," she said, simply, with a taint of scorn, "I do not care to do that. If I had cared to burn anything it would have been the Flandrins'

village. It is odd that you should live in a palace and he should want for bread; but then he can create things, and you can only buy them. So it is even, perhaps."

The old man smiled, amused.

"You are no respecter of persons, that is certain. Come in another chamber and take some wine, and break your fast. There will be many things here that you never saw or tasted."

She shook her head.

"The thought is good of you," she said, more gently than she had before spoken. "But I never took a crust out of charity, and I will not begin."

"Charity! Do you call an invitation a charity?"

"When the rich ask the poor--yes."

He looked in her eyes with a smile.

"But when a man, old and ugly, asks a woman that is young and beautiful, on which side lies the charity then?"

"I do not favor fine phrases," she answered curtly, returning his look with a steady indifference.

"You are hard to please in anything, it would seem. Well, come hither, a moment at least."

She hesitated; then, thinking to herself that to refuse would seem like fear, she followed him through several chambers into one where his own mid-day breakfast was set forth.

She moved through all the magnificence of the place with fearless steps, and meditative glances, and a grave measured easy grace, as tranquil and as unimpressed as though she walked through the tall ranks of the seeding gra.s.ses on a meadow slope.

It was all full of the color, the brilliancy, the choice adornment, the unnumbered treasures, and the familiar luxuries of a great n.o.ble's residence; but such things as these had no awe for her.

The mere splendors of wealth, the mere acc.u.mulations of luxury, could not impress her for an instant; she pa.s.sed through them indifferent and undaunted, thinking to herself, "However they may gild their roofs, the roofs shut out the sky no less."

Only, as she pa.s.sed by some dream of a great poet cast in the visible shape of sculpture or of painting, did her glance grow reverent and humid; only when she recognized amidst the marble forms, or the pictured stories, some one of those dear G.o.ds in whom she had a faith as pure and true as ever stirred in the heart of an Ionian child, did she falter and pause a little to gaze there with a tender homage in her eyes.

The old man watched her with a musing studious glance from time to time.

"Let me tempt you," he said to her when they reached the breakfast-chamber. "Sit down with me and eat and drink. No? Taste these sweetmeats at the least. To refuse to break bread with me is churlish."

"I never owed any man a crust, and I will not begin now," she answered obstinately, indifferent to the blaze of gold and silver before her, to the rare fruits and flowers, to the wines in their quaint flagons, to the numerous attendants who waited motionless around her.