Her Fair Fame; and the Story of a Statue

Chapter I. Mr

OGDEN HAMILTON MAKES AN ADDITION TO HIS ESTABLISHMENT. I THINK, then," said the young man to the maid-servant, " that I'd best wait no lonoer." o " I'm afraid, sir," was the reply, " that Miss Phyllis's shopping may keep her a good while yet." " Thank you. Very well — I see — then her drawing-lesson will be missed. But it doesn't matter." Here Foulke Bradhurst looked at his watch. " I'll write her a line," he said, and at once seated himself before a desk of rich and dainty design. All about him were the artistic and costly things which wealth and refinement can com mino-le in a drawing-room with such tasteful effect. From a gem-like painting by Chaplin or Henner to a drowsytinted Eastern rug of price, the whole environment was at once luxurious and beautiful. It was part of a large house in Madison Avenue, not far from the first real slope made by Murray Hill.

It had been, for a good while past, the possession of an exceedingly wealthy man, a bachelor of perhaps two-and-fifty, named Ogden Hamilton. For several years a girl had been growing up in the Hamilton mansion. Its owner had adopted her when a child, and his sister, Mari etta, a lady prone to invest with decorative elements an advanced state of spinsterhood, had proved to her a second mother. She was now in the full and sweet bloom of maidenly grace. This young man, an artist of decided talent, had of late given her two or three drawing-lessons every week. These meetings had turned out for Foulke Bradhurst almost equally a pleasure and a pain. He had resolved more than once to end them. Did not all New York know that Phyllis Lorremore was the heiress of her guardian's riches? "And who am I," Bradhurst had again and again bitterly asked himself, "that I should presume to dream she would ever care for me ?

" Who, indeed? With his un-French name, he was more than half a Frenchman, having lived since a boy in Paris, and having plunged very deep in some of its worst evils. His parents, both Americans, had perished of cholera years ago, while he was yet a child. Foulke had then gone to live with an uncle, a miserly little man in the Rue Vivienne, who had sometimes treated him quite cruelly, but who softened as he discovered that his nephew had marked artistic talents. Amos Bradhurst was a dealer in art for American transportation, and Foulke's father had for merly been his partner in the same species of enterprise. It never had turned out with them a very successful one, and when his uncle Amos died, Foulke found himself with by no means a copious fortune. This, for two or three years, he spent in rash excesses, and at last awoke one morning with desperate thoughts about throwing himself into the Seine after nightfall.

He had scarcely a franc left; he had painted several pictures, which he could not sell ; life looked leaden, even odious, to his depressed and foolish young spirit. But before the end of that day Foulke had changed his mind on the subject of suicide. Chancing to take up a journal at one of the cafes in the Boulevard St. Michel, he saw there the announcement that Mr. Ogden Hamilton, the well-known American art-patron and connoisseur, had recently arrived in Paris. This made the young man remember and re llect. He recalled a certain morning when his uncle Amos had presented him to a tall man of distinguished appearance, with a heavy grey moustache, and dark, cold, but kindly eyes. "That," said Foulke to himself, "was Ogden Hamilton. I recollect being surprised that he was an American, for he spoke French with such a perfect accent.

When my uncle showed him some of my work, both in landscape and figure-drawing — I was only eighteen then, and a great believer in my artistic powers— he scanned them with a succession of surprised starts. Presently he turned to me, and took my hand in his : ' My boy,' he said gravely and very gently, 'you have remarkable talents.' Then, while I am sure that my gaze began to sparkle with gratified egotism, he continued suavely, yet somehow severely : ' Still there is much in your work that I find quite crude ; you must conquer it by patient study, or it will con quer you.' Well, this was a good while ago, and in spite of all my mad capers I have striven to conquer it. What if I should go to Ogden Hamilton and throw myself on his mercy ? " Foulke went. He looked haggard and ill as he betook himself to the Hotel Meurice.

But he was not the ordinary sort of beggar. A sense of his former follies had keenly pierced him. His nature was really a moral one, but evil company, youth, and a passionate tempera ment, had combined to work his downfall. He meant that Mr. Hamilton, this admirer of his native powers in the past, should hear from him only the unflinching truth. But misgivings beset him: what if Mr. Hamilton failed to recollect those former courtesies ? What if he even failed to recollect that such a person as Foulke Bradhurst had ever crossed his ken ? Quite the reverse happened. Ogden Hamil ton not merely received his visitor, but soon had taken his feverish hand and gazed into his pale face, with its touches of ravage from reck less living, and its big, dark, poetic eyes. " I recall you perfectly," he said.

" I might have forgotten that your first name is Foulke, but I should soon have reminded myself that your last one is Bradhurst. You are far less like your uncle than your father, whom I knew well, and who has helped me to more than one happy ' find ' in the way of a choice canvas. And so you confess that you've been going wrong, eh? But what have you done with your splendid gift ? Have you flung it to the dogs ? I hope not, for you gave great promise once." All this, though full of much dignity and fraught with both sadness and doubt, was nevertheless genial enough to thrill its hearer. Foulke felt like falling on his knees and craving pardon of this elderly gentleman, with his quiet grandeur of mien, and his fine chiselled, soldierly face. But he only stammered forth his thanks instead, and told Hamilton of the two or three unsaleable pictures now in his Bohemian little studio on the Rue Monsieur le Prince.

"I'll go and look at them," said Hamilton, while he scanned the young man's visage and figure, silently assuring himself that here was a youth as good at heart as he was handsome, and possibly capable of being reformed into the most wholesome and permanent repentance of his silly past. And Ogden Hamilton kept his promise. The pictures, when he had thoroughly ob served them, disappointed him in certain ways, yet in others pleased him vastly. " You are on the wrong track, my lad," he said, and sank into a chair, as though to add that he had quite ended all necessity of further survey. "Let me explain, please"; and then he began to make himself wholly clear. As Foulke watched him, seated there amid the dinginess of that little studio whence all the pretty and valued appointments had one by one vanished through recent impecunious weeks, it struck the young painter that his manner liter ally glowed with distinction, just as his words were softly illumined by the best kind of critical artistic wisdom.

It was admirable counsel, and Foulke never forgot it. Ogden Hamilton could neither have drawn nor painted one creditable stroke ; but with an amazing; shrewdness he knew how to advise and warn others who could wield pencil and brush. It had been said of him that nature had designed him for a great artist, but suddenly had changed her mind, and made him a great critic instead. From this hour Foulke Bradhurst's heart went out in love toward Hamilton. The latter soon proved more than his dead father's friend, or even than his own. He became a benefactor, while warmly liking Foulke, and at the same time believing firmly in his genius. He brought the young man to his hotel, and presented him to his sister, Miss Marietta Hamilton, and his young ward, Phyllis. Foulke thought the elder lady rather comic in her old-maidish affabilities, her endeavour to look twenty years older than she really was.

It occurred to him that her stately brother was rather ashamed of her, and Hamilton soon took occasion to observe that this was the first of his trips abroad on which his sister had accom panied him. As for young Phyllis Lorremore, she im pressed Foulke merely as a slim slip of a girl, with nice brown eyes, a rather awkward way of holding her hands, and a general air as if Paris were somehow boring her. But then, as her guardian explained, she was still only a schoolgirl. Hamilton and his new admirer had more long talks, and not a few long walks as well. It soon occurred to Foulke that here was a colder man than at first he had supposed. " If he did not think me a genius," ran Foulke's meditations, " I don't believe he would con descend to treat me half so well. As it is, B I am growing every clay more and more his debtor."

Finally, having re-met some of his old as sociates of the Ouartier Latin (though he rigidly avoided all the excesses which had once wrecked him), Foulke was surprised to hear from one of these galliard and indolent beings that he had known Hamilton for quite an age. " And he is an icicle ! " declared the artist, flipping off a bit of ash from his cigarette. " He cares for nothings but art — voila !" "That is a great deal to care for," said Foulke. " But, my dear Gamier, he has been very good to me." Gamier smiled and shook his curly dark head with a skeptic briskness. " These fellows who have no passions, who are all marble intellect and perfect equanimity — Bah, mon vieux, I don't believe in them ! Tiens ! " and Gamier leaned toward Foulke, clutching his sleeve with a finger and thumb not wholly soilless, it must be owned.

" This Monsieur Hamilton has for years had but one ruling idea — to find a young painter whom he could train into a devout following of his own principles in art. Of course he needed some body at once, young, greatly gifted, and with a devout respect for himself. He has found all three in you. I don't say that he will lead you wrong ; his guidance may result in crowning you with honours. But pray, do not count on him as being moved by any really human amity. Be certain of this : he uses you but to flatter his own egotism, which is huge. Eight or nine years ago he suddenly poured his courtesies upon poor Pierre Despard, who painted brilliantly, drank hard, and died young. Despard liked him at first, and went about boasting that he had lighted on a magnificent patron. He even compared Monsieur to Lorenzo di Medici, et tout fa.

But soon came revolt. Despard would not stand his gilded slavery, and broke loose from it. He was excessively original, and preferred to paint at the dictation of his own genius." "And he died of drink, as you half admit," smiled Foulke. " Hamilton has already spoken of him to me, and with the utmost kindness." Foulke secretly fathered these words of the older artist upon secret, rankling jealousy. His allegiance to Hamilton had already grown strong, as it was incorruptible. They passed hours together in the lovely salons of the Louvre, examining and discussing there the great masterpieces of the dead, from Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael to David and Ingres. " You fill me with creative longings," Foulke said to him one day. "And yet you insist that it is better for me to rest from all labours at present.

Surely I should soon again begin to paint — or," he added modestly, " to try and paint, at least." Hamilton watched him somewhat absently for a moment. Then his manner grew lively and earnest. " My dear boy," he said, "you are still young enough to rest mentally and to long artistically." He put one hand on Foulke's shoulder, with an air of affection that his natural stateliness rendered all the more noteworthy. " I'll make a great artist of you some day." He said this in English instead of French, though here in Paris he would more often use the latter language when speaking with Foulke. "Yes," he proceeded, " I'll make a great artist of you if you'll only follow my directions." " I would gladly follow them," said Foulke, with glistening eyes, "for I have the firmest belief in them. But " " Oh, I think I know what your ' but' means, my friend.

Come back with us to America, and we'll talk it over during the voyage." " Come back with you ! " murmured Foulke, almost aghast. " Yes, why not ? You think you would not care to do so as my guest ? " " Your gaiest, Mr. Hamilton ! As if I were not too much indebted to you already ! " And now, with tremulous voice, Foulke added : " But every franc you have been kind enough to lend me will be repaid hereafter ! I — I should despise myself if I did not feel the certainty of this ! " Hamilton gently nodded, as if in approval of these words. " Very well, Foulke," he now said, in his suavest tones, "what you call your ' indebted ' condition may cease at once. My ward, Miss Phyllis Lorremore, is extremely anxious to learn drawing and painting. I never refuse her anything. I am afraid that I spoil her horribly ; my sister is always hint ing to me that I do.

But it would be most unpleasant for me to have her study under a bad master. You would make her an excellent one. I?" " Don't stare at me as if I had just said something quite scandalous. Name what salary you please, but be sure to make it a handsome one. Return with us all three to America, and promise that you will stay there at least one year. You will gain nothing in actual art, I admit ; but you will gain a great deal in the way of change, observation, ex perience. Think all this over, and at the end of a week give me your answer." Foulke did think it all over, and when he at last told his patron that he would make the voyage, not a little self-reproach accompanied his consent. But in giving this consent he felt that he tightened the bond between himself and his new, phenomenal friend.

The transatlantic passage from Havre to New York was a rough one, but to him full of enjoyment. Like himself, Phyllis did not suffer at all from sea-sickness. He got to know her better. Much that he had thought uninteresting and almost childish about her melted into air. Miss Marietta's horror of the ocean afforded them both extreme amusement. She was very anxious, as soon as the first two or three clays at sea had mitigated her more acute tortures, to absorb the time and atten tion of a certain elderly French Baron, named Florensac, whose wealth and position were great, yet whose aversion to marriage had made him the despair of many a scheming mamma. The Baron Florensac declared that he was going to America for his health ; but report whispered that his sister, a very fashionable Parisian lady, had endeavoured to bring about a match between himself and her own young sister-in-law, of whom she was exceedingly fond, and that the Baron, in terror of being hopelessly compromised as a fiance', had fled the country.

He was a stout little bald man, with a black moustache waxed at the ends, a monocle, which he incessantly used, a tendency to wear very gay neckties, and a manner which was at all times the pink of politeness. Ogden Hamilton treated him, nearly always, with a sort of languid and courteous contempt, and Foulke soon drifted toward him into a de meanour of familiarity which his social dis tinction at first had seemed to forbid. Miss Marietta's droll advances, retreats, oglings and simpers were perhaps the real cause of this. The Baron appeared ludicrously terrified at them, and yet incapable of crushing them by the faintest uncivil sign. Miss Mari etta, in stages of an almost staggering con valescence, would manage to secure his sup porting arm, his services with regard to wraps and refreshments on deck, and all the while this wonderfully amiable little Frenchman would treat her as if the attentions that she showered upon him were scaring him half out of his life.

"You must not laugh at poor, dear old Marietta," said Phyllis Lorremore to Foulke, as they sat one day in the great lower saloon. " She is the kindest and best of women, and has a good deal of natural force of character, despite her absurd belief that she has not long ago passed the marrying age." " Oh, I haven't laughed at her," said Foulke, apologetically. " But I must grant you that the Baron's manner toward her is excessively funny." Phyllis nodded and smiled. By this time Foulke had got to find her smile very sweet, and full of subtleties and lures, like the shining and mutable sea that encompassed them. That awkwardness with her hands, too — how it had disappeared, or rather, how it had never at all existed ! She was merely given to pretty little gestures, quite original and peculiar ; he must indeed have been blind not to think them graceful !

"The poor Baron can't be rude," said Phyllis; "he simply can't, and that's all there is about it. / think Marietta's behaviour merely entertaining ; but I'm afraid it rather distresses Mr. Hamilton." There was now a slight pause, and soon Foulke said : " But he, after all, is the most liberal-minded of men." " Do you think so ? " quickly asked Phyllis. "Do not you?" came the equally quick answer. She laughed, and somewhat embarrassedly, as her hearer thought. " He has his peculiari ties." Foulke remembered these words long after ward. " But you are very fond of him, are you not ?" he continued. " I — I used to be," the girl declared, with sudden confusion. Used to be ? And you are not fond now." " No, no," she protested, colouring a little. " I did not mean that ! Of course not. But as a child I loved him so !

" "And you still do not love him?" was Foulke's reproachful answer. " Love him ? " She tossed her head a little, and somewhat challengingly too. " Of course — of course. But it's different now. I was thinking of my childhood." " When he first became your guardian ?" "Yes." It was meanwhile passing through Foulke's mind that he had never learned the why and how of this guardianship. He had been in different regarding these questions until lately. Now his curiosity emboldened him to say, — " Pardon me, but I suppose Mr. Hamilton has charge of your property, and all that ? " She sat for several moments with drooped eyes. He feared that he had offended her, and was about to stammer forth some sort of apology, when she lifted her glance and replied, — " I have no property." She scanned his face with a sudden excited look.

" Don't you know ? Has he told you nothing ? " " Nothing." In the reply that she presently gave him it seemed as if the last juvenile trace vanished from her and that she became a woman, richly thoughtful and emotional, almost in an instant. " Listen," she said, very softly at first, though her voice loudened somewhat and grew more earnest as she proceeded : "if he has not spoken to you, whom I know that he greatly likes, and in whose future achievements as a painter I know that he deeply trusts, it is because of extreme natural reserve. But, of course, he would never have told you all, in any case — I am sure of that. And what I tell you now I have but recently heard." " From Miss Marietta?" said Foulke, making his guess at random, and feeling a thrill of acute desire to hear further disclosures.

"Well, yes; it was from dear old Marietta. My — my mother killed herself." "Killed herself?" "She had been engaged, before her marriage, to Mr. Hamilton. Some quarrel occurred between them, and the engagement was broken off. Marietta says that it was because she accused her lover of a strange and aggravating coldness. Shortly afterward she married a man much older than herself — my father, Alvord Lorremore, a New York banker, then thought a man of great wealth. She remained his wife three years, and they were not happy years. People said that she took poison because she was insane. I don't remember her at all ; I was only a year old when she died. Shortly after this my father's banking-house of Lorre more and Langston, failed terribly. My father, already a man of advanced years, died of a stroke of paralysis, caused, it was said, by the knavery and defalcation of his partner, Mr. Langston.

It was then that Mr. Hamilton adopted me ; I was just two years old at the time. He brought me into his home, and has reared me as his daughter. But Marietta says that he chiefly did so because of a letter which my dead mother had left him. This letter she never saw, but she insists that she saw him receive and read it. Perhaps it contained a prayer for his forgiveness. Who knows ? who knows ? " Phyllis' s voice died away into silence with a pathetic fall. Foulke, intently watching her, perceived that she was deeply moved. Ah, how he had mistaken this girl, in believing her unintelligent ! " If there was any such letter," he now said, "and if it bore a message regarding yourself, Mr. Hamilton has surely shown by years of devotion to you that he valued it beyond measure." "Years of devotion ?

" the girl repeated, in a dazed, abrupt way. Then she gave a slight start, and added, as if forcing herself into her wonted composure : " He has been good ; he has been very wonderfully good and kind ! " "Why," thought Foulke, "does she say that as if she only half meant it ? Is she not really grateful to her guardian ? " Aloud he presently asked, "Shall we not go on deck for a little stroll ? The sea is very clement now, and it promises to be a charming evening." Phyllis acquiesced, and they took a pro tracted stroll on the deck of the now steady ship. Again and again they passed Miss Marietta, who reclined on a steamer-chair, wrapped in one or two big shawls, with the FA .ME. 31 Baron de Florensac seated beside her. The Baron had a ludicrous, entrapped look, and Miss Marietta was talking to him with great vehemence, every now and then requesting him to place beneath her nostrils a large fiacon of smelling salts which she had bidden him to hold in readiness.

" Poor, martyred Baron," laughed Foulke to his young companion. " Perhaps this voyage may settle his fate, after all ! " "Hush," reproved Phyllis, "you must not poke fun at Marietta. She will make him a splendid wife, I'm sure, if anything should happen. I've always said that my guardian's sister would be a great success as a married woman." " Her term of triumph is limited," Foulke could not resist saying : " she has not a very bounteous amount of sunshine in which to make matrimonial hay." " How cruel of you ! " rebuked Phyllis. " I want you to like Marietta, for besides her many excellent traits of character, she and I are the best of friends." " I shall certainly like her because you and she are friends," Foulke answered. And then they talked of art, of the great European masters and masterpieces, and of just what forms of industry and application would be needful for Phyllis when she should once settle down with energy under the tutelage of her new instructor.

After the arrival at New York, however, Foulke, who was now desperately in love for the first time in his life, realized that a great social gulf spread between himself and his pupil. Three times a week, throughout the autumn months, he spent two hours of a morning with Phyllis. He soon discovered that her ambition to draw and paint was founded on a very meagre amount of native talent. This, however, was not in the least a disappointment; what did lie care whether or no she was born to make daubs or masterpieces ? He had found out the one important thing about her — that she was the dearest girl in the world. Besides, her lack of progress rendered tuition all the pleasanter. He selfishly told himself that he should not have liked it so well if she had shown vivid aptitudes. That would have necessitated more ceremonious relations be tween them.

As it was, her delightful artistic dulness pleased him ; it engendered a welcome and exquisite intimacy. Before long Hamil ton's influence caused him to get several other pupils. He was grateful for these, and yet they did not lull in him certain conscience pangs. He felt that he had accepted too much from his friend. The change had already done him rare physical good; he was confident of that. He noted a distinct æsthetic rawness here that affected him like a tonic after the soft, symmetric culture of French art. And yet he dreaded to think of what Hamil ton might say on learning of his love for Phyllis. This had tormented him for some time past, and it had specially tormented him on the very evening when our tale begins. He had made up his mind not to appear at her coming-out ball, which must strike him, he had assured himself, as no less brilliant than melan choly.

For who, after all, was he, Foulke c Bradhurst, compared with this entrancing young debutante ? She would inherit, said those who knew, much if not all of her guardian's pro perty. Admirers would flock about her ; he would scarcely stand the chance of one heedful look. No ; he would remember his place, or at least not run the risk of having himself re minded of it. Giving to the servant the note which he had written, Foulke quietly left the house. Perhaps two hours later Phyllis returned home. She was quite excited and nervous about the coming ball — and for other reasons besides. She went straight to her own room, whither Marietta, who had heard her step on the stairs, presently joined her. " My dear ! " exclaimed the elderly maiden ; " it has come, and it's really superb." " What has come, Marietta ? and what is superb ?"

" My gown for this evening. No doubt you'll call it too youthful, but then, you and brother Ogden are always wanting me to dress like some old beldame." " Oh, no, Marietta ; not so bad as that," came Phyllis's rather absent answer. She had just seen, with a slight start, a note on her dressing-table. Her young eyes were good, and she had recognised its outer handwriting even before she took up the note and broke its envelope. " Ah ! how unexpected ! " she soon exclaimed, tossing the note away. "What disappoints you so, my dear?" asked Marietta, putting herself into a would-be girlish pose before a long dressing-mirror. " Mr. Bradhurst is not coming to-night, after all ! " Marietta veered round, with a high little laugh. " How despairingly you say that, Phyllis ! Will his absence make you quite desolate ?

" "Of course not, Marietta! I'm annoyed because " Here Phyllis abruptly grew silent. " Well ; pray go on," proposed her auditress. " Because," the girl suddenly continued, with a flash of the eyes and a break of the voice which astonished Marietta — " because he has told himself that a poor and obscure artist like Foulke Bradhurst would be out of place in this coming pomp and magnificence, and should enter my presence only portfolio in hand, as the drawing-master, and not as the equal. But in what way am I better than he ? Who of all Ogden Hamilton's prosperous friends would not turn from me if I were the nobody and pauper fate once made me, and not buoyed up, as now, by my guardian's name and riches ? " "Tut, tut, my dear Phyllis !" Marietta (who, by the way, had always in sisted that her guardian's ward should call her plainly by this name, as any respectful prefix to it would have flavoured, for her taste, quite too strongly of maturity) now drew close to Phyllis and laid one arm fondly upon her shoulder.