Men and Men. A love story

Chapter I. Sarah Lovell

There seem to be men and men. It is sad that a woman may not pick and choose her man from the whole brother hood of men, neatly set in line, under equal light and other conditions. Such, however, is her conceit, that if she but choose and be chosen early in life, she can perhaps live on forever without seeing that the masculine world is not describable as a man and men. She may fairly be called a fountain sealed But woe to her if, missing her first choice, she find it in her heart to make B a second or a third. She may lose her most amusing superstitions. In any case, whatever be her luck, to her there will always be men and men. In Paris, it is the air that is to blame for almost everything. It keeps whispering to one. It is full of little ghosts, forever unseen, that are at once restless and dreamy ; and no matter where they seem to be pushing, nobody can withstand their sway for any length of time.

Miss Sarah Lovell of Philadelphia found herself very restless when she first went to Paris. She was restless and eager, yet felt not the slightest interest in the French city nor people. And although she had come all the way from America on purpose to see and learn of him on whom she had been told to fix her artistic faith, the famous painter Jean Paul Fortier, yet she did not go near him nor the studio in which he taught for nearly four weeks. Four weeks is a long time for an idle person. Perhaps she was afraid of him. She seemed to be rather a shy woman, though having plenty of dignity. And maybe she stayed away, feeling that a man who had stirred up such a pretty little revolution in his world of painting might be one to revolutionize the dearer ways and beliefs of those who put them selves in his path.

However that may be, she kept away from him for those four weeks. It is not meant in this story to go into any discussion of the art of paint ing. To do that would be to touch what is a sore and tiresome topic to many people, perhaps even to Sarah by this time. So it is only because of the changes that were worked in herself, and because of her adventures, that one feels it worth while to go back to her life on the rue Gareau. After the first few weeks, she could keep herself still enough in the little darkened parlour, shining with its B clumsy mahogany, its uneven waxed floor, and its pitiful old looking-glasses that were clouded at the outer edge like an old man's eyes, in that cramped and almost squalid rue Gareau. Half way up Montmartre, just beyond the Mairie, and far beyond the haunts of the wall-cleaner, this ancient crooked street is too steep and uneven for carriages.

Its tall and rock-away houses show long seams, being black in all the chinks like old silver. Sarah and Mrs. Preston chose this place because it was high and cheap and quiet : far away from carriages. Feeling so sorry, too, for the anxious old woman who showed them the rooms. Not too far from the Place Clichy, where one might take omnibuses, they were also within easy reach of that studio in which Sarah would fain have learned to paint French pictures without letting herself become in the least a French artist, the well known "Academy of the Rue Pigalle." Sarah was a good-sized woman, as yet not over-developed in the way that seems unfortunate to the Anglo-Saxon, nor had she that machine-like look which the French find ugly. She was well-grown, no longer quite girlish ; and her calm fair face needed only a touch of the pencil to make it motherly.

That is why it seems so strange to think of her wandering up and down the ways and bye-ways of Paris with all the troubled and eager feelings of other idle folks. She knew very well that it would not have been thought quite proper for her to walk so much and so far alone, and she was the last one to fall beneath conventions. But she had the handy power of rising above conventionality when it served her turn, and her flat calm eyebrows could be lifted much higher above her soft blue eyes than one often sees eyebrows raised, giving her a look more of suffering hauteur than of disdain. What made her attractive to the crowd was her complexion. For she was fair, having the prettiest mottled pink imaginable in her flat oval cheeks. Her cheeks carelessly let this soft pink slip, as it were between its fingers, to tinge her velvety ear, under the haze of loose brown hair.

And so people turned to look after her in the streets. One would have been taken aback to learn that she was not very strong ; such a large girl, with that fresh colour. But it was quite true that she was rather weakly. Then about twenty four years old, she had had twinges of rheumatism when in America, it being partly a fear that the neuralgia, which lasted so long the winter before, might come back, which at last decided her to go to Paris with Mrs. Preston. Mrs. Preston was her third cousin. She was little and old ; somewhere beyond middle age, in a hard way, and Sarah had always called her Aunt Preston, feeling a settled kind of respect for her, because of the admiring way in which the family had always spoken of her business talent, of her fearlessness in running about all over the round globe quite alone.

More over, they spoke with awe of her great courage in being perfectly happy after having done so very wrong in leaving the bed and board of her lawful husband thirty years before. Thirty years before she had actually left him without giving a reason, or at least without giving a reason to her cousins. And Sarah never would have liked the idea of becoming intimate with her, had it not been pointed out that not only she had never taken up with any body else, but that she had in time built a handsome and costly monument to the memory of her husband ; after he was dead, of course. And it had all happened so very long ago. The cousins were most of them better off than Sarah, who was left an orphan early, and they very likely hoped that Aunt Preston would leave her a little pot of money, sometime.

Having enough to live on, or to travel on in a second-class way, there was no reason why the old lady should not leave it to Sarah, other than that she had always said that she did not believe in main taining people of no talent. For nobody ever thought that Sarah had talent — though she could sew pretty well, and cook pretty well, and would doubtless have made a reason ably good housekeeper, had any hand some and clever young man offered her a house to keep. " I can be happy unmarried," she had said, patiently, when they urged that the bow-legged Mr. White had a handsome head of hair. " I sha'n't fret if I never should be married at all, and I am going to take lessons in oil-painting." When her cousins May and Florry came home from school, she was not too much of a coward to tell herself that it would be very awkward for her Aunt Mary, with whom she had been since leaving school herself, to have three marriageable girls all on show at once.

So she did take lessons in oil-painting. Miss Johnson taught her. After which she was persuaded to go out sketching with a large party of women, led by young Wakestreet, who wore the same corduroys that he had worn in France. There was a shine in that young man's eye, as he taught his paying class, that was at once self-conscious and humorous ; and his red lips had a little full look which made Sarah blush when by accident her eyes crossed his face. She would not have dooked at his face except by accident, saying to herself as she did so that his mouth might have been like that before he ever went to France. And he had certainly learned to paint there, in a fear less kind of way which made her tremble with wonder, even when she could not see the picture. Besides which, he could point out on those corduroys the paint streak made by brushing against the palette of the great Jean Paul Fortier.

As Sarah could not look at Wake street, her eyes were downcast, and the pink in her cheeks blew this way and that, like cloud-shadows, as she asked him one day, a little breathlessly, — " Do you think, Mr. Wakestreet, that one can really learn a better style of painting in Paris than one can learn in America, with — with our present advan tages ? " Wakestreet bit his moustache — the middle of it — it being well waxed and brushed up at the corners. " Of course," he answered, slowly, beginning to scrape his palette. " Of course, it isn't as it was ten years ago, in my time. Of course, we fellows have been through it for you, so to speak. We've brought home what we've learned ; but then — well, yes, to tell the truth, Miss Lovell, Paris is the only place to learn anything. We can't paint when we've been there per haps.

But we learn to see ; at any rate, we learn to see ! " Sarah thought that she should like to learn to see. " Thank you," she said rather primly, trying, by way of looking frank, to raise her eyes. But unconsciously she took a step back wards, turning her large white neck. Before that she had never cared to go to Europe. Aunt Preston asking her to go once or twice, she had said, " Thank you — thank you very much ; but I think I should get too confused and tired to profit by it." Each time that she had been asked to go she had said that. Always with a certain straightening of her gentle red lips, if lips they should be called ; for it might be more descriptive to call them the soft red edges of her straight mouth. " Well," would answer Aunt Preston in her own peculiar way, " stay at home, then, and grow as owl-eyed and dumpy as you please !

" It was very hateful to Sarah to be called dumpy, knowing as she did that she was not in the least too stout. Though she had to have her clothes rather free because of the heart palpi tations that she felt sometimes, she knew that her figure was quite trim enough, in a sensible way. She was always careful in seeing that the dress maker cut and finished her gowns neatly, that the backs were graceful, that the sleeves were well set, and that the skirts fell evenly ; and she was sure that she never looked in the least too stout, being merely plump, as one should be. However, after watching the artists who came back from Paris while in the first bloom of their sense of superiority, and after listening carefully to young Wakestreet, Sarah came to believe that all artistic salvation depended on studying for a while in Paris.

So she packed up her painting tools and her unfinished slippers in Berlin wool ; eating humble pie to tell Aunt Preston that, after all, she should like very much to go with her on her next trip. Mrs. Preston was really pleased, beginning to dream at once of an economical tour of Europe. But Sarah would hear of nothing of the kind, and must go straight to Paris. When her aunt wanted to go by Liverpool, to show her something of England, she weakened a little, it is true ; but she soon laid bare all the grave faults of that plan, pinning the old lady down to the fact that it must cost something more than going straight to Havre. All their friends came down to the boat to see them off. " You'll fall in love with Monsieur Fortier," said young Wakestreet in parting ; " they all do ! " Sailing straight for Havre, on the steamer they met Henry Snow, an old friend of Mrs. Preston.

A rather young friend, comparatively, but one she had known when he was a child, having travelled with his mother. She was alone when she first met him on the steamer, Sarah not getting her sea-legs until the next day. " You're a pretty boy," scolded the old lady, " not to write to me since I saw you last ! And not to send me word that you were going over this summer ! " " I forgot," said Henry, blushing to the roots of his thinning hair. He did not blush once in an age — a grasshopper's age. For he seldom caught himself telling fibs. A Boston man, he had spent a good part of his time in making up answers to possible hard questions. Speaking always in reassuring tones, he was, as one could see, proud of his peculiar accent ; for he never failed to pronounce his words rather mincingly, with just the slightest pursing of the lips.

" However," thought Mrs. Preston, in memory of his mother, " it's her own fault, since she would marry the professor. Besides, he has a nice figure, and would be called handsome anywhere." Then she added aloud, " Well, I think I may forgive you this time. It's a great piece of good luck that you met us, unless — unless your troubles are already ended. What use have you made of your winter in Boston ? " " I couldn't get away from Boston all winter," he said, shaking his head with a slight frown. " Mother has not been well, and Aunt Alice has had that trouble with her nerves again. Besides, you know, I was best man at my cousin's wedding. That sort of thing does take up so much time." " I daresay. But how is it you're not engaged, in all this while, to some pretty Bostonian ? " Raising his eyebrows and twirling his moustache, Henry thought, " I suppose that at her age she couldn't be made to feel the peculiar taste of her little way of putting things."

So he asked, " Didn't we talk of that last summer ? You know I told you then how I felt about it. And I don't see why I should change now. Indeed, after all I've seen of home this winter the more strongly I feel the evil effects of the constant intermarriage of the Boston people. As I said to my cousin ; but it did no good, of course." Mrs. Preston chuckled. " You were too cruel not to take my Rosalie last year. But, never mind ! I've another chance for you. A girl of my own family, forsooth. And if you should happen to strike her in the right light—" Henry smiled, deprecatingly. " Why are you so wild to get me settled ? " he asked ; adding, " Oh, well, I like to look them over. Where is she ? " Just then the luncheon bell rang, and Mrs. Preston stared well at Henry as he was going downstairs before her, after she refused his arm.

He was certainly a neat-built, handsome man, having a large straight nose, and com placent but searching brown eyes. One did not quite like to meet his eyes, though there was no reason why one should not look him straight in the mouth, unlike a gift horse or Mr. Wakestreet. There was no reason, but it was a thing that one never did, for his eyes held the attention in spite of one. When he looked at Sarah her colour stopped wavering and stood stock-still. Perhaps the shock was good for her — like a sea bath. But she could not help thinking how dreadful it would be if she were to happen to scream. He wore a heavy auburn moustache, and that was another reason why one did not see his mouth. But really, he was a handsome man, carrying himself with the ease and self-consciousness of a prince. One might have taken him for some kind of a prince, until one had c caught his alert, speculative American eye.

Nothing could be less prince-like than that. But he was handsome, and Sarah was proud to walk up and down with the handsomest man on the ship. Therefore she walked a good deal with him, though she would have liked better to lie in a steamer-chair without stirring all day long. Had he but seemed willing to sit quietly beside her, she would have liked much better to do that. As it was, Mr. Snow never sat still long, telling her that it was for her good to walk, too. So she rose and walked, dragging herself along as one does in dreams, when one's feet feel as if sand-bags were tied to them. She was so proud to have all the people see her walking with him, and happy with a sense of fulfilling her right and proper destiny, which she felt vaguely to be a state of trembling obedience and happy discomfort.

One night as she undressed she went so far as to say to herself, " I — I have really enjoyed myself this even ing, though I do not see quite why, I'm sure." They had walked late that night, while Aunt Preston pretended to sleep in her wonderful patent chair. Sarah's feet trembled so towards the last, that she was thinking she must own very soon that she was tired. But for reasons that she did not quite care to make clear to herself, she felt that Mr. Snow would not like her to say that she was tired. Somehow, she could not say what she knew he would not like, though, being a moral woman, she might have been deeply shocked had she known that she was wishing to seem strong and lively, or anything else that she was not. As they walked, Henry — Mrs. Pres ton called him Henry — explained the phosphorescent lights that were glint ing on the broken black track of the ship.

It was a dark close night, and though above and before them, to the c right and to the left, everything was of an even, sombre black, yet the fretted water in the wake of the steamer could be seen trailing out like the jetty oozings of a burning lump of coal, until it, too, was covered by the filmy shades. As they looked, Henry talked clearly and well in accounting for those phos phorescent lights, which were not un like the flashes and sparkles on coals. But Sarah did not understand a word that he said. Following the meaning of his tones, however, she was able to say, "Oh!" and "To be sure!" in just the right places, until at length he paused and asked with undue anxiety, — "May I smoke?" Sarah smiled in the darkness at his seriousness. " Of course," she an swered. " What made you think I don't like— ?

". " Oh ! " he said, with a faint shade of reproof in his voice, " it would be quite natural in you not to like it." Sarah understood that he could have wished her to give him permission to smoke in a slightly reproachful tone. She bit her lip. " My Aunt Alice is very cross to me about the tobacco," he continued, " though of course I never smoke in the house, and I never smoke more than three cigarettes a day in any case ; but she objects to the smell in my clothes." "Oh!" said Sarah, faintly, wondering whether she could ever gather her self together enough to lay down rules to anybody. She was not without experience in love matters. Love had often, for short seasons, held the first place in her heart. But in these days her desires for other goods than love had become so strong that she now silently owned that love might be passed over.

What she did want, with a feeling so set that it left her numb and dumb, was simply a nice large house and garden of her own, servants, children of her own, and last, as well as least of all, the constant and dignified presence at the breakfast table of a handsome, busy person, who should like his food and the fit of his shirts, and carry an endlessly-inked fountain pen for the writing of cheques. The rest of the voyage passed pleasantly. Mrs. Preston was cheer ful, and, what might be thought more to the point in her case, absorbed. She had almost always been cheerful enough, but usually, of late years, she had a way of looking about her with frightful coolness and knowingness, to read the thoughts and note the doings of the company. During this voyage, however, she seemed absent-minded ; perhaps lost in the past, for she had plenty of transatlantic trips to remember.

And Sarah and Henry found themselves free to talk and to watch each other as much as ever they liked. Henry had little to say. His re marks were apt to take the shape of questions, though in the first part of the voyage he had shown such a liking to hold forth. Instead of holding forth now, he asked Sarah where she had gone to school, what she had there studied, what kind of people she liked ; and also, with discretion, he was able to find a way of asking her of what illnesses her father and mother had died. Once he led the conversation to the topic of insanity and con sumption, remarking in a tone, which was not meant to be questioning, that it must be dreadful to have had any cases of such diseases in one's family. Quite frightful ! And Sarah said that it must indeed be frightful. All these questions she was feeling to be quite right and natural since he asked them in the proper way, and it never oc curred to her to smile, though quite seeing their drift.

In the very last part of the voyage, when there were already pilots and custom-house officers, and such strange beings aboard, Henry said to her, " Well, I suppose from what you said the other day, that when we get to Paris you are going to become a pupil of this famous creature, Jean Paul — Fourmier — Fortier ? " " That is what I meant to do." " Well, I should just like to suggest ; but you'll think me rude ? " "Oh, no!" said Sarah. " It isn't a thing that I have any right to say to you, and you won't be angry ? " " Certainly not," answered Sarah. " What is it ? " " Only this. That I don't doubt that the man Fortier may be a very good artist and all that. Some of my best friends have admired his pictures ex ceedingly, and, of course, they fetch enormous prices. But personally, I should think that one might be doing well to be careful of him, especially if one were a lady. He was a peasant by birth. But it isn't that, of course. It is that he— ah — has been talked about ; you know ! "

Chapter II. Odette Fabien

So they all went to Paris, and within a short time Mrs. Preston and Sarah were settled in the three furnished rooms on Montmartre, the rooms belonging to two poor old ladies, as ladies go, who had had a paper-sign out, beside the con cierge's door, until it was dropping into yellow rags. The ladies were quite old, seeming also to be dreadfully poor, and they had most likely the one wish in such life as was left to them, to keep together their dear old clocks, candle sticks, and bits of mahogany, feeling, perhaps, that the pieces of furniture cared for each other, and would suffer in the evil but inevitable hour when the auctioneer came to scatter them. So it was a great day for these good women when they let their sitting-room and the two best bedrooms, promising the ser vice of their poor old hands and of their closet of a kitchen.

One of the sisters had been married, and it was she who did all the talking, who would walk back and forth half-a dozen times between the table and the door, dishes in her hands and forever unended speeches in her mouth — in her loose little mouth, which was rather flabby about the edges, like the rest of her face ; and like the lids of her eager black eyes. Her black eyes being the one feature that she had in common with her sister the old maid, she whose face was pure and clean-cut, shy, and droop ing with something like burnt-out pride. Poor old woman ! she knitted lace all day long, and was never heard to speak, leading the concierge to think that per haps she "wasn't right." Henry Snow had rooms near the Avenue de l'Opera. A rather long way off, but he was not poor enough to think of the cost of carriages.

Not like Sarah, who begrudged the money for carriages so much that she was quite unhappy during the whole of a drive. She preferred to think that Henry came to see them in the Clichy-Odeon omnibuses, which would bring him straight and quickly as far as the Place Clichy, for whatever brought him seemed to bring him very often. He came three times a week, with sometimes an extra evening, and all the neighbourhood was soon gaily interested in the matter. The concierge smiled at his back, Mdme. Rigollot, the widowed sister, smiling at his face, and as she opened the parlour door reflecting in her poor old eyes the pleasure that Sarah was sup posed to feel ; while the old maid sister, knitting in the tiny bedroom, raised her thin large eyelids, and dropped her veiny hand into her pocket, where was sure to be a rosary.

It should be told that Sarah could speak French, as could, of course, Mrs. Preston. Mrs. Preston had lived in Paris for years at a time, and Sarah, although she never crossed the Atlantic before, had had a French nurse, in whose sole charge she was sometimes left for months together, so that, with the help of any number of " lessons " at school, she could speak French pretty well. For that reason she was quickly let into an intimate place in the studio. It usually takes about two months to get treated as one belonging to the place, but since Sarah spoke French she could know the French girls at once, at the same disarming the English and Ameri cans of their usual weapon against new-comers. With characteristically easy-going wisdom, therefore, they took her to themselves almost as if she had been an " ancienne " come back.

The people who struck her most at first were not all those whom she came to know best in the end. For instance, there was a handsome English girl whom she fully expected to like ; but they soon found that the qualities they had in common were not of the kind to draw them together. Then the Massier, Mile. Maugeret, seemed interesting, just at first, and until Sarah saw that she was a hard-hearted, greedy old thing ; after that having no more to do with her than she could help. A Scotchwoman, Miss Dunlop, proved more sympathetic, and Sarah was from the very first amused by the pretty tricks and droll pranks of a plump little French girl called Odette. Henry had said, " I hear that the fellow Fortier is soft on one of his girls, though there are several who were fond of him." And on seeing Odette, Sarah thought at once that this might be the person whom M. Fortier liked.

While the model was resting, she asked Miss Dunlop as they walked up and down the broad court-yard together. " Oh, no," said Miss Dunlop, with a tinge of dread in her honest voice ; " it isn't like that. He's only just fond of her as we all are, you may be sure. The dear little scatter-brained thing ! And you know she used to be his model." It seemed that Odette had been a model ; that Odette's mother was a poor, unhealthy, unsuccessful kind of woman, dying when the girl was four teen or fifteen. During the last few years of her life Mdme. Fabien herself had been something of a model, when ever she could get a chance to sit for the head. Being lean and wretched, poor thing, she could not have thought of posing for the ensemble. " Odette is such a sweet, gentle little thing," said Sarah, musingly, " that I should think that even a great genius like Monsieur Fortier might — " Miss Dunlop made a gesture of annoyance, her mouth giving such a twitch at the far corner that Sarah was careful never to make any suggestions of the kind again.