第30章 TWO AMERICANS(5)

Nevertheless, she met him the next morning walking slowly so near her house that their encounter might have been scarcely accidental on his part.She walked with him as far as the Conservatoire.In the light of the open street she thought he looked pale and hollow-cheeked; she wondered if it was from his enforced frugality, and was trying to conceive some elaborate plan of obliging him to accept her hospitality at least for a single meal, when he said:--"I think you have brought me luck, Miss Maynard."Helen opened her eyes wonderingly.

"The two Russian connoisseurs who stared at us so rudely were pleased, however, to also stare at my work.They offered me a fabulous sum for one or two of my sketches.It didn't seem to me quite the square thing to old Favel the picture-dealer, whom I had forced to take a lot at one fifteenth the price, so I simply referred them to him.""No!" said Miss Helen indignantly; "you were not so foolish?"Ostrander laughed.

"I'm afraid what you call my folly didn't avail, for they wanted what they saw in my portfolio.""Of course," said Helen."Why, that sketch of the housetop alone was worth a hundred times more than what you"-- She stopped; she did not like to reveal what he got for his pictures, and added, "more than what any of those usurers would give.""I am glad you think so well of it, for I do not mean to sell it,"he said simply, yet with a significance that kept her silent.

She did not see him again for several days.The preparation for her examination left her no time, and her earnest concentration in her work fully preoccupied her thoughts.She was surprised, but not disturbed, on the day of the awards to see him among the audience of anxious parents and relations.Miss Helen Maynard did not get the first prize, nor yet the second; an accessit was her only award.She did not know until afterwards that this had long been a foregone conclusion of her teachers on account of some intrinsic defect in her voice.She did not know until long afterwards that the handsome painter's nervousness on that occasion had attracted even the sympathy of some of those who were near him.

For she herself had been calm and collected.No one else knew how crushing was the blow which shattered her hopes and made her three years of labor and privation a useless struggle.Yet though no longer a pupil she could still teach; her master had found her a small patronage that saved her from destitution.That night she circled up quite cheerfully in her usual swallow flight to her nest under the eaves, and even twittered on the landing a little over the condolences of the concierge--who knew, mon Dieu! what a beast the director of the Conservatoire was and how he could be bribed;but when at last her brown head sank on her pillow she cried--just a little.

But what was all this to that next morning--the glorious spring morning which bathed all the roofs of Paris with warmth and hope, rekindling enthusiasm and ambition in the breast of youth, and gilding even much of the sordid dirt below.It seemed quite natural that she should meet Major Ostrander not many yards away as she sallied out.In that bright spring sunshine and the hopeful spring of their youth they even laughed at the previous day's disappointment.Ah! what a claque it was, after all! For himself, he, Ostrander, would much rather see that satin-faced Parisian girl who had got the prize smirking at the critics from the boards of the Grand Opera than his countrywoman! The Conservatoire settled things for Paris, but Paris wasn't the world! America would come to the fore yet in art of all kinds--there was a free academy there now--there should be a Conservatoire of its own.Of course, Paris schooling and Paris experience weren't to be despised in art; but, thank heaven! she had THAT, and no directors could take it from her! This and much more, until, comparing notes, they suddenly found that they were both free for that day.Why should they not take advantage of that rare weather and rarer opportunity to make a little suburban excursion? But where? There was the Bois, but that was still Paris.Fontainebleau? Too far; there were always artists sketching in the forest, and he would like for that day to "sink the shop." Versailles? Ah, yes! Versailles!

Thither they went.It was not new to either of them.Ostrander knew it as an artist and as an American reader of that French historic romance--a reader who hurried over the sham intrigues of the Oeil de Boeuf, the sham pastorals of the Petit Trianon, and the sham heroics of a shifty court, to get to Lafayette.Helen knew it as a child who had dodged these lessons from her patriotic father, but had enjoyed the woods, the parks, the terraces, and particularly the restaurant at the park gates.That day they took it like a boy and girl,--with the amused, omniscient tolerance of youth for a past so inferior to the present.Ostrander thought this gray-eyed, independent American-French girl far superior to the obsequious filles d'honneur, whose brocades had rustled through those quinquonces, and Helen vaguely realized the truth of her fellow pupil's mischievous criticism of her companion that day at the Louvre.Surely there was no classical statue here comparable to the one-armed soldier-painter!