Francie Again

by Emily Hahn

  “Idiot,” muttered Mark. “Now he’ll have something to boast about all year.”

  It was over in a minute, a minute toward which the whole day had been aimed. The bulls turned a roped-off corner of the street and were gone from sight. They would be taken to the barns of the bull ring for the night. A sense of anticlimax pervaded the square. The young men sauntered away, or disappeared into the houses, and mothers with their babies and their excited older children climbed down from the benches. Soon nothing would be left of the corrida but the rugs hanging from the windows.

  “Anyone hurt badly?” called Phyllis to Derek, who was chatting with a policeman.

  “One man, a chap who lives near the ranch. He was badly hurt and this fellow thinks he’ll die,” said Derek. “On the whole, he says, it’s been an unexciting day. On a really good day, it seems, they manage to kill two or three innocent bystanders.”

  “Extraordinary people,” said Mark, sighing. “Well, if we want to get back before dark, we’d better make tracks.”

  “And tomorrow,” thought Francie, “I’ll really get started on my career as a great artist.”

  From the beginning Francie was interested in Catarina de Abreu. As the days went by and she grew to know the students better, the interest increased. Catarina seemed all that was romantic and tragic, with her large sorrowful green eyes and her clear, almost transparent skin. She was talented. Fontoura praised her work. She was married, Francie learned, and had two children, and her husband didn’t approve of the art school.

  A few of the students went every day for lunch to a small restaurant near Fontoura’s. Francie was usually one of this group. She found she picked up Portuguese far more readily in this way than she did with the language teacher who came to Estoril now and then, in desultory fashion, to instruct Aunt Lolly. Besides, it all seemed an important part of the school work; they were earnest young people who talked at length about painting and sculpture and literature. Most of the discussion was above Francie’s head, she felt, not only because of the language. The talk was about things she didn’t know. Therefore, during the stroll to the restaurant, or sitting at table, whenever some impassioned student galloped off on a monologue of the intellectual sort, she got into the way of chatting about personal matters with Catarina de Abreu. They tended to be de Abreu matters rather than Nelson, most of the time.

  Catarina was forthright, imparting the most confidential facts with a lack of reserve which charmed Francie. Even an American woman, she felt, would not have told as much about herself as Catarina did, with the flat announcement, “I lead an unhappy life.” And the details—the description of her husband’s cruel mama, and his cold lack of understanding, and the general stresses and strains of being an artist in a materialistic world! It wasn’t restrained, but it was decidedly interesting.

  “Like reading an exciting novel,” said Francie enthusiastically to Maria one afternoon. They were eating ice cream in their favorite tea shop, an enormous place of mirrors and dainty furnishings. Among the crowded tables you saw few men, but for long hours every day the ladies of Lisbon consumed cakes with whipped cream and drank tea in this shop, especially during the rainy season when it was not pleasant to be out of doors. Ruy hated the place, but when Maria and Francie were alone they usually went there.

  “Catarina’s almost too good to be true, isn’t she?” continued Francie. “And so beautiful!”

  “Catarina beautiful?” Maria looked genuinely surprised. “She is well enough, but I wouldn’t have said she was out of the ordinary. Lisbon is full of women who look like Catarina. Perhaps we have different standards of beauty, you and I.”

  “We certainly must have, because I think she’s stunning. Any of the men I know at home would fall all over themselves at the first look. And she’s so young, too,” said Francie. She sighed. “It seems queer that she should be married, and have two children, and quarrel with her husband and all that. She doesn’t seem old enough to be a matron.”

  Maria said seriously, “Yes, it is a great pity that Catarina married so young. I think myself if they had left her alone and not persuaded her to marry until later there would have been less trouble now. With a little freedom beforehand she’d have made a better wife. But old-fashioned families, you know, don’t look at things in that way.”

  “You seem to know all about her.”

  “Of course,” said Maria. “We all know about each other. Catarina’s husband’s family, the de Abreus, are connections of my mother’s. I’ve known them all my life. I am really sorry for Catarina. I’ve always been, though she is so silly.”

  “Silly?” repeated Francie, displeased and a little shocked. “But she’s very talented, Maria.”

  “Oh yes, she is talented.” Maria said no more about the glamorous Catarina. Francie resolved to probe Ruy on the matter, and find out his opinion of Catarina’s beauty, among other things.

  When she had the opportunity to ask him he gave her little satisfaction. He merely shrugged his shoulders and said, rather as Maria had done, “Lisbon is full of women as pretty as Catarina.”

  “You only say that because she’s a kind of cousin of yours,” said Francie. “At home she’d be famous, I can tell you. People would be painting her portrait and everything.”

  “Then it’s as well that Catarina isn’t likely to go to America,” said Ruy. “She is conceited enough as it is.”

  “I must say you’re all awfully mean about her. She’s not a bit conceited. You just don’t understand her,” said Francie. “Mark says she’s a smasher.”

  “Ah well, of course that changes everything,” said Ruy. “Though I don’t know this wonderful Mark, I am now convinced.”

  “It’s all very well to laugh, but you don’t appreciate her enough around here,” said Francie.

  “I am not really laughing. I do not laugh when people are loyal and generous,” said Ruy, “and you are both.”

  Such a compliment from an unexpected source threw Francie badly off balance. She simply gaped at Ruy, and he looked back with eyes full of kindness and admiration. “You are a very nice girl,” he said.

  “I thought you—well, I thought you didn’t think so,” she said idiotically.

  “I do think so,” said Ruy sternly. He decided to change the subject. “When did Mark meet Catarina?” he demanded.

  She bristled at his tone. It sounded suspicious. The pleasantness of a moment ago was forgotten, and she said sharply, “He hasn’t met her. Yesterday when he came to the studio to call for me he peeked in the door, that’s all. He noticed her. Who wouldn’t?”

  “So you went out alone with this Mark after your class,” said Ruy, without expression in his voice.

  “Yes, I did. So what?” flared Francie. “Why not? It’s the way we do behave in the States and England.”

  Ruy did not reply, and Francie felt ashamed of herself. She wasn’t absolutely in the right, she knew. Aunt Lolly would remind her that the customs of the country must be observed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Isn’t it done here? I thought—”

  “It is quite all right for moderns,” he said in gentle tones. “I was wrong to speak of it. Only here, you understand, our young ladies when they have no chaperones are careful to go in groups.”

  “Like you and Maria and me. I see,” said Francie.

  The conversation worried her when she thought it over later. Not that she was genuinely concerned about Ruy’s opinion of her own behavior; she could trust him to be reasonable on a question like that. He had been to America and knew for himself. It was his attitude toward Catarina which seemed more unpleasant. She felt a sudden longing for Glenn and all the other Americans she had left on the other side of the Atlantic. They would have understood her. They would agree with her about such matters. It was appalling that so many nice people should have mistaken ideas.

  “Women like me should stay at home, they say,” Catarina had told her during one of her long heart-to-heart confidences. “They tell me I have no business
to be painting. They think I do it only to get out of the house, to meet friends who are not of the family. They have such bad thoughts, you cannot imagine!”

  Thinking of her plaintive little voice, Francie’s indignation mounted. It was really disgraceful the way young people were managed by old people in this country. Look at Ruy himself, allowing his life to be ruined by a stubborn, silly father. He should have been a painter, she was convinced. Look at Catarina, being stifled and ill-treated. “Somebody ought to do something about it,” stormed Fraricie to Aunt Lolly.

  “Possibly,” said Aunt Lolly, “but I’d be careful if I were you, my dear. It’s not your affair.”

  Francie was silent. She had remembered one of Mark’s sayings at Phyllis’ dinner, “One doesn’t want to go about reforming the world.”

  But one did want to—she was certain of that!

  CHAPTER 7

  Within a few weeks, Francie’s routine was so changed that she would not have known herself, even if she had had the time to think things over. Gone were the late mornings in bed, and the sulky, wistful hours of gazing out to sea. Gone were the empty spaces of late afternoon, when she idled, waiting for the telephone to ring. Portuguese evenings are long for an idler; she had dreaded nights when she had no party or gathering. But all that sort of thing was over.

  “I go to bed early—that is, as early as I can, with the Portuguese late, late dinner hour,” she wrote contentedly to Pop. “Otherwise I would oversleep in the morning and miss the train that gets me in for life class.”

  Francie was in truth an early riser now. With difficulty she had persuaded the chambermaid to bring her chocolate promptly, and she always dressed quickly and left the hotel without disturbing Mrs. Barclay. It was all very much like schooldays in Jefferson, and none the less pleasant on that account. Sometimes she half expected to meet Ruth as she hurried from the hotel and across the road. The elm-shaded streets of Jefferson and the crisp Middle Western mornings, scented with burning autumn leaves, seemed to haunt the Lisbon streets, though the avenues were already languorous and heavy-aired with warmth when the train let her off near the studio.

  Fontoura’s classes themselves had that same half-familiar atmosphere, though her fellows were not at all like the young Americans Francie had grown up with. They were a different group, quieter yet more alive than her old friends. In fact, they were so unfamiliar to her that it was hard to decide why she was always being reminded of home in the studio.

  “Just because it’s routine, I suppose,” she decided. It was more than the routine, however. Francie had become possessed with ambition, a feeling she had not had since schooldays. She was ashamed now of her slowness in beginning; she blushed when she remembered how she had sacrificed the first day of Fontoura’s instruction. None of the others would have done a thing like that so light-heartedly.

  And there was another thing: all these new friends of hers, or at least nearly all of them, worked awfully hard. They weren’t stuffy in any sense of the word, but they acted like people who were confident they would be artists, who wanted to be artists, and went about achieving what they wanted with a fervent earnestness that made Francie marvel.

  “I don’t see how they stick at it,” she said once when Ruy asked about her impressions. “I mean, of course I know what it’s like; I get steamed up myself about something I’m painting, once in a while. But that only happens when I’m sure I’ve got a good start. These kids are always steamed up; they always seem to feel they’ve got a good start. And they know how to make the start, every time. They’re—” she paused, searching for an unusual word, but she couldn’t find it. “They’re keen as bird dogs,” she said at last, for want of something better.

  Ruy nodded. “Naturally,” he said.

  “But it’s extraordinary,” went on Francie. “What is it about Portugal that makes everybody like that?”

  “Oh, but it isn’t Portugal!” said Ruy. “You are in an unusual school, do not forget that. Every one of those students is hand-picked by Fontoura. He would not accept them for pupils at the beginning if he didn’t find some special quality, some talent or industry—both, if possible.”

  “My goodness,” said Francie. “You make me feel awfully inferior.”

  At this point it would have been nice, she thought, if only Ruy would reassure her, and say that she was just as good as any of Fontoura’s favorites. But he didn’t; his mind was still on the others. He said, “The little lame fellow, you know him? His name is Monteiro, I think.”

  “Yes, I know Monteiro, of course,” said Francie.

  “That boy comes of a very poor family,” said Ruy, “a family of a poverty you cannot imagine. They are fishermen, and Monteiro too would have been a fisherman, like his father and brothers, but he wasn’t strong enough, and so he took to drawing scenes of the sea. Fontoura found him on one of his sketching journeys on the coast. He has given him a scholarship out of his own pocket.”

  Francie was thoughtful. This information explained a good deal about Monteiro, she realized. During the lunch period, when she and her friends went out to the café, Monteiro never came with them, but went on with his work as if food meant nothing, as if there were not enough minutes in the day. He was always there in the morning before her, no matter how early she came. Come to think of it, sometimes she had seen him cleaning up the studio after class. “I suppose he works for Fontoura any way he can,” she reflected. “I suppose he doesn’t get a lot to eat. No wonder he looks quiet and thin.”

  The thought was disturbing.

  “He is good, very good,” said Ruy, “but he is not the only talented student there. Fontoura brings out the best in all those children.”

  Francie did not reply. She had learned to share the intense respect, verging on awe, that was felt by her companions at the school for their head master. She wished intensely that he would give her more attention. Twice or so in a week he paused by her sketch-board and gave a criticism. It was short, much shorter than the talks he gave some of the others, but after all she was a new arrival.

  “And I guess he doesn’t enjoy talking English too much, either,” she told herself. Nevertheless she longed for the day when the master would treat her as he did the others. It wasn’t only pride that made her want to fit into the class and get a word of praise now and then. It was a sense of duty; she felt she owed it to Ruy to make good. After all, she was there on his special recommendation. Besides, it would be nice to live up to Ruy’s ideas of her. She liked his admiration.

  “Could I possibly be falling for that boy?” she thought. “That would be awkward.” Then she thought of Dom Rodrigo, and shook her head. He would be a terrifying father-in-law.

  There was no one in Estoril or Lisbon with whom she could talk it over, and Francie was not a secretive girl; she liked talking about these things. All her life she and Ruth and the other girls in their select circle had tended to take their hearts out and examine them, and discuss them, and take note of any changes of sentiment. No yearning was too trivial, none too serious for these semi-public confessions. Now, during her morning train rides in this distant country she thought wistfully of the long, cozy talks she and Ruth used to have: Was Glenn a better dancer than Chuck? Whom was Ruth going to date for the country club dance? Wasn’t Connie awfully young to be wearing Jimmy’s pin?

  “Kid stuff,” thought Francie, sighing. “I’m grown up now, but I wouldn’t mind wasting time like that again. It would help me get sorted out. And it was comfortable and easy-going. Sometimes the worshipful atmosphere at Fontoura’s gets kind of rare for me.”

  To change her thoughts, which were growing gloomy, she pulled out her little sketch pad and amused herself with making up a new border pattern for a bedcover. It was just doodling, of course, but it was fun.

  The students were in full strength that day. As Francie had noticed, there was little voluntary absenteeism among Fontoura’s pupils, but the all-powerful call of family life had been known to intrude. Even with all the fe
rvor in the world, a Portuguese painter might have to excuse himself from class in case of a funeral, a wedding or sickness of a close relative. There was one other exception sometimes—Catarina de Abreu. It was generally understood, if Catarina did not turn up, that she had been frustrated again by the ogres of her family.

  Today when Francie came in and went to her locker, she was glad to see, as she glanced over to the Life section under the glass roof, that Catarina had already arrived. For nearly a week Catarina had been absent, and though the other students had not discussed it very much, the way they shrugged and shook their heads over her name spoke volumes. Evidently Catarina’s husband, or mother-in-law, or second cousin once removed, had made one of the periodic de Abreu rows about Catarina’s shameless behavior. A good woman did not neglect her children, they said. A good woman did not continue, in spite of all that her elders and betters could say, to go out in this stubborn way and spend the day without them, doing God knows what in some rackety atelier among bohemians.

  Every so often it was all too much for Catarina, and then she gave in for a little and stayed at home. Francie had spoken of it indignantly to Mrs. Barclay.

  “Isn’t it a disgrace, Aunt Lolly? Isn’t it a shame?”

  “Yes,” said Aunt Lolly, “it’s a shame, I suppose. But she’s wise to give in a little, if she doesn’t want an open break with her husband’s family.”

  Francie wondered if things weren’t even worse than Catarina hinted. That husband! Francie had never seen him. He didn’t come to Fontoura’s; according to report he refused to set foot in the studio, or even in the street that led to it. “He must be a rat,” Francie decided. “It wouldn’t surprise me if he hit her sometimes.”