Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  With an inscrutable smile she studied the massed faces below her. Occasionally her eyes rested on some new man, who never failed to feel uncomfortable and look at the floor until the grayish-green eyes swept in another direction. Sara was haughty at best. In her sunniest smiles lurked the lightning of scorn, and in all her brief “affairs,” the caprice of passion never disturbed her astounding egotism, never lowered the imperious head, never drove the shadow of irony from her scarlet lips.

  Boissy shouted for silence, and banged on the floor with his spurred heels, but nobody paid attention until the girl took a step forward and held up both pink palms as if to shield her ears from the pandemonium. That was sufficient.

  Then with a nod to Boissy, who straightened his epaulettes and looked fierce, she began very quietly.

  “Messieurs il s’agit—” when an unlucky nouveau fell off a stool and crashed to the floor carrying several easels with him. He was mobbed at once amid cries of “Silence, cochon! Down with the Nouveau! Vive Sara!”

  “C’est épatant,” observed Sara with superb scorn, “fiche moi cet nouveau au clou!”

  No sooner said than the unlucky youth was seized and hustled toward the dust-chest amid cries of “au clou! au clou!”

  Elliott opened the lid of the dust-chest and looked at Boissy.

  “What’s his name,” growled Boissy.

  “Freddie Fradley,” replied Elliott, “shall he go in?”

  Fradley screamed and struggled, but at a sign from Sara they shoved him in, and, inserting some mahl-sticks under the lid to give him air, requested “Fatty” Carriere to sit on the top, which he did with alacrity. Sara tossed her glittering hair and continued, undeterred by the faint screams from the chest:

  “Messieurs, you all know that on the night of the Mi-Carême, it is the custom of our studio to go en masse, to the Bullier. Messieurs, the massiers of all the studios have decided to honour me with an escort, but— “laughing proudly, “that is the difficulty! All of you wish to go with me, which you know very well is impossible. Are there not other girls in the Quarter?”

  “No!” shouted the students in a spasm of gallantry.

  She opened her arms with a peculiarly graceful motion. “You know that I adore you all, — all the Julian men, and I do not wish to show favouritism—”

  “Vive Sara! Vive la Rousse!” came thundering from the students and was echoed by stifled yells from the dust-chest.

  “Fatty” Carriere banged on the lid and uttered awful threats against Fradley’s health unless he ceased. Sara smiled. “No, no favouritism,” she said—” mais — mais comment faire?”

  “Take us all as escorts!” cried Clifford, and the Frenchmen understood and took up the cry—” en choisisez pas! nous voulons aller tous!”

  The girl’s eyes sparkled, and she shook her head at Clifford. “Monsieur the incorrigible!”

  Clifford waved his hat and cried,—” C’est entendu alors! Vive Sara!”

  “Mais non, mon petit Clifford,” smiled the girl, “c’est impossible—”

  “Not at all,” exclaimed Boissy with a reckless laugh, “Clifford and I — we will arrange that!”

  “Of course,” replied Clifford, “we’ll fix the police.”

  Then bedlam broke loose, and impromptu quadrilles began, and “Fatty” Carriere, unwilling to lose his share of the dance, hastily locked the chest, punched some air holes in the lid, oblivious of the danger which Fradley would run if anybody sat down on them, and went lumbering and gyrating about until his elephantine gambols shook the building.

  Shortly afterward, the fatherly Monsieur Julian appeared, softly suggesting that work should begin, and ten minutes later the seats were full, the models posed in the various rooms, and the scrape of charcoal and palette knife alone broke the quiet of the studio.

  Clifford, who had missed the morning roll-call, roamed about looking for a place. There appeared to be none. The lines of easels radiating in circles from the model-stand were all occupied. He glared at the nouveaux.

  “This is disgusting,” he observed to Elliott! “fancy a four-year man hunting a place and those fool nouveaux squatting on the tabourets!”

  “Come in time, — it’s the only way now,” replied Elliott.

  “Here is a place, Mr. Clifford,” said Garland who was sitting in the front row. Clifford threaded his way among the easels to his side.

  “It’s very good of you,” he said; “whose name is that on the floor?”

  “Fradley’s,” said Garland. Clifford rubbed it out and substituted his own signature.

  “This begins Fradley’s discipline,” he muttered, and called to Ciceri to bring him his portfolio. Then he looked at Garland and was prepossessed in his favor.

  “You’re a nouveau, are you not?” he asked amiably; “what is your name?”

  “Garland.”

  “Mine is Clifford.”

  “Oh, we all know that,” laughed Garland.

  “Oh, you do!” said Clifford, “and how the devil do you know it?”

  Garland did not think it prudent to mention the cab incident, and Clifford picked up his charcoal and squinted at the model.

  “I hear,” said Garland, “that you older men are going to discipline us.”

  “We are,” said Clifford calmly.

  “Why?”

  “Well, you see, we usually receive a certain amount of respect and deference from new men, and before you fellows came nobody ever heard of a nouveau turning an old man out of his seat.”

  Carrington looked up from his easel. “I am a nouveau,” he said, “and I think, Mr. Clifford, you will find that the nouveaux respect the traditions of the studio.”

  “I think so, too,” insisted Garland.

  Clifford looked at him coldly. “Didn’t you turn me out last week?” he demanded.

  “I,” cried Garland, “never!”

  “Fradley did,” said Cary, “and I noticed it at the time and wondered why you didn’t spank him, Clifford.”

  “Well, by Jove!” exclaimed Clifford, “I thought it was you, Garland.”

  “I know you did,” replied Garland indignantly, “and a pretty life I’ve led with Rowden and Elliott and all the concour men making it hot for me. I respect the traditions and always will.”

  “Then I beg your pardon,” said Clifford cordially, “come and see me at my studio.”

  All the nouveaux knew what that meant. It indicated that Garland would soon be released from menial work, and would find himself in the charmed circle of the powers that be.

  “By the way,” said Clifford, “there is that fellow Fradley in the dust chest. Hadn’t I better let him out?”

  “Has he enough air?” asked Selby.

  “Plenty. I bored some more holes just nowand asked him how he felt. He said I was no gentleman.”

  “He says,” said Rowden, “that it’s a disgrace to his family and a blot on his honour. He’s an excitable customer and screams like a cat when addressed through the air-holes in the lid.”

  “Oh, let him out,” said Clifford.

  “No, he must be taught decency. He’s been here three months, and that’s long enough for the studio to size him up.”

  “Why did you put him in?” asked Garland.

  “Because,” replied Elliott, “he made a racket trying to go out when Sara was speaking.”

  “He couldn’t help it, he fell off the stool; let him out,” said Clifford.

  “No, he must understand that this studio won’t tolerate a sneak. Did you know that he went to old Julian with tales of our doings and said that for his part he never met such a rude and vulgar set of men before? He said he had not come to Paris to listen to models make speeches, but had expected to find a refined and elevating art atmosphere. He insisted that he could not draw if the studio was noisy, and he asked old Julian to stop the racket. Fancy the expression on Julian’s face!”

  Clifford’s face was a study. “What impudence,” he said, “what did Julian do?”
/>   “He? Oh, he told him that he was not obliged to stay; that there were other schools in Paris.” Clifford turned to his drawing and shrugged his shoulders. “Let him sit in the box then,” he muttered, steadying his plumb line with the end of his pencil; “dust-chest discipline won’t hurt him!”

  Clifford was a clever draughtsman. The nouveaux watched him in respectful admiration as he constructed his study, indicated a shadow here and there, and then, dusting the paper, rapidly sketched in the essential outlines and began to model the head with a vigour and dash which did not at all detract from its value as a serious academic study.

  Mid-day struck, and there was a scramble for hats and a rush for the stairs. Bouguereau’s men came trampling out of their atelier with the studio band at their head and the studio mascot, a pale-eyed goat named “Tapage,” bringing up the rear. Following Bouguereau’s atelier came Doucet’s two rooms and behind them Chapu’s sculptors. The stairs were jammed, and as Clifford was in a hurry to get his luncheon, he persuaded “Tapage” to butt the passage clear, which the goat was only too glad to do, for he smelled the appetising odour of brown paper and cabbage leaves in the court below.

  When Clifford had reached the restaurant on the corner of the boulevard he remembered that Fradley was still in the dust-bin. “The deuce!” he muttered, “I’ve got to go back and let the beggar out!”

  Sara, who had been posing in the second studio for the concour men had also forgotten Fradley, and it was only when she had finished dressing and stood alone in the studio twisting up her burnished tresses, that a rustling in the dust-chest behind her recalled Fradley’s existence to her mind.

  “B’en vrai!” she exclaimed, “I forgot you, my friend!” and she stooped and drawing the bolt, lifted the heavy lid. Fradley was squatting in a corner of the chest.

  “Ah! mais ça — c’est trop fort!” she cried in self-reproach; “I am so sorry.”

  Fradley snarled.

  The girl looked at him curiously for a moment and then began to laugh. “To think that we all should have forgotten you, my poor friend.! I shall scold Boissy and Clifford — oh — they shall catch it! Do you know you are very dusty?”

  Fradley arose and surveyed his cuffs. Then he turned to the mirror and grew giddy with rage. His long, artistically arranged hair was full of straws, and his thin egotistical features bore little resemblance to Byron’s at twenty, which he was confident they did when not smeared with soot.

  “The rude, ungentlemanly creatures! The horrid brutes?” he cried. “I will complain to Julian, I will have them dismissed—”

  “Comment?” said the girl.

  Then Fradley plunged into the French language.

  “Vooly voo donny moi — er — a — rest, or vooly voo pas! Je swee tray fachy, — er — er — tray, tray fachy!”

  “You are angry? Mais mon petit, tu as raison!”

  Fradley eyed her with animosity. “C’est votre faut!” he said; “Je dirais Musseer Julian toot sweet!”

  “Comment?” inquired Sara.

  “Wee! Wee!” he said with a venomous glance at her, “vooz avvy mis moi dans cette boite!” She did not understand his accusation, but she laughed wickedly and marched straight up to him. Before he knew what she was about she had deliberately thrown hex arms about his neck and kissed him.

  “There,” she said calmly, “we must not be enemies, mon petit; now I forgive you for making a racket when I was trying to speak, and you may tell the whole atelier that Sara has kissed you.” Then with an imperious nod she marched out of the studio leaving Fradley petrified.

  A few moments later Clifford came in and found him still motionless, gaping vacantly.

  “Oh, you’re out, eh?” said Clifford. Fradley paid no attention to this salute, but stared at the door through which Sara had disappeared.

  Clifford eyed him for a moment and then sat down on the chest.

  “Fradley,” he said, “you listen to me and I’ll give you a pointer or two concerning this studio. Be manly and you’ll get along. Don’t kick against tradition. Better men than either of us have conformed to the customs here and filled the stove and searched for the ‘grand reflecteur’ on dark days.” He looked hard at Fradley. “You had better conform to custom or go somewhere else. We seldom haze here, — we never haze a manly man, and if you know anything about the École des Beaux Arts you will appreciate what I say.”

  Fradley was looking at him, but something in his eyes told Clifford he was not listening.

  Then Clifford rose, disgusted, and swung out through the hall and down the stairs, leaving Fradley in an imbecile trance.

  IV.

  Fradley had delicate tastes. His rooms were hung with pale green draperies, tidies lay on every divan, and his initials were embroidered on his pillow shams. He worked very little at the studio.

  “It is not necessary,” he told Garland; “mere painting doesn’t make an artist, — it’s experience; an artist must be broad!” So Fradley began the process of broadening by going to theatres, concerts, exhibitions and museums. He also presented letters of introduction to families who maintained nourishing tables. There was one thing about him that Garland could not understand. Fradley was thin, very thin, but he ate ravenously, and Garland, eyeing him from his meagre face to his spindle shanks, wondered why he did not grow stouter.

  “It’s most extraordinary,” he said to Carrington, “the fellow eats like a pig and grows thin on it. It’s very disagreeable to me. I wish he’d stop coming in here every evening.”

  “You’re too severe on him,” said Carrington.

  “I am? Well just wait until he begins visiting you with a roll of manuscript poems to read. By Jove, he nearly drives me idiotic!”

  “Oh, he’s a very decent fellow,” said Carrington; “he’s a man of splendid morals—”

  “ — According to himself,” said Garland. “Since he arrived in the Quarter he has not missed an evening in telling us how he scorns the immoral students of this immoral Quarter, and how innocent and pure he is himself. I take no stock in that sort of thing. You and I are morally decent, but we don’t sound trumpets on that account.

  Carrington was silent for a moment, then he said diffidently; “I’m rather sorry for him; he isn’t popular, you know. I think we ought to be friendly to him.”

  “It’s his own fault that he is unpopular.”

  “Perhaps so; anyway I might as well tell you that he asked us to come to see him to-night. I accepted.”

  “Good heavens,” groaned Garland, “he’s sure to read us a poem.”

  “What of it?”

  “Oh, I can stand it if you can. I’m tired and cross, but if you have accepted that settles it.”

  “It’s nine o’clock,” said Carrington, glancing at his watch, “we might as well go now and get away early. I’m dead tired myself. Come on, old chap, and face the music. We nouveaux should stick together!”

  “You’re d — n democratic for an aristocrat,” laughed Garland, following him across the hallway to Fradley’s door. They found Fradley sitting before the piano. He could not play the piano, but he had an enervating habit of striking single notes with one finger which filled Garland with murderous inclinations.

  “Ah!” said Fradley in affected surprise, “Garland? — and Lord Ronald Carrington—”

  “How are you, Fradley,” said Carrington hastily, “trot out your verses, for Garland and I are going to sport our oak directly — we’re dead beat from the studio concour.”

  Carrington had worked modestly in the Quarter for months, living under his name of Carrington with no prefix, for he hated notoriety and fuss, and was perfectly aware that a fuss would be made over him if people discovered him to be identical with the young Lord Carrington who led his company so gallantly in Burmah, He had resigned from the service to study art, and he worked hard and faithfully to make up for lack of ability. It took Fradley to discover his title and identity and, much to Carrington’s chagrin, he spread the glad news and fell d
own and worshipped.

  “Come,” said Garland, “let’s hear your verses. Got anything to smoke?”

  “You may smoke,” murmured Fradley, in a trance before Carrington, “for Lord Carrington smokes—”

  “For goodness, sake call me Carrington,” said Ronald, “and give us some tobacco will you?” Fradley produced his tobacco and then began to glide about the room tidying things, arranging knick-knacks, dusting albums, until Garland shuddered.

  “Come, Fradley,” he said, as amiably as he could, “trot out your grog and poetry and let’s get to bed. You know we only have to-morrow on the concour and we must get up early.”

  Fradley tripped over to the piano, found his manuscript, tripped back again to the fireplace, sat down, throwing one lank leg over the other, and coughed gently.

  “It’s only a trifle — a little thing I finished tonight. Let me read it to you.”

  Garland, aghast at the bulky manuscript, lighted a cigar and gave himself up to gloom. Carrington settled back in his chair and determined to enjoy it.

  “It is entitled, ‘The Kiss of Sin,’” observed Fradley.

  “Oh, fin-de-siècle? inquired Carrington.

  “I thought you were opposed to immorality,” said Garland.

  “This is moral!” gasped Fradley, “do you think I would—”

  “No — no! go on, old fellow,” said Carrington.

  “For Heaven’s sake,” muttered Garland.

  Then with a smile the poet began:

  “Her burnished hair is red as flame,

  Her red lips burn like fire,