Part 6

Miss Clarenden continued her explanation. “Very likely, though, we shall have to economize, at first. And I didn’t want Jack to see me spend four hundred dollars right off bang, the very day after we landed, even for something I long for as I do for that marble hand; real art, too. You see, Jack got awfully gloomy over that last dozen pairs of gloves I got at the Bon Marché, the day before we sailed. Said he feared that at first he couldn’t give me all I’d been accustomed to, and so on. And, honestly, I was afraid that he’d be doing a bit of mental arithmetic right here in your studio, and doing it wrong! Saying to himself that if twenty-four kid gloves cost a hundred francs, why should one marble hand cost so many hundred dollars, or something like that!” I saw that the tears were very near those laughing eyes of hers, but she went bravely on. “Jack doesn’t know much about art yet, but I’m going to explain it all to him, the _morbidezza_ and everything. And I’m just crazy to see what you’ve done for me.”

Her voice with its smiles and tears floated in to Senator Bullwinkle as I led her toward the work of her hope. The marble was fairly heavy, but the Senator was more than fairly strong, and in my absence, he had gathered it up between his hands, and had sat down to muse upon it. In fact, it lay across his knees, just where he had said he would like to take Mariellen. I don’t know how, but he presently succeeded in making a place for both. I think Mariellen helped him.

Of course it was the Senator who kept the masterpiece, the buccaneer in him prizing it all the more when he learned from a grateful Gigi the origin of the raw material. He tells me he doesn’t care a whoop whether the work elevates American art or not; it elevates him. Mariellen admits it’s better so, since the lad Mario is the gainer by the one hundred dollars with which the Senator had built up the price. To clinch the matter, she wanted, for Mario’s sake, to add her own check to her uncle’s, her very first glance at that boy’s amazing sculpture in various lowly substances having convinced her of the wisdom of such a step. But I prevailed upon her to wait a year, at least; and that part does not come into this tale, at all.

“Ah, well, there are more ways than one to elevate art, or anything else. It’s up to Mario, now,” blithely remarked the young lady in blue.

“C’EST UNE TAUPE”

I feel sure that everybody, at least everybody who _is_ anybody, really knows, in the bottom of his heart, just what a _taupe_ is. But in case there should be any person with such weighty world affairs on his mind that he could not possibly move them around to discover hidden among them an insignificant matter like a _taupe_, I will say that a _taupe_ is a small furry thing that burrows in the ground. By no means an unfashionable creature, I assure you! Its color is always modish. Its skins, when collected by hundreds and thousands, go to make up what I am informed are “among the most authoritative fur garments of the coming season.” In short, a _taupe_ is a mole, all told.

Also, I am reasonably certain that most of us, if we should stop to consider the subject, would understand perfectly the nature of a _limace_. A slimy, limy _limace_! Its very name tells its story. It is not exactly one of the “slithy toves” of the old song, but they may all have had similar ancestors. And if you have guessed that a _limace_ is a slug, poor thing,—a big slug, no more and no less,—you are entirely right. So there you have the two characters, the mole, the slug; the furry, fashionable _taupe_, the slippery yet sticky _limace_.

In the Bois de Meudon, on the most beautiful summer morning in the world, a _limace_ was lying curled up like a thick brown half-moon on a bright green leaf. In its sluggish way, it was coquetting with the sunbeams. The _limace_ was in love with life, and at peace with all the earth. So were the little Parisians who had come out from the city to make holiday. At first there were not many of them; only M. Petitpot, the kind, red-eyed mason of the rue Delambre; Mme. Petitpot with the baby, in his straw hat built like a life-preserver; the good grandmother, not ashamed of her white cap; and the boy Pierre Petitpot, in his newest black apron. There were also the two doubly-opening baskets for the luncheon. M. Petitpot himself carried the basket that had the bread and the salad, with the two bottles of red wine slanted in, one at each end. But the grandmother kept fast hold of the smaller basket, because that one contained a truly magnificent roasted chicken, wrapped in a napkin. What an aroma, my friends! A _déjeuner sur l’herbe_ was contemplated. Messrs. Manet and Monet are not the only artists of the _déjeuner sur l’herbe_.

Presently other Parisians came, from various quarters of the city, and from various businesses. All were seeking a little Sunday happiness in the open. They were not really familiar with the secrets of the wood, as you shall see. But they had curiosity and discernment, and these two, keeping together, will go far toward finding knowledge. Unlike English people, these French persons chatted with each other, without mistrust. Also, they revealed the beauties of nature to each other. How dazzling and glorious were the clouds that day! The grocer’s lady pointed out to Mme. Petitpot that the good God must surely possess a giant egg-whip, to be able to produce a _méringue_ as colossal and light as those masses of cloud over there! And Mme. Petitpot had replied that eggs were better and cheaper, now that it was June, but that her own egg-beater had a kink in it, so that she was about to buy another.

Black-aproned Pierre was a pale bright-eyed child with a bulging forehead, and hands that looked as if they wanted to play the piano or something. Easy to see that he was predestined for the paths of learning. _Per aspera ad astra_; the latter for Pierre, the former for his parents. Even for this one holiday, they had not been able to separate him from his new “Petit Atlas du Monde”; he hugged it so tightly that the crimson cover had already stained his hands, freshly washed that very morning. His delighted glance skipped like a bird from tree to bush. He nodded his head in smiling ecstasy when the grocer’s lady expressed that airy fantasy of hers as to the clouds.

But it was one of the later comers, a pink-sashed little girl from the Montrouge quarter, who first saw the _limace_, and shouted aloud in joyous fright. “What a droll of a beast! I beg of thee, Mamma, regard me that!”

All the world pressed forward to inspect the _limace_. There were some who even had the hardihood to touch the creature with little sticks. “Hold, hold, my infant! _Faut pas la toucher!_ Perhaps it is a poisonous one, _hein_? Demand of thy papa whether it is envenomed.”

By now, quite a little crowd had gathered. One would say, amateurs in _limaçonnerie_! Papa, not knowing in the least whether it was envenomed or otherwise, preferred not to make any statement before the other Parisians, who, if the truth were discovered, were no better informed than he himself as to the nature of the thing there. Strange as it may seem, those Parisians were really less wise about the _limace_ than you and I are, to-day! For not one of them really knew that all of them were looking at a _limace_. But they one and all wanted to talk about it, solo, fugue, and chorus; and they did not know how best to mention it. Now it is absurd to keep on calling a thing _la chose_. So at last some one asked aloud, as all had been asking within, “What is it that that is, that that?”

Ah, if only M. J. Henri Fabre had been there, M. Fabre, the “insects’ Homer”! But M. Fabre was far away, and no one answered for him. There was a pause. Parisians hate a pause. The day had begun so joyous, and there they all were, pausing. Insupportable! A pretty lady with a primrose-colored parasol said that if it were a serpent, now, she would be able to tell you. She felt herself something of a connoisseur in serpents; there had been a serpent at the last _pique-nique_ she had attended. The gentleman on whose arm she was leaning said, with emotion, “Ah, I can well believe that, Mademoiselle!” Then everybody laughed a merry “_Hé, hé!_” But all this graceful _badinage_ brought them no nearer to knowledge. Hence those who really thirsted for knowledge were glad when the white-capped grandmother Petitpot, with proud beady eyes, pushed forward pale little Pierre with his bulging forehead. In fine, our Pierre, a child well instructed, could inform those ladies.

Appalling yet entrancing moment for black-aproned Pierre! He clasped his thin little Atlas of the World against his stomach, and silently prayed for knowledge to descend upon him from on high. Then he looked earnestly down on the _limace_, to put himself _en rapport_ with the creature in her underworld life.

A touch of rose pink bloomed a moment on his sallow cheek. “I think,” he said, in his eager fluty voice of a born “teacher’s favorite,” “I think, yes, I believe well!—_c’est une taupe_.” The very utterance of his faith created in him a faith more abundant. He nodded his head sagely, even boldly. “_Ah, oui, Madame, sans doute, c’est une taupe._”

Swiftly the words of the young scholar penetrated all the little groups of Parisians. _Une taupe!_ Lady and gentleman, girl and boy, mason and grocer, one after the other took up that goodly revelation. “_C’est une taupe!_” Some repeated it a little sadly, as if it were a mistake, or at least an indelicacy, on the part of the _taupe_ not to have been something else. Others repeated it with exquisite gayety, as if a _taupe_ were the one object of joy the world had waited for, until then. Still others repeated it without passion and without surprise, as if a _taupe_ were no more than should have been expected at such a time. But in one way or another, they all repeated it. _C’est une taupe._ Even those who had never had so much as a cornerwise glance at the _limace_ went their ways, saying, with a fine discriminating wave of the hand, “_une taupe_.” Indeed, not having seen the _limace_, they were naturally far more confident than those who had really gone quite near to that brown half-moon on the green leaf, and touched it with twigs. The distribution of knowledge is a moving spectacle, is it not?

My friend who was beside me in that lovely wood, with the blue sky above the waving branches, and with the flower-like children springing up from the grass, and the autumn-leaf grandmothers walking abroad with baskets for the _déjeuner_, suddenly asked me why I was laughing like that, and the tears running down my cheeks.

“You do not know why!” I answered. “Oh, surely if you know anything at all, you must know! It is because I can see, at this moment, this same spectacle shaping itself everywhere on our planet; yes, from the Arctic to the Antarctic, on Capricornus and on Cancer, and even in the Equatorial belt where the lazy peoples live. Everywhere, everywhere on this round globe of ours, there is a poor _limace_ among the green leaves, and no one knows what she is; but everywhere there is a good old grandmother, pushing forward a pale little Pierre with a bay-window brow, to tell the world, ‘_C’est une taupe._’ And the world listens, and repeats, and so becomes wise.”

My friend, a sadly literal person, objected. It couldn’t be like that, among the Esquimaux, in their igloos. And I had all I could do to prove that among the Esquimaux, in their igloos, it was not only just like that, but more so. On the return boat for Paris, we were still arguing the question. The beady-eyed little grandmother had already helped to remove the life-preserving hat from the Petitpot baby. She continued to guard her basket, which now held only an aroma, and, please God, the _carcasse_ for the morrow’s soup. Black-aproned Pierre, with an unrelenting grip upon his Atlas of the World, laid his sleepy, knowledge-burdened head against her shoulder. Mme. Petitpot whispered over that head into the grandmother’s ear, and the grandmother nodded and smiled. The two were agreed that it was truly a miracle; in all that fine company, the boy was the only one who knew. Surely there was a future for this child, already so well instructed! And with what agreeable courtesy he had said it, “_Madame, c’est une taupe!_”

The women smiled, yet there was something sad and lofty in their smiling. For they knew that they were guarding between them a very precious vessel, and they prayed for strength equal to the honored task. The evening breeze freshened sweetly; and in case that fabled Gallic monster, a _courant d’air_, might come stalking through the boat, the grandmother spread a fold of her voluminous black skirt over Pierre’s bare knees.

THEIR APPOINTED ROUNDS

I

They were destined to dislike each other on sight, those two whose appointed rounds, unexpectedly interlacing, had brought them together under the ancient pines keeping watch over the grave of a Revolutionary soldier. The man disliked the boy, because he himself had at that moment a loathing and a horror of himself and his probable fate, and the lad’s pliant figure vividly recalled to him what his own had been, in days long past. The boy’s reason for disliking the man was far more obscure, but no less potent.

That little pine-clad hill with the graves was pleasantly sheltered by hills higher than itself. The pines were very tall and shapely. They soared skyward like clustering brown masts, decked out at their far tops with tossing banners of holiday green. The summer sunlight paid long visits at their feet. If you should lay down your head under those trees, and then lift your eyes, you would be startled to discover the unbelievable purple pomp of those woven branches, and the intense blueness beyond. The shadows on the ground were more golden there than elsewhere, the sunbeams more serious-minded. They had all played together there for so many years, seeing the same sights and thinking the same thoughts, that they had at last come to look somewhat like each other. L’Allegro and Il Penseroso had mingled their identities. A scarlet tanager flared down from a far purple bough, to sing the peace that brooded over the place. Both the man and the boy had their reasons for seeking peace. Though unknown to each other, they knew that peace might be found under those pines, but they had no mind for sharing it with each other.

II

The boy Royal had a poem of his own make in his pocket, and being on his travels, he had climbed up from the east to rest himself, and to re-read his verses yet again in solitude. Perhaps he was about to add to them some touch of immortality, some wistful trace of that philosophy which may not revisit the mind of man after his seventeenth year, but day by day loses itself more deeply in the underbrush of uncharted, enchanted woodways. The poem was about a maiden called Amaryllis. In the prose of private life, Royal’s Amaryllis was a wholly good and pretty girl a little older than himself. Her name was Mary, but even at nineteen she was still signing herself Maimée. However, what is poetry for, unless to quicken and rechristen all worlds into strangeness and beauty? Let Royal keep his Amaryllis a while longer, I beg!

Is there any good and comfortable thing that the heart of youth will not flee from, in its longing for the untrodden way? The boy Royal was a fugitive from the eggs-and-bacon type of breakfast. He was in search of some ambrosial, sit-by-the-brookside food more precious and sustaining to his spirit, so he dreamed, than any of the comestibles, fine or gross, involving his parents in worrisome monthly bills at the grocer’s. For him, life and letters were mingled mysteriously in the same sparkling cup, and he wanted to drink of that cup freely. One can do such things better away from home. He had therefore wrung from his mother, his father being absent in the city, working for the wherewithal, her unwilling consent to a solitary three days’ walking tour, his entire luggage to consist of a flashlight, the Iliad, and a toothbrush. Oh, of course, a full tin of provender slung across the back of his Norfolk jacket! You will doubtless understand what his twin brother Peter meant when he said that the difference between Royal’s travels and R. L. S.’s was all in one word; a preposition, don’t they call it? Stevenson’s Travels were With a Donkey, Royal’s were Of a Donkey. Peter was sore because he had not been invited to be a donkey too.

The twins loved one another dearly, but now that adolescence was upon them, they often wounded one another sorely. Each boy, recognizing certain superiorities in the other, felt all the more bound to rescue and protect and assert his own individuality. Who knows what dire harm to ourselves may issue from our brother’s excellences? And Royal, even more than Peter, longed for a more emphatic identity of his own—something so distinct and compelling that the world would forever cease contrasting and comparing him with another.

Their father was a painter, their mother a writer. Peter took to colors, Royal to ink. But Peter, luckily for the world, was no such born-in-the-blood Romantic as poor Royal then was, and might forever be, unless something could be done about it! That boy’s parents had showered upon him all the benefits of education, dentistry, operations for adenoids. They had even had him psycho-analyzed, since Uncle Tom’s business in life was exactly that. My uncle the psychiatrist; the boys often stuck the phrase into their cheeks, for the benefit of their mates. The work on Royal had been done with the utmost secrecy, of course. Uncle Tom had made a mental diagram of Royal’s case, as carefully as for a paying patient. In seven closely typewritten pages, bristling with words like prognosis, adolescence, stimuli, adaptability, environment, Royal’s young soul-history may still be found among Uncle Tom’s files. And Uncle Tom would be the first to tell you that for the unlearned, those seven pages might be summed up in seven words: a poet is growing, let him alone. Royal’s parents were cheered by that report. They had always rejoiced in the harmonious understanding that existed between the uncle and nephew. There was a strong family likeness between the two; they turned their heads to the same side when arguing, and waved a good-bye in the same manner. Often Royal at his most poetical made observations that staggered Uncle Tom at his most psychological. Uncle Tom sometimes found it ludicrous when, simply because “_maxima debetur puero reverentia_,” he had refrained from saying something, and then found that Royal, with immense earnestness, was saying it himself.

Royal was a lean, rangy, bright-haired lad, with a clear skin and a good carriage. He had nobly-set blue eyes whose depths seemed practically bottomless, the young eyes that suggest both heaven and hell. He had also a determined chin that often pushed him into positions in which his undetermined nose was of no use whatever. Oh, quite the ordinary type of boy whose unusualness is chiefly within! Perhaps the most striking thing about him, thus far, was his passion for beauty; beauty to be seen, heard, tasted, clasped, protected, prayed to. There was Scotch blood in him; he had plenty of second sight, but was often found lacking in that vulgar variety of first sight known as common sense.

In planning his travels, he had seen himself, now as a sailor in tarry trousers, jingling strange coins in foreign ports that reeked with incredible oaths and aromas; now as a gifted young scholar, teaching French to some sturdy blacksmith’s fair daughters, in exchange for a noggin of milk and a brace of doughnuts, since you can’t expect cakes and ale in this country; and now as a prince-in-disguise mechanic out of work, in smutched overalls, with nothing clean at all about him but his teeth; his toothbrush would tell the world. Royal recognized the weakness of his own fables. He knew well enough that, unlike practical Peter he himself could scarcely tell a bolt from a bit-stock, or a belaying-pin from a bo’s’n’s whistle; and also (here Peter would be no better off) that he would certainly be unable to explain away the French subjunctive, in case the prettier of the blacksmith’s daughters should show an unfortunate curiosity about a topic so repugnant. Yes, Royal was a stern critic of his own castles, and therefore spent much time in rebuilding them.

Royal on his travels soon found that three days were all too brief a term for such adventures as he sought. His mother and he had been reading the “Crock of Gold” together, and he knew that she would understand him when he wrote, on the second day of his faring:

“_Dear Mother_, I am with the leprecauns, and so shall not return as early as we said. Fear not, all is well with me. The world is wide, the weather fine, and the extra $3.75 you gave me is hardly touched as yet. Besides, I can earn what I need, if I need more than I have. I love the feel of this life in the open, and you know how much I want to spin the wheel of life, in my own philosopher fashion.”

Thus wrote Royal, giving neither date nor address, and incontinently planning to reach far cities by means of gondola cars. His mother was hurt, irritated, and anxious, in equal parts; but she understood her boy well enough to know that there was some fabric to his fustian. Uncle Tom jeered openly, saying that people who breakfast with the leprecauns may have to sup with the lepers, if they don’t watch out. These psychiatrists have a way of taking the worm’s-eye view of high doings.

III

Within a week, the Royal progress had swept through parts of three of our United States, without serious damage either to the lad or to the landscape. The curve of operations was now fast shaping itself into a circle. Day and night, the weather had been magically lovely. Royal had gladly passed the first three nights _à la belle étoile_; with keen relish, he rolled the phrase under his tongue, thinking that now not a boy in Froggy Beaurivage’s French Literature classes understood its charm as well as he. His Norfolk coat, a bore by day, proved a godsend in the chill hours before dawn, and he knew the use of a Sunday paper as a mattress. Before falling asleep, he would gaze with delight into the skies; thrilled with their beauty and immensity, he would say to himself, “After this, I am changed forever; I shall always be something more than I was before I came here.” No doubt he was right.