and so barnabas departed to paris in the attempt to find some clue regarding the scrap of humanity which the fates had led to miss mason’s studio. it was not that miss mason cared in the smallest degree what her parentage was. she was just a lonely little soul needing love, and so miss mason had taken her into her arms and into her big heart. dan had once said of miss mason, and only shortly after making her acquaintance:
“i veritably believe that woman has the biggest hands, the biggest feet, and the biggest heart of any woman in christendom.” and the more he knew of her the more convinced he felt of the truth of his statement.
but even a big heart is not entirely sufficient guarantee for taking possession of a small girl. one can no more pick one up and keep it than one can pick up a valuable ornament and place it on one’s mantelpiece. at any rate, if one did there would always be the uncomfortable feeling that the rightful owner might one day walk casually up to it and say:
“that is mine.”
barnabas understood this, and therefore he had gone off to paris to see if there were any likelihood of a rightful owner turning up one day to claim pippa. it was wiser that miss mason should not get too attached to her possession before he had made sure on that point. also there was the memory of philippe kostolitz.
but while he was gone miss mason petted the child to her heart’s content, bought dainty undergarments and charming frocks, and played that delightful game of “mother,” which is a game all women have played throughout eternity at some time in their lives, even if it is only played with a rag doll wrapped in a shawl.
and while she was playing, and while pippa was enjoying the game almost as much as she was and revelling in frilly petticoats, long black stockings, buckled shoes, and soft green frocks—green seemed to belong to her, for some reason, as a matter of course—the other five artists of the courtyard were living their lives, painting their pictures, smoking their pipes, and being happy or miserable according to their moods.
and it is perhaps safe to say, though a great pity to have to say it, that jasper’s mood of the last six months had been one of utter depression.
at first, when he had walked away from the ugly little house in chiswick, he had felt—in spite of the shock he had received at bridget’s unexpected attitude towards him—a certain exultation in the thought that duty would never compel him to take that route again. he told himself that he rejoiced in his freedom, but after a day or so he had found it necessary to emphasize that point to himself with a certain degree of insistence. phrases she had used began to return to his mind at odd moments. in the midst of painting an angel’s wing, or trying to concentrate on the beatific expression of some saint’s face, he would suddenly hear her voice:
“i wanted to ask your help, to tell you what i had suffered. i could not.”
and again, when painting some piece of flame-coloured drapery, he would hear the words:
“how did you try to help me? by talking calm platitudes through a kind of moral disinfectant sheet which you held between us——”
and yet again, as he tried for the strength of courage in the face of the warrior angel, he would hear her saying:
“you have not had the manhood to help me.”
it angered him that she should come between him and his work. he had loved it. he had felt a kind of mystical joy in it, in the knowledge that his work would adorn the houses of god, and that the saints he painted would look down upon the altar where the priest commemorated the great sacrifice. sometimes in his more intense moments he had fancied himself an incarnation of one of the old painters who [pg 153]portrayed for sheer love of god dancing saints garlanded with flowers. he did not know that his own work lacked that child-like joy, and that its asceticism was hard and cold.
but now the memory of the house in chiswick, which he used to banish easily from his thoughts, came again and again before his mind to prevent him working. he began to leave his studio and go for long walks, only returning when it was too dark to paint. and his fellow-artists wondered what possessed him, and would have welcomed one of his priggish speeches rather than this moody silence.
and alan farley, the other artist who fancied himself a mystic, painted a few pictures when the inspiration was upon him, pictures which remained to adorn his own studio walls, as they were incomprehensible to any one but himself and to one other—a girl, aurora castleton, in whom alan found a kindred soul. they frequented each other’s studios, and talked of “the true spirit,” and “the deeper meaning,” and “the virtue of symbolism,” and lamented that the public were too blind to realize the inner beauty which they were kindly interpreting for them on canvas. they found, however, a great deal of consolation and pleasure in each other’s society. and a small boy with drooping wings sat mournfully in a corner and heard them talk, knowing that he alone could give them the true key to the meaning of beauty—a key that the most ignorant could understand. but they refused to look at him. even his arrows were useless, for the cloak of high art with which the two had surrounded themselves seems to be the one thing that is impervious to them.
and dan plodded on with his messonier-like paintings and missed barnabas a good deal, in spite of the fact that he had been gone barely three days. and michael did wonderful line work, and wrote little cynical essays for a small magazine that scoffed at love as sentimental.
but paul was absorbed in his portrait of the duchessa, and in the wonderful music his heart heard, the meaning of which was beginning to dawn on his soul.
the duchessa had given him her own ideas regarding the portrait the first morning she had come to the studio. she had told him about the casa di corleone, and the courtyard with the golden oranges and marble fauns and nymphs, and the gallery where her portrait was to hang.
“i want it,” she had said, “to be a wee bit—just the weest bit in the world—flaunting. the women of the house of corleone are haughty and disdainful. they are too proud to show their feelings. if they ever loved the courtyard and the sunshine, they would have scorned to show it. they have scorned me often for loving it. i have seen—you may laugh at me if you like—their [pg 155]lips curl when my heart has danced for joy as i have stood in the gallery and watched the sunlight stream through the big hall door. i can’t hang there meekly accepting their scorn. i want to defy them. they may think the place theirs, and be calmly satisfied in their possession of it, and they may look upon me as an alien. but it is mine, mine, mine. i want them to know it—not aggressively, you realize—but with just the tiniest bit of assurance that there’s no mistake at all.”
and paul had responded to her mood as a violin responds to the master-hand that draws the bow across its strings. he had sketched her in on the canvas almost as she had spoken the words, standing there with her head just a trifle thrown back, a little gleam of fascinating devilry in her eyes.
they had nearly come to loggerheads regarding her dress, however. she wished it to be scarlet, in contrast to the black dresses and sombre colours of the haughty ladies already in the gallery. paul wished it to be blue. in the end she had had her will. it was not often that sara, duchessa di corleone, failed in accomplishing it.
perhaps the most noticeable characteristic of sara was her vivid magnetism. every separate burnished hair of her head seemed to possess it. her eyes possessed it, her smile possessed it, her voice—a low contralto—possessed it. her presence dominated a room the moment she entered it, even if she did not speak a word, and sara possessed a curious gift for silences. they were sudden and unaccountable silences, more disconcerting and full of magnetism than speech. she lapsed into them often with paul. they came as a sudden and odd interruption to her flow of sparkling talk. she had a trick of making the most ordinary words sparkle. water, after all, is only water, but it can look very different in sunshine from beneath a grey sky.
and perhaps for the first time paul found himself at a loss to read the character she presented to him. probably because he could not appreciate it sufficiently calmly. the music in his heart distracted him, and the tune was clearer and sweeter when she was near. he knew its meaning now, and it filled him with happiness and pain—happiness because it is the most beautiful music in the world to those who hear it, and pain because it somehow seemed to emphasize his own loneliness. and because he had always been lonely a certain feeling had come to him of being not wanted. it was not exactly diffidence, not the outcome of shyness, but merely a certainty that he made no difference to the scheme of happiness in others; in fact, that it probably worked more easily without him. he could not imagine himself as essential to anyone, and never in his wildest dreams could he [pg 157]have imagined himself as essential to the woman who had suddenly become the centre of his universe.
one evening barnabas returned and walked into miss mason’s studio. he came right over to the fire and sat down.
“well?” she said, looking at him very anxiously. the game of “mother” can gain an extraordinary fascination in a very few days.
“i have found out one thing,” said barnabas, “that is a curious coincidence at all events. the child’s real name is philippa.”
“ah,” said miss mason slowly.
“i went to different studios,” went on barnabas, “but the artists knew nothing beyond the fact that the child had lived with madame barbin. then i went to the houses she had tenanted. the neighbours told me she was a kind old soul, and two of them at least averred that they remembered the advent of pippa to the house when a baby of a few weeks old. they declare that an english lady brought her to madame barbin, and that madame barbin received money for the child’s keep. madame fournier was a relation of madame barbin’s—a niece, they believed. they did not know where her home was beyond that it was somewhere in brittany. she came occasionally to visit madame barbin, and was with her when she died. their theory is that madame [pg 158]fournier took possession of the child in order to receive the allowance made for her. it was sent to madame barbin, and she returned a receipt and statement that the child was alive and well. that, at least, is the neighbour’s story. but they had no notion from whom the money came. the people who sent it must certainly have trusted madame barbin implicitly. according to the neighbours, she deserved the trust. madame fournier no doubt took on the job and abandoned the child as soon as she could conveniently do so. to receive the money without having to provide for the child has evidently appealed to her mind as a method of procedure more advantageous to herself.”
barnabas stopped.
“and how did you find out that the child’s real name was philippa?” asked miss mason.
“a woman named madame paulet volunteered the information,” said barnabas. “she told me that madame barbin had said that the child had first been christened philippa according to the rites of the english church. but being a devout catholic, madame barbin evidently didn’t trust to an english baptism. she had the child re-baptized. i saw the priest who performed the ceremony. she was then, he said, about two months old. madame barbin had told him that she did not know the name of the child’s parents. she [pg 159]received money quarterly for her maintenance. she did tell him the name of the woman who sent it, but as it was told under the seal of confession he couldn’t have given it to me even if he had remembered it. but he had forgotten.”
there was a short silence.
“then,” said mason slowly, “pippa is a catholic.”
“yes,” said barnabas. “you are sorry?”
“i am old-fashioned,” said miss mason. “but after all it is the same god we worship.”
“and if,” said barnabas, “she is philippe’s child, as i believe, he would be glad. he was a devout catholic with a strange mixture of paganism. i believe that for him the altars of pan and christ were built side by side.”
miss mason looked at barnabas with a little twinkle in her eyes.
“you’ll have to take her to church,” she said.
barnabas laughed. “you think that after all there may be some advantage in her baptism?”
again there was a silence. then barnabas spoke.
“if philippe were her father, and i can’t help feeling sure of it, he must have died some months before her birth. possibly before he knew that she was even thought of.”
and then miss mason put a question, one which had been in the minds of both of them throughout that conversation at least, but, being a woman, it was she who voiced it.
“i wonder,” she said quietly, “who was her mother?”
“exactly,” said barnabas.
and because he had loved philippe kostolitz he said no more. but his eyes again grew sad. for barnabas held very straight views on some subjects, and he dreaded lest the whiteness of his friend’s honour had been in the smallest degree smirched.
