Eye of Dread — Chapter 31 - Robert Kater's Success
ROBERT KATER'S SUCCESS
"Halloo!
So it's here!"
Robert Kater stood by a much-littered table and looked down on a few papers and envelopes which some one had laid there during his absence.
All day long he had been wandering about the streets of Paris, waiting--passing the time as he could in his impatience--hoping for the communication contained in one of these very envelopes.
Now that it had come he felt himself struck with a singular weakness, and did not seize it and tear it open.
Instead, he stood before the table, his hands in his pockets, and whistled softly.
He made the tour of the studio several times, pausing now and then to turn a canvas about, apparently as if he would criticize it, looking at it but not regarding it, only absently turning one and another as if it were a habit with him to do so; then returning to the table he stirred the envelopes apart with one finger and finally separated one from the rest, bearing an official seal, and with it a small package carefully secured and bearing the same seal, but he did not open either.
"Yes, it's here, and that's the one," he said, but he spoke to himself, for there was no one else in the room.
He moved wearily away, keeping the packet in his hand, but leaving the envelope on the table, and hung his hat upon a point of an easel and wiped his damp brow.
As he did so, he lifted the dark brown hair from his temple, showing a jagged scar.
Quickly, as if with an habitual touch, he rearranged the thick, soft lock so that the scar was covered, and mounting a dais, seated himself on a great thronelike chair covered with a royal tiger skin.
The head of the tiger, mounted high, with glittering eyes and fangs showing, rested on the floor between his feet, and there, holding the small packet in his hand, with elbows resting on the arms of the throne, he sat with head dropped forward and shoulders lifted and eyes fixed on the tiger's head.
For a long time he sat thus in the darkening room.
At last it grew quite dark.
Only the great skylight over his head showed a defined outline.
The young man had had no dinner and no supper, for his pockets were empty and his last sou gone.
If he had opened the envelopes, he would have found money, and more than money, for he would have learned that the doors of the Salon had opened to him and the highest medal awarded him, and that for which he had toiled and waited and hoped,--for which he had staked his last effort and sacrificed everything, was won.
He was recognized, and all Paris would quickly know it, and not Paris only, but all the world.
But when he would open the envelope, his hands fell slack, and there it still lay on the table concealed by the darkness.
Down three flights of stairs in the court a strange and motley group were collecting, some bearing candles, all masked, some fantastically dressed and others only concealed by dominoes.
The stairs went up on the outer wall of this inner court, past the windows of the basement occupied by the concierge and his wife and pretty daughter, and entered the building on the first floor above.
By this arrangement the concierge could always see from his window who mounted them.
"Look, mamma."
The pretty daughter stood peering out, her face framed in the white muslin curtains.
"Look.
See the students.
Ah, but they are droll!"
"Come away, ma fille."
"But the owl and the ape, there, they seem on very good terms.
I
wonder if they go to the room of Monsieur Kater!
I think so; for one--the ghost in white, he is a little lame like the Englishman who goes always to the room of Monsieur.
--Ah, bah!
Imbecile!
Away with you!
Pig!"
The ape had suddenly approached his ugly face close to the face framed in the white muslin curtains on the other side of the window, and made exaggerated motions of an embrace.
The wife of the concierge snatched her daughter away and drew the curtains close.
"Foolish child!
Why do you stand and watch the rude fellows?
This is what you get by it.
I have told you to keep your eyes within."
"But I love to see them, so droll they are."
Stealthily the fantastic creatures began to climb the stairs, one, two, three flights, traversing a long hall at the end of each flight and turning to climb again.
The expense of keeping a light on each floor for the corridors was not allowed in this building, and they moved along in the darkness, but for the flickering light of the few candles carried among them.
As they neared the top they grew more stealthy and kept close together on the landing outside the studio door.
One stooped and listened at the keyhole, then tried to look through it.
"Not there?"
whispered another.
"No light," was the whispered reply.
They spoke now in French, now in English.
"He has heard us and hid himself.
He is a strange man, this Scotchman.
He did not attend the 'Vernissage,' nor the presentation of prizes, yet he wins the highest."
The owl stretched out an arm, bare and muscular, from under his wing and tried the door very gently.
It was not locked, and he thrust his head within, then reached back and took a candle from the ghost.
"This will give light enough.
Put out the rest of yours and make no noise."
Thus in the darkness they crept into the studio and gathered around the table.
There they saw the unopened envelopes.
"He is not here.
He does not know," said one and another.
"Where then can he be?"
"He has taken a panic and fled.
I told you so," said the ghost.
"Ah, here he is!
Behold!
The Hamlet of our ghost!
Wake, Hamlet; your father's spirit has arrived," cried one in English with a very French accent.
They now gathered before the dais, shouting and cheering in both English and French.
One brought the envelopes on a palette and presented them.
The young man gazed at them, stupidly at first, then with a feverish gleam in his eyes, but did not take them.
"Yes, I found them when I came in--but they are--not for me."
"They are addressed to you, Robert Kater, and the news is published and you leave them here unopened."
"He does not know--I told you so."
"You have the packet in your hand.
Open it.
Take it from him and decorate him.
He is in a dream.
It is the great medal.
We will wake him."
They began to cheer and cheer again, each after the manner of the character he had assumed.
The ass brayed, the owl hooted, the ghost groaned.
The ape leaped on the back of the throne whereon the young man still sat, and seized him by the hair, chattering idiotically after the manner of apes, and began to wag his head back and forth.
In the midst of the uproar Demosthenes stepped forward and took the envelopes from the palette, and, tearing them open, began reading them aloud by the light of a candle held for him by Lady Macbeth, who now and then interrupted with the remark that "her little hand was stained with blood," stretching forth an enormous, hairy hand for their inspection.
But as Demosthenes read on the uproar ceased, and all listened with courteous attention.
The ape leaped down from the back of the throne, the owl ceased hooting, and all were silent until the second envelope had been opened and the contents made known--that his exhibit had been purchased by the Salon.
"Robert Kater, you are at the top.
We congratulate you.
To be recognized by the 'Salon des Artistes Francaises' is to be recognized and honored by all the world."
They all came forward with kindly and sincere words, and the young man stood to receive them, but reeling and swaying, weary with emotion, and faint with hunger.
"Were you not going to the mask?"
"I was weary; I had not thought."
"Then wake up and go.
We come for you."
"I have no costume."
"Ah, that is nothing.
Make one; it is easy."
"He sits there like his own Saul, enveloped in gloom.
Come, I will be your David," cried one, and snatched a guitar and began strumming it wildly.
While the company scattered and searched the studio for materials with which to create for him a costume for the mask, the ghost came limping up to the young man who had seated himself again wearily on the throne, and spoke to him quietly.
"The tide's turned, Kater; wake up to it.
You're clear of the breakers.
The two pictures you were going to destroy are sold.
I
brought those Americans here while you were away and showed them.
I
told you they'd take something as soon as you were admitted.
Here's the money."
Robert Kater raised himself, looking in the eyes of his friend, and took the bank notes as if he were not aware what they really might be.
"I say!
You've enough to keep you for a year if you don't throw it away.
Count it.
I doubled your price and they took them at the price I made.
Look at these."
Then Robert Kater looked at them with glittering eyes, and his shaking hand shut upon them, crushing the bank notes in a tight grip.
"We'll halve it, share and share alike," he whispered, staring at the ghost without counting it.
"As for this," his finger touched the decoration on his breast--"it is given to a--You won't take half?
Then I'll throw them away."
"I'll take them all until you're sane enough to know what you're doing.
Give them to me."
He took them back and crept quietly, ghostlike, about the room until he found a receptacle in which he knew they would be safe; then, removing one hundred francs from the amount, he brought it back and thrust it in his friend's pocket.
"There--that's enough for you to throw away on us to-night.
Why are you taking off your decoration?
Leave it where it is.
It's yours."
"Yes, I suppose it is."
Robert Kater brushed his hand across his eyes and stepped down from the throne.
Then lifting his head and shoulders as if he threw off a burden, he leaped from the dais, and with one long howl, began an Indian war dance.
He was the center and life of the hilarious crowd from that moment.
The selection of materials had been made.
A curtain of royal purple hung behind the throne, and this they threw around him as a toga, then crowned him as Mark Antony.
They found for him also a tunic of soft wool, and with a strip of gold braid they converted a pair of sheepskin bedroom slippers into sandals, bound on his feet over his short socks.
"I say!
Mark Antony never wore things like these," he shouted.
"Give me a mask.
I'll not wear these things without a mask."
He snatched at the head of the owl, who ducked under his arm and escaped.
"Go then.
This is better.
Mark, the illustrious, was an ass."
He made a dive for the head of his braying friend and barely missed him.
"Come.
We waste time.
Cleopatra awaits him at 'la Fourchette d'or';
all our Cleopatras await us there."
"Surely?"
"Surely.
Madame la Charne is there and the sisters Lucie and Bertha,--all are there,--and with them one very beautiful blonde whom you have never seen."
"She is for you--you cold Scotchman!
That stone within you, which you call heart, to-night it will melt."
"You have everything planned then?"
"Everything is made ready."
"Look here!
Wait, my friends!
I haven't expressed myself yet."
They were preparing to lift him above their heads.
"I wish to say that you are all to share my good fortune and allow--" "Wait for the champagne.
You can say it then with more force."
"I say!
Hold on!
I ask you to--" "So we do.
We hold on.
Now, up--so."
He was borne in triumph down the stairs and out on the street and away to the sign of the Golden Fork, and seated at the head of the table in a small banquet room opening off from the balcony at one side where the feast which had been ordered and prepared was awaiting them.
A group of masked young women, gathered on the balcony, pelted them with flowers as they passed beneath it, and when the men were all seated, they trooped out, and each slid into her appointed place, still masked.
Then came a confusion of tongues, badinage, repartee, wit undiluted by discretion--and rippling laughter as one mask after another was torn off.
"Ah, how glad I am to be rid of it!
I was suffocating," said a soft voice at Robert Kater's side.
He looked down quickly into a pair of clear, red-brown eyes--eyes into which he had never looked before.
"Then we are both content that it is off."
He smiled as he spoke.
She glanced up at him, then down and away.
When she lifted her eyes an instant later again to his face, he was no longer regarding her.
She was piqued, and quickly began conversing with the man on her left, the one who had removed her mask.
"It is no use, your smile, mademoiselle.
He is impervious, that man.
He has no sense or he could not turn his eyes away."
"I like best the impervious ones."
With a light ripple of laughter she turned again to her right.
"Monsieur has forgotten?"
"Forgotten?"
Robert was mystified until he realized in the instant that she was pretending to a former acquaintance.
"Could I forget, mademoiselle?
Permit me."
He lifted his glass.
"To your eyes--and to your--memory," he said, and drank it off.
After that he became the gayest of them all, and the merriment never flagged.
He ate heartily, for he was very hungry, but he drank sparingly.
His brain seemed supplied with intellectual missiles which he hurled right and left, but when they struck, it was only to send out a rain of sparks like the balls of holiday fireworks that explode in a fountain of brilliance and hurt no one.
"Monsieur is so gay!"
said the soft voice of the blonde at his side.
"Are we not here for that, to enjoy ourselves?"
"Ah, if I could but believe that you remember me!"
"Is it possible mademoiselle thinks herself one to be so easily forgotten?"
"Monsieur, tell me the truth."
She glanced up archly.
"I have one very good reason for asking."
"You are very beautiful."
"But that is so banal--that remark."
"You complain that I tell you the truth when you ask it?
You have so often heard it that the telling becomes banal?
Shall I continue?"
"But it is of yourself that I would hear."
"So?
Then it is as I feared.
It is you who have forgotten."
They were interrupted at that moment, for he was called upon for a story, and he related one of his life as a soldier,--a little incident, but everything pleased.
They called upon him for another and another.
The hour grew late, and at last the banqueters rose and began to remask and assume their various characters.
"What are you, monsieur, with that very strange dress that you wear, a Roman or a Greek?"
asked his companion.
"I really don't know--a sort of nondescript.
I did not choose my costume; it was made up for me by my friends.
They called me Mark Antony, but that was because they did not know what else to call me.
But they promised me Cleopatra if I would come with them."
"They would have done better to call you Petrarch, for I am Laura."
"But I never could have taken that part.
I could make a very decent sort of ass of myself, but not a poet."
"What a very terrible voice your Lady Macbeth has!"
"Yes; but she was a terror, you know.
Shall we follow the rest?"
They all trooped out of the café, and fiacres were called to take them to the house where the mask was held.
The women were placed in their respective carriages, but the men walked.
At the door of the house, as they entered the ballroom, they reunited, but again were soon scattered.
Robert Kater wandered about, searching here and there for his very elusive Laura, so slim and elegant in her white and gold draperies, who seemed to be greatly in demand.
He saw many whom he recognized; some by their carriage, some by their voices, but Laura baffled him.
Had he ever seen her before?
He could not remember.
He would not have forgotten her--never.
No, she was amusing herself with him.
"Monsieur does not dance?"
It was a Spanish gypsy with her lace mantilla and the inevitable red rose in her hair.
He knew the voice.
It was that of a little model he sometimes employed.
"I dance, yes.
But I will only take you out on the floor, my little Julie,--ha--ha--I know you, never fear--I will take you out on the floor, but on one condition."
"It is granted before I know it."
"Then tell me, who is she just passing?"
"The one whose clothing is so--so--as if she would pose for the--" "Hush, Julie.
The one in white and gold."
"I asked if it were she.
Yes, I know her very well, for I saw a gentleman unmask her on the balcony above there, to kiss her.
It is she who dances so wonderfully at the Opéra Comique.
You have seen her, Mademoiselle Fée. Ah, come.
Let us dance.
It is the most perfect waltz."
At the close of the waltz the owl came and took the little gypsy away from Robert, and a moment later he heard the mellifluous voice of his companion of the banquet.
"I am so weary, monsieur.
Take me away where we may refresh ourselves."
The red-brown eyes looked pleadingly into his, and the slender fingers rested on his arm, and together they wandered to a corner of palms where he seated her and brought her cool wine jelly and other confections.
She thanked him sweetly, and, drooping, she rested her head upon her hand and her arm on the arm of her chair.
"So dull they are, these fêtes, and the people--bah!
They are dull to the point of despair."
She was a dream of gold and white as she sat there--the red-gold hair and the red-brown eyes, and the soft gold and white draperies, too clinging, as the little gypsy had indicated, but beautiful as a gold and white lily.
He sat beside her and gazed on her dreamily, but in a manner too detached.
She was not pleased, and she sighed.
"Take the refreshment, mademoiselle; you will feel better.
I will bring you wine.
What will you have?"
"Oh, you men, who always think that to eat and drink something alone can refresh!
Have you never a sadness?"
"Very often, mademoiselle."
"Then what do you do?"
"I eat and drink, mademoiselle.
Try it."
"Oh, you strange man from the cold north!
You make me shiver.
Touch my hand.
See?
You have made me cold."
"Cold?
You are a flame from the crown of gold on your head to your shoes of gold."
"Now that you are become a success, monsieur, what will you do?
To you is given the heart's desire."
She toyed with the quivering jelly, merely tasting it.
It too was golden in hue, and golden lights danced in the heart of it.
"A great success?
I am dreaming.
It is so new to me that I do not believe it."
"You are very clever, monsieur.
You never tell your thoughts.
I asked if you remembered me and you answered in a riddle.
I knew you did not, for you never saw me before."
"Did I never see you dance?"
"Ah, there you are again!
To see me dance--in a great audience--one of many?
That does not count.
You but pretended."
He leaned forward, looking steadily in her eyes.
"Did I but pretend when I said I never could forget you?
Ah, mademoiselle, you are too modest."
She was maddened that she could not pique him to a more ardent manner, but gave no sign by so much as the quiver of an eyelid.
She only turned her profile toward him indifferently.
He noticed the piquant line of her lips and chin and throat, and the golden tones of her delicate skin.
"Did I not also tell you the truth when you asked me?
And you rewarded me by calling me banal."
"And I was right.
You, who are so clever, could think of something better to say."
