A Girl of the Commune. G. A. Henty

"but I warn you it will be useless. You English cannot paint, even the best of you. You have no soul, you are monotonous, but you may bring them."

      An hour later Cuthbert returned to the studio, which was now occupied by the students.

      "You are prompt," the master said, looking round from the student whose work he was correcting with no small amount of grumbling and objurgation. "Put your things on those two spare easels, I will look at them presently."

      Seeing that several of the other students were smoking, Cuthbert filled and lighted his pipe, calmly placed the pictures on the easels without taking off the cloths in which they were wrapped, and then put his hands into the pockets of his velvet jacket and looked round the room. After his experience of some of the luxuriously arranged studios at St. John's Wood, the room looked bare and desolate. There was no carpet and not a single chair or lounge of any description. Some fifteen young fellows were painting. All wore workmen's blouses. All had mustaches, and most of them had long hair. They appeared intent on their work, but smiles and winks were furtively exchanged, and the careless nonchalance of this tall young Englishman evidently amused them. In four or five minutes M. Goudé turned round and walked towards the easels. Cuthbert stepped to them and removed the cloths. The master stopped abruptly, looked at them without speaking for a minute or two, then walked up and closely examined them.

      "They are entirely your own work?" he asked.

      "Certainly, I did not show either of them to my master until I had finished them."

      They were companion pictures. The one was a girl standing in a veranda covered with a grapevine, through which bright rays of sunshine shone, one of them falling full on her face. She was evidently listening, and there was a look of joyous expectancy in her face. Underneath, on the margin of the canvas, was written in charcoal, "Hope." The other represented the same figure, darkly dressed, with a wan, hopeless look in her face, standing on a rock at the edge of an angry sea, over which she was gazing; while the sky overhead was dark and sombre without a rift in the hurrying clouds. It was labelled "Despair."

      For two or three minutes longer M. Goudé looked silently at the pictures and then turning suddenly called out, "Attention, gentlemen. Regard these pictures, they are the work of this gentleman who desires to enter my studio. In the eight years I have been teaching I have had over two hundred canvases submitted to me, but not one like these. I need not say that I shall be glad to receive him. He has been well taught. His technique is good and he has genius. Gentlemen, I have the honor to present to you Monsieur Cuthbert Hartington, who is henceforth one of you."

      The students crowded round the pictures with exclamations of surprise and admiration. It was not until M. Goudé said sharply "to work," that they returned to their easels.

      "You will find canvases in that cupboard if you like to set at work at once. Choose your own size and subject and sketch it out in chalk. I should like to see how you work. Ah, you have a portfolio. I will look through your sketches this afternoon if you will leave it here."

      Cuthbert chose a canvas from a pile ready stretched, selected a sketch from his portfolio of a wayside inn in Normandy, pinned it on the easel above the canvas, and then began to work. M. Goudé did not come near him until the work was finished for the morning, then he examined what he had just done.

      "You work rapidly," he said, "and your eye is good. You preserve the exact proportions of the sketch, which is excellent, though it was evidently done hastily, and unless I mistake was taken before you had begun really to paint. You did not know how to use color, though the effect is surprisingly good, considering your want of method at the time. I will look through your portfolio while I am having my lunch. In an hour we resume work." So saying he took up the portfolio and left the room. The students now came up to Cuthbert and introduced themselves one by one.

      "You see our master in his best mood to-day," one said. "I never have seen him so gracious, but no wonder. Now we have no ceremony here. I am René, and this is Pierre, and this Jean, and you will be Cuthbert."

      "It is our custom in England," Cuthbert said, "that a new boy always pays his footing; so gentlemen, I hope you will sup with me this evening. I am a stranger and know nothing of Paris; at any rate nothing of your quarter, so I must ask two of you to act as a committee with me, and to tell me where we can get a good supper and enjoy ourselves."

      From that time Cuthbert had been one of the brotherhood and shared in all their amusements, entering into them with a gayety and heartiness that charmed them and caused them to exclaim frequently that he could not be an Englishman, and that his accent was but assumed. Arnold Dampierre had been admitted two months later. He had, the master said, distinct talent, but his work was fitful and uncertain. Some days he would work earnestly and steadily, but more often he was listless and indolent, exciting M. Goudé's wrath to fever heat.

      Among the students he was by no means a favorite. He did not seem to understand a joke, and several times blazed out so passionately that Cuthbert had much trouble in soothing matters down, explaining to the angry students that Dampierre was of hot southern blood and that his words must not be taken seriously. Americans, he said, especially in the south, had no idea of what the English call chaff, and he begged them as a personal favor to abstain from joking with him, or it would only lead to trouble in the studio.

CHAPTER V.

       Table of Contents

      There was no more talk after the master had given the order for work. Most of the easels were shifted round and fresh positions taken up, then there was a little pause.

      "She is late," M. Goudé said, with an impatient stamp of the foot. The words were scarcely out of his mouth when the door opened and a girl entered.

      "Good-morning, messieurs," and she made a sweeping courtesy.

      "You are five minutes late, Minette."

      "Ma foi, master, what would you have with the Prussians in sight and all Paris in the streets—five minutes mean neither here nor there. I expected praise for having come at all."

      "There, there," the artist said hastily, "run into your closet and change, we are all waiting."

      She walked across the room to a door in the corner, with an expression of careless defiance in her face, and reappeared in five minutes in the dress of a Mexican peasant girl attired for a fête. The dress suited her admirably. She was rather above the middle height, her figure lithe and supple with exceptionally graceful curves; her head was admirably poised on her neck. Her hair was very dark, and her complexion Spanish rather than French. Her father was from Marseilles and her mother from Arles.

      Minette was considered the best model in Paris, and M. Goudé had the merit of having discovered her. Three years before, when passing through a street inhabited by the poorer class of workmen in Montmartre, he had seen her leaning carelessly against a doorway. He was struck with the easy grace of her pose. He walked up the street and then returned. As he did so he saw her spring out and encounter an older woman, and at once enter upon a fierce altercation with her. It was carried on with all the accompaniment of southern gesture and ceased as suddenly as it began; the girl, with a gesture of scorn and contempt turning and walking back to the post she had left with a mien as haughty as that of a Queen dismissing an insolent subject.

      "That girl would be worth a fortune as a model," the artist muttered. "I must secure her; her action and gesture are superb." He walked up to her, lifted his broad hat, and said "Mademoiselle, I am an artist. My name is Goudé. I have an academy for painting, and I need a model. The work is not hard, it is but to sit or stand for two or three hours of a morning, and the remuneration I should offer would be five francs a day for this. Have I your permission to speak to your parents?"

      There was an angry glitter in her eye—a change in her pose that, slight as it was, reminded the artist of a cat about to spring.

      "A model for a painter, monsieur? Is it that you dare to propose that I shall sit without clothes to be stared at by young men?