They were well known and well liked there; the people cl.u.s.tered by dozens round them, the women greeting them with kisses, the children hugging the dogs, the men clamoring with invitations to eat and to drink and be merry.

They bade her watch them at their art in a rough wooden house outside the wine tavern.

She stood in the shadow and looked as they bade her, while the mimic life of their little stage began and lived its hour.

To the mind which had received its first instincts of art from the cold, lofty, pa.s.sionless creations of Arslan, from the cla.s.sic purity and from the divine conception of the old h.e.l.lenic ideal, the art of the stage could seem but poor and idle mimicry; gaudy and fragrantless as any painted rose of paper blooming on a tinseled stem.

The crystal truthfulness, the barbaric liberty, the pure idealism of her mind and temper revolted in contempt from the visible presentment and the vari-colored harlequinade of the actor's art. To her, a note of song, a gleam of light, a shadowy shape, a veiled word, were enough to unfold to her pa.s.sionate fancy a world of dreams, a paradise of faith and of desire; and for this very cause she shrank away, in amazement and disgust, from this realistic mockery of mere humanity, which left nothing for the imagination to create, which spoke no other tongue than the common language of human hopes and fears. It could not touch her, it could not move her; it filled her--so far as she could bring herself to think of it at all--with a cold and wondering contempt.

For to the reed which has once trembled under the melody born of the breath divine, the voices of mortal mouths, as they scream in rage, or exult in clamor, or contend in battle, must ever seem the idlest and the emptiest of all the sounds under heaven.

"That is your art?" she said wearily to the actors when they came to her.

"Well, is it not art; and a n.o.ble one?"

A scornful shadow swept across her face.

"It is no art. It is human always. It is never divine. There is neither heaven nor h.e.l.l in it. It is all earth."

They were sharply stung.

"What has given you such thoughts as that?" they said, in their impatience and mortification.

"I have seen great things," she said simply, and turned away and went out into the darkness, and wept,--alone.

She who had knelt at the feet of Thanatos, and who had heard the songs of Pan amidst the rushes by the river, and had listened to the charmed steps of Persephone amidst the flowers of the summer;--could she honor lesser G.o.ds than these?

"They may forget--they may forsake, and he likewise, but I never," she thought.

If only she might live a little longer s.p.a.ce to serve and suffer for them and for him still; of fate she asked nothing higher.

That night there was much money in the bag. The players pressed a share upon her; but she refused.

"Have I begged from you?" she said. "I have earned nothing."

It was with exceeding difficulty that they ended in persuading her even to share their simple supper.

She took only bread and water, and sat and watched them curiously.

The players were in high spirits; their chief ordered a stoup of bright wine, and made merry over it with gayer songs and louder laughter, and more frequent jests than even were his wont.

The men and women of the town came in and out with merry interchange of words. The youths of the little bourg chattered light amorous nonsense; the young girls smiled and chattered in answer; whilst the actors bantered them and made them a hundred love prophecies.

Now and then a dog trotted in to salute the players' poodles; now and then the quaint face of a pig looked between the legs of its master.

The door stood open; the balmy air blew in; beyond, the stars shone in a cloudless sky.

She sat without in the darkness, where no light fell among the thick shroud of one of the blossoming boughs of pear-trees, and now and then she looked and watched their laughter and companionship, and their gay and airy buffoonery, together there within the winehouse doors.

"All fools enjoy!" she thought; with that bitter wonder, that aching disdain, that involuntary injustice, with which the strong sad patience of a great nature surveys the mindless merriment of lighter hearts and brains more easily lulled into forgetfulness and content.

They came to her and pressed on her a draught of the wine, a share of the food, a handful of the honeyed cates of their simple banquet; even a portion of their silver and copper pieces with which the little leathern sack of their receipts was full,--for once,--to the mouth.

She refused all: the money she threw pa.s.sionately away.

"Am I a beggar?" she said, in her wrath.

She remained without in the gloom among the cool blossoming branches that swayed above-head in the still night, while the carousal broke up and the peasants went on their way to their homes, singing along the dark streets, and the lights were put out in the winehouse, and the trill of the gra.s.shopper chirped in the fields around.

"You will die of damp, roofless in the open air this moonless night,"

men, as they pa.s.sed away, said to her in wonder.

"The leaves are roof enough for me," she answered them: and stayed there with her head resting on the roll of her sheepskin; wide awake through the calm dark hours; for a bed within she knew that she could not pay, and she would not let any charity purchase one for her.

At daybreak when the others rose she would only take from them the crust that was absolutely needful to keep life in her. Food seemed to choke her as it pa.s.sed her lips,--since how could she tell but what his lips were parched dry with hunger or were blue and cold in death?

That morning, as they started, one of the two youths who bore their traveling gear and the rude appliances of their little stage upon his shoulders from village to village when they journeyed thus--being oftentimes too poor to permit themselves any other mode of transit and of porterage--fell lame and grew faint and was forced to lay down his burden by the roadside.

She raised the weight upon her back and head as she had been wont to do the weights of timber and of corn for the mill-house, and bore it onward.

In vain they remonstrated with her; she would not yield, but carried the wooden framework and the folded canvases all through the heat and weariness of the noonday.

"You would have me eat of your supper last night. I will have you accept of my payment to-day," she said, stubbornly.

For this seemed to her a labor innocent and just, and even full of honor, whatever men might say: had not Helios himself been bound as a slave in Thessaly?

They journeyed far that day, along straight sunlit highways, and under the shadows of green trees. The fields were green with the young corn and the young vines; the delicate plumes of the first blossoming lilacs nodded in their footsteps; the skies were blue; the earth was fragrant.

At noonday the players halted and threw themselves down beneath a poplar-tree, in a wild rose thicket, to eat their noonday meal of bread and a green cress salad.

The shelter they had chosen was full of fragrance from rain-drops still wet upon the gra.s.ses, and the budding rose vines. The hedge was full of honeysuckle and tufts of cowslips; the sun was warmer; the mild-eyed cattle came and looked at them; little redstarts picked up their crumbs; from a white vine-hung cottage an old woman brought them salt and wished them a fair travel.

But her heart was sick and her feet weary, and she asked always,--"Where is Paris?"

At last they showed it her, that gleaming golden cloud upon the purple haze of the horizon.

She crossed her hands upon her beating breast, and thanked the G.o.ds that they had thus given her to behold the city of his desires.

The chief of the mimes watched her keenly.

"You look at Paris," he said after a time. "There you may be great if you will."

"Great? I?"

She echoed the word with weary incredulity. She knew he could but mock at her.

"Ay," he made answer seriously. "Even you! Why not? There is no dynasty that endures in that golden city save only one--the sovereignty of a woman's beauty."

She started and shuddered a little; she thought that she saw the Red Mouse stir amidst the gra.s.ses.