48
FOLLE-FAKINE.
I
•
shrink? Sol can ft matter so much? He is dead to
you. He is a great man, but he is a fool. Half his
-genius would give him the fame he wants with much
greater swiftness than the whole ever will. The world
Ekes talent, which serves it. It hates genius, which
rules it. Men would adore his technical treatment, his
pictorial magnificence, his anatomical accuracy; but
tfiey will always be in awe of his intensity of meaning,
of his marvelous fertility,of his extraordinary mingling
ofthe chillest of idealisms and the most unsparing of
sensualities—but I talk idly. Let us talk of you; see, I
chose your likeness, and he let me have it—did you
dream that he would part with it so lightly?"
"Why not? He had a million things more beau-
tiful."
He looked at her keenly. He could measure the
superb force of this unblenchhrg and mute courage.
"In any other creature such a humility would be
hypocrisy. But it is not so in you. Why will you
earry yourself as in an enemy's house? Will you not
even break your fast with me? Nay, that is sullen,
that is barbaric. Is there nothing that can please you?
See here—all women love these; the gypsy as well as
the empress.   Hold them a moment."
She took them; old oriental jewels lying loose in an
agate cup on a table near; there were among them
three great sapphires, which in their way were price-
less, from their rare size and their perfect color.
Her mouth laughed with its old scorn. She, who
had lost life, soul, earth, heaven, to be consoled with
the glass beads of a bauble ! This man seemed to her
more foolish than any creature that had ever spoken
¦on her ear.
She looked, then laid them—indifferently—down.
"Three sparrow's eggs are as big, and almost as
blue, among the moss in any month of May!"
He moved them away, chagrined.
" How do you intend to live?" he asked, dryly.
"It will come as it comes," she answered, with the
fatalism and composure that ran in her Eastern blood.
" What have you done up to this moment since you
left my house at Rioz?"
She told him, briefly; she wanted to hide that she
had suffered aught, or had been in any measure coldly
dealt with, and she spoke with the old force of a hap-
pier time, seeking rather to show how well it was with
her that she should thus be free, and have no law save
her own will, and know that none lived who could say
to her. " Come hither " or "go there."
Almost she duped him, she was so brave. Not quite.
His eyes had read the souls and senses of women for
half a century: and none had ever deceived him. Ashe
listened to her he knew well that under her desolation
and her solitude her heart was broken—though not her
.courage.
But he had accepted her words as she spoke them.
*' Perhaps you are wise to take your fate so lightly,"
he said to her. " But do you know that it is a horrible
thing to be alone and penniless and adrift, and without
•a home or a friend, wfien one is a woman and young?"
" It is worse when one is a woman and old: but who
-pities it then?" she said, with the curt and caustic
meaning that had first allured him in her.
"And a woman is so soon old!" he added, with as
subtle a significance.
She shuddered a little; no female creature that is
beautiful and vigorous and young can coldly brook to
look straight at the doom of age: death is far less ap-
palling, because death is uncertain, mystical, and may
still have beauty.
" What do you intend to do with yourself?" he pur-
sued.
"Intend! It is for the rich 'to intend, the poor must
take what chances."
She spoke calmly, leaning down on orre of the cush-
ioned benches by the hearth, resting her chin on
her hand; her brown slender feet were crossed one
over another, her eyelids were heavy from weak-
ness and the warmth of the room; the soft dim light
played on her tenderly; he looked at her with a musing
.smile.
" No beautiful woman need ever be poor," he said,
¦slowly spreading out the delicate palms of iiis hands to
the lire; " and you are beautiful—exceedingly."
"I know!" She gave a quick gesture of her head,
tired, insolent, indifferent; and a terrible darkness stole
ever her face; what matter how beautiful she might
be, she had no beauty in her own sight, for- the eyes of
Arslàn had dwelt on her cold, calm, unmoved, whilst
he had said, " I would love you—if I could."
" You know your value, " Sartorian said, dryly.
¦" Well, then, why talk of poverty and of your future
together? they need never be companions in this
world.*'                                                                   /
She rose and stood before him in the rosy glow of the
fire that bathed her limbs until they glowed like jade
and porphyry.
" No beautiful woman need be poor—no—no beauti-
ful woman need be honest, I dare say."
He smiled, holding his delicate palms to the warmth
of his hearth.
" Your lover drew a grand vision of Barabbas. Well
—we choose Barabbas still, just as Jerusalem chose;
enly now, our Barabbas is most often a woman. Why
do you rise? It is a wet day, out there, and, for the
spring-time, cold."
" Is it?"
" And you have been ill?"
"So they say."
" You will die of cold and exposure."
" So best."
" Wait a moment. In such weather I would not let a
dog stir."
" You would if the dog chose to go."
" To a master who forsook it—for a kick and a
curse?"
Her face burned; she hung her head instinctively.
She sank down again on the seat which she had quitted.
The old horror of shame which she had felt by the
water-side tinder the orchards bent her strength under
this man's unmerciful pressure. She knew that he had
her secret, and the haughty passion and courage of her
nature writhed under his taunt of it.
" To refuse to stay is uncouth," he said to her.
" I am uncouth, no doubt."
" And it is ungrateful."
" I would not be that."
"Ungrateful! I did what you asked of me. I un-
loosed your Othyr of Art to spend his strength as he
will, in essaying to raise a storm-blast which shall have
force enough to echo through the endless tunnels of the
time to come.1'
" You gave him a handful of gold pieces for that!"
" Ah ! if you thought that I should offer him the half
of my possessions, you were disappointed, no doubt.
But you forgot that ' that ' would not sell in the world,
as yet, for a handful of wheat."
She touched the three sapphires.
" Are your blue stones of less worth, because I, being
ignorant, esteem them of no more value than three
sparrow's eggs inthe hedge?"
" My poor jewels ! Well, stay here to-night; vou need
rest, shelter, and warmth; and to-morrow you shall go
as poor as you came, if you wich. But the world is
very hard. The world is always winter -to the poor,"
he added, carelessly, resting his keen far-reaching 7yes
upon her.
Despite herself she shuddered; he recalled to her
that the world was close at hand—the -,/crld in which
she would be houseless, friendless, pe.'niless, alone.
"A hard world, to tfiose who wlT. not vorship its
gods," he repeated, mnsingly. " And you astray in it,
you poor barbarian, with your noble madness, and
your blindness of faith and of passion. Do you know
what it is to be famished, and have none to hear your
cries?"
"Do I know?" her voice suddenly gathered strength
and scorn, and rang loud on the stillness. "Do '¦jou!
The empty dish, the chill stove, the frozen :.eet, ihe
long nights, with the roof dripping rain, the sour berries
and hard roots that mock hunger, the mud floors, .vith
the rats fighting to get first at your bed, the bitter black
months, whose saints' days are kept by new pains, and
whose holy days are feasted by fresh diseases. Do /
know?   Do you!"
He did not answer her; he was absorbed in his study
other face; he was thinking how she-woul.i look in
Paris in some theatre's spectacle of Egypt, with anklets
of dull gold and a cymar of dead white, and behind her
a sea of palms and a red and sullen sky.
"What a fool he must have been!" he thought, as his
eyes went from her to the study of her sleeping in the
Eoppies. " What a fool ! he left his lantern of Aladdin
elrind him."
"You remember unlovely things," he said, aloud.
" No, I do not know them; and I should not have sup-
posed that you, who did, could so much have cared to
know them more, or could have clung to them as the
only good, as you now seem to do. You cannot love
such hardships?"
"I have never known luxuries; and I do not^wish to
know them."
" Then you are no woman. What is your idea of the
most perfect life?"
" I do not know—to be always in the open air, and to
be quite free, and forever to see the sun.'
"Not a low ideal. You must await the Peruvian Para-
dise. Meanwhile there is a dayspring that represents
the sun not ill; we call it Wealth."
"Ah!" she could not deride this god, for she knew it
was the greatest of them all; when the rod of riches
had been lost, had not the Far-Striking King him-
self been brought low and bound down to a slave's
drudgery?
The small, keen, elfin, satiric face bent on her did
not change from its musing study, its slow, vigilant
smile; holding her under the subtle influence of his
gaze, Sartorian began to speak—speak as he could at
choice, with accents sweet as silver, slow words per-
suasive as sorcery. With the terse, dainty, facile
touches of a master, he placed before her that world
of which she knew no more than any one of the reeds
that blew by the sands of the river.
He painted to her that life of all others which was in
most vital contrast and unlikeness to her own; the life
of luxury, of indolence, of carelessness, of sovereignty,
of endless pleasure, and supreme delight; he painted
to her the years of a woman rich, caressed, omnipo-
tent, beautiful, supreme, with all the world before her
from which to choose her lovers, her playthings, her
triumphs, her victories, her cruelties, and her seduc-
tions. He painted the long cloudless invigorating day
of such a favorite of fortune, with its hours winged by
love, and its laughter rhymed to music, and its wishes
set to gold; the same day for the same woman, whether
it were called of Rome or of Corinth, of Byzantium or
of Athens, of Babylon or of Paris, and whether she her-
self were hailed hetaira or imperatrix. He drew such
things as the skill of his words and the deep knowledge
of his many years enabled him, in language which
aroused her even from the absorption of fier wretched-
ness, and stirred her dull disordered thoughts to a
movement of restless discontent, and of strange won-
der—Arslàn had never spoken to her thus.
He let his words dwell silently on her mind, awhile:
then suddenly he asked her:
"Such lives are; do you not envy them?"
She thought—" Envy them? she? what eould she
envy save the eyes that looked on Arslàir's lace?"
"What were the use?" she said aloud; "all my life I
have seen all things for you, instead."
She flashed her eyes upon him.
"How can that be?"
"Listen to me; you are alone in the world, Folle-
Farine?"
"Alone; yes."
" You have not a coin to stand a day between you
and hunger?"
"Not one."
" You know of no roof that will shelter you for so
much as a night?"
"Not one."
" You have just left a public place of pestilence.
"Yes."
" And you know that every one's hand is against you
because you are nameless and bastard, and come of a
proscribed people, who are aliens alike in every land?"
"I am Folle-Farine; yes."
For a moment he was silent. The simple, pathetic
acceptance of the fate that made her name—merely
because hers—a symbol of all things despised, and
desolate, and forsaken, touched his fieart and moved
him to sorrowful pity. But the pity died, and the cru-
elty remained alive behind it
He bent on her the magnetic power of his bright,
sardonic, meaning eyes.
" Well—be Folle-Farine still. Why not? But let Folle-
Farine mean no longer a beggar-, an out cast, a leper,
a thing attainted, proscribed, and forever suspected;
but let it mean on the ear of every man that hears it
the name of the most famous, the most imperious, the
most triumphant, the most beautiful woman of her
time; a woman of whom the world says, " look on her
face and die—you have lived enough."
Her breath came and went as she listened; the blood
in her face flushed and paled; she trembled violently,
and her whole frame seemed to dilate and strenghten
and vibrate with the electric force of that subtlest
temptation.
" I!" she murmured brokenly.
"Yes, you. All that I say you shall be: homeless,
tribeless, nameless, nationless, though you stand there
now, Folle-Farine."
The wondrous promise swept her fancy for the mo-
ment on the strong current of its imagery, as a river
sweeps a leaf. This empire hers?—hers?—when all
mankind had driven and derided her, and shunned her
sight and touch, and cursed and flouted her, and barely
thought her worthy to be called " thou dog!"
He looked at her and smiled, and bent towards the
warmth of the fire.
"All that I say you shall be; and—the year is all
winter for the poor, Folle-Farine."
The light on fier face faded; a sudden apprehension
tightened at her heart; on her face gathered the old
fierce deadly antagonism which constant insult and
attack had taught her to assume on the first instant of
menace as her only buckler.
She knew not what evil threatened; but vaguely she
felt that treason was close about her.
"If you do not mock me," she said slowly, "if you
do not—how will you make me what you promise?"
"I will show the world to you, you to the world;
your beauty will do the rest."
The darkness and the perplexed trouble deepened on
her face; she rose and stood and looked at him, her
teeth shut together with a quick sharp ring, her straight
proud brows drew together in stormy silence; all the
tigress in her was awoke and rising ready to spring;
yet amid that dusky passion, that withering scorn of
doubt, there was an innocent pathetic wonder, a vague
desolation and disappointment, that were childlike and
infinitely sad.
"This is a wondrous pear you offer me!" she said,
bitterly. "And so cheap?—it must be rotten some-
where."
" It is golden.   Who need ask more?"
And he laughed his little low laugh in his throat.
Then, and then only, she understood him.
With a sudden unconscious instinctive action her
hand sought her knife, but the girdle was empty; she
sprang erect, "her face on fire with a superb fury, her
eyes blazing like the eyes of a wild beast's by night, a
magnificence of scorn and race upon her quivering
features.
Her voice rang clear and hard and cold as ring the
blows of steel.
" I ask more—that I should pluck it with clean hands,
and eat of it with pure lips.- A strange quibble for a
beggar—homeless, penniless, tribeless, nationless! So
you think, no doubt. But we who are born outlawed
are born free—and do not sell our freedom. Let me
go."
He watched her with a musing smile, a dreamy calm
content; all this tempest of her scorn, all this bitter-
ness of fier disdain, all this whirlwind of her passion
and her suffering, seemed but to beguile him more and
make him surer of her beauty, of her splendor, of her
strength.
" She would be a great creature to show to the
world," he thought, as he drooped his head and
watched her through his half-closed eyelids, as the Red
Mouse watched the sleepers in the poppies. " Let you
go?" fie said, with that slow, ironic smile—" let you go?
Why should I let you go, Folle Farine?"
She stooped as a tigress stoops to rise the stronger
for her death spring, and her voice was low, on a level
with his ear.
"Why? Why? To save your own life—if you are
wise."
He laughed in his throat again.
"Ah, ah! It is never wise to threaten, Folle-Farine.
I do not threaten. You are foolish ; you are unreason-
able: and that is the privilege of a woman. I am not
angered at it. On the contrary, it adds to your charm.
You are a beautiful, reckless, stubborn, half-mad, half-
savage creature. Passion and liberty become you—
become you like your ignorance and your ferocity. I
would not for worlds that you should change them."
" Let me go!" she cried, across his words.
" Oh, fool! the winter will be hard—and you are bare
of foot—and you have not a crust!"
"Let me go."
"Ah! Go?—to beg your way to Paris, and to creep
through the cellars "and the hospitals till you can see
your lover's face, and to crouch a moment at his feet
to hear him mutter a curse on you in payjnent for your
pilgrimage ; and then to slit your throat or his—in your
despair, "and lie dead in all your loveliness in the com-
mon ditch."
"Let me go, I say!"
"Or else, more like, come back to me in a week's
time and say, ' I was mad but now I am wise. Give me
the golden pear. What matter a little speck? What
is golden may be rotten; but to all lips it is sweet.' "
"Let me go!"
She stood at bay before him, pale in her scorn of
rags, her right hand clinched against her breast, her
eyes breathing fire, her whole attitude instinct with the
tempest of contempt and loathing, which she held
down thus, passive and almost wordless, because she
once had promised never to be thankless to this man.
He gazed at her and smiled, and thought how beau-
tiful that chained whirlwind of her passions looked;
but he did not touch her nor even go nearer to her.
There was a dangerous gleam in her eyes that daunted
him. Moreover, he was patient, humorous, gentle,
cruel, wise—all in one; and he desired to tame and to
beguile her, and to see her slowly drawn into the
subtle sweetness of the powers of gold ; and to enjoy
the yielding of each moral weakness one by one, as the
southern boy slowly pulls limb from limb, wing from
wing, of the cicala.
" I will let you go, surely," he said, with his, low, grim
laugh. " I keep no woman prisoner against her will.
But think one moment longer, Folle-Farine. You will
take no gift at my hands!"
"None."
"You want to go—penniless as you are?"
" I will go so—no other way."
" You will fall ill on the road afresh."
"That does not concern you."
"You will starve."
" That is my question."
" You will have to herd with the street dogs."
" Their bite is better than your welcome.
"You will be suspected—most likely impftoooecl»
You are an outcast."
" That may be "
"You will be driven to public charity."
"Not till I need a public grave."