Max | Page 7

fur cap drawn down over the dark hair.
"Look here! you aren't alone in Paris?" he asked in the easy, impersonal way that spoke his nationality. "You have people--friends to meet you?"
For an instant the look that had possessed the boy's face during the journey--the look of suspicion akin to fear--leaped up, but on the moment it was conquered. The well-poised head was thrown back, and again the eyes met Blake's in a deliberate gaze.
"Why do you ask, monsieur?"
The words were clipped, the tone proud and a little cold.
Another man might have hesitated to reply truthfully, but Blake was an Irishman and used to self-expression.
"I ask," he said, simply, "because you are so young."
A new expression--a new daring--swept the boy's mobile face. A spirit of raillery gleamed in his eyes, and he smiled for the first time.
"How old, monsieur?"
The question, the smile touched Blake anew. He laughed involuntarily with a sudden sense of friendliness.
"Sixteen?--seventeen?"
The boy, still smiling, shook his head.
"Guess again, monsieur."
Blake's interest flashed out. Here, in the gray station, in this damp hour of dawn, he had touched something magnetic--some force that drew and held him. A quality intangible and indescribable seemed to emanate from this unknown boy, some strange radiance of vitality that flooded his surroundings as with sunshine.
"Eighteen, then!" He laughed once more, with a curious sense of pleasure.
But from the corridor outside a slow voice was borne back on the damp, close air, forbidding further parley.
"Blake! I say, Blake! For the Lord's sake, get a move on!"
The spell was broken, the moment of companionship passed. Blake drifted toward the carriage door, the boy following.
Outside in the corridor they were sucked into the stream of departing passengers--that odd medley of men and women, unadorned, jaded, careless, that a night train disgorges. Slowly, step by step, the procession made its way, each unit that composed it glancing involuntarily into the empty carriages that he passed--the carriages that, in their dimmed light, their airlessness, their _débris_ of papers, seemed to be a reflection of his own exhausted condition; then a gust of chilly air told of the outer world, and one by one the travellers slid through the narrow doorway, each instinctively pausing to brace himself against the biting cold before stepping down upon the platform.
At last it was Blake's turn. He, too, paused; then he, too, took the final plunge, shivered, glanced at where McCutcheon and the Englishman were talking to their porters, then turned to watch the Russian boy swing himself lithely down from the high step of the train.
All about him was the consciousness of the awakening crowd, conveyed by the jostling of elbows, the deepening hum of voices.
"Look here!" he said again, in response to his original impulse. "You have somebody to meet you?"
The boy glanced up, a secret emotion burning in his eyes. "No, monsieur."
"You are quite alone?"
"Yes, monsieur."
"And why are you here--to play or to work?"
The question was unwarrantable, but an Irishman can dispense with warranty in a manner unknown to other men. It had ever been Blake's way to ask what he desired to know.
This time no offence showed itself in the boy's face.
"In part to work, in part to play, monsieur," he answered, gravely; "in part to learn life."
The reply was strange to Blake's ears--strange in its grave sincerity, stranger still in its quiet fearlessness.
"But you are such a child!" he cried, impulsively. "You--"
Imperceptibly the slight figure stiffened, the proud look flashed again into the eyes.
"Many thanks, monsieur, but I am older than you think--and very independent. I have the honor monsieur, to wish you good-bye."
The tone was absolutely courteous, but it was final. He bowed with easy foreign grace, raised his fur cap, and, turning, swung down the platform and out of sight.
Blake stood watching him--watching until the high head, the straight shoulders, the lithe, swinging body were but a memory; then he turned with a start, as a hand was laid upon his shoulder, and the pleasant, prosaic voice of the young Englishman assailed his ears.
"My dear chap, what in the world are you doing? Not day-dreaming with the mercury at thirty?"
"Foolish--but I was!" Blake answered, calmly. "I was watching that young Russian stalk away into the unknown, and I was wondering--"
"What?"
He smiled a little cynically. "I was wondering, Billy, what type of individual and what particular process fate will choose to let him break himself upon."
* * * * *
The most splendid moment of an adventure is not always the moment of fulfilment, not even the moment of conception, but the moment of first accomplishment, when the adventurer deliberately sets his face toward the new road, knowing that his boats are burned.
Nothing could have been less inspiring than the dreary Gare du Nord, nothing less inviting than the glimpse of Paris to be caught through its open doorways; but