October Vagabonds | Page 3

my indignant shock, one morning, at finding a stranger calmly occupying my place. I stood for a moment rooted to the spot, in the shadow of the encircling woods, and he had not yet seen me. As I stood, pondering on the best way of dealing with the intruder, a sudden revulsion of kindness stole over me. For here indeed was a very different figure from what, in my first shock of surprise, I had expected to see. No common intruder this. In fact, who could have dreamed of coming upon so incongruous an apparition as this in an American woodland? How on earth did this picturesque waif from the Quartier Latin come to stray so far away from the Boul' Miche! For the little boyish figure of a man that sat sketching in my place was the Frenchiest-looking Frenchman you ever saw--with his dark, smoke-dried skin, his long, straight, blue-black hair, his fine, rather ferocious brown eyes, his long, delicate French nose, his bristling black moustache and short, sting-shaped imperial. He wore on his head a soft white felt hat, somewhat of the shape affected by circus clowns, and too small for him. His coat was of green velveteen corduroy and he wore knickerbockers of an eloquent plaid.
He was intently absorbed in sketching a prosperous group of weeds, a crazy quilt of wildly jostling colour, that had grown up around the decay of a fallen tree, and made a fine blazon of contrast against the massed foliage in the background. There was no mistake how the stranger loved this patch of coloured weeds. Here was a man whose whole soul was evidently--colour. There was a look in his face as if he could just eat those oranges and purples, and soft greens; and there was a sort of passionate assurance in the way in which he handled his brushes, and delicately plunged them here and there in his colour-box, that spoke a master. So intent was he upon his work that, when I came up behind him, he seemed unaware of my presence; though his oblivion was actually the conscious indifference of a landscape painter, accustomed to the ambling cow and the awe-struck peasant looking over his shoulder as he worked.
"Great bunch of weeds," he said presently, without looking up, and still painting, drawing the while at a quaint pipe about an inch long.
"O, you are not the Boul' Miche, after all," I exclaimed in disappointment.
"Aren't I, though?" he said at last, looking up in interested surprise. "Ever at--?" mentioning the name of a well-known cafe, one of the many rally-points of the Quartier.
"I should say," I answered.
"Well!"
And thereupon we both plunged into delighted reminiscence of that city which, as none other, makes immediate friends of all her lovers. For a while the woods faded away, and in that tangled clearing rose the towers of Notre Dame, and the Seine glittered on under its great bridges, and again the world smelled of absinthe, and picturesque madmen gesticulated in clouds of tobacco smoke, and propounded fantastic philosophies amid the rattle of dominoes--and afar off in the street a voice was crying "Haricots verts!" My new friend's talk had the pathos of spiritual exile, for, as French in blood as a man could be, born in Bordeaux of Proven?al parentage, he had lived most of his life in America. The decoration of a rich man's house in the neighbourhood had brought him thus into my solitude, and, that work completed, he would return to his home in New York.
Meanwhile the morning was going by as we talked, and, putting up his sketch-box, he accepted my invitation to join me at lunch.
Such was the manner of my meeting, in the guise of a trespasser, with the dear friend to whom I had brought the decisive news of the death of Summer, as he was innocently making a salad, in antiquam silvam, on that sad September evening.
CHAPTER IV
SALAD AND MOONSHINE
"Do you remember that first salad you made us, Colin?" I said, as we sat over our coffee, and Colin was filling his little pipe. "A daring work of art, a fantastic tour de force, of apples, and lettuce, and wild strawberries, and I don't know what else."
"I believe I mixed in some May-apples, too. It was a great stunt ... well, no more May-apples and strawberries this year," he finished, with a sigh, and we both sat silently smoking, thinking over the good Summer that was gone.
After our first meeting, Colin had dropped in to see me again from time to time, and when his work at the great house was finished, I had asked him to come and share my solitude. A veritable child of Nature himself, he fitted into my quiet days as silently as a squirrel. So much of his