THE PRINCESS SONIA

BY JULIA MAGRUDER WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY CHARLES DANA GIBSON NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1895 Copyright, 1895, by The Century Co. THE DE VINNE PRESS. TO GENEVIEVE

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

{1}

I

MARTHA KEENE had been at work for several months in Etienne’s atelier, in the Latin quarter of Paris, and although her appearance would have led one to believe her frail in health, she had never missed a working-day, and always occupied a good position well in view of the model, because she always came among the earliest to secure it. Her work was far from brilliant, and Etienne had noticed her very little at first. If he did so more of late, it was her ability to stick which had won her this favor. So many students had come and gone, rousing his hopes only to disappoint them, that it had got to be rather a comfort to the little old man to be sure of one earnest worker always in her place; and while he could not say that her work was good, it was certainly not bad.{2}

Recently he had told Martha this several times. “Not bad” was about the highest praise that most of Etienne’s pupils got from him; and when the young American girl heard it for the first time applied to her work, she experienced what was perhaps one of the most thrilling sensations of her life.

It was followed by another thrilling sensation; for, as she looked up from the canvas which the master had thus commended, she met the beautiful eyes of the princess, turned upon her with a congratulatory smile.

It was almost too much for Martha. Her heart thumped so that her breathing became rapid and a little difficult. Instead of answering the princess’s smile, a frown contracted her forehead; for she was afraid that she was going to lose her self-control, and she needed a stern effort not to do so. Martha had a heart which was made for worshiping. Etienne and the princess were two of the people that she worshiped, and there was a third.

When Etienne had passed on, after smudging one part of her drawing with his thumb until it was a dirty blur, and scratching another part with ruthless streaks of soft charcoal, she remembered she had received his{3} first words of encouragement rather coldly, and had made the same sort of return for the princess’s smile. This plunged her from a state of delight into one of wretchedness. She looked toward the master with some hope of making amends; but he was too absorbed in his next criticism, and it was only too evident that her chance was gone. Then she glanced at the princess, to receive the same impression from that quarter. The beautiful young woman on whom her eyes rested had stepped back from her easel, and with her head turned sidewise, and her eyelids drawn up, was looking at her picture. She held a brush in one hand, with the fingers delicately poised, and in the other her palette, laid with brilliant dabs of color. Her lips were pursed critically, and her whole attitude and expression showed such absorption in her work that Martha felt it

would be absurd to imagine that she or her behavior could have any part in that beautiful lady’s consciousness.

As usual, when Martha allowed herself to look at the princess, she forgot everything else. She had long ago had to make it a rule to place her easel so that she would be turned away from her enchantress while she was work{4}ing; otherwise she could see and think only of her. At the present moment she was completely fascinated by the tall, strong figure, so firmly poised, with one foot advanced, and her body thrown backward from the slender waist, where a belt of old silver confined the folds of her red silk shirt-waist above the sweep of her skirt of dark green serge. This was her ordinary working-rig; and as she wore no apron, as most of the other students did, it was more or less streaked with paint. Martha herself wore her calico apron religiously, and was always neatly clothed beneath it; but she would have protested utterly against seeing her neighbor in an apron. It would have looked so unprincesslike! She was very tall and straight, this princess, and “Serene Highness” seemed to Martha to be written on every inch of her.

There was not much sociability among the students in the atelier. They came from many different countries, and spoke many different tongues; and they were such a mixture of aristocrats and plebeians—some were so afraid of patronizing and others of being patronized,—that the conditions generally were such as were opposed to much mixing. Talking was{5} forbidden during work-hours, except the little absolutely necessary whispering; and in the intermission at noon the princess always went away for lunch, and sometimes did not return. Martha, too, went to her mother’s apartment for the midday meal, though nothing ever prevented her from returning. Some of the students had chums, with whom they chatted glibly in the cloak-room; but as a rule, these intimacies had been formed outside.

Martha Keene was a girl who would never have made the first advance toward an acquaintance with any one; for, although she had passed her twentieth year, she was incorrigibly shy. This reserve of manner was so evident that it discouraged advances from others. She knew this and regretted it, but could not help it.

It had pleased Martha very much when, on a single occasion, this wall of isolation which she had built around herself had been broken through by a little American chatterbox, who had rattled away to her for ten minutes one day as she was waiting for her carriage in the cloak-room. This had been soon after her entrance at Etienne’s, and her voluble country-woman had vanished from the horizon the{6} next day; but in that one talk she had got almost all the knowledge of the atelier which she possessed.

Her informant had told her that the students were not supposed to inquire about one another at all, the ideal of the atelier being a place where high and low alike could lay aside their disabilities and get the benefits of the common workshop. She added that there had been several personages of importance studying there since she herself had been a student, but that she had always heard of it from the outside, and they had generally left before she had identified them. “I spotted the princess, though,” she had said. “As soon as I heard that there was a Russian princess studying here, I picked her out. Do you know which one she is?” Martha had answered, “The lady in the red blouse”—a guess at once confirmed. “Isn’t she stunning?” her companion had gone on; “I’m dying to speak to her! If she were not a princess, I’d have done it long ago. I can’t go the Russian; but no doubt she speaks every language. Russians always do.” At this point of the conversation the lady herself had come into the cloak-room. A neat French maid who was{7}

“A LITTLE AMERICAN CHATTERBOX.”

in waiting had come forward, and held out her lady’s wrap, a magnificent sable thing, in which the beautiful creature had quickly infolded herself, and left the room, the two girls meanwhile making a tremendous effort to cover their breathless interest by an air of unconsciousness.

Ever since that day—indeed, even before it—Martha had been a silent worshiper at the shrine of the princess. She had a passionate love of beauty, and her heart, for all her grave and shy exterior, was packed as full of romance as it could hold. The discovery that this beautiful being was a princess—and a Russian princess, of all others—was meet food for this appetite for the romantic; and she dreamed by the hour about this young woman’s life, and wondered what it had been and was to be. She knew she could not be many years older than herself, and she wondered, with burning interest, whether she was or was not married. Sometimes she would hold to one opinion for days, and then something—a mere turn of expression, perhaps—would convert her to the opposite one. She wanted her to be unmarried, so that she might be free to construct from her imagination a beautiful{8} future for her; and yet she dreaded to find out that she was married. There was certainly a look about the princess which contradicted Martha’s ideal of her as the possessor of a

fair, unwritten life-page. Martha had watched her hands to see if she wore a wedding-ring; but those extraordinarily beautiful hands were either loaded down with jeweled gauds of antique workmanship or else quite ringless. Still, many married women were careless about wearing their wedding-rings, a thing which Martha herself could not comprehend; but she felt that this wonderful creature was removed as far as possible from her in both actuality and ideas.

Martha had heard the sound of the princess’s voice only once or twice, and on those occasions she had spoken French with what seemed to the American girl an absolutely perfect accent. Once she had been near enough to hear a little talk between the princess and Etienne, as he was criticizing the former’s work with rather more humanness, Martha thought, than he showed to the students generally; and once or twice when the princess had been placed near the model’s little retiring-room, Martha had had the joy of hearing her divinity give{9} the summons, in the usual atelier jargon, “C’est l’heure!” It seemed to the girl a most lovable act of condescension on the part of her Serene Highness.

One day (it was the day after Etienne had told her that her drawing was “not bad,” and the princess had smiled at her) Martha was working away, when she became aware that an easel was being pushed into the unoccupied space at her right hand. She had known that some one would soon take possession of this place, and she did not even look round to see who it was. Her whole attention was bent on making Etienne see that his encouragement had yielded good fruit, even though she had made no verbal acknowledgment of it. She went on drawing, with intense concentration, until, weary at last, she put down her charcoal, and stood resting her arms, with her hands on her hips. As she finished her scrutiny of her work, and looked around, she started to discover that it was the princess who was seated at the easel next her own, and was looking full at her. As Martha, confused and delighted, encountered that gaze, the beautiful lady’s lips parted in a friendly smile, and she whispered gently,{10}

“Bon jour.”

Martha crimsoned with pleasure as she returned the greeting, and then both fell to work again. The princess was painting, laying on her color in a broad and daring style that almost frightened her neighbor. Martha watched her furtively while she crumbled her bread, and pretended to be erasing and touching up certain points in her picture. It was a bewildering delight to her to stand so close to the princess and see her at work, and she was agreeably aware that the princess was also aware of her, and perhaps even pleased at their being together.

When the time came for the model to rest, and the quiet of the room was a little relieved by the whispered talk that sprang up among the students as they waited, Martha felt that the princess had inclined toward her a little, and was looking at her work. She put down as childish the impulse that rushed up in her to cover the picture from sight, or to say how bad she knew it was, and she stood very still and very much embarrassed until the princess said again, in that exquisite utterance of French subtleties,

“C’est bien difficile, n’est-ce pas?{11}”

Martha answered her somehow—she never knew what.

When the model came back, and they began to work again, she felt that she had become part of a wonderful experience. She had never seen the princess talking to any one else, and, amazing and undeserved as the tribute was, she could not be mistaken in thinking that the lovely lady wished to know her, and perhaps to allow her the dear privilege of such intercourse as their atelier life permitted. She never expected it to go beyond that; but that was far more than anything she had imagined.

Across one corner of her canvas Martha’s name was scrawled in full, and she knew that the princess must have seen it. She looked to see if there was any signature upon the princess’s picture, and, as if interpreting her thought, her neighbor, with a brilliant smile, dipped her brush in vermilion, and wrote in a bold, strong hand the word “Sonia.” This name (which Martha did not know to be the Russian abbreviation of Sophia) seemed to the girl very odd and beautiful, and peculiarly appropriate to its possessor.{12}

II

Martha said nothing to her mother and sisters of her encounter with the princess. She had a way of locking very close in her heart her most personal and sacred feelings, and all that related to the princess was sacred to her now. During her earlier years she had so often been laughed at for an enthusiast that she had learned to keep back what she felt most strongly; and for that very reason, perhaps, the intensity of her feelings grew greater as she grew older. The enthusiasm of her life was for her only brother, whom she worshiped with a blind idolatry of the extent of which even he was unaware. There had been one or two other divinities in her horizon, always second to Harold; but at this period of her life she was suffering from a sense of disappointment in these as, one after the other, they had come short of her ardent expectations. She was now, therefore, in the exact state of{13} mind to take on a new object of worship. This the princess had become.

It was not surprising that Martha’s ideal had been so repeatedly unrealized, for it was a difficult one. She had suffered acutely from her former disappointments, and had even resolved never to pin her faith and hope on another woman. But the princess was not to be resisted. Martha felt that even if her goddess never spoke to her again, she was worthy of all adoration.

As the young girl drove through the streets of Paris in the early morning of the day following her brief interview with the princess, her heart was very happy.

In appearance Martha was small and rather plain; and no one would have noticed her, perhaps, but for the concentration of expression on her face as she looked out of the carriage window on her way to her atelier in the Latin Quarter. The people abroad at that hour were not of a class to pay much attention to such a look on a girl’s face. The little army of street-cleaners, occupying their brief hour with busy industry to produce the beautiful effect of gay cleanliness which the world enjoyed later in the day, had no time to notice Martha, and{14} she was as unaware of them. Even the ice on the figures in the fountains of the Place de la Concorde, which she generally admired in passing, she did not so much as see to-day. The “cold sea-maidens” wore an unusually beautiful veil of mist, made by the freezing spray, and Martha might have got an impression for some future picture if she had studied it with the early sunlight on it.

But she was thinking only of the princess as she drove along and crossed the bridge and entered old Paris. Here, too, all was familiar, for Martha had taken this drive daily for months, and there was nothing to disturb her preoccupation until she reached the Invalides, where her hero-worshiping soul never failed to offer a passing tribute of awe to the ashes of Napoleon.

As she turned into a cross street farther on, a little funeral procession met her. This sight, too, was familiar; but no wont and usage could keep Martha from being deeply moved as often as she witnessed the pitiful little ceremonial which attends the burial of the very poor in Paris.

It is usually in the early morning that these funerals occur, as there seems to be a{15} demand upon the poor to give up to the more prosperous even the space in the streets which they, with their dead, lay claim to for so short a time. This was a child’s funeral, or, rather, it was the funeral of two children. There was neither hearse nor carriage. Each little coffin was borne upon a wretched bier carried by rough and shabby men, who appeared cross and reluctant in their miserable, faded trappings of mourning. Looking carefully, Martha discovered that there was a separate family of mourners to each little bier; and as the whole procession was under the command of a tall old man, who held his shoulders very erect, as if to atone for a limp in one leg, she comprehended that this bedizened old undertaker, with the ragged crape on his cocked hat and the dirty bunches of black and white ribbons on the end of his long staff of office, had consolidated his duties, probably at a slight and very welcome discount to his poor patrons, and

was burying the dead of two families at once. Directly after him came the bearers of the light coffin, and just behind it were five little children, four girls and a boy, walking abreast, and dressed in mourning. This mourning con{16}sisted of hastily fashioned aprons made of dull black calico, and so carelessly fitted that the many-colored undergarments of the children showed plainly at every opening. The children were regular little steps, the boy being the youngest; and cold as it was, they were all bareheaded. Each carried a sprig of yellow bloom, which resembled, if indeed it was not, the mustard-flower. This they held very stiffly and correctly in their right hands, and they walked with an air of the utmost decorum. Behind them came their father and mother, the former looking more apathetic than sad, and the latter carrying with some complacency the dignity of a dingy and draggled crape veil, in frank contrast to a blue-and-green plaid dress. She was taller than her husband, and leaned awkwardly upon his arm, keeping no time

whatever to his shuffling gait. Then came the other coffin and the second group of mourners, who were evidently not so fashionable as the first; for they made no effort at mourning, and walked after their little dead one with nothing like a flower, and in their common working-clothes.

While Martha’s carriage was passing this{17}

“A TALL OLD MAN.”

procession, she saw on the other side of them, going in the same direction with her, a smart turnout in which a gentleman was driving, with a groom behind. The horses shone like satin, and their harness jingled and glittered in the morning sunshine. The gentleman and his servant were dressed with a brilliant effect of care and detail. The former was smoking a cigarette, and had a scarlet flower in his coat.

As the little funeral procession passed this carriage, the young swell who was driving bared his head, with its smoothly parted blond hair, remaining uncovered until the procession had passed, his servant imitating his act. This little tribute of homage to death which the French take the pains to perform always touched and pleased Martha. She thought of the absurdity of this man’s uncovering his head to that pauper baby alive; but the mystery of death imparted to it a majesty which the equal mystery of life could not. This child was a partaker of the knowledge of the unknown, into which Napoleon, lying near by, had also entered, and was, with him, divided from the merely mortal.

Martha thought of this as she watched the showy carriage, which had relaxed its speed{18} for a moment, whirling rapidly away toward the outskirts of the city. She wondered where that handsome, prosperous-looking, well-bred man was going at this early hour. Probably to fight a duel, she thought, in her romantic way! Perhaps in a few hours’ time he might be as dead as the poor little baby; and perhaps there was some one who loved and adored him as she did Harold!

These were the ideas which filled her mind as she reached the atelier, there to learn that there was a disappointment about the model, who had failed to come.