Francie Again (8 page)

“I must say you're all awfully mean about her. She's not a bit conceited. You just don't understand her,” said Francie. “Mark says she's a smasher.”

“Ah well, of course that changes everything,” said Ruy. “Though I don't know this wonderful Mark, I am now convinced.”

“It's all very well to laugh, but you don't appreciate her enough around here,” said Francie.

“I am not really laughing. I do not laugh when people are loyal and generous,” said Ruy, “and you are both.”

Such a compliment from an unexpected source threw Francie badly off balance. She simply gaped at Ruy, and he looked back with eyes full of kindness and admiration. “You are a very nice girl,” he said.

“I thought you—well, I thought you didn't think so,” she said idiotically.

“I do think so,” said Ruy sternly. He decided to change the subject. “When did Mark meet Catarina?” he demanded.

She bristled at his tone. It sounded suspicious. The pleasantness of a moment ago was forgotten, and she said sharply, “He hasn't met her. Yesterday when he came to the studio to call for me he peeked in the door, that's all. He noticed her. Who wouldn't?”

“So you went out alone with this Mark after your class,” said Ruy, without expression in his voice.

“Yes, I did. So what?” flared Francie. “Why not? It's the way we do behave in the States and England.”

Ruy did not reply, and Francie felt ashamed of herself. She wasn't absolutely in the right, she knew. Aunt Lolly would remind her that the customs of the country must be observed. “I'm sorry,” she said. “Isn't it done here? I thought—”

“It is quite all right for moderns,” he said in gentle tones. “I was wrong to speak of it. Only here, you understand, our young ladies when they have no chaperones are careful to go in groups.”

“Like you and Maria and me. I see,” said Francie.

The conversation worried her when she thought it over later. Not that she was genuinely concerned about Ruy's opinion of her own behavior; she could trust him to be reasonable on a question like that. He had been to America and knew for himself. It was his attitude toward Catarina which seemed more unpleasant. She felt a sudden longing for Glenn and all the other Americans she had left on the other side of the Atlantic.
They
would have understood her.
They
would agree with her about such matters. It was appalling that so many nice people should have mistaken ideas.

“Women like me should stay at home, they say,” Catarina had told her during one of her long heart-to-heart confidences. “They tell me I have no business to be painting. They think I do it only to get out of the house, to meet friends who are not of the family. They have such bad thoughts, you cannot imagine!”

Thinking of her plaintive little voice, Francie's indignation mounted. It was really disgraceful the way young people were managed by old people in this country. Look at Ruy himself, allowing his life to be ruined by a stubborn, silly father. He should have been a painter, she was convinced. Look at Catarina, being stifled and ill-treated. “Somebody ought to
do
something about it,” stormed Fraricie to Aunt Lolly.

“Possibly,” said Aunt Lolly, “but I'd be careful if I were you, my dear. It's not your affair.”

Francie was silent. She had remembered one of Mark's sayings at Phyllis' dinner, “One doesn't want to go about reforming the world.”

But one did want to—she was certain of that!

CHAPTER 7

Within a few weeks, Francie's routine was so changed that she would not have known herself, even if she had had the time to think things over. Gone were the late mornings in bed, and the sulky, wistful hours of gazing out to sea. Gone were the empty spaces of late afternoon, when she idled, waiting for the telephone to ring. Portuguese evenings are long for an idler; she had dreaded nights when she had no party or gathering. But all that sort of thing was over.

“I go to bed early—that is, as early as I can, with the Portuguese late, late dinner hour,” she wrote contentedly to Pop. “Otherwise I would oversleep in the morning and miss the train that gets me in for life class.”

Francie was in truth an early riser now. With difficulty she had persuaded the chambermaid to bring her chocolate promptly, and she always dressed quickly and left the hotel without disturbing Mrs. Barclay. It was all very much like schooldays in Jefferson, and none the less pleasant on that account. Sometimes she half expected to meet Ruth as she hurried from the hotel and across the road. The elm-shaded streets of Jefferson and the crisp Middle Western mornings, scented with burning autumn leaves, seemed to haunt the Lisbon streets, though the avenues were already languorous and heavy-aired with warmth when the train let her off near the studio.

Fontoura's classes themselves had that same half-familiar atmosphere, though her fellows were not at all like the young Americans Francie had grown up with. They were a different group, quieter yet more alive than her old friends. In fact, they were so unfamiliar to her that it was hard to decide why she was always being reminded of home in the studio.

“Just because it's routine, I suppose,” she decided. It was more than the routine, however. Francie had become possessed with ambition, a feeling she had not had since schooldays. She was ashamed now of her slowness in beginning; she blushed when she remembered how she had sacrificed the first day of Fontoura's instruction. None of the others would have done a thing like that so light-heartedly.

And there was another thing: all these new friends of hers, or at least nearly all of them, worked awfully hard. They weren't stuffy in any sense of the word, but they acted like people who were confident they would be artists, who wanted to be artists, and went about achieving what they wanted with a fervent earnestness that made Francie marvel.

“I don't see how they stick at it,” she said once when Ruy asked about her impressions. “I mean, of course I know what it's like; I get steamed up myself about something I'm painting, once in a while. But that only happens when I'm sure I've got a good start. These kids are always steamed up; they
always
seem to feel they've got a good start. And they know how to make the start, every time. They're—” she paused, searching for an unusual word, but she couldn't find it. “They're keen as bird dogs,” she said at last, for want of something better.

Ruy nodded. “Naturally,” he said.

“But it's extraordinary,” went on Francie. “What is it about Portugal that makes everybody like that?”

“Oh, but it isn't Portugal!” said Ruy. “You are in an unusual school, do not forget that. Every one of those students is hand-picked by Fontoura. He would not accept them for pupils at the beginning if he didn't find some special quality, some talent or industry—both, if possible.”

“My goodness,” said Francie. “You make me feel awfully inferior.”

At this point it would have been nice, she thought, if only Ruy would reassure her, and say that she was just as good as any of Fontoura's favorites. But he didn't; his mind was still on the others. He said, “The little lame fellow, you know him? His name is Monteiro, I think.”

“Yes, I know Monteiro, of course,” said Francie.

“That boy comes of a very poor family,” said Ruy, “a family of a poverty you cannot imagine. They are fishermen, and Monteiro too would have been a fisherman, like his father and brothers, but he wasn't strong enough, and so he took to drawing scenes of the sea. Fontoura found him on one of his sketching journeys on the coast. He has given him a scholarship out of his own pocket.”

Francie was thoughtful. This information explained a good deal about Monteiro, she realized. During the lunch period, when she and her friends went out to the café, Monteiro never came with them, but went on with his work as if food meant nothing, as if there were not enough minutes in the day. He was always there in the morning before her, no matter how early she came. Come to think of it, sometimes she had seen him cleaning up the studio after class. “I suppose he works for Fontoura any way he can,” she reflected. “I suppose he doesn't get a lot to eat. No wonder he looks quiet and thin.”

The thought was disturbing.

“He is good, very good,” said Ruy, “but he is not the only talented student there. Fontoura brings out the best in all those children.”

Francie did not reply. She had learned to share the intense respect, verging on awe, that was felt by her companions at the school for their head master. She wished intensely that he would give her more attention. Twice or so in a week he paused by her sketch-board and gave a criticism. It was short, much shorter than the talks he gave some of the others, but after all she was a new arrival.

“And I guess he doesn't enjoy talking English too much, either,” she told herself. Nevertheless she longed for the day when the master would treat her as he did the others. It wasn't only pride that made her want to fit into the class and get a word of praise now and then. It was a sense of duty; she felt she owed it to Ruy to make good. After all, she was there on his special recommendation. Besides, it would be nice to live up to Ruy's ideas of her. She liked his admiration.

“Could I possibly be falling for that boy?” she thought. “That would be awkward.” Then she thought of Dom Rodrigo, and shook her head. He would be a terrifying father-in-law.

There was no one in Estoril or Lisbon with whom she could talk it over, and Francie was not a secretive girl; she liked talking about these things. All her life she and Ruth and the other girls in their select circle had tended to take their hearts out and examine them, and discuss them, and take note of any changes of sentiment. No yearning was too trivial, none too serious for these semi-public confessions. Now, during her morning train rides in this distant country she thought wistfully of the long, cozy talks she and Ruth used to have: Was Glenn a better dancer than Chuck? Whom was Ruth going to date for the country club dance? Wasn't Connie awfully young to be wearing Jimmy's pin?

“Kid stuff,” thought Francie, sighing. “I'm grown up now, but I wouldn't mind wasting time like that again. It would help me get sorted out. And it was comfortable and easy-going. Sometimes the worshipful atmosphere at Fontoura's gets kind of rare for me.”

To change her thoughts, which were growing gloomy, she pulled out her little sketch pad and amused herself with making up a new border pattern for a bedcover. It was just doodling, of course, but it was fun.

The students were in full strength that day. As Francie had noticed, there was little voluntary absenteeism among Fontoura's pupils, but the all-powerful call of family life had been known to intrude. Even with all the fervor in the world, a Portuguese painter might have to excuse himself from class in case of a funeral, a wedding or sickness of a close relative. There was one other exception sometimes—Catarina de Abreu. It was generally understood, if Catarina did not turn up, that she had been frustrated again by the ogres of her family.

Today when Francie came in and went to her locker, she was glad to see, as she glanced over to the Life section under the glass roof, that Catarina had already arrived. For nearly a week Catarina had been absent, and though the other students had not discussed it very much, the way they shrugged and shook their heads over her name spoke volumes. Evidently Catarina's husband, or mother-in-law, or second cousin once removed, had made one of the periodic de Abreu rows about Catarina's shameless behavior. A good woman did not neglect her children, they said. A good woman did not continue, in spite of all that her elders and betters could say, to go out in this stubborn way and spend the day without them, doing God knows what in some rackety
atelier
among bohemians.

Every so often it was all too much for Catarina, and then she gave in for a little and stayed at home. Francie had spoken of it indignantly to Mrs. Barclay.

“Isn't it a disgrace, Aunt Lolly? Isn't it a shame?”

“Yes,” said Aunt Lolly, “it's a shame, I suppose. But she's wise to give in a little, if she doesn't want an open break with her husband's family.”

Francie wondered if things weren't even worse than Catarina hinted. That husband! Francie had never seen him. He didn't come to Fontoura's; according to report he refused to set foot in the studio, or even in the street that led to it. “He must be a rat,” Francie decided. “It wouldn't surprise me if he hit her sometimes.”

Even if Catarina hadn't actually been a good painter, Francie thought, it was disgraceful that she should have to struggle so fantastically to do something innocent like attending an art class. And it was all the worse, since she
was
a good painter. Unfortunately, as Maria once said (rather oddly, Francie thought), she was very good.

“It would have been more convenient if that talent had been given to somebody whose life was not full of other interests,” said Maria. “A woman like Catarina—” She left the observation unfinished, and Francie did not insist that she go on. It seemed wiser not to talk about Catarina very much with the da Souzas; on that subject they were always irritating, both of them. They lacked the slightest sympathy, thought Francie, for their downtrodden kinswoman. Perhaps it was only to be expected that they would take the national point of view, but it was disturbing, and disappointing as well.

Francie put on her smock, sniffing the air, as usual, with appreciation for the workmanlike smell of paint and wet clay. She carried her easel over near the dais and set it up.

“Oh, it's you, Francesca,” said Catarina. “I am so happy to be back, you cannot think.” She gestured as if words failed to express her happiness. “It is as if I had been years in a desert,” she said.

Catarina never asked questions about the affairs of others. She didn't ask after Fontoura now, though he would have been the first thought of any other student after an absence like hers. This was typical of Catarina. All her talk, and she talked rather a lot, was about her own life and emotions. But somehow Francie did not find this trait as irritating in Catarina as it would have been in someone else. Catarina was so beautiful and tragic that when you talked to her it seemed quite natural and right that she should be the only thing that mattered.