We both laughed.
"That is what brought us together, Asticot. You seemed to regard him as a G.o.d rather than as a man--and I loved you for it."
She put out her left hand. I touched it with my lips.
"That"s a charming French way we haven"t got in England. And--you did it very nicely, Asticot."
I almost scowled at the servant who entered with the announcement that tea was waiting in the drawing-room.
I think of all human utterances I have heard fall from the lips of those I love and honour, that formula of Paragot"s echoed by Joanna was the most pathetically vain. And they believed it. Indeed it was the vital article of their faith. On its truth the whole fabric of their love depended.
It counted for nothing in Joanna"s romantic eyes that the brilliant eager youth, "rich in the glory of his rising-sun," who had won her heart long ago--(she shewed me his photograph: alas poor Paragot!)--was now the tongue-tied spectre, the tale of whose ungentle past was scarred upon his face: who stalked grotesquely comfortless in his ill-fitting clothes: who with the art of dress had lost in the boozing-kens of Europe the graces of social intercourse. It counted for nothing that he was middle-aged, deserted forever by the elusive wanton, inspiration, condemned (she knew it in her heart) to artistic barrenness in perpetuity. It counted for nothing that her G.o.ds awakened his contempt, and his G.o.ds her fear. It counted for nothing that they had scarcely a single taste or thought in common--half-educated, half-bred boy that I was, I vow I entered a sweeter chamber of intimacy in my dear lady"s heart than was open to Paragot.
You see, in spite of all the deadening influences, all the horror of her married life, she had remained a child. When the Comte de Verneuil had found her unforgiving in the matter of the false announcement of Paragot"s death, he had left her pretty much to herself, and had gone after the strange G.o.ddesses, the ign.o.ble Astaroths, beloved by a man of his type. Month had followed month and year had followed year, and she had not developed. His family, nationalist and devout, of the old school, regarded him, rightly, as a renegade from their traditions, and regarded Joanna, wrongly, as the English heretic who had seduced him from the paths of orthodoxy. Their relations with Joanna were of the most frigid. On the other hand, the society of Hebraic finance in which the Comte de Verneuil found profit and entertainment was repugnant to the delicately nurtured Englishwoman. She led a lonely existence. "I have so few friends in Paris," were almost her first words to me on the day of our meeting outside the Hotel Bristol. She went through the world, her lips set in a smile, and her dear eyes frozen, and her heart yearning for the sheltered English life with its rules for guidance and its barriers of convention, its pleasant little routine of duties, and its gentle communion of unemotional temperaments. Her eleven years married life had been merely a suspension of existence. Her few excursions into the unusual had been the scared adventures of a child.
Her romance was the romance of a child. Her gracious simplicity, and her caressing adorableness which made my boy"s love for her a pa.s.sionate wors.h.i.+p which has lasted to this day, when we both are old and only meet to shake heads together in palsied sympathy, were the essential charms of a child. How should she understand the Paragot that I knew? His soul still shone the stainless radiance that had dazzled her young eyes. That was all that mattered. It was easy to convert the outer man to convention. It was the simplest thing in the world to make the chartered libertine of talk accept the Index Expurgatorius of subjects mete for discussion: to regulate the innate vagabond by the clock: to bring the pantheistic pagan of wide spiritual sympathies (for Paragot was by no means an irreligious man) into the narrowest sphere of Anglicanism. The colossal nature of her task did not occur to her; and there again she exhibited a child"s unreasoning confidence. Nor did it occur to her to bid him throw off his undertaker"s garb and gloom and to adopt his free theories of life and conduct. At her mother"s knee she had learned the First Commandment, "Thou shalt have none other G.o.ds but me"; and Joanna"s G.o.d, though serving her sweet innocent soul all the reasonable purposes of a deity, was Matthew Arnold"s gigantic clergyman in a white tie. In obedience to his maxims alone lay salvation: Joanna"s conviction was unshakable. As a matter of course Paragot must walk the same path.
There was not another one to walk.
Paragot accepted meekly my report of Joanna"s tabu of the Black Boar.
"Whatever Madame de Verneuil says is right. I was forgetting that the refrain of the ballade of the immortal Villon "_Tout aux tavernes et aux filles_" which was that of my life for so many years is so no longer, I wonder what the devil the refrain is now? Ha!" he exclaimed clapping his hand on my shoulder in his old violent way, "I have it! also Villon.
Guess. Didn"t I teach you all the ballades by rote as we wandered through Savoy?"
"Yes, Master," said I; but I could only think of the one that came into my Byronic little head on the occasion of my first meeting with Joanna, "_Bien heureux qui rien n"y a_," which in the present circ.u.mstances was clearly not applicable. The romantic lover does not base his conduct on the formula that blessed is he who has nothing to do with women.
"What is it, Master?" I asked.
""_En ceste foy je veuil vivre et mourir._""
I did not understand. "In which faith do you wish to live and die?" I asked.
He made a gesture of disappointment. He too was a child in many respects.
"You must go back to Paris to sharpen your wits, my son. I thought I had trained you to catch allusion, one of the most delicate and satisfying arts of life. Did I not preface my remarks by saying that Madame de Verneuil was infallible? By which I mean that she is the mouthpiece of all the sweeter kinds of angels. That is the faith, my little Asticot,"
and he repeated to himself the rascal poet"s refrain to his most perfect poem: "_En ceste foy je veuil vivre et mourir._"
"But that," said I, wis.h.i.+ng to prove that I had not forgotten my scholars.h.i.+p, "is a prayer to Our Lady made by Villon at the request of his mother."
"You are as hopeless as mine host of the Black Boar," said my master, and being wound up to talk--it was during the after-dinner interval before joining the ladies--he launched into a half hour"s disquisition on the philosophic value of allusiveness, addressing me as if I had been his audience at the Lotus Club or a choice band of disciples at the Cafe Delphine.
In the drawing-room I played my piquet with Mrs. Rushworth, while Paragot sat with Joanna in a far corner. I could not help noticing how little they spoke. Paragot"s torrent of words had dried up, and the talk seemed to flow in unsatisfying driblets. Why did he not entertain her with his newly adopted romantical motto from Villon? Why did he not express, in terms of which he was such a master, his fantastic adoration? Why even did he not continue his disquisition on the philosophic value of allusiveness? Anything, thought I, as I declared a _quinzieme_ and fourteen kings, rather than this staccato exchange of commonplaces which I was sure neither Joanna nor himself in the least enjoyed. In fact, my dear Joanna yawned.
Presently Major Walters was announced. He had come, he explained apologetically, on trustee business and required Joanna"s signature to an important doc.u.ment. She flew to him with a pretty air of delight, drew him by the arm to an escritoire in a corner of the room, and laughed girlishly as she inked her fingers and confessed her powerlessness to comprehend the deed she was signing. Paragot, after a very cold exchange of greetings with Major Walters, sat down by our card-table, and watched the game with the funereal expression he always wore when he desired to exhibit his entire correctness of demeanour. To Mrs. Rushworth"s placid remarks during the deals he made the politest of monosyllabic replies. Meanwhile his dingy white tie, which he never could arrange properly (he dressed for dinner each night without a murmur) had worked up beyond his collar, and encircling his lean neck like a p.u.s.s.y-cat"s ribbon, gave him a peculiarly unheroic appearance.
The signing over, Joanna kept Major Walters by the escritoire and chatted in a lively manner. As far as I could hear--and I am afraid my attention was sadly abstracted from my game--they talked of the same unintelligible things as the Tuesday afternoon guests, personalities, local doings and what not. She ran to fetch the stole, over which Paragot had not glowed with rapturous enthusiasm; apparently Major Walters said just the thing concerning it her heart craved to hear; her silvery voice rippled with pleasure. A while later he must have returned to some business matter which he declared settled, for she put her hand on his sleeve in her impulsive caressing way and her eyes beamed grat.i.tude.
"I don"t know what I should do without you, Dennis. You bear all my responsibilities on your strong shoulders. How can I thank you?"
He bent down and said something in a low voice, at which she blushed and laughed reprovingly. His remark did not offend her in the least. She was enjoying herself. He drew himself up with a smile. It was then that I noted particularly how well bred and clean-limbed he was; how easily his clothes fitted. It seemed as impossible for Major Walters" tie to work up round his neck as for his toes to protrude through his boots. He gave one the impression of having followed cleanliness of thought and person all his life. I began to have a sneaking admiration for the man. I beheld in its openness that which I had often seen pierce through Paragot"s travesty of mountebankery or rags, but which singularly enough seemed hidden beneath his conventional garb--the inborn and incommunicable quality of the high-bred gentleman. I set to dreaming of it and scheming out a portrait in which that essential quality could be expressed; whereby I played the fool with my hand and incurred the mild rebuke of my adversary, as she repiqued and capoted me and triumphantly declared the game.
There was a short, general conversation. Then Major Walters, declining the offer of whisky and soda in the dining-room, took his leave. Paragot accompanied him to the front door. When he returned, Mrs. Rushworth retired, as she always did after her game, and Joanna instead of remaining with us for an hour, as usual, pleaded fatigue and went to bed.
"Master," said I, boyishly full of my new idea, "do you think Major Walters would sit to me? I don"t mean as a commission--of course I couldn"t ask him--but for practice. I should like to paint him as a knight in armour."
"Why this lunatic notion?" asked my master.
I explained. He looked at me for some time very seriously. There was a touch of pain in his tired blue eyes.
"You are right, my little Asticot," he said, "and I was wrong. My perception is growing blunt. I regarded our friend as having fallen out of the War Office box of tin soldiers. Your vision has been keener.
Breed counts for much; but for it to have full value there must be the _life_ as well. All the same, the notion of asking Major Walters to pose to you in a suit of armour is lunatic, and the sooner you finish Mrs.
Rushworth and get back to Janot"s the better. There is also Blanquette who must be bored to death in the Rue des Saladiers, with no one but Narcisse to bear her company."
He put a cigarette into his mouth, but for some time did not light it although he held a match ready to strike in his fingers. His thoughts held him.
"My son," he said at last, "I would give the eyes out of my head to have my violin."
"Why, Master?" I asked.
"Because," said he, "when one is afflicted with a divine despair, there is nothing for it like fiddling it out of the system."
CHAPTER XXI
PARIS again; Janot"s; the organized confusion of the studio; the boisterous comrades.h.i.+p of my coevals; the Monday morning throng of models in all stages of non-attire crowding the staircases; the noisy cafe over the way; the Restaurant Didier where those of us, young men and maidens, who had princely incomes dined marvellously for one franc fifty, _vin compris_--such wine!--I writhe sympathetically at its memory; the squabbles, the new romances, the new slang on the tip of everyone"s tongue; the studio in Menilmontant where the four of us slaved at never-to-be-purchased masterpieces; the dear, full-blooded, inspiring life again. Paris, too, which meant the Rue des Saladiers and Blanquette and Narcisse, and the grace of dear familiar things.
It must not be counted to me for ingrat.i.tude that I was glad to be back.
I was still a boy, under twenty. My pockets bulged with the bank notes into which I had converted Mrs. Rushworth"s cheque, and I found myself master of infinite delight. I presented Blanquette with a tortoise-sh.e.l.l comb and Narcisse with a collar, and I electrified my intimate and less fortunate friends by giving them a dinner in the dismal entresol at Didier"s which was superbly styled the "_Salle des Banquets_." Fanchette and one or two of her colleagues being of the party, I fear we behaved in a disreputable manner. If Melford had looked on it would have blushed to the top of its decorated spire. We put the table aside and danced eccentric quadrilles. We shouted roystering songs. When Cazalet tried to sing a solo we held him down and gagged him with his own sandals. We flirted in corners. A goodly portion of Rosaria, a Spanish model born and bred in the Quartier Saint-Antoine, we washed in red wine. It was a memorable evening. The next day Blanquette listened with great interest to my expurgated account of the proceedings, and in her good unhumorous way prescribed for my headache. When one is young, such a night is worth a headache. I am unrepentant, even though I am old and the almond tree flourishes and the gra.s.shopper is trying to be a nuisance. I don"t like your oldsters who pretend to be ashamed of the follies of their youth.
They are humbugs all. There is no respectable elderly gentleman in the land who does not inwardly chuckle over the chimes he has heard at midnight.
Though I always had Joanna"s gracious personality at the back of my mind, and the love of my good master as part of my spiritual equipment, yet I must confess to concerning my thoughts very little with the progress of their romance. I took it for granted as I took many things in those unspeculative days. The actual whirl of Paris caught me and left me little time for conjecture. I wrote once or twice to Joanna; but my letters were egotistical outpourings; the mythological picture at Menilmontant inspired sheets of excited verbiage. She replied in her pretty sympathetic way, but gave me little news of Paragot. It was hardly to be expected that she should write romantically, like a young girl foolishly in love, gus.h.i.+ng to a bosom friend. Paragot himself, who disliked pen, ink, and paper, merely sent me the casual messages of affection through Joanna. He took the view of the Duenna in "Ruy Blas"
as to the adequacy of the King"s epistle to the Queen: "Madame. It is very windy and I have killed six wolves. Carlos." What more was necessary? asked the Duenna. So did Paragot.
When I was with Blanquette I avoided the subject of the impending marriage as much as possible. She looked forward with dull fatalism to the day when another woman would take the master into her keeping and her own occupation would be gone.
"But, Blanquette, we shall go on living together just as we are doing now," I cried in the generosity of youth.
"And when a woman comes and takes you too?"
I swore insane vows of celibacy; but she laughed at me in her common-sense way, and uttered blunt truths concerning the weaknesses of my s.e.x.
"Besides, my little Asticot," she added, "I love you very much; you know that well; but you are not the Master."
Once I suggested the possibility of her marrying some one else. There was a cheerful _quincaillier_ at the corner of the street who, to my knowledge, paid her a.s.siduous attentions. He was evidently a man of substance and refinement, for a zinc bath was prominently displayed among his hardware. But Blanquette"s love laughed at tinsmiths. She who had lived on equal terms with the Master and myself (I bowed my acknowledgment of the tribute) to marry a person without education? _Ah!
mais non! Au grand nom! Merci!_ She was as scornful as you please, and without rhyme or reason plucked a bunch of Christmas roses from a jug on the table and threw them into the stove. Poor _quincaillier_! There was nothing for it but to _se fich" a l"eau_--to chuck herself into the river. That was the end of most of our conversations on the disastrous subject.