"I am like a prisoner who has been kept in the dark and is let out free into the suns.h.i.+ne," she said one day to Paragot, who had remarked on her gaiety. "I want to run about and dance and smell flowers and clap my hands."
In these moments of exuberance she seemed to cast off the shadow of the years and become a girl again. I regarded her as my contemporary; but Paragot with his lined time-beaten face looked prematurely old. Only now and then, when he got into fierce argument with Cazalet and swung his arms about and mingled his a.s.severations with the quaint oaths of the Latin Quarter, did he relax his portentous gravity.
"That is just how he used to go on," she laughed confidentially to me, her pink-sh.e.l.l face close to mine. "He was a whirlwind. He carried everybody off their feet."
She caught my eye, smiled and flushed. I quite understood that it was she who had been carried off her feet by my tempestuous master.
"_Mais sacre mille cochons, tu n"y comprends rien du tout!_" cried Paragot, at that moment. I, knowing that this was not a proper expression to use before ladies, kept up the confidential glance for a second.
"I hope he didn"t use such dreadful language."
"You couldn"t in English, could you? He always spoke English to me. In French it is different. I like it. What did he say? _"Sacre mille cochons"!_"
She imitated him delightfully. You have no idea what a dainty musical phrase this peculiarly offensive expletive became when uttered by her lips.
"After all," she said, "it only means "sacred thousand pigs"--but why aren"t you painting, Mr. Asticot?"
"Because you have got entirely out of pose, Madame."
Whereupon it was necessary to fix her head again, and my silly fingers tingled as they touched her hair. It is a good thing for a boy of nineteen to be romantically in love with Joanna. He can thus live spiritually beyond his means, without much danger of bankruptcy, and his extravagance shall be counted to him for virtue. Also if he is painting the princess of his dreams, he has such an inspiration as is given but to the elect, and what skill he is possessed of must succeed in its purpose.
One morning she found on her arrival a bowl of roses, which I had bought in the markets, placed against her chair on the dais. She uttered a little cry of pleasure and came to me both hands outstretched. Taking mine, she turned her head, in an adorable att.i.tude, half upwards to Paragot.
"I believe it is Mr. Asticot who is in love with me, Gaston. Aren"t you jealous?"
I blushed furiously. Paragot smiled down on her.
"Hasn"t every man you met fallen in love with you since you were two years old?"
"I forgive you," she cried, "because you still can make pretty speeches.
Thank you for the roses, Mr. Asticot. If I wore one would you paint it in? Or would it spoil your colour scheme?"
I selected the rose which would best throw up the pink sea-sh.e.l.l of her face, and she put it gaily in her corsage. She pirouetted up to the dais and with a whisk of skirts seated herself on the throne.
"If any of my French friends and relations knew I were doing this they would die of shock. It"s lovely to defy conventions for a while. One will soon have to yield to them."
"Conventions are essential for the smooth conduct of social affairs,"
remarked Paragot.
She looked at him quizzically. "My dear Gaston, if you go on cultivating such unexceptional sentiments, they"ll turn _you_ into a churchwarden as soon as you set foot in Melford."
I had seen, for the first time in my life, a churchwarden in Somerset, a local cheesemonger of appalling correct.i.tude. If Paragot ever came to resemble him, he was lost. There would be an ent.i.ty who had pa.s.sed through Paragot"s experiences; but there would be no more Paragot.
"You must save him, Madame," I cried, "from being made a churchwarden."
Paragot lit a cigarette. I watched the first few puffs, awaiting a repartee. None came. I felt a qualm of apprehension. Was he already becoming de-Paragot-ised? I did not realise then what it means to a man to cast aside the slough of many years" decay, and take his stand clean before the world. He s.h.i.+vers, is liable to catch cold, like the tramp whose protective hide of filth is summarily removed in the workhouse bath. Nor did my dear lady realise this. How could she, bright freed creature, hungering after the long withheld joyousness of existence, and overwilling to delude herself into the belief that every shadow was a ray of sunlight? She had no notion of the man"s grotesque struggles to conceal the s.h.i.+vering sensitiveness of his roughly cleaned soul.
She twitted him merrily.
"You can argue like a tornado with Monsieur Cazalet, but you think I must be talked to like this country"s _jeune fille a marier_. Isn"t he perverse, Mr. Asticot? I think I am quite as entertaining as Caliban."
Well you see, when he talked to Cazalet, he slipped on the slough again and was comfortable.
He waited for a moment or two as if he were composing a speech, and then rose and drawing near her, said in a low voice, thinking that as I was absorbed in my painting I could not hear:--
"This new happiness is too overwhelming for fantastic talk."
"Oh no it isn"t," she declared in a whisper. "We have put back time thirteen years--we wipe out of our minds all that has happened in them, and start just where we left off. You were fantastic enough then, in all conscience."
"I had the world at my feet and I kicked it about like a football." He hunched up his shoulders in a helpless gesture. "Somehow the football burst and became a helpless piece of leather."
"I haven"t the remotest idea what you mean," laughed Joanna.
"Madame," said I, "if you turn your head about like that I shall get you all out of drawing."
"Oh dear," said Joanna, resuming her pose.
These were enchanted days, I think, for all of us. Even Cazalet felt the influence and put on a pair of gaudily striped socks over which his sandals would not fit. Joanna was very tender to him, as to everybody, but she appeared to draw her skirts around her on pa.s.sing him by, as if he were a slug, which she did not love but could not harm for the world.
Paragot, having for some absurd reason forsworn his porcelain pipe, smoked the cigarette of semi-contentment and fulfilled his happiness by the contemplation of Joanna and myself. I verily believe he was more at his ease when I was with them. As for the portrait, he viewed its progress with enthusiastic interest. Now and then he would forget himself and discourse expansively on its merits, to the delight of Joanna. He regarded it as his own production. Had he not bought this poor little devil and all his works for half-a-crown? Ergo, the work taking shape on the canvas was his, Paragot"s. What could be more logical? And it was he who had given me my first lessons. No mother showing off a precocious brat to her gossips could have displayed more overweening pride. It was pathetic, and I loved him for it, and so did Joanna.
The time came however--all too soon---when Madame de Verneuil could live in her Land of c.o.c.kaigne no longer. Convention claimed her. Her cousin, Major Walters, was coming from England to aid her in final arrangements with the lawyers, and he was to carry her off in a day or two to Melford. At the end of the last sitting she looked round the dismal place--it had discoloured, uneven, bulging whitewashed walls, an unutterably dirty loose plank floor, and a skylight patched with maps of hideous worlds on Mercator"s projection, and was furnished with packing cases and grime and the sacking which was Cazalet"s bed--and sighed wistfully, as if she had been an unoffending Eve thrust out of Eden.
"I have been so happy here," she said to me. "I wonder whether I shall ever be so happy again! Do you think I shall?"
I noticed her give a swift, sidelong glance--almost imperceptible--at Paragot, who had sauntered down the studio to look at one of Cazalet"s pictures.
"The first time you saw me," she added, as I found nothing to say, "you announced that you were learning philosophy. Haven"t you learned enough yet to answer me?"
"Madame," I replied, driven into a corner, "happiness is such an awfully funny thing. You find it when you least expect it, and when you expect it you often don"t find it."
"Is that supposed to be comforting or depressing, Mr. Asticot?"
"I think we had better ask my master, Madame," I said. "He can tell you better than I."
But she shook her head and did not ask Paragot.
"My son," said Paragot that evening by his window in the Rue des Saladiers, trying to disintegrate some fresh air from the fetid odours that rose from the narrow street below, "you have won Madame de Verneuil"s heart. You are a lucky little Asticot. And I am proud of you because I made you. You are a proof to her that I haven"t spent all my life in absorbing absinthe and omitting to decorate Europe with palaces.
Instead of bricks and mortar I have worked in soul-stuff and my masterpiece is an artist,--and a great artist, by the Lord G.o.d!" he cried with sudden access of pa.s.sion, "if you will keep "the sorrowful great gift" pure and undefiled as a good woman does her chast.i.ty. You must help me in my work, my son. Let me be able to point to you as the one man in the world who does not prost.i.tute his art for money or reputation, who sees G.o.d beneath a leper"s skin and proclaims Him bravely, who reveals the magical beauty of humanity and compels the fool and the knave and the man with the muck-rake and the harlot to see it, and sends them away with hope in their hearts, and faith in the destiny of the race and charity to one another--let me see this, my son, and by heavens! I shall have done more with my life than erect a temple made by hands--and I shall have justified my existence. You will do this for me, Asticot?"
I was young. I was impressionable. I loved the man with a pa.s.sionate grat.i.tude. I gave my promise. Heaven knows I have tried to keep it--with what success is neither here nor there.
The fantastic element in the psychological state of Paragot I did not consider then, but now it moves me almost to tears. Just think of it. I was his one _apologia pro vita sua_; his one good work which he presented with outstretched hands and pleading eyes, to Joanna. I love the man too well to say more.
Madame de Verneuil went away leaving both of us desolate. Even the prospect of visiting Melford a month hence--at Mrs. Rushworth"s cordial invitation--only intermittently raised Paragot"s spirits. It did not affect mine at all. I felt that a glory had faded from Menilmontant.
Still, I had the portrait to finish, and the preliminary sketches to make of a deuce of a mythological picture for which Cazalet and Fanchette (who for want of better company had become addicted during August to my colleague) were to serve as models. I had my head and hands full of occupation, whereas the reorganized Paragot had none. He talked in a great way of resuming his profession, and even went the length of buying drawing-paper and pins, and drawing-board and T-squares and dividers and other working tools of the architect. But as a man cannot design a palace or a pigstye and put it on the market as one can a book or a picture, he made little headway with his project. He obtained the conditions of an open compet.i.tion for an Infectious Diseases Hospital somewhere in Auvergne, and talked grandiosely about this for a day or two; but when he came to set out the plan he found that he knew nothing whatever about the modern requirements of such a building and cared less.