II
Leftalone for a few moments while his hostess was making her farewells in the hall, Monsieur Fontenelle sat still admiring the beautiful room, quiet now, its long windows open to the night and to the sound of the whispering trees.
Lighted by pink-shaded candles, its white panelled walls, its rose-patterned chintz curtains and chair-covers gave it an air of exquisite freshness and purity. Everywhere there were flowers. Roses glowed between the candles on the mantelpiece. China bowls filled with sweet peas, with pink mallows, with snapdragon, stood on tables, or on the top of Sheraton bureaus. Even the deep fireplace was filled with flowering plants.
Appreciatively, Monsieur Fontenelle glanced at the delicate workmanship of a Chippendale chair, noticed the graceful shape of a writing-table, and the beauty of an inlaid bookcase with a lattice-work of wood over its diamond panes. There were only one or two pictures on the walls, whose creamy surface made arestful background to the colour in the room. Monsieur Fontenelle examined them. His quick eye detected a Corot, a tiny sketch of Whistler’s, and then on the wall opposite to him, a landscape at the sight of which a peculiar brightness sprang to his eyes.
He crossed the room and stood looking at it. He was still looking at it when the rustle of a gown made him aware that Miss Page had come back.
Then he turned. She was standing just within the door, watching him, and in her eyes also there was the same curious brightness.
He looked at her a moment whimsically, without moving.
“You are a wonderful woman!” he exclaimed at last, speaking in French.
“Why?” she returned in the same language.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“I leave that to thebon Dieuwho made you. He’s responsible, I suppose, for women of your type.”
She smiled without replying.
“You tell me you’re happy?” he asked.
“Quite happy, François.”
Again he shrugged his shoulders. “Come, let us talk,” he said, taking her by both hands and leading her to the sofa. “I only saw you for ten minutes this morning.”
“Let us talk,” she replied. And in French, “Ça me fera du bien.”
Instead of speaking at first, he looked at her.
“Anne,” he exclaimed after a moment, “you are amazing! How do you manage it? You look younger than the day I first saw you.”
“But I was old then,” she returned, shaking her head—“very old. A woman who had done with life.”
He answered her seriousness with a slow smile.
“Life had not done with you, had it?”
She did not reply, and with a change of voice, he said—
“So these are your neighbours.”
“Some of them. They are dear people. I can’t tell you half their kindness to me.”
“It’s not difficult to be kind to sweet Anne Page.”
She gave him a quick glance. “It’s nice to hear the old name again.”
“No name ever suited a woman better. So you can live with the inhabitants of Dymfield without boring yourself to extinction? But of course you can. I never saw you bored.”
“Boredom is a modern disease, isn’t it? And you know I am not a modern woman.”
“Thank God!” he exclaimed with fervour. “The little woman whose pretty head I’ve been puzzling all the evening, suffers from it terribly, though.”
“Boredom? You’re very quick, François. You always were. Poor little thing!” she added with a sigh.
“Why? Doesn’t her husband amuse her?”
She shook her head. “No. It’s one of those unnecessary tragedies of life. They don’t try to understand one another. The material for happiness is all there, and they miss it. He’s a dear fellow. Kind, and good; and a scholar too, as of course you discovered.”
“Yes. You have one person at least with whom you need not talk in words of one syllable.”
“Words of one syllable are often the sweetest.”
He laughed. “You remind me of the lady from whose lips whenever she opened them, a flower fell. Your floors ought to be strewn with roses and violets by this time. But come! I don’t want to discuss your neighbours. I want to talk about you. Do you know that in ten years I have only seen you three times? And you must have been through Paris very often. What have you to say for yourself?”
“Twice when I went to your studio youwere away. The last time, theconcièrgetold me you were with a lady.”
“Well?”
“Well I didn’t come up, of course.”
He laughed. “Anne! You are the same Anne. So demure—so discreet.”
“I thought you would have married by this time, François,” she said after a moment.
He shook his head. “No dear Anne, you didn’t. You know I am not the man to marry.”
She returned his glance. “You are right,” she answered quietly. “You have become such a celebrity François, that I ought to be afraid of you,” she added.
His face changed. “I have become a popular painter, you mean.”
“You are not satisfied?” She put the question softly.
He shrugged his shoulders. “One becomes what one is fit to become. I’m a lazy devil, Anne. It wasn’t in me to bear the heat and burden of the day without my hire. I have learnt to give the public what it wants, and to laugh in my sleeve at its stupid shouting. The result is that in every paper the world is assured that I have achieved an international reputation. And next week I shall stand at the head of a staircase, solemnly shaking bythe hand, innumerable stupid people who know nothing, and care less about art, but have come because it is one of the functions of the season, to stare at the President of the International Art Congress.Quelle farce!”
He laughed a little. “It seems far enough away from that summer twenty years ago, when we all sat in that garden,” he nodded towards the open window, “and talked of our dreams and our ambitions. Ah! we were going to revolutionize art, weren’t we? We were going to bring the world to our feet like the young painters inL’Oeuvre, do you remember? The young painters who used to walk about Paris, talking, for ever talking, mad with hope and enthusiasm. And now? Henri is writing forLa Presse ... Sacré tonnerre de Dieu, as Lantier and Sandoz used to remark so frequently. What stuff! And how it pays! (Henri has a flat, Rue Malesherbes—Empire right through.) Paul has abandoned music, and is making vast sums on the Bourse, and I am President of the International Art Congress.”
He paused.
“And René is dead,” said Anne.
There was a silence. The lamp-lit room with its colour and fragrance was very still. To both of them, their minds filled with the scenes of other days, it assumed for a momentan air of brilliant unreality, like a room seen in a dream. Outside, the trees whispered very softly.
“Whom the gods love——” began François.
He rose abruptly, and moved to the picture he had been examining when Anne entered.
“That’s the real stuff!” he exclaimed. “God! how good it is! How did you get this?” he asked.
“I bought it.”
He wheeled abruptly round. “Have you much of his work?”
“I bought all I could get.The BathersandThe Forestare in my room upstairs.”
“Then France is the poorer by three masterpieces.”
“France will get them back at my death.”
“You have arranged that?”
She nodded. “They belong to his country, of course.”
He came and sat beside her again. “I told you that the Luxembourg had bought my portrait of you?”
“Yes. Dear François the news gave me more pleasure than anything I have heard about you for a long time.”
“It was to be my masterpiece, if you remember. They’re quite right. I’ve neverdone anything to touch it since. It belongs to my youth.”
He saw that she was pale, and that her eyes looked sad.
“I’ve distressed you. I’m a brute!” he declared impulsively. “And we’re not allhommes ratés, thank Heaven! Some of the men of the old Rue de Fleurus days are not to be despised.”
“Thouret, Bussières, Giroux,” murmured Anne.
“Yes; they have big names now. But after all Anne, it’s you who have made an art oflife. You’re the only real success. You and René—who was wise enough to die,” he added.
“Talk to me about Paris,” Anne urged. “What is your new studio like? Very gorgeous, I suppose?”
“It’s the studio of a popular portrait-painter. Now you know all about it.”
“And the Duclos? And Georges Pasteurs?”
He began to talk gaily, while she questioned him, and they both laughed at reminiscences. There was no end to her eager inquiries.
“How you remember the people!” exclaimed François, presently.
“How can I forget?” she asked.
It was late when he rose to go.
“To-morrow, early I start for London, to prepare for the fuss of next week. I’m glad you won’t be there, Anne.”
His whimsical mocking smile met her as she raised her eyes.
“I should prefer you not to see your old friend playing the solemn fool.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Well! One can’t have everything, and I have five thousand a year. It’s enough to make one comfortable.”
“But not happy,” she said gently.
“That, till forty, depends on one’s temperament. Afterwards on one’s dinner. I’m very happy to-night. Your cook was chosen with your usual discretion.”
She laughed.
“You will be coming through Paris this winter?”
“Not to stay. Paris hurts me a little, old woman as I am. On my way back, in the spring perhaps.”
He kissed her hand. “Most certainly in the spring. It’sau revoir.”