XVIII
Françoisdrew up an armchair close to the blaze, and lighted his pipe.
His thoughts at first dwelt upon the man with whom he had just parted—a loyal straight, good fellow if ever there was one, he decided. The verdict was accompanied by a greater sense of self-dissatisfaction, a sensation nearer to shame and regret that he had for years experienced.
It was an uncomfortable attitude of mind, and with characteristic love of ease, he hastened to obliterate it, by turning his attention elsewhere.
His conversation with the doctor had conjured up so many mental pictures of the past, that he scarcely knew which of them to examine first.
The salon in Anne Page’s flat, rose before him. With the retentive memory of a painter, François recalled minutely every detail of the charming room.
He saw the deep-red curtains drawn acrossthe three windows, the rose-coloured carpet, the lights shining like stars between the flowers. He saw Anne standing near the table at which coffee was served, receiving her guests with her lovely smile, and eager words of welcome.
He remembered to the smallest detail of lace and trimming, a dress she often wore in the evening, a gown of purple silk which suited so admirably, her hair and the soft whiteness of her neck.
Giroux and Bussières were talking to her, and he watched with amusement their excited faces, and vehement gestures.
It was the evening after René had shown his new pictures.
There had been a crowd of his friends in the studio all the afternoon; a crowd of eager interested men and women, standing before the canvases now so well known, so greatly prized.
Bussières and Giroux he knew were talking of the latest picture, his masterpiece—the famous picture of the lady in the green dress, leaning back upon the sofa.
François looked round the room already filled with people.
He saw the white head of Matignon the critic, towering above the rest. He saw the dark alert face of Thouret bent towardsMadame Valory, the painter of pastels delicate and fragile as herself. He saw Courtois the sculptor, in animated discussion with Bellet the new poet of audacities in rhythm. He heard René’s sudden amused laugh, and turned to look at him, as he moved from one group to the other, a little flushed and excited, his fair hair ruffled, his slim yet athletic figure suggesting the Englishman of sport and open-air pastimes, rather than the brilliant French painter he had even then become.
Conspicuous among the crowd was the lady whose portrait he had recently painted.
Blanche Aubriot was the wife of an elderlyroué, who regarded her very pronounced flirtations with an indifference equal to that which she on her side extended towards his infidelities.
She was a beautiful young woman of two or three and twenty, childless, soulless, and much admired.
To-night she wore the green dress of the picture, and held her court with her usual piquante vivacity.
François regarding the scene with critical and observant eyes, noticed how frequently her glance wandered in René’s direction, and with amusement, her oft-repeated efforts to attract his attention.
His own eyes turned again to Anne, where she stood surrounded by friends, laughing and talking.
He watched her to-night with peculiar admiration.
Curiously enough Dampierre had never painted her.
Once soon after they had settled in their apartment, François had spoken of it as a foregone conclusion.
“She’s just your type—the essentially feminine type of woman.”
Greatly to his surprise, René shook his head.
“C’est impossible,” he said conclusively.
François wondered, but the conversation turned immediately upon other matters, and it was only just before he took leave, when Anne was out of the room, that his friend took a book from one of the shelves, and turning over the leaves, handed it to him at an open page.
“That’s why I can’t paint her,” he said.
The poem he touched with his forefinger was Browning’s song beginning—
“Nay, but you who do not love her,Is she not pure gold, my mistress?”
“Nay, but you who do not love her,Is she not pure gold, my mistress?”
“Nay, but you who do not love her,Is she not pure gold, my mistress?”
“Nay, but you who do not love her,
Is she not pure gold, my mistress?”
François read it aloud, and came to the last few lines—
“Then why not witness, calmly gazing,If earth holds aught—speak truth—above her?Above this tress, and this, I touchBut cannot praise, I love so much!”
“Then why not witness, calmly gazing,If earth holds aught—speak truth—above her?Above this tress, and this, I touchBut cannot praise, I love so much!”
“Then why not witness, calmly gazing,If earth holds aught—speak truth—above her?Above this tress, and this, I touchBut cannot praise, I love so much!”
“Then why not witness, calmly gazing,
If earth holds aught—speak truth—above her?
Above this tress, and this, I touch
But cannot praise, I love so much!”
“Forpraise, readpaint,” said René, taking the book and closing it. “It’s the same thing. You’re the man to paint her. Ask her to sit for you.”
François had always delayed to avail himself of the suggestion.
To-night he determined to delay no longer. Crossing the room, he joined the little group round Anne, and presently drew her away.
“I haven’t had a word with you this evening,” he said. “And now you must give me one, or even two. About that portrait. I think the time has come. When will you sit for me?”
Even at the moment, he was struck by the curious expression which crossed her face.
When afterwards he tried to analyze it, he could only think of the face of a woman who expecting a signal of some sort, had heard, and accepted it.
“When would you like me to come?” she asked.
She was standing at the end of the room by the fire, and as she raised her eyes, François saw in them the look which did not escape him when he came to paint them.
They discussed the matter for a few moments. Various engagements on both sides postponed the first sitting for a fortnight, but a day was finally arranged.
“How long will it take?” asked Anne.
He made a gesture of ignorance. “I don’t know. A month perhaps, with luck. But this is going to be my masterpiece, Anne. I shall succeed, or perish in the attempt. Have you got that flowered gown you used to wear in the garden at Dymfield? I suppose not. Yes?Très bien!Bring it, I want to try an effect.”
He was interrupted by René, who came up at the moment, and laid his hand lightly on Anne’s arm.
“I want you to go and talk to Matignon, dear,” he said in a low voice. “He’s always bad tempered if you don’t pay him enough attention. Go and make love to the old boy.”
A vague uneasiness passed from François’s mind at the sound of his friend’s voice, always gentle when he spoke to Anne. It was even gentler than usual now, and he did not fail to notice the caress of his hand on her sleeve, nor the look of happy understanding between them, as she moved away, smiling, to obey him.
“I’m arranging for her to come and pose. I’m going to begin the picture at once,” he said.
“Bon!” returned René, his face lighting up. “You’ve taken your time about it.”
“One hesitates to begin one’s masterpiece,” François retorted. “You who do nothing else, except finish them, ought to have compassion on the weaker brethren.”
René made a laughing gesture of menace.
“Allons, mes amis ... mais calmez-vous donc!” exclaimed Blanche Aubriot at his elbow.
François looked down at her white shoulders, and experienced a momentary feeling of repugnance which passed into self-ridicule, for glancing at her indolent brown eyes soft as velvet, at her full red lips, at her glossy hair, he acknowledged her beauty.
“Come and talk to me, Monsieur René,” she urged with the insistence of a spoilt child. “You’re a great man, I know, but the lion condescends to the mouse sometimes, doesn’t he?”
François followed them with his eyes as they moved away together.
“If she had saidcat, I should have found no difficulty in reversing the parts,” was his inward reflection.
The fire had died down, but as he sat before the smouldering ashes, François wasvery far in space and time from the club bedroom in which he was dreaming.
He was passing through successive stages of satisfaction and despair, hope and baffling discouragement, while he painted Anne’s portrait. After the first fortnight, she came every day, and every day she was more silent.
He remembered this afterwards. At the time, engrossed heart and soul in his picture, he did not notice her quietude. He was only half consciously perplexed by a subtle difference in her expression which he found hard to reconcile with his previous impression of her—a difference which was at once his inspiration, and his despair.
“If only I can get that, I shall paint a great picture!” he exclaimed one day involuntarily, breaking a long silence.
“What?” asked Anne.
He started, forgetting that he had spoken aloud.
“I don’t know.”
She smiled a little. “Then I’m afraid you won’t get it.”
“But Ihave!”
He almost shouted the words, one afternoon a week afterwards, when she had stood patiently almost as long as the daylight lasted.
She looked at him with inquiring eyes, as he threw down his brush.
“I won’t touch it again! It’s there! It’s all right.Mon Dieu!Anne, do you hear me? I’ve painted a great picture.”
He came towards the stand, both hands outstretched, and helped her down.
“Come and look before the light goes,” he urged. “Why Anne——” his triumphant tone changed abruptly to consternation. “You’re not ill, dear? You’re trembling so. What a brute I am! I’ve kept you posing too long. I forgot. Come and sit in this chair. Here’s a cushion. I’ll get you some water.”
She shook her head. “I’m all right,” she assured him, trying to smile. “I want to see the picture.”
He turned the easel towards her, and she looked at it a long time in silence.
“Do you like it?” asked François at last anxiously.
“It’s too good for me. It’s idealized,” she said. “But it’s the best thing you’ve ever done, François. I congratulate you. You’re right. It’s your masterpiece.”
He felt a warm glow of pleasure. Anne as he had often acknowledged was an admirable critic, instinctively a connoisseur, and her lifeamongst painters had trained and sharpened her natural perception. Secretly François stood in greater awe of Anne’s verdict on his work, than on that of many of his fellow-craftsmen.
“You have suggested all the Dymfield garden in those flowers,” she said after another silence.
“In you,” he returned quickly, wondering at the tone in her voice.
“I’m going to give you this, Anne,” he went on, speaking gaily to avert an uneasy fear. “I hope you appreciate the compliment. I lay my masterpiece at your feet, and you can pick it up and hang it in your salon, between the two long windows. That’s the place for it.”
She turned slowly from the picture, and her eyes met his, while she shook her head.
“No,” said she in a low voice. “I can’t take it, François.”
“Why not?”
She leant back in her chair, and a smile so sad that involuntarily he turned away, came creeping round her lips.
“Because I’m a woman,” she replied.
He made no reply. The meaning of her words did not escape him, but in a moment she translated them.
“You’ve painted me at the end of mybeaux jours,” she said. “Before they are quite over—but at the end. I’m very grateful. But I couldn’t live with that picture, it would be too——”
She did not finish the sentence.
“Besides,—there’s another reason,” she added after a further pause.
“What’s this?” asked François, suddenly taking a book from the table. With a sort of blind haste, he strove to hinder her next words by snatching at any pretext to arrest them.
“It’s a book you lent me, nearly three years ago, I’m ashamed to say. When I first came to Paris. I’ve always forgotten to return it. But to-day,” she paused as though her mind were wandering away from the present. “To-day I remembered it.”
François took it up.
“Mademoiselle de Maupin.I forgot I’d ever lent it to you.”
“You remember the story?”
He nodded. “Of course.”
“It’s very different from my story, isn’t it? But the way she found, I had already discovered for myself before I read the book. It’s the right way. In my case, the only way.”
François had just lighted a cigarette. He threw it away with a sudden jerk, and looked at her without speaking.
“I’m going to-morrow.”
Her voice was steady, but quite colourless.
“René,” stammered her friend, “René is going to-morrow?”
“Yes. Into the country for a few days, for the background of his new picture.”
François drew up a chair, and sat down close to her.
“Anne,” he began gently, “There hasn’t been anything? Any...?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. But it’s coming. This has been in my mind for weeks. It was there though I scarcely knew it, before you wanted me to sit to you. When you asked me, I knew certainly.”
The spring twilight lingered in the studio, and he could still see her face, white against the cushion he had put into the chair.
As he listened to her quiet low voice, all she was saying seemed to him like the illusion of a dream.
Anneto be talking of leaving René! It was an absurd hallucination on his part—a trick of his imagination.
“But René?” he asked nevertheless. “He doesn’t know? Why, I saw him early this morning, and he spoke of you——”
For the first time, her voice trembled, andhe watched her slim hands travelling aimlessly over the frills on her dress.
“He doesn’t know,” she said. “That’s why I’m telling you.” There was a long silence, and he saw her fighting for composure.
“François,” she began at last in a whisper. “He won’t understand at first. He’ll think me cruel, and wicked and inexplicable.” She caught her breath, but went on bravely. “You are far sighted too. You know as well as I do, the woman who will—who will——
“He doesn’t know it yet himself. He still loves me. Now, to-day. And that’s why I’m going. I couldn’t bear.... He must be quite free. It was only on those terms I agreed with myself to—to——” She was shivering now from head to foot, and the words came in gasps like the words of a dying woman. “It has lasted for three years, and I thought it might only be three months. I have had quite ... quite a long life, François.”
He turned away so that he should not see her smile.
“I’m not going to be coward enough to spoil it—for both of us,” she went on after minutes which seemed like hours. François had been mechanically counting the strokes ofofthe clock which ticked maddeningly in the gloom. He had never noticed it before, andwas seized with a sudden mad desire to smash it into fragments.
“But I want you,—will you, François?—in a little while, when he will listen, to say what you can for me?”
He got up, and began to walk about the room, stumbling against the chairs in the way.
At last he turned abruptly, and stood before her.
“Must you, Anne?” His voice was an entreaty. It shook almost as much as her own.
She got up slowly, and gave him both hands.
“Good-bye, François.”
He held them close, without speaking.
“I shall write to you,” she said, “—later on. I’m going to be a great traveller. You will hear of me from—from all sorts of wonderful places. And I shall see you again, my dear friend. But I don’t think I shall ever see——” she stopped, and he felt her hands shaking in his.
“Anne!” he implored. “Don’t go.”
“Don’t say anything more,” she implored. “I have to get through the evening. It’s our—last. So you see it must be quite—It must be quite a happy——”
She stretched out a trembling hand for hercloak, and he wrapped it round her, fastening it for her as though she were a child. Then he took her downstairs, and called a closedfiacre.
In the darkness of the courtyard, by the door, he put his arm round her shoulders, and taking both her hands in one of his, he kissed them.
They were wet with the tears she had tried to brush aside.