Part 12 (1/2)
”The turpentine!” All suspicion of amus.e.m.e.nt fled her eyes: she was contrite. ”I comprehend. How careless of Chitta not at once to have returned it to you.”
Turpentine! What a nectar for romance! Cartaret made a face that could not have been worse had he swallowed some of the liquid. He tried to protest, but she did not heed him. Instead, she left him standing there while she went to hunt for that accursed bottle. In five minutes she had found it, returned it, thanked him and sent him back to his own room, no further advanced in her acquaintance than when he knocked at her door.
She had laughed at him. He returned fiercely to his work, convinced that she had been laughing at him all the while. Very well: what did he care? He would forget her.
He concentrated all his thoughts upon the idea of forgetting the Lady of the Rose. In order to a.s.sist his purpose, he set a new canvas on his easel and fell to work to make a portrait of her as she should be and was not. The contrast would help him, and the plan was cheap, because it needed no model. By the next afternoon he had completed the portrait of a beautiful woman with a white rose at her throat. It was quite his best piece of work, and an excellent likeness of the girl in the room opposite.
He saw that it was a likeness and thought of painting it out, but it would be a pity to destroy his best work, so he merely put it aside.
He decided to paint a purely imaginative figure. He squeezed out some paints, almost at haphazard, and began painting in that mood. After forty-eight hours of this sort of thing, he had produced another picture of the same woman in another pose.
In more ways than one, Cartaret's position was growing desperate. His money was almost gone. He must paint something that Fourget, or some equally kind-hearted dealer, would buy, and these two portraits he would not offer for sale.
Telling himself that it was only to end his obsession, he tried twice again to see the Lady of the Rose, who was now going out daily to some master's cla.s.s, and each time he gained nothing by his attempt. First, she would not answer his knock, though he could hear her moving about and knew that she must have heard him crossing the hall from his own room and be aware of her caller's ident.i.ty. On the next occasion, he waited for her at the corner of the Boul' Miche' when he knew that she would be returning from the cla.s.s, and was greeted by nothing save a formal bow. So he had to force himself to pot-boilers by sheer determination, and finally turned out something that then seemed poor enough for Fourget to like.
Houdon came in and found him putting on the finis.h.i.+ng touches. The plump musician, frightened by his impudence, had stopped below at his own room on the night of the dinner when the revelers at last came to seek their host. Now it appeared that he was anxious to apologize. He advanced with the dignity befitting a monarch kindly disposed, and his gesturing hands beat the score of the kettle-drums for the march of the priests in _Ada_.
”My very dear Cartarette!” cried Houdon. ”Ah, but it is good again to see you! I so regretted myself not to ascend with our friends to call upon you the evening of our little collation.” He sought to dismiss the subject with a run on the invisible piano and the words: ”But I was slightly indisposed: without doubt our good comrades informed you that I was slightly indisposed. I am very sensitive, and these communions of high thought are too much for my delicate nerves.”
His good comrades had told Cartaret that Houdon was very drunk; but Cartaret decided that to continue his quarrel would be an insult to its cause. After all, he reflected, this was Houdon's conception of an apology. Cartaret looked at the composer, who was a walking symbol of good feeding and iron nerves, and replied:
”Don't bother to mention it.”
Houdon seized both of Cartaret's hands and pressed them fondly.
”My friend,” said Houdon magnanimously, ”we shall permit ourselves to say no more about it. What sings your sublime poet, Henri Wadsworth Longchap? 'I shall allow the decomposed past to bury her dead.'--Or do I mistake: was it Whitman, _hein_?”
He gestured his way to Cartaret's easel, much as if the air were water and he were swimming there. He praised extravagantly the picture that Cartaret now knew to be bad. Finally he began to potter about the room with a pretense of admiring the place and looking at its other canvases, but all the while conveying the feeling that he was apprising the financial status of its occupant. Cartaret saw him drawing nearer and nearer to the two canvases that, their faces toward the wall, bore the likeness of the Lady of the Rose.
”I am just going out,” said Cartaret. He hurried to his visitor and took the fellow's arm. ”I must take that picture on the easel to the rue St. Andre des Arts. Will you come along?”
Houdon seemed suspicious of this sudden friendliness. He cast a curious glance at the canvases he had been about to examine, but his choice was obviously Hobson's.
”Gladly,” he flourished. ”To my _cher ami_ Fourget, is it? But I know him well. Perhaps my influence may a.s.sist you.”
”Perhaps,” said Cartaret. He doubted it, but he hoped that something would a.s.sist him.
He held the picture, still wet of course, exposed for all the world of the Quarter to see, hurried Houdon past the landing and could have sworn that the composer's eyes lingered at the sacred door.
”But it is an infamy,” said Houdon, when they had walked as far down the Boul' Miche' as the Musee Cluny--”it is an infamy to sell at once such a superb work to such a little cow of a dealer. Why then?”
”Because I must,” said Cartaret.
Houdon laughed and wagged his head.
”No, no,” said he; ”you deceive others: not Houdon. I know well the disguised prince. Come”--he looked up and down the Boulevard St.
Germain before he ventured to cross it--”trust your friend Houdon, my dear Cartarette.”
”I am quite honest with you.”