Part 13 (2/2)

Anxious to pay for his pain, as the human kind always is, he tossed his last franc to that vendor of emotions in the twilit street.

He was drunk at last with the wine that his own misery distilled. He abandoned himself to the admission that he was in love: he abandoned himself to his dream of the Lady of the Rose.

Seraphin, in a wonderful new suit of clothes, found him thus the next morning--it was a Friday--and found him accordingly resentful of intrusion. Cartaret was sitting before an empty easel, his hands clasped in his lap, his eyes looking vacantly through the posts of the easel.

”Good-day,” said Seraphin.

Cartaret said ”Good-day” as if it were a form of insult.

Seraphin's hands tugged at his two wisps of whisker.

”You are not well, _hein_?”

”I was never better in my life,” snapped Cartaret, turning upon his friend a face that was peaked and drawn.

The Frenchman came timidly nearer.

”My friend,” he said, ”I have completed my _magnum opus_. It has not sold quite so well as I hoped, not of course one thousandth of its value. That is this Spanish cow of a world. But I have three hundred francs. If you need----”

”Go away,” said Cartaret, looking at his empty easel. ”Can't you see I'm trying to begin work?”

Seraphin himself had suffered. His dignity was not offended: he kept it for only his creditors and other foes. He guessed that Cartaret was at last penniless, and he guessed rightly.

”Come, my friend,” he began; ”none shall know. Will you not be so kind as to let me----”

Cartaret got up and, for all his weakness, gripped the Frenchman's hand until Dieudonne nearly screamed.

”I'm a beast, Seraphin!” said Cartaret. ”I'm a beast to treat a friendly offer this way. Forgive me. It's just that I feel a bit rocky this morning. I drank too much champagne last night. I do thank you, Seraphin. You're a good fellow, the best of the lot, and a sight better than I am. But I'm not hard up; really I'm not. I'm poor, but I'm not a sou poorer than I was this time last year.”

It was a magnificent lie. Seraphin could only shrug, pretend to believe it, and go away.

Cartaret scarcely heeded the departure. He had relapsed into his day-dream. He took from against the wall the two portraits that he had painted of the Lady of the Rose and hung them, now here, now there, trying them in various lights. There were at least ten more sketches of her by this time, and these, too, he hung in first one light and then another. He studied them and tried to be critical, and forgot to be.

His thoughts of her never took the shape of conscious words--he loved her too much to attempt to praise her--but, as he looked at his endeavors to portray her, his mind was busy with his memories of all that loveliness--and pa.s.sed from memories to day-dreams. He saw her as something that might fade before his touch. He saw her as a Princess, incognito, learning his plight, buying his pictures secretly, and, when she came to her throne, letting him serve her and wors.h.i.+p from afar. And then he saw her even as a Galatea possible of miraculous awakening. Why not? Her eyes were the clear eyes of a woman that has never yet loved, but they were also, he felt, the eyes of one of those rare women who, when they love once, love forever. Cartaret dared, in his thoughts, to lift the heavy plaits of her blue-black hair and, with trembling fingers, again to touch that hand at the recollection of touching which his own hand tingled.

Why not, indeed? Already a stranger thing had happened in his meeting her. Until that year he had not guessed at her existence; oceans divided them; the barriers of alien race and alien speech were raised high between them, and all of these things had been in vain. The existence was revealed, the ocean was crossed, the bar of sundering speech was down. He was here, close beside her, as if every event of his life had been intended to bring him. Through blind ways and up ascents misunderstood, unattracted by the many and lonely among the crowd, he had, somehow, always been making his way toward--Her.

Thus Cartaret dreamed while Seraphin made a hurried journey to the rue St. Andre des Arts and the shop of M. Fourget.

”But no, but no, but no!” Fourget's bushy brows met in a frown. ”It is out of the question. Something has happened to the boy. He can no longer paint.”

Oh, well, at least monsieur could go to the boy's rooms and see what he had there.

”No. Am I then a silly philanthropist?”

Seraphin tried to produce his false dignity. What he brought out was something genuine.

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