NARRATING HOW CARTARET BEGAN HIS QUEST OF THE ROSE
The power of herbs can other harms remove,
And find a cure for every ill, but love.
--Gray: _Elegy I_.
For a great while Cartaret remained as a man stunned. It was only very
slowly that there came to him the full realization of his loss, and
then it came with all the agony with which a return to life is said to
come to one narrowly saved from death by drowning.
Blindly his brain bashed itself against the mysterious wall of
Vitoria's flight. Why had she gone? Where had she gone? Why had she
left no word? A thousand times that day these unanswerable questions
whirled through his dizzy consciousness. Had he offended her? He had
explained his one offense, and she had given no sign of having taken
any other hurt. Was she indeed a revolutionist from some strange
country, summoned away, without a moment's warning, by the inner
council of her party? Revolutionist conspirators did not go to
art-classes and do not walk only under the chaperonage of an ancient
duenna. Was she, then, that claimant to power that he had once
imagined her, now gone to seize her rights? Things of that sort did
not, Cartaret knew, occur in these prosy days. Then why had she gone,
and where, and why had she left no word for him? Again these dreary
questions began their circle.
Less than twenty-four hours ago, he had thought that money would
resolve all his troubles. Money! Fervently he wished himself poor
again--poor again, as yesterday, with Her across the landing in the
Room Opposite.
Somehow, he did not forget his friends and the dinner he had promised
them. He went to the Deux Colombes and ordered the dinner.
"Say to them, Pasbeaucoup," he gave instructions, "that I am
indisposed and shall not be able to dine with them. Say that we shall
all dine together some other night--very soon I hope. Say that I am
sorry."
He was bitter now against all the world. "What will they care, as long
as they have the dinner?" he reflected.
Pasbeaucoup cared. He expressed great concern for monsieur's health.
"That," thought Cartaret, "is because I'm rich. A month or two ago and
they wouldn't trust me: they'd have let me starve."
He went back to his desolate room and to his dreary questioning. He
was there, with his head in his hands, when Seraphin found him.
Seraphin's suit was still new, and it was evident that he had dressed
carefully his twin wisps of whisker in honor of Cartaret's
celebration. The Frenchman's face was grave.
"Why aren't you dining?" sneered Cartaret.
Seraphin passed by the sneer.
"They told me that you were ill," he said, simply.
"And you came to see if it was true?"
"I came to see if I could be of any assistance."
("Ah," ran Cartaret's unjust thoughts, "it's very evident you're rich
now, Charlie!")
"Nobody else came with you," he said.
Seraphin hesitated. He twirled his soft hat in his hands.
"They thought--all but Houdon, who still persists that you have been
rich always--they thought that, now that you were rich, you might
prefer other society."
"_You_ didn't think it?"
"I did not."
It was said so frankly that even Cartaret's present mood could not
resist its sincerity. Charlie frowned and put both his hands on
Seraphin's shoulders.
"Dieudonne," he said, "I'm in trouble."
"I feared it."
"Not money-trouble."
"I feared that it was not money-trouble."
"You understood?"
"I guessed. You have been so happy of late, while you were so poor,
that to absent yourself from this gayety when you were rich----" An
expressive gesture finished the sentence. "Besides," added Seraphin,
"one cannot be happy long, and when you told me that you had money, I
feared that you would lose something else."
Cartaret wrung the hand of his friend.
"Go back," he said. "Go back and tell them that it's not pride. Tell
them it's illness. I _am_ ill. It was good of you to come here, but
there's nothing you can do just now. To-morrow, or next day, perhaps I
can talk to you about it. Perhaps. But not now. I couldn't talk to any
one now. Good-night."
He sat down again--sat silent for many hours after he had heard
Seraphin's footsteps die away down the stairs. He heard the
hurdy-gurdy and thought that he could not bear it. He heard the other
lodgers return. He heard the strange sounds--the creaking boards, the
complaining stairway, the whispering of curtains--which are the
night-sounds of every house. In the ear of his mind, he heard the
voices of his distant guests:
"What woman's lips compare to this:
This sturdy seidel's frothy kiss?----"
Because he grew afraid of the ghosts of doubt that haunt the darkness,
he lighted his lamp; but for a long time the ghosts remained.
This was the very room in which he had told her that he loved her;
this desert place was once the garden in which he had said that little
of what was so much. She had stood by that table (so shabby now!) and
made it a wonderful thing. She had touched that curtain; her fingers,
at parting, had held that rattling handle of the shattered door. He
half thought that the door might open and reveal her, even now. Memory
joined hands with love to make her poignantly present. Her lightest
word, her least action: his mind retained them and rehearsed them
every one. The music of her laughter, the melody of her grace, wove
spells in the lamplit room; but they ceased as she had ceased; they
left the song unfinished, they stopped in the middle of a bar.
He wondered whether it must always remain unfinished, this allegro of
love in what, without it, would be the dull biographic symphony of
his life; whether he would grow to be an old man with no memories but
broken memories to warm his heart; and whether even this memory would
become as the mere memory of a beautiful portrait seen in youth, a
Ghirlandaio's or a Guido Reni's work, some other man's vision, a part
of the whole world's rich heritage, a portion of the eternal riddle of
existence.
"So short a time ago," crooned the ghosts--"and doubtless she has
already forgotten you. You have but touched her hands: how could you
hope that you had touched her heart? She will be happy, though she
knows that you are unhappy; glad, though you are desolate. You gave
her your dreams to keep, your hopes, your faith in love and womankind:
and this is what she did with them! They are withered like that rose."
He had put the yellow thing against his heart, where once he had put
it when it was fresh and pure. He drew it out now and looked at it.
What did it mean--that message of the rose? That, as she had once
treasured the flower, so now she would treasure in its place her
memory of him?
"It means," chanted the ghosts, "that her friendship is as dead as
this dry flower!"
Did it? He would make one trial more.
Vivid as was her face in his mind, he brought to the lamp his pictures
of her. She had liked those pictures; in spite of herself, she had
shown him that she liked them----
(The ghosts were crooning:
"Though you had the brush of Diego Velasquez, she would not heed you
now!")
Had he painted her--he had tried to--as she should have been? Or had
he painted her as she really was?
He searched the pictures. Her eyes seemed to look at him with a long
farewell in their blue-black depths, the parted lips to tremble on a
sob. A light was born in the canvas--the reflected light of his own
high faith revived. Whatever separated them, it was by no will of
hers. No, there was no ghost in all the fields of night that he would
listen to again: in that pictured face there was as much of pride as
there was of beauty, but there was nothing of either cruelty or
deceit. Yes, he had only touched her hand, but certainly hand had
never yet touched hand as his touched hers. He was sure of it and sure
of her. A short acquaintance--it had been long enough to prove her. A
few broken words in the twilight--they were volumes. The merest breath
of feeling--it would last them to their graves.
He would move earth and Heaven to find Vitoria: the wine of that
resolution rang in his ears and fired his heart. The sun, coming up
over the Pantheon in a glory of red and gold, sent into Cartaret's
room a shining messenger of royal encouragement before whose sword the
ghosts forever fled. The lover was almost gay again: here was new
service for her; here, for him, was work, the best surcease of sorrow.
He felt like an athlete trained to the minute and crouching for the
starter's pistol-shot. He believed in Vitoria! He believed in her, and
so he could not doubt his own ability to discover her in the face of
all hardships and to win her against all odds; he believed in her and
in himself, and so he could not doubt God.
He understood something of the difficulties that presented themselves.
He knew scarcely anything of the woman whom he sought; his only clews
were her name and the name of the rose; he must first find to what
country those names belonged, and to find that country he might have
to seek through all the world. He could not ask help of the police; he
would not summon to his assistance those vile rats who call themselves
private-detectives. It was a task for himself alone; it was a task
that must occupy his every working-hour; but it was a task that he
would accomplish.
A second cable-message interrupted him at his ablutions. It was from
his uncle, and it read:
"Cora wires me received no reply from you. Do you accept
trust's offer stated in her cable? Advise you say yes. Better
come home and attend to business."
This brought Cartaret to the realization that he was in a paradoxical
position: he was a penniless millionaire. He went to Fourget's and
borrowed some money. Thence he went to the cable-office in the Avenue
de l'Opera. There had been, he now recalled, an offer--a really
dazzling offer--mentioned in his sister's message; but more practical
matters had driven it from his mind. He therefore sent his uncle this:
"I accept trust's offer. Advise Cora to agree. Don't worry:
New York's not the only place for business. There's business
in Paris--lots of it."
His uncle had been very annoying: Charlie should have been at work at
the Bibliotheque Nationale a full half-hour ago. He had resolved to
begin with the floral clew.
He went there immediately and asked what books they had about flowers;
they told him that they had many thousand. Cartaret narrowed his
field; he said what he wanted was a book on roses, and he was told
that he might choose any of hundreds that were at hand. In despair, he
ordered brought to him any one that began with an "A"; he would work
through the alphabet.
By closing-time he had reached "Ac." He hurried out into the fresh
breeze that blew down through the public square and the narrow rue
Colbert, and so cut across to the cable-office.
He wanted to send a message mentioning a little matter he had
forgotten that morning. As it happened, the operator had just received
a message for Charlie. It was again from his uncle, and said that the
sale would be consummated early next day. There was about it a brevity
more severe than even cables require: the elder Cartaret patently
disapproved of the communication that his nephew had sent him. Still,
the sale seemed to be assured, and that was the main thing, so Charlie
put the word "Five" in place of the word "One" in the message he was
drafting, and sent it off:
"Cable me five thousand."
He interrupted his library-researches the next day to make a sporadic
raid upon florist-shops along the boulevards, but found no florist
that had ever heard of the Azure Rose.
The answer to his latest cable-message came the next day at noon. He
had resumed his search at the Bibliotheque and instructed the
cable-clerk to hold all messages until he should call for them. He
called for this at lunch-time:
"Sale completed, thanks to power-of-attorney you left me when
sailing. Do you mean dollars?"
Cartaret groaned at this procrastination.
"And my uncle brags of his American hustle!" he cried.
He filed his reply:
"Of course I meant dollars. What did you suppose I meant?
Francs? Pounds sterling? I mean dollars. Hurry!"
"Be sure to put in the punctuation marks," he admonished the pretty
clerk.
He dashed back to the library. During the next hundred and twenty
hours, he divided his time between botanical researches and one side
of the following cable-conversation:
"Come home."
"Can't."
"Why?"
"Busy."
"How?"
"Botanizing. But if you don't send me immediately that little bit of
all that belongs to me, I'll knock off work to find out the reason
why."
The money arrived just as his credit in short-credit Paris was
everywhere close to the breaking-point, and just as he gave up hope of
ever finding what he wanted at the great library, where he had driven
every sub and deputy librarian to the brink of insanity. Money,
however, brings resourcefulness: Cartaret then remembered the Jardin
des Plantes, where he had once been with Vitoria.
No official knew anything about the Azure Rose, but an old gardener
(Cartaret was trying them all) gave him hope. He was a little Gascon,
that gardener, with white hair and blue eyes, and his long labor had
bent him forward, as if the earth in which he worked had one day laid
hold of his shoulders and never since let go.
"I had a brother once who was a _faineant_ and so a great traveler.
He spoke of such a rose," the Gascon nodded; "but I cannot remember
what it was that he told me."
"Here are five francs to help you remember," said Cartaret.
The old man took the money and thanked him.
"But I cannot remember what my brother told me," he said, "except that
the rose was found nowhere but in the Basque provinces of Spain." ...
A half-hour later Cartaret had bought his traveling-kit, which
included a forty-five caliber automatic revolver. Forty minutes later
he had paid Refrogne ten months' rent in advance, together with a
twenty-five franc tip, and directed that his room be held against his
return. An hour later he was sheepishly handing Seraphin a bulky
package, evidently containing certain canvases, and saying to him:
"These are something I wouldn't leave about and couldn't bring myself
to store, and you're--well, I think you'll understand."
At twelve o'clock that night, from an opened window in his compartment
of a sleeping-car on a southward-speeding _train de luxe_, Cartaret
was looking up at the yellow stars somewhere about Tours.
"Good-night, Vitoria!" he was whispering. "Good-night, and--God keep
you!"
He was a very practical man.