FACE TO FACE
I fell from the skies on Barbizon about two o'clock of a September
afternoon. It is the dead hour of the day; all the workers have gone
painting, all the idlers strolling, in the forest or the plain; the
winding causewayed street is solitary, and the inn deserted. I was the
more pleased to find one of my old companions in the dining-room; his
town clothes marked him for a man in the act of departure; and indeed
his portmanteau lay beside him on the floor.
"Why, Stennis," I cried, "you're the last man I expected to find here."
"You won't find me here long," he replied. "'_King Pandion he is dead;
all his friends are lapped in lead._' For men of our antiquity, the poor
old shop is played out."
"'_I have had playmates, I have had companions_,'" I quoted in return.
We were both moved, I think, to meet again in this scene of our old
pleasure parties so unexpectedly, after so long an interval, and both
already so much altered.
"That is the sentiment," he replied. "'_All, all are gone, the old
familiar faces._' I have been here a week, and the only living creature
who seemed to recollect me was the Pharaon. Bar the Sirons, of course,
and the perennial Bodmer."
"Is there no survivor?" I inquired.
"Of our geological epoch? not one," he replied. "This is the city of
Petra in Edom."
"And what sort of Bedouins encamp among the ruins?" I asked.
"Youth, Dodd, youth; blooming, conscious youth," he returned. "Such a
gang, such reptiles! to think we were like that! I wonder Siron didn't
sweep us from his premises."
"Perhaps we weren't so bad," I suggested.
"Don't let me depress you," said he. "We were both Anglo-Saxons, anyway,
and the only redeeming feature to-day is another."
The thought of my quest, a moment driven out by this rencounter, revived
in my mind. "Who is he?" I cried. "Tell me about him."
"What, the Redeeming Feature?" said he. "Well, he's a very pleasing
creature, rather dim, and dull, and genteel, but really pleasing. He is
very British, though, the artless Briton! Perhaps you'll find him too
much so for the transatlantic nerves. Come to think of it, on the other
hand, you ought to get on famously, he is an admirer of your great
republic in one of its (excuse me) shoddiest features; he takes in and
sedulously reads a lot of American papers. I warned you he was artless."
"What papers are they?" cried I.
"San Francisco papers," said he. "He gets a bale of them about twice a
week, and studies them like the Bible. That's one of his weaknesses;
another is to be incalculably rich. He has taken Masson's old
studio--you remember?--at the corner of the road; he has furnished it
regardless of expense, and lives there surrounded with _vins fins_ and
works of art. When the youth of to-day goes up to the Caverne des
Brigands to make punch--they do all that we did, like some nauseous form
of ape (I never appreciated before what a creature of tradition mankind
is)--this Madden follows with a basket of champagne. I told him he was
wrong, and the punch tasted better; but he thought the boys liked the
style of the thing, and I suppose they do. He is a very good-natured
soul, and a very melancholy, and rather a helpless. O, and he has a
third weakness which I came near forgetting. He paints. He has never
been taught, and he's well on for thirty, and he paints."
"How?" I asked.
"Rather well, I think," was the reply. "That's the annoying part of it.
See for yourself. That panel is his."
I stepped toward the window. It was the old familiar room, with the
tables set like a Greek [Pi], and the side-board, and the aphasic piano,
and the panels on the wall. There were Romeo and Juliet, Antwerp from
the river, Enfleld's ships among the ice, and the huge huntsman winding
a huge horn; mingled with them a few new ones, the thin crop of a
succeeding generation, not better and not worse. It was to one of these
I was directed: a thing coarsely and wittily handled, mostly with the
palette-knife; the colour in some parts excellent, the canvas in others
loaded with mere clay. But it was the scene and not the art or want of
it that riveted my notice. The foreground was of sand and scrub and
wreckwood; in the middle distance the many-hued and smooth expanse of a
lagoon, enclosed by a wall of breakers; beyond, a blue strip of ocean.
The sky was cloudless, and I could hear the surf break. For the place
was Midway Island; the point of view the very spot at which I had landed
with the captain for the first time, and from which I had re-embarked
the day before we sailed. I had already been gazing for some seconds
before my attention was arrested by a blur on the sea-line, and,
stooping to look, I recognised the smoke of a steamer.
"Yes," said I, turning toward Stennis, "it has merit. What is it?"
"A fancy piece," he returned. "That's what pleased me. So few of the
fellows in our time had the imagination of a garden-snail."
"Madden, you say his name is?" I pursued.
"Madden," he repeated.
"Has he travelled much?" I inquired.
"I haven't an idea. He is one of the least autobiographical of men. He
sits, and smokes, and giggles, and sometimes he makes small jests; but
his contributions to the art of pleasing are generally confined to
looking like a gentleman and being one. No," added Stennis, "he'll never
suit you, Dodd; you like more head on your liquor. You'll find him as
dull as ditchwater."
"Has he big blonde side-whiskers like tusks?" I asked, mindful of the
photograph of Goddedaal.
"Certainly not; why should he?" was the reply.
"Does he write many letters?" I continued.
"God knows," said Stennis.--"What is wrong with you? I never saw you
taken this way before."
"The fact is, I think I know the man," said I. "I think I'm looking for
him. I rather think he is my long-lost brother."
"Not twins, anyway," returned Stennis.
And about the same time, a carriage driving up to the inn, he took his
departure.
I walked till dinner-time in the plain, keeping to the fields; for I
instinctively shunned observation, and was racked by many incongruous
and impatient feelings. Here was a man whose voice I had once heard,
whose doings had filled so many days of my life with interest and
distress, whom I had lain awake to dream of like a lover, and now his
hand was on the door; now we were to meet; now I was to learn at last
the mystery of the substituted crew. The sun went down over the plain of
the Angelus, and as the hour approached my courage lessened. I let the
laggard peasants pass me on the homeward way. The lamps were lit, the
soup was served, the company were all at table, and the room sounded
already with multitudinous talk before I entered. I took my place and
found I was opposite to Madden. Over six feet high and well set up, the
hair dark and streaked with silver, the eyes dark and kindly, the mouth
very good-natured, the teeth admirable; linen and hands exquisite;
English clothes, an English voice, an English bearing--the man stood out
conspicuous from the company. Yet he had made himself at home, and
seemed to enjoy a certain quiet popularity among the noisy boys of the
table d'hote. He had an odd silver giggle of a laugh that sounded
nervous even when he was really amused, and accorded ill with his big
stature and manly, melancholy face. This laugh fell in continually all
through dinner like the note of the triangle in a piece of modern French
music; and he had at times a kind of pleasantry, rather of manner than
of words, with which he started or maintained the merriment. He took his
share in these diversions, not so much like a man in high spirits, but
like one of an approved good-nature, habitually self-forgetful,
accustomed to please and to follow others. I have remarked in old
soldiers much the same smiling sadness and sociable self-effacement.
I feared to look at him, lest my glances should betray my deep
excitement, and chance served me so well that the soup was scarce
removed before we were naturally introduced. My first sip of Chateau
Siron, a vintage from which I had been long estranged, startled me into
speech.
"O, this'll never do!" I cried, in English.
"Dreadful stuff, isn't it?" said Madden, in the same language. "Do let
me ask you to share my bottle. They call it Chambertin, which it isn't;
but it's fairly palatable, and there's nothing in this house that a man
can drink at all."
I accepted; anything would do that paved the way to better knowledge.
"Your name is Madden, I think," said I. "My old friend Stennis told me
about you when I came."
"Yes, I am sorry he went; I feel such a Grandfather William, alone among
all these lads," he replied.
"My name is Dodd," I resumed.
"Yes," said he, "so Madame Siron told me."
"Dodd, of San Francisco," I continued. "Late of Pinkerton and Dodd."
"Montana Block, I think?" said he.
"The same," said I.
Neither of us looked at each other; but I could see his hand
deliberately making bread pills.
"That's a nice thing of yours," I pursued, "that panel. The foreground
is a little clayey, perhaps, but the lagoon is excellent."
"You ought to know," said he.
"Yes," returned I, "I'm rather a good judge of--that panel."
There was a considerable pause.
"You know a man by the name of Bellairs, don't you?" he resumed.
"Ah!" cried I, "you have heard from Dr. Urquart?"
"This very morning," he replied.
"Well, there is no hurry about Bellairs," said I. "It's rather a long
story, and rather a silly one. But I think we have a good deal to tell
each other, and perhaps we had better wait till we are more alone."
"I think so," said he. "Not that any of these fellows know English, but
we'll be more comfortable over at my place.--Your health, Dodd."
And we took wine together across the table.
Thus had this singular introduction passed unperceived in the midst of
more than thirty persons, art-students, ladies in dressing-gowns and
covered with rice powder, six foot of Siron whisking dishes over our
head, and his noisy sons clattering in and out with fresh relays.
"One question more," said I: "did you recognise my voice?"
"Your voice?" he repeated. "How should I? I had never heard it--we have
never met."
"And yet we have been in conversation before now," said I, "and I asked
you a question which you never answered, and which I have since had
many thousand better reasons for putting to myself."
He turned suddenly white. "Good God!" he cried, "are you the man in the
telephone?"
I nodded.
"Well, well!" said he. "It would take a good deal of magnanimity to
forgive you that. What nights I have passed! That little whisper has
whistled in my ear ever since, like the wind in a keyhole. Who could it
be? What could it mean? I suppose I have had more real, solid misery out
of that...." He paused, and looked troubled. "Though I had more to
bother me, or ought to have," he added, and slowly emptied his glass.
"It seems we were born to drive each other crazy with conundrums," said
I. "I have often thought my head would split."
Carthew burst into his foolish laugh. "And yet neither you nor I had the
worst of the puzzle," he cried. "There were others deeper in."
"And who were they?" I asked.
"The underwriters," said he.
"Why, to be sure!" cried I. "I never thought of that. What could they
make of it?"
"Nothing," replied Carthew. "It couldn't be explained. They were a crowd
of small dealers at Lloyd's who took it up in syndicate; one of them has
a carriage now; and people say he is a deuce of a deep fellow, and has
the makings of a great financier. Another furnished a small villa on the
profits. But they're all hopelessly muddled; and when they meet each
other they don't know where to look, like the Augurs."
Dinner was no sooner at an end than he carried me across the road to
Masson's old studio. It was strangely changed. On the walls were
tapestry, a few good etchings, and some amazing pictures--a Rousseau, a
Corot, a really superb old Crome, a Whistler, and a piece which my host
claimed (and I believe) to be a Titian. The room was furnished with
comfortable English smoking-room chairs, some American rockers, and an
elaborate business table; spirits and soda-water (with the mark of
Schweppe, no less) stood ready on a butler's tray, and in one corner,
behind a half-drawn curtain, I spied a camp-bed and a capacious tub.
Such a room in Barbizon astonished the beholder, like the glories of the
cave of Monte Cristo.
"Now," said he, "we are quiet. Sit down, if you don't mind, and tell me
your story all through."
I did as he asked, beginning with the day when Jim showed me the passage
in the _Daily Occidental_, and winding up with the stamp album and the
Chailly post-mark. It was a long business; and Carthew made it longer,
for he was insatiable of details; and it had struck midnight on the old
eight-day clock in the corner before I had made an end.
"And now," said he, "turn about: I must tell you my side, much as I hate
it. Mine is a beastly story. You'll wonder how I can sleep. I've told it
once before, Mr. Dodd."
"To Lady Ann?" I asked.
"As you suppose," he answered; "and, to say the truth, I had sworn never
to tell it again. Only, you seem somehow entitled to the thing; you have
paid dear enough, God knows; and God knows I hope you may like it, now
you've got it!"
With that he began his yarn. A new day had dawned, the cocks crew in the
village and the early woodmen were afoot, when he concluded.