Ward is a portrait-painter, and in the matter of vogue there seem to be
no pinnacles left for him to surmount. I think he has painted most of
the very rich women of fashion who have come to Paris of late years,
and he has become so prosperous, has such a polite celebrity, and his
opinions upon art are so conclusively quoted, that the friendship of
some of us who started with him has been dangerously strained.
He lives a well-ordered life; he has always led that kind of life. Even
in his student days when I first knew him, I do not remember an
occasion upon which the principal of a New England high-school would
have criticised his conduct. And yet I never heard anyone call him a
prig; and, so far as I know, no one was ever so stupid as to think him
one. He was a quiet, good-looking, well-dressed boy, and he matured
into a somewhat reserved, well-poised man, of impressive distinction in
appearance and manner. He has always been well tended and cared for by
women; in his student days his mother lived with him; his sister, Miss
Elizabeth, looks after him now. She came with him when he returned to
Paris after his disappointment in the unfortunate Harman affair, and
she took charge of all his business--as well as his
social--arrangements (she has been accused of a theory that the two
things may be happily combined), making him lease a house in an
expensively modish quarter near the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne. Miss
Elizabeth is an instinctively fashionable woman, practical withal, and
to her mind success should be not only respectable but "smart." She
does not speak of the "right bank" and the "left bank" of the Seine;
she calls them the "right bank" and the "wrong bank." And yet, though
she removed George (her word is "rescued") from many of his old
associations with Montparnasse, she warmly encouraged my friendship
with him--yea, in spite of my living so deep in the wrong bank that the
first time he brought her to my studio, she declared she hadn't seen
anything so like Bring-the-child-to-the-old-hag's-cellar-at-midnight
since her childhood. She is a handsome woman, large, and of a fine,
high colour; her manner is gaily dictatorial, and she and I got along
very well together.
Probably she appreciated my going to some pains with the clothes I wore
when I went to their house. My visits there were infrequent, not
because I had any fear of wearing out a welcome, but on account of Miss
Elizabeth's "day," when I could see nothing of George for the crowd of
lionising women and time-wasters about him. Her "day" was a dread of
mine; I could seldom remember which day it was, and when I did she had
a way of shifting it so that I was fatally sure to run into it--to my
misery, for, beginning with those primordial indignities suffered in
youth, when I was scrubbed with a handkerchief outside the parlour door
as a preliminary to polite usages, my childhood's, manhood's prayer has
been: From all such days, Good Lord, deliver me!
It was George's habit to come much oftener to see me. He always really
liked the sort of society his sister had brought about him; but now and
then there were intervals when it wore on him a little, I think.
Sometimes he came for me in his automobile and we would make a mild
excursion to breakfast in the country; and that is what happened one
morning about three weeks after the day when we had sought pure air in
the Luxembourg gardens.
We drove out through the Bois and by Suresnes, striking into a
roundabout road to Versailles beyond St. Cloud. It was June, a dustless
and balmy noon, the air thinly gilded by a faint haze, and I know few
things pleasanter than that road on a fair day of the early summer and
no sweeter way to course it than in an open car; though I must not be
giving myself out for a "motorist"--I have not even the right cap. I am
usually nervous in big machines, too; but Ward has never caught the
speed mania and holds a strange power over his chauffeur; so we rolled
along peacefully, not madly, and smoked (like the car) in hasteless
content.
"After all," said George, with a placid wave of the hand, "I sometimes
wish that the landscape had called me. You outdoor men have all the
health and pleasure of living in the open, and as for the work--oh! you
fellows think you work, but you don't know what it means."
"No?" I said, and smiled as I always meanly do when George "talks art."
He was silent for a few moments and then said irritably,
"Well, at least you can't deny that the academic crowd can DRAW!"
Never having denied it, though he had challenged me in the same way
perhaps a thousand times, I refused to deny it now; whereupon he
returned to his theme: "Landscape is about as simple as a stage fight;
two up, two down, cross and repeat. Take that ahead of us. Could
anything be simpler to paint?"
He indicated the white road running before us between open fields to a
curve, where it descended to pass beneath an old stone culvert. Beyond,
stood a thick grove with a clear sky flickering among the branches. An
old peasant woman was pushing a heavy cart round the curve, a scarlet
handkerchief knotted about her head.
"You think it's easy?" I asked.
"Easy! Two hours ought to do it as well as it could be done--at least,
the way you fellows do it!" He clenched his fingers as if upon the
handle of a house-painter's brush. "Slap, dash--there's your road." He
paddled the air with the imaginary brush as though painting the side of
a barn. "Swish, swash--there go your fields and your stone bridge. Fit!
Speck! And there's your old woman, her red handkerchief, and what your
dealer will probably call 'the human interest,' all complete. Squirt
the edges of your foliage in with a blow-pipe. Throw a cup of tea over
the whole, and there's your haze. Call it 'The Golden Road,' or 'The
Bath of Sunlight,' or 'Quiet Noon.' Then you'll probably get a
criticism beginning, 'Few indeed have more intangibly detained upon
canvas so poetic a quality of sentiment as this sterling landscapist,
who in Number 136 has most ethereally expressed the profound silence of
evening on an English moor. The solemn hush, the brooding quiet, the
homeward ploughman--'"
He was interrupted by an outrageous uproar, the grisly scream of a
siren and the cannonade of a powerful exhaust, as a great white
touring-car swung round us from behind at a speed that sickened me to
see, and, snorting thunder, passed us "as if we had been standing
still."
It hurtled like a comet down the curve and we were instantly choking in
its swirling tail of dust.
"Seventy miles an hour!" gasped George, swabbing at his eyes. "Those
are the fellows that get into the pa--Oh, Lord! THERE they go!"
Swinging out to pass us and then sweeping in upon the reverse curve to
clear the narrow arch of the culvert were too much for the white car;
and through the dust we saw it rock dangerously. In the middle of the
road, ten feet from the culvert, the old woman struggled frantically to
get her cart out of the way. The howl of the siren frightened her
perhaps, for she lost her head and went to the wrong side. Then the
shriek of the machine drowned the human scream as the automobile struck.
The shock of contact was muffled. But the mass of machinery hoisted
itself in the air as if it had a life of its own and had been stung
into sudden madness. It was horrible to see, and so grotesque that a
long-forgotten memory of my boyhood leaped instantaneously into my
mind, a recollection of the evolutions performed by a Newfoundland dog
that rooted under a board walk and found a hive of wild bees.
The great machine left the road for the fields on the right, reared,
fell, leaped against the stone side of the culvert, apparently trying
to climb it, stood straight on end, whirled backward in a
half-somersault, crashed over on its side, flashed with flame and
explosion, and lay hidden under a cloud of dust and smoke.
Ward's driver slammed down his accelerator, sent us spinning round the
curve, and the next moment, throwing on his brakes, halted sharply at
the culvert.
The fabric of the road was so torn and distorted one might have thought
a steam dredge had begun work there, but the fragments of wreckage were
oddly isolated and inconspicuous. The peasant's cart, tossed into a
clump of weeds, rested on its side, the spokes of a rimless wheel
slowly revolving on the hub uppermost. Some tools were strewn in a
semi-circular trail in the dust; a pair of smashed goggles crunched
beneath my foot as I sprang out of Ward's car, and a big brass lamp had
fallen in the middle of the road, crumpled like waste paper. Beside it
lay a gold rouge box.
The old woman had somehow saved herself--or perhaps her saint had
helped her--for she was sitting in the grass by the roadside, wailing
hysterically and quite unhurt. The body of a man lay in a heap beneath
the stone archway, and from his clothes I guessed that he had been the
driver of the white car. I say "had been" because there were reasons
for needing no second glance to comprehend that the man was dead.
Nevertheless, I knelt beside him and placed my hand upon his breast to
see if his heart still beat. Afterward I concluded that I did this
because I had seen it done upon the stage, or had read of it in
stories; and even at the time I realised that it was a silly thing for
me to be doing.
Ward, meanwhile, proved more practical. He was dragging a woman out of
the suffocating smoke and dust that shrouded the wreck, and after a
moment I went to help him carry her into the fresh air, where George
put his coat under her head. Her hat had been forced forward over her
face and held there by the twisting of a system of veils she wore; and
we had some difficulty in unravelling this; but she was very much
alive, as a series of muffled imprecations testified, leading us to
conclude that her sufferings were more profoundly of rage than of pain.
Finally she pushed our hands angrily aside and completed the
untanglement herself, revealing the scratched and smeared face of
Mariana, the dancer.
"Cornichon! Chameau! Fond du bain!" she gasped, tears of anger starting
from her eyes. She tried to rise before we could help her, but dropped
back with a scream.
"Oh, the pain!" she cried. "That imbecile! If he has let me break my
leg! A pretty dancer I should be! I hope he is killed."
One of the singularities of motoring on the main-travelled roads near
Paris is the prevalence of cars containing physicians and surgeons.
Whether it be testimony to the opportunism, to the sporting
proclivities, or to the prosperity of gentlemen of those professions, I
do not know, but it is a fact that I have never heard of an accident
(and in the season there is an accident every day) on one of these
roads when a doctor in an automobile was not almost immediately a
chance arrival, and fortunately our case offered no exception to this
rule. Another automobile had already come up and the occupants were
hastily alighting. Ward shouted to the foremost to go for a doctor.
"I am a doctor," the man answered, advancing and kneeling quickly by
the dancer. "And you--you may be of help yonder."
We turned toward the ruined car where Ward's driver was shouting for us.
"What is it?" called Ward as we ran toward him.
"Monsieur," he replied, "there is some one under the tonneau here!"
The smoke had cleared a little, though a rivulet of burning gasoline
ran from the wreck to a pool of flame it was feeding in the road. The
front cushions and woodwork had caught fire and a couple of labourers,
panting with the run across the fields, were vainly belabouring the
flames with brushwood. From beneath the overturned tonneau projected
the lower part of a man's leg, clad in a brown puttee and a russet
shoe. Ward's driver had brought his tools; had jacked up the car as
high as possible; but was still unable to release the imprisoned body.
"I have seized that foot and pulled with all my strength," he said,
"and I cannot make him move one centimetre. It is necessary that as
many people as possible lay hold of the car on the side away from the
fire and all lift together. Yes," he added, "and very soon!"
Some carters had come from the road and one of them lay full length on
the ground peering beneath the wreck. "It is the head of monsieur,"
explained this one; "it is the head of monsieur which is fastened under
there."
"Eh, but you are wiser than Clemenceau!" said the chauffeur. "Get up,
my ancient, and you there, with the brushwood, let the fire go for a
moment and help, when I say the word. And you, monsieur," he turned to
Ward, "if you please, will you pull with me upon the ankle here at the
right moment?"
The carters, the labourers, the men from the other automobile, and I
laid hold of the car together.
"Now, then, messieurs, LIFT!"
Stifled with the gasoline smoke, we obeyed. One or two hands were
scorched and our eyes smarted blindingly, but we gave a mighty heave,
and felt the car rising.
"Well done!" cried the chauffeur. "Well done! But a little more! The
smallest fraction--HA! It is finished, messieurs!"
We staggered back, coughing and wiping our eyes. For a minute or two I
could not see at all, and was busy with a handkerchief.
Ward laid his hand on my shoulder.
"Do you know who it is?" he asked.
"Yes, of course," I answered.
When I could see again, I found that I was looking almost straight down
into the upturned face of Larrabee Harman, and I cannot better express
what this man had come to be, and what the degradation of his life had
written upon him, than by saying that the dreadful thing I looked upon
now was no more horrible a sight than the face I had seen, fresh from
the valet and smiling in ugly pride at the starers, as he passed the
terrace of Larue on the day before the Grand Prix.
We helped to carry him to the doctor's car, and to lift the dancer into
Ward's, and to get both of them out again at the hospital at
Versailles, where they were taken. Then, with no need to ask each other
if we should abandon our plan to breakfast in the country, we turned
toward Paris, and rolled along almost to the barriers in silence.
"Did it seem to you," said George finally, "that a man so frightfully
injured could have any chance of getting well?"
"No," I answered. "I thought he was dying as we carried him into the
hospital."
"So did I. The top of his head seemed all crushed in--Whew!" He broke
off, shivering, and wiped his brow. After a pause he added
thoughtfully, "It will be a great thing for Louise."
Louise was the name of his second cousin, the girl who had done battle
with all her family and then run away from them to be Larrabee Harman's
wife. Remembering the stir that her application for divorce had made, I
did not understand how Harman's death could benefit her, unless George
had some reason to believe that he had made a will in her favour.
However, the remark had been made more to himself than to me and I did
not respond.
The morning papers flared once more with the name of Larrabee Harman,
and we read that there was "no hope of his surviving." Ironic phrase!
There was not a soul on earth that day who could have hoped for his
recovery, or who--for his sake--cared two straws whether he lived or
died. And the dancer had been right; one of her legs was badly broken:
she would never dance again.
Evening papers reported that Harman was "lingering." He was lingering
the next day. He was lingering the next week, and the end of a month
saw him still "lingering." Then I went down to Capri, where--for he had
been after all the merest episode to me--I was pleased to forget all
about him.