IV

When, the next morning, she appeared equipped for their customary ramble,

her husband surprised her by announcing that he meant to stay at home.

“The fact is I’m rather surfeited,” he said, smiling. “I suppose my

appetite isn’t equal to such a plethora. I think I’ll write some letters

and join you somewhere later.”

She detected the wish to be alone and responded to it with her usual

readiness.

“I shall sink to my proper level and buy a bonnet, then,” she said. “I

haven’t had time to take the edge off that appetite.”

They agreed to meet at the Hotel Cluny at mid-day, and she set out alone

with a vague sense of relief. Neither she nor Keniston had made any direct

reference to Mrs. Davant’s visit; but its effect was implicit in their

eagerness to avoid each other.

Claudia accomplished some shopping in the spirit of perfunctoriness that

robs even new bonnets of their bloom; and this business despatched, she

turned aimlessly into the wide inviting brightness of the streets. Never

had she felt more isolated amid that ordered beauty which gives a social

quality to the very stones and mortar of Paris. All about her were

evidences of an artistic sensibility pervading every form of life like the

nervous structure of the huge frame--a sensibility so delicate, alert and

universal that it seemed to leave no room for obtuseness or error. In such

a medium the faculty of plastic expression must develop as unconsciously

as any organ in its normal surroundings; to be “artistic” must cease to be

an attitude and become a natural function. To Claudia the significance of

the whole vast revelation was centred in the light it shed on one tiny

spot of consciousness--the value of her husband’s work. There are moments

when to the groping soul the world’s accumulated experiences are but

stepping-stones across a private difficulty.

She stood hesitating on a street corner. It was barely eleven, and she had

an hour to spare before going to the Hotel Cluny. She seemed to be letting

her inclination float as it would on the cross-currents of suggestion

emanating from the brilliant complex scene before her; but suddenly, in

obedience to an impulse that she became aware of only in acting on it, she

called a cab and drove to the gallery where her husband’s pictures were

exhibited.

A magnificent official in gold braid sold her a ticket and pointed the way

up the empty crimson-carpeted stairs. His duplicate, on the upper landing,

held out a catalogue with an air of recognizing the futility of the offer;

and a moment later she found herself in the long noiseless impressive room

full of velvet-covered ottomans and exotic plants. It was clear that the

public ardor on which Mrs. Davant had expatiated had spent itself earlier

in the week; for Claudia had this luxurious apartment to herself. Something

about its air of rich privacy, its diffusion of that sympathetic quality in

other countries so conspicuously absent from the public show-room, seemed

to emphasize its present emptiness. It was as though the flowers, the

carpet, the lounges, surrounded their visitor’s solitary advance with

the mute assurance that they had done all they could toward making the

thing “go off,” and that if they had failed it was simply for lack of

co-operation. She stood still and looked about her. The pictures struck her

instantly as odd gaps in the general harmony; it was self-evident that they

had not co-operated. They had not been pushing, aggressive, discordant:

they had merely effaced themselves. She swept a startled eye from one

familiar painting to another. The canvases were all there--and the

frames--but the miracle, the mirage of life and meaning, had vanished

like some atmospheric illusion. What was it that had happened? And had

it happened to _her_ or to the pictures? She tried to rally her

frightened thoughts; to push or coax them into a semblance of resistance;

but argument was swept off its feet by the huge rush of a single

conviction--the conviction that the pictures were bad. There was no

standing up against that: she felt herself submerged.

The stealthy fear that had been following her all these days had her by the

throat now. The great vision of beauty through which she had been moving

as one enchanted was turned to a phantasmagoria of evil mocking shapes.

She hated the past; she hated its splendor, its power, its wicked magical

vitality.... She dropped into a seat and continued to stare at the wall

before her. Gradually, as she stared, there stole out to her from the

dimmed humbled canvases a reminder of what she had once seen in them, a

spectral appeal to her faith to call them back to life. What proof had she

that her present estimate of them was less subjective than the other? The

confused impressions of the last few days were hardly to be pleaded as a

valid theory of art. How, after all, did she know that the pictures were

bad? On what suddenly acquired technical standard had she thus decided

the case against them? It seemed as though it were a standard outside of

herself, as though some unheeded inner sense were gradually making her

aware of the presence, in that empty room, of a critical intelligence that

was giving out a subtle effluence of disapproval. The fancy was so vivid

that, to shake it off, she rose and began to move about again. In the

middle of the room stood a monumental divan surmounted by a _massif_

of palms and azaleas. As Claudia’s muffled wanderings carried her around

the angle of this seat, she saw that its farther side was occupied by the

figure of a man, who sat with his hands resting on his stick and his head

bowed upon them. She gave a little cry and her husband rose and faced her.

Instantly the live point of consciousness was shifted, and she became aware

that the quality of the pictures no longer mattered. It was what _he_

thought of them that counted: her life hung on that.

They looked at each other a moment in silence; such concussions are not apt

to flash into immediate speech. At length he said simply, “I didn’t know

you were coming here.”

She colored as though he had charged her with something underhand.

“I didn’t mean to,” she stammered; “but I was too early for our

appointment--“

Her word’s cast a revealing glare on the situation. Neither of them looked

at the pictures; but to Claudia those unobtruding presences seemed suddenly

to press upon them and force them apart.

Keniston glanced at his watch. “It’s twelve o’clock,” he said. “Shall we go

on?”

V

At the door he called a cab and put her in it; then, drawing out his watch

again, he said abruptly: “I believe I’ll let you go alone. I’ll join you at

the hotel in time for luncheon.” She wondered for a moment if he meant to

return to the gallery; but, looking back as she drove off, she saw him walk

rapidly away in the opposite direction.

The cabman had carried her half-way to the Hotel Cluny before she realized

where she was going, and cried out to him to turn home. There was an acute

irony in this mechanical prolongation of the quest of beauty. She had

had enough of it, too much of it; her one longing was to escape, to hide

herself away from its all-suffusing implacable light.

At the hotel, alone in her room, a few tears came to soften her seared

vision; but her mood was too tense to be eased by weeping. Her whole being

was centred in the longing to know what her husband thought. Their short

exchange of words had, after all, told her nothing. She had guessed a faint

resentment at her unexpected appearance; but that might merely imply a

dawning sense, on his part, of being furtively watched and criticised. She

had sometimes wondered if he was never conscious of her observation; there

were moments when it seemed to radiate from her in visible waves. Perhaps,

after all, he was aware of it, on his guard against it, as a lurking knife

behind the thick curtain of his complacency; and to-day he must have caught

the gleam of the blade.

Claudia had not reached the age when pity is the first chord to vibrate in

contact with any revelation of failure. Her one hope had been that Keniston

should be clear-eyed enough to face the truth. Whatever it turned out to

be, she wanted him to measure himself with it. But as his image rose before

her she felt a sudden half-maternal longing to thrust herself between him

and disaster. Her eagerness to see him tested by circumstances seemed now

like a cruel scientific curiosity. She saw in a flash of sympathy that he

would need her most if he fell beneath his fate.

He did not, after all, return for luncheon; and when she came up-stairs

from her solitary meal their _salon_ was still untenanted. She

permitted herself no sensational fears; for she could not, at the height of

apprehension, figure Keniston as yielding to any tragic impulse; but the

lengthening hours brought an uneasiness that was fuel to her pity. Suddenly

she heard the clock strike five. It was the hour at which they had promised

to meet Mrs. Davant at the gallery--the hour of the “ovation.” Claudia

rose and went to the window, straining for a glimpse of her husband in the

crowded street. Could it be that he had forgotten her, had gone to the

gallery without her? Or had something happened--that veiled “something”

which, for the last hour, had grimly hovered on the outskirts of her mind?

She heard a hand on the door and Keniston entered. As she turned to meet

him her whole being was swept forward on a great wave of pity: she was so

sure, now, that he must know.

But he confronted her with a glance of preoccupied brightness; her first

impression was that she had never seen him so vividly, so expressively

pleased. If he needed her, it was not to bind up his wounds.

He gave her a smile which was clearly the lingering reflection of some

inner light. “I didn’t mean to be so late,” he said, tossing aside his hat

and the little red volume that served as a clue to his explorations. “I

turned in to the Louvre for a minute after I left you this morning, and the

place fairly swallowed me up--I couldn’t get away from it. I’ve been there

ever since.” He threw himself into a chair and glanced about for his pipe.

“It takes time,” he continued musingly, “to get at them, to make out what

they’re saying--the big fellows, I mean. They’re not a communicative lot.

At first I couldn’t make much out of their lingo--it was too different from

mine! But gradually, by picking up a hint here and there, and piecing them

together, I’ve begun to understand; and to-day, by Jove, I got one or two

of the old chaps by the throat and fairly turned them inside out--made them

deliver up their last drop.” He lifted a brilliant eye to her. “Lord, it

was tremendous!” he declared.

He had found his pipe and was musingly filling it. Claudia waited in

silence.

“At first,” he began again, “I was afraid their language was too hard for

me--that I should never quite know what they were driving at; they seemed

to cold-shoulder me, to be bent on shutting me out. But I was bound I

wouldn’t be beaten, and now, to-day”--he paused a moment to strike a

match--“when I went to look at those things of mine it all came over me

in a flash. By Jove! it was as if I’d made them all into a big bonfire to

light me on my road!”

His wife was trembling with a kind of sacred terror. She had been afraid

to pray for light for him, and here he was joyfully casting his whole past

upon the pyre!

“Is there nothing left?” she faltered.

“Nothing left? There’s everything!” he exulted. “Why, here I am, not much

over forty, and I’ve found out already--already!” He stood up and began to

move excitedly about the room. “My God! Suppose I’d never known! Suppose

I’d gone on painting things like that forever! Why, I feel like those

chaps at revivalist meetings when they get up and say they’re saved! Won’t

somebody please start a hymn?”

Claudia, with a tremulous joy, was letting herself go on the strong

current of his emotion; but it had not yet carried her beyond her depth,

and suddenly she felt hard ground underfoot.

“Mrs. Davant--“ she exclaimed.

He stared, as though suddenly recalled from a long distance. “Mrs. Davant?”

“We were to have met her--this afternoon--now--“

“At the gallery? Oh, that’s all right. I put a stop to that; I went to see

her after I left you; I explained it all to her.”

“All?”

“I told her I was going to begin all over again.”

Claudia’s heart gave a forward bound and then sank back hopelessly.

“But the panels--?”

“That’s all right too. I told her about the panels,” he reassured her.

“You told her--?”

“That I can’t paint them now. She doesn’t understand, of course; but she’s

the best little woman and she trusts me.”

She could have wept for joy at his exquisite obtuseness. “But that isn’t

all,” she wailed. “It doesn’t matter how much you’ve explained to her. It

doesn’t do away with the fact that we’re living on those panels!”

“Living on them?”

“On the money that she paid you to paint them. Isn’t that what brought us

here? And--if you mean to do as you say--to begin all over again--how in

the world are we ever to pay her back?”

Her husband turned on her an inspired eye. “There’s only one way that I

know of,” he imperturbably declared, “and that’s to stay out here till I

learn how to paint them.”

“COPY”