THE PAINTER
Luc heard that the King and M. Amelot had returned to Paris early
the same morning that he had been in converse with the young painter.
There was now nothing to keep him in Versailles: he had not seen the
Countess Carola, and yesterday M. de Biron, who was now rejoining his
regiment, could tell him nothing of her. She was probably still in
Paris.
Versailles, at least, had no attractions for Luc; he was more than
ever anxious to see M. Amelot, as a second crisis had arisen between
France, Austria, and the advancing power of Prussia. Now Fleury was
dead, greater things were hoped from the diplomats of Paris, and Luc
believed that he might find this a favourable moment for obtaining
employment in politics.
A few days before he came to Versailles he had heard from his father;
he re-read the letter now, and it revived the sense of the dead weight
of the chains of home. His father was waiting eagerly for news of his
success; his mother wanted him back, and sent anxious inquiries after
his health; Joseph and all his friends would have been so happy if he
would have returned after his hardships at the war and settled down in
Aix----
Why could he not do it? He loved them all; he often felt ill and
lonely. Why not go back and forget these vain visions that M. de
Biron so laughed at? Why not marry Mademoiselle de Séguy and take
up the life his father and his brother were leading? His sense of
responsibility towards his parents was heavy: they had done everything
for him, he nothing for them; he grudged even the money his stay in
Paris was costing. Joseph had never been able to afford to come to
Court.
That they should be indulgent, even making sacrifices for him, was the
last intolerable chain; how could he proceed on his way fettered by
obligation, burdened by affection and sentiment? He wept a little over
this love that was so rare and precious, and yet so useless!
He almost wished that he was penniless, friendless--_Master_ of
himself, with no one to care if he lived or died; a state that was
supposed to be the epitome of human misery. But the man so situated
was at least free.
Other thoughts instantly checked and thrust this aside, but it had
been formed.
After all, what all these conflicting emotions amounted to was that
he must in some way justify himself; must obey the passionate impulse
within him, and obtain a scope for his energies.
He left his chamber, and walked near the great park where he had met
the beautiful young noble in the peach-coloured light of the pavilion
last night. One sentence of his kept recurring to Luc; it was the only
moment when he had shown any glimpse of feeling, and it was when Luc
had said, “Those who brought you up have something to answer for,” and
the young man had answered, in a moved tone, “God judge them--I think
they have!”
Luc felt sorry for him, but contemptuous too; he wondered if he
should see him again entering the house in the Rue du Bac, or if
the adventure of the coffin had caused him to abandon his place of
rendezvous. Somehow Luc did not think he would risk the narrow street
again after dark. How extraordinary cowardice was----
The Marquis could not remotely conceive the fear of death as an active
factor in anyone’s life.
As he sat over his dinner in an inn near the populous market square,
he thought of the young painter whose quest for glory had brought
him to despair, even to madness. Glory--what was it that so many, in
this frivolous age, pursued with panting breath and staring eyes? The
great sceptic Voltaire, even as the great believer Bossuet, had been
swept on to achievement by the desire of it; the blue-eyed noble who
might have had it by lifting his finger sat inert and melancholy; the
obscure young artist was livid with anguish because he had missed it.
Where was it, what was it? A kind of frenzy, a wordless exaltation;
perhaps the only sign there is of the godlike in man; the gateway
to the infinite; the talisman that would turn the world to gold and
heaven into a reality; the pursuit of the San Graal; the journey to
the land of Canaan; the search for El Dorado, for the Islands of the
Blest--under all these symbols had the quest of glory been disguised.
Luc trembled in his heart, for who had yet found the Fortunate Isles?
By the time he returned to his lodgings, his servant had packed his
portmanteau and had the horses ready for their return to Paris. It was
considerably past midday, and later than he had intended; he thought
of the artist, and asked Jean if he had seen him go out.
The man answered “No,” and Luc crossed the landing and knocked on the
door opposite.
There was no answer, and after waiting a little, Luc, who was already
in his riding-cloak, turned the handle and entered the sombre,
old-fashioned bedchamber where he had found himself in that morning’s
dawn.
He then saw that his servant had been mistaken, for the painter had
certainly gone out; the room was empty.
The Marquis was leaving again when he noticed on the dark table
between the windows where the brass lamp and hour-glass stood a folded
piece of paper. He approached, and saw it was addressed to himself. It
contained only a few lines, and was unsigned.
“MONSIEUR,--I am unfortunately obliged to leave you on a
journey I have long contemplated. As you were courteous
enough to wish to see some of my work, you will find my
first and last masterpiece on the bed--I call it ‘The End
of the Quest of Glory.’ It has the merit of truth, at least.”
Luc glanced round the room: not a thing had been disarranged--some
clothes even still lay across a chair; a portmanteau stood, loosely
unstrapped, at the foot of the bed. Luc felt an absolute conviction
that no one had left this room since he had himself, several hours
before--save one way----
“Suicide,” he said, and folded the letter across. Then, with a
callousness that surprised himself, he went to the bed and pulled
aside the heavy blue brocade curtains, which were drawn closely
together as they had been before.
He saw what he had expected to see: the young painter, prone and
still, with fixed open eyes and a sneer on his stiff lips.
Luc stood gazing; his serene brows contracted with an expression of
pity, anger, and regret. He stooped and laid his hand on the dulled
hair of the young suicide, damp with the death-agony.
The coverlet was slightly disturbed by the last struggle of departing
life, the dead man’s limbs slightly contracted, as if he had died in
the convulsion of a shudder. His left hand and arm lay across his
breast, showing that his final action had been to draw the curtains
about him.
Luc thought of the bitter sarcasm of the letter, and the hand he laid
on the painter’s forehead quivered. There was no mark of any violence;
the young painter had evidently made an end of himself with poison.
Luc moved away from the bed; he checked an almost mechanical impulse
to lay the melancholy crucifix hanging above the bed on the dead man’s
breast, and, moving to the canvases piled against the wall, turned the
first two or three round. They were marked and defaced by a knife,
which had completely disfigured the original paintings.
Luc looked no more. A sword lay across a chair, and near it an open
snuff-box filled with gold pieces. The Marquis felt a blankness of all
sensation save weariness and aversion. He left the room and called the
servant of the house, and soon the chamber of the dead was filled with
people, with question, curiosity, wonder.
Nothing, it appeared, was known of the dead man. He had come a few
days before by the coach from Paris; he had given his name as Henri
de Bèze; the day before he had paid for his week’s lodging. He had
received no letters while in Versailles, nor, as far as could be
known, had he sent any. No one had visited him, but he had been much
from the house.
Nor did a search among his effects provide any further information.
If he had had any papers, he had destroyed them. He had died with his
story, which might have been common or tragical, wrapped at least in
the dignity of silence.
There was enough money in the snuff-box to pay for his decent burial.
A manifest suicide, and one who had died without absolution or any of
the offices of the Church, his grave would be in the lonely strip of
land outside consecrated ground where play-actors and vagabonds and
Jews were laid.
Luc returned to his own room, his head sick with fatigue, and seated
himself by the window. In the commotion, his departure for Paris had
been delayed; he wondered if he should return to-day. A slackness had
fallen on his thoughts.
While he was answering the respectful questions of the master of the
house concerning his brief acquaintance with the dead man, he had been
recalling his short stay in the painter’s chamber during the dawn of
this same day. Evidently the painter had drunk the poison before he
had asked for company, and Luc had been talking to a dying man who was
measuring his life by the grains of sand in an hour-glass; for Luc
recalled how he had taken up the hour-glass, and seeing that the sands
were nearly run through, had abruptly ended the interview.
Luc found himself picturing what had happened in the room after he had
left it. He had heard the door bolted--but afterwards the dying man
had altered that with some change of thought, probably when the idea
of his ironical letter occurred to him.
“He had a bitter humour,” thought Luc, with a sweet amaze. As for
himself, the melancholy, the disgust, and the pity roused in him
by the hopeless cynicism of the young painter’s sudden end had not
extinguished or even for a second damped the fires of his own ardour;
they only burnt the clearer and brighter in contrast with the gloom he
had just witnessed in two other human beings--the luxurious, soulless
youth and worn-out painter. He felt like a man walking on an upland in
the full light of the sun, while below him others struggled through
the mists and morasses, shadows and sloughs of a dismal valley, and
never lifted their eyes to the sun. He might look down on these
blinded people, he might pity, though he could not comfort them; but
they could not long trouble him nor put a shade across his bright path.
As he sat at the window watching the clean empty street, a very
handsome equipage swept round the corner, swinging on its leathers.
With a faint flush Luc recognized the liveries and arms of Carola
Koklinska, and when the coach drew up before the door his heart gave
a little lift into a region that knew not melancholy.
He saw one of her servants descending, and on a sudden impulse went
down himself. The house was still full of the tragedy, the modest
establishment disorganized; the doctor and the magistrate’s clerk
were busy in the chamber of the dead man. Luc met the lackey in the
doorway, and a sudden confusion seized him that perhaps the Countess
was not in the coach, or perhaps had not come to see him.
While he hesitated, the servant inquired if he was M. de Vauvenargues.
Luc responded, and added, “If your mistress is in the coach, I will
come and speak to her.”
Then, before the man could answer, he caught sight of the Countess at
the coach window, holding back the stamped leather blind.
Luc, bare-headed and with the sun shining in his loosely curled fine
hair, came to the coach step.
“I found out from M. de Biron where you were lodging,” said Carola,
“and called on my way back to Paris to leave a message for you,
Monsieur.”
She spoke in her usual cold, rather precise accents, and her delicate
face was rather sad and tired in expression.
“You were not at the fête last night,” she added. “I wished to present
you to M. Amelot.”
“Madame,” he answered, “I was there, but certainly did not see you.”
The Countess leant a little way from the window of the coach; she had
a gold and scarlet figured scarf round her dark, unpowdered hair.
“What has happened?” she asked. “You look--strange.”
Luc remembered that he had not been to bed that night, and was,
despite his inner exaltation, feeling giddy and weary. Of late he
could ill stand any fatigue; he recalled also the suicide that for
the moment he had completely forgotten.
“A man died this morning,” he answered gravely, “in the room opposite
mine--died by his own hand, Madame.”
“You must be so used to death,” she answered. She looked up at the
house, and straight, as by a kind of instinct, at the drawn heavy
curtains of the painter’s room. “Who was he?” she asked.
“Why should I sadden you?” he answered. “And who the man was, no one
knows.”
“Oh,” she answered quickly, “it does not sadden me at all.” She smiled
wistfully. “But you are very pale, Monsieur le Marquis.”
Luc looked into her clear, ardent brown eyes, that were fixed on him
with an eager and intense expression. A wave of faintness came over
him; he felt impelled to catch at the long embroidered window strap
that hung over the side of the coach door to prevent himself from
falling. He could make no answer.
“This is my message,” said the Countess, rather hurriedly and in a
lowered voice: “I want you to come to my garden to-morrow about four
o’clock. Knock at the door in the Rue Deauville--you remember that it
is the street that runs at the end of the garden. You will know the
door, for the knocker is shaped like a woman’s head.”
Luc caught his breath; he was still feeling dizzy. His look was a
question as to what she meant.
“Do you care to come?” she said. “It is a question of politics.”
“I am very honoured,” he answered formally.
“You can be of use to me,” remarked the Countess. “I shall be grateful
if you will come--but perhaps you are not leaving Versailles so soon?”
“Yes,” he replied, “I was leaving immediately. Of course I will come,
Madame.”
She sighed and leant back in her coach.
“Very well, Monsieur, the Rue Deauville.”
Luc bowed, and the sumptuous coach rolled noisily down the narrow
cobbled street.