The Belovéd Vagabond

I selected the rose which would best throw up the pink sea-shell of her face, and she put it gaily in her corsage. She pirouetted up to the dais and with a whisk of skirts seated herself on the throne.

"If any of my French friends and relations knew I were doing this they would die of shock. It's lovely to defy conventions for a while. One will soon have to yield to them."

"Conventions are essential for the smooth conduct of social affairs," remarked Paragot.

She looked at him quizzically. "My dear Gaston, if you go on cultivating such unexceptional sentiments, they'll turn you into a churchwarden as soon as you set foot in Melford."

I had seen, for the first time in my life, a churchwarden in Somerset, a local cheesemonger of appalling correctitude. If Paragot ever came to resemble him, he was lost. There would be an entity who had passed through Paragot's experiences; but there would be no more Paragot.

"You must save him, Madame," I cried, "from being made a churchwarden."

Paragot lit a cigarette. I watched the first few puffs, awaiting a repartee. None came. I felt a qualm of apprehension. Was he already becoming de-Paragot-ised? I did not realise then what it means to a man to cast aside the slough of many years' decay, and take his stand clean before the world. He shivers, is liable to catch cold, like the tramp whose protective hide of filth is summarily removed in the workhouse bath. Nor did my dear lady realise this. How could she, bright freed creature, hungering after the long withheld joyousness of existence, and overwilling to delude herself into the belief that every shadow was a ray of sunlight? She had no notion of the man's grotesque struggles to conceal the shivering sensitiveness of his roughly cleaned soul.

She twitted him merrily.

"You can argue like a tornado with Monsieur Cazalet, but you think I must be talked to like this country's jeune fille à marier. Isn't he perverse, Mr. Asticot? I think I am quite as entertaining as Caliban."

Well you see, when he talked to Cazalet, he slipped on the slough again and was comfortable.

He waited for a moment or two as if he were composing a speech, and then rose and drawing near her, said in a low voice, thinking that as I was absorbed in my painting I could not hear: —

"This new happiness is too overwhelming for fantastic talk."

"Oh no it isn't," she declared in a whisper. "We have put back time thirteen years – we wipe out of our minds all that has happened in them, and start just where we left off. You were fantastic enough then, in all conscience."

"I had the world at my feet and I kicked it about like a football." He hunched up his shoulders in a helpless gesture. "Somehow the football burst and became a helpless piece of leather."

"I haven't the remotest idea what you mean," laughed Joanna.

"Madame," said I, "if you turn your head about like that I shall get you all out of drawing."

"Oh dear," said Joanna, resuming her pose.

These were enchanted days, I think, for all of us. Even Cazalet felt the influence and put on a pair of gaudily striped socks over which his sandals would not fit. Joanna was very tender to him, as to everybody, but she appeared to draw her skirts around her on passing him by, as if he were a slug, which she did not love but could not harm for the world. Paragot, having for some absurd reason forsworn his porcelain pipe, smoked the cigarette of semi-contentment and fulfilled his happiness by the contemplation of Joanna and myself. I verily believe he was more at his ease when I was with them. As for the portrait, he viewed its progress with enthusiastic interest. Now and then he would forget himself and discourse expansively on its merits, to the delight of Joanna. He regarded it as his own production. Had he not bought this poor little devil and all his works for half-a-crown? Ergo, the work taking shape on the canvas was his, Paragot's. What could be more logical? And it was he who had given me my first lessons. No mother showing off a precocious brat to her gossips could have displayed more overweening pride. It was pathetic, and I loved him for it, and so did Joanna.

The time came however – all too soon – when Madame de Verneuil could live in her Land of Cockaigne no longer. Convention claimed her. Her cousin, Major Walters, was coming from England to aid her in final arrangements with the lawyers, and he was to carry her off in a day or two to Melford. At the end of the last sitting she looked round the dismal place – it had discoloured, uneven, bulging whitewashed walls, an unutterably dirty loose plank floor, and a skylight patched with maps of hideous worlds on Mercator's projection, and was furnished with packing cases and grime and the sacking which was Cazalet's bed – and sighed wistfully, as if she had been an unoffending Eve thrust out of Eden.

"I have been so happy here," she said to me. "I wonder whether I shall ever be so happy again! Do you think I shall?"

I noticed her give a swift, sidelong glance – almost imperceptible – at Paragot, who had sauntered down the studio to look at one of Cazalet's pictures.

"The first time you saw me," she added, as I found nothing to say, "you announced that you were learning philosophy. Haven't you learned enough yet to answer me?"

"Madame," I replied, driven into a corner, "happiness is such an awfully funny thing. You find it when you least expect it, and when you expect it you often don't find it."

"Is that supposed to be comforting or depressing, Mr. Asticot?"

"I think we had better ask my master, Madame," I said. "He can tell you better than I."

But she shook her head and did not ask Paragot.

"My son," said Paragot that evening by his window in the Rue des Saladiers, trying to disintegrate some fresh air from the fetid odours that rose from the narrow street below, "you have won Madame de Verneuil's heart. You are a lucky little Asticot. And I am proud of you because I made you. You are a proof to her that I haven't spent all my life in absorbing absinthe and omitting to decorate Europe with palaces. Instead of bricks and mortar I have worked in soul-stuff and my masterpiece is an artist, – and a great artist, by the Lord God!" he cried with sudden access of passion, "if you will keep 'the sorrowful great gift' pure and undefiled as a good woman does her chastity. You must help me in my work, my son. Let me be able to point to you as the one man in the world who does not prostitute his art for money or reputation, who sees God beneath a leper's skin and proclaims Him bravely, who reveals the magical beauty of humanity and compels the fool and the knave and the man with the muck-rake and the harlot to see it, and sends them away with hope in their hearts, and faith in the destiny of the race and charity to one another – let me see this, my son, and by heavens! I shall have done more with my life than erect a temple made by hands – and I shall have justified my existence. You will do this for me, Asticot?"

I was young. I was impressionable. I loved the man with a passionate gratitude. I gave my promise. Heaven knows I have tried to keep it – with what success is neither here nor there.

The fantastic element in the psychological state of Paragot I did not consider then, but now it moves me almost to tears. Just think of it. I was his one apologia pro vita sua; his one good work which he presented with outstretched hands and pleading eyes, to Joanna. I love the man too well to say more.

Madame de Verneuil went away leaving both of us desolate. Even the prospect of visiting Melford a month hence – at Mrs. Rushworth's cordial invitation – only intermittently raised Paragot's spirits. It did not affect mine at all. I felt that a glory had faded from Menilmontant. Still, I had the portrait to finish, and the preliminary sketches to make of a deuce of a mythological picture for which Cazalet and Fanchette (who for want of better company had become addicted during August to my colleague) were to serve as models. I had my head and hands full of occupation, whereas the reorganized Paragot had none. He talked in a great way of resuming his profession, and even went the length of buying drawing-paper and pins, and drawing-board and T-squares and dividers and other working tools of the architect. But as a man cannot design a palace or a pigstye and put it on the market as one can a book or a picture, he made little headway with his project. He obtained the conditions of an open competition for an Infectious Diseases Hospital somewhere in Auvergne, and talked grandiosely about this for a day or two; but when he came to set out the plan he found that he knew nothing whatever about the modern requirements of such a building and cared less.

"I will wait, my son, until there is something worthy of an artist's endeavour. A Palace of Justice in an important town, or an Opera House. Hospitals for infectious diseases do not inspire one, and I need inspiration. Besides, the visit to Melford would break the continuity of my work. I begin, my son Asticot, when I come back, and then you will see. An ancient Prix de Rome, nom de nom! has artistic responsibilities. He must come back in splendour like Holger Danske when he wakes from his enchanted slumber to conquer the earth."

Poor Holger Danske! When he does wake up he will find his conquering methods a trifle out of date. Paragot did not take this view of his simile. I believed him, however, and looked forward to the day when his winning design for a cathedral would strike awe into a flabbergasted world.

"My son," said he a day or two after he had resolved upon this Resurrection in State, "I want Blanquette. An orderly household cannot be properly conducted by the intermittent ministrations of a concierge."

Our good Blanquette, believing as I had done, that the Master was riding about France on a donkey, was still in villégiatura with our farmer friends near Chartres, and in order that she should have as long a holiday as possible he had hitherto forbidden me to enlighten her as to his change of project.

"Besides," he added, "Blanquette has a place in my heart which the concierge hasn't. I also want those I love to share the happiness that has fallen to my lot. You will write to her my son and ask whether she wants to come home."

"She will take the first train," said I.

"Blanquette is a curious type of the absolute feminine," he remarked. "She is never happier than when she can regard us as a couple of babies. Her greatest delight would be to wash us and feed us with a spoon."

"Master," said I, somewhat timidly, "I think Blanquette is sometimes just a little bit miserable because you don't seem to care for her."

He regarded me in astonishment.

"I not care for Blanquette? But you ridiculous little lump of idiocy! will you never understand? She, like you, is part of myself." He thumped his chest as usual. "In the name of petticoats, what does she want? In Russia I met an honest German artisan who had married a peasant girl. After a month's unclouded existence she broke down beneath the load of misery. Her husband didn't love her. Why? Because they had been married a whole month and he hadn't beaten her yet! Does the child want me to beat her? I believe lots of women do. And you, mindless little donkey, what do you want me to make of her? Your head is full of the imbecilities of the studio. Because I keep her here like my daughter, and have not made her my mistress, you take it upon yourself to conclude that I have no affection for her. Bah! You know nothing. You have lived with me all these years, and you know nothing whatever about me. You don't even know Blanquette. Beneath an unprepossessing exterior she has a heart of gold. She has every large-souled quality that a woman can stuff into her nature. She would live on cheese-rind and egg shells, if she thought it would benefit either of us. I not care for Blanquette? You shall see."

So the following afternoon when we met Blanquette's train at the Gare Saint-Lazare, Paragot had taken her into his arms and planted a kiss on each of her broad cheeks before she realised who the magnificent, clean-shaven welcomer in the silk hat really was.

When he released her, she stared at him even as I had done.

"Mais – qu'est-ce que c'est que ça?" she cried, and I am sure that the comfort of his kisses was lost in her entire bewilderment.

"It is the Master, Blanquette," said I.

"I know, but you are no longer the same. I shouldn't have recognised you."

"Do you prefer me as I used to be?"

"Oui, Monsieur," said Blanquette.

I burst out laughing.

"She is saying 'Monsieur' to the silk hat."

"Méchant!" she scolded. "But it is true." She turned to the master and asked him how he had enjoyed his holiday.

"I never went, my little Blanquette."

"You have been in Paris all the time?"

"Yes."

"And you only send for me now? But mon Dieu!– how have you been living?"

Visions of hideous upheaval in the Rue des Saladiers floated before her mind, and she hurried forward as if there was no time to be lost in getting there. When we arrived she held up horror-stricken hands. The dust! The dirt! The state of the kitchen! The Master's bedroom! Oh no, decidedly she would not leave him again! She would only go to the country after she had seen him well started in the train with a ticket for a long way beyond Paris. There was a week's work in front of her.

"Anyway, my little Blanquette," said Paragot, "you are glad to be with me?"

"It is never of my own free will that I would leave you," she replied.

CHAPTER XVIII

"You perceive," said Paragot, waving a complacent hand, as soon as Blanquette had retired to make the necessary purchases for the evening meal, "you perceive that she is perfectly happy. You were entirely wrong. All is for the best in this best of all possible worlds."

When my master adopted the Panglossian view of the universe I used no arguments that might cloud his serenity. I acquiesced with mental reservations. We talked for a time, Paragot sitting primly on a straight-backed chair. He had abandoned his sprawling attitudes, for fear, I suspect, of spoiling his new clothes. The position, however, not making for ease of conversation, he presently took up a book and began to read, while I amused myself idly by making a furtive sketch of him. Since his metamorphosis he was by no means the entertaining companion of his unregenerate days. He himself was oppressed, I fancy, by his own correctitude. The eternal reading which filled so much of his life did not afford him the same wholehearted enjoyment now, as it did when he lolled dishevelled, pipe in mouth and glass within reach, on bed or sofa. This afternoon, I noticed, he yawned and fidgeted in his chair, and paid to his book the distracted attention of a person reading a back number of a magazine in a dentist's waiting room. My sketch, which I happen to have preserved, shows a singularly bored Paragot. At last he laid the book aside, and gathering together hat, gloves, and umbrella, the precious appanages of his new estate, he announced his intention of taking the air before dinner. I remained indoors to gossip with Blanquette during its preparation. I had considerable doubts as to her optimistic view of things, and these were confirmed as soon as the outer door closed behind my master, and the salon door opened to admit Blanquette.

She came to me with an agitated expression on her face which did not accord with perfect happiness of spirit.

"Dis donc, Asticot," she cried. "What does it mean? Why did the master not go on his holiday? Why did he not send for me? Why has he cut off his hair and beard and dressed himself like a Monsieur? I know very well the master is a gentleman, but why has he changed from what he used to be?"

I temporised. "My dear," said I, "when you first knew me I wore a blue blouse and boots with wooden soles. Almost the last time you had the happiness of beholding me, I was clad in the purple and fine linen of a dress-suit. You weren't alarmed at my putting on civilised garments, why should you be excited at the master doing the same?"

"If you talk like the master, I shall detest you," exclaimed Blanquette. "You do it because you are hiding something. Ah, mon petit frère," she said with a change of tone and putting her arm round my neck, "tell me what is happening. He is going to be married to the beautiful lady, eh?"

She looked into my eyes. Hers were deep and brown and a world of pain lay behind them. I am a bad liar. She freed me roughly.

"I see. It is true. He is going to be married. He does not want me any longer. It is all finished. O mon Dieu, mon Dieu! What is to become of me?"

She wept, rubbing away the tears with her knuckles. I tried to comfort her and lent her my pocket-handkerchief. She need have no fear, I said. As long as the master lived her comfort was assured. She turned on me.

"Do you think I would let him keep me in idleness while he was married to another woman? But no. It would be malhonnête. I would never do such a thing."

She looked at me almost fiercely. There was something noble in her pride. It would be dishonourable to accept without giving. She would never do that, never.

"But what will become of you, my dear Blanquette?" I asked.

"Look, Asticot. I would give him all that he would ask. I am his, all, all, to do what he likes with. I have told you. I would sleep on the ground outside his door every night, if that were his good pleasure. It is not much that I demand. But he must be alone in the room, entends-tu? Another woman comes to cherish him, and I no longer have any place near him. I must be far away. And what would be the good of being far away from him? What shall I do? Tiens, as soon as he marries, je vais me fich' à l'eau."

"You are going to do what?" I cried incredulously.

She repeated that she would "chuck" herself into the river – "Se fich à l'eau" is not the French of Racine. I remonstrated. She retorted that if she could not keep the master's house in order there was nothing left to live for. Much better be dead than eat your heart out in misery.

"You are talking like a wicked girl," said I severely, "and it will be my duty to tell the master."

She gave her eyes a final dab with my handkerchief which she restored to me with an air of scornful resentment.

"If you do, you will be infamous, and I will never speak to you again as long as I live."

I descended from my Rhadamanthine seat and reflected that the betrayal of Blanquette's confidence would not be a gallant action. I maintained my dignity, however.

"Then I must hear nothing more about you drowning yourself."

"We will not talk of it any longer," said Blanquette, frigidly. "I am going to cook the dinner."

As the prim salon provided little interest for an idle youth, I followed her into the slip of a kitchen, where I lounged in great contentment and discomfort. Blanquette relapsed into her fatalistic attitude towards life and seemed to dismiss the disastrous subject from her mind. While she prepared the simple meal she entertained me with an account of the farm near Chartres. There were so many cows, so many ducks and hens and so many pigs. She rose at five every morning and milked the cows. Oh, she had milked cows as a child and had not forgotten the art. It was difficult for those who did not know. Tiens! She demonstrated with finger and thumb and a lettuce how it was done.

"I shall not forget it," said I.

"It is good to know things," she remarked seriously.

"One never can tell," said I, "when a cow will come to you weeping to be milked: especially in the Rue des Saladiers."

"That is true," replied Blanquette. "The oddest things happen sometimes."

Light satire was lost on Blanquette.

After dinner she continued the recital of her adventures for the Master's delectation. The old couple no longer able to look after the farm were desirous of selling it, so that they could retire to Evreux where their only son who had married a rich wife kept a prosperous hotel.

"Do you know what they said, Master. 'Why does not Monsieur Paragot, who must be very rich, buy it from us and come to live in the country instead of that dirty Paris?' C'est drôle, hein?"

"Why do they think I am very rich?"

"That is what I asked them. They said if a man did not work he must be either rich or a rogue; and they know you are not a rogue, mon Maître."

"They flatter me," said Paragot. "Would you like to live in the country, Blanquette?"

"Oh yes!" she cried with conviction. "Il y a des bêtes. J'adore ça. And then it smells so good."

"It does," he sighed. "I haven't smelt it for over three years. Ah! to have the scent of the good wet earth in one's nostrils and the sound of bees in one's ears. For two pins I would go gipsying again. If I were a rich man, my little Blanquette, I would buy the farm, and give it you as your dowry, and sometimes you would let me come and stay with you."

"But as I shall never marry, mon Maître, there will be no need of a dowry."

She said it smilingly, as if she welcomed her lot as a predestined old maid. There was not a sign on her plain pleasant face of the torment raging in her bosom. In my youthful ignorance I did not know whether to deplore woman's deceit or to admire her stout-heartedness.

"My child," said Paragot, "no human being can, without arrogance, say what he will or what he will not do. Least of all a woman."

Having uttered this profound piece of wisdom my master went to bed.

During the next few weeks Paragot suffered the boredom of a provisional condition of existence. He went to bed early, for lack of evening entertainment, and rose late in the morning for lack of daily occupation. With what he termed "the crapulous years," he had divested himself of his former associates and habits. Friends that would harmonise with his gloves and umbrella he had none as yet. If he ordered an apéritif before the midday meal, it was on the terrace of a café on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, where he sat devouring newspapers in awful solitude. Sometimes he took Blanquette for a sedate walk; but no longer Blanquette en cheveux. He bought her a mystical headgear composed as far as I could see of three plums and a couple of feathers, which the girl wore with an air of happy martyrdom. He discoursed to her on the weather and the political situation. At this period he began to develop republican sympathies. Formerly he had swung, according to the caprice of the moment, from an irreconcilable nationalism to a fantastic anarchism. Now he was proud to identify himself with the once despised bourgeoisie. He would have taken to his bosom the draper papa of Hedwige of Cassel.

Most of his time he spent in the studio at Menilmontant; there at any rate he was at ease. We were not too disreputable for the umbrella, and though he deprecated the loose speech of Bringard and Bonnet who had returned to Paris, and the queer personal habits of Cazalet, he appeared to find solace in our society. At any rate the visits gave him occupation. He also posed for the body of M. Thiers in an historical picture which Bringard proposed to exhibit at the Salon the following spring.

"L'homme propose et Dieu expose," said Paragot.

"If he is anything of a judge this ought to be hung on the line," said Bonnet.

I regret to say the picture was rejected.

At last the time came for the Melford visit. Paragot consulted Ewing and myself earnestly as to his outfit, and though he clung to his frock-coat suit as a garb of ceremony, we succeeded in sending him away with a semblance of English country-house attire. He took with him my portrait of Joanna, packed in a wooden case and bearing, to my great pride, the legend, "Precious. Work of Art. With great care," in French and English.

When he had gone I moved my belongings from my attic to the Rue des Saladiers, and gave myself up to the ministrations of Blanquette.

A little while later I received from my dear lady an invitation to visit Melford and paint the portrait of her mother, who regarded my portrait of Joanna as a work of genius. If you are a young artist it makes your head spin very pleasantly to hear yourself alluded to as a genius. Later in life you do not quite like it, for you have bitter knowledge of your limitations and are mortally afraid your kind flatterers will find you out. But at twenty you really do not know whether you are a genius or not. Mrs. Rushworth, however, backed her opinion with a hundred guineas. A hundred guineas! When I read the words I uttered a wild shriek which brought Blanquette in a fright from the bedroom. It was a commission, Joanna explained, and I was to accept it just like any other artist, and I was to stay with them, again like any other artist, during the sittings.