Читать книгу The Rapin - H. De Vere Stacpoole - Страница 6

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The room was filled with an odor of Nice violets, fur, and the faint scent of caravan tea. A number of candles burning under rose-colored shades lit the place subduedly, whilst through the great windows the broad white expanse of the Boulevard Haussmann reflected the cold light of the April evening with a suggestion of snow.

The Princesse de Cammora’s “Five-o’clock” was exhausting itself, Madeline Frémont of the Comédie Française having just departed, also the Duchesse M—— de M——, the wheels of whose barouche had a moment ago rumbled away round the corner of the Rue de Courcelles.

Nothing was left now but for the remaining few to take their departure. There was nothing to keep them, yet they clung after the fashion of grounds to the bottom of a coffee-cup.

There were three ancient dames and an old Marquis, all relics of the Empire, all boring each other to death, and lingering on in the dim hope of being asked to dinner. A pretty girl in furs and picture hat stood at one of the windows, her furs thrown open, and her eyes fixed meditatively upon the street. M. le Marquis Sobrahon de Nani was explaining to two old Empire women the difference between the Comédie Française now and “then,” whilst the Princesse de Cammora sat near the tea-table with its little cups and dishes of petits fours and what-nots, conversing volubly with another Princesse, painted, after the fashion of her hostess, with the roses of eighteen on the parchment of fifty.

“I should never have called him Toto,” wailed the Princesse de Cammora, whilst the girl at the window pricked her ears beneath her picture hat, and seemed more than ever absorbed by the Boulevard Haussmann. “It was the wretched Nounou’s fault; she came from Tarbes. Really, if I had known the worry of nurses, I would never have had a child. She stole everything she could lay her hands upon—my bracelets, my rings, the drops off the grand chandelier; everything was found in her box; it was like the nest of a magpie. She spoke as if she held pins in her mouth, and she could never pronounce the name Désiré, so she called him Toto. Her husband was an Italian from Ventimiglia, and he was called Toto, and so it pleased the good God that my child should receive this outrageous nickname. Everyone calls him Toto now, and the wretched boy, when I accuse him of his wildnesses, throws the name in my teeth, and asks me how he can live seriously with such a pug-dog name attached to him. I assure you, my dear Mathilde, the amounts I have paid during the last month would horrify you—bills that he has run up! Oh, no, never give a child a thoughtless name! I assure you, in this world things often begin in jest which end very much in earnest. If you could only guess one-half of this mad boy’s wickedness and absurd”—here the other Princesse made a grimace at Helen Powers, the American millionairess in the picture hat, as if to say, “She is listening”—“and absurd good-nature!” resumed the mother of Toto, snapping her scent-bottle lid—“wickednesses without a particle of real wickedness in them, but none the less annoying to a mother for that. Only the other night he came home without any money. It seems he had met a poor old woman near the Madeleine, and for a freak upset the basket of apples she was carrying; then, to pay her for her apples, what must he do but empty all the money in his pocket—some seventeen napoleons, as I afterwards learnt—into her lap! That is the sort of wickedness my Toto indulges in.”

“Ah!” moaned the other, shaking a crumb off her muff, “such wickednesses are enough to open the gates of heaven. And this poor old woman?”

“She has retired into the country to live on this bounty. Toto, I believe, went to-day to see her and carry her some more assistance. Mon Dieu!”

Someone who had slipped into the room, and who had been standing unobserved behind the heavy curtains of the door listening to the lies in the air, slipped out now like a hound freed from the leash, and embraced the Princesse de Cammora, nearly dislocating her neck, and brushing the bloom off her right cheek. It was Toto.

Never was created a more debonair or devil-may-care-looking person than Toto; the name fitted him like a glove, at least now, as he stood helping himself to sweets from the table and laughing at his mother. He looked about eighteen; his real age, however, was twenty-two, and he possessed that brightness of eye and vivacity of manner which sometimes indicates genius, and sometimes excellent health, combined with a highly strung nervous temperament. Affecting Longchamps and art, the society of pugilists and men of letters, shining here as a flâneur, there as the patron of little poets, and lately—somewhat in secret—as a painter of pictures painted all by himself, he presented a queer variety of that always amusing insect, the “child of the age.”

“Where the devil can Toto have come from?” asked Otto Struve, the art critic, one day, tilting his hat back in momentary astonishment. “His father, on his own showing, was a miser; his mother never laughed. They marry, and live for ten years unproductive as a pair of icebergs, and then produce Toto, who only stops smiling when he laughs or yawns, and spending money when he sleeps; whose head produces the most extraordinary ideas in Paris; whom God constructed with one eye on the gingerbread fair, and whom the devil made a prince of—a prince of twenty, with the ideas of ten and the vices of sixty!”

“I am a changeling,” had replied Toto, bonneting Otto Struve’s hat in such a manner that it had to be cut off with scissors.

Now he saluted everyone at once—Helen Powers, and his mother, and the old Princesse de Harnac. The Empire decadents came out of their corner like lizards towards sunshine, and he promptly invited them to stay to dinner, knowing that his mother hated them, and that he would be dining out himself.

“I have been to a cock-fight at Chantilly,” he explained, glancing down at the suit of tweed in which he was dressed. “The police broke it up, and we had to run; but they wired, and the police stopped me at the Nord. They let me go when I gave my address; then I took a cab from the Nord, and coming downhill we ran over a dog—nothing but accidents.”

The old Marquis de Nani lifted up his hands in pretended horror to please his hostess, and lowered them again and took a pinch of snuff when that lady frowned slightly.

“I do not see any particular harm in cock-fighting,” said Toto’s mother, appealing to the company generally, and Helen Powers in particular. “I know it sounds cruel, but, then, they say the cocks enjoy it.”

“That must be so,” said the Marquis, replacing his snuff-box in his pocket, “or else they would not fight.”

“But——” said Miss Powers, and stopped. Her eyes had met Toto’s eyes. He was standing almost behind his mother and making grimaces, as if to say, “For goodness’ sake don’t begin an argument, or we shall never get away.” “But,” said Miss Powers, shamelessly turning the conversation in the wished-for direction, “you promised me, M. le Prince, to show me those pictures on which you were engaged.”

“That is why I came back in such a hurry,” replied Toto. “And if you will accompany me now to my studio, come on, and M. le Marquis also, for he is a connoisseur. No one else; my bashfulness will not hold more than two comfortably.”

He led the way, laughing, out of the room and up the great staircase, Helen Powers following and the old Marquis de Nani toiling after, his Empire legs unaccustomed to such unstately swiftness. On the top landing Prince Toto opened a door and switched on the electric light, exposing to view a large square studio.

One could see at a glance that this was the atelier of no dilettante. Work was written on the place from the top light to the boarded floor. Several massive easels stood about with the air of willing laborers awaiting their jobs; there was a throne and some drapery; a painting-jacket hung suspended from a nail in the wall, along which a number of canvases stood with their backs to the room like children undergoing punishment.

Helen Powers felt utterly astonished. She had known Toto some time, and she liked him more, perhaps, than she had ever liked another man; but she was alive to his faults, his irresponsibility, his childish wildnesses. Here, then, was a revelation of honest hard work more amazing than a jewel in a toad’s head.

“I know the place is rather bare,” said Toto apologetically, “but it’s good enough to work in. It’s a bit cold now, but I light a fire when I am working at the nude, and then it is like a furnace. Here’s a thing.”

He took one of the canvases in Coventry and placed it upon an easel.

“Oh, my God, how beautiful!” said the old Marquis de Nani, putting on his pince-nez as the electric light fell full upon the indifferent-looking daub exposed so ruthlessly to view.

“Everyone says that,” said Toto, so innocently and so frankly that the tears almost rose to Helen Powers’ eyes.

“I have never seen a picture quite like that,” continued the Marquis. “There is an air about it, a something indefinable about it. Those bulrushes”—it was a naked nymph trying to screen herself behind bulrushes—“those bulrushes seem to quiver in the wind.”

“Otto Struve said Ingres might have painted it,” said Toto, with a smile that made him look like an angel by Raphael. He had several smiles at his command, and most of them made him look like a good-humored devil. “But they turned it away from the Salon, though I’d had half of the hanging committee to dinner the night before and made them jolly. Otto said the other half were jealous. I’ll have the whole lot next time if I can get them. Here’s a John the Baptist. What do you think of that?”

John the Baptist was brought forth, and a Sisera and Jael, all treated in the old original manner, with a difference due to want of skill. A lamentable Holofernes appeared and vanished.

“Those are all classical,” said the author after De Nani had almost bleated himself hoarse in their praise, revolving in his own mind the while a project which had for aim the borrowing of five hundred francs from this illustrious artist. “But this is original, or, at least, I think so.”

He exposed a blind beggar and his daughter, filled with a mawkish sentimentality strangely at variance with the known character of the Prince.

Helen Powers looked on. Her liking for Toto had rapidly altered. This art show had supplied the crystallizing thread for her feelings to seize upon. She was now mournfully in love with him. It was as if he had suddenly become maimed and needful of her pity. Her mind became filled with anger against Otto Struve and old De Nani and all the other sycophants or sneerers who had belauded this poor boy and his works. She felt a kindness for cock-fighting as she gazed upon the blind beggar and his whining yellow-ocher daughter, a strange emotion in the breast of a delicately nurtured girl, and, so to speak, one of the minor miracles wrought by art.

Toto, as anxious for praise as a baby for milk, looked at her with dark expectant eyes.

“I don’t know what to say,” said the poor girl. “I know nothing about art, but I think I like Jael the best; but don’t take my opinion, please, for I am an utter ignoramus. What a time it must have taken you to paint all these!”

“That’s just what it didn’t,” replied the artist joyously, as if he had outwitted art by some clever trick. “I paint like lightning. You see, I haven’t much time to spare; but I love it, and give all the time I can. I have often thought of throwing everything else over and giving all my time to art.”

“Oh, do!” said Helen earnestly.

“Do what?” asked the lightning artist.

“Give up all your time to it, be in earnest over it. Nothing is done in this world without earnestness of purpose. I am sure you would be—would be—a great artist if you worked. Give up cock-fighting and all that, and take seriously to art.”

“Do you know,” said Prince Toto, putting the blind beggar away, “I have often thought of kicking the world over. I’ve seen everything and done everything worth doing, and I feel as old as the hills.”

“He, he, he!” bleated the Marquis de Nani.

“Then why not begin at once?” said Helen. “If you are only in earnest and have purpose, you will succeed, for I am sure you have genius.”

The unlucky little word had escaped unweighed by the speaker. Toto nodded reflectively, as if to some thought that had just left the shelter of his curly head to take visible form.

“I am sure that M. le Prince has more genius in that head of his than resides in all those palette-scrapers one sees in the Louvre,” declared the Marquis de Nani, taking a pinch of snuff and making a little old-fashioned bow, as if to the observation that had just escaped from him. He held out his box, and the amateur genius took a pinch and sneezed frightfully.

“And genius,” continued the old gentleman reflectively, adding on two hundred and fifty francs to the intended loan, “it seems to me, never has a more charming home than with a man of birth; birth comes out even in a picture. That blind beggar and his little daughter. Ah, my God! cannot one see the sympathy of the well-born for the poor illuminating it? I never praise—old age has made a wreck of my enthusiasm; but my heart rekindles when I see art thus wrested from the hands of the hateful canaille by one of us.”

“Indeed!” said Helen Powers, whose father had been a pig-slaughterer.

“Indeed yes, mademoiselle!” replied the old man, winking and blinking like a delirious goat, whilst Toto looked on with a grin. “I have left all my ambition behind me, buried beneath the ruins of the Empire, else would I wish to be young like M. le Prince, and gifted like the painter of these treasures.”

“Now I must be going,” said Helen Powers.

“And I,” said Toto; “I have a dinner on at the Grand Café.”

“Why,” cried the Marquis, seeing his seven hundred and fifty francs vanishing, “I thought you were going to dine here, at home!”

“Not I indeed!” said Toto; “I am giving a little dinner of my own.”

“Alas!” moaned the old man, “I had counted upon your pleasant company. I am desolated.”

“Well, bring your desolation to my feast.”

“But——” said M. le Marquis, glancing down at his frock-coat.

“Oh, that’s nothing,” replied Toto; “I am going to dine in these.”

“Then,” said the other, “I will go down and make my excuses to the Princesse. Pardon me, mademoiselle.”

“With pleasure,” answered Helen Powers, and he tripped away like a boy.

“Toto,” said the girl,—she called him Toto sometimes when no one was by,—“beware of that old man and all these people who praise you; there’s nothing so bad for an artist as praise. Art,” she continued, gazing at him and speaking as if she knew all about it, “is always capable of improvement. I mean the artist is. Don’t mind what he says about the canaille—remember Millet; go and get a blouse like a common man, work like a common man. All people are common in art till they have made princes of themselves like Raphael and Michael Angelo.”

“That is what I have been thinking lately,” said the unhappy Toto, imbibing this lesson greedily because it fitted in with his whim, and whims with Toto sometimes lasted for months—Mlle. Dumaresque lasted for three, and cost him sixty thousand francs. “Just what I have been thinking: what is the use of all this life? I’m sick of it. If one could invent a new way of spending money or something new to eat—but it’s just the same old round. I’ve thought of committing suicide, sometimes.”

“Oh, don’t, Toto—don’t speak like that!”

“I won’t; besides, I didn’t think of it seriously.”

“Tell me, Toto,” said Helen, in the voice of a mother speaking to a child, “do you ever think seriously of anything?”

“I think I do,” said Toto, rubbing his cheek against a corner of her sealskin jacket, because it was soft and gratified his sensual nature. “I have thought seriously of running away from here, and living by my painting—seriously.”

A look came into his face that astonished her, a look of iron determination or leaden obstinacy, she could not tell which; but it made her feel sure that if he ever did commit such a folly he would adhere to it till he was famous or, a more probable eventuality, dead.

“For” said Toto, “I have got a queer sort of feeling lately: it’s money-hate. It’s awfully funny, for it’s not exactly money-hate, but it’s a want to make money and not spend it. It’s like a man that wants to dig.”

Helen looked at him proudly.

“Here,” thought she, “is the man breaking out; the boy is dying away. Toto will be a great man yet.” Alas for Helen’s thoughts! What woman can ever understand a man? what woman could ever have understood Toto? Otto Struve alone got him in a true focus, but of that anon.

“Besides,” said Toto, still rubbing his cheek softly against the fur, a caress which Helen took to herself, “I feel that I—I want to protect someone, to feed them and work for them, and I haven’t anyone to—protect, for everyone I know is so rich.”

Helen’s eyes became dim. She was just about to say something hopeful in reply, when the old Marquis entered the room, jubilant like a schoolboy going to a treat.

“Now good-by,” said Helen, pressing Toto’s hand. “No, don’t come with me; I’ll find my way. Good-by, M. le Marquis;” and she vanished to say good-by to her hostess and find her coachman, who for the last two hours had been outside shivering in the cold April evening.

As Toto and his companion passed the drawing-room door, the Princesse appeared for a moment and drew the old fellow aside.

“Be sure and take care of my boy, Marquis, and give him good advice.”

“Princesse, be assured,” replied the gentleman of the old school, placing his hand upon his heart, “I will give him good advice; and,” he whispered, “it is all right in that quarter. She called him a genius, and that tickles a young man’s vanity, and I am almost sure kisses passed between them during my absence from the room. I am not a bad judge of these affairs, and I predict——”

He nodded mysteriously, and the Princesse de Cammora smiled under her paint and powder the smile of the happy mother.