Читать книгу The Iron Mistress - Paul Iselin Wellman - Страница 5

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Together they walked along the Rue Charteris, and Bowie gaped at the stately Ursuline convent with its many chimneys and its dormered roof. Passing this, they turned up a side street and presently they came to one of the innumerable stairways giving on the street, so characteristic of the Vieux Carré.

“Let us go softly,” said the stranger, almost in a whisper. “My landlady is an excellent woman. But she has a—a prejudice against noise. Especially on the Sabbath. I would not disturb her——”

With what seemed unnecessary caution he led the way, tiptoe, to the hall above, where he unlocked a door.

At once an awful odor of death puffed out at them, swirling so overpoweringly from the room that Bowie stepped back from it.

“My heron!” cried the artist.

He seized Bowie by the arm, snatched him within, and shut the door behind him. The stench was such that Bowie was forced to hold his breath, yet he glanced about him with a mighty curiosity as his remarkable host hurried to the window and threw it open to the fullest. Everywhere the walls were covered with paintings, finished and unfinished. Papers with sketches and daubs strewed the floor and were heaped in corners. To one side stood a rumpled bed and a littered washstand, and by the window an easel. Now for the first time Bowie saw the cause of the dreadful odor. Near the easel, dead and putrefying, yet held upright on its long legs in some semblance of life’s erectness by an ingenious system of wires, was a swamp heron.

“Alas, ma belle,” wailed the artist, “I kept thee too long!”

Almost tenderly he disengaged the disgusting carcass from its wire braces and threw it into the alley. Then seizing a frond of palmetto, he vigorously fanned the air to clear the atmosphere.

“Nay,” he cried sharply, “open not the door! The worst will soon be out. And Madame Guchin is—well—strong-minded——”

When he felt he had sufficiently alleviated the unpleasantness, he tossed the palmetto on a heap of the branches and turned to the washstand to lave his fouled hands.

“The paradox of existence,” he said. “My heron dies, and rots, and the mongrel dogs of the street presently will devour her, and all that she may live forever. Voilà.” His hands dripped above the basin, but with his chin he pointed to the easel.

Bowie stepped to the window where the abominable smell had somewhat cleared. There was the heron, painted as in life, her feathers gleaming, her eye bright, the mirrored waters of her native swamp at her feet, tall palmetto palms in the background.

“Do thee like it?” asked the artist anxiously.

“Like it? It’s plain wonderful!”

“Then behold!”

With a flourish the artist opened the black portfolio and began to spread painting after painting on the easel before the window, All were of birds, and Bowie almost forgot the lingering taint on the air in his interest. Many he recognized, as the king woodpecker, which his host called the ivory-billed; the purple martin, courted by the Cajuns with little houses on tall poles because it destroys mosquitoes; the night-long aspirating whippoorwill; the brown pelican with great-pouched bill and surly eyes placed strangely in the top of its head; the stately, dazzling white egret; eagles and owls, hawks and gulls, partridge, quail, plover, geese and ducks, all familiar to his hunter’s eye. Most of the smaller birds, to which he had paid little attention in his hunting, he did not know, and his host delighted in naming them for him, seeming to think the least as important as the largest

“The tufted titmouse,” he said, “and a prothonotary warbler”—Bowie blinked at the big word—“and here a ruby-crowned kinglet——”

Expanding, the artist explained his method. He shot birds and used them for models, rather than the stuffed specimens which retained neither natural shape nor color. The wiring which held the dead creatures in attitudes of life was his own invention. He painted very rapidly, he added, because of the perishable nature of his originals—as witness the heron.

Once Bowie uttered an objection. The painting was spirited: four mockingbirds furiously battled a coiled serpent in the crotch of a tree where rested their nest.

“What’s wrong with it?” demanded the artist quickly.

“Mockers will fight—even a snake—it’s their nature. But rattlesnakes don’t climb trees—except maybe during a freshet——”

“And why not?” Resentful voice.

“Too fat and sluggish. It ain’t their nature. Rather go down in burrows after mice or gophers. Now a blacksnake——”

“Blacksnake? Artistic and dramatic sacrilege! Here thee see a poisonous fanged serpent—death itself—and the brave, brave birds——”

“A blacksnake may not be poison, but he moves like a whiplash. He’d be a sight more dangerous to your birds than any lazy rattler.”

“On what authority do thee say this?” cried the artist hotly. “Thee have seen, belike, all rattlesnakes in the world—that thee can say with surety that none climb trees for their prey?” He sneered. “It is I, friend, who am the naturalist. I am the student, observing all works of nature with the greatest scientific care!” His face paled, his teeth seemed to flash, his voice shrilled in surprising and quite unnecessary rage. “It is to be supposed that I—I—know not as much about the habits of snakes as some raw woods ranger——”

Bowie felt his own anger rising, as it does in most men at another’s causeless fury. But he wanted no quarrel, so without replying, he turned and walked abruptly out of the room.

Behind, the spate of words ceased. As he went down the stairs he heard the other come out of the door and stand on the landing. Then running steps pursued him, a hand was laid on his shoulder.

“M’sieu——” A soft pleading. “Forgive me. I—I am overwrought and—well—it is just that the truth is so very painful.”

Bowie allowed himself to be halted.

“Thee be most perfectly correct—of course—concerning the rattlesnake, wretched reptile!” The artist made a gloomy gesture of despair. “The charlatan’s touch—and I know it. Even as I painted it, I knew as well as thee that the sluggish rattlesnake climbs not in trees. ’Twas that made me screech so—my conscience pinched me shrewdly when thee put thy great finger square on my dishonesty.”

“It’s none of my affair,” said Bowie gruffly.

“But wait! I must confess to thee why I fell guilty of such sham. I had hoped through that one painting to gain attention for the others. There’s the truth of it! Do thee not think the world might find interest in the death-fight—look thee—between the beautiful birds and the horrid, venom-dripping serpent? And from that, belike, turn to my other pictures of—less melodrama? In God’s name, is a man to be damned utterly because he uses a small trick, perchance, for a good end?”

The tone was so imploring, the apology so complete and abject, that Bowie’s anger ebbed from him.

“At least give me thy name,” begged the shabby artist.

Bowie made up his mind. “If you want it, I’ll give it. And for the matter of that; I see no harm in the trick, as you call it, for nobody but a woodsman would ever question it. So—my name is James Bowie.”

“James? ’Tis my own second name, and we must be friends! I am John James Audubon, painter and naturalist, at thy service. My hand, James Bowie!”