Читать книгу The Iron Mistress - Paul Iselin Wellman - Страница 6

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Both had forgotten the injunction for quiet. Now they heard a door close in the hall above, followed by the grating of a key in the lock. Next a woman appeared at the head of the stair: a broad, dark woman of middle age, in lace cap and black bombazine dress, who looked down at them with the grimly hostile visage of landladies the world over. In her plump white fingers she held the key which Audubon had left in the door. The artist gazed up at her with a ludicrous combination of consternation, guilt, and anxiety.

“Good—good day, Madame Guchin,” he faltered.

In dour silence she stared down at them.

“Is—is that the key—of my room——” he began again.

Her harsh lips opened. “It is no longer your key, monsieur, nor is it your room.”

“My—paintings——?”

“Will remain where they are,” the woman said obdurately. “I may find them of more substance than your promises, which mean nothing.”

She turned her broad back and disappeared down the hall, as uncompromising and unassailable as a frigate which commands an estuary with its guns. Bowie glanced at Audubon. The man seemed caved in, shrinking, as if humiliated almost beyond endurance. His face turned white and he sat suddenly down on the step.

“Are you ailing?” asked Bowie.

“I am ruined. The work of years ... my whole career——” Audubon’s eyes filled with tears, and Bowie, unaccustomed to the emotions of men of this type, was more impressed perhaps than need be by his new friend’s despair.

“You’re a little behind on your rent?” he said. “Would a loan——”

He drew out his wallet, but the artist rose with frigid dignity.

“Sir,” he said, “I own to a faulty memory, but I cannot recall asking thee or anyone for aid——”

Actually, the man was affronted! Bowie found himself apologizing for his own kindly impulse. The despair returned to Audubon’s face.

“You’ve got something worth more than all those paintings,” Bowie said.

“What could be worth more than them?”

“The art to make others, as good or even better.”

“Rattlesnakes, for example, that remain properly on the ground?”

A wan smile. That smile, under the circumstances, won Bowie. He placed a hand on the artist’s shoulder. To his surprise, it trembled. Intuition told him that the fine-drawn look he had attributed to fatigue might be something else. This shabby man, who painted nature with such miraculous fidelity, was famished, actually faint from hunger. He started to say something, remembered Audubon’s pride, and thought of a better approach. He grinned amiably.

“I mind a Cajun saying. A taste of salt makes perfect a soup, a salad, or a new friendship. If it suits your whim to go along with a little superstition of mine, Mr. Audubon, come have dinner with me, so we can taste salt together and thus seal our friendship.”

The artist looked at him sharply. But the grin remained disarming.

“To seal our friendship, eh? That seemeth well thought of——” He regarded Bowie closely again, then with sudden impulsiveness embraced him. “But from this moment call me John! As I shall call thee by thy first name—for I find that I love thee, James!”