CHAPTER XXXVI
The last days of August in Paris! A deadly oppression of heat; abrooding inertia that lay upon the city like a cloak!
In the little _appartement_ every window stood gaping, thirsting for adraught of air; but no stir lightened the haze that weighed upon theatmosphere, no faintest hint of breeze ruffled the plantation shrubs,dark in their fulness of summer foliage. Stillness lay uponMontmartre--upon the rue Mueller--most heavily of all, upon the home ofMax.
It was an obvious, weighty stillness unconnected with repose. It seemedas though the spirit of the place were fled, and that in its stead thevacant quiet of death reigned. In the _salon_ the empty hearth hurt theobserver with its poignant suggestion of past comradeship, dead fires,long hours when the spring gales had whistled through the plantation andstories had been told and dreams woven to the spurt of blue and copperflames. The place had an aspect of desertion; no book lay thrown, facedownward, upon chair or table; no flowers glowed against the whitewalls, though flowers were to be had for the asking in a land thatteemed with summer fruitfulness.
This was the _salon_; but in the studio the note of loss was still moresharply struck. Not because the easel, drawn into the full light,offered to the gaze a crude, unfinished study, nor yet because a ladenpalette was cast upon the floor to consort with tubes and brushes, butbecause the presiding genius of the place Max--Max the debonair, Max theadventurous--was seated on a chair before his canvas, a prey to blackdespair.
Max was thinner. The great heat of August--or some more potentcause--had smoothed the curves from his youthful face, drawn the curledlips into an unfamiliar hardness and painted purple shadows beneath theeyes. Max had fought a long fight in the three months that had dwindledsince the morning of Blake's going, and a long moral fight has full asmany scars to leave behind as a battle of physical issues. The saddesthuman experience is to view alone the scenes one has viewed throughother eyes--to walk solitary where one has walked in company--to haveits particular barbed shaft aimed at one from every stick and stone thatmark familiar ways. All this Max had known, wrapping himself in hispride, keeping long silence, fighting his absurd, brave fight.
'The first days will be the worst!' he had assured himself, walking backfrom Notre Dame in the searching sun, heedless of who might notice hisred eyes. 'The first days will be the worst!' And this formula he hadrepeated in the morning, standing uninspired and wretched before a blankcanvas. Then had come Blake's first message--a note written from Swedenwithout care or comfort, importing nothing, indicating nothing beyondthe place at which the writer might be found, and tears--torrents oftears--had testified to the fierce anticipation, the crushingdisappointment for which it was responsible.
He had sent no answer to the cold communication--no answer had beendesired, and calling himself by every name contempt could coin, he hadpushed forward along the lonely road, companioned by his work. But hehimself had once said: 'One must come naked and whole to art, as onemust come naked and whole to nature,' and he had spoken a truth. Art isno anodyne for a soul wounded in other fields, and Art closed arms tohim when most he wooed her. He threw himself into work with pitiablevehemence in those first black weeks. By day, he haunted the galleriesand attended classes like any art student; by night, he ranged thestreets and _cafes_, seeking inspiration, returning to his lonely roomto lie wakeful, fighting his ghosts, or else to sob himself to sleep.
His theory of life had been amply proved. Blake had prated of the soul,but it had been the body he had desired! Again and again that thoughthad struck home, a savage spur goading him in daytime to a wild plyingof his brushes, gripping him in the lonely darkness of the night-timeuntil his sobs were suspended by their very poignancy and the scaldingtears dried before they could fall.
He saw darkly, he saw untruly, but the world is according to thebeholder's vision, and in those sultry days, when summer waxed and Parisemptied, opening its gates to the foreigner, all the colors had recededfrom existence and he had tasted the lees of life.
And now to-day it seemed that the climax had been reached. Seated idlybefore his canvas, the whole procession of his Paris life unwound beforehim--from the first tumultuous hour, when he had entered the HotelRailleux on fire for freedom, to this moment when, with dull resentfuleyes, he confronted the sum of his labors--an unfinished, sorry studydevoid of inspiration.
He stared at the flat canvas--the rough outline of his picture--thereckless splashing on of color; and, abruptly, as if a hand had touchedhim, he sprang to his feet, making havoc among the paint tubes thatstrewed the floor, and turned summarily to the open window.
It was after eight o'clock, but the hazy, unreal daylight of a summerevening made all things visible. He scanned the plantation, viewing itas if in some travesty of morning; he looked down upon the city,sleeping uneasily in preparation for the inevitable night of pleasure,and a sudden loathing of Paris shook him. It seemed as if some gauzyillusive garment had been lifted from a fair body and that his eyes,made free of the white limbs, had discerned a corpse.
By a natural flight of ideas, the loathing of the city turned toloathing of himself--to an unsatiable desire for self-forgetfulness, forself-effacement. Solitude was no longer tenable, the walls of the_appartement_ seemed to close in about him, stifling--suffocating him.With a feverish movement, he turned from the window, picked up his hatand fled the room.
On the landing he paused for a moment before the door of M. Cartel. Hehad paid many visits to M. Cartel under stress of circumstances similarto this, and invariably M. Cartel--and, moving in his shadow, the demureJacqueline--had proffered a generous hospitality--talking to him ofwork, of politics, of Paris, but with a Frenchman's inimitable tact.
For all this unobtrusive attention he had been silently grateful, butto-night he stood by the door hesitating; for long he hesitated,honestly fighting with his mood, but at last the desperation of the moodprevailed. Who could talk of work, when work was as an evil smell in thenostrils? Who could talk of politics, when the overthrow of nationswould not stimulate the mind? He turned on his heel with a littleexclamation, hopeless as it was cynical, and ran down the stairs withthe gait of one whose destination concerns neither the world norhimself.
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