‘But not with cold porridge,’ I reminded him.
‘It’s a little warmer than it was,’ he said laughing. I liked him much better here than I had in Dinard. He was catching the afternoon plane to London and pressed money on me before he took me back to Montparnasse in a taxi. I wouldn’t accept it. I thought that in some way it would influence me in the decision I had taken about Cynthia.
XVI
QUITE suddenly the painting began to improve. The fog of uncertainty in which I had been wandering cleared, and a definite meaning and form began to show itself in my work. Monsieur Prinet was pleased and urged me not to relax my efforts but to persevere now that I had found a glimmering of what I wanted to say. He actually praised me several times, and even called the other students in the room over to look at my painting. All the despair and wretchedness of the last weeks fell away as if by a miracle. I was thrilled, excited, in a transport of delight. Xavier had perhaps not been so wrong. I would become a painter. I no longer minded the severe warning and harsh criticism which followed on my next piece of work. The memory of the praise made that bearable.
One morning when we had a particularly interesting model, a negress whose skin was almost blue, and I was working in a fever of excitement, Buddy came into the room. He had left Julien’s and was working downstairs in the other painting room. He beckoned me mysteriously, but I went on painting, annoyed at the interruption. He came over to my easel. ‘You’re wanted urgently outside,’ he said. ‘You’ve a visitor from Dinard.’
For one dazzling moment I thought it must be Armand. My heart gave a bound. Then I felt cold and frightened. I didn’t want to see him. I couldn’t. That the very thought of him could still upset me like this infuriated me. I put down my paint-brushes and wiped my hands on my trousers and followed him out. In the passage outside, sitting on the wooden bench where the models waited to be interviewed, was Thalia. On her lap, looking acutely miserable, was Kiki.
She looked up apprehensively at me as I came out with Buddy—then, letting the dog slither to the floor, she stood up, clasping her hands nervously. She was dirty and untidy, her clothes pulled on anyhow and her coat covered with dog hairs, but at the sight of her dejected figure a wave of tremendous feeling swept me. I was overjoyed to see her!
She must have seen this, for her face lighted up and dropping the dog’s lead she took a step towards me. ‘Rachel . . . Rachel . . . I had to come. I had to. I couldn’t stay there any longer. Don’t be angry. . . . Please . . . please.’
But I didn’t answer her. I caught her to me, and kissed her warmly. She clung wildly to me in a paroxysm of weeping, and conscious of the interested stares of the models and students, I pulled her away up the passage. ‘Come into the cloak-room,’ I said. She picked up the dog’s lead and all three of us went into the wash-up.
For several minutes she couldn’t stop crying. Great choking, gulping sobs enveloped her. She looked dreadful with the tears making water channels down her dirty face. ‘I want to stay with you. I won’t go back. I can’t. I can’t,’ she kept repeating. ‘Let me stay with you, Rachel.’
‘Does Cynthia know you are here?’ I said at last. She shook her head. She had run away—as I had.
It was about eleven o’clock. Cynthia would surely be frantic with anxiety. ‘We must telegraph her that you’re here.’
‘I don’t think she’ll be worrying about me,’ she said cryptically.
‘What d’you mean?’
‘She has other things to worry about.’ And she burst into tears again.
‘Thalia, what is it? Is your father all right?’
‘He was all right in his last letter. There’s one for you in my satchel. It came with mine.’ She was still crying hopelessly.
‘Have you quarrelled with your mother?’
‘No. Oh, no.’
‘Is there some trouble at school?’
‘No. I haven’t been lately. Marie and Elise left, and no one would come and help. I’ve been doing all the cleaning and the cooking.’
She gave a thin smile and made a determined effort to stop crying.
‘Wash your face, here, use my handkerchief.’
We cleaned and tidied her up somewhat. When she was calmer she said, ‘How thin you’ve grown! And how lovely! Can I have some of those trousers? They’re all wearing them here.’
‘Yes.’ I was absently washing the paint off my hands. What was I to do with her? What? Should I send a telegram to Cynthia? What a complication to my own worries . . . and yet I was glad to see her. There was no denying the joy I’d felt at the sight of her.
Buddy was waiting for us in the passage-way.
‘Well, what now?’ he asked, patting Kiki.
‘We must take him out on to some grass. The journey was over five hours,’ said Thalia.
We went into the Luxembourg Gardens and walked Kiki there. Then I sent a telegram to Cynthia. Thalia was suspicious and sulky at my insistence. She begged me not to send it. She implored me. I showed her the bare words on the form: ‘THALIA IS HERE WITH ME’ with the address added. ‘You’ll be sorry. You’ll be sorry, Rachel,’ she kept saying.
‘You must take her back to Dinard at once,’ said Buddy, firmly.
‘No.’
‘Yes. You must, Rachel. Don’t you see that it’s impossible? She’s a child. You both are. You need a nurse!’
‘It’s none of your business,’ I said angrily.
‘It’s somebody’s business to see that you don’t make a worse fool of yourself than you have. That girl must go back to her mother.’
‘She can’t go back to-night. I’ll ask Madame Robert if she can stay with me. I’ve just paid her so she won’t object. Thalia, come along. We’ll go and see Madame Robert.’ Madame was willing that Thalia should share my room for a time, but adamant about the dog. Dogs were not allowed in the flats. Thalia refused to be separated from him. What to do now?
‘Oh well, I guess it’ll be me who has the little brute. He can sleep at my place,’ said Buddy resignedly. Thalia was humbly grateful. She looked terribly tired—as if she hadn’t slept at all. In the afternoon I took her to a hairdresser. She emerged minus the straggly tails, her hair cut as short as a boy’s.
‘I want some blue cotton trousers like yours,’ she begged.
It was then that I wondered where she had got the money for the journey. I asked her. She looked confused and evaded the answer.
‘You never wrote,’ she said resentfully. ‘Not even a good-bye note—nothing.’
I could not answer this. I had deliberately not written to her.
‘I saw Armand,’ she went on, looking at me out of half-closed, speculative eyes. ‘He brought Quiquengrogne back to me. He was lost for a whole day. Armand wanted your address; he wouldn’t believe that you hadn’t written to us. Do you still love him, Rachel?’
I would not answer her. The very mention of Armand’s name caused such a tumult of feeling in me. Her own arrival, after that first joy at seeing her, brought back vividly those last painful scenes.
‘He was terribly upset—quite pale and his mouth all straight and queer—and I was glad,’ she went on, still watching my face. ‘I told him that you had gone back to England.’
When I still said nothing she said defiantly, ‘And so you might have done for all I knew—you never wrote me one line.’
‘You did right to tell him that,’ I said at last. ‘But listen to me, Thalia. If you want to stay here with me never mention Armand again. It’s as if he is dead as far as I am concerned.’
‘But we talk about the dead—Robin Thorne and your cousin Lawrence—both dead so young. We talk about them. You don’t love Armand any more?’
‘No,’ I said, thrusting down the clamour of my heart and the urging of the ‘Living in Truth’. ‘No, I don’t love him any more.’
We bought the trousers. She was much slimmer and they suited her admirably. When we got back, Madame Robert had put a folding bed in my room. Thalia had dinner with the
rest of us. She was extraordinarily gay—almost hysterically so, keeping us all laughing. But when I asked suddenly after Claude a change came over her. She mumbled that he was all right and became silent. Each time I asked about Dinard, the villa, or her mother a mutinous silence was my answer, and if I persisted she would reluctantly mumble something. I couldn’t blame her. She had run away from it all—as I had. I hadn’t wanted to think of it either.
In the morning she accompanied me to the Chaumière. Madame Rose allowed Kiki to lie at her feet under the table at which she sat checking the students and taking their admission tickets. Thalia was allowed to work in the croquis or quick sketch room. Here she made friends with a charming French boy, Guy, who wasn’t much older than she was. Her drawing was quite as good as that of many of the adults there. The students liked her. They found her amusing, eccentric—refreshing. She had quite a success. When we went back to the Place Delambre in the evening after leaving Kiki with Buddy, she looked happier than I had seen her since the day she’d been dressed as Nefertiti.
In the evening we went to Eugénie’s little pavillon, where she made even Théodore laugh. He was unusually melancholy that evening, having had a letter from his wife saying that she couldn’t manage the hairdresser’s business and would he please come back. But Thalia made him laugh with her imitation of Monsieur Prinet giving a criticism to a spoilt young student, and with a brilliant impersonation of an American lady who told the astonished master that she reckoned it would take her just one year to paint as Cézanne did.
‘She’s clever. Very clever. She’s a born mimic. She must study languages and elocution and singing too. Then if she studied deportment and went to a school of drama she would be wonderful. . . .’
He said all this with the air of the business man who always has an eye on a possible investment.
‘D’you hear that, Thalia?’ I said delightedly. ‘It’s exactly what I’m always telling you.’
‘I’m too ugly,’ she said, dejectedly.
‘Mademoiselle, you have a face of india-rubber! It can become anything! Anything or anyone you wish. You have something much more valuable than beauty. Pretty girls are two a penny. What you have is as rare as an albino! You mustn’t waste this talent. You must train it!’ Then, looking sharply at her, he said, ‘What imbecile has cut your hair?’ We said meekly that we’d been to a hairdresser on the Boulevard.
‘Wasting your money on unskilled fools. Eugénie, bring my sharp scissors.’
He cut not only Thalia’s shorn hair to a far more attractive line, but trimmed mine to a neater, more shapely length.
‘I’d better get into training again,’ he said sadly. ‘My poor Annemarie can’t manage—and without money from the shop they can’t eat and I can’t stay here.’
‘Oh, Rachel, I’m so happy. I love it here. I’d like to stay here always with you,’ Thalia cried as we walked back along the streets full of people as in the day, the cafés packed with gay throngs, music drifting from some, the sound of dancing and pleasure from others. I reflected as we wandered slowly, taking in all the vivid pulsating night life round us, that until now I hadn’t really laughed the whole time I’d been in Paris. I’d found the Hell of which Marie had such a horror a singularly sad place. Since Thalia’s arrival I had scarcely stopped laughing. She seemed hysterically gay, and her eyes were brighter than I’d ever seen them. ‘Tell me,’ I said as we climbed, giggling, up the five flights of stairs to Madame Robert’s, ‘can you think of any resemblance between the heart and a cat?’
She began giggling more violently. ‘What is it—a riddle?’
‘No. Someone said that the heart resembled a cat—how?’
She thought a while, climbing slowly and stumblingly behind me. ‘Some people say that the cat has nine lives,’ she said, thoughtfully.
‘And you? What do you think?’
‘I don’t know about cats—but as to the heart—mine has only one life—and so, I’m afraid, has yours.’
In the night I was awakened by the sound of her weeping. I sat up. ‘What is it? What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing. Nothing. I had a bad dream. That’s all.’
But she wept again the next night—and in the morning she was pale and puffy-eyed.
No answer came to my telegram to Cynthia and I was puzzled and worried. For now my conscience was making itself doubly felt. Buddy and Eugénie kept urging me to take Thalia back. ‘You’ll get into serious trouble if the mother likes to lodge a complaint,’ said Eugénie. ‘I like the child. She’s an original—an unusual type—but you can’t keep her here indefinitely. How are you going to manage for money?’
In the intervals in the painting room Buddy argued vehemently with me. ‘You must take her back—she’s not sixteen yet, is she?’
‘She will be very soon.’
‘Rachel, you can’t possibly keep her here. You’ve no money for yourself, let alone her. Do be sensible.’
‘I can’t go back to that place. Everyone there knows about Armand and me.’
‘Would it make it any easier if I came back with you?’
I stared at him uncertainly. ‘Meaning what?’
‘Meaning just that. Would it make you feel any better?’
‘Yes, I think it would. But I can’t go back even to please you, Buddy darling.’
Later we sat sipping an apéritif. Thalia and her friend Guy had taken Kiki for a walk.
‘Listen, Rachel. You ought to go back to that woman in Dinard. You don’t want to—but you must. You gave your promise to that girl’s father, didn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I agreed resentfully.
‘If you don’t go back you’re going to feel pretty mean later on. Your own father’ll be upset. He’s upset now, isn’t he? So’s your aunt.’
‘They don’t understand.’
‘Rachel, I’ve got to go back, too—and I hate leaving Paris as much as you do. I’m twenty-five. You’re eighteen—all right, eighteen and a half. You’ve got talent. I haven’t. No, don’t contradict. It’s been a hard pill to swallow, but I’ve swallowed it at last. I’ll never be a painter. Never. So I’m going back to the States. If I can do that—couldn’t you go back to that woman? It’s only for a few months more and you’ll be in London at the Slade.’
I hesitated. He was such a darling person. I liked him more than anyone I’d met. Why, oh why couldn’t I fall in love with someone like him?
‘Well—is it a deal?’ he said, grinning just as Judy did.
‘You’ll come with us?’
‘Yes. I want to see Judy and my young niece. I’ll take you both back—and it had better be at once.’
‘To-morrow,’ I said drearily.
We drank to it very sadly and sat there looking at the plane trees on the Boulevard. At the grey houses with their grey shutters, at the gay awnings of the cafés, at the flower sellers and the vendors of snails, postcards, newspapers. At the five rows of wicker chairs in the Dôme, at the tall iron plant stands with their cascading greenery, at the brazier still burning although it was May. They were suddenly, inexpressibly dear to us both.
‘We’ll come back,’ said Buddy.
‘We’ll come back,’ I said. But when, when? I thought wretchedly. And if we come back it’ll never be like this again, never as enticing, as exciting, as lovely. Next time it’ll all be different—because we’ll be different people.
When Thalia joined us with Guy we told her of our decision. She stared at me unbelievingly, sat down at the table, pushing the dog under her legs, then she said passionately, ‘I can’t go back. You don’t understand. I can’t. I can’t. Never. Never. I didn’t think you’d give in, Rachel.’
‘It’s not a question of giving in,’ I said wretchedly. ‘I just haven’t the money to keep myself here—let alone you.’
‘We can work. I’ve had to scrub and polish and cook since you left. I’ve done the whole villa. Let’s work.’
‘We can’t get a work permit,’ I said bluntly, ‘I’v
e tried—Eugénie has been into all that for me already.’
‘So you’re going back to her. You’ll be working there all right.’
‘There’s no alternative. We’re going to-morrow.’
I was going with Buddy to a party that night. We debated what to do with Thalia. I was for taking her with us. I felt that she shouldn’t be left alone.
‘She’s too young for such a party. She must stay with the old Frenchwoman.’
‘She’s not young at all,’ I said. ‘She was born knowing more than most people ever find out.’
‘Listen, honey. We can’t take her. It’s out of the question.’ He was adamant.
Madame took the news of our intending departure very calmly. She had been afraid something was wrong because of all the telegrams. She had another young woman waiting for my room. ‘Your little sister can stay and talk to me this evening,’ she said. ‘And the dog can stay too, if your American friend will remove him for the night.’
I was sorry I had given Thalia Kiki. Instead of easing matters he was an added complication. She wouldn’t go anywhere without him. I had told Madame Robert that Thalia was my sister. I didn’t know why, except that it would have been difficult for her to refuse a sister where she might have refused a friend.
I felt dreadful at leaving Thalia there. I had seldom met a more funereal companion than our landlady. Her conversation tended to run on two topics—cemeteries and unfaithful men. Her husband had run off with his young secretary and she had been obliged to divorce him.
Thalia, whose face was bleak and old since I’d told her we were going back, wouldn’t look at me when I said good-bye. She assured me stiffly that she’d be all right. ‘If she gets on to cemeteries I shall tell her about the burning ghats in India and how they haven’t always enough fuel and bits of the corpse float down the Ganges,’ she said with satisfaction. I hoped her French wouldn’t be adequate, but it had improved out of all recognition since she’d come to Paris. I heard her talking fluently and very intelligently to Guy, who knew no English.
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