“Yes.”
He looked at her, and broke into a smile. “Well, then, we’re square, aren’t we? I thought you’d be so amused if I proposed.” He saw the look of surprise that came over her face. “I’ve not taken you in, have I? By Jove! I was awfully afraid that you’d accept.”
“Didn’t you want me to?” she cried.
“I don’t know what I should have done if you had. It was rather risky, wasn’t it?”
“You absolute brute,” she exclaimed. She looked at him doubtfully, and then, seeing his amusement, “You did mean it, Bertie — I know you did.”
“I will be a brother to you, Mrs. Parnaby.”
“Oh, I will punish you for this,” she answered, laughing in spite of herself.
“I shall be on my guard.”
She opened the trap and told the cabman to drive back to Curzon Street. It was very hard to bear Bertie’s triumph, for she had meant to give him a fall, and it looked much as though she had suffered one instead.
“Good-bye,” she said, when they arrived at the door of the house into which she was going. “When shall I see you again?”
“Oh, very soon, I hope.”
III
Somewhat to her surprise she heard him direct the cabman to Cook’s office in Piccadilly, and when she was told two days later that he was gone to Homburg, Mrs. Parnaby wondered what he meant. His journey did not much disturb her, for she soon concluded he had done it merely to annoy, and within a week would be home again clamouring at her door. But the week passed, and there was no sign of him. Mrs. Parnaby asked herself if he had taken her refusal seriously. A second week went by, and she missed him more than she would have thought possible; a third week, and she grew very cross; a month, and she discovered to her consternation that she could think of nothing but Bertie Shenton. She had meant to amuse herself, and, behold, she was head over ears in love; it was very inconvenient and very absurd, and she did not know what to do. She tormented herself with all sorts of reasons to explain his absence, and once or twice, like the spoilt child she was, cried. But Mrs. Parnaby was a sensible woman, and soon made up her mind that if she could not live without the man she had better take steps to procure his presence. She wired to ask if she might come to tea at his house on the following Friday; he answered that he would be away; but, nothing daunted, she telegraphed again, more peremptorily this time, to announce her fixed determination to drink tea with him on the day mentioned. She duly went, and, of course, found him waiting for her. “So you’ve come back,” she said, as she shook hands with him.
“I was just passing through town,” he answered coldly.
“From where to where?”
“From Homburg to the Italian Lakes.”
“Rather out of your way, isn’t it?”
“Not at all,” he replied. “If I were going from Liverpool to Manchester I should break the journey in London. That’s one of my hobbies.”
“Why d’you think I telegraphed to you the other day?”
“Because you’re the most disgraceful flirt I’ve ever seen in my life,” he answered promptly.
She opened her eyes very wide. “My dear Bertie, have you never contemplated yourself in a looking-glass?”
“You’re not a bit repentant of the harm you’ve wrought.”
She did not answer, but looked at him with a smile so entirely delightful that he cried out irritably: “I wish you wouldn’t look like that.”
“How am I looking?”
“To my innocent and inexperienced gaze very much as if you wanted to be kissed.”
“You brute! I’ll never speak to you again.”
“Why d’you make such rash statements? You know you couldn’t hold your tongue for two minutes together.”
“I never can get a word in edgeways when I’m with you. You’re such a chatterbox,” she answered, crossly.
“Upon my word, I don’t see why you should pretend to have a grievance,” he said. “It’s I who ought to be furious.”
“You behaved very unkindly to me a month ago,” she complained, trying to prevent a smile.
“You don’t think of my injured feelings. You forget that for the last four weeks I’ve been laboriously piecing together the fragments of a broken heart.”
“It was entirely your fault,” she laughed. “If you hadn’t been so conceited and certain that I was going to accept you I should never have refused. I couldn’t resist the temptation of saying no just to see what you did.”
“I flatter myself that I took it very well.”
“You didn’t,” she answered. “You showed an entire lack of humour. You might have known that a nice woman doesn’t accept a man the first time he asks her. It was very silly of you to go off to Homburg as if you didn’t care. How was I to know that you meant to wait a month before asking me again?”
“I haven’t the least intention of asking you again.”
“Then why on earth did you invite me to come and have tea?”
“May I respectfully remind you that you invited yourself?” he protested.
“Don’t go into irrelevant details,” she commanded.
“Now, don’t be cross with me.”
“I shall be cross. You’re not being at all nice.”
He looked at her thoughtfully for a little while, and his eyes twinkled.
“Do you know what I’d do if I were you?”
“No, what?”
“Well, I can’t suffer the humiliation of another refusal. Why don’t you propose to me — just for a change?”
“What cheek!” Their eyes met, and she smiled. “What will you say if I do?”
“That depends on how you do it.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Yes, you do,” he insisted. “You gave me an admirable lesson. First you go on your bended knees and then you say you’re quite unworthy of me.”
“You are the most spiteful creature I’ve ever known. You’re just the sort of man who’d beat his wife.”
“Every Saturday night regularly,” he agreed.
She hesitated, but saw in him no signs of yielding.
“Bertie, I am a widow, twenty-nine years of age, extremely eligible. My maid is a treasure, my dressmaker is charming, I’m clever enough to laugh at your jokes, and not so learned as to know where they come from.”
“Really you’re very long-winded. I said it all in four words.”
“So could I if I might write it down.” She stretched out her hands and he took her in his arms. “You might let me off, Bertie.”
“No, I won’t,” he laughed.
“You know I don’t really want to marry you a bit. I’m only doing it to please you....You will say yes if I ask you, won’t you?”
“I’ll see when the time comes.”
“Will you marry me?”
She said it quite indifferently as though she were asking what o’clock it was.
“Of course, I will, you silly,” he answered.
“I never saw any one make such a fuss about so insignificant a detail as marriage.”
She tried to draw away from him, but he held her fast, and, smiling, took a ring from his pocket.
“I’ve got a little present for you. I bought it this morning.” She looked at him.
“Then you meant to ask me all the time?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, I wish I’d known that before.”
He laughed, and the rest of their conversation concerns nobody.
THE FORTUNATE PAINTER
“Let the great book of the world be your principal study.” — Chesterfield.
There were times when Charlie Bartle could take his straitened circumstances with a light heart. When the sky was blue and the air of Paris, keen yet balmy, was more exhilarating than wine, his studio in the Rue Breda lost its shabbiness. On such days as these he went down into the street and watched gay ladies make their purchases for luncheon. The disarray of their costume in the morning contrasted with the splendour with
which he had seen them emerge from their houses the night before. They lingered on the door of greengrocers, bargaining for their vegetables with the strenuousness of model housewives. Several had sat for him, and with these he exchanged the gossip of the quarter. Then, his eyes filled with the vivacity of that scene, he returned to his studio, and sought to place on canvas the dancing sunlight of the Parisian street. He felt in him the courage to paint masterpieces. But when grey clouds and rain made the colours on his palette scarcely distinguishable from one another, his mood changed. He could scarcely bear the dingy shabbiness of his studio. He looked with distaste at the picture on which he had been working for a month, and saw that it was bad. His poverty appalled him.
It was on such an occasion that Charles Bartle sat, pipe in mouth, contemplating with deep discouragement the work of his hands. He smoked gloomily. Presently, with a sigh, he took a palette-knife and prepared to scrape down all that he had done. There was a knock at the door.
“Come in,” cried Charlie, looking round.
It was slowly opened by a little old man, with a bald head, a hooked nose of immense size, and a grey beard. He was shabbily dressed, but the rings on his finger, the diamond in his tie, and his massive watch-chain suggested that it was not from poverty.
“Monsieur Leir!” said Charlie, with a smile. “Come in. I’m delighted to see you.”
“I knew you couldn’t paint in this weather, so I thought I shouldn’t be in your way.”
He came into the room and looked at Bartle’s unfinished canvas. The painter watched him anxiously, but no change in the Frenchman’s expression betrayed his opinion.
“Do you think it’s utterly rotten?” asked Charlie.
“My dear fellow, you young men are so impatient. You buy a canvas, and you buy paints, and you think you can produce marvels immediately. You won’t give time to it, and you won’t give patience. The old masters weren’t in such a hurry. Read Vasari and you’ll see how they worked.”
Charles Bartle impatiently threw aside his palette-knife.
“I wish I’d been a crossing-sweeper rather than a painter. It’s a dog’s life that I lead. I do without everything that gives happiness, and I don’t even do work that’s fit to look at.”
Monsieur Leir sat down, took from his waistcoat pocket the stump of an unfinished cigar, rubbed the charred end with his finger, and lit it. He smoked this with apparent satisfaction. In his day he had known many painters. Some had succeeded, but most had failed, and he knew that the profession, even for the fortunate, was very hard. Genius itself starved at times, and recognition often did not arrive till a man was too embittered to enjoy it. But he liked artists, and found a peculiar satisfaction in their society. And this was only natural, for they had made his fortune. Monsieur Leir was a dealer. He had early seen the merit of the impressionists, had bought their pictures systematically, thus saving many of them from disaster and, at the same, benefiting himself, and finally sold them when the world discovered that Manet, Monet, and Sisley were great painters. His only daughter had married Rudolf Kuhn, a dealer in New York, so Monsieur Leir felt justified in spending the years that remained to him in a condition of opulent idleness. But he flattered himself that the painters whose works he had bought for a song were his friends as well as his customers, and it pleased him still to potter about the studios of those who yet lived. When Charlie Bartle settled in the house in which he himself had an apartment, Monsieur Leir gladly made his acquaintance. The young man was delighted to hear stories of the wild life they led in Montmartre in the ‘seventies, and he was taken, too, by the kindliness of the retired dealer. There was an unaffected amiability in Monsieur Leir’s manner, which led the foreigner quickly to pour into his sympathetic ear his troubles and his ambitions. The dealer was a lonely man, and he soon began to feel a certain affection for the young painter. Now that he was no longer in the trade, he could afford to put charms of manner before talent, and the mediocrity of his friend’s work touched his gentle old heart.
“It’s one of your bad days, mon vieux,” said the dealer.
“I wish to goodness I was a dealer, like you,” laughed Charlie. “At least I shouldn’t be worried to death by the approach of quarter-day.”
“The picture-trade is no place for an honest man now,” returned Monsieur Leir, reflectively. “It was all very well in the old days, when we had it in our own hands. We drove hard bargains, but it was all above-board. But now the Christians have taken to it, there’s a good deal too much hocus-pocus.”
“I simply can’t go on this way. I have to pay three hundred francs for my rent to-morrow, and I shan’t have a penny left to buy myself bread and butter for the next month. No one will buy a picture.”
Monsieur Leir looked at him with good-natured eyes, but he said nothing. Charlie glanced at the portrait of a very pretty girl, which stood in solitary splendour, magnificently framed, on the chimney-piece.
“I had a letter from Rosie this morning. Her people want her to give me up. They say there’s not the least chance of my ever earning any money.”
“But will she do that?” asked the dealer.
“No, of course not,” answered Charlie, with decision. “She’s a good girl. But it means waiting, waiting, waiting; and our youth is going, and we shall grow sore with hope deferred. When at last we marry we shall be disillusionised and bitter.”
He sighed deeply. He brooded with despair on the future, and the old man did not venture to disturb him. He watched the painter with compassion. At last, however, he spoke.
“What are the exact conditions on which the father of your fiancée will allow you to marry her?”
“They’re insane. You see, she has five thousand pounds of her own. He refuses to consent to our marriage unless I can produce the same sum or show that I am earning two hundred and fifty a year. And the worst of it is that I can’t help acknowledging he’s right. I don’t want Rosie to endure hardships.”
“You know that my daughter’s husband is a dealer in New York,” returned Monsieur Leir, presently. “I vowed when I sold off my stock that I would never deal in pictures again, but I’m fond of you, my friend, and I should like to help you. Show me your stuff, and I’ll send it to Rudolf; he may be able to sell it in America.”
“That would be awfully good of you,” cried Charlie.
The dealer sat down while Bartle placed on his easel one after the other his finished pictures. There were, perhaps, a dozen, and Monsieur Leir looked at them without a word. For the moment he had gone back to his old state, and he allowed no expression to betray his feelings. No one could have told from that inscrutable gaze whether he thought the painting good or bad.
“That’s the lot,” said Charlie, at length. “D’you think the American public will seize their opportunity, and allow us to marry?”
“What is that?” asked the dealer quietly, pointing to the last canvas, its face against the wall, which Bartle had not shown him.
Without a word the painter produced it and fixed it on the easel. Monsieur Leir gave a slight start, and the indifference of his expression vanished.
“Watteau!” he cried. “But, my dear fellow, how did you get that? You talk of poverty and you have a Watteau. Why, I can sell that for you in America for double the sum you want.”
“Look at it carefully,” smiled Charlie.
The dealer went up to the picture and peered into it. His eyes glittered with delight. It represented a group of charming persons by the side of a lake. It was plain that the ladies, so decadent and dainty, discussed preciously with swains, all gallant in multi-coloured satins, the verses of Racine or the letters of Madame de Sévigné. The placid water reflected white clouds, and the trees were russet already with approaching autumn. It was a stately scene, with its green woodland distance, and the sober opulence of oak and elm; and it suggested ease and long tending. Those yellows and greens and reds glowed with mellow light.
“It’s one of the few Watteaus I’ve ever seen with
a signature,” said the dealer.
“You flatter me,” said Charlie. “Of course, it’s only a copy. The original belonged to some old ladies in England whom I knew; and last summer, when it rained, I spent my days in copying it. I suppose chance guided my hand happily; everyone agreed it was not badly done.”
“A copy?” cried Monsieur Leir. “A copy? Where is the original? Would your friends sell it?”
“The ruling instinct is as strong as ever,” laughed the painter. “Unfortunately, a month after I finished this the house was burnt down, and everything was destroyed.”
The dealer drew a deep breath, and for a moment meditated. He looked at Charlie sharply.
“Didn’t you say you wanted three hundred francs for your rent?” he asked, very quietly. “I’ll buy that copy off you.”
“Nonsense, I’ll give it you. You’re taking no end of trouble for me, and you’ve been awfully kind.”
“You’re a fool, my friend,” answered Monsieur Leir. “Write me out a receipt for the money.”
He took from his pocket-book three bank-notes and laid them on the table. Bartle hesitated for an instant, but he wanted the money badly. He shrugged his shoulders. He sat down and wrote the receipt. But as he was about to give it, an idea came to him and he quickly drew it back.
“Look here, you’re not going to try any hanky-panky tricks, are you? I won’t sell you the copy unless you give me your word that you won’t try and pass it off as an original.”
A quiet smile passed across the dealer’s lips.
“You can easily reassure yourself. Just paint out the signature and put your name on the top of it.”
Without a word, Bartle did as the old man suggested, and presently his own name was neatly painted in place of the master’s.
“I don’t mistrust you,” he said, as he handed the receipt, “but it’s well not to put temptation in the way of wily dealers.”
Monsieur Leir laughed as he pocketed the document and took the Watteau in his hand. He pointed with a slightly disdainful finger at Bartle’s pictures.
“I’m going to take the copy along with me, and I’ll send my femme de ménage for the others,” he said. But at the door he stopped. “I like your pictures, my friend, and when Rudolf knows that I take an interest in you, I dare say he’ll be able to sell them. Don’t be surprised if in another month I come and tell you that you can marry your fiancée.”
Delphi Collected Works of W. Somerset Maugham (Illustrated) Page 280