Paris: The Novel

by Edward Rutherfurd

  She did not hear a murmured conversation between her parents in their bedroom that night, however.

  “I like Fox,” said Jules. “It’s a pity he’s a Protestant.”

  “So do I,” agreed his wife. “But he’s Protestant, all the same.”

  “Yes. It’s a pity, though.”

  Nor did she hear a conversation a few days later when her aunt arrived to see her father.

  “My dear Jules, it’s time to forgive your son.”

  “Why?”

  “The Petit girl is installed in England. Her daughter is safely born and she has been adopted by a charming family like our own. Our troubles in this matter are over. The Petit family have disowned their daughter, which I consider an abomination, but sadly it’s what many others would have done. The conventions of society are cruel. But Marc has been punished enough. God knows he has done nothing worse than many other young men of his age.”

  “He hasn’t been punished at all.”

  “Of course he has.”

  “He seems to live quite well, after I stopped his allowance.”

  “He gets commissions.”

  Jules looked at his sister affectionately.

  “How much are you giving him, Éloïse?”

  “If I were, I wouldn’t tell you.”

  “He’s not suffering at all.”

  “He is suffering by being deprived of his father and mother.”

  “It must be killing him.”

  “More than you know. He loves you.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  Marc and Hadley arrived at Fontainebleau for the last ten days of August. For Marie, it was a magical time. Sometimes they would go into the forest to sketch, and she would go with them, taking a book and a sketch pad herself, to keep them company. She and her mother conducted Hadley around the château, which he preferred to Versailles. In particular he liked the old tapestries that showed the courtly hunting scenes in their deep, rich colors.

  In the evenings everyone would sit out on the veranda. Her father would often read the paper then, and Marc and Hadley would chat, while she quietly listened. At Marc’s prompting, Hadley would talk easily about his childhood, of tobogganing in the snow, of his rowing days at university, or his year of ranching. Sometimes he would mention little things. “When I was eighteen, my father gave me a pair of wooden hairbrushes. Dark hickory, with my initials carved on the back. I always take them with me. Some people have fancy ivory brushes, but I wouldn’t change the hickory brushes my father gave me for anything in the world.”

  He talked of his parents also.

  “If I like to travel, I dare say I get it from them,” he remarked once. “My father usually had spare time in the summer. Before I was born, they went to Japan, to England, to Egypt. And they’d take us children to all kinds of places too. When I marry,” he added easily, “I hope my wife will want to travel with me. It’s a wonderful thing to share.”

  She listened to these and other things until, she thought, she knew everything about him.

  One evening on the veranda, after they had spent the afternoon walking through the forest to nearby Barbizon where Corot had painted, Hadley threw back his head and closed his eyes.

  “You know, I feel as if I’ve entered a beautiful, unchanging world,” he confessed to them. “There’s a softness in the light, a sort of echo everywhere in the landscape. I can’t really put it into words.”

  “Everyone is seduced by the French countryside,” said Marc. “But you should also understand that we French are so conscious of our history—it’s everywhere around us—that we all feel as if we have lived many times before.” He smiled. “This may be a delusion, but it’s a rich one, and it gives us comfort.”

  “We also find comfort in the Church,” his mother added.

  “Same wine, same cheeses,” said Jules pleasantly. “Once a Frenchman, always a Frenchman.”

  “French life has so much charm,” said Hadley with a contented sigh. “I could imagine living here.”

  Could Hadley really live in France? Marie wondered. She tried to imagine him living in the house in Fontainebleau. She thought of his sketches on the wall of the passage that led to the kitchen; the picture of the Gare Saint-Lazare she would give him, in the salon perhaps; and his hairbrushes, on the table in her father’s dressing room.

  Or would he live in America, and travel like his parents? He could have a house in France, she thought, and spend every summer here. Why not? His children could be bilingual.

  One afternoon, Hadley and Marc were painting in the garden, and she came out to look at what they were doing. Hadley was painting a flower bed which contained some magnificent peonies in full bloom. So far, his painting looked like a glowing, almost formless sea of color.

  “I see what it is, but I’d never have thought of it like that,” she said.

  “The difficulty isn’t putting the paint on the canvas,” he answered quietly. “It’s seeing what you’re painting. I mean, looking at it without any preconceptions about what it’s supposed to look like. If you think you know what a peony looks like, then you’ll never be able to paint it. You have to look at everything with fresh eyes, which is difficult.”

  “I can understand that in painting and drawing, I think. I don’t think it works for other arts, does it?”

  “There are some writers who are trying to do something similar. Especially in France. The symbolists like the poet Mallarmé. And there are political revolutionaries too, who say we should start all over again and decide what the rules of society should be. After all, they were doing that when they destroyed the monarchy and attacked religion back in the days of the French Revolution.” He smiled. “I dare say people have always been changing the rules ever since the Greeks invented democracy or man invented the wheel.”

  “So do you want to change the world?”

  “No. Because the world’s been pretty good to me. But I like to try to discover the truth about how things look.”

  She left him to his work and went back to the shade of the veranda. Then she took out her sketch pad. She started a drawing of the puppy. It wasn’t any good, but if anyone asked what she was drawing, she’d have that to show them. Meanwhile, as her father buried himself in his newspaper, she turned to a fresh sheet underneath the drawing of the puppy, and she started to draw Hadley.

  She tried to do exactly as he said, and just look at exactly what she saw. At first it didn’t seem right, but gradually she realized that by concentrating her eye, she had produced exactly the line of his jaw, and his powerful neck, and the way his hair tumbled down in its strong, unruly way. And she found herself smiling as she realized how perfectly she knew him.

  Later she and her mother went into the kitchen, and she helped the cook prepare the evening meal. And she insisted that the strawberry flan, which she knew Hadley loved, should be made entirely by her own hand.

  Just before the end of August, James Fox called in on his return from Burgundy. One could see he’d been out in the open air. He looked fit and well.

  Since the whole family was planning to return to Paris the following day, they suggested he should stay the night so that they could all go back together.

  They had a large lunch that lasted until three in the afternoon. Then, rather than doze on the veranda, the whole family went for a walk to the old château—the two Blanchard parents, Marc and Marie, Fox, Hadley, and the puppy too. They walked about in the park for a while. It was hot. The little puppy was running about excitedly, but in the end even he got tired and sank contentedly into the slow lethargy of the August afternoon.

  As they returned, the dusty streets of Fontainebleau seemed half asleep. The roadway glared in the sun while the houses, some stone gray, some brick, were shuttered against the brightness, getting what coolness they could from the sharp shadows falling from the eaves. As they reached the road that led to the house, they were the only people in the street, apart from a coachman dozing in a trap, drawn by a singl
e horse, that was waiting outside one of the houses for someone to come out.

  “The puppy’s on his last legs,” Marie remarked to Fox. “I’d carry him if we weren’t so close to home.”

  The little spaniel had been dragging his feet for some time. But curiosity had given him the energy to inspect a small bundle lying in the roadway. Marie glanced back and shrugged. The road was quiet.

  It was a second later that they heard the loud bang of a shutter that someone had opened carelessly. Obviously they had opened the window as well, for there was a sudden flash as the glass caught the sun.

  It was nothing. But it was enough to spook the horse in the waiting trap. Throwing its head up, it plunged forward, and before the dozing coachman could gather his wits and fumble for the reins, the trap was surging down the street.

  The puppy did not see the trap coming up behind him. If he heard it, he took no notice. He was interested in the bundle, and its curious smells.

  Marie screamed. Everyone turned to look.

  She would never have believed that Fox, who was a tall man, could move so fast. Racing toward the puppy, he dived, scooped up the tiny dog in one hand, went into a roll and as the trap missed him by inches, emerged lying on the roadway with the puppy held above his head.

  “Mon Dieu,” gasped Marc. A half second’s error and the Englishman could have been seriously injured.

  “Nice move,” called Hadley admiringly.

  Fox stood up. He was dusty and one of his sleeves was torn.

  “Cricket,” he said. “Fielding practice.”

  “Ah, Monsieur Fox,” cried Marie’s mother gratefully.

  But Marie was ahead of her. She ran up to Fox and kissed him on the cheek.

  For just a moment Jules frowned. Not that he was shocked, but Marie wasn’t supposed to do that.

  Fox saw it.

  “Well,” he said to them all, with great good humor, “if I’d known I was going to get a kiss …” He strode across to Jules and handed him the puppy. “Would you be so kind, monsieur, as to place this puppy in the road, so that I can do it again!”

  Jules laughed, and relaxed. But his wife was looking at Fox’s arm.

  “You are bleeding, my dear Fox,” she said.

  “It’s nothing. I’ll get cleaned up as soon as we’re back.”

  The letter was waiting for him in Paris on his arrival back at his studio. The next day, when Hadley came around, Marc showed it to him.

  Mon Chéri,

  Welcome back. I long for you. Every time we make love, I only want you more, and I believe it’s the same for you.

  But now, chéri, the time has come to make a decision. Is it going to be better than this with someone else, for you, or for me? I don’t believe so.

  I want to have your babies. There is still time. You know that I am a woman of fortune. Why not make your life more easy? Why not have babies with a wife who loves you, instead of these mistresses who have children you have to hide?

  But if you decide that this is not what you want, if you don’t want to marry me, then although I love you, chéri, I am leaving you to find someone who will give me what I want, and what I deserve.

  Think about it. Je t’aime,

  H

  As he passed the letter to Hadley, Marc shrugged.

  “She wants to marry me.”

  “Evidently.”

  “What do you think?”

  “You could do worse. How do you feel about her?”

  “She never bores me. There is always something new. She has …”—he searched for words—“a ruthless intelligence.”

  “Ruthless?”

  “It fascinates me. And I also get a lot of work done when she’s around.”

  “Marry her.”

  “She’s older than me.”

  “That’s not everything. She looks as if she’ll age well.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what my parents would think.”

  “If you marry a woman with a small fortune and stay out of trouble, Marc, I suspect they can live with it.” Hadley shook his head. “You’ll have to make a commitment, that’s all.”

  “But I’ve never made a commitment in my life,” Marc objected.

  “You could start.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’ll lose her. I don’t think it’s an idle threat. She’ll go.” He stared at Marc. “I guess the question is, can you live without her?”

  “I can live without everybody.”

  Hadley sighed.

  “Spoken like a true artist.”

  Marc looked at him in surprise.

  “You think so?”

  “They say that most artists are monsters. Not all. But most.”

  “I meant, do you think I’m a true artist?”

  “Oh, I see.” Hadley smiled. “Well, at least you’re a monster. Be grateful for that.”

  He handed the letter back to Marc, who put it on the table.

  “By the way,” said Marc, “I promised Marie that we’d meet her at rue Laffitte. We’d better get going. I’ll think about Hortense on the way.”

  The Vollard gallery was just up the street from the older Durand-Ruel gallery. Its owner was a gruff fellow. Unlike Durand-Ruel, he did not support artists. “He churns work, buys a lot cheap and sells it quickly. But he has the most interesting shows, all the same,” Marc had told Hadley. “In ’95, he had a big show of Cézanne, who most people had never heard of, and made quite a name for himself.”

  They waited awhile for Marie to arrive, but as she didn’t, they made themselves known to the owner.

  Vollard was a large, sharp-eyed, bearded man. Marc asked to see a Cézanne. “He’ll deliberately ignore what I asked for and bring something else,” he whispered to Hadley, and sure enough Vollard returned a few moments later with a painting by Gauguin, a scene from Tahiti.

  They gazed at the strange, exotic colors.

  “It’s powerful. Astonishing,” said Hadley.

  “Come back in two months,” Vollard told them. “I’m having a big Gauguin show.”

  “What else would you like to show us?” asked Marc.

  “What about this?” Vollard produced a small painting of the French countryside, the Midi somewhere, by the look of it. In some ways there were hints of similarity with the Gauguin painting. But there was a strange nervousness, a sort of cosmic urgency and fear in the work that was hard to define.

  “Who’s this?” Hadley asked.

  “He died nearly a decade ago. His brother was a dealer. Small time, but good.” Vollard shrugged. “I bought some. Still got a few. They’re not expensive.” He didn’t sound very enthusiastic. “Van Gogh is the artist’s name.”

  “I haven’t heard of him,” Hadley confessed.

  “Not many people have,” said Marc. “Buy one if you like it.” He smiled. “Just don’t expect to make any money from it.”

  They looked at some more work, hoping that Marie might still appear, but she didn’t. After half an hour, they left. On the way back to Marc’s studio, they stopped for a drink.

  Marie was so annoyed with herself. She’d been shopping with her mother and mistaken the time. When she reached Vollard’s gallery, he told her she’d missed her brother by ten minutes.

  It was hardly a fifteen-minute walk from the gallery to her brother’s studio, so she thought she’d go over there to apologize.

  When she got to the street door, she found it open, so she mounted the stairs. At the door of the studio, she knocked and listened, but heard no sound. She tried the door. It opened.

  “Marc?” she called.

  Silence. Obviously he hadn’t gotten back yet. She wondered whether to leave again, but thought she might as well wait a little while. Then, if he didn’t appear, she could always leave him a note.

  She moved around in the studio, looked out the window, glanced at the stacks of paintings. She was quite tempted to look at them, but thought that he wouldn’t like it if she disturbed them.

 
She sat down to wait. Twenty minutes passed. Perhaps he’d gone somewhere else, and it would make more sense to leave him a note. She looked around for some paper and something to write with. There was a letter already lying on the table. Idly, she picked it up. Mon Chéri, it began. A private letter, obviously. She shouldn’t read it. She left it alone. She glanced at it again. She read it.

  Then she heard steps coming up the stairs. Marc’s voice. Hadley’s too.

  She quickly sat down again and tried to look unconcerned. But she was very pale.

  Marc was surprised to see Marie sitting in his studio, but he smiled.

  “We missed you at Vollard’s,” he cried. “Did you think we were meeting here?”

  “No. It’s my fault. I was shopping with Maman. I got there just after you left. I came round to apologize.”

  Something wasn’t right. She looked pale. Her voice sounded unnatural. He glanced at the table and saw the letter from Hortense.

  He thought quickly. Personally he didn’t care what Marie knew, but his parents did. Whereas if his American friend had been a naughty fellow, it wouldn’t matter to anyone. Casually he picked up the letter, and handed it to Hadley.

  “You shouldn’t leave things lying around, mon ami,” he murmured.

  Thank God Hadley had a quick brain. He read the situation at once.

  “Ah,” he said quietly, folded the letter, and put it in his pocket.

  They chatted for a few moments. It was hard to tell whether Marie had read the letter or not, and Marc certainly wasn’t going to ask her. Then, after apologizing again for missing them at the gallery, Marie said that she had to get back home.

  After she’d gone, Marc turned to Hadley.

  “Thanks for getting me out of that one,” he said. “Have I ruined your reputation forever?”

  Hadley handed him back the letter.

  “Your sister’s well brought up,” he said. “I don’t suppose she even read it.”

  Half an hour later, Aunt Éloïse was most astonished when Marie arrived unexpectedly at her apartment. She was looking distraught.