CHAPTER VIII

THE END OF THE GUITAR

One effort and then another, and little by little Phil freed himself. So far his health could stand it. He had glimpses of better days. Along with his will his talent also grew strong. His progress was rapid; step by step he mounted upward; and the horizon grew wider before him.

The day when it was certain that Phil would have his Salon medal, Socrate drank off his absinthe savagely and declared:

“That fellow is lost!”

In a few words he put the case before the comrades.

Phil, the Phil they had known as such a “seeker,” with so much personality, was knuckling down! He was turning bourgeois—he was going to have his medal! In other words, he was down on his knees to tickle the soles of the feet of the old bonzes of the Academy!

“That’s no artist! not what I call an artist!” Socrate went on. And it was plain from the fashion in which Socrate ordered another absinthe that he, at least, would never come to terms! Good old Poufaille was dumb with admiration.

“What a pity Phil’s not here!” he thought.

A few days later he ran across Phil, who looked tired.

“You’re lost, you know; you’re in a bad way!” Poufaille said to him as soon as he saw him; and he added mysteriously: “You ought to go to see Socrate—such a wonderful man, _mon cher_!”

“Come on,” answered Phil, who wanted a walk.

They found Socrate at the café, smoking his pipe and talking art. Half hidden in a cloud of smoke, he raised his head and looked at Phil.

“You’re doing things that please. Look out—take care! You ought to do powerful things! Take any subject at all—a bottle, a pumpkin, if you wish! it doesn’t matter—only put your soul into it!”

“Put my soul into a bottle!” said Phil, amused.

Socrate did not admit any discussion of his pronouncements, and struck Phil dumb with a glance.

“I tell you, you must paint with your soul!”

“But I always do my best!” Phil said.

“_Peuh!_ your best!” Socrate had an expression of unspeakable pity for Phil’s best.

Caracal now and then put in a brief appearance at the Deux Magots, looking from Phil to Socrate and laughing to himself.

“Socrate is right; you ought to do high art! It would be very funny—you who are lucky enough to be the lover—”

“What?” cried Phil.

“—of an acrobat! There’s inspiration for you! The trapeze is high art; it soars—very high!”

“Another word and I’ll knock you down!” was Phil’s answer.

“Calm yourself, _mon cher_! calm yourself!”

But Phil meanwhile was changing visibly. The life he had been leading for some time had worn him out. He now worked less and less, and came more and more under the influence of Socrate. He expended his energy at the café, and in his turn traced out masterpieces on the table. He explained his ideas to Socrate, and discussed them until the landlord turned out the gas and wiped off the masterpieces with his napkin.

“Phil will go far!” Socrate said as he clapped him on the shoulder, adding like a truly superior man:

“You haven’t twenty francs about you?”

One day Socrate brought with him, wrapped up in a newspaper, an object which he laid on the bench.

“My guitar,” he said.

Socrate’s guitar! Every one was acquainted with it. Socrate, painter-poet-philosopher, was a musician as well. He “heard colors” and “saw sounds.” He had undertaken a gigantic work—to set the Louvre to music and make colors perceptible to the ear.

He took notes on the spot, colored photographs, and then came home and played them on his guitar with the hand of a genius. Violet was _si_; he made sol out of blue; green was a _fa_—and so on up to red, which was _do_.

Phil looked at the guitar with respect; and Socrate had an idea.

“_Tiens!_” he said with a noble air; “take my guitar. It has sounded the ‘Mona Lisa’—it has played Rubens and Raphael! It has thrilled with beauty; it contains the Louvre! My soul has vibrated within it! Do a masterpiece with it! Show on your canvas all that it holds! Take it! Carry it away with you!”

And Phil had taken away the guitar.

“All right,” he said the next day, “I will do a masterpiece. They shall see if I am an artist or a pork-packer.”

He resolved to “hatch a masterpiece” from this guitar which had thrilled with the soul of Socrate. From that time he went out no longer. He passed whole days in his room, distracted only by the cackling of the chicken in its corner, that brought him back to the realities of life.

“Ah, ha! You’re hungry, are you?” he said, as he threw the chicken some crumbs. Then he looked at the guitar as if he would say: “We’ll have it out together!”

Phil struggled. He dreamed and pondered, and hunted all sorts of material for his sketches. He went to the Louvre to study pictures that had guitars in them.

“The old masters knew nothing about guitars,” Phil said one evening at the café. Even the comrades laughed at this.

“How’s the guitar? Does it go?” they asked him.

They spoke only of guitars—guitar this and guitar that—as if all the _estudiantinas_ of all the Spains had met together at the Deux Magots.

“It will drive me crazy!” said Phil.

“You will produce a masterpiece,” replied Socrate.

One evening Phil came in radiant. “I have it!” he cried.

He explained his idea. Women had been painted in the moonlight, in the sunlight, and in the light of flames. _Eh bien!_ he, Phil, would light his woman with reflections from a guitar!

“You see, I have a woman’s head in shadow,” Phil explained to Socrate, as he made lines with his pencil on the table; “and the guitar itself is lighted up by a ray from heaven—do you understand? Music, an echo of heaven, enlightens our sad humanity!”

“Bravo!” exclaimed Socrate.

Poufaille, in his emotion, pressed Phil’s hand.

“I’ll give you a write-up!” said Caracal; “something really good.” But he added to himself: “So you’re painting echoes from heaven, pork-packer that you are!”

Phil, under the guidance of Socrate, began his picture. It was hard to set himself again to real work after so many months of doing nothing. He exhausted his strength and spirits over his canvas. He ate next to nothing and grew thin visibly; he lived merely a life of the brain.

“Oh, if I could only have a great success and get rich,” he said to himself, “I would have Helia come back!”

He wrote long letters to her. Helia’s replies breathed love and the lofty confidence she had in him. At the bottom of the page there was always a circle traced with a pen, and to this he touched his lips.

It was Helia whom he was painting in the background of his picture—a Helia illuminated by a strange light like a vision.

But Phil, worn out and bloodless, no longer had the strength to fix her features on canvas. He was all the time beginning over again, floundering in his powerlessness.

Every now and then Socrate came to see him and borrowed his last piece of money: “You haven’t five francs about you?—and this old overcoat, lend it to me till to-morrow!

“_Tiens!_ a chicken!” Socrate went on, continuing his inspection; and he winked at Phil and made a gesture of wringing the fowl’s neck—“like that! _couïc!_” Then he looked at the picture.

“It doesn’t go,” Socrate said, rubbing his hands.

At other times the picture seemed to go better.

“Look out! You’re going too fast!” Socrate said, in a fright at the idea that his guitar might be brought back to him and that he might no longer have a pretext to come and borrow five francs or an overcoat. Suzanne also paid Phil visits. He often spoke to her of Helia.

“You’re always thinking about her!” Suzanne said, as she lighted a cigarette, taking two or three puffs and throwing it away with a _pouah_!

“Well, you must be in love with Helia!” she continued. “I had no idea of it! It won’t last, _mon cher_!”

She looked at him with mocking eyes.

“What do you mean by that?” Phil asked.

“Oh, I don’t mean to offend you, Monsieur Phil. I believe you’re sincere!”

“You think I’m sincere!”

“My dear Phil, I’ve seen men dragging themselves at my knees,—do you hear? dragging themselves at my knees with tears in their eyes,—men who wouldn’t look at me now!”

“I’m not that kind,” said Phil.

“So much the better!” said Suzanne, becoming suddenly grave. “I’m happy for Helia’s sake—very happy, because she thinks so, too!”

Phil took up his palette; but Suzanne could not stay quiet.

“Say, Monsieur Phil, how good you are, all the same!”

“I? Why?”

“You don’t see they’re making fun of you?”

“Who?”

“Why, Caracal’s set—Socrate among the rest,” Suzanne answered.

“I don’t believe it,” Phil said. “Socrate is an enthusiast, but he’s a real artist!”

“_Penses-tu, bébé!_” Suzanne murmured to herself. Then, passing before the glass, with a twist of her finger she put a lock of hair in place and went out.

Phil seldom had such visits. For the most part of the time he was alone in front of his picture which did not go. There was no end to his fumbling efforts. There were always parts to be done over—and he never succeeded in doing them right.

Socrate arrived one fine evening with his hands in his pockets.

“I’m coming to live with you!” he said. “Landlords are idiots, on my word! Talent and thought never count with them. It’s dough they want. If it weren’t for you I’d have to sleep out of doors!”

He sat down on a chair and added: “You’re willing?”

“Certainly,” Phil said, as he drew a mattress near the stove. “You can sleep there for the present. We’ll see later on.”

From that day an infernal life began for Phil. Socrate, stretched out by the stove, worried him with advice and made him begin the same thing twenty times over; he encumbered the room, smoking like a locomotive or sleeping until noon. When the thinker’s ferocious snoring quite deafened Phil, he would whistle gently to stop it. But a steamer’s siren would not have awakened Socrate. Then Phil, in his exasperation, would shake him by the shoulder.

“Let me be! I am thinking of something—hum—something,” Socrate would stammer; and the sleeper would begin “thinking” again. It was a continual torture. Phil, moreover, was so weak that he could not even get angry.

One morning Suzanne came in with her arms loaded down with mistletoe and packages. “My friends, to-morrow is Christmas day,” she said, as she entered.

“Ah!” Phil answered.

“What—ah?” Suzanne took him up. “Didn’t you know it, then?”

“No,” said Phil, who was now only a shadow of himself, living on mechanically from day to day.

“But didn’t you see,” asked Suzanne, “this pretty Christmas card that Helia sent you from London?”

“Ah, yes!” said Phil; “true!”

“Phil is sick,” thought Suzanne, “and very sick! He’s losing his memory. It’s high time that Helia came back!”

“Let me prepare the feast,” she said next day. “You’ll see what it will be! Men don’t understand such things! Phil, let me do it, will you? I’ve invited Poufaille. We shall be four at table. There is a fork for each of us!”

“I don’t eat much,” Phil answered.

“Socrate will eat for you, Monsieur Phil,” said Suzanne. She added: “I have a favor to ask you first: I don’t want you to kill the chicken!”

“But we shall have nothing else for the meal,” said Phil.

“Oh, Monsieur Phil, let her live! She’s so amusing! She would follow me in the street, and people would take her for a dog. But wouldn’t they laugh!”

“What a child you are!” Phil said.

“And then I’ll like you so much for it, and I’ll make you a nice salad,” Suzanne went on, “and I’ll get four sous’ worth of fried potatoes.”

“Granted!”

Just then they heard a _couïc_, and Socrate threw the chicken with its neck wrung at the feet of Suzanne.

“Enough sentimentality,” he said.

Seeing the turn things were taking, Socrate, who was not willing to miss his meal, had slyly stretched out his hand, seized the chicken, and put an end to it.

“Oh, you wretch!” cried Suzanne.

“Bah! the chicken had to end by being eaten,” Phil said; “let’s not quarrel for that!”

Suzanne made everything ready. She cleared the table of paints and palette, spread the cloth and dishes deftly, and sang as she did the cooking. Poufaille came in, bringing a cheese made of goat’s milk and garlic which he had received that morning from his village.

“What smells like that? _Pouah!_” Suzanne cried.

“Do you mean my cheese?” said Poufaille, in a pet.

The time had come. With emotion Suzanne placed the chicken on the table.

“Your chicken isn’t cooked; you’re not much on cooking!” cried Poufaille, who had not forgiven the insult to his cheese.

“I don’t know how to cook, don’t I?” Suzanne exclaimed; “and I don’t understand salads, either? No, perhaps, _hein!_”

Socrate, with his nose in his plate, ate like an ogre, disdainful of idle quarrels.

“The salad?” Phil said, to keep up the gaiety. “Your salad has a little too much vinegar.”

“My salad spoiled—oh, insolents! It’s worth while taking trouble to please you!” And Suzanne began weeping, or a pretense of weeping. But, suddenly losing her temper, she seized the frying-pan with a “_Tiens! tiens, donc! et aïe donc!_ This will teach you!” and while chicken and salad flew across the floor, bang! she threw the pan full tilt into the painted guitar. Phil’s picture was rent in twain.

“Oh, forgive me!” Suzanne cried.

All had passed as quick as lightning. Suzanne was at Phil’s knees, weeping, begging pardon—oh! how could she have done it, she who knew all the trouble he had taken? And she kept on repeating in her despair: “Oh, Phil, forgive me!”

Phil said not a word; he was pale as death. Poufaille had fallen backward, and, sitting on his cheese, which had fallen under him, looked in turn at Phil and Suzanne. Socrate was thunderstruck.

“Oh, forgive me, Phil, forgive me!” Suzanne went on repeating.

But she did not finish. To her terror, she saw Phil arise, turn, and fall headlong.