Part 11

“I don’t mean, of course, that an artist, a great creative artist, isn’t always different ... on the contrary....” Paul hesitated again. “I understand all that.... I’ve experienced it....” His handsome face softened, and French, mollified, murmured to himself: “He was awfully kind to Emily Morland—I’m sure he was.”

“Only,” Mrs. Paul’s husband continued with a deepening earnestness, as if he were trying to explain to French something not quite clear to himself, “only, if you’re not a great creative artist yourself, it is hard sometimes, sitting by and looking on and feeling that if you were just allowed to say a word—. Of course,” he added abruptly, “he was very good to her in other ways; very grateful. She was his Inspiration.”

“It’s something to have been that,” French said; and at the words his companion’s colour deepened to a flush which took in his neck and ears, and spread up to his white forehead.

“It’s everything,” he agreed, almost solemnly.

French had wandered up to a book-shelf in what had apparently been Fingall’s dressing-room. He had seen no other books about, and was curious to learn what these had to tell him. They were chiefly old Tauchnitz novels—mild mid-Victorian fiction rubbing elbows with a few odd volumes of Dumas, Maupassant and Zola. But under a loose pile the critic, with beating heart, had detected a shabby sketch-book. His hand shook as he opened it; but its pages were blank, and he reflected ironically that had they not been the dealers would never have left it there.

“They’ve been over the place with a fine-toothcomb,” he muttered to himself.

“What have you got hold of?” Donald Paul asked, coming up.

French continued mechanically to flutter the blank pages; then his hand paused at one which was scribbled over with dots and diagrams, and marginal notes in Fingall’s small cramped writing.

“Tea-party,” it was cryptically entitled, with a date beneath; and on the next page, under the heading: “For tea-party,” a single figure stood out—the figure of a dowdily-dressed woman seated in a low chair, a cup in her hand, and looking up as if to speak to some one who was not yet sketched in. The drawing, in three chalks on a gray ground, was rapidly but carefully executed: one of those light and perfect things which used to fall from Fingall like stray petals from a great tree in bloom. The woman’s attitude was full of an ardent interest; from the forward thrust of her clumsily-shod foot to the tilt of her head and the high light on her eye-glasses, everything about her seemed electrified by some eager shock of ideas.

“Who was talking to her—and what could he have been saying?” was the first thought the little drawing suggested. But it merely flashed through French’s mind, for he had almost instantly recognized the portrait—just touched with caricature, yet living, human, even tender—of the woman he least expected to see there.

“Then she _did_ know him!” he triumphed out aloud, forgetting who was at his elbow. He flushed up at his blunder and put the book in his companion’s hand.

Donald Paul stared at the page.

“She—who?”

French stood confounded. There she sat—Emily Morland—aquiver in every line with life and sound and colour: French could hear her very voice running up and down its happy scales! And beside him stood her lover, and did not recognize her....

“Oh—” Paul stammered at length. “It’s—you mean?” He looked again. “You think he meant it for Mrs. Morland?” Without waiting for an answer he fixed French with his large boyish gaze, and exclaimed abruptly: “Then you knew her?”

“Oh, I saw her only once—just once.” French couldn’t resist laying a little stress on the _once_.

But Donald Paul took the answer unresentfully. “And yet you recognized her. I suppose you’re more used than I am to Fingall’s way of drawing. Do you think he was ever very good at likenesses? I _do_ see now, of course ... but, come, I call it a caricature, don’t you?”

“Oh, what does that matter?”

“You mean, you think it’s so clever?”

“I think it’s magnificent!” said French with emotion.

The other still looked at him ingenuously, but with a dawning light of eagerness. It recalled to French the suppressed, the exaggerated warmth of his greeting on the hotel stairs. “What is it he wants of me? For he wants something.”

“I never knew, either,” Paul continued, “that she and Fingall had met. Some one must have brought her here, I suppose. It’s curious.” He pondered, still holding the book. “And I didn’t know _you_ knew her,” he concluded.

“Oh, how should you? She was probably unconscious of the fact herself. I spent a day with her once in the country, years ago. Naturally, I’ve never forgotten it.”

Donald Paul’s eyes continued obscurely to entreat him. “That’s wonderful!”

“What—that one should never forget having once met Emily Morland?” French rejoined, with a smile he could not repress.

“No,” said Emily Morland’s lover with simplicity. “But the coincidence. You see, I’d made up my mind to ask you—.” He broke off, and looked down at the sketch, as if seeking guidance where doubtless he had so often found it. “The fact is,” he began again, “I’m going to write her Life. She left me all her papers—I daresay you know about all that. It’s a trust—a sacred trust; but it’s also a most tremendous undertaking! And yesterday, after hearing something of what you’re planning about Fingall, I realized how little I’d really thought the book out, how unprepared I was—what a lot more there was in that sort of thing than I’d at first imagined. I used to write—a little; just short reviews, and that kind of thing. But my hand’s out nowadays; and besides, this is so different. And then, my time’s not quite my own any longer.... So I made up my mind that I’d consult you, ask you if you’d help me ... oh, as much as ever you’re willing....” His smile was irresistible. “I asked Bessy. And she thought you’d understand.”

“Understand?” gasped French. “Understand?”

“You see,” Paul hurried on, “there are heaps and heaps of letters—her beautiful letters! I don’t mean—” his voice trembled slightly—“only the ones to me; though some of those ... well, I’ll leave it to you to judge.... But lots of others too, that all sorts of people have sent me. Apparently everybody kept her letters. And I’m simply swamped in them,” he ended helplessly, “unless you will.”

French’s voice was as unsteady as his. “Unless I will? There’s nothing on earth I’d have asked ... if I could have imagined it....”

“Oh, really?” Paul’s voice dropped back with relief to its everyday tone. He was clearly unprepared for exaltation. “It’s amazingly kind of you—so kind that I don’t in the least know how to thank you.”

He paused, his hand still between the pages of the sketch-book. Suddenly he opened it and glanced down again at the drawing, and then at French.

“Meanwhile—if you really like this thing; you _do_?” He smiled a little incredulously and bent his handsome head to give the leaf a closer look. “Yes, there are his initials; well, that makes it all the more....” He tore out the page and handed it to French. “Do take it,” he said. “I wish I had something better of her to give you—but there’s literally nothing else; nothing except the beautiful enlarged photograph she had done for me the year we met; and that, of course—”

V

Mrs. Paul, as French had foreseen she would be, was late at their second appointment; later even than at the first. But what did French care? He could have waited contentedly for a week in that blatant drawing-room, with such hopes in his bosom and such a treasure already locked up in his portmanteau. And when at last she came she was just as cordial, as voluble and as unhelpful as ever.

The great difficulty, of course, was that she and her husband were leaving Paris so soon, and that French, for his part, was under orders to return at once to America. “The things I could tell you if we only had the time!” she sighed regretfully. But this left French unmoved, for he knew by now how little she really had to tell. Still, he had a good many more questions to ask, a good many more dates and facts to get at, than could be crowded into their confused hour over a laden tea-table, with belated parcels perpetually arriving, the telephone ringing, and the maid putting in her head to ask if the orange and silver brocade was to go to Biarritz, or to be sent straight on with the furs and the sports clothes to St. Moritz.

Finally, in the hurried parenthesis between these weightier matters, he extracted from her the promise to meet him in Paris in March—March at the latest—and give him a week, a whole week. “It will be so much easier, then, of course,” she agreed. “It’s the deadest season of the year in Paris. There’ll be nobody to bother us, and we can really settle down to work—” her lovely eyes kindled at the thought—“and I can give you all the papers you need, and tell you everything you want to know.”

With that he had to be content, and he could afford to be—now. He rose to take leave; but suddenly she rose also, a new eagerness in her eyes. She moved toward the door with him, and there her look detained him.

“And Donald’s book too; you can get to work with Donald at the same time, can’t you?” She smiled on him confidentially. “He’s told me that you’ve promised to help him out—it’s so angelically good of you! I do assure you he appreciates it immensely. Perhaps he’s a little too modest about his own ability; but it _is_ a terrible burden to have had imposed on him, isn’t it, just as he and I were having our first real holiday! It’s been a nightmare to him all these months. Reading all those letters and manuscripts, and deciding—. Why don’t authors do those things for themselves?” She appealed to French, half indignantly. “But after all,” she concluded, her smile deepening, “I understand that you should be willing to take the trouble, in return for the precious thing he’s given you.”

French’s heart gave a frightened thump: her smile had suddenly become too significant.

“The precious thing?”

She laughed. “Do you mean to say you’ve forgotten it already? Well, if you have, I don’t think you deserve it. The portrait of Mrs. Morland—the _only_ one, apparently! A signed drawing of Horace’s; it’s something of a prize, you’ll admit. Donald tells me that you and he made the discovery of the sketch-book together. I can’t for the life of me imagine how it ever escaped those harpies of dealers. You can fancy how they went through everything ... like detectives after finger-prints, I used to say! Poor me—they used to have me out of bed every day at daylight! How furious they’d be if they knew what they’ve missed!” She paused and laughed again, leaning in the doorway in one of her long Artemis-attitudes.

French felt his head spinning. He dared not meet her eyes, for fear of discovering in them the unmasked cupidity he fancied he had once before detected there. He felt too sick for any thought but flight; but every nerve in him cried out: “Whatever she says or does, she shall never never have that drawing back!”

She said and did nothing; which made it even more difficult for him. It gave him the feeling that if he moved she would move too—with a spring, as if she herself were a detective, and suspected him of having the treasure in his pocket (“Thank God I haven’t!” he thought). And she had him so entirely at her mercy, with all the Fingall dates and documents still in her hold; there was nothing he could do but go—pick up the portmanteau with the drawing in it, and fly by the next train, if need be!

The idea traversed him in a flash, and then gave way again to the desolating sense of who she was, and what it was that they were manœuvring and watching each other about.

That was the worst of all—worse even than giving up the drawing, or renouncing the book on Fingall. He felt that he must get away at any cost, rather than prolong their silent duel; and, sick at heart, he reached out for the door-knob.

“Oh, no!” she exclaimed, her hand coming down on his wrist.

He forced an answering smile. “No?”

She shook her head, her eyes still on his. “You’re not going like that.” Though she held him playfully her long fine fingers seemed as strong as steel. “After all, business is business, isn’t it? We ordinary mortals, who don’t live in the clouds among the gods, can’t afford to give nothing for nothing.... _You_ don’t—so why should I?”

He had never seen her so close before, and as her face hovered over him, so warm, persuasive, confident, he noted in it, with a kind of savage satisfaction, the first faint lines of age.

“So why should I?” she repeated gaily. He stood silent, imprisoned; and she went on, throwing her head back a little, and letting her gaze filter down on him through her rich lowered lashes: “But I know you’ll agree with me that it’s only fair. After all, Donald has set you the example. He’s given you something awfully valuable in return for the favour you’re going to do him—the immense favour. Poor darling—there never was anybody as generous as Donald! Don’t be alarmed; I’m not going to ask you to give me a present on _that_ scale.” She drew herself up and threw back her lids, as if challenging him. “You’d have difficulty in finding one—anybody would!”

French was still speechless, bewildered, not daring to think ahead, and all the while confusedly aware that his misery was feeding some obscure springs of amusement in her.

“In return for the equally immense favour I’m going to do you—coming back to Paris in March, and giving you a whole week—what are you going to give _me_? Have you ever thought about _that_?” she flung out at him; and then, before he could answer: “Oh, don’t look so miserable—don’t rack your brains over it! I told you I wasn’t grasping—I’m not going to ask for anything unattainable. Only, you see—” she paused, her face grown suddenly tender and young again—“you see, Donald wants so dreadfully to have a portrait of me, one for his very own, by a painter he really admires; a _likeness_, simply, you see, not one of those wild things poor Horace used to do of me—and what I want is to beg and implore you to ask Jolyesse if he’ll do me. I can’t ask him myself: Horace despised his things, and was always ridiculing him, and Jolyesse knew it. It’s all very well—but, as I used to tell Horace, success does mean something after all, doesn’t it? And no one has been more of a success than Jolyesse—I hear his prices have doubled again. Well, that’s a proof, in a way ... what’s the use of denying it? Only it makes it more difficult for poor me, who can’t afford him, even if I dared to ask!” She wrinkled her perfect brows in mock distress. “But if _you_ would—an old friend like you—if you’d ask it as a personal favour, and make him see that for the widow of a colleague he ought to make a reduction in his price—really a _big_ reduction!—I’m sure he’d do it. After all, it’s not my fault if my husband didn’t like his pictures. And I should be so grateful to you, and so would Donald.”

She dropped French’s arm and held out both her shining hands to him. “You _will_—you really will? Oh, you dear good man, you!” He had slipped his hands out of hers, but she caught him again, this time not menacingly but exuberantly.

“If you could arrange it for when I’m here in March, that would be simply perfect, wouldn’t it? You can, you think? Oh, bless you! And mind, he’s got to make it a full-length!” she called after him joyfully across the threshold.

VELVET EAR-PADS

I

Professor Loring G. Hibbart, of Purewater University, Clio, N. Y., settled himself in the corner of his compartment in the Marseilles-Ventimiglia express, drew his velvet ear-pads from his pocket, slipped them over his ears, and began to think.

It was nearly three weeks since he had been able to indulge undisturbed in this enchanting operation. On the steamer which had brought him from Boston to Marseilles considerable opportunity had in truth been afforded him, for though he had instantly discovered his fellow-passengers to be insinuating and pervasive, an extremely rough passage had soon reduced them to inoffensiveness. Unluckily the same cause had in like manner affected the Professor; and when the ship approached calmer waters, and he began to revive, the others revived also, and proceeded to pervade, to insinuate and even to multiply—since a lady gave birth to twins as they entered the Mediterranean.

As for the tumultuous twenty-four hours since his landing, the Professor preferred not to include them in his retrospect. It was enough that they were over. “All I want is _quiet_,” he had said to the doctors who, after his alarming attack of influenza, followed by bronchial pneumonia, had ordered an immediate departure for warmer climes; and they had thrust him onto an excursion-steamer jammed with noisy sight-seers, and shipped him to a port whither all the rest of the world appeared to be bound at the same moment! His own fault, perhaps? Well—he never could plan or decide in a hurry, and when, still shaken by illness, he had suddenly been told that he must spend six months in a mild climate, and been faced with the alternatives of southern California or southern France, he had chosen the latter because it meant a more complete escape from professional associations and the terror of meeting people one knew. As far as climate went, he understood the chances to be equal; and all he wanted was to recover from his pulmonary trouble and employ his enforced leisure in writing a refutation of Einstein’s newly published book on Relativity.

Once the Professor had decided on the south of France, there remained the difficulty of finding, in that populous region, a spot quiet enough to suit him; but after much anxious consultation with colleagues who shared his dread of noise and of promiscuous human intercourse, he had decided on a secluded _pension_ high up in the hills, between Monte Carlo and Mentone. In this favoured spot, he was told, no dogs barked, cocks crew or cats courted. There were no waterfalls, or other sonorous natural phenomena, and it was utterly impossible for a motor (even with its muffler knocked off) to ascend the precipitous lane which led to the _pension_. If, in short, it were possible to refute Einstein’s theory, it was in just such a place, and there only, that the feat might be accomplished.

Once settled in the train, the Professor breathed more freely. Most of his fellow-passengers had stayed on the ship, which was carrying them on to swarm over a succession of other places as he had just left them swarming over Marseilles. The train he got into was not very crowded, and should other travellers enter the compartment, his ear-pads would secure him from interruption. At last he could revert to the absorbing thought of the book he was planning; could plunge into it like a diver into the ocean. He drew a deep breath and plunged....

Certainly the compartment had been empty when the train left Marseilles—he was sure of that; but he seemed to remember now that a man had got in at a later station, though he couldn’t have said where or when; for once he began to think, time vanished from him as utterly as space.

He became conscious of the intruding presence only from the smell of tobacco gradually insinuating itself into his nostrils. Very gradually; for when the Professor had withdrawn into his inner stronghold of Pure Reason, and pulled up the ladder, it was not easy for any appeal to reach him through the channel of the senses. Not that these were defective in him. Far from it: he could smell and see, taste and hear, with any man alive; but for many years past he had refrained from exercising these faculties except in so far as they conduced to the maintenance of life and security. He would have preferred that the world should contain nothing to see, nothing to smell, nothing to hear; and by negativing persistently every superfluous hint of his visual, auditive or olfactory organs he had sheathed himself in a general impenetrability of which the ear-pads were merely a restricted symbol.

His noticing the whiff of tobacco was an accident, a symptom of his still disorganized state; he put the smell resolutely from him, registered “A Man Opposite,” and plunged again into the Abstract.

Once—about an hour later, he fancied—the train stopped with a jerk which flung him abruptly out of his corner. His mental balance was disturbed, and for one irritating instant his gaze unwillingly rested on silver groves, purple promontories and a blue sea. “Ugh—_scenery_!” he muttered; and with a renewed effort of the will he dropped his mental curtain between that inconsequent jumble of phenomena and the absolutely featureless area in which the pure intellect thrones. The incident had brought back the smell of his neighbour’s cigarette; but the Professor sternly excluded that also, and the train moved on....

Professor Hibbart was in truth a man of passionately excitable nature: no one was ever, by temperament, less adapted to the lofty intellectual labours in which his mind delighted. He asked only to live in the empyrean; but he was perpetually being dragged back to earth by the pity, wrath or contempt excited in him by the slipshod course of human affairs. There were only two objects on which he flattered himself he could always look with a perfectly unseeing eye; and these were a romantic landscape and a pretty woman. And he was not absolutely sure about the landscape.

Suddenly a touch, soft yet peremptory, was laid on his arm. Looking down, he beheld a gloved hand; looking up he saw that the man opposite him was a woman.

To this awkward discovery he was still prepared to oppose the blank wall of the most complete imperception. But a sharp pinch proved that the lady who had taken hold of his arm had done so with the fixed determination to attract his attention, at the cost of whatever pain or inconvenience to himself. As she appeared also to be saying something—probably asking if the next station were the one at which she ought to get out—he formed with soundless lips the word “Deaf,” and pointed to his ears. The lady’s reply was to release his wrist, and with her free hand flick off an ear-pad.

“Deaf? Oh, no,” she said briskly, in fluent but exotic English. “You wouldn’t need ear-pads if you were. You don’t want to be bothered—that’s all. I know the trick; you got it out of Herbert Spencer!”

The assault had nearly disabled the Professor for farther resistance; but he rallied his wits and answered stonily: “I have no time-table. You’d better consult the guard.”

The lady threw her spent cigarette out of the window. As the smoke drifted away from her features he became uneasily aware that they were youthful, and that the muscles about her lips and eyes were contracted into what is currently known as a smile. In another moment, he realized with dismay, he was going to know what she looked like. He averted his eyes.

“I don’t want to consult the guard—I want to consult _you_,” said the lady.

His ears took reluctant note of an intonation at once gay and appealing, which caressed the “You” as if it were a new pronoun rich in vowels, and the only one of its kind in the world.

“Eeee-you,” she repeated.

He shook his averted head. “I don’t know the name of a single station on this line.”

“Dear me, don’t you?” The idea seemed to shock her, to make a peculiar appeal to her sympathy. “But I do—every one of them! With my eyes shut. Listen: I’ll begin at the beginning. Paris—”

“But I don’t _want_ to know them!” he almost screamed.

“Well, neither do I. What I want is to ask you a favour—just one tiny little enormous favour.”

The Professor still looked away. “I have been in very bad health until recently,” he volunteered.

“Oh, I’m so glad—glad, I mean,” she corrected herself hastily, “that you’re all right again now! And glad too that you’ve been ill, since that just confirms it—”