Martha in Paris (11 page)

Late that night—in fact in the small hours of the morning—the big double bed creaked as he turned and woke. Beside him three blankets and a quilt padded Dolores' bony hip almost to voluptuousness; but he didn't disturb her. He lay and thought about Martha.

Addressing himself more or less to the ceiling—

“Why's she
want
to come home?” mused Harry.

Unexpectedly, Dolores answered. She hadn't been asleep either.

“You never read her letter, darling. She
does
miss me after all!”

“So she should,” said Harry—but more as one stating a desideratum than a fact.

“And I'm so glad,” murmured Dolores, out of her own private but happier thoughts, “because although I always tried to do my best for her—”

“You were an angel,” said Harry warmly.

“—she never showed much affection. Sometimes it hurt,” admitted Dolores, “but if she's willing to give up a year in Paris, just because she
misses
me, I know every sacrifice was worth while.”

With connubial familiarity she turned to insert her feet between the warmth of Harry's calves. It was nice. Even under three blankets and a quilt Dolores' feet had a trick of staying cold, but it was still nice. Harry lay several moments thinking what a lucky chap he was, before the question of Martha's homecoming bothered him again.

He didn't know why, but he smelt something—fishy. His wife's happy explanation hadn't convinced him. Undoubtedly Martha
ought
to be missing so kind (and self-sacrificing) an aunt; but all Harry's experience of her made it seem unlikely. That she had her own good reasons for abandoning a second year in Paris he didn't doubt for a moment; but he was dashed if he believed they were sentimental ones …

Thus he lay staring up at the ceiling with his original question still unanswered.—Though he had no glimmering of the truth, Harry Gibson face to face with Martha might just possibly have got it out of her, simply by rejecting her paper-explanation outright and blundering about until he blundered upon the right track. But Martha was in Paris and Harry Gibson at Richmond, and they weren't to meet for the next three months; so Martha had nothing to fear from her Uncle Harry.

She was in fact due for a severer, an expert cross-examination. Upon Mr. Joyce the retailed gladsome news acted more positively. Mr. Joyce nipped over to Paris within the next twenty-four hours.

Chapter Fourteen

His appearance in the rue de Vaugirard, where he arrived unheralded just in time to take Martha out to dinner, considerably fluttered both Madame Dubois and Angèle and slightly dismayed even Martha. Unlike her nervous hostesses—Madame apprehensive of being charged with inefficacy as a duenna, Angèle more insanely fearful of a rebuke for having attempted to send him a match-box cover—Martha guessed accurately why Mr. Joyce had come; and recognizing in him the only person with a right to question her, while washing her hands attempted to think of a few acceptable answers.—During this interval, indeed, Mr. Joyce by his calm demeanour and pleasant conversation quite succeeded, if unconsciously, in allaying every fear he had as unconsciously aroused, in the bosoms of Madame and Angèle; but Martha stumped out after him still uneasy …

They gained the restaurant of his choice in complete silence. Martha had never learned the art of making small-talk, and Mr. Joyce was too rich to need to. Not until they were settled at table—(the attentions of head- and wine-waiter briefly acknowledged; the menu swiftly and expertly chosen)—did Martha's patron open fire.

2

“Now please tell me what is all this,” ordered Mr. Joyce, “about wishing to leave the studio.—For I may say at once that your tale of missing a kind Auntie the old man does not for a moment believe.”

Martha pushed about the six snail-shells on her plate. The hand-washing interval hadn't been long enough; and she was never quick-witted.

“Didn't Aunt Dolores believe it?” she asked cautiously.

“Naturally she did. Your Aunt Dolores is a very simple and affectionate woman. But I am not simple at all,” stated Mr. Joyce, “also I have put money into you; and therefore I repeat the question.”

To gain time, Martha extracted the largest snail and chewed. It tasted like india-rubber.—Unlike many other persons who remark on this, Martha actually had, and quite frequently, chewed india-rubber.

“I don't see why I shouldn't miss an aunt like anyone else,” she harked back sulkily.

“Only you are not like anyone else. You are an artist,” said Mr. Joyce. “If you tell me you have been crying into your pillow, again I shall not believe. Continue.”

“That's what
le maître
says,” offered Martha—as it were seizing a red herring by the tail. “It means he's pleased with me.”

“All the more reason why you should continue with him,” countered Mr. Joyce.

Martha swallowed.

“Only he's no good for
paysage
—and I never told you,” plunged Martha, and it was the measure of her desperation, “but now I want to paint landscape …”

3

Mr. Joyce sat back and looked at Martha's plate. The restaurant of his choice, besides being famous for its food, was exquisitely sited. The view from the window by which they sat included the Île St. Louis breasting the Seine like a galleon in full sail. Martha had never looked out; but on her plate the one big empty snail-shell now lodged in proper relation with the five lesser ones to form a six-fold pattern of helices …

“Since when?” enquired Mr. Joyce.

“Well, since that sketching-party I went on,” said Martha.

“From which you brought back a drawing of a kitchen-stove,” recalled Mr. Joyce. “I admit it was a good drawing—”

“How did you see it?” asked Martha, surprised.

“It was sent me,” said Mr. Joyce repressively, “and what a disappointment! No light, no colour, nothing the old man had hoped for, from your famous sketching-party!—Nice, ain't they?” pounced Mr. Joyce, his eye on Martha's plate.

“Yes,” said Martha eagerly. “Can I have them?”

“You can,” said Mr. Joyce, “but still the less am I fooled. Here we sit where if you looked through the window you would see Notre Dame and the Île St. Louis, also a remarkable evening light: you prefer to observe snail-shells. All right, very well, I have nothing against snail-shells! Only do not tell me in the same breath that you now wish to paint landscape, because the old man is not such a fool as he may look.”

Martha sighed. She had always recognized in her patron an intelligence able to meet, encourage, or as now to combat, her own.

“Actually I don't
particularly
want to paint landscape,” reneged Martha—casting aside the odious cloak of a
paysagiste
indeed not without relief.

“Aha!” said Mr. Joyce. “Now perhaps we are getting somewhere!—
Le maître
is pleased with you, you do not wish to paint landscape, still you wish to return to England,” checked Mr. Joyce. He paused, baffled as Harry Gibson had been; but unlike Harry Gibson tracked his uneasiness to its source. It had always been his greatest fear that Martha might hobble her career by an early marriage; especially with Martha sitting opposite him, nothing less serious now entered his mind—her portly and consequential aspect put the frivolity of a mere
passade
too thoroughly out of court …

“Are you going to tell me there is some young man?” demanded Mr. Joyce.

4

In the moment before she answered he found himself absolutely holding his breath. Martha had flushed scarlet—or more accurately, beetroot-colour; and while Mr. Joyce had more than once seen her so flushed before—either with rage (her Aunt Dolores blocking Martha's view of the kitchen-stove), or from the effort of three hours' drawing without a break, or merely (as when he'd bullied her into going to Paris in the first place) under the lash of sarcasm—Mr. Joyce recognized it as possible that Martha might now in fact be blushing. Her negative ferocious growl so relieved him, he tossed off a glass of excellent Montrachet without tasting it.

“No,” growled Martha, with convincing fury; and while her patron still took a breather at last discovered a sufficient argument that in its way contained a truth.

“If you want to know—” began Martha.

“Naturally I want to know!” snapped Mr. Joyce.

“Well, I'm tired of being taught,” stated Martha. “At home, there won't be any one to teach me.”

Again Mr. Joyce sat back. The arrogance if anything rather pleased him; also, when he considered the pressures to which she had been subjected during the past ten months, it struck him that perhaps Martha knew very well what she was about.—“Lie a year fallow,” thought Mr. Joyce, “and only then back to Paris!”

“That at last I understand,” said Mr. Joyce, “too much of being taught. Maybe you have been pressed too hard; maybe you know best.—Who am I,” asked Mr. Joyce, with a genuine, rare humility Martha was still too callow to appreciate, “to say yes or no to you? But why not have told the old man outright?”

“I didn't want to seem ungrateful,” said Martha virtuously, “when you've been paying for me in Paris.”

5

The meal ended in great cordiality. Mr. Joyce didn't let Martha drink too much (which in her condition was just as well), but fed her to happy repletion (which was just what her condition required), also procured for her from the head-waiter a bag of snail-shells to take home. “Now we shall see nothing but drawings of snail-shells,” complained Mr. Joyce, “but at least a change from the kitchen-stove!—Also remember I am to have the pick.”

More importantly, before they parted in the rue de Vaugirard he handed Martha a fat manila envelope.

“There is what you asked for, and a little over,” said Mr. Joyce, “to stay a few months longer in France—without being taught. For that I see perfectly to be your idea,” added Mr. Joyce, secure in his own wisdom, “in joining this so-called very good sketching-party. God help whatever poor hack of a
paysagiste
is in charge! Or if you run short, write to me direct: no need to bother the kind Auntie!”

“I won't,” promised Martha, “and thank you very much.”

6

Cash in hand, Martha immediately, with Sally's help, wrote a letter to Madame Paule at Fontenay-aux-Chênes enquiring whether she might book Madame Paule's attic for the entire summer vacation. To so serious a lodger the latter responded almost cordially—though naturally pointing out that a double room occupied by only one person remained still, economically speaking, double. Martha thumbed through Mr. Joyce's envelope, and again with Sally's help booked herself in. “I suppose she'll understand what ‘okay' means?” pondered Martha, disentangling the one familiar word. “She understands it spoken,” reassured Sally. “Anyway, it's international.” And indeed so it seemed to be, judging by Madame Paule's second, even more cordial communication …

As term ended, Martha won a prize. It was for the best drawing of the year; a small gold, or more probably silver-gilt, medallion—and rather chucked at her than awarded to her by
le maître
, who had in fact instituted it for the encouragement of such well-heeled students as Sally. In this case, however, it wasn't only
le maître's
artistic integrity that proved a stumbling-block:
le maître
, if Martha didn't, knew that if he'd awarded it to anyone but Mother Bunch, his students would have howled him down.

It was to be several years before Martha realized what impact she made on her contemporaries. When she did, she exploited it mercilessly: bullying them into cooking for her, washing her brushes for her, painting frames and transporting canvasses for her. Throughout all her later life Martha never did a hand's turn for herself—off the easel.

Just at the moment, however, she merely got Nils to turn in her medal at the nearest
mont de pieté
. It didn't fetch much, being but silver-gilt after all; but every little helped, and Martha particularly didn't want to have to write home for fresh supplies, either to Mr. Joyce or to the kind Auntie.

Term ended: variously the students dispersed. Sally flew back to New York again (whither even Nils doubted if he could hitch-hike); all over France uncomprehending parents received back newly-bearded offspring speaking an incomprehensible jargon. In villages far from Paris sermons were preached, each Sunday, with special intent to sceptic son of pious mother; tolerantly the newly-bearded sons listened, anxious not to upset Maman. French family affection is very strong—also they were most of them going back to Paris …

Martha would have liked to be going back to Paris too. It was in her conversation with Mr. Joyce at Christmas in Richmond, not in her conversation with him at the restaurant, that she'd spoken the fundamental truth. She wanted to continue in Paris. Only the threat to her whole professional career, of being railroaded into marriage and domesticity, could have made her relinquish a second year—even bullied by
le maître
.

No more than Mr. Joyce did
le maître
take her defection patiently. On the last day of term Martha was summoned to his private room, and there received such a classic dressing-down as would have reduced any other female student to tears. She bore it stoically, however, making no attempt at self-defence as
le maître
systematically defined her as ungrateful, conceited, stubborn, and imbecile. Only at the harshest accusation of all, that of being un-serious, did she open her mouth; and even so closed it again without uttering. The irony of the situation—that it was
because
she was serious she was giving up another year under his tuition—wasn't lost on Martha, but she knew better than to embark on the slippery ground of explanations.