Of Human Bondage (39 page)

  But notwithstanding when Miss Price on the following
Sunday offered to take him to the Louvre Philip accepted. She
showed him Mona Lisa. He looked at it with a slight feeling of
disappointment, but he had read till he knew by heart the jewelled
words with which Walter Pater has added beauty to the most famous
picture in the world; and these now he repeated to Miss Price.

  "That's all literature," she said, a little
contemptuously. "You must get away from that."

  She showed him the Rembrandts, and she said many
appropriate things about them. She stood in front of the Disciples
at Emmaus.

  "When you feel the beauty of that," she said,
"you'll know something about painting."

  She showed him the Odalisque and La Source of
Ingres. Fanny Price was a peremptory guide, she would not let him
look at the things he wished, and attempted to force his admiration
for all she admired. She was desperately in earnest with her study
of art, and when Philip, passing in the Long Gallery a window that
looked out on the Tuileries, gay, sunny, and urbane, like a picture
by Raffaelli, exclaimed:

  "I say, how jolly! Do let's stop here a minute."

  She said, indifferently: "Yes, it's all right. But
we've come here to look at pictures."

  The autumn air, blithe and vivacious, elated Philip;
and when towards mid-day they stood in the great court-yard of the
Louvre, he felt inclined to cry like Flanagan: To hell with
art.

  "I say, do let's go to one of those restaurants in
the Boul' Mich' and have a snack together, shall we?" he
suggested.

  Miss Price gave him a suspicious look.

  "I've got my lunch waiting for me at home," she
answered.

  "That doesn't matter. You can eat it tomorrow. Do
let me stand you a lunch."

  "I don't know why you want to."

  "It would give me pleasure," he replied,
smiling.

  They crossed the river, and at the corner of the
Boulevard St. Michel there was a restaurant.

  "Let's go in there."

  "No, I won't go there, it looks too expensive."

  She walked on firmly, and Philip was obliged to
follow. A few steps brought them to a smaller restaurant, where a
dozen people were already lunching on the pavement under an awning;
on the window was announced in large white letters: Dejeuner 1.25,
vin compris.

  "We couldn't have anything cheaper than this, and it
looks quite all right."

  They sat down at a vacant table and waited for the
omelette which was the first article on the bill of fare. Philip
gazed with delight upon the passers-by. His heart went out to them.
He was tired but very happy.

  "I say, look at that man in the blouse. Isn't he
ripping!"

  He glanced at Miss Price, and to his astonishment
saw that she was looking down at her plate, regardless of the
passing spectacle, and two heavy tears were rolling down her
cheeks.

  "What on earth's the matter?" he exclaimed.

  "If you say anything to me I shall get up and go at
once," she answered.

  He was entirely puzzled, but fortunately at that
moment the omelette came. He divided it in two and they began to
eat. Philip did his best to talk of indifferent things, and it
seemed as though Miss Price were making an effort on her side to be
agreeable; but the luncheon was not altogether a success. Philip
was squeamish, and the way in which Miss Price ate took his
appetite away. She ate noisily, greedily, a little like a wild
beast in a menagerie, and after she had finished each course rubbed
the plate with pieces of bread till it was white and shining, as if
she did not wish to lose a single drop of gravy. They had Camembert
cheese, and it disgusted Philip to see that she ate rind and all of
the portion that was given her. She could not have eaten more
ravenously if she were starving.

  Miss Price was unaccountable, and having parted from
her on one day with friendliness he could never tell whether on the
next she would not be sulky and uncivil; but he learned a good deal
from her: though she could not draw well herself, she knew all that
could be taught, and her constant suggestions helped his progress.
Mrs. Otter was useful to him too, and sometimes Miss Chalice
criticised his work; he learned from the glib loquacity of Lawson
and from the example of Clutton. But Fanny Price hated him to take
suggestions from anyone but herself, and when he asked her help
after someone else had been talking to him she would refuse with
brutal rudeness. The other fellows, Lawson, Clutton, Flanagan,
chaffed him about her.

  "You be careful, my lad," they said, "she's in love
with you."

  "Oh, what nonsense," he laughed.

  The thought that Miss Price could be in love with
anyone was preposterous. It made him shudder when he thought of her
uncomeliness, the bedraggled hair and the dirty hands, the brown
dress she always wore, stained and ragged at the hem: he supposed
she was hard up, they were all hard up, but she might at least be
clean; and it was surely possible with a needle and thread to make
her skirt tidy.

  Philip began to sort his impressions of the people
he was thrown in contact with. He was not so ingenuous as in those
days which now seemed so long ago at Heidelberg, and, beginning to
take a more deliberate interest in humanity, he was inclined to
examine and to criticise. He found it difficult to know Clutton any
better after seeing him every day for three months than on the
first day of their acquaintance. The general impression at the
studio was that he was able; it was supposed that he would do great
things, and he shared the general opinion; but what exactly he was
going to do neither he nor anybody else quite knew. He had worked
at several studios before Amitrano's, at Julian's, the Beaux Arts,
and MacPherson's, and was remaining longer at Amitrano's than
anywhere because he found himself more left alone. He was not fond
of showing his work, and unlike most of the young men who were
studying art neither sought nor gave advice. It was said that in
the little studio in the Rue Campagne Premiere, which served him
for work-room and bed-room, he had wonderful pictures which would
make his reputation if only he could be induced to exhibit them. He
could not afford a model but painted still life, and Lawson
constantly talked of a plate of apples which he declared was a
masterpiece. He was fastidious, and, aiming at something he did not
quite fully grasp, was constantly dissatisfied with his work as a
whole: perhaps a part would please him, the forearm or the leg and
foot of a figure, a glass or a cup in a still-life; and he would
cut this out and keep it, destroying the rest of the canvas; so
that when people invited themselves to see his work he could
truthfully answer that he had not a single picture to show. In
Brittany he had come across a painter whom nobody else had heard
of, a queer fellow who had been a stockbroker and taken up painting
at middle-age, and he was greatly influenced by his work. He was
turning his back on the impressionists and working out for himself
painfully an individual way not only of painting but of seeing.
Philip felt in him something strangely original.

  At Gravier's where they ate, and in the evening at
the Versailles or at the Closerie des Lilas Clutton was inclined to
taciturnity. He sat quietly, with a sardonic expression on his
gaunt face, and spoke only when the opportunity occurred to throw
in a witticism. He liked a butt and was most cheerful when someone
was there on whom he could exercise his sarcasm. He seldom talked
of anything but painting, and then only with the one or two persons
whom he thought worth while. Philip wondered whether there was in
him really anything: his reticence, the haggard look of him, the
pungent humour, seemed to suggest personality, but might be no more
than an effective mask which covered nothing.

  With Lawson on the other hand Philip soon grew
intimate. He had a variety of interests which made him an agreeable
companion. He read more than most of the students and though his
income was small, loved to buy books. He lent them willingly; and
Philip became acquainted with Flaubert and Balzac, with Verlaine,
Heredia, and Villiers de l'Isle Adam. They went to plays together
and sometimes to the gallery of the Opera Comique. There was the
Odeon quite near them, and Philip soon shared his friend's passion
for the tragedians of Louis XIV and the sonorous Alexandrine. In
the Rue Taitbout were the Concerts Rouge, where for seventy-five
centimes they could hear excellent music and get into the bargain
something which it was quite possible to drink: the seats were
uncomfortable, the place was crowded, the air thick with caporal
horrible to breathe, but in their young enthusiasm they were
indifferent. Sometimes they went to the Bal Bullier. On these
occasions Flanagan accompanied them. His excitability and his
roisterous enthusiasm made them laugh. He was an excellent dancer,
and before they had been ten minutes in the room he was prancing
round with some little shop-girl whose acquaintance he had just
made.

  The desire of all of them was to have a mistress. It
was part of the paraphernalia of the art-student in Paris. It gave
consideration in the eyes of one's fellows. It was something to
boast about. But the difficulty was that they had scarcely enough
money to keep themselves, and though they argued that French-women
were so clever it cost no more to keep two then one, they found it
difficult to meet young women who were willing to take that view of
the circumstances. They had to content themselves for the most part
with envying and abusing the ladies who received protection from
painters of more settled respectability than their own. It was
extraordinary how difficult these things were in Paris. Lawson
would become acquainted with some young thing and make an
appointment; for twenty-four hours he would be all in a flutter and
describe the charmer at length to everyone he met; but she never by
any chance turned up at the time fixed. He would come to Gravier's
very late, ill-tempered, and exclaim:

  "Confound it, another rabbit! I don't know why it is
they don't like me. I suppose it's because I don't speak French
well, or my red hair. It's too sickening to have spent over a year
in Paris without getting hold of anyone."

  "You don't go the right way to work," said
Flanagan.

  He had a long and enviable list of triumphs to
narrate, and though they took leave not to believe all he said,
evidence forced them to acknowledge that he did not altogether lie.
But he sought no permanent arrangement. He only had two years in
Paris: he had persuaded his people to let him come and study art
instead of going to college; but at the end of that period he was
to return to Seattle and go into his father's business. He had made
up his mind to get as much fun as possible into the time, and
demanded variety rather than duration in his love affairs.

  "I don't know how you get hold of them," said Lawson
furiously.

  "There's no difficulty about that, sonny," answered
Flanagan. "You just go right in. The difficulty is to get rid of
them. That's where you want tact."

  Philip was too much occupied with his work, the
books he was reading, the plays he saw, the conversation he
listened to, to trouble himself with the desire for female society.
He thought there would be plenty of time for that when he could
speak French more glibly.

  It was more than a year now since he had seen Miss
Wilkinson, and during his first weeks in Paris he had been too busy
to answer a letter she had written to him just before he left
Blackstable. When another came, knowing it would be full of
reproaches and not being just then in the mood for them, he put it
aside, intending to open it later; but he forgot and did not run
across it till a month afterwards, when he was turning out a drawer
to find some socks that had no holes in them. He looked at the
unopened letter with dismay. He was afraid that Miss Wilkinson had
suffered a good deal, and it made him feel a brute; but she had
probably got over the suffering by now, at all events the worst of
it. It suggested itself to him that women were often very emphatic
in their expressions. These did not mean so much as when men used
them. He had quite made up his mind that nothing would induce him
ever to see her again. He had not written for so long that it
seemed hardly worth while to write now. He made up his mind not to
read the letter.

  "I daresay she won't write again," he said to
himself. "She can't help seeing the thing's over. After all, she
was old enough to be my mother; she ought to have known
better."

  For an hour or two he felt a little uncomfortable.
His attitude was obviously the right one, but he could not help a
feeling of dissatisfaction with the whole business. Miss Wilkinson,
however, did not write again; nor did she, as he absurdly feared,
suddenly appear in Paris to make him ridiculous before his friends.
In a little while he clean forgot her.