The young artist had made no attempt to join the conversation and, now that he had finished his coffee, he got up, taking an easel, a camp-stool, and a box of paints, and went away out on to the cliffs. His morose profile passed along against the frieze of floating sea-gulls and madame Vervier, sadly shaking her head, said that Jules was in one of his humeurs noires.
“Pauvre cher!” sighed monsieur de Valenbois.
It seemed that the young artist had an adored wife who was in a madhouse.
“I saw her before leaving Paris,” said madame Vervier. “She is quite gentle. She allowed me to hold her hand.—But lost; altogether lost; she was like a tame bird that has strayed from its cage and cannot find its way in the forest. There it sits, on a branch, and stares into the darkness. It is pitiful.”
A silence fell for a while after that, and Giles heard in it the echoes of the compassionate voice beating softly against each heart.
“He will do great things,” said monsieur de Maubert presently. It was as if he turned away from the gloomy fact and displayed for their comfort the golden coin it had minted. “It is an authentic genius.”
“Yes. If we can keep him alive to give it to us,” said madame Vervier.
“If anyone can keep him alive it is you, Hélène,” said monsieur de Maubert.
Charming people they were, and compassionate and wise, thought Giles, sitting there among them in the pellucid shadow while the gulls floated past in the golden light. Strains of Gluck’s “Orpheus” floated with the gulls through his mind. The thought of the young painter’s wife, lost in the shades, suggested that music, perhaps. But it was an Elysian scene.
When they were dispersed, all driving in monsieur de Valenbois’ car to Allongeville for tennis, all except monsieur de Maubert who withdrew to his room—to sleep, Giles imagined—Giles himself did not write letters. He wandered along the cliff-path and saw the lovely shore curving, far away, in azure bays beneath the gold-white cliffs. He looked at the scene and was not consciously absorbed in thought; but a process of testing, of reëstablishing, went on within him as if he felt about his roots to see that they were firm. He would have need of firmness, and the figure of Toppie went with him as an exorcising presence.