“You are right, my dear, there isn’t a decent picture here,” Cornpepper chuckled, grimacing to adjust his monocle, and feeling his round beard. “Ichabod! The glory is departed from Paris. The only chaps who can paint nowadays are the Neo-Teutonic school. The Frenchmen are played out—they have even lost their taste. They bought a picture of mine last year, you remember. I palmed off the rottenest thing I’d ever done on ’em. It’s in the Luxembourg—you go and see it, old man, and you tell me if I’m not right. Now, mind you do! Ta, ta, old fellow. Sorry you’re not in the Academy this year—but it’s a good advertisement for you. I think I shall be ill myself next year. But we mustn’t talk shop. Good-bye, old man. Oh, by-the-way, I hear your cousin’s engaged to an heiress. It’s true, is it? Lucky beggar, that Herbert! Better than painting, eh? Ha! ha! ha! But I knew he’d never do anything. Didn’t he win the Gold Medal, eh? Ho! ho! ho! Well, au revoir. Don’t forget the Luxembourg. You don’t want to wait till I’m dead and in the Louvre, what? Thanks for a pleasant chat, and wish you better.”
Matthew shook his hand for the third time with unabated affection. What a clever fellow Cornpepper was, and what a pretty wife he had got!
He went to his hotel to dine. The court-yard was gay with lounging, lolling visitors, the fountain in the centre leaped and sparkled with changing colors, like an effervescence of the city. Far into the night he sat out on the balcony of his gilt-skied, many-mirrored bedroom, gazing at the beautiful Boulevards stretching serenely away in the moonlight between their gigantic edifices.
CHAPTER IX
RUTH HAILEY
How he lived through the rest of the week he never definitely remembered. He would have willingly given the days away, but, as they had to be filled up somehow, they left confused recollections of theatres and ballets, of rencontres with random acquaintances, of riding on tiny tram-cars to see the Zoological Garden in the Bois de Boulogne, of wandering in a rag-fair, of reading modern French poetry, of visiting the ateliers of French painters whom he knew, and sympathizing with their grumbles against the Institute and the distribution of decorations, while wondering inwardly why these overgrown school-boys languished and died for lack of a bit of ribbon. What could a man want in life but to paint and to love? State recognition? Bah! The artist was always an Anarchist. He stood alone, self-centred.
He hobnobbed with students, too, in his new sympathy with youth and art, and—a distinguished visitor—was taken through the great ateliers with their rainbow-colored dados of palette-scrapings and the announcements in every European language that new-comers must pay for drinks. He gladly accepted a ticket for a students’ ball on the Saturday night; it had been postponed for a few weeks through the death of a beloved professor. He had heard much of these balls, but had never seen one, and he counted upon it to while away that last intolerable night between him and his happiness.
Several times during the week he had thought of going to see Ruth Hailey in accordance with the duty that on the other side of the Channel had seemed so pressing, but he shrank instinctively from the raking up of memories of the old unhappy days at this joyous crisis; he was not in the mood for extraneous emotion. Nevertheless on the Saturday afternoon, partly for want of anything better to do, partly to keep up to himself the pretence that she was at least one of the motives that brought him to Paris, and partly to ascertain if she had spoken to people in England about his wife, he set out to pay the long-projected visit. He would feel how the ground lay, discover if she had innocently betrayed him to anybody who might touch Mrs. Wyndwood’s circle—which might be awkward if in a possible compromise Eleanor should ever decide to live with him in ostensible marriage.
He had a dim, unformed idea of appealing to Ruth for silence, but he did not really meditate invoking her sympathies; she was on the eve of departing for the Antipodes—was perhaps already gone.
He found her hotel—it was in the Rue de Rivoli. A waiter took up his name and forthwith brought back word that Mademoiselle would see Monsieur Strang.
His heart was throbbing curiously as he mounted the stairs and stood outside her door. The quick, irregular clack, clack of a type-writer responded like an echo. He was ushered into a large plainly-furnished sitting-room. His first vision was of a tall comely lady in a grayish gown, writing at a table opposite the door; but this was effaced by the slimmer figure of a younger woman approaching from the right, with a smile of welcome and an extended hand. A moment later her smile had faded, and her hand was on her heart, soothing its flutter. He was shaken to his depths; behind all the bodily changes he saw the little girl-friend of his childhood; and, indeed, the purity of her limpid, truthful gaze was undimmed.