Part 38

But for a time this minute examination of the photograph (through a powerful lens he bought on purpose), and this delving search into his own deep consciousness of her, into his keen remembrance of every detail of feature and color and shade of expression, made him realize and idealize and foresee what the face might be some day--and what its owner might become.

And a horror of his life in London came over him like a revelation--a blast--a horrible surprise! Mere sin is ugly when it's no more; and so beastly to remember, unless the sinner be thoroughly acclimatized; and Barty was only twenty-two, and hated deceit and cruelty in any form. Oh, poor, weak, frail fellow-sinner--whether Vivien or Guinevere! How sadly unjust that loathing and satiety and harsh male contempt should kill man's ruth and pity for thee, that wast so kind to man! What a hellish after-math!

Poor Barty hadn't the ghost of a notion how to set to work about becoming a painter, and didn't know a soul in Paris he cared to go and consult, although there were many people he might have discovered whom he had known: old school-fellows, and friends of the Archibald Rohans--who would have been only too glad.

So he took to wandering listlessly about, lunching and dining at cheap suburban restaurants, taking long walks, sitting on benches, leaning over parapets, and longing to tell people who he was, his age, how little money he'd got, what lots of friends he had in England, what a nice little English girl he knew, whose portrait he didn't know how to paint--any idiotic nonsense that came into his head, so at least he might talk about something or somebody that interested him.

There is no city like Paris, no crowd like a Parisian crowd, to make you feel your solitude if you are alone in its midst!

At night he read French novels in bed and drank eau sucrée and smoked till he was sleepy; then he cunningly put out his light, and lit it again in a quarter of an hour or so, and exploded what remained of the invading hordes as they came crawling down the wall from above. Their numbers were reduced at last; they were disappearing. Then he put out his candle for good, and went to sleep happy--having at least scored for once in the twenty-four hours. Mort aux punaises!

Twice he went to the Opéra Comique, and saw Richard Coeur de Lion and le Pré aux Clercs from the gallery, and was disappointed, and couldn't understand why he shouldn't sing as well as that--he thought he could sing much better, poor fellow! he had a delightful voice, and charm, and the sense of tune and rhythm, and could please quite wonderfully--but he had no technical knowledge whatever, and couldn't be depended upon to sing a song twice the same! He trusted to the inspiration of the moment--like an amateur.

Of course he had to be very economical, even about candle ends, and almost liked such economy for a change; but he got sick of his loneliness, beyond expression--he was a fish out of water.

Then he took it into his head to go and copy a picture at the Louvre--an old master; in this he felt he could not go wrong. He obtained the necessary permission, bought a canvas six feet high, and sat himself before a picture by Nicolas Poussin, I think: a group of angelic women carrying another woman though the air up to heaven.

They were not very much to his taste, but more so than any others. His chief notion about women in pictures was that they should be very beautiful--since they cannot make themselves agreeable in any other way; and they are not always so in the works of the great masters. At least, he thought not. These are matters of taste, of course.

He had no notion of how to divide his canvas into squares--a device by which one makes it easier to get the copy into proper proportion, it seems. He began by sketching the head of the principal woman roughly in the middle of his canvas, and then he wanted to begin painting it at once--he was so impatient.

Students, female students especially, came and interested themselves in his work, and some rapins asked him questions, and tried to help him and give him tips. But the more they told him, the more helpless and hopeless he grew. He soon felt conscious he was becoming quite a funny man again--a centre of interest--in a new line; but it gave him no pleasure whatever.

After a week of this mistaken drudgery he sat despondent one afternoon on a bench in the Champs Élysées and watched the gay people, and thought himself very down on his luck; he was tired and hot and miserable--it was the beginning of July. If he had known how, he would almost have shed tears. His loneliness was not to be borne, and his longing to feel once more the north had become a chronic ache.

A tall, thin, shabby man came and sat by his side, and made himself a cigarette, and hummed a tune--a well-known quartier-latin song--about "Mon Aldegonde, ma blonde," and "Ma Rodogune, ma brune."

Barty just glanced at this jovial person and found he didn't look jovial at all, but rather sad and seedy and out at elbows--by no means of the kind that the fair Aldegonde or her dark sister would have much to say to.

Also that he wore very strong spectacles, and that his brown eyes, when turned Barty's way, vibrated with a quick, tremulous motion and sideways, as if they had the "gigs."

Much moved and excited, Barty got up and put out his hand to the stranger, and said:

"Bonjour, Monsieur Bonzig! comment allez-vous?"

Bonzig opened his eyes at this well-dressed Briton (for Barty had clothes to last him a French lifetime).

"Pardonnez-moi, monsieur--mais je n'ai pas l'honneur de vous remettre!"

"Je m'appelle Josselin--de chez Brossard!"

"Ah! Mon Dieu, mon cher, mon très-cher!" said Bonzig, and got up and seized Barty's both hands--and all but hugged him.

"Mais quel bonheur de vous revoir! Je pense à vous si souvent, et à Ouittebé! comme vous êtes changé--et quel beau garçon vous êtes! Qui vous aurait reconnu! Dieu de Dieu--c'est un rêve! Je n'en reviens pas!" etc., etc....

And they walked off together, and told the other each an epitome of his history since they parted; and dined together cheaply, and spent a happy evening walking up and down the boulevards, and smoking many cigarettes--from the Madeleine to the Porte St.-Martin and back--again and again.

"Non, mon cher Josselin," said Bonzig, in answer to a question of Barty's--"non, I have not yet seen the sea ..; it will come in time. But at least I am no longer a damned usher (un sacré pion d'études); I am an artist--un peintre de marines--at last! It is a happy existence. I fear my talent is not very imposing, but my perseverance is exceptional, and I am only forty-five. Anyhow, I am able to support myself--not in splendor, certainly; but my wants are few and my health is perfect. I will put you up to many things, my dear boy.... We will storm the citadel of fame together...."

Bonzig had a garret somewhere, and painted in the studio of a friend, not far from Barty's lodging. This friend, one Lirieux, was a very clever young man--a genius, according to Bonzig. He drew illustrations on wood with surprising quickness and facility and verve, and painted little oil-pictures of sporting life--a garde champêtre in a wood with his dog, or with his dog on a dusty road, or crossing a stream, or getting over a stile, and so forth. The dog was never left out; and these things he would sell for twenty, thirty, even fifty francs. He painted very quick and very well. He was also a capital good fellow, industrious and cultivated and refined, and full of self-respect.

Next to his studio he had a small bedroom which he shared with a younger brother, who had just got a small government appointment that kept him at work all day, in some ministère. In this studio Bonzig painted his marines--still helping himself from La France Maritime, as he used to do at Brossard's.

He was good at masts and cordage against an evening sky--"l'heure où le jaune de Naples rentre dans la nature," as he called it. He was also excellent at foam, and far-off breakers, and sea-gulls, but very bad at the human figure--sailors and fishermen and their wives. Sometimes Lirieux would put one in for him with a few dabs.