Grey Roses Part 5

'Every novice in our order, sir,' said Chalks, 'must approve his mettle by undergoing something in the nature of an initiatory ordeal.

We may now drop foolery, and converse like intelligent human beings.

You were asking our opinion of w.i.l.l.y's daub----'

'w.i.l.l.y?' questioned Blake.

'Ay--Bouguereau. Isn't his front name William?' And Chalks, speaking as it were _ex cathedra_, made very short work indeed of Monsieur Bouguereau's claims to rank as a painter. Blake listened with open-eyed wonder. But we are difficult critics, we of the Paris art schools, between the ages of twenty and twenty-five; cold, cynical, suspicious as any Old Bailey judge; and rare is the man whose work can sustain our notice, and get off with lighter censure than '_croute_'

or '_plat d'epinards_.' We grow more lenient, however, as we advance in years. Already, at thirty, we begin to detect signs of promise in other canvases than our own. At forty, conceivably, we shall even admit a certain degree of actual merit.

By and by, Chalks having concluded his p.r.o.nouncement, and drifted to another corner of the room, Blake and I fell into separate talk.

'I must count it a piece of exceptional good fortune,' he informed me, 'to have made the acquaintance of your little _coterie_ this evening.

I am on the point of writing a novel, in which it will be necessary that my hero should pa.s.s several years as a student in the Latin Quarter; and I have run over from London for the especial purpose of collecting local colour. No doubt you will be able to help me with a hint or two as to the best mode of setting about it.'

'I can think of none better than to come here and live for a while,'

said I.

'I only arrived last night, and I put up at the Grand Hotel. But it was quite my intention to move across the river directly I could find suitable lodgings. Do you know of any that you could recommend?'

'If you want to see student life _par excellence_, you can scarcely improve upon the shop I'm in myself--the Hotel du Saint-Esprit, in the Rue St. Jacques.'

And after he had examined me in some detail touching that house of entertainment, 'Yes,' he said, 'then, if you will bespeak a room for me there, I'll come to-morrow and stop for a week or ten days.'

'A week or ten days?' I questioned.

'I can't spare more than a fortnight. I must be back in town by the 20th.'

'But what can you hope to learn of Latin Quarter customs in a fortnight? One ought to live here for a year, at the very least, before attempting to write us up.'

'Ah,' he rejoined, shaking his head and gazing dreamily at something invisible beyond the smoky atmosphere of the cafe, 'a man with dramatic insight can learn as much in a fortnight as an ordinary person in half a lifetime. Intuition and inspiration take the place of the note-book and the yard-stick. The author of _The Merchant of Venice_ had never visited Italy. In "Crispin Dorr" I have described a tempest and a shipwreck at which old sailors shudder: and my longest voyage has been from Holyhead to Kingstown. Besides,' he added, with a bow and smile, 'for the Latin Quarter, if you will take me under your protection, I shall, I am sure, benefit by the services of a capital cicerone.'

And the next afternoon he arrived. I met him at the threshold of the hotel, introduced him to our landlady, Madame Pamparagoux (who stared rather wildly, not being accustomed to see her lodgers so mediaevally attired), and showed him upstairs to the room I had engaged.

There he invited me to be seated while he unpacked his portmanteau and put his things in order. These, I noticed, were un-Britishly few and simple. I could discern no vestiges of either sponge or tub. As he moved backwards and forwards between his chest of drawers and dressing-table, he would cast frequent affectionate glances at his double, now in the gla.s.s of the _armoire_, now in that above the chimney. He was favouring me meantime with a running monologue of an autobiographical complexion.

'I am a self-educated man. My father was a wine merchant in Leeds. At sixteen he put me to serve in the shop of a cousin, a print-seller. It was there, I think, that my literary instincts awoke. I contributed occasional art notes to a local paper. At twenty I came up to London and began my definite career, as a reporter. I was soon earning thirty shillings a week, which seemed to me magnificent. But I aspired to higher things. I felt within me the stirrings of what I could not help believing to be genius--true genius. I longed to distinguish myself, to emerge from the crowd, from the background, to make myself remarked, to do something, to be somebody, to see my name a famous one. I was fortunate enough at this epoch to attract the notice of X----, the poet. He believed in me, and encouraged me to believe in myself. It is one of the regrets of my life that he died before I had achieved my celebrity. However, I have achieved it. My name is a household word wherever the English language is read. I have written the only novels of my time that are sure to live. They will live not only by virtue of their style and matter, but because of a quality they possess which I must call _universal_--a quality which appeals with equal force to readers of every rank, and which will procure for them as wide a popularity five hundred years hence as they enjoy to-day. I call them novels, but they are really prose-poems. The novel,' he continued, rising for an instant to impersonal heights, 'the novel is the literary form or expression of my period, as the drama was that of Shakespeare's, the epic of Homer's. Do you follow me? Ah, here is a copy of "Crispin Dorr"--here is "The Card Dealer."

Take them and read them, and return them when you have finished. Being author's copies, they possess an exceptional value. This is my autograph upon the fly-leaf. This is a photograph of my wife. She is a good woman, but has no great literary culture, and we are not so happy together as I could wish. Men of commanding parts seldom make good husbands, and I committed the imprudence of marrying very young. My wife, you see, belongs to that cla.s.s of society from which I have risen. I am the son of a wine merchant, yet I dine with peers, and have been favoured with smiles from peeresses. My wife has not kept pace with me. This is my little girl--our only child--my daughter Judith. Here is the _Ill.u.s.trated Gazette_ with the portrait of myself.'

Some of us in the Latin Quarter found the man's egotism insupportable, and gave him a wide berth. Others, more numerous, among them the irrepressible Chalks, made it an object of derision, and would exhaust their ingenuity in efforts to lead him on, and entice him into more and more egregious exhibitions of it; while, if they did not laugh in his face, they took, at least, no slightest pains to conceal their jubilant interchange of winks and nudges.

'If he were only an a.s.s,' Chalks urged, 'one might feel disposed to spare him. A merciful man is merciful to a beast. But he's such a cad, to boot--bandying his wife's name about the Latin Quarter, telling Tom, d.i.c.k, and Harry of their conjugal differences, and boasting of his successes with other women!'

A few of us, however, could not prevent an element of pity from tincturing our amus.e.m.e.nt. If his self-conceit was comical, by reason of its candour, it was surely pitiable, because of the poor, dwarfed starveling of a soul that it revealed. Here was a man, with life in his veins, and round about him the whole mystery and richness of creation--and he could seriously think of nothing save how, by his dress, by his speech, his postures, to render himself the observed of all observers!

Wherever he went, in whatever company he found himself, that was the sole thing he cared for--to be the centre of attention, to be looked at, listened to, recognised and admired as a celebrity. And if the event happened otherwise, if he had ground for the suspicion that the people near him were suffering their minds to wander to another topic, his face would darken, his att.i.tude become distinctly one of rancour.

With Chalks, familiarity bred boldness; he made the latter days of Blake's sojourn amongst us exceedingly unhappy.

'Now, Mr. Blake,' he would say, 'we are going to talk of art and love and things in general for a while, to rest our brains from the author of "Crispin Dorr." Please step into the corner there and sulk.'

And he had a bit of slang, which he set to a bar of music, and would sing, as if in absence of mind, whenever the conversation lapsed, to the infinite annoyance of Mr. Blake:--

'Git your hair cut--git your hair cut--git your hair cut--_short_!'

'If that is meant for me,' Blake once protested, 'I take it as discourteous in the last degree.'

'My dear sir, you were twenty thousand leagues from my thoughts. And as for getting your hair cut, I beseech you, don't. You would shear away the fabric of our joy,' Chalks answered.

Blake had a curiously exaggerated notion of his fame; and his jealousy thereof surpa.s.sed the jealousy of women. He took it for granted that everybody had heard of him, and bridled, as at a personal affront, when he met any one who hadn't. If you fell into chance talk with him, in ignorance of his ident.i.ty, he could not let three minutes pa.s.s without informing you. And then, if you appeared not adequately impressed, he would wax ill-tempered. He was genuinely convinced that his person and his actions were affairs of consuming interest to all the world. To be something, to do something, perhaps he honestly aspired; but to _seem_ something was certainly his ruling pa.s.sion.

One Sunday afternoon, at his suggestion, we went together to the studio of Z----, and I introduced him to the Master. But, as we moved about the vast room, among those small, priceless canvases, the consciousness grew upon me that my companion was in some distress of mind. His eye wandered; his utterances were brief and dry. At length he got me into a corner, and remarked, 'You introduced me simply as Mr. Blake. He evidently doesn't realise who I am.'

'Oh, these Frenchmen are so indifferent to things not French, you know,' said I.

'Yes--but--still--I wish you could make an occasion to let him know.

In introducing me you might have added "a distinguished English author."'

'But do you quite realise who _he_ is?' I cried. 'He's jolly near the most distinguished living painter.'

'Never mind. He is treating me now as he might Brown, Jones, or Robinson.' As this was with a superfine consideration, it seemed unreasonable to demand a difference. Nevertheless, I seized an opportunity to whisper in the Master's ear a word or two to the desired effect. '_Tiens_!' he returned composedly, and continued to treat his visitor precisely as he had done from the beginning.

Blake had announced that he wanted to gather information about the Latin Quarter; and I don't doubt that his purpose was sincere, but he employed a novel method of attaining it. We took him everywhere, we showed him everything; I could never observe that he either looked or listened. He would sit (or stand or walk), his eye craving admiration from our faces; his tongue wagging about himself; his early hardships, his first success, his habits of work, his troubles with his wife, his _liaison_ with Lady Blank, his tastes in fruits and wines, his handwriting, his very teeth and boots. He pa.s.sed his life in a sort of trance, an ecstacy of self-absorption; he had fallen in love with his own conception of himself, like a metaphysical Narcissus. This idiosyncrasy was the means of defeating various conspiracies, in which Chalks, of course, was the prime mover, calculated to impose upon his credulity, and send him back to London loaded down with misinformation.

'His cheek, by Christopher!' cried Chalks. 'Live in the Quarter for a fortnight, keep his eyes and ears shut, talk perpetually of Davis Blake, and read nothing but his own works, and then go home and write a book about it. _I'll_ quarter him!'

But Chalks counted without his man. That Monsieur Bullier, the founder of the Closerie des Lilas, was also Professor of Moral Philosophy in the College de France; that the word _etudiante_ (for Blake had only a tourist's smattering of French) should literally be translated _student_, and that the young ladies who bore it as a name were indeed pursuing rigorous courses of study at the Sorbonne; that it was obligatory upon a freshman (_nouveau_) in the Quarter to shave his head and wear wooden shoes for the first month after his matriculation--from these and kindred superst.i.tions Blake was saved by his grand talent for never paying attention.

In the meanwhile some of us had read his books: chromo-lithographs, struck in the primary colours; pasteboard complications of pa.s.sion and adventure, with the conservative entanglement of threadbare marionnettes--a hero, tall, with golden brown moustaches and blue eyes; a heroine, lissome, with 'sunny locks;' then a swarthy villain, for the most part a n.o.bleman, and his Spanish-looking female accomplice, who had an uncomfortable habit of delivering her remarks 'from between clenched teeth,' and, generally, 'in a blood-chilling hiss'--the narrative set forth in a sustained _fortissimo_, and punctuated by the timely exits of the G.o.d from the machine. Never a felicity, never an impression. I fancy he had made his notes of human nature whilst observing the personages of a melodrama at a provincial theatre. He loved the obvious sentiment, the obvious and but approximate word.

But the climax of his infatuation was not disclosed till the night before he left us. Again we were in session at the Cafe des Souris, and the talk had turned upon metempsychosis. Blake, for a wonder, p.r.i.c.ked up his ears and appeared to listen, at the same time watching his chance to take the floor. Half-a-dozen men had their say first, however; then he cut in.

'Metempsychosis is not a theory, it is a fact. I can testify to it from my personal experience. I know it. I can distinctly recall my former life. I can tell you who I was, who my friends were, what I did, what I felt, everything, down to the very dishes I preferred for dinner.'

Chalks scanned Blake's features for an instant with an intentness that suggested a mingling of perplexity and malice; then, all at once, I saw a light flash in his eyes, which forthwith began to twinkle in a manner that struck me as ominous.

'In my early youth,' Blake continued, 'this memory of mine was, if I may so phrase it, piecemeal and occasional. Feeling that I was no ordinary man, conscious of strange forces struggling in me, I would obtain, as it were, glimpses, fleeting and unsatisfactory, into a former state. Then they would go, not for long intervals to return. As time elapsed, however, these glimpses, to call them so, became more frequent and lasting, the intervals of oblivion shorter; and at last, one day on Hampstead Heath, I identified myself in a sudden burst of insight. I was walking on the Heath, and thinking of my work--marvelling at a certain quality I had discerned in it, which, I was convinced, would a.s.sure it everlasting life: a quality that seemed not unfamiliar to me, and yet which I could a.s.sociate with none of the writers whose names pa.s.sed in review before my mind; not with Byron, or Sh.e.l.ley, or Keats, not with Wordsworth or Coleridge, Goethe or Dante, not even with Homer. I mean the quality which I call universal--universal in its authenticity, universal in its appeal.

By-and-bye, I took out a little pocket mirror that I always carry, and looked into it, studying my face. One glance sufficed. There, suddenly, on Hampstead Heath, the whole thing flashed upon me. I saw, I understood; I realised who I was, I remembered everything.'

'Stop right there, Mr. Blake,' called out Chalks in stentorian tones.

'Don't you say another word. I'm going to hail you by your right name in half-a-minute. I guess I must have recognised you the very first time I clapped eyes on your distinguished physiognomy; only I couldn't just _place_ you, as we say over in America. But there was a _je ne sais quoi_ in the whole cut of your jib as familiar to me as rolls and coffee. I tried and tried to think when and where I'd had the pleasure before. But now that you speak of a former state of existence--why, I'm _there_! It was all I needed, just a little hint like that, to jog my memory. Talk about entertaining angels unawares! The beard, eh? And the yaller cloak? And ain't there a statue of you up Boulevard Haussmann way? Shakesy, old man, shake!'

And Chalks got hold of his victim's hand and wrung it fervently. 'I'm particularly glad to meet you this way,' he added, 'because I was Queen Elizabeth myself; and I can't begin to tell you how sort of out of it I felt, alone here with all this degenerate posterity.'

Blake coldly withdrew his hand, frowning loftily at Chalks. 'You should reserve your nonsense for more appropriate occasions,' he said.

'Though you speak in a spirit of foolish levity, you have builded better than you knew. I am indeed Shakespeare re-incarnated. My books alone would prove it; they could have been dictated by no other mind.

But--look at this.'

He produced from an interior pocket a case of red morocco and handed it to me. 'You,' he said, with a flattering emphasis upon the p.r.o.noun, 'you are a man who can treat a serious matter seriously.

What do you think of that?'

The case contained a photograph, and the photograph represented the head and shoulders of Mr. Blake and a bust of Shakespeare, placed cheek by jowl. In the pointed beard and the wide-set eyes there were, perhaps, the rudiments of something remotely like a likeness.