His Masterpiece Part 22

Five days later, after packing and sending their chattels to the railway, they started for Paris.

Claude was already on the road with little Jacques, when Christine fancied that she had forgotten something. She returned alone to the house; and finding it quite bare and empty, she burst out crying. It seemed as if something were being torn from her, as if she were leaving something of herself behind--what, she could not say. How willingly would she have remained! how ardent was her wish to live there always--she who had just insisted on that departure, that return to the city of pa.s.sion where she scented the presence of a rival. However, she continued searching for what she lacked, and in front of the kitchen she ended by plucking a rose, a last rose, which the cold was turning brown.

And then she slowly closed the gate upon the deserted garden.

VII

WHEN Claude found himself once more on the pavement of Paris he was seized with a feverish longing for hubbub and motion, a desire to gad about, scour the whole city, and see his chums. He was off the moment he awoke, leaving Christine to get things shipshape by herself in the studio which they had taken in the Rue de Douai, near the Boulevard de Clichy. In this way, on the second day of his arrival, he dropped in at Mahoudeau's at eight o'clock in the morning, in the chill, grey November dawn which had barely risen.

However, the shop in the Rue du Cherche-Midi, which the sculptor still occupied, was open, and Mahoudeau himself, half asleep, with a white face, was shivering as he took down the shutters.

Ah! it's you. The devil! you've got into early habits in the country. So it's settled--you are back for good?'

'Yes; since the day before yesterday.'

'That's all right. Then we shall see something of each other. Come in; it's sharp this morning.'

But Claude felt colder in the shop than outside. He kept the collar of his coat turned up, and plunged his hands deep into his pockets; shivering before the dripping moisture of the bare walls, the muddy heaps of clay, and the pools of water soddening the floor. A blast of poverty had swept into the place, emptying the shelves of the casts from the antique, and smashing stands and buckets, which were now held together with bits of rope. It was an abode of dirt and disorder, a mason's cellar going to rack and ruin. On the window of the door, besmeared with whitewash, there appeared in mockery, as it were, a large beaming sun, roughly drawn with thumb-strokes, and ornamented in the centre with a face, the mouth of which, describing a semicircle, seemed likely to burst with laughter.

'Just wait,' said Mahoudeau, 'a fire's being lighted. These confounded workshops get chilly directly, with the water from the covering cloths.'

At that moment, Claude, on turning round, noticed Chaine on his knees near the stove, pulling the straw from the seat of an old stool to light the coals with. He bade him good-morning, but only elicited a muttered growl, without succeeding in making him look up.

'And what are you doing just now, old man?' he asked the sculptor.

'Oh! nothing of much account. It's been a bad year--worse than the last one, which wasn't worth a rap. There's a crisis in the church-statue business. Yes, the market for holy wares is bad, and, dash it, I've had to tighten my belt! Look, in the meanwhile, I'm reduced to this.'

He thereupon took the linen wraps off a bust, showing a long face still further elongated by whiskers, a face full of conceit and infinite imbecility.

'It's an advocate who lives near by. Doesn't he look repugnant, eh? And the way he worries me about being very careful with his mouth. However, a fellow must eat, mustn't he?'

He certainly had an idea for the Salon; an upright figure, a girl about to bathe, dipping her foot in the water, and shivering at its freshness with that slight shiver that renders a woman so adorable. He showed Claude a little model of it, which was already cracking, and the painter looked at it in silence, surprised and displeased at certain concessions he noticed in it: a sprouting of prettiness from beneath a persistent exaggeration of form, a natural desire to please, blended with a lingering tendency to the colossal. However, Mahoudeau began lamenting; an upright figure was no end of a job. He would want iron braces that cost money, and a modelling frame, which he had not got; in fact, a lot of appliances. So he would, no doubt, decide to model the figure in a rec.u.mbent att.i.tude beside the water.

'Well, what do you say--what do you think of it?' he asked.

'Not bad,' answered the painter at last. 'A little bit sentimental, in spite of the strapping limbs; but it'll all depend upon the execution.

And put her upright, old man; upright, for there would be nothing in it otherwise.'

The stove was roaring, and Chaine, still mute, rose up. He prowled about for a minute, entered the dark back shop, where stood the bed that he shared with Mahoudeau, and then reappeared, his hat on his head, but more silent, it seemed, than ever. With his awkward peasant fingers he leisurely took up a stick of charcoal and then wrote on the wall: 'I am going to buy some tobacco; put some more coals in the stove.' And forthwith he went out.

Claude, who had watched him writing, turned to the other in amazement.

'What's up?'

'We no longer speak to one another; we write,' said the sculptor, quietly.

'Since when?'

'Since three months ago.'

'And you sleep together?'

'Yes.'

Claude burst out laughing. Ah! dash it all! they must have hard nuts.

But what was the reason of this falling-out? Then Mahoudeau vented his rage against that brute of a Chaine! Hadn't he, one night on coming home unexpectedly, found him treating Mathilde, the herbalist woman, to a pot of jam? No, he would never forgive him for treating himself in that dirty fashion to delicacies on the sly, while he, Mahoudeau, was half starving, and eating dry bread. The deuce! one ought to share and share alike.

And the grudge had now lasted for nearly three months without a break, without an explanation. They had arranged their lives accordingly; they had reduced their strictly necessary intercourse to a series of short phrases charcoaled on the walls. As for the rest, they lived as before, sharing the same bed in the back shop. After all, there was no need for so much talk in life, people managed to understand one another all the same.

While filling the stove, Mahoudeau continued to relieve his mind.

'Well, you may believe me if you like, but when a fellow's almost starving it isn't disagreeable to keep quiet. Yes, one gets numb amidst silence; it's like an inside coating that stills the gnawing of the stomach a bit. Ah, that Chaine! You haven't a notion of his peasant nature. When he had spent his last copper without earning the fortune he expected by painting, he went into trade, a petty trade, which was to enable him to finish his studies. Isn't the fellow a sharp 'un, eh?

And just listen to his plan. He had some olive oil sent to him from Saint-Firmin, his village, and then he tramped the streets and found a market for the oil among well-to-do families from Provence living in Paris. Unfortunately, it did not last. He is such a clod-hopper that they showed him the door on all sides. And as there was a jar of oil left which n.o.body would buy, well, old man, we live upon it. Yes, on the days when we happen to have some bread we dip our bread into it.'

Thereupon he pointed to the jar standing in a corner of the shop. Some of the oil having been spilt, the wall and the floor were darkened by large greasy stains.

Claude left off laughing. Ah! misery, how discouraging it was! how could he show himself hard on those whom it crushed? He walked about the studio, no longer vexed at finding models weakened by concessions to middle-cla.s.s taste; he even felt tolerant with regard to that hideous bust. But, all at once, he came across a copy that Chaine had made at the Louvre, a Mantegna, which was marvellously exact in its dryness.

'Oh, the brute,' he muttered, 'it's almost the original; he's never done anything better than that. Perhaps his only fault is that he was born four centuries too late.'

Then, as the heat became too great, he took off his over-coat, adding:

'He's a long while fetching his tobacco.'

'Oh! his tobacco! I know what that means,' said Mahoudeau, who had set to work at his bust, finishing the whiskers; 'he has simply gone next door.'

'Oh! so you still see the herbalist?'

'Yes, she comes in and out.'

He spoke of Mathilde and Chaine without the least show of anger, simply saying that he thought the woman crazy. Since little Jabouille's death she had become devout again, though this did not prevent her from scandalising the neighbourhood. Her business was going to wreck, and bankruptcy seemed impending. One night, the gas company having cut off the gas in default of payment, she had come to borrow some of their olive oil, which, after all, would not burn in the lamps. In short, it was quite a disaster; that mysterious shop, with its fleeting shadows of priests' gowns, its discreet confessional-like whispers, and its odour of sacristy incense, was gliding to the abandonment of ruin. And the wretchedness had reached such a point that the dried herbs suspended from the ceiling swarmed with spiders, while defunct leeches, which had already turned green, floated on the tops of the gla.s.s jars.

'Hallo, here he comes!' resumed the sculptor. 'You'll see her arrive at his heels.'

In fact, Chaine came in. He made a great show of drawing a screw of tobacco from his pocket, then filled his pipe, and began to smoke in front of the stove, remaining obstinately silent, as if there were n.o.body present. And immediately afterwards Mathilde made her appearance like a neighbour who comes in to say 'Good morning.' Claude thought that she had grown still thinner, but her eyes were all afire, and her mouth was seemingly enlarged by the loss of two more teeth. The smell of aromatic herbs which she always carried in her uncombed hair seemed to have become rancid. There was no longer the sweetness of camomile, the freshness of aniseed; she filled the place with a horrid odour of peppermint that seemed to be her very breath.

'Already at work!' she exclaimed. 'Good morning.' And, without minding Claude, she kissed Mahoudeau. Then, after going to shake hands with the painter in her brazen way, she continued:

'What do you think? I've found a box of mallow root, and we will treat ourselves to it for breakfast. Isn't that nice of me now! We'll share.'

'Thanks,' said the sculptor, 'it makes my mouth sticky. I prefer to smoke a pipe.'

And, seeing that Claude was putting on his overcoat again, he asked: 'Are you going?'

'Yes. I want to get the rust off, and breathe the air of Paris a bit.'

All the same, he stopped for another few minutes watching Chaine and Mathilde, who stuffed themselves with mallow root, each taking a piece by turns. And though he had been warned, he was again amazed when he saw Mahoudeau take up the stick of charcoal and write on the wall: 'Give me the tobacco you have shoved into your pocket.'