The Last Touches, and other stories

Preface

. THESE stories have already appeared in " Blackwood," " The English Illustrated," " Black and White," etc. I wish to thank the editors who kindly sheltered them there and do not now refuse to let them come out into the world by themselves. L. C. CONTENTS. PACE The Last Touches i An Interlude 31 On the way to the Sea 56 A Sorry Lcve-Affair £5 A Ridiculous Tragedy no A Sad Comedy 128 Thomas 155 The Last Scene of the Play 185 Wooden Tony : an Anyhow Story .... Without doubt Henri Carbouche was the greatest painter in France. He had done his best to convince the world of this, and the world had responded by trying to prove its conviction. A few inches of canvas that he had covered with paint were worth thousands. Sovereigns thought it a privilege to inspect his studio ; decorations were offered him, but he refused them — even though he was a Frenchman.

Biographical writers pined for details of his life, but he supplied none. Newspaper men tried in vain to see him, and autograph collectors and subscription hunters had no success with him. No one knew who he was, or where he had studied, or what had been his history. His pictures were famous, but it seemed as if his fame had had no beginning ; it had arrived suddenly and at its height. One year no one had heard of his work, the next it was spoken of almost as a national possession : it had been considered one ever since. But he himself was hardly known even by sight. He had no friends, i no particular haunts, nothing that made him intimate with his fellow men ; nobody visited him except on business, and then the interviews were short and to the point. It had happened of late years that he had been tempted now and then by some almost fabulous sum to paint a portrait ; but his sitters knew him little better than the rest of the world, and could give but few details concerning him, for while he painted he was silent and formal, and all attempts to draw him into conversation failed utterly.

The bow with which he wished his sitter adieu for the last time was as distant as the first one with which he had received him, — him, for as yet he had never painted a woman. He was no longer young — fifty more or less : he gave no clue to his age, but he was growing grey, and the lines on his face were many and deep. His expression was grave and stern : his bearing was almost distinguished. He appeared to take some interest in his work, but he was never eager about it. His pictures set the whole art world talking ; but they seemed to be things apart from him, to come into being as though some unseen power other than the man who held the brush inspired them. They gave him no trouble, or appeared to give him none ; and when they were done, he treated them with courtesy, as though they were hisguests, or with an odd curiosity, as though they were strange things that had silently presented themselves to his notice rather than the work of his own thought and genius.

Besides his work he took an interest in his invest ments, but that interest also seemed half curiosity ; he shrugged his shoulders as he counted his thousands, and, putting away the record of his wealth in an iron safe, turned to his work again. Through the winter he stayed in Paris in his house near the Pare Monceau : in the early summer he dis appeared, and the only clue to his wandering was afforded later on perhaps by some picture he exhibited. His house was a splendid one. Its appointments were perfect ; he looked at them with cold criticism, but that was all. The names of his servants he hardly remembered ; but he turned on them fiercely if they neglected their duties. His food, the food he ate, was the simplest, yet he stormed if the table were meagre. His studio was the one bare undecorated room in the house : it was absolutely destitute of all the luxuries that painters of these days affect.

There were a couple of easy chairs, and a table near the fireplace, a great open fireplace on which he burnt huge logs of wood : for the rest, there were the actual necessities to his work, but that was all. He spent most of his time in the studio : he worked there and sat there always, save when he went for his two hours' drive, or took his way to the gorgeous salle a manger to eat his solitary meals. It was in the studio that his pictures were sold to eager buyers, who thought it an honour to stand in his presence. The other rooms of the house were always empty, waiting it seemed to form a setting to a life that refused to be lived, or belonging to a story that never was told, and that day by day slipped back farther and farther into the past. There were many anecdotes told of Carbouche, all of them turning on a certain savagery that seemed to be in him : as when he had painted the portrait of Alphonse Dubois the millionaire, and had brought out the sinister expression on his face with a malignity that was almost startling ; or when he had painted his famous picture of the Forest of St. Germain-en- Laye, and had suggested to everyone that its beauty was overrated, its terrace walk a long straight road, its famous view merely an effect of distance and wind ing river that was after all well known in other views : even the dim city in the distance, with the thousands of human histories gathered together in the far-off mists, seemed to gain some quality repulsive to its poetry.

" And oh, that forest ! " said an English girl who stood before the picture in its place of honour in the Salon, " I felt once as I walked up and down the terrace and looked into the trim depths that it was artificial. Now I know it. I believe that every tree was reared in a square box painted green and let into the ground beneath like a theatre growth. Perhaps even the squirrels are shams, and their bushy tails were bought at the furrier's and sewn on to make believe." " Ah, Carbouche is a great painter," said her com panion as they passed on, " but he always brings out the cynical side of the world and the worst aspect of nature." By the end of October he had generally finished his summer wandering. Paris is cold enough by that time ; the yellow leaves are falling from the trees on the Boulevards ; there is a little cutting breeze hurrying by ; the ricketty open fiacre that rattles on so heed lessly in the warm weather has given way to the close voiture of winter, with chauffee painted in white letters on the side of the driver's box : and the Parisian acknowledges that winter is inevitable, and shrugs his shoulders as though he had hoped that for once it might have been otherwise.

II. Carbouche had returned to Paris. The logs were piled on the studio fire, for the room was chilly after its long emptiness. In the painter's life there was little warmth, little of anything but work and silence, and his surroundings seemed to express the condition'of his soul. He strode up and down, looking at his easel and the little old-fashioned bureau for colours beside it ; on a shelf to its left there were some brushes and a palette. Against the wall were one or two sketches, but they were slight and unfinished, for there was never any work of Carbouche's unsold if money could buy it. The only other canvas in the room rested on the floor with its face to the wall : half hiding it was an old worn portfolio. No one save Carbouche knew what was painted on the canvas, and he, with a carelessness that was half scorn, half superstition, had for years avoided looking at it.

The only comfort in the room, after the blazing fire with the two easy chairs before it, was in an open box of cigarettes that stood on the little table between the chairs. Carbouche sat down and stared at the fire : then he turned to the cigarettes, and lighting one, smoked it vigorously until the end was thrown among the blazing logs. There was a faint rumbling in the distance. It came nearer ; it entered the gateway, and Carbouche knew by the grinding sound peculiar to the turning of a carriage on gravel that a visitor had arrived. He waited half resentfully, impatient at the prospect of being disturbed. The servant entered with a card : " Milor " — and he hesitated. Carbouche took the card, and said slowly, as if he too found the name difficult — " The Earl of Harlekston. Ah, one moment, Auguste ; I had forgotten."

He sorted a note from a dozen on the mantelpiece and read it. "Ask Milor if he will enter." A minute later there appeared a middle-aged well-groomed Englishman. T " Good morning, Monsieur," the painter said stiffly ; " I regret that you should have had the trouble of coming. I only returned last night, and found your note." " I did not expect an answer," Lord Harlekston said, in excellent French. Carbouche, of course, could speak no other tongue. " But I regret to have caused you a fruitless journey." " I am delighted to have made it. It is, if you will allow me to say so, a great privilege to have entered your studio." " I am flattered," the painter said coldly ; " but I apologize again for the unanswered note." It is very good of you to apologize, but — " " And I regret exceedingly — " Carbouche began again.

" Will you allow me to sit down ? " the Englishman asked, and went towards one of the chairs. " Certainly, Monsieur ; " but it was said half unwill ingly. Lord Harlekston looked round the studio again, then at the artist, who had seated himself facing his visitor. " I see you patronize the severities of life rather than the frivolities," the latter went on. "It is rather a relief ; I can breathe in your studio : London ones choke me, they are so full of gimcracks." Carbouche bowed ; he evidently wished to convey that it would be well to come to the point. Lord Harlekston took the hint. " I told you in my note that my wife wished to be painted by you, M. Carbouche." " I am much honoured by the desire of Madame la Comtesse, and regret that I am not a portrait painter." " She would think it an honour to sit to you," Lord Harlekston said courteously.

" I regret much that I am not a portrait painter," Carbouche repeated distantly. " But," said Lord Harlekston hesitatingly, " I think I have seen one or two portraits that you have painted ?" " That is possible, but they have been very few, and for each one there have been reasons." "Would it not be possible to make reasons in this case ? " " I have never painted a woman, Monsieur. I do not wish to paint one, much as I am flattered at your desire that I should begin with Madame." Lord Harlekston was evidently a diplomat. " You increase my desire by that remark," he said suavely. " Is it not possible to persuade you ? I feel a hesitation in speaking of money in connection with work like yours. Its value I know is immense." " It is immense, Monsieur," the painter said grimly, and turned towards the fire.

" Which again increases my desire." "I would not paint a woman under — " he named an enormous sum, "and then I should prefer not to do it," and Carbouche looked into the fire almost savagely. " I should be delighted to pay that sum, and most grateful to you besides." "I am very busy, and I never did a portrait that took much time — three or four sittings at most." " That would be fortunate, since our stay in Paris is so short." " I would not give much time to a face that is, after all, of no interest to the world," the painter went on. " I do not mean this as any lack of compliment to Madame la Comtesse," he added. " But you will under stand, Monsieur, that the face of a woman, even if it is beautiful, and no doubt Madame's is beautiful, is not so interesting as a man's face. Of course I would not say this before the other sex, but we are alone and can speak without reserve."

" I perfectly understand," Lord Harlekston said. "I am going to the Pyrenees next Thursday for a fortnight, would it be possible while I am away — " " I am very busy," Carbouche persisted. " Of course we are only talking of a head, but even a sketch we should feel to be a great possession." Carbouche looked at the fire and hated the woman already. Still, deep in his soul there lurked a love of money, and the sum he had mentioned was a fabulous one for a portrait. No man in Europe but himself would have dared to ask it. He felt a triumph in remembering this, just as he felt a dogged triumph in adding to his wealth ; it gave him a sense of defiance towards the world, of having conquered it, and put it under his feet — that insolent world, that in the begin ning had given him nothing, had made him suffer and feel keenly that he was nobody, that he had not even money to study as he wished, that he had only, and that in secret, a sense of power, a knowledge that the time would come that was now here.

Yes, it was now here, but he knew that on its way it had stripped itself of all the gifts fate usually made to other men. After all, what had he in life ? His fame did not sweeten a single moment to any other person on earth. His great house was worse than a tomb ; it would never hold any dead, save perhaps his own lonely body. His money had served him nothing except to strengthen his feeling of defiance and loneliness and hatred towards the world. And yet, he thought scornfully, he would leave the world richer than he had found it, possessed of things in which it took a pride, but each one would be a sign of his power, his greatness, his scorn. He was per fectly aware of what the world would owe him, the world that once had grudged him all things. But this woman — what had he to do with women that he should paint her portrait ?

With almost a start he turned to his visitor, who had been watching him curiously. " Monsieur," he said, " I am not very gallant, but I would prefer to keep to the work I have already arranged. I am, as I said before, much flattered that an English lady should desire to have a picture of her self at my hands ; still, if I did a portrait at all, it would perhaps be only just that I should paint one of my own countrywomen." " Then let me give you the chance of paying a double compliment, for my wife is half French." " Ah, that is so ? Madame is half French." " Her father was English, but her mother was French." " It was so ? " the painter repeated oddly, and he looked up as if an impossible idea were dawning upon him. "When she was a girl she lived at St. Germain-en- Laye, until she went to her father's people in England, They sent for her when she was nineteen or twenty."

"Ah, yes. I remember them sending for Mademoi selle," Carbouche said in a low voice. An expression of satisfaction broke over the Englishman's face. " Now I see you understand. My wife told me, if all other arguments failed, that I was to urge that you and she were old friends." " Madame la Comtesse has an excellent memory," the painter said cynically; "it matches the other qualities I remember in Mademoiselle." "You were in the same pension?" Lord Harlekston said. " I was staying with M. and Madame Carton at the Pavilion Rouge. I was young, Monsieur, and vene rated an old soldier above all things. Monsieur Carton was one. He belonged to the old order of things and despised the new one. He had left Paris, and he and Madame lived quietly at the Pavilion Rouge on such money as they had saved or could gather in giving instruction.

Monsieur taught some of the youths in the town, and Madame received one or two pupils into her family. That was how I knew Mademoiselle ; she was staying there with her mother, Madame Brooke." " I wonder you did not paint her then : she was very beautiful." For a moment the expression on Carbouche's face softened, as he answered, " Yes, she was very beautiful." " But probably you were studying at one of the schools in Paris ? I never heard who had the honour of being your master." " I never owned one, Monsieur, and belong to no school. If there is fire in oneself, one can nourish it and make it strong. If one's eye is not true, and one's hand is not docile, if one does not see the outward expression and understand the soul that is beneath, then one had better give up the endeavour to give the world that which has not been created for it by some one else."

" But all men have studied in some school." " All, with exceptions, Monsieur." " My wife tells me that you and she had many talks together." " Madame is most kind to remember," the painter's voice was cynical again ; " for in those days I was nobody, and had nothing save ambitions." He was silent for a moment, and looked into the fire. " It was a pleasant menage" he went on, as if he were talking to himself, " M. and Madame Carton, Madame Brooke and Mademoiselle, one or two others, and myself, who had been received because my father had also been a soldier, and was known to M. Carton." " Was the Pavilion Rouge near the Chateau ? " Lord Harlekston asked, remembering Carbouche's picture. "Ah, no, Monsieur; it was half an hour from the Chateau, outside St. Germain altogether, on the road to the Forest of Marly.

But I am keeping you, Mon sieur. These recollections are after all of little interest. Express my compliments to Madame." " But the portrait, M. Carbouche ? " " I do not understand why Madame should wish to sit to me : we have not met since she left St. Germain." " She does wish it, and she hoped that you would consent for the sake of old acquaintance, which it has always been a great pleasure to her to remember." Carbouche frowned, and was silent for a moment ; then suddenly he looked up. " Monsieur," he said, " I should think it a pleasure to paint a portrait of Madame la Comtesse." III. The logs were piled on the studio fire again. The light was carefully arranged. On the easel was a •canvas, large enough, perhaps, for a head and shoulders, but no more. On a slightly raised platform was a chair.

Carbouche was awaiting his sitter, and walked up and ■down, expecting to hear again the sound that had disturbed him three mornings ago. " Madame la Com tesse," he said to himself, " Madeline — e-egh," and an ugly sound came from his lips, but it was an expression of pain. " Perhaps she wears the grey squirrel round her throat still. It must be a different throat from that of three and twenty years ago. Mon Dieu ! but if things had come at the other end of life instead of at this," — he stopped before the portfolio in the corner, and pulled out the canvas from behind it. It represented some chestnut trees in a forest, and a youth who was trying to see the face of a girl, but she had turned away from him. " I wish I had seen her eyes, then I should have known," he said. In a corner was written ''Marly, 18— ."

He put it back with a sigh, and paced up and down again. Then the door opened, and a tall, graceful woman entered. Carbouche bowed formally, his face grew hard, but he looked curiously at his visitor, and tried to see her features through the lace veil that covered them. " How do you do, M. Carbouche ; it is indeed a pleasure to see you again." Her voice was low and sweet, and his heart stirred to it, but he set his teeth together, and answered stiffly, " Bon jour, Madame ; I am to have the honour of painting your portrait." " It is too good of you to consent," she said, and came a step forward. He listened with an odd grati tude at the rustle of her dress. Then he answered, " To paint is my business in life, Madame." There stood by the door a trim-looking lady's-maid. Car bouche looked at her inquiringly.

" It is only Susette," Lady Harlekston explained ; " she will arrange me ; " and then she looked up at Carbouche's face. "It is strange to meet you again ; I have often wished — " " We will begin your portrait, Madame, at once, if you will make yourself ready." " Ah, yes ; we must not waste your time, it is too precious. Susette!" She unhooked her cloak, and the maid took it. With almost hungry eyes the painter watched her. The figure beneath the cloak was slim enough, though naturally in three and twenty years it had lost its girlishness. He had seen, too, the moment she entered that the freedom of movement of old days had developed into a womanly ease that had with it especially an air of distinction. Then the maid un fastened the tortoiseshell arrow that held her veil, and Carbouche's keen eyes that refused him any illusions, saw in a moment that though her hair was golden still, its colouring was harsher than formerly.

" Ah," he thought, " there have been many winters since the summer-end in which we said ' Good-bye,' and when the sunshine goes it is well to make a substi tute as best one can." She turned towards him a little reluctantly. " I am changed ? " she said, with something that was pathetic in her voice, and a smile that asked him to contradict her ; but he answered with almost sad gravity : " Naturally, Madame, we are both changed — you are Madame la Comtesse, and I am an old man." " Ah, no, not old, Monsieur," she said, with a smile that was meant to be winning. A little dislike shot through him. Suddenly he saw her face, and some thing that was almost hatred took possession of him. The eyes that looked up at him were not as blue as formerly, and they had lost their look of trustfulness ■ her eyebrows were fine and arched, and darker than her hair.

Lady Harlekston was not the daughter of a Frenchwoman for nothing, and knew well as years advanced how to offer nature the little attentions of art. There was a flush upon her cheek ; he remem bered the flush of old, and knit his brows when he saw the one that was there now : and her lips had lost their moulding and their colour ; her chin had taken to itself a little firmness, and there were lines that nothing would ever smooth away save death, which often, when it gathers in the years to itself, gathers in their footprints too, and leaves the face as smooth, as if the traveller, having reached the end of his circle, had met his youth again. There was no disguising it — on the face of Lady Harlekston, and in her whole bearing, handsome and fashionable woman though she was counted, there was something artificial and worldly.

Carbouche saw it, and forgave her nothing. " And now, Susette, you may go : the sitting was to be two hours, was it not, Monsieur ? At one o'clock you can return ; bring the carriage, for I shall be tired." " Your maid can wait if you prefer it, Madame ; there is a chair by the fire." " Ah, no, she has some shopping to do ; besides, we are old friends, Monsieur." There was something very French in her manner : even he recognized it. " And I want — I want — " she lingered over the words until the door was shut behind the maid, " to have some talk ; it would be impossible before a maid." Car bouche shrunk back. " Pardon, Madame," he said, as he motioned her to the chair on the platform, and looked for his charcoal stick, "but I have not the honour of being an old friend ; it is not but minutes since you arrived."

" I was thinking of years ago," she said, in a low voice. "The years ago have no more concern with us, Madame, than the dead who lie in their graves. To-day we have to think of your portrait. Will you have the goodness to turn a little more to the light," and he stepped back to look at her pose. " Am I very much changed ? " she asked sadly. " Time is an envious thing, Madame, and takes some thing from us all," Carbouche said, as he began to draw on his canvas ; " it is seldom so self-denying as to take least from the beautiful." She made a little grimace that had been studied : it had its effect upon him accordingly. For a few minutes neither of them spoke. " You were surprised when you heard who your sitter was to be, Hen — M. Carbouche?" She corrected herself almost elaborately, and watched the effect of her seem ingly careless slip upon him.

His manner was colder and still more formal than before, as he answered, " There are many unexpected things in life, Madame la Comtesse, but as one grows old one is seldom much surprised," and again there was a silence. " You find it difficult to talk while you paint ? " she asked. " As a rule I prefer to be silent, Madame. " I long so much to hear about yourself." " I am flattered at Madame's longing," he said coldly. " I have watched your career with much interest." " I am honoured by Madame's interest ; " and he went on with his work. Lady Harlekston was baffled. When he looked up at her there was no expression on his face except one of desire to accomplish accurately the portrait on which he was engaged ; evidently he worked with extraordinary quickness and decision. An hour passed ; a good deal of progress had been made with the portrait, but the painter and his sitter were on precisely the same terms as at her arrival.

Presently she made a bold venture. " Have you been to St. Germain lately ? " she asked suddenly. " No, Madame." " It is a dear place," she sighed, " I long to see it again." " That would not be difficult," he answered absently, as if his whole attention were given to his work ; " it is not an hour from Paris, and the trains are frequent." " It is full of memories, it would only make me sad," she said with another sigh, but he was silent ; " it is a beautiful place," she added. " It is not beautiful now, Madame," he said grimly, "it is winter, and the leaves have fallen. St. Germain depends on the leaves ; when they are gone it is bare and ugly. Its beauty is like that of a woman ; as a rule she has little that is beautiful beneath her looks. When the summer goes, St. Germain has nothing beneath its leaves."

" Youth and summer are not everything," she said almost piteously. " Ah, no," he answered ; " sometimes wisdom and knowledge come with age, and in winter there is time for reflection." Another silence ; Carbouche went on with the portrait. Keenly and quickly he looked at her ; surely and unhesitatingly his brush went to the canvas. The sitting was nearly at an end. " Monsieur," she said softly, " I think you are very hard." " Perhaps," and he shrugged his shoulders ; " but one cannot help one's nature ; it is one's misfortune, or the reverse." " I think," she went on reflectively, " it is a little inevitable — it is one of the qualities of genius. So many precious things are hard ; the diamond is hardest of all." " Madame is most ingenious ; she would make one feel flattered even at the possession of one's defects," but there was no yielding in his voice.