|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 7
By and by we plunged into a dark hallway, climbed a long, unsavoury,
corkscrew staircase, and knocked at a door. A gruff voice having
answered, ''Trez!' we entered Chalks's bare, bleak, paint-smelling
studio. He was working (from a lay-figure) with his back towards us;
and he went on working for a minute or two after our arrival, without
speaking. Then he demanded, in a sort of grunt, 'Eh bien, qu'est ce
que c'est?' always without pausing in his work or looking round. Nina
gave two little _ahems_, tense with suppressed mirth; and slowly,
indifferently, Chalks turned an absent-minded face in our direction.
But, next instant, there was a shout--a rush--a confusion of forms in
the middle of the floor--and I realised that I was not the only one to
be honoured by a kiss and an embrace. 'Oh, you're covering me with
paint,' Nina protested suddenly; and indeed he had forgotten to drop
his brush and palette, and great dabs of colour were clinging to her
cloak. While he was doing penance, scrubbing the garment with rags
soaked in turpentine, he kept shaking his head, and murmuring, from
time to time, as he glanced up at her, 'Well, I'll be dumned.'
'It's very nice and polite of you, Chalks,' she said, by and by, 'a
very graceful concession to my sex. But, if you think it would
relieve you once for all, you have my full permission to pronounce it
--amned.'
Chalks did no more work that afternoon; and that evening quite twenty
of us dined at Madame Chanve's; and it was almost like old times.
VIII.
'Oh, yes,' she explained to me afterwards, 'my uncle is a good man. My
aunt and cousins are very good women. But for me, to live with
them--pas possible, mon cher. Their thoughts were not my thoughts, we
could not speak the same language. They disapproved of me unutterably.
They suffered agonies, poor things. Oh, they were very kind, very
patient. But--! My gods were their devils. My father--my great, grand,
splendid father--was "poor Alfred," "poor uncle Alfred." Que
voulez-vous? And then--the life, the society! The parishioners--the
people who came to tea--the houses where we sometimes dined! Are you
interested in crops? In the preservation of game? In the diseases of
cattle? Ol�l�! (C'est bien le cas de s'en servir, de cette
expression-l�.) Ol�l�, l�l�! And then--have you ever been homesick?
Oh, I longed, I pined, for Paris, as one suffocating would long, would
die, for air. Enfin, I could not stand it any longer. They thought it
wicked to smoke cigarettes. My poor aunt--when she smelt
cigarette-smoke in my bed-room! Oh, her face! I had to sneak away,
behind the shrubbery at the end of the garden, for stealthy whiffs.
And it was impossible to get French tobacco. At last I took the bull
by the horns, and fled. It will have been a terrible shock for them.
But better one good blow than endless little ones; better a lump-sum
than instalments with interest.'
But what was she going to do? How was she going to live? For, after
all, much as she loved Paris, she couldn't subsist on its air and
sunshine.
'Oh, never fear! I'll manage somehow. I'll not die of hunger,' she
said confidently.
IX.
And, sure enough, she managed very well. She gave music lessons to the
children of the Quarter, and English lessons to clerks and shop girls;
she did a little translating; she would pose now and then for a
painter friend--she was the original, for instance, of Norton's 'Woman
Dancing,' which you know. She even--thanks to the employment by Chalks
of what he called his 'in_floo_ence'--she even contributed a weekly
column of Paris gossip to the _Palladium_, a newspaper published at
Battle Creek, Michigan, U.S.A., Chalks's native town. 'Put in lots
about me, and talk as if there were only two important centres of
civilisation on earth, Battle Crick and Parus, and it'll be a boom,'
Chalks said. We used to have great fun, concocting those columns of
Paris gossip. Nina, indeed, held the pen and cast a deciding vote; but
we all collaborated. And we put in lots about Chalks--perhaps rather
more than he had bargained for. With an irony (we trusted) too subtle
to be suspected by the good people of Battle Creek, we would introduce
their illustrious fellow-citizen, casually, between the Pope and the
President of the Republic; we would sketch him as he strolled in the
Boulevard arm-in-arm with Monsieur Meissonier, as he dined with the
Perpetual Secretary of the French Academy, or drank his bock in the
afternoon with the Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honour; we would
compose solemn descriptive criticisms of his works, which almost made
us die of laughing; we would interview him--at length--about any
subject; we would give elaborate bulletins of his health, and
brilliant pen-pictures of his toilets. Sometimes we would betroth him,
marry him, divorce him; sometimes, when our muse impelled us to a
particularly daring flight, we would insinuate, darkly, sorrowfully,
that perhaps the great man's morals ... but no! We were persuaded that
rumour accused him falsely. The story that he had been seen dancing at
Bullier's with the notorious Duchesse de Z---- was a baseless
fabrication. Unprincipled? Oh, we were nothing if not unprincipled.
And our pleasure was so exquisite, and it worried our victim so. 'I
suppose you think it's funny, don't you?' he used to ask, with a feint
of superior scorn which put its fine flower to our hilarity. 'Look
out, or you'll bust,' he would warn us, the only unconvulsed member
present. 'By gum, you're easily amused.' We always wrote of him
respectfully as Mr. Charles K. Smith; we never faintly hinted at his
sobriquet. We would have rewarded liberally, at that time, any one who
could have told us what the K. stood for. We yearned to unite the
cryptic word to his surname by a hyphen; the mere abstract notion of
doing so filled us with fearful joy. Chalks was right, I dare say; we
were easily amused. And Nina, at these moments of literary frenzy--I
can see her now: her head bent over the manuscript, her hair in some
disarray, a spiral of cigarette-smoke winding ceilingward from between
the fingers of her idle hand, her lips parted, her eyes gleaming with
mischievous inspirations, her face pale with the intensity of her
glee. I can see her as she would look up, eagerly, to listen to
somebody's suggestion, or as she would motion to us to be silent,
crying, 'Attendez--I've got an idea.' Then her pen would dash swiftly,
noisily, over her paper for a little, whilst we all waited
expectantly; and at last she would lean back, drawing a long breath,
and tossing the pen aside, to read her paragraph out to us.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|