IV
When, the next morning, she appeared equipped for their customary ramble,
her husband surprised her by announcing that he meant to stay at home.
"The fact is I'm rather surfeited," he said, smiling. "I suppose my
appetite isn't equal to such a plethora. I think I'll write some letters
and join you somewhere later."
She detected the wish to be alone and responded to it with her usual
readiness.
"I shall sink to my proper level and buy a bonnet, then," she said. "I
haven't had time to take the edge off that appetite."
They agreed to meet at the Hotel Cluny at mid-day, and she set out alone
with a vague sense of relief. Neither she nor Keniston had made any direct
reference to Mrs. Davant's visit; but its effect was implicit in their
eagerness to avoid each other.
Claudia accomplished some shopping in the spirit of perfunctoriness that
robs even new bonnets of their bloom; and this business despatched, she
turned aimlessly into the wide inviting brightness of the streets. Never
had she felt more isolated amid that ordered beauty which gives a social
quality to the very stones and mortar of Paris. All about her were
evidences of an artistic sensibility pervading every form of life like the
nervous structure of the huge frame--a sensibility so delicate, alert and
universal that it seemed to leave no room for obtuseness or error. In such
a medium the faculty of plastic expression must develop as unconsciously
as any organ in its normal surroundings; to be "artistic" must cease to be
an attitude and become a natural function. To Claudia the significance of
the whole vast revelation was centred in the light it shed on one tiny
spot of consciousness--the value of her husband's work. There are moments
when to the groping soul the world's accumulated experiences are but
stepping-stones across a private difficulty.
She stood hesitating on a street corner. It was barely eleven, and she had
an hour to spare before going to the Hotel Cluny. She seemed to be letting
her inclination float as it would on the cross-currents of suggestion
emanating from the brilliant complex scene before her; but suddenly, in
obedience to an impulse that she became aware of only in acting on it, she
called a cab and drove to the gallery where her husband's pictures were
exhibited.
A magnificent official in gold braid sold her a ticket and pointed the way
up the empty crimson-carpeted stairs. His duplicate, on the upper landing,
held out a catalogue with an air of recognizing the futility of the offer;
and a moment later she found herself in the long noiseless impressive room
full of velvet-covered ottomans and exotic plants. It was clear that the
public ardor on which Mrs. Davant had expatiated had spent itself earlier
in the week; for Claudia had this luxurious apartment to herself. Something
about its air of rich privacy, its diffusion of that sympathetic quality in
other countries so conspicuously absent from the public show-room, seemed
to emphasize its present emptiness. It was as though the flowers, the
carpet, the lounges, surrounded their visitor's solitary advance with
the mute assurance that they had done all they could toward making the
thing "go off," and that if they had failed it was simply for lack of
co-operation. She stood still and looked about her. The pictures struck her
instantly as odd gaps in the general harmony; it was self-evident that they
had not co-operated. They had not been pushing, aggressive, discordant:
they had merely effaced themselves. She swept a startled eye from one
familiar painting to another. The canvases were all there--and the
frames--but the miracle, the mirage of life and meaning, had vanished
like some atmospheric illusion. What was it that had happened? And had
it happened to _her_ or to the pictures? She tried to rally her
frightened thoughts; to push or coax them into a semblance of resistance;
but argument was swept off its feet by the huge rush of a single
conviction--the conviction that the pictures were bad. There was no
standing up against that: she felt herself submerged.
The stealthy fear that had been following her all these days had her by the
throat now. The great vision of beauty through which she had been moving
as one enchanted was turned to a phantasmagoria of evil mocking shapes.
She hated the past; she hated its splendor, its power, its wicked magical
vitality.... She dropped into a seat and continued to stare at the wall
before her. Gradually, as she stared, there stole out to her from the
dimmed humbled canvases a reminder of what she had once seen in them, a
spectral appeal to her faith to call them back to life. What proof had she
that her present estimate of them was less subjective than the other? The
confused impressions of the last few days were hardly to be pleaded as a
valid theory of art. How, after all, did she know that the pictures were
bad? On what suddenly acquired technical standard had she thus decided
the case against them? It seemed as though it were a standard outside of
herself, as though some unheeded inner sense were gradually making her
aware of the presence, in that empty room, of a critical intelligence that
was giving out a subtle effluence of disapproval. The fancy was so vivid
that, to shake it off, she rose and began to move about again. In the
middle of the room stood a monumental divan surmounted by a _massif_
of palms and azaleas. As Claudia's muffled wanderings carried her around
the angle of this seat, she saw that its farther side was occupied by the
figure of a man, who sat with his hands resting on his stick and his head
bowed upon them. She gave a little cry and her husband rose and faced her.
Instantly the live point of consciousness was shifted, and she became aware
that the quality of the pictures no longer mattered. It was what _he_
thought of them that counted: her life hung on that.
They looked at each other a moment in silence; such concussions are not apt
to flash into immediate speech. At length he said simply, "I didn't know
you were coming here."
She colored as though he had charged her with something underhand.
"I didn't mean to," she stammered; "but I was too early for our
appointment--"
Her word's cast a revealing glare on the situation. Neither of them looked
at the pictures; but to Claudia those unobtruding presences seemed suddenly
to press upon them and force them apart.
Keniston glanced at his watch. "It's twelve o'clock," he said. "Shall we go
on?"
