The Incomplete Amorist Part 16

Book 2.--The Man

CHAPTER VIII.

THE ONE AND THE OTHER.

"Some idiot," remarked Eustace Vernon, sipping Vermouth at a little table, "insists that, if you sit long enough outside the Cafe de la Paix, you will see everyone you have ever known or ever wanted to know pa.s.s by. I have sat here for half-an-hour--and--_voila_."

"You met me, half an hour ago," said the other man.

"Oh, _you_!" said Vernon affectionately.

"And your hat has gone off every half minute ever since," said the other man.

"Ah, that's to the people I've known. It's the people I've wanted to know that are the rarity."

"Do you mean people you have wanted to know and not known?"

"There aren't many of those," said Vernon; "no it's--Jove, that's a sweet woman!"

"I hate the type," said the other man briefly: "all clothes--no real human being."

The woman was beautifully dressed, in the key whose harmonies are only mastered by Frenchwomen and Americans. She turned her head as her carriage pa.s.sed, and Vernon's hat went off once more.

"I'd forgotten her profile," said Vernon, "and she's learned how to dress since I saw her last. She's quite human, really, and as charming as anyone ought to be."

"So I should think," said the other man. "I'm sorry I said that, but I didn't know you knew her. How's trade?"

"Oh, I did a picture--well, but a picture! I did it in England in the Spring. Best thing I've done yet. Come and see it."

"I should like to look you up. Where do you hang out?"

"Eighty-six bis Rue Notre Dame des Champs," said Vernon. "Everyone in fiction lives there. It's the only street on the other side that authors seem ever to have dreamed of. Still, it's convenient, so I herd there with all sorts of blackguards, heroes and villains and what not. Eighty-six bis."

"I'll come," said the other man, slowly. "Do you know, Vernon, I'd like awfully to get at your point of view--your philosophy of life?"

"Haven't you got one, my dear chap!--'sufficient unto' is my motto."

"You paint pictures,", the other went on, "so very much too good for the sort of life you lead."

Vernon laughed.

"My dear Temple," he said, "I live, mostly, the life of a vestal virgin."

"You know well enough I'm not quarrelling with the way you spend your evenings," said his dear Temple; "it's your whole outlook that doesn't match your work. Yet there must be some relation between the two, that's what I'd like to get at."

There is a bond stronger than friends.h.i.+p, stronger than love--a bond that cannot be forged in any other shop than the one--the bond between old schoolfellows. Vernon had sometimes wondered why he "stood so much" from Temple. It is a wonder that old schoolfellows often feel, mutually.

"The subject you've started," said he, "is of course, to me, the most interesting. Please develop your thesis."

"Well then, your pictures are good, strong, thorough stuff, with sentiment--yes, just enough sentiment to keep them from the brutality of Degas or the sensualism of Latouche. Whereas you, yourself, seem to have no sentiment."

"I? No sentiment! Oh, Bobby, this is too much! Why, I'm a ma.s.s of it!

Ask--"

"Yes, ask any woman of your acquaintance. That's just it--or just part of it. You fool them into thinking--oh, I don't know what; but you don't fool me."

"I haven't tried."

"Then you're not brutal, except half a dozen times in the year when you--And I've noticed that when your temper goes smash your morals go at the same time. Is that cause or effect? What's the real you like, and where do you keep it?"

"The real me," said Vernon, "is seen in my pictures, and--and appreciated by my friends; you for instance, are, I believe, genuinely attached to me."

"Oh, rot!" said Bobby.

"I don't see," said Vernon, moving his iron chair to make room for two people at the next table, "why you should expect my pictures to rhyme with my life. A man's art doesn't rhyme with his personality. Most often it contradicts flatly. Look at musicians--what a divine art, and what pigs of high priests! And look at actors--but no, one can't; the spectacle is too sickening."

"I sometimes think," said Temple, emptying his gla.s.s, "that the real you isn't made yet. It's waiting for--"

"For the refining touch of a woman's hand, eh? You think the real me is--Oh, Temple, Temple, I've no heart for these childish imaginings!

The real me is the man that paints pictures, d.a.m.n good pictures, too, though I say it."

"And is that what all the women think?

"Ask them, my dear chap; ask them. They won't tell you the truth."

"They're not the only ones who won't. I should like to know what you really think of women, Vernon."

"I don't think about them at all," lied Vernon equably. "They aren't subjects for thought but for emotion--and even of that as little as may be. It's impossible seriously to regard a woman as a human being; she's merely a dear, delightful, dainty--"

"Plaything?"

"Well, yes--or rather a very delicately tuned musical instrument. If you know the scales and the common chords, you can improvise nice little airs and charming variations. She's a sort of--well, a penny whistle, and the music you get depends not on her at all, but on your own technique."

"I've never been in love," said Temple; "not seriously, I mean," he hastened to add, for Vernon was smiling, "not a life or death matter, don't you know; but I do hate the way you talk, and one of these days you'll hate it too."

Miss Desmond's warning floated up through the dim waters of half a year.

"So a lady told me, only last Spring," he said. "Well, I'll take my chance. Going? Well, I'm glad we ran across each other. Don't forget to look me up."

Temple moved off, and Vernon was left alone. He sat idly smoking cigarette after cigarette, and watched the s.h.i.+fting crowd. It was a bright October day, and the crowd was a gay one.

Suddenly his fingers tightened on his cigarette,--but he kept the hand that held it before his face, and he bent his head forward.