The Azure Rose Part 14

"I ask it from the heart," he pleaded. "Do not I, my G.o.d, know what it is to be hungry?"

"Hungry?" said the dealer. "Hungry! The boy has an uncle famously rich. What is an uncle for? Hungry? You make _une betise_. Hungry." He called his clerk and took up his hat. "I will not go," he vowed.

"Hungry, _par example_!"

"Truly you will not," smiled Seraphin. "And do not tell him that I sent you: he is proud."

The sound of the door opening interrupted Cartaret's dream. He turned, a little sheepish, wholly annoyed. Spectacled Fourget stood there, looking very severe.

"I was pa.s.sing by," he explained. "I have not come to purchase anything, but I grow old: I was tired and I climbed your stairs to rest."

It was too late to hide those portraits. Cartaret could only place for Fourget a chair with its back to them.

"What have you been doing?" asked the dealer.

He swung 'round toward the portraits.

"Don't look at them!" said Cartaret. "They're merely sketches."

But Fourget had already looked. He was on his feet. He was bobbing from one to the other, his lean hands adjusting his gla.s.ses, his shoulders stooped, his nose thrust out. He was uttering little cries of approval.

"But this is good! It is good, then. This is first-rate. This is of an excellence!"

"They're not for sale," said Cartaret.

"_Hein?_" Fourget wheeled. "If they are not for sale, they are for what, then?"

"They--they are merely sketches, I tell you. I was trying my hand at a new method; but I find there is nothing in it."

Fourget was unb.u.t.toning his short frock-coat. He was reaching for his wallet.

"I tell you there is everything in it. There is the sure touch in it, the clear vision, the sympathy. There is reputation in it. In fine, there is money."

He had the wallet out as he concluded.

Cartaret shook his head.

"Oh," said Fourget, the dealer in him partially overcoming the lover of art, "not much as yet; not a great deal of money. You have still a long way to go; but you have found the road, monsieur, and I want to help you on your journey. Come, now." He nodded to the first portrait.

"What do you ask for that?"

"I don't want to sell it."

"Poof! We shall not haggle. Tell Fourget what you had thought of asking. Do not be modest. Tell me--and I will give you half."

He kept it up as long as he could; he tried at last to buy the least of the preliminary sketches of the Rose-Lady; he offered what, to Cartaret, were dazzling prices; but Cartaret was not to be shaken: these experiments were not for sale.

Fourget was first disappointed, then puzzled. His enthusiasm had been genuine; but could it be possible that Dieudonne was mistaken? Was Cartaret not starving? The old man was beginning to b.u.t.ton his coat when a new idea struck him.

"Who was your model?" he asked abruptly.

"I--I had none," Cartaret stammered.

"Ah!"--Fourget peered hard at him through those glistening spectacles.

"You painted them from memory?"

"Yes." Cartaret felt his face redden. "From imagination, I mean."

Then Fourget understood. Perhaps he had merely the typical Frenchman's love of romance, which ceases only with the typical Frenchman's life; or perhaps he remembered his own youth in Besancon, when he, too, had wanted to be an artist and when, among the vines on the hillside, little Rosalie smiled at him and kissed his ambition away--little Rosalie Poullot, dust and ashes these twenty years in the Cimetiere du Mont Parna.s.se....

He turned to a pile of pot-boilers. He took one almost at random.

"This one," he said, "I should like to buy it."

It was the worst pot-boiler of the lot. Before the portraits, it was hopeless.

Cartaret half understood.

"No," he said; "you don't really want it."

Seraphin had been right: the young man was proud. "How then?" demanded Fourget. "This also did you paint not-to-sell?"

"I painted it to sell," said Cartaret miserably, "but it doesn't deserve selling--perhaps just because I did paint it to sell."

To his surprise, Fourget came to him and put an arm on his shoulder, a withered hand patting the American's back.

"Ah, if but some more-famous artists felt as you do! Come; let me have it. That is very well. I shall sell it to a fool. Many fools are my patrons. How else could I live? There is not enough good art to meet all demands, or there are not enough demands to meet all good art. Who shall say? Suffice it there are demands of sorts. Daily I thank the good G.o.d for His fools...."

Cartaret went to Les Halles and bought a large box of strawberries.

He had put them carefully on his window-shelf and covered them with a copy of a last week's _Matin_--being an American, he of course read the _Matin_--for he was resolved that, now he again had a little money, these strawberries should be his final extravagance and should be treasured accordingly--he had just anch.o.r.ed the paper against the gentle Spring breeze when he became aware that he had another visitor.

Standing by his table, much as she had stood there on the night of his second sight of her, was the Lady of the Rose.

Cartaret thought that his eyes were playing him tricks. He rubbed his eyes.

"It is I," she said.

He thought that again he could detect the perfume of the Azure Rose.

He again thought that he could see white mountain-tops in the sun. He could have sworn that, in the street, a hurdy-gurdy was playing:

"Her brow is like the snaw-drift; Her throat is like the swan----"

"I came in," she was saying, "to see how you were. I should have sent Chitta, but she was so long coming back from an errand."

"Thank you," he said--he was not yet certain of himself--"I'm quite well. But I'm very glad you called."