Paris: The Novel (73 page)

“We have heard nothing recently. My father says that he took extra leave to deal with his father’s affairs and the family estate.”

“And what do you feel about him?”

“It is flattering that he may have taken an interest in me.”

“And that he may again.”

“He is very agreeable, but I hardly know him. That is all I can say.”

“You have no other prospects at present?”

“If I have, nobody has told me. Aunt Éloïse,” she went on, “will you please tell me if my father and Marc have quarreled.”

“What makes you think they have?”

“Marc never comes to the apartment anymore, and Papa doesn’t want me to visit his studio.”

“You’d have to ask them if they’ve quarreled. I might not know. Perhaps your father doesn’t think you should disturb Marc in his work.”

“But I never see him.”

“Well, you can certainly meet him if he comes here, or if I take you both out. Your father cannot object to that.” She paused. “If we go out, I may ask him to bring his American friend. I think he’s a good influence on your brother. Would you mind?”

Marie’s heart missed a beat.

“I don’t mind. Monsieur Hadley seems nice enough.” She shrugged. “As far as I can tell.”

In the coming weeks she met Marc several times at her aunt’s. He was usually with Hadley.

She noticed that Hadley’s French was getting very fluent now. Not only that, he was picking up all kinds of the idiomatic expressions the French love. Instead of saying, “To return to the subject,” for instance, he’d say:
Pour revenir à nos moutons
, “To return to our sheep.” He might say, “He bores me stiff.” But he might also say
Il me casse les pieds
, “He breaks my feet.” And this new confidence with the language made a difference in their relationship.

He began to converse with her.

He’d talked before, of course. But when he sat down on the sofa beside her at Aunt Éloïse’s apartment and turned to her, and looked into her face seriously with his handsome eyes and asked what she thought of the Dreyfus affair, or some other piece of current news, or whether she liked a particular painting by Manet, and why, she experienced two reactions.

She felt short of breath. It wasn’t the questions. It was the fact of his presence, so close to her, the fact that her heart would palpitate, she hardly knew why. She managed never to blush; she was grateful for that. She made herself concentrate very hard on everything he said as if he were a teacher in a classroom, and made herself think hard before she replied. That got her through.

“You look a bit distressed sometimes, when you’re talking to Hadley,” Marc told her. “But you mustn’t mind him. It seems the American girls are used to discussing all kinds of things and having their own opinions in a way that men wouldn’t care for here.”

But the other reaction she experienced was even stranger to her.

It was a thrill of a new kind of excitement. She felt uplifted, as if this stranger from another world was taking her into a new and larger life. To a place where she could grow, like an exotic plant, become a person she had never dreamed of being before.

So when Marc asked her if she was still finding his friend a little difficult, she replied: “No. He’s American, but I’m getting used to it.”

Early in May, Aunt Éloïse announced that she and Marie were coming to visit Marc in his studio. They came late in the afternoon. The light was good, and it looked as if Marc had tidied the place up before their coming. Against one wall was a settee and chair where visitors could sit, and a low table on which he’d set out some refreshments. His easel stood about twenty feet away, with a low dais and chair for a sitter. Stacked against the far wall were two sets of canvases, one set face out, the other reversed. Beside them was a plan chest for drawings, a roll of canvas and a pile of stretchers.

“This portrait,” he showed them the painting on the easel, “is almost complete. What do you think?”

The picture showed a slim, pale woman in a long dress, her unsmiling face half turned toward the viewer. The effect was one of conventional
formality, yet there was a hint of ambiguity in the depiction, as if it were the frontispiece of a short story that the audience was waiting to be told.

“Who is she?” asked Marie.

“Mademoiselle Ney, the daughter of a lawyer. Father got me the commission, which was good of him.”

“There is something hidden yet sensual about this woman,” Aunt Éloïse remarked.

“Really?” Marc looked at her. “How interesting you should say that. I can’t see it myself. She is highly respectable, I assure you. And her father is paying handsomely for it.”

“No doubt,” said his aunt, drily. “May we see some more?”

For ten minutes or so he showed them paintings, drawings, sketches, of people, landscapes, animals, some finished, others not.

“Well, Marc, I can see you’ve been working. And I am very glad of it. Are you happy in your work?”

“I am.”

“And what of those?” Aunt Éloïse indicated the stacked canvases.

“Oh. Things I’ve abandoned. Canvases I’m going to paint over.”

“May we see them? You never know, Marc, artists are not always right about their own work. There may be something good in there.”

“Absolutely not.” He gave his aunt a hard look. “There’s nothing there that I wish you and Marie to see.”

Aunt Éloïse bowed her head.

“I understand, Marc,” she said. “An artist must always protect his reputation.”

Aunt Éloïse seemed well pleased with the visit, Marie thought. As for herself, she was delighted.

As they were leaving, she noticed Aunt Éloïse slip a roll of banknotes into Marc’s hand. Her aunt thought she wouldn’t see, but she did.

“Why did you give Marc all that money?” she asked after they had left.

“Oh,” said Aunt Éloïse, with scarcely a moment’s hesitation, “I owed him for a painting he bought for me.” But Marie wasn’t sure that this was true.

It was two weeks later that her father told Marie he had received a letter from Roland de Cygne.

“He writes that after much consideration, he has decided to rejoin his
regiment and devote himself to his military duties. I think that means he has decided not to settle down and take a wife just yet. At all events, we shall not be seeing him for a while. His regiment has been posted to eastern France.”

“I am sorry not to see him, Papa, but I am not hurt,” Marie replied. It was always agreeable, she supposed, to know that such an eligible man might be a suitor; so she could not help feeling that she had lost something. A little status, perhaps.

“I must confess, I’d rather hoped he might have pursued you,” her father said frankly. “And until I knew whether he might, I didn’t look too hard for other candidates.”

“We’ll both keep a lookout, Papa,” she said.

“And he’ll be a lucky man,” he replied, and kissed her.

“Marie,” her aunt told her the following week, “I have a very important errand. Your brother’s friend Hadley wants to meet Monet. Marc tells me he’s quite set his heart on it.”

“But they say he never sees anyone nowadays,” Marie objected, “unless he already knows them.”

It was years since the great painter had retreated to the quiet village of Giverny, some fifty miles out from Paris, on the edge of Normandy. For a time he’d known peace there. But gradually, young artists had started making pilgrimages to Giverny to see him. A regular artists’ colony had developed. Nowadays, in self-preservation, Monet had been forced to close his doors, in order to get any work done.

“There is someone in Paris who may be able to give me a special dispensation,” her aunt said with a smile. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow.”

The rue Laffitte was hardly a ten-minute walk from the family apartment: across the columned front of the Madeleine, past the Opéra, and then the rue Laffitte was on the left. It was a straight, narrow street. On its modest journey northward, it encountered other, larger thoroughfares with famous names: the boulevard Haussmann, the rue Rossini, the rue de Provence, rue La Fayette, rue de la Victoire. But humble though it was, the rue Laffitte contained some of the best art galleries in Paris.

They had just crossed the Boulevard Haussmann when, ahead of
them, they saw Marc and Hadley waiting. Moments later, they were in the gallery.

Monsieur Paul Durand-Ruel was already in his sixties, though he looked ten years younger. He was a dapper man with a small mustache and kindly eyes, and as soon as he saw Aunt Éloïse, those eyes lit up with pleasure.

“My dear Mademoiselle Blanchard. Welcome.”

Aunt Éloïse quickly made the introductions.

“My niece Marie has been here before, Marc I think you know, and this is Monsieur Hadley, our American friend who is studying art in Paris for a while.”

There was no particular show at the gallery at that moment, but a selection of gallery artists hung on the walls. As they went around together, Durand-Ruel chatted amiably.

“Your family still has the house near Barbizon?”

“At Fontainebleau, yes.”

“Back in my father’s day,” the dealer explained to Marie, “your aunt was buying members of the Barbizon school from us. She has two Corots, I think. And then, when I began to promote the Impressionists, as we call them now, your aunt was one of our first supporters.”