The Quest of Glory - Marjorie Bowen (most interesting books to read txt) 📗

“and fell into

thought when I returned, and now it seems strange to go to bed by

daylight.”

 

The young man hesitated a moment, while Luc held the door courteously

open.

 

“Are you alone?” he asked at last.

 

“I have my servant—he is asleep in the other chamber.”

 

Again the other hesitated, then said with a kind of wistful earnestness—

 

“Monsieur, would you come to my room and keep me company a little while?

I thought if you had been a priest I could have asked this in the name

of God. As it is, may I ask it in the name of our common youth, our

common humanity?”

 

“I have no reason in the world for refusing,” answered the Marquis; “but

if you require a priest, shall I not go for one? There is, I think, a

convent near by.”

 

The young man shook his head.

 

“No, if you will come, Monsieur—just for a little while.” Luc closed

his own door and followed the other across the landing into the room

opposite.

 

He found it was much larger than his own and rather gloomily furnished.

The house was old, and the floor was sloping in this room and the two

windows with the deep sills had slightly sunk; the walls were panelled

in black waxed oak, and the ceiling was low and beamed.

 

A heavy bed, with dark blue brocade curtains drawn closely round it,

stood in one corner, and near it hung a long mirror in a thick

tortoiseshell frame; in the murky depths of the greenish glass the rest

of the chamber was reflected.

 

A brass hand-lamp and an hourglass stood on a circular worm-eaten oak

table between the windows, from which the sombre tapestry curtains had

been looped back.

 

Hanging on the wall above this table was a black crucifix similar to

that which the Marquis had in his own apartment.

 

The few chairs were large and worn, with sunken seats and arms polished

with much use. The occupier of this ordinary, yet gloomy, apartment

offered one of these chairs to the Marquis and took one himself, seating

himself with his back to the light and his face towards Luc.

 

The light, though increasing every moment, was still grey and

colourless, and only entered with difficulty through the deep-set small

windows.

 

Luc looked keenly at the stranger.

 

He saw a man of no more than his own age, of the appearance of a

well-bred gentleman, dressed in a worn suit of dark red corded tabinet,

with a plain muslin shirt ruffled at the neck and wrists; he wore a

simple sword, ornamented by a bunch of steel tassels hanging from the

scabbard, and a lady’s handkerchief, deeply bordered with lace, beneath

the black band of his neck ribbon.

 

Owing to the way in which he sat and his attitude, with his head

slightly bent, Luc could not clearly distinguish his features; but his

hair, which was a bright brown, inclined to reddish, and gathered into a

club, was full in the meagre light of the window.

 

“In what way can I serve you, Monsieur?” asked the Marquis. He was

slightly interested, slightly diverted, but weary mentally and languid

after his sleepless night. His pure, proud face was thrown up by the

strengthening dawn against the old black chair in which he sat, and his

deep grey eyes rested on the other with perfect courtesy and perfect

serenity.

 

“I am the Marquis de Vauvenargues, formerly of the régiment du roi,”

he said.

 

The young man moved suddenly, looped the curtain yet farther back, and

pulled his chair round so that the light fell over his face; it was like

taking a mask from his features, so suddenly were countenance and

personality revealed.

 

He had, as the Marquis noticed with a slight sense of horror, something

of the look of Georges d’Espagnac in his fair, regular outline; but his

expression was one of hopeless despair, keen wretchedness, and bitter

self-contempt. His light brown eyes were sunk and shadowed, his mouth

strained, his cheeks hollow; over his whole face was a bluish tinge that

contrasted with the bright colour of his hair. This might have been

caused by the chill, hard light of the dawn, or the effect of

ill-health. Whatever the reason of it, it gave him a peculiar, ghastly

appearance.

 

Luc sat forward in his chair; for the second time within a few hours he

was looking at an expression of absolute despair on a young, fair face.

He compared the two countenances—the seen and the remembered—and there

was this great difference in them, that, whereas the noble in the

pavilion had revealed the bitter languor of satiety, the faded distaste

of life caused by unending pleasure and cloying luxury, this man looked

like one who bad burnt out his soul in some useless endeavour, and was

now on the verge of uttermost failure.

 

“Monsieur,” said the Marquis, not without a tremor in his tone, “why did

you ask my company?”

 

“Ah,” replied the other, in a voice that had retained more of its youth

and freshness than his face, “you are afraid that I am about to disturb

your tranquillity by some recital of grief; but you need not be. And

besides,” he added, “you are as serene as a very old monk who has never

left his cloister—I can see it in your eyes.”

 

“Not so serene,” replied Luc, “that I am not troubled by the sight of

despair, and I have looked on it before this night.”

 

“Very well, Monsieur,” was the answer; “return to your room and forget

I ever broke in upon your meditations.”

 

“Who are you?” asked Luc.

 

“A painter—perhaps a poet.”

 

“What have you done with your life,” asked the Marquis, “that at your

age you seem so hopeless?”

 

The painter smiled bitterly.

 

“I have wasted all my years in the quest of glory.”

 

Luc felt the blood beating at his heart.

 

“And you have found—?” he questioned half fearfully.

 

“I have found that there is no such thing as glory on earth. And I have

no belief in any heaven.”

 

As he spoke these words his face took on another tinge of pallor and a

certain rigidity came over his features, giving them a look of death.

 

“You are unfortunate,” said Luc; “but you cannot say glory is not there

because you have not achieved it with a paint-brush and a few yards of

canvas.”

 

The painter broke into long and harsh laughter.

 

“That is good, very good!” he cried. “And you still believe in it,

though you have failed to gain it with your sword and your cannon and

all your noisy details of war?”

 

The Marquis rose and paced up and down the waxed, uneven floor. The

painter’s laughter ended suddenly.

 

“If you could question the god, the creature, the beast who made me,” he

said fiercely, “you would see that I commenced my life searching for the

ideal—the ideal love, the ideal work, the ideal reward at the end of

it; and though my heart was pure, my courage high, and my industry

enormous, I failed in everything—the world played me false every time,

every time; and now I am a moral bankrupt, who does not even possess the

asset of hope.”

 

“You have had terrible experiences, to make you speak like this,”

answered the Marquis, in a moved tone.

 

“I have had all experiences, and I have found out that glory is only the

lure used to beguile us to our wretched, our solitary ends.”

 

“I think,” said Luc, “you never discovered the true meaning of it.”

 

The painter lifted eyes in which there gleamed the feeble remains of

what had once been the noble fires of enthusiasm and ambition.

 

“I understand the meaning very well,” he replied; then he rose from his

chair and stood looking out at the neat quiet street.

 

Luc was silent. Tremendous thoughts assailed him—why could he not bring

comfort down from the clouds to console this man?—why could he not lend

him a spark from his own fire to rekindle the desire for glory in his

breast?

 

Presently he said—

 

“Monsieur, you are still so young.” The words sounded commonplace even

to himself, and the artist made no answer.

 

“I should like to see your pictures,” said the Marquis. Now the light

was strengthening, he observed a pile of canvases standing against the

wall by the side of the bed.

 

The painter answered without turning his head—

 

“I painted a picture once that Watteau, or Boucher, or Fragonard might

have been pleased to sign. It was a portrait of the woman I loved.”

 

“Where is it now?” asked Luc.

 

“In her house, I think. I found her in the gutters of St. Antoine—she

left me in a silk dress I had starved myself to buy. I never succeeded

after that, and as I went down she went up, and now you will find very

high personages indeed at her little suppers. She is now, I believe, a

spy among the Courts of Europe—and once she was my inspiration,” he

added, in a dry tone.

 

The sordidness of this disgusted Luc.

 

“It is weakness to pin your fortunes to the skirts of a woman,” he said.

 

The painter looked at him.

 

“Are you going your way uncheered by any thought of any woman? Can you

manage without laying your ambitions at some one’s feet?”

 

Luc flushed.

 

“I have never met the woman who could break my heart,” he answered.

 

“Yet—” added the painter. “As for my picture,” he continued, “I took

her, for some reason, as Bellona, with the hounds in leash and her

drapery carried by a light wind. The drapery was very well put in.”

 

The daylight was now full in the sombre room, and the dark furniture

stood out clear against the shining walls; it fully revealed, too, the

young artist, and showed that his peculiar pallor was no trick of light,

but the colour of his face.

 

Luc watched him keenly. There seemed a wildness in his words, in his

expression, in his action in asking for the company of a stranger, that

made Luc think that perhaps some anguish had sent him out of his wits;

but even while he was thinking this, and wondering what comfort he could

offer, the painter turned in a perfectly composed manner, and raising

the hourglass from the table between the windows, looked at it with a

smile.

 

The sand had nearly run through.

 

“Now I will keep you no longer, Monsieur,” he said, in an even voice.

“And if you wish to see my pictures—there is one I should like to show

you, a little later in the morning; it is not yet quite completed.”

 

Luc could see no brushes, paints, or easel in the plain bedchamber, nor

any sign that the painter could finish any canvas; again he thought he

detected a wildness in the man’s speech.

 

“I shall be glad to see you again,” he said. “I fear this visit,

Monsieur, has been of little use; but since you would give me no

confidence, I could give you no consolation.”

 

The painter smiled; he was still looking at the hourglass.

 

“Where there is no hope, how can there be any consolation?” he replied.

“You have rendered me all the service I required—half an hour’s

company.”

 

He set down the hourglass, went to the door and opened it.

 

“You are searching for glory, are you not, Monsieur?” he asked, as Luc

passed him. “Well, the