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

CHAPTER V # THE PAINTER

Luc heard that the King and M. Amelot had returned to Paris early the

same morning that he had been in converse with the young painter. There

was now nothing to keep him in Versailles: he had not seen the Countess

Carola, and yesterday M. de Biron, who was now rejoining his regiment,

could tell him nothing of her. She was probably still in Paris.

 

Versailles, at least, had no attractions for Luc; he was more than ever

anxious to see M. Amelot, as a second crisis had arisen between France,

Austria, and the advancing power of Prussia. Now Fleury was dead,

greater things were hoped from the diplomats of Paris, and Luc believed

that he might find this a favourable moment for obtaining employment in

politics.

 

A few days before he came to Versailles he had heard from his father; he

re-read the letter now, and it revived the sense of the dead weight of

the chains of home. His father was waiting eagerly for news of his

success; his mother wanted him back, and sent anxious inquiries after

his health; Joseph and all his friends would have been so happy if he

would have returned after his hardships at the war and settled down in

Aix—

 

Why could he not do it? He loved them all; he often felt ill and lonely.

Why not go back and forget these vain visions that M. de Biron so

laughed at? Why not marry Mademoiselle de Séguy and take up the life his

father and his brother were leading? His sense of responsibility towards

his parents was heavy’: they had done everything for him, he nothing for

them; he grudged even the money his stay in Paris was costing. Joseph

had never been able to afford to come to Court.

 

That they should be indulgent, even making sacrifices for him, was the

last intolerable chain; how could he proceed on his way fettered by

obligation, burdened by affection and sentiment? He wept a little over

this love that was so rare and precious, and yet so useless!

 

He almost wished that he was penniless, friendless—_Master_ of himself,

with no one to care if he lived or died; a state that was supposed to be

the epitome of human misery. But the man so situated was at least free.

 

Other thoughts instantly checked and thrust this aside, but it had been

formed.

 

After all, what all these conflicting emotions amounted to was that he

must in some way justify himself; must obey the passionate impulse

within him, and obtain a scope for his energies.

 

He left his chamber, and walked near the great park where he had met the

beautiful young noble in the peach-coloured light of the pavilion last

night. One sentence of his kept recurring to Luc; it was the only moment

when he had shown any glimpse of feeling, and it was when Luc had said,

“Those who brought you up have something to answer for,” and the young

man had answered, in a moved tone, “God judge them—I think they have!”

 

Luc felt sorry for him, but contemptuous too; he wondered if he should

see him again entering the house in the Rue du Bac, or if the adventure

of the coffin had caused him to abandon his place of rendezvous. Somehow

Luc did not think he would risk the narrow street again after dark. How

extraordinary cowardice was—

 

The Marquis could not remotely conceive the fear of death as an active

factor in anyone’s life.

 

As he sat over his dinner in an inn near the populous market square, he

thought of the young painter whose quest for glory had brought him to

despair, even to madness. Glory—what was it that so many, in this

frivolous age, pursued with panting breath and staring eyes? The great

sceptic Voltaire, even as the great believer Bossuet, had been swept on

to achievement by the desire of it; the blue-eyed noble who might have

had it by lifting his finger sat inert and melancholy; the obscure young

artist was livid with anguish because he had missed it. Where was it,

what was it? A kind of frenzy, a wordless exaltation; perhaps the only

sign there is of the godlike in man; the gateway to the infinite; the

talisman that would turn the world to gold and heaven into a reality;

the pursuit of the San Graal; the journey to the land of Canaan; the

search for El Dorado, for the Islands of the Blest—under all these

symbols had the quest of glory been disguised. Luc trembled in his

heart, for who had yet found the Fortunate Isles?

 

By the time he returned to his lodgings, his servant had packed his

portmanteau and had the horses ready for their return to Paris. It was

considerably past midday, and later than he had intended; he thought of

the artist, and asked Jean if he had seen him go out.

 

The man answered “No,” and Luc crossed the landing and knocked on the

door opposite.

 

There was no answer, and after waiting a little, Luc, who was already in

his riding-cloak, turned the handle and entered the sombre,

old-fashioned bedchamber where he had found himself in that morning’s

dawn.

 

He then saw that his servant had been mistaken, for the painter had

certainly gone out; the room was empty.

 

The Marquis was leaving again when he noticed on the dark table between

the windows where the brass lamp and hourglass stood a folded piece of

paper. He approached, and saw it was addressed to himself. It contained

only a few lines, and was unsigned.

 

“MONSIEUR,—I am unfortunately obliged to leave you on a journey I have

long contemplated. As you were courteous enough to wish to see some of

my work, you will find my first and last masterpiece on the bed—I call

it ‘The End of the Quest of Glory.’ It has the merit of truth, at

least.”

 

Luc glanced round the room: not a thing had been disarranged—some

clothes even still lay across a chair; a portmanteau stood, loosely

unstrapped, at the foot of the bed. Luc felt an absolute conviction that

no one had left this room since he had himself, several hours

before—save one way—

 

“Suicide,” he said, and folded the letter across. Then, with a

callousness that surprised himself, he went to the bed and pulled aside

the heavy blue brocade curtains, which were drawn closely together as

they had been before.

 

He saw what he had expected to see: the young painter, prone and still,

with fixed open eyes and a sneer on his stiff lips.

 

Luc stood gazing; his serene brows contracted with an expression of

pity, anger, and regret. He stooped and laid his hand on the dulled hair

of the young suicide, damp with the death-agony.

 

The coverlet was slightly disturbed by the last struggle of departing

life, the dead man’s limbs slightly contracted, as if he had died in the

convulsion of a shudder. His left hand and arm lay across his breast,

showing that his final action had been to draw the curtains about him.

 

Luc thought of the bitter sarcasm of the letter, and the hand he laid on

the painter’s forehead quivered. There was no mark of any violence; the

young painter had evidently made an end of himself with poison.

 

Luc moved away from the bed; he checked an almost mechanical impulse to

lay the melancholy crucifix hanging above the bed on the dead man’s

breast, and, moving to the canvases piled against the wall, turned the

first two or three round. They were marked and defaced by a knife, which

had completely disfigured the original paintings.

 

Luc looked no more. A sword lay across a chair, and near it an open

snuffbox filled with gold pieces. The Marquis felt a blankness of all

sensation save weariness and aversion. He left the room and called the

servant of the house, and soon the chamber of the dead was filled with

people, with question, curiosity, wonder.

 

Nothing, it appeared, was known of the dead man. He had come a few days

before by the coach from Paris; he had given his name as Henri de Bèze;

the day before he had paid for his week’s lodging. He had received no

letters while in Versailles, nor, as far as could be known, had he sent

any. No one had visited him, but he had been much from the house.

 

Nor did a search among his effects provide any further information. If

he had had any papers, he had destroyed them. He had died with his

story, which might have been common or tragical, wrapped at least in the

dignity of silence.

 

There was enough money in the snuffbox to pay for his decent burial. A

manifest suicide, and one who had died without absolution or any of the

offices of the Church, his grave would be in the lonely strip of land

outside consecrated ground where play-actors and vagabonds and Jews were

laid.

 

Luc returned to his own room, his head sick with fatigue, and seated

himself by the window. In the commotion, his departure for Paris had

been delayed; he wondered if he should return to-day. A slackness had

fallen on his thoughts.

 

While he was answering the respectful questions of the master of the

house concerning his brief acquaintance with the dead man, he had been

recalling his short stay in the painter’s chamber during the dawn of

this same day. Evidently the painter had drunk the poison before he had

asked for company, and Luc had been talking to a dying man who was

measuring his life by the grains of sand in an hourglass; for Luc

recalled how .he had taken up the hourglass, and seeing that the sands

were nearly run through, had abruptly ended the interview.

 

Luc found himself picturing what had happened in the room after he had

left it. He had heard the door bolted—but afterwards the dying man had

altered that with some change of thought, probably when the idea of his

ironical letter occurred to him.

 

“He had a bitter humour,” thought Luc, with a sweet amaze. As for

himself, the melancholy, the disgust, and the pity roused in him by the

hopeless cynicism of the young painter’s sudden end had not extinguished

or even for a second damped the fires of his own ardour; they only burnt

the clearer and brighter in contrast with the gloom he had just

witnessed in two other human beings—the luxurious, soulless youth and

worn-out painter. He felt like a man walking on an upland in the full

light of the sun, while below him others struggled through the mists and

morasses, shadows and sloughs of a dismal valley, and never lifted their

eyes to the sun. He might look down on these blinded people, he might

pity, though he could not comfort them; but they could not long trouble

him nor put a shade across his bright path.

 

As he sat at the window watching the clean empty street, a very handsome

equipage swept round the corner, swinging on its leathers.

 

With a faint flush Luc recognized the liveries and arms of Carola

Koklinska, and when the coach drew up before the door his