The story which Philip made out in one way and another was terrible. One
of the grievances of the women-students was that Fanny Price would never
share their gay meals in restaurants, and the reason was obvious: she had
been oppressed by dire poverty. He remembered the luncheon they had eaten
together when first he came to Paris and the ghoulish appetite which had
disgusted him: he realised now that she ate in that manner because she was
ravenous. The concierge told him what her food had consisted of. A
bottle of milk was left for her every day and she brought in her own loaf
of bread; she ate half the loaf and drank half the milk at mid-day when
she came back from the school, and consumed the rest in the evening. It
was the same day after day. Philip thought with anguish of what she must
have endured. She had never given anyone to understand that she was poorer
than the rest, but it was clear that her money had been coming to an end,
and at last she could not afford to come any more to the studio. The
little room was almost bare of furniture, and there were no other clothes
than the shabby brown dress she had always worn. Philip searched among her
things for the address of some friend with whom he could communicate. He
found a piece of paper on which his own name was written a score of times.
It gave him a peculiar shock. He supposed it was true that she had loved
him; he thought of the emaciated body, in the brown dress, hanging from
the nail in the ceiling; and he shuddered. But if she had cared for him
why did she not let him help her? He would so gladly have done all he
could. He felt remorseful because he had refused to see that she looked
upon him with any particular feeling, and now these words in her letter
were infinitely pathetic: I can't bear the thought that anyone else should
touch me. She had died of starvation.
Philip found at length a letter signed: your loving brother, Albert. it
was two or three weeks old, dated from some road in Surbiton, and refused
a loan of five pounds. The writer had his wife and family to think of, he
didn't feel justified in lending money, and his advice was that Fanny
should come back to London and try to get a situation. Philip telegraphed
to Albert Price, and in a little while an answer came:
"Deeply distressed. Very awkward to leave my business. Is presence
essential. Price."
Philip wired a succinct affirmative, and next morning a stranger presented
himself at the studio.
"My name's Price," he said, when Philip opened the door.
He was a commonish man in black with a band round his bowler hat; he had
something of Fanny's clumsy look; he wore a stubbly moustache, and had a
cockney accent. Philip asked him to come in. He cast sidelong glances
round the studio while Philip gave him details of the accident and told
him what he had done.
"I needn't see her, need I?" asked Albert Price. "My nerves aren't very
strong, and it takes very little to upset me."
He began to talk freely. He was a rubber-merchant, and he had a wife and
three children. Fanny was a governess, and he couldn't make out why she
hadn't stuck to that instead of coming to Paris.
"Me and Mrs. Price told her Paris was no place for a girl. And there's no
money in art--never 'as been."
It was plain enough that he had not been on friendly terms with his
sister, and he resented her suicide as a last injury that she had done
him. He did not like the idea that she had been forced to it by poverty;
that seemed to reflect on the family. The idea struck him that possibly
there was a more respectable reason for her act.
"I suppose she 'adn't any trouble with a man, 'ad she? You know what I
mean, Paris and all that. She might 'ave done it so as not to disgrace
herself."
Philip felt himself reddening and cursed his weakness. Price's keen little
eyes seemed to suspect him of an intrigue.
"I believe your sister to have been perfectly virtuous," he answered
acidly. "She killed herself because she was starving."
"Well, it's very 'ard on her family, Mr. Carey. She only 'ad to write to
me. I wouldn't have let my sister want."
Philip had found the brother's address only by reading the letter in which
he refused a loan; but he shrugged his shoulders: there was no use in
recrimination. He hated the little man and wanted to have done with him as
soon as possible. Albert Price also wished to get through the necessary
business quickly so that he could get back to London. They went to the
tiny room in which poor Fanny had lived. Albert Price looked at the
pictures and the furniture.
"I don't pretend to know much about art," he said. "I suppose these
pictures would fetch something, would they?"
"Nothing," said Philip.
"The furniture's not worth ten shillings."
Albert Price knew no French and Philip had to do everything. It seemed
that it was an interminable process to get the poor body safely hidden
away under ground: papers had to be obtained in one place and signed in
another; officials had to be seen. For three days Philip was occupied from
morning till night. At last he and Albert Price followed the hearse to the
cemetery at Montparnasse.
"I want to do the thing decent," said Albert Price, "but there's no use
wasting money."
The short ceremony was infinitely dreadful in the cold gray morning. Half
a dozen people who had worked with Fanny Price at the studio came to the
funeral, Mrs. Otter because she was massiere and thought it her duty,
Ruth Chalice because she had a kind heart, Lawson, Clutton, and Flanagan.
They had all disliked her during her life. Philip, looking across the
cemetery crowded on all sides with monuments, some poor and simple, others
vulgar, pretentious, and ugly, shuddered. It was horribly sordid. When
they came out Albert Price asked Philip to lunch with him. Philip loathed
him now and he was tired; he had not been sleeping well, for he dreamed
constantly of Fanny Price in the torn brown dress, hanging from the nail
in the ceiling; but he could not think of an excuse.
"You take me somewhere where we can get a regular slap-up lunch. All this
is the very worst thing for my nerves."
"Lavenue's is about the best place round here," answered Philip.
Albert Price settled himself on a velvet seat with a sigh of relief. He
ordered a substantial luncheon and a bottle of wine.
"Well, I'm glad that's over," he said.
He threw out a few artful questions, and Philip discovered that he was
eager to hear about the painter's life in Paris. He represented it to
himself as deplorable, but he was anxious for details of the orgies which
his fancy suggested to him. With sly winks and discreet sniggering he
conveyed that he knew very well that there was a great deal more than
Philip confessed. He was a man of the world, and he knew a thing or two.
He asked Philip whether he had ever been to any of those places in
Montmartre which are celebrated from Temple Bar to the Royal Exchange. He
would like to say he had been to the Moulin Rouge. The luncheon was very
good and the wine excellent. Albert Price expanded as the processes of
digestion went satisfactorily forwards.
"Let's 'ave a little brandy," he said when the coffee was brought, "and
blow the expense."
He rubbed his hands.
"You know, I've got 'alf a mind to stay over tonight and go back tomorrow.
What d'you say to spending the evening together?"
"If you mean you want me to take you round Montmartre tonight, I'll see
you damned," said Philip.
"I suppose it wouldn't be quite the thing."
The answer was made so seriously that Philip was tickled.
"Besides it would be rotten for your nerves," he said gravely.
Albert Price concluded that he had better go back to London by the four
o'clock train, and presently he took leave of Philip.
"Well, good-bye, old man," he said. "I tell you what, I'll try and come
over to Paris again one of these days and I'll look you up. And then we
won't 'alf go on the razzle."
Philip was too restless to work that afternoon, so he jumped on a bus and
crossed the river to see whether there were any pictures on view at
Durand-Ruel's. After that he strolled along the boulevard. It was cold and
wind-swept. People hurried by wrapped up in their coats, shrunk together
in an effort to keep out of the cold, and their faces were pinched and
careworn. It was icy underground in the cemetery at Montparnasse among all
those white tombstones. Philip felt lonely in the world and strangely
homesick. He wanted company. At that hour Cronshaw would be working, and
Clutton never welcomed visitors; Lawson was painting another portrait of
Ruth Chalice and would not care to be disturbed. He made up his mind to go
and see Flanagan. He found him painting, but delighted to throw up his
work and talk. The studio was comfortable, for the American had more money
than most of them, and warm; Flanagan set about making tea. Philip looked
at the two heads that he was sending to the Salon.
"It's awful cheek my sending anything," said Flanagan, "but I don't care,
I'm going to send. D'you think they're rotten?"
"Not so rotten as I should have expected," said Philip.
They showed in fact an astounding cleverness. The difficulties had been
avoided with skill, and there was a dash about the way in which the paint
was put on which was surprising and even attractive. Flanagan, without
knowledge or technique, painted with the loose brush of a man who has
spent a lifetime in the practice of the art.
"If one were forbidden to look at any picture for more than thirty seconds
you'd be a great master, Flanagan," smiled Philip.
These young people were not in the habit of spoiling one another with
excessive flattery.
"We haven't got time in America to spend more than thirty seconds in
looking at any picture," laughed the other.
Flanagan, though he was the most scatter-brained person in the world, had
a tenderness of heart which was unexpected and charming. Whenever anyone
was ill he installed himself as sick-nurse. His gaiety was better than any
medicine. Like many of his countrymen he had not the English dread of
sentimentality which keeps so tight a hold on emotion; and, finding
nothing absurd in the show of feeling, could offer an exuberant sympathy
which was often grateful to his friends in distress. He saw that Philip
was depressed by what he had gone through and with unaffected kindliness
set himself boisterously to cheer him up. He exaggerated the Americanisms
which he knew always made the Englishmen laugh and poured out a breathless
stream of conversation, whimsical, high-spirited, and jolly. In due course
they went out to dinner and afterwards to the Gaite Montparnasse, which
was Flanagan's favourite place of amusement. By the end of the evening he
was in his most extravagant humour. He had drunk a good deal, but any
inebriety from which he suffered was due much more to his own vivacity
than to alcohol. He proposed that they should go to the Bal Bullier, and
Philip, feeling too tired to go to bed, willingly enough consented. They
sat down at a table on the platform at the side, raised a little from the
level of the floor so that they could watch the dancing, and drank a bock.
Presently Flanagan saw a friend and with a wild shout leaped over the
barrier on to the space where they were dancing. Philip watched the
people. Bullier was not the resort of fashion. It was Thursday night and
the place was crowded. There were a number of students of the various
faculties, but most of the men were clerks or assistants in shops; they
wore their everyday clothes, ready-made tweeds or queer tail-coats, and
their hats, for they had brought them in with them, and when they danced
there was no place to put them but their heads. Some of the women looked
like servant-girls, and some were painted hussies, but for the most part
they were shop-girls. They were poorly-dressed in cheap imitation of the
fashions on the other side of the river. The hussies were got up to
resemble the music-hall artiste or the dancer who enjoyed notoriety at the
moment; their eyes were heavy with black and their cheeks impudently
scarlet. The hall was lit by great white lights, low down, which
emphasised the shadows on the faces; all the lines seemed to harden under
it, and the colours were most crude. It was a sordid scene. Philip leaned
over the rail, staring down, and he ceased to hear the music. They danced
furiously. They danced round the room, slowly, talking very little, with
all their attention given to the dance. The room was hot, and their faces
shone with sweat. it seemed to Philip that they had thrown off the guard
which people wear on their expression, the homage to convention, and he
saw them now as they really were. In that moment of abandon they were
strangely animal: some were foxy and some were wolf-like; and others had
the long, foolish face of sheep. Their skins were sallow from the
unhealthy life they led and the poor food they ate. Their features were
blunted by mean interests, and their little eyes were shifty and cunning.
There was nothing of nobility in their bearing, and you felt that for all
of them life was a long succession of petty concerns and sordid thoughts.
The air was heavy with the musty smell of humanity. But they danced
furiously as though impelled by some strange power within them, and it
seemed to Philip that they were driven forward by a rage for enjoyment.
They were seeking desperately to escape from a world of horror. The desire
for pleasure which Cronshaw said was the only motive of human action urged
them blindly on, and the very vehemence of the desire seemed to rob it of
all pleasure. They were hurried on by a great wind, helplessly, they knew
not why and they knew not whither. Fate seemed to tower above them, and
they danced as though everlasting darkness were beneath their feet. Their
silence was vaguely alarming. It was as if life terrified them and robbed
them of power of speech so that the shriek which was in their hearts died
at their throats. Their eyes were haggard and grim; and notwithstanding
the beastly lust that disfigured them, and the meanness of their faces,
and the cruelty, notwithstanding the stupidness which was worst of all,
the anguish of those fixed eyes made all that crowd terrible and pathetic.
Philip loathed them, and yet his heart ached with the infinite pity which
filled him.
He took his coat from the cloak-room and went out into the bitter coldness
of the night.
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