Books: The Ink Stain, v2
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Rene Bazin >> The Ink Stain, v2
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"There is a later train at ten minutes to eight, father," said Jeanne.
"Well, dear, do you care to try your luck again, and return to the
assault of that Annia Faustina?"
"As you please, father."
We left the inn together by the by-road down the hill. I could not
believe my eyes. This old man with refined features who walked on my
left, leaning on his malacca cane, was M. Charnot. The same man who
received me so discourteously the day after I made my blot was now
relying on me to introduce him to an Italian nobleman; on me, a lawyer's
clerk. I led him on with confidence, and both of us, carried away by our
divers hopes, he dreaming of medals, I of the reopened horizon full of
possibilities, conversed on indifferent subjects with a freedom hitherto
unknown between us.
And this charming Parisienne, whose presence I divined rather than saw,
whom I dared not look in the face, who stepped along by her father's
side, light of foot, her eyes seeking the vault of heaven, her ear
attentive though her thoughts were elsewhere, catching her Parisian
sunshade in the hawthorns of Desio, was Jeanne, Jeanne of the flower-
market, Jeanne whom Lampron had sketched in the woods of St. Germain! It
did not seem possible.
Yet it was so, for we arrived together at the gates of the Villa
Dannegianti, which is hardly a mile from the inn.
I rang the bell. The fat, idle, insolent Italian porter was beginning to
refuse me admission, with the same words and gestures which he had so
often used. But I explained, in my purest Tuscan, that I was not of the
ordinary kind of importunate tourist. I told him that he ran a serious
risk if he did not immediately hand my card and my letter--Lampron's card
in an envelope--to the Comtesse Dannegianti.
From his stony glare I could not tell whether I had produced any
impression, nor even whether he had understood. He turned on his heel
with his keys in one hand and the letter in the other, and went on his
way through the shady avenue, rolling his broad back from side to side,
attired in a jacket which might have fitted in front, but was all too
short behind.
The shady precincts of which Lampron wrote did not seem to have been
pruned. The park was cool and green. At the end of the avenue of plane-
trees, alternating with secular hawthorns cut into pyramids, we could see
the square mass of the villa just peeping over the immense clumps of
trees. Beyond it the tops and naked trunks of a group of umbrella pines
stood silhouetted against the sky.
The porter returned, solemn and impassive. He opened the gate without a
word. We all passed through--M. Charnot somewhat uneasy at entering
under false pretenses, as I guessed from the way he suddenly drew up his
head. Jeanne seemed pleased; she smoothed down a fold which the wind had
raised in her frock, spread out a flounce, drew herself up, pushed back a
hairpin which her fair tresses had dragged out of its place, all in
quick, deft, and graceful movements, like a goldfinch preening its
feathers.
We reached the terrace, and arranged that M. and Mademoiselle Charnot
should wait in an alley close at hand till I received permission to visit
the collections.
I entered the house, and following a lackey, crossed a large mosaic-paved
hall, divided by columns of rare marbles into panels filled with mediocre
frescoes on a very large scale. At the end of this hall was the
Countess's room, which formed a striking contrast, being small, panelled
with wood, and filled with devotional knick-knacks that gave it the look
of a chapel.
As I entered, an old lady half rose from an armchair, which she could
have used as a house, the chair was so large and she was so small. At
first I could distinguish only two bright, anxious eyes. She looked at
me like a prisoner awaiting a verdict. I began by telling her of the
death of Lampron's mother. Her only answer was an attentive nod. She
guessed something else was coming and stood on guard, so to speak. I
went on and told her that the portrait of her daughter was on its way to
her. Then she forgot everything--her age, her rank, and the mournful
reserve which had hitherto hedged her about. Her motherly heart alone
spoke within her; a ray of light had come to brighten the incurable gloom
which was killing her; she rushed toward me and fell into my arms, and I
felt against my heart her poor aged body shaking with sobs. She thanked
me in a flood of words which I did not catch. Then she drew back and
gazed at me, seeking to read in my eyes some emotion responsive to her
own, and her eyes, red and swollen and feverishly bright, questioned me
more clearly than her words.
"How good are you, sir! and how generous is he! What life does he lead?
Has he ever lived down the sorrow which blasted his youth here? Men
forget more easily, happily for them. I had given up all hope of
obtaining the portrait. Every year I sent him flowers which meant,
'Restore to us all that is left of our dead Rafaella.' Perhaps it was
unkind. I did reproach myself at times for it. But I was her mother,
you know; the mother of that peerless girl! And the portrait is so good,
so like! He has never altered it? tell me; never retouched it? Time
has not marred the lifelike coloring? I shall now have the mournful
consolation I have so long desired; I shall always have before me the
counterpart of my lost darling, and can gaze upon that face which none
could depict save he who loved her; for, dreadful though it be to think
of, the image of the best beloved will change and fade away even in a
mother's heart, and at times I doubt whether my old memory is still
faithful, and recalls all her grace and beauty as clearly as it used to
do when the wound was fresh in my heart and my eyes were still filled
with the loveliness of her. Oh, Monsieur, Monsieur! to think that I
shall see that face once more!"
She left me as quickly as she had come, and went to open a door on the
left, into an adjoining room, whose red hangings threw a ruddy glow upon
the polished floor.
"Cristoforo!" she cried, "Cristoforo! come and see a French gentleman
who brings us great news. The portrait of our Rafaella, Cristoforo, the
portrait we have so long desired, is at last to be given to us!"
I heard a chair move, and a slow footstep. Cristoforo appeared, with
white hair and black moustache, his tall figure buttoned up in an old-
fashioned frockcoat, the petrified, mummified remains of a once handsome
man. He walked up to me, took both my hands and shook them
ceremoniously. His face showed no traces of emotion; his eyes were dry,
and he had not a word to say. Did he understand? I really do not know.
He seemed to think the affair was an ordinary introduction. As I looked
at him his wife's words came back to me, "Men forget sooner." She gazed
at him as if she would put blood into his veins, where it had long ceased
to flow.
"Cristoforo, I know this will be a great joy to you, and you will join
with me in thanking Monsieur Lampron for his generosity. You, sir, will
express to him all the Count's gratitude and my own, and also the
sympathy we feel for him in his recent loss. Besides, we shall write to
him. Is Monsieur Lampron rich?"
"I had forgotten to tell you, Madame, that my friend will accept nothing
but thanks."
"Ah, that is truly noble of him, is it not, Cristoforo?"
All the answer the old Count made was to take my hands and shake them
again.
I used the opportunity to put forward my request in behalf of M. Charnot.
He listened attentively.
"I will give orders. You shall see everything--everything."
Then, considering our interview at an end, he bowed and withdrew to his
own apartments.
I looked for the Countess Dannegianti. She had sunk into her great
armchair, and was weeping hot tears.
Ten minutes later, M. Charnot and Jeanne entered with me into the
jealously guarded museum.
Museum was the only name to give to a collection of such artistic value,
occupying, as it did, the whole of the ground floor to the right of the
hall. Two rooms ran parallel to each other, filled with pictures,
medals, and engravings, and were connected by a narrow gallery devoted to
sculpture.
Hardly was the door opened when M. Charnot sought the famous medals with
his eye. There they were in the middle of the room in two rows of cases.
He was deeply moved. I thought he was about to make a raid upon them,
attracted after his kind by the 'auri sacra fames', by the yellow gleam
of those ancient coins, the names, family, obverse and reverse of which
he knew by heart. But I little understood the enthusiast.
He drew out his handkerchief and spectacles, and while he was wiping the
glasses he gave a rapid and impatient glance at the works that adorned
the walls. None of them could charm the numismatist's heart. After he
had enjoyed the pleasure of proving how feeble in comparison were the
charms of a Titian or a Veronese, then only did M. Charnot walk step by
step to the first case and bend reverently over it.
Yet the collection of paintings was unworthy of such disdain. The
pictures were few, but all were signed with great names, most of them
Italian, a few Dutch, Flemish, or German. I began to work systematically
through them, pleased at the want of a catalogue and the small number of
inscriptions on the frames. To be your own guide doubles your pleasure;
you can get your impression of a picture entirely at first hand; you are
filled with admiration without any one having told you that you are bound
to go into ecstasies. You can work out for yourself from a picture, by
induction and comparison, its subject, its school, and its author, unless
it proclaims, in every stroke of the brush, "I am a Hobbema,"
"a Perugino," or "a Giotto."
I was somewhat distracted, however, by the voice of the old numismatist,
as he peered into the cases, and constrained his daughter to share in the
exuberance of his learned enthusiasm.
"Jeanne, look at this; crowned head of Cleopatra, Mark Antony on the
reverse; in perfect condition, isn't it? See, an Italian 'as-Iguvium
Umbriae', which my friend Pousselot has sought these thirty years! Oh,
my dear, this is important: Annius Verus on the reverse of Commodus, both
as children, a rare example--yet not as rare as--Jeanne, you must engrave
this gold medal in your heart, it is priceless: head of Augustus with
laurel, Diana walking on the reverse. You ought to take an interest in
her. Diana the fair huntress.
This collection is heavenly! Wait a minute; we shall soon come to the
Annia Faustina."
Jeanne made no objection, but smiled softly upon the Cleopatra, the
Umbrian 'as', and the fair huntress.
Little by little her father's enthusiasm expanded over the vast
collection of treasures. He took out his pocketbook and began to make
notes. Jeanne raised her eyes to the walls, took one glance, then a
second, and, not being called back to the medals, stepped softly up to
the picture at which I had begun.
She went quickly from one to another having evidently no more than a
child's untutored taste for pictures. As I, on the contrary, was getting
on very slowly, she was bound to overtake me. You may be sure I took no
steps to prevent it, and so in a very short time we were both standing
before the same picture, a portrait of Holbein the younger. A subject of
conversation was ready to hand.
"Mademoiselle," said I, "do you like this Holbein?"
"You must admit, sir, that the old gentleman is exceedingly plain."
"Yes, but the painting is exquisite. See how powerful is the drawing of
the head, how clear and deep the colors remain after more than three
hundred years. What a good likeness it must have been! The subject
tells his own story: he must have been a nobleman of the court of Henry
VIII, a Protestant in favor with the King, wily but illiterate,
and wishing from the bottom of his heart that he were back with the
companions of his youth at home in his country house, hunting and
drinking at his ease. It is really the study of a man's character.
Look at this Rubens beside it, a mere mass of flesh scarcely held
together by a spirit, a style that is exuberantly material, all color and
no expression. Here you have spirituality on one side and materialism on
the other, unconscious, perhaps, but unmistakable. Compare, again,
with these two pictures this little drawing, doubtless by Perugino,
just a sketch of an angel for an Annunciation; notice the purity of
outline, the ideal atmosphere in which the painter lives and with which
he impregnates his work. You see he comes of a school of poets and
mystics, gifted with a second sight which enabled them to beautify this
world and raise themselves above it."
I was pleased with my little lecture, and so was Jeanne. I could tell it
by her surprised expression, and by the looks she cast toward her father,
who was still taking notes, to see whether she might go on with her first
lesson in art.
He smiled in a friendly way, which meant:
"I'm happy here, my dear, thank you; 'va piano va sano'."
This was as good as permission. We went on our way, saluting, as we
passed, Tintoretto and Titian, Veronese and Andrea Solari, old Cimabue,
and a few early paintings of angular virgins on golden backgrounds.
Jeanne was no longer bored.
"And is this," she would say, "another Venetian, or a Lombard, or a
Florentine?"
We soon completed the round of the first room, and made our way into the
gallery beyond, devoted to sculpture. The marble gods and goddesses,
the lovely fragments of frieze or cornice from the excavations at Rome,
Pompeii, or Greece, had but a moderate interest for Mademoiselle Charnot.
She never gave more than one glance to each statue, to some none at all.
We soon came to the end of the gallery, and the door which gave access
into the second room of paintings.
Suddenly Jeanne gave an exclamation of surprise.
"What is that?" she said.
Beneath the large and lofty window, fanned on the outside by leafy
branches, a wooden panel, bearing an inscription, stood upright against
the wall. The words were painted in black on a white ground, and
arranged with considerable skill, after the style of the classic epitaphs
which the Italians still cultivate.
I drew aside the folds of a curtain:
"It is one of those memorial tablets, Mademoiselle, such as people hang
up in this part of the country upon the church doors on the day of the
funeral. It means:
"To thee, Rafaella Dannegianti--who, aged twenty years and few months--
having fully experienced the sorrows and illusions of this world--on
January 6--like an angel longing for its heavenly home--didst wing thy
way to God in peace and happiness--the clergy of Desioand the laborers
and artificers of the noble house of Dannegianti--tender these last
solemn offices."
"This Rafaella, then, was the Count's daughter?"
"His only child, a girl lovely and gracious beyond rivalry."
"Oh, of course, beyond rivalry. Are not all only daughters lovely and
perfect when once they are dead?" she replied with a bitter smile.
"They have their legend, their cult, and usually a flattering portrait.
I am surprised that Rafaella's is not here. I imagine her portrait as
representing a tall girl, with long, well-arched eyebrows, and brown
eyes--"
"Greenish-brown."
"Green, if you prefer it; a small nose, cherry lips, and a mass of light
brown hair."
"Golden brown would be more correct."
"Have you seen it, then? Is there one?"
"Yes, Mademoiselle, and it lacks no perfection that you could imagine,
not even that smile of happy youth which was a falsehood ere the paint
had yet dried on the canvas. Here, before this relic, which recalls it
to my thoughts, I must confess that I am touched."
She looked at me in astonishment.
"Where is the portrait? Not here?"
"No, it is at Paris, in my friend Lampron's studio."
"O--oh!" She blushed slightly.
"Yes, Mademoiselle, it is at once a masterpiece and a sad reminder. The
story is very simple, and I am sure my friend would not mind my telling
it to you--to you if to no other--before these relics of the past.
"When Lampron was a young man travelling in Italy he fell in love with
this young girl, whose portrait he was painting. He loved her, perhaps
without confessing it to himself, certainly without avowing it to her.
Such is the way of timid and humble men of heart, men whose love is
nearly always misconstrued when it ceases to be unnoticed. My friend
risked the happiness of his life, fearlessly, without calculation--and
lost it. A day came when Rafaella Dannegianti was carried off by her
parents, who shuddered at the thought of her stooping to a painter, even
though he were a genius."
"So she died?"
"A year later. He never got over it. Even while I speak to you, he in
his loneliness is pondering and weeping over these very lines which you
have just read without a suspicion of the depth of their bitterness."
"He has known bereavement," said she; "I pity him with all my heart."
Her eyes filled with tears. She repeated the words, whose meaning was
now clear to her, "A to Rafaella." Then she knelt down softly before the
mournful inscription. I saw her bow her head. Jeanne was praying.
It was touching to see the young girl, whom chance had placed before this
simple testimony of a sorrow now long past, deeply moved by the sad tale
of love, filled with tender pity for the dead Rafaella, her fellow in
youth and beauty and perhaps in destiny, finding in her heart the tender
impulse to kneel without a word, as if beside the grave of a friend. The
daylight's last rays streaming in through the window illumined her bowed
head.
I drew back, with a touch of awe.
M. Charnot appeared.
He went up to his daughter and tapped her on the shoulder. She rose with
a blush.
"What are you doing there?" he said.
Then he adjusted his glasses and read the Italian inscription.
"You really take unnecessary trouble in kneeling down to decipher a thing
like that. You can see at once that it's a modern panel, and of no
value. Monsieur," he added, turning to me, "I do not know what your
plans are, but unless you intend to sleep at Desio, we must be off, for
the night is falling."
We left the villa.
Out of doors it was still light, but with the afterglow. The sun was out
of sight, but the earth was still enveloped, as it were, in a haze of
luminous dust.
M. Charnot pulled out his watch.
"Seven minutes past eight. What time does the last train start, Jeanne?"
"At ten minutes to eight."
"Confusion! we are stranded in Desio! The mere thought of passing the
night in that inn gives me the creeps. I see no way out of it unless
Monsieur Mouillard can get us one of the Count's state coaches. There
isn't a carriage to be got in this infernal village!"
"There is mine, Monsieur, which luckily holds four, and is quite at your
service."
"Upon my word, I am very much obliged to you. The drive by moonlight
will be quite romantic."
He drew near to Jeanne and whispered in her ear:
"Are you sure you've wraps enough? a shawl, or a cape, or some kind of
pelisse?"
She gave a merry nod of assent.
"Don't worry yourself, father; I am prepared for all emergencies."
At half-past eight we left Desio together, and I silently blessed the
host of the Albergo dell' Agnello, who had assured me that the carriage
road was "so much more picturesque." I found it so, indeed.
M. Charnot and Jeanne faced the horses. I sat opposite to M. Charnot,
who was in the best of spirits after all the medals he had seen.
Comfortably settled in the cushions, careless of the accidents of the
road, with graphic and untiring forefinger, he undertook to describe his
travels in Greece, whither he had been sent on some learned enterprise by
the Minister of Education, and had carried an imagination already
prepossessed and dazzled with Homeric visions. He told his story well
and with detail, combining the recollections of the scholar with the
impressions of an artist. The pediment of the Parthenon, the oleanders
of the Ilissus, the stream "that runs in rain-time," the naked peak of
Parnassus, the green slopes of Helicon, the blue gulf of Argus, the pine
forest beside Alpheus, where the ancients worshipped "Death the Gentle"--
all of them passed in recount upon his learned lips.
I must acknowledge, to my shame, that I did not listen to all he said,
but, in a favorite way I have, reserved some of my own freedom of
thought, while I gave him complete freedom of speech. And I am bound to
say he did not abuse it, but consented to pause at the frontiers of
Thessaly. Then followed silence. I gave him room to stretch. Soon,
lulled by the motion of the carriage, the stream of reminiscence ran more
slowly--then ran dry. M. Charnot slept.
We bowled at a good pace, without jolting, over the white road. A warm
mist rose around us laden with the smell of vegetation, ripe corn, and
clover from the overheated earth and the neighboring fields, which had
drunk their full of sunlight. Now and again a breath of fresh air was
blown to us from the mountains. As the darkness deepened the country
grew to look like a vast chessboard, with dark and light squares of grass
and corn land, melting at no great distance into a colorless and unbroken
horizon. But as night blotted out the earth, the heaven lighted up its
stars. Never have I seen them so lustrous nor in such number. Jeanne
reclined with her eyes upturned toward those limitless fields of prayer
and vision; and their radiance, benignly gentle, rested on her face. Was
she tired or downcast, or merely dreaming? I knew not. But there was
something so singularly poetic in her look and attitude that she seemed
to me to epitomize in herself all the beauty of the night.
I was afraid to speak. Her father's sleep, and our consequent isolation,
made me ill at ease. She, too, seemed so careless of my presence, so far
away in dreamland, that I had to await opportunity, or rather her leave,
to recall her from it.
Finally she broke the silence herself. A little beyond Monza she drew
closer her shawl, that the night wind had ruffled, and bent over toward
me:
"You must excuse my father; he is rather tired this evening, for he has
been on his feet since five o'clock."
"The day has been so hot, too, Mademoiselle, and the medals 'came not in
single spies, but in battalions'; he has a right to sleep after the
battle."
"Dear old father! You gave him a real treat, for which he will always be
obliged to you."
"I trust the recollection of to-day will efface that of the blot of ink,
for which I am still filled with remorse."
"Remorse is rather a serious word."
"No, Mademoiselle, I really mean remorse, for I wounded the feelings of a
gentleman who has every claim on my respect. I never have dared to speak
of this before. But if you would be kind enough to tell Monsieur Charnot
how sorry I have been for it, you would relieve me of a burden."
I saw her eyes fixed upon me for a moment with a look of attention not
previously granted to me. She seemed pleased.
"With all my heart," she said.
There was a moment's silence.
"Was this Rafaella, whose story you have told me, worthy of your friend's
long regret?"
"I must believe so."
"It is a very touching story. Are you fond of Monsieur Lampron?"
"Beyond expression, Mademoiselle; he is so openhearted, so true a friend,
he has the soul of the artist and the seer. I am sure you would rate him
very highly if you knew him."
"But I do know him, at least by his works. Where am I to be seen now,
by the way? What has become of my portrait?"
"It's at Lampron's house, in his mother's room, where Monsieur Charnot
can go and see it if he likes."
"My father does not know of its existence," she said, with a glance at
the slumbering man of learning.
"Has he not seen it?"
"No, he would have made so much ado about nothing. So Monsieur Lampron
has kept the sketch? I thought it had been sold long ago."
"Sold! you did not think he would sell it!"
"Why not? Every artist has the right to sell his works."
"Not work of that kind."
"Just as much as any other kind."
"No, he could not have done that. He would no more sell it than he would
sell the portrait of Rafaella Dannegianti. They are two similar relics,
two precious reminiscences."
Mademoiselle Charnot turned, without a reply, to look at the country
which was flying past us in the darkness.
I could just see her profile, and the nervous movement of her eyelids.
As she made no attempt to speak, her silence emboldened me.
"Yes, Mademoiselle, two similar relics, yet sometimes in my hours of
madness--as to-day, for instance, here, with you near me--I dare to think
that I might be less unfortunate than my friend--that his dream is gone
forever--but that mine might return to me--if you were willing."
She quickly turned toward me, and in the darkness I saw her eyes fixed on
mine.
Did the darkness deceive me as to the meaning of this mute response? Was
I the victim of a fresh delusion? I fancied that Jeanne looked sad, that
perhaps she was thinking of the oaths sworn only to be broken by her
former lover, but that she was not quite displeased.
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