Alone In Paris Read online

  Now in fact they were back in the Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré and their drive was over.

  He suddenly decided that the best way to deal with anyone as elusive as Una was to present her with a fait accompli.

  He decided that, instead of taking her to Oscar Massin’s shop as he had intended, he would go alone, buy her a present, and then see how she behaved when he offered it to her.

  Accordingly, as they alighted, he told the servants to keep his chaise and followed Una into the hall.

  The Clerk of the Chambers came forward to say,

  “There’s a gentleman to see Your Grace. I’ve put him in the antechamber.”

  The Duke guessed that his visitor would be Dubucheron with Thoreau’s pictures, which he had undoubtedly collected by now from Montmartre.

  He hesitated for a moment, unsure whether he should take Una with him to inspect them and then decided that he would rather see them himself first.

  But while he was trying to make up his mind, Una had started up the stairs.

  Therefore without speaking the Duke walked away down the passage that led to the antechamber where he usually saw dealers like Dubucheron with something to sell.

  As he went, he decided that he would certainly take the opportunity of finding out more about Una, though he was quite convinced that Dubucheron would attempt to be mysterious about her and her past.

  *

  Una was halfway up the staircase when a sudden thought came to her.

  For a moment she stood still and indecisive and then ran back down the stairs and into the hall.

  “I want a fiacre,” she said to one of the footmen.

  The servant looked surprised, but it was not his job to question anything the gentry might wish to do and he ran through the courtyard and out into the street to return within a few seconds with an open fiacre drawn by a thin rather tired horse.

  He opened the door and Una stepped into it.

  “Where to, m’mselle?”

  “Please ask him to go to No. 9 Rue de l’Abreuville.”

  The footman gave the order to the cocher and they drove off.

  Only when they had driven for quite a little way did Una wonder whether she should have left a message to tell the Duke where she was going.

  It had suddenly struck her that, as Monsieur Dubucheron had obtained a large sum of money from the Duke for her father’s painting, there might be others in the studio that could also be sold.

  She had a feeling that the Duke was going to be difficult about letting her spend the money he was paying for the painting he had bought.

  But if there were other purchases of her father’s paintings, that money would pay for a new evening gown, so that the Duke would not be ashamed of her.

  She realised that she had annoyed him in refusing to allow him to buy her new clothes as he had offered to do.

  She was quite certain, whatever he might say, that her mother would think it exceedingly reprehensible for her to accept expensive presents not only from a gentleman but from one she had only just met.

  Her mother had been very proud and she had taught Una that there was no crime in being poor. It was wrong only when people pretended to be different from what they were.

  This meant, she had explained, lowering their self-esteem and accepting favours that they could not possibly return.

  Una remembered once hearing her mother argue with her father over some rich Americans to whom he had sold a painting and who subsequently wished to entertain them.

  “We cannot ask them back here,” her mother had said, “and therefore, Julius, I have no desire to accept their hospitality.”

  “That is a ridiculous attitude!” her father exclaimed. “They are rich enough to wine and dine half of Paris.”

  “And half of Paris would accept!” her mother said quickly. “And that is exactly why we will refuse their invitation courteously but firmly.”

  “It is all very well to give yourself airs and graces!” her father retorted. “But quite frankly I should have enjoyed a dinner where expense was no object and the wine would undoubtedly be superlative.”

  Her mother had not continued to argue about it, but Una remembered that neither she nor her father had gone to the Americans’ party.

  Afterwards she had said to her mother,

  “What a pity you did not go, Mama. It would have been a chance for you to wear one of your evening gowns, which you have not worn for many years.”

  Her mother had smiled.

  “They are out of fashion now, dearest, and I have no wish to be beholden to anyone, certainly not the type of people my father would not have had inside his house.”

  As Una grew older, she began to understand the pride that could not accept anything unless one could give something in return.

  She knew now that her mother would think that she was humiliating herself if she allowed the Duke, kind though he was, to pay for her clothes.

  ‘I must learn to stand on my own feet,’ she said to herself. ‘There must be some way that I can make enough money quickly, so that I can have a new gown, if not for tonight then for tomorrow.’

  She remembered that there were lots of small dressmakers in the side streets of Paris who could copy the most elaborate clothes that came from what the Duke had called the ‘famous couturiers’.

  ‘If I can sell one of Papa’s paintings,’ Una planned, ‘then I could have a lovely new gown and the Duke will not only be surprised but will admire me in it.’

  She thought a little wistfully that she wanted him to admire her and wanted him to think that she looked pretty.

  Then, as she thought of Yvette Joyant and the ladies they had seen sitting in the restaurant in the Bois de Boulogne, she felt her spirits sink.

  How could she ever look as smart as they? Besides, she was certain that their gowns had in fact cost more than she could earn in years and years.

  One blessing, however, she told herself, was that she had a very tiny waist.

  This was the fashion above full skirts that trailed on the ground at the back and which gave a woman, as she stepped into a room, the grace of a swan gliding over a lake.

  ‘There was no one in the restaurant as handsome as the Duke,’ Una told herself, thinking of where they had enjoyed luncheon.

  She thought how kind he had been to take her there when doubtless he would rather have been talking to one of the ladies with feathers in their hats, which they wore on exquisitely coiffeured heads.

  It seemed to Una that she had set herself an impossible task in seeking to copy any of those women and yet she told herself that she had to try.

  ‘Help me, Mama,’ she whispered in her heart. ‘Help me to do what is right and what you would want me to do and still please the Duke.’

  She had the feeling that it was going to be difficult to compromise between the two people who, at the moment, filled her whole thoughts to the exclusion of everyone else.

  Then she saw Sacré-Coeur looming up above her and she ceased to think of herself in the excitement of being in Montmartre again.

  The horse climbed very very slowly up the steep hill. Then there were the artists in their velvet suits working at their easels at every corner, in doorways and, as she had seen them before, under the trees in the square.

  A moment later they arrived at the Rue de l’Abreuville and the house where her father had had his studio looked even dirtier and more dilapidated than it had yesterday.

  “Will you please wait?” Una asked the cocher.

  He nodded, obviously thinking that he had a rich fare because of where he had picked her up and Una hurried across the pavement and in through the open door.

  She climbed up the dirty staircase to her father’s studio and went in.

  The first thing she noticed was that some clearing up had been done since the preceding day.

  Quite a lot of the junk that had been littered all over the room had been brushed to one side.

  Then, as she turned her head, she
saw an enormous mountain of rubbish piled in a corner, although there was still a large number of things to add to it.

  “Where have you come from?” a voice asked.

  Una jumped, not realising that there was anyone else in the studio.

  Then from behind the easel that had hidden him a man appeared and she saw that he was an artist.

  It was obvious from the blue smock he was wearing, smeared with paint, and above a large floppy black tie she saw the face of a young man with a shock of long untidy hair.

  He had a palette in one hand and a paintbrush in the other.

  “Have you – taken over this studio?” Una asked in reply to his question.

  “I moved in this morning,” he answered, “and a devil of a mess it’s in!”

  Una was just about to tell him that the mess had been made by her father, but thought that the information might make him embarrassed, so instead she said,

  “I had no idea that anyone was here. I came to see if there were any paintings left by the previous owner.”

  “They have already gone,” the artist replied.

  “Gone?” Una repeated almost stupidly.

  “Two men came and collected them this morning,” the artist explained. “I think one of them was a dealer.”

  “Monsieur Dubucheron?” Una enquired.

  “That may have been his name, but, as he was not interested in me, I saw no reason to be curious about him.”

  The artist spoke resentfully and Una thought sympathetically that obviously Monsieur Dubucheron did not think his paintings were saleable.

  It was, however, a blow to think that Monsieur Dubucheron had been here before her and, if her father had left any canvasses, he would sell them for her and doubtless the Duke would say that she was not to spend the money.

  She glanced towards the great pile of rubbish, wondering if there was anything there of any value and was not aware that the artist was watching her.

  Then he said,

  “You are very pretty! Not the type that one expects to find in Montmartre.”

  Una gave him a vague little smile.

  She was still wondering whether it would be worthwhile to search amongst the dirty dusty debris for something to sell.

  “Have you done any modelling?” the artist asked.

  Una’s eyes widened.

  Here was an idea that she had not thought of before.

  She had heard that artists used models, and, as she had told the Duke, her father had sometimes made her mother pose for him, but it had never struck her that it was something she might do.

  “Are models – paid?” she asked tentatively.

  “You can bet they see to that!” the artist answered. “They pick and choose who they’ll sit for, as if they were Prima Donnas.”

  He spoke almost savagely, as if he had had trouble with his models and Una said,

  “Can you – tell me what they are – paid?”

  His eyes narrowed and she thought that he was looking at her speculatively, as if he saw her now in a different way.

  “If you’ll sit for me,” he said after a moment, “I’ll pay you double what I paid the little hag who has left me for someone she thinks more important.”

  He smiled as he added,

  “I hardly think you’d do a dirty trick like that.”

  “No – of course not,” Una said. “Is your painting only half-finished?”

  “Come and see for yourself,” he suggested.

  She walked towards him, hoping as she did so that his picture would not look like the one of her father’s that she had hated.

  When she saw it on the easel, it was, however, quite different from anything that Julius Thoreau had ever done, when she had lived with him.

  She stared at the canvass on the easel and then said,

  “I think – although I am not sure – that you are an Impressionist.”

  “I am,” he replied, “and exceedingly proud of it, despite the fact that the newspapers say we are anarchists, madmen and unscrupulous adventurers who want to bluff the public.”

  “And have been described,” Una added, “as the enemies of the ‘purity’ of French art.”

  “They say anything that comes into their heads,” the young artist growled savagely. “What annoys everyone is that we are different.”

  Una knew this was true and she had always thought that it was ridiculous for anyone to say there was a ‘correct’ way of painting a tree, a field or a stream.

  Her father painted differently from the pictures that she had seen in the Art Galleries and she knew that the great pioneers of Impressionism had a fresh vision of everything they saw.

  She told herself that what she had studied in the famous Galleries in Florence had not really given her an insight into Impressionism.

  However, she could not help feeling that this artist’s effort had not the Master touch that she could recognise in most paintings from whatever period they came.

  Impressionists, she understood, gave a new light and life to their pictures, but the canvass that stood on the easel seemed not only lifeless but blurred.

  But there was, she saw, a vague outline of a woman in the foreground that had not yet been filled with any detail.

  As if she had asked the question, the artist said,

  “I scrubbed out what I had done already. I wouldn’t have that woman back now if she came and asked me on her bended knees!”

  “She must have made you very angry.”

  “She did,” he answered, “but that is women for you.”

  “Not all of them, I hope,” Una replied. “But I do understand that it is annoying to lose your model when the painting is there in your mind.”

  She knew that artists, once they had started, usually worked as her father had, oblivious of time, fatigue or hunger, while he had the vision in front of him of what he wanted to convey.

  “I had much better start again,” the artist said gloomily. “It is always a mistake to try to complete a painting that one has started in one place and then moved to another.”

  “You had another studio in Montmartre?” Una asked.

  “I had a corner of one,” he replied. “I was kicked out of it this morning. That is why I came here.”

  He looked back at the mess behind them.

  “It’s pretty ghastly here until I can clean it up, but that needn’t worry you. There is a bedroom up those stairs, where you can take off your clothes.”

  “T-take off my – clothes?” Una asked in a voice that seemed to die in her throat.

  “Yes, hurry up and get on with it!” he ordered. “The light will be going soon.”

  “B-but – but I could not!” Una said. “I-I mean – I thought I could model for you – just as – I am.”

  The artist was already looking at his canvass.

  “No,” he said briefly. “I will paint you as a nymph coming from the wood. I can see it quite clearly. Hurry up!”

  Una drew in her breath.

  “I-I am – sorry – very sorry,” she said, “if – I misled you – but I am afraid I – cannot stay now.”

  He turned from his easel and she saw an expression of anger in his eyes that was suddenly replaced by something else.

  “Playing hard to get?” he asked. “Or have you come here for a very different reason?”

  There was something in the way he asked the question that made Una feel frightened.

  “I am – sorry – very sorry,” she said quickly, “b-but I have to – g-go – I have – ”

  The words died away on her lips, for the painter threw down his palette and took a step towards her.

  “I said you were pretty,” he said, “and now I know what your little game is. Well, the painting can wait!”

  He put out his hands towards her and suddenly Una was terrified.

  “No, no!” she cried, backing away from him.

  With a smile on his lips he followed her.

  “No!” she cried again.

&
nbsp; He gave a laugh that was almost a shout as he said,

  “If you want a chase, that’s what you’ll have! And when I’ve undressed you, you’ll look exactly as I want you to look. There’s nothing like combining business with pleasure!”

  He spoke in a manner that made Una know that he threatened her with something so horrible, so terrible, that for a moment she thought that it was impossible to move, impossible even to cry out.

  Then, as he caught hold of her, she screamed, pulled herself free and rushed towards the door.

  “You can’t escape!” he shouted.

  As Una screamed again, through the door she had left ajar came a man and, as she flung herself in sheer terror against him, she found that it was the Duke!

  *

  The Duke entered the anteroom to find, as he had expected, that Philippe Dubucheron was there with a pile of half-a-dozen canvasses.

  He had a smile on his lips which annoyed the Duke immensely, knowing that the Frenchman was thinking of how well his plans were working out and that he had found Una as delectable as he had anticipated.

  As a footman closed the door, the Duke made no effort to shake hands with the Frenchman, but walked across the room towards the canvasses that were stacked against the side of a chair.

  “You have found some more of Thoreau’s pictures?” he asked.

  “Yes, Your Grace. I am afraid that the majority of them are only rough sketches, but interesting, most of them showing the promise that he undoubtedly achieved with his later efforts.”

  Philippe Dubucheron had no intention of telling the Duke about the picture that Julius Thoreau had been working on when he died, which was at this moment waiting in his Gallery to be burnt.

  He had recognised, as Una had, that it was the meandering of a drunkard’s mind that had made his brush run wild in a travesty of colour that was unpleasantly revealing.

  The Duke waited and Philippe Dubucheron, wondering if anything had gone wrong, picked up the canvasses from the floor and propped them on the sofa, where they were in a good light from the window.

  There was only one that interested the Duke, who saw at once that it was a half-finished portrait of Una as a child.

  He could understand why she had said that her father had not been pleased with it, but there was no mistaking who was portrayed.