Crucial Instances

When, the next morning, she appeared equipped for their customary ramble, her husband surprised her by announcing that he meant to stay at home.

“The fact is I’m rather surfeited,” he said, smiling.  “I suppose my appetite isn’t equal to such a plethora.  I think I’ll write some letters and join you somewhere later.”

She detected the wish to be alone and responded to it with her usual readiness.

“I shall sink to my proper level and buy a bonnet, then,” she said.  “I haven’t had time to take the edge off that appetite.”

They agreed to meet at the Hotel Cluny at mid-day, and she set out alone with a vague sense of relief.  Neither she nor Keniston had made any direct reference to Mrs. Davant’s visit; but its effect was implicit in their eagerness to avoid each other.

Claudia accomplished some shopping in the spirit of perfunctoriness that robs even new bonnets of their bloom; and this business despatched, she turned aimlessly into the wide inviting brightness of the streets.  Never had she felt more isolated amid that ordered beauty which gives a social quality to the very stones and mortar of Paris.  All about her were evidences of an artistic sensibility pervading every form of life like the nervous structure of the huge frame—­a sensibility so delicate, alert and universal that it seemed to leave no room for obtuseness or error.  In such a medium the faculty of plastic expression must develop as unconsciously as any organ in its normal surroundings; to be “artistic” must cease to be an attitude and become a natural function.  To Claudia the significance of the whole vast revelation was centred in the light it shed on one tiny spot of consciousness—­the value of her husband’s work.  There are moments when to the groping soul the world’s accumulated experiences are but stepping-stones across a private difficulty.

She stood hesitating on a street corner.  It was barely eleven, and she had an hour to spare before going to the Hotel Cluny.  She seemed to be letting her inclination float as it would on the cross-currents of suggestion emanating from the brilliant complex scene before her; but suddenly, in obedience to an impulse that she became aware of only in acting on it, she called a cab and drove to the gallery where her husband’s pictures were exhibited.

A magnificent official in gold braid sold her a ticket and pointed the way up the empty crimson-carpeted stairs.  His duplicate, on the upper landing, held out a catalogue with an air of recognizing the futility of the offer; and a moment later she found herself in the long noiseless impressive room full of velvet-covered ottomans and exotic plants.  It was clear that the public ardor on which Mrs. Davant had expatiated had spent itself earlier in the week; for Claudia had this luxurious apartment to herself.  Something about its air of rich privacy, its diffusion of that sympathetic quality in other countries so conspicuously absent from the public show-room, seemed to emphasize its present emptiness.  It was as though the flowers, the carpet, the lounges, surrounded their visitor’s solitary advance with the mute assurance that they had done all they could toward making the thing “go off,” and that if they had failed it was simply for lack of co-operation.  She stood still and looked about her.  The pictures struck her instantly as odd gaps in the general harmony; it was self-evident that they had not co-operated.  They had not been pushing, aggressive, discordant:  they had merely effaced themselves.  She swept a startled eye from one familiar painting to another.  The canvases were all there—­and the frames—­but the miracle, the mirage of life and meaning, had vanished like some atmospheric illusion.  What was it that had happened?  And had it happened to her or to the pictures?  She tried to rally her frightened thoughts; to push or coax them into a semblance of resistance; but argument was swept off its feet by the huge rush of a single conviction—­the conviction that the pictures were bad.  There was no standing up against that:  she felt herself submerged.

The stealthy fear that had been following her all these days had her by the throat now.  The great vision of beauty through which she had been moving as one enchanted was turned to a phantasmagoria of evil mocking shapes.  She hated the past; she hated its splendor, its power, its wicked magical vitality….  She dropped into a seat and continued to stare at the wall before her.  Gradually, as she stared, there stole out to her from the dimmed humbled canvases a reminder of what she had once seen in them, a spectral appeal to her faith to call them back to life.  What proof had she that her present estimate of them was less subjective than the other?  The confused impressions of the last few days were hardly to be pleaded as a valid theory of art.  How, after all, did she know that the pictures were bad?  On what suddenly acquired technical standard had she thus decided the case against them?  It seemed as though it were a standard outside of herself, as though some unheeded inner sense were gradually making her aware of the presence, in that empty room, of a critical intelligence that was giving out a subtle effluence of disapproval.  The fancy was so vivid that, to shake it off, she rose and began to move about again.  In the middle of the room stood a monumental divan surmounted by a massif of palms and azaleas.  As Claudia’s muffled wanderings carried her around the angle of this seat, she saw that its farther side was occupied by the figure of a man, who sat with his hands resting on his stick and his head bowed upon them.  She gave a little cry and her husband rose and faced her.

Instantly the live point of consciousness was shifted, and she became aware that the quality of the pictures no longer mattered.  It was what he thought of them that counted:  her life hung on that.

They looked at each other a moment in silence; such concussions are not apt to flash into immediate speech.  At length he said simply, “I didn’t know you were coming here.”

She colored as though he had charged her with something underhand.

“I didn’t mean to,” she stammered; “but I was too early for our appointment—­”

Her word’s cast a revealing glare on the situation.  Neither of them looked at the pictures; but to Claudia those unobtruding presences seemed suddenly to press upon them and force them apart.

Keniston glanced at his watch.  “It’s twelve o’clock,” he said.  “Shall we go on?”