Katherine Keenum (39 page)

CHAPTER FORTY

End of August 1879

O
f the hundred or so artists in and around Pont Aven, most contributed something to Cousin Effie and Miss Isobel’s rummage sale and many to the art sale as well. By the end of the month, the ladies had sold all their tickets in a raffle. On the day of the fête, they sold all their boxed teas. Everyone claimed that Town Hall, where the works for sale were on display, was as packed as any Salon; and late into the evening, everyone sat outside to listen to an impromptu concert by volunteer performers on the green between the Hôtel Voyageurs and the Pension Gloanec. Business at the two hotel bars was brisk, with a portion of the night’s take going to the cause. Altogether, a sizable purse was collected for Charlie Post.

In the excitement of the big day, Jeanette forgot everything else, including the need ever to leave Pont Aven, but Tuesday brought the beginning of the end. Saying she wanted to talk to Rodolphe Julian, Amy left on Wednesday. For the next two days, Jeanette paused before every sight from the breakfast crockery to the sails of fishing boats in the harbor, aware that by the following summer, her parents expected her to be in Ohio. When her mind ran too far forward, she wrenched it back to the smell of crushed apples and grass in the orchard, the buzz of wasps feeding on the sticky brown fruit near her feet, the squealing clamor of seabirds in the distance. Yet as much as she tried to hold on to everything, she also felt a nervous impatience to be done with what was finished, to go back to the pressures of Paris, to models and classes and competition, to another month in Miss Reade’s studio, to Edward.

On the train, Effie began working on a “Letter from an Artist’s Colony” to send to the New York
Weekly Panorama
. Jeanette alternately read and dozed while her mind rushed forward over and over again to the Montparnasse train station, where always Edward awaited her on the platform. As the hours passed, the stories she told herself became more elaborate. They began with his ardently seeking her through a crowd. Usually, she flew into his arms. After a first scene of reunion, the daydreams took various directions. Some ended melodramatically in his rescuing her from a runaway hansom, others in her looking into his eyes and answering a silent question, “Yes.” In still others, she renounced love and marriage to devote herself to Art. She half expected him really to be there, even though she and Effie had deliberately refrained from sending him the particulars of their return for fear it would seem too much like asking for a ride home. She knew it was foolish to make his being there a test of his devotion, but she did.

As a matter of fact, Edward had gone so far as to check on possible trains coming in from the west on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, but he gave up trying to guess which one the ladies would take. To haunt the station for days on the chance of being there at the right time was for young fools, he told himself, not old ones. Instead, he left a note for them with their concierge and ordered fresh flowers—red roses and fragrant white lilies—to be delivered to the Reades’ apartment on all three mornings.

When Jeanette and Effie arrived back at the Reades’ apartment on Saturday afternoon, therefore, feeling bedraggled and, in Jeanette’s case, disappointed, they were met in the hall by a huge bouquet and a note from Edward asking to be informed of their safe arrival. While Jeanette stood transfixed by the flowers and by the words in Edward’s hand, Effie picked up a second note, this one from Amy. It was dated that morning:
Damn and blast, must see you. Let me know when I can come around.

“I sit up all night in a second-class carriage,” said Amy, that evening, having been invited to supper, “and arrive back in Paris and what do you suppose I find at home? A skeletal figure in an apron, that’s what, a woman with masses of dark hair piled on top of her head: La Grecque.”

“No!” said Jeanette.

“My reaction exactly. I marched straight into the studio and said, ‘Sonja, is that Andrea Antonielli in our kitchen, and if so, what the hell is she doing there?’

“‘
Ah, chérie, bienvenue
,’ says Sonja, cool as you please.
‘Oui, c’est Andrea. Sa petite fille aussi.’

“Sonja, it seems, went looking for a model early one morning down at the foot of Rue Nôtre-Dame-des-Champs and found the beastly child Angelica gyrating through lewd poses picked up from some chanteuse. Andrea has been mostly out of work for months and spending any money she could earn or beg in the worst sort of places. According to Angelica, they’ve been feeding off rinds filched from the garbage.”

“Oh, dear,” said Effie, “something must be done.”

“I did suggest delivering them to one of your mission halls, Miss P, and Sonja said—she actually said—‘a good Catholic deliver Andrea to Protestants?’ Ha. I asked her when was the last time either of them had dared set foot in a confession booth. No, but the point is, what she
had
done was put the pair of them in my bed. ‘And what do you propose to do now?’ I asked. Her answer was to put them up in the storeroom. When I said she couldn’t possibly mean to house them indefinitely, she said it wasn’t charity—she had hired Andrea: ‘She is model; I need model.’ Those were her very words. To top it all off, she’s paying the poor woman only a franc an hour with five sous an hour extra to cook and clean. You’d think they were serfs.”

“Does she really mean to go on with it now that you’re back?” asked Jeanette.

“It seems so. There’s no chance it will work, of course. Oh, but there are so many things wrong! Even simple, stupid things like head lice.”

“Head lice! Then their heads need shaving!” interjected Effie.

“Well, precisely. I marched them around to a barber myself, yesterday. It’s a sign of how beaten down Antonielli is that she submitted. She was tragic about it, of course. She claimed her locks were her living, which is rubbish—she could earn her living with her head in a bag if she regained that stupendous control of hers. Sold the swatch of hair for a pretty penny, too—which I have insisted must go toward new clothes and tuition for Angelica as soon as she can be sent out to school. If I am to be saddled with that child, she will at least learn to read and write. Meanwhile, the tot’s wearing a scarf and scrambling all over the impasse, wheedling and showing off and making herself a right nuisance.”

“How is Sonja taking it all?” asked Jeanette.

“Oddly enough, I think she welcomes a little discipline in the house. For one thing, I pointed out that if La Grecque is there to model, she must be given a raise and pose. And I must say she’s interesting now, all skin and bones with that bald head. I want her to pose reclining—nude first and then in a shift. Sonja agrees she could make use of some oil studies herself. One thing I wanted to ask was, could you come in with us? Rare chance for you—”

Jeanette nodded excitedly.

“—and frankly, I think another person in the room will make it all more businesslike. I want to stymie any attempt by Antonielli to play Sonja and me off against each other.”

Effie sat shaking her head.

“Well, why not?” demanded Jeanette.

“It’s, it’s just so cold-blooded and so indecent.”

“You are cannier than the world at large,” said Amy. “Few people know how much ice water runs through artists’ veins. But as for indecency, surely in this case it’s just a matter of a professional model doing her job.”

“It’s taking advantage of the
signora
’s plight. She’s afraid of being thrown out.”

“As well she should be,” said Amy, her face darkening. “But I don’t see making her work as wicked. Far better that she pose for us than be forced to sleep with men, which is what too many down-and-out models wind up doing. Given the shape she’s in, one shudders to think what sort of man she might attract. I’ll tell you what. Come over for tea tomorrow, you two. I promise, Miss P, you’ll feel better about the whole thing.”

“Can we make it some other time or another day?” asked Jeanette.

“Dr. Murer is coming to tea,” explained Effie.

“Oh, I see-e-eee.”

“He sent the flowers,” said Jeanette, lamely.

“Yes, I had guessed whence Flora’s bounty. Very well, then, we’ll talk about it Monday morning on the way to Julian’s to register. By the way, here’s my other news: I’m giving up my job as
massière
.”

“Amy!” exclaimed Jeanette. “You’re going to devote the fall to a Salon piece?”

“I am. I had thought I’d work at home, but now I’ve decided to enroll in the afternoon class—with Antonielli around, and that brat, farewell to uninterrupted peace and quiet.

“Anyway, I’ll give this much to Julian: He’s being handsome about everything. He’s offered me space in the atelier for independent work and criticism to help prepare a submission, and he’s going to find me work doing designs for menus and such.”

“Success for the students is success for the school.”

“That’s what Sonja says. She thinks I should spit in his eye and make the break total, but I’m inclined to take every bit of help he offers.” Amy turned to Effie. “Miss P, we’ll get you by the studio one day this week; you’ll see it’s all right about the posing.”

*   *   *

Edward had enjoyed indulging in the flowers. For the assistant at the florist’s shop, his triple order had marked a welcome resumption of business after the summer doldrums, and she led him through a careful selection of individual stems for the first bouquet. When he received Jeanette and Effie’s responses late Saturday afternoon—a watercolor of a rose and a lily, and a note filled with underlinings and exclamation points—he kept the little painting beside him all evening until finally, at bedtime, it went into a drawer beside his bed. The next morning, he walked the six or eight blocks from his apartment to the Protestant American Chapel on the Rue de Berri and watched at a little distance.

Jeanette saw only him, no one else. Wordlessly, she walked right past the congregants dawdling on the sidewalk, without ever taking her eyes from his. To compensate for her rudeness, Effie made a point of greeting the acquaintances whom they had not seen for a month. When she finally joined Jeanette and Edward, she asked, “Will you sit with us, Dr. Murer?”

He would and did—not that either he or Jeanette paid any attention to the service (each was acutely aware of the other’s hand when they shared a hymnbook). What the hour gave them most was an opportunity to adjust to sitting next to each other. Afterward, Edward invited the ladies to lunch at an open-air café.

They ate, then strolled to the Place de la Concorde. Across the bridge, when Edward began steering them upriver toward the Latin Quarter, Effie said, “Jeanette, I think you should tell Dr. Murer all about Pont Aven, but if you two will excuse me, I’m going to take an omnibus home. I shall expect you around four thirty or five.”

Jeanette was so happy for the chance to be alone with Edward that Effie’s blatancy embarrassed her only for the instant it took to exchange a glance with him. Edward himself fully understood the implications. He took Effie’s hand. “Thank you, Miss Pendergrast.” He would have called a cab, but Effie insisted that after a month in the country, she would enjoy a ride atop the Boulevard Saint-Germain bus. It seemed to be true; they let her hurry away. “Do you want to tell me about Pont Aven?” asked Edward.

Jeanette brought her free hand up to shade her eyes a moment. About discussions with Amy, discussions with Effie? No. About Charlie Post or the orchard? Yes, no, maybe. “It was much like last year, which was what we wanted,” she said. “I painted a picture of the farm that I want you to see.” They had come to a parapet in the wall at street level. Below, near the water’s edge, on this side before the docks jutted out, a child with his nurse threw large chunks of bread to a frenzy of speckled ducks in the water. Jeanette pretended to watch a moment, then turned to Edward. “How about this? I’ll tell you about Brittany when I show you my sketches and pictures later on. For now, you tell me what
you
did all month.” Caution should have stopped her right there, but Cupid or a spirit of mischief or an unconsidered, reckless vanity led her to add, “What did you think about?” She did not say,
while I was gone
; she did not ask bluntly,
did you think of me?
But with her mouth left provocatively half open, she might as well have.

“I thought about you, Jeanette. Often.”

It was as delicious to hear as she had hoped until the twinkle in his eye as he added the word
often
brought her to her senses. “You’re right,” she said, laughing, “conceited me. But I thought about you, too—Edward.” After a pause, she added softly, “I want to see you without your hat.” Her hand reached slowly up as though to brush the brim lightly with the back of her fingers.

“If I take off my hat . . .” Edward did not finish the thought—that he might be tempted to gather her into his arms right there and then. All teasing vanished from his expression, baring a glimpse of the ardor he had so far held in check. A suggestion of impropriety hung in the air. She pulled her hand back.

“Have I offended you?” he asked.

“Frightened me a little.”