CHAPTER II

THE PORTRAIT

My father who was an iron manufacturer intended to take me into his works, but first of all he was bent on my undergoing a complete course of study in one of those Technical Institutes in the United States where one is supposed to learn everything that can be useful to a mechanic and an engineer, but where the practice of every form of sport is a particular and glorious feature. I may say that I was the pride of the Institute though I was the greatest dunce in it. Boxing, tennis, golf, riding, swimming, boating, into which I fiercely threw myself, diverted my thoughts from Cordélia without making me forget her.

I counted the months which stood between me and the happiness that awaited me. Meanwhile my father and mother were carried off almost at the same time during an epidemic of influenza, as it was then called. I fulfilled their wishes by making no attempt to precipitate the course of events. They were of opinion that I ought not to marry until I reached my twenty-fourth year. I had no desire to thwart them, particularly now that they were in their graves.

My uncle’s attitude towards me in the circumstances left nothing to be desired. He took upon himself the management of my business affairs. I was relieved from all trouble, notwithstanding that both my father and mother had left me a considerable fortune.

He asked me if I wished to take up the succession to my father’s business. I answered that I would readily have done so had such been necessary, but since I was left with sufficient means to insure the happiness of Cordélia and myself, I had made up my mind to live, in my own way, upon my income.

He assured me that I would soon become bored unless I engaged in some work. I answered that I had often felt bored when I was engaged in work but never when I was not working. My uncle’s ideas belonged to a different age which did not realize how full life is nowadays. I mean full of the movement which brings with it health and beauty. An athlete is never bored.

For that matter, the argument that I am advancing on the subject of work is by no means necessarily that of a “sportsman.” I have heard a man of considerable intellectual power, an author—a novelist who worked his ten hours a day—declare that he had a horror of work because work swallowed up the best part of his time, leaving him no opportunity of seeing life which was a marvelous occupation and a spectacle tedious only to imbeciles. He looked upon work as an ignominious necessity to which mankind had been doomed for some transgression or other, and he considered that those mortals who by the favor of the gods were absolved from it, and yet clamored for it because time hung heavily upon their hands, were deserving of eternal punishment.

For my part, I hold the same opinion and I add: If they are feeling bored, bless my soul, let them play football.

At length I reached my twenty-fourth year, and I sailed in the mail steamer to Havre. I already pictured to myself Cordélia waiting for me on the pier. I had not seen her for eighteen months. We had never ceased to write to each other with the greatest freedom. And yet during the last period of my stay in America I seemed to perceive some change in her.

True, her heart still remained mine but her mind had become unsettled; in other words I did not comprehend everything that she said in her letters. I have mentioned that Cordélia had always displayed an inclination for the arts and in particular for painting. Well, it was in connection with a small painting that she sent to me, a portrait of myself painted from memory, which I considered a splendid likeness, that she wrote extraordinary things which I scornfully called, without quite knowing why, a “deterioration,” for they appertained to a sphere of knowledge in which we were not accustomed to wander at my Technical Institute.

I said to myself: Cordélia thinks too much. It is high time that I was home. You bet I’ll make her give up her books and painting and music, and then to horse! as in the good old days.

But let me return to this portrait and in regard to it I will refer to my “notes.” I am not, to be sure, one of those persons who write their recollections from day to day. But I rejoice that I possess these memoranda, and I will explain how they came to be made almost without my noticing it, and why I happened to keep them.

I am very methodical and have always kept a strict record of my expenditure. I still have my little account books. Thus in the evening after casting up my accounts for the day, I used to sit gazing at the figures before me and dreaming of Cordélia, and I seldom closed the book without setting down some thought about her, or adding some comment upon her last letter.

These were often very simple remarks. For example, I find this entry under the date of the 25th April, 19——.

“Thirty-five dollars ten cents.... Dearest Cordélia, we shall have heaps of beautiful children crowding round our knee.” Or else a few words even more simple still. Under the date of the 30th May of the same year I find:

“Twenty-five dollars ten cents.... Dear, dear, dear Cordélia!”

Here are my observations concerning the portrait:

“To-day I received my portrait painted by Cordélia. It is a speaking likeness. It is complete in every respect, even to the scar which I still bear under the right eyebrow, caused by an unlucky fall against the corner of the stairs when I was eight. The wound bled copiously, and I call to mind Cordélia’s sorrow, for we had been playing together. I feel certain that when she portrayed this little scar she remembered that unfortunate mishap with some feeling. Dear, dear Cordélia!”

A month later I wrote the following note:

“What is happening? I have received a letter from Cordélia and can make nothing of it. She asks me to return the portrait. She considers the painting unworthy. I don’t quite follow whether she considers it unworthy of me or unworthy of her. Moreover she declares that while it resembles me it is not like me. What is the meaning of this fantastic language?”

And still dwelling on the portrait which, however, I was careful not to return to her because I was delighted with it, I wrote:

“Cordélia says in her letter that I ought to understand that a portrait should represent something more than the mere lineaments of a person; for instance, it should convey the expression of the soul and in so far as the soul is not expressed in a portrait, it expresses nothing at all!”

Well, I was quite at a loss. I did not understand how she could materialize my soul which was a thing essentially unseen. Had she meant by her words that it is indispensable to put life into a portrait, I should agree with her, and all that is needed for the purpose is a certain touch of animation in the expression of the eyes, but to depict the soul!... I shall ask her to explain what she means.

I pass over various comments expressing surprise at the tone of other letters from Cordélia which, moreover, were becoming very brief and few and far between. I am eager to arrive at Havre....

And here I was at Havre again.

Alas! Cordélia was not waiting for me on the pier.

On the other hand an old man-servant of my uncle’s came to meet me on the _Titan_, which was a small steam-tug engaged in the pilot and post service, and I learnt that Cordélia and her father had set out two days before on “an urgent journey abroad.”

Though I was physically hardened by my devotion to sport, I could not restrain my tears, for the news was so unforeseen and coincided so little with my expectations, that I felt a presentiment that some irretrievable calamity had befallen me.