Katherine Keenum (36 page)

“Are you coming to the Salon on Saturday to hear the medals announced?” asked Adeline.

“I’ll rely on Miss Palmer to assess the judges’ choices,” said Edward.

“Oh, that’s no good. We’re going with her. You come, too,” said Adeline. She ignored Jeanette’s efforts to interrupt. “She took Harold and me through the exhibition, and I promise you, she’s a marvelous guide.”

“Yes, I know . . .” He caught Jeanette’s eye.

“I told you, Adeline,” said Jeanette, “Carolus’s students will be meeting up when we get there. Of course, I do want you to come, too, Dr. Murer, if you—”

“Well, that’s settled then,” said Adeline. “We’ll all start out together, and if Jeanette runs into her artistic friends, so much the better for the rest of us—they’ll be part of the show.”

Jeanette bit her lip. She looked at Edward and saw a slight lift of his eyebrow. So he was asking her for guidance! Jeanette softened into resignation; her eyes laughed. She loved the covert intimacy of their silent conversation.

“It will be my honor to join you, Mrs. Vann,” said Edward.

Later, as the party broke up and Edward was taking his leave of Cornelia, Adeline whispered to Jeanette, “You’d better marry that man. It’s clear he’s in love with you, and back in the States, the pickings may not be so good for a girl who . . . well, anyway, marry him.”

A girl who what?—got expelled from Vassar, was rumored to have had a baby in Europe, studied art? Jeanette swallowed her indignation. “Aren’t you being a little premature?”

“It’s never too early to know what you mean to do, goosey. A man won’t catch you if you don’t chase him.”

“What if I’ve decided on blessed singleness?”

“Then look at Cousin Effie and decide again.”

*   *   *

Marry him.
Over the next few days, Jeanette’s mind kept running back to those two words.
Marry him.
It was too soon to think about marriage, much, much too soon. At the end of her longest daydreams sometimes, yes, he asked her, sometimes yes, she accepted; but she always stopped short of the wedding, and well short of the wedding night. Adeline’s cynicism threatened to spoil everything. Jeanette could scornfully reject the suggestion that she marry to redeem her social position. Far better to make her own way in the world, like Amy and Sonja and Miss Steadman—
with
Amy and Sonja and Miss Steadman. But what if she really was in love with Edward? The feeling of rightness that engulfed her whenever they were together was undeniable. Nevertheless, she was unwilling to put down her paintbrush, to renounce lessons, expeditions, and time spent with fellow artists. Charlie Post had cursed Mr. Moyer for marrying Miss Whitmore. Little Joel and Laura notwithstanding, Jeanette felt no desire for babies. And yet, and yet, and yet. If she and Edward were as much in love as she was being forced to consider they—might be? were? Well, then what?

*   *   *

A few days later at the Vanns’ hotel, it was plain to Edward that something was off-key. Jeanette was absent in manner. He assumed she wished herself already with her friends and tried not to take it personally nor push himself on her. In any case, Harold latched onto him until the party reached the Palais de l’Industrie, where noise put an end to all conversation. It was at this point that Jeanette came out of her shell and took the lead, making a determined path through the press of bodies toward the place where Carolus’s pupils had agreed to meet. They were intercepted by Miss Reade, who shouted out excuses to the Vanns, thrust Miss Isobel toward Effie, and carried Jeanette off into the maelstrom.

Edward hung on gamely until at last the medals were awarded—best to avoid offending Miss Palmer’s family if possible, and Cornelia would welcome every scrap or detail he could carry back. He was rewarded with a fine tale to tell her. The announcement that John Singer Sargent had received an honorary mention for his portrait of Carolus-Duran brought cheers and foot stamping from his fellow pupils. And when it was announced that Carolus had been awarded the Medal of Honor for his portrait of Countess Vandal, loyal pandemonium broke out.

Miss Reade again kept her head better than most and steered Jeanette back to where they could beg her party to see Miss Isobel safely home while the two of them rejoined an impromptu parade that was snaking its way through the building. Jeanette flew from embracing Effie to Adeline to Edward. Springing up on her toes, she threw her arms around his neck and just for a moment pressed her cheek to his. Ever so slightly, he pressed back, and for the first time, she felt the coarse whiskers of his beard, the thin flesh over hard bone. As she dropped back, her eyes shone up into his. Next moment, Miss Reade pulled her back to their boisterous classmates.

Carolus’s cohort cheered themselves hoarse. Chanting and singing, they marched arm in arm out onto the Champs-Élysées and through the streets of Paris. For Jeanette, no prize day at school, no win at a horse race, no political victory by one of Papa’s friends had ever been half so exciting. (Just wait until I write home, she exulted. Wait till Mama hears this!) As they proclaimed their allegiance, they dazzled themselves with the knowledge that they were exactly where they needed to be, studying under the best master in Paris, while they wrestled with their gifts and hopes and doubts. And through it all, Jeanette felt the touch of Edward’s cheek against hers and made no attempt to sort anything out.

*   *   *

Edward was in something of the same exalted state. People around him bumped, shoved, and talked all at once; he hardly knew it. Above the tumult, Adeline asked, loudly, “Well, what now?”

“We make for the exit along with everyone else,” said Miss Isobel, “and then, Mr. and Mrs. Vann, off you go,
tzzz-tzzz
, in a beeline to Ledoyen’s restaurant—it’s where the winners and fashionable set will be, and you will enjoy telling your New York acquaintances about it when you go home. Meanwhile, Dr. Murer, Sister has landed you with Miss Pendergrast and me, but we are quite capable of seeing ourselves home, quite, quite capable. We do it all the time. Unless you care to join us for ice cream?”

Although, for Edward, only home and a rest for his weary leg should have appealed, the momentary euphoria of Jeanette’s embrace left him expansive. He could call on Cornelia with a bottle of champagne; he could stroll out to see what Paris had to offer; in the circumstances, he would eat ice cream.

“Do you mind taking the omnibus?” asked Effie, when they reached the Place de la Concorde. “Isobel and I always do. We sit on top and see everything.”

Why not? thought Edward. The streetcar was how he got around Cincinnati.

Their destination was Le Petit Honoré, Robbie Dolson’s patisserie off the Boulevard des Italiens. Effie had retained a covert liking for it; and without telling Jeanette, she had introduced Miss Isobel to it. The two of them thought of it as their little secret.

It was a secret they shared with a growing clientele. If
Noggins
influenced public opinion less than Robbie Dolson had claimed, the excellence of Le Petit Honoré’s pastries and its location had ensured its prosperity. Two lacy wrought-iron tables placed by the owner on the sidewalk were continually occupied, but there were a few more in a tiny, walled garden out back that not everyone knew about. Effie and Miss Isobel did, and it was only a short wait until they were seated in the dappled sun and shade of a chestnut tree that was piled with pyramids of fragrant blossom.

“Do you have plans for the summer, Miss Reade?” Edward asked, after they had placed their order.

“I’m so glad you asked that! We do, and you give me the opening to ask a favor of Miss Pendergrast. Now, Penders, you must listen carefully. With classes at Carolus’s atelier done for the summer, Sister could leave at any time, but we shall stay in town through June. Paris is at its loveliest in June—so lovely that Sister can’t see why Carolus leaves for the country. I’ve told her it’s because the countryside is
also
at its prettiest beginning now. So sweet, all the green fields and flowers, but we saw much the same thing in Ireland year after year. We shall wait until
July
to go down to Pont Aven. And this year we plan to stay there until October. Three whole months and the apartment empty. So here is my proposal. Do you think it possible, just possible, that you and dear Miss Palmer could mind it for us? Free of rent, of course, with use of the studio.”

“Oh, my, Isobel. Oh, my.” Effie puffed and blew. “I’d say yes in a minute—an airy apartment in summer?
Ouff!
Only you see, Jeanette and I were planning to be in Pont Aven ourselves in August, that is, assuming we don’t have to go back to the States, which I don’t think we will. Even so, you might want someone else . . .”

“You’ll be in Pont Aven? Oh, Penders, what
fun
we shall have! It makes no difference about the apartment, none whatsoever. The concierge can earn her keep for
one
month by looking after things. And surely you are not thinking of going home this autumn. That would be so foolish: Sister says Miss Palmer is blossoming under Carolus’s tutelage. We’ll hear no more about it. Dr. Murer—do
you
have plans for the summer?”

“I’m embarked on some chemical experiments, Miss Reade. I’ll see where they lead me.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Summer 1879

C
arolus’s students were jubilant for days. To celebrate his victory, the ladies’ class took him to lunch on Monday in a private room at Père Cagniard’s. And then it was over. Carolus left for the country. On Tuesday, Jeanette carried her watercolor box and a few sheets of ready-primed paper.

“Now” said Adeline, “with all that hullabaloo behind you, you can settle down to ten days of serious work.”

Jeanette swallowed the obvious retort. “I can give you mornings this week,” she said, “and there is plenty of light in the evenings, but next week the class is going to the Cluny. I can’t miss that.”

“You mean, you won’t.”

“In my shoes, you wouldn’t either, Adeline. Papa has let me sign up at Julian’s through June, but I don’t know how much time I’ve got after that.”

“Don’t be silly; he hasn’t ordered you to buy a ticket, so you know you have at least July, and Cousin Effie wants to go to your Pont Aven again, so that means August. I’ll write Uncle Joseph, how’s that? After he hears about your dashing Carolus-Duran’s medal, if you can’t persuade him to let you stay as long as you like, then feminine wiles are at an end. And you need to wield them while you-know-who is in Paris, remember. I’ll tell your parents about him, too, if you want.”

“Adeline, don’t you dare!”

“Then paint me some splendid portraits to praise, and I’ll write about those instead.”

*   *   *

Despite her irritation with Adeline, Jeanette painted the next three mornings in the nursery and devoted evenings to two horizontal watercolors of Adeline with the children in the Tuileries Garden. For herself, she would later try oil versions of the Tuileries pictures on wooden cigar-box tops given her by Harold (he produced several once he learned she could use them). On Saturday, she sacrificed most of a beautiful day to finish up the formal portraits at the Vanns’ hotel. On Sunday, she triumphantly took completed park scenes to morning service at the American Episcopal Church favored by the Vanns. She and Effie ate a midday dinner with Adeline and Harold in the hotel dining room. The landscapes were delivered; the children were visited; by midafternoon, she and Effie were out the door and onto the Rue de Rivoli.

Across the street, tree leaves fluttered in the breeze. Jeanette turned her face up to the sun and closed her eyes. She felt free. The commission was done. The Vanns would soon be gone. She wanted to stretch and yawn and luxuriate with as fine an unconcern as Boots. That being impossible in public, she linked arms lazily with Cousin Effie. “I can’t do a single thing on this heavenly day. Let’s walk through the Tuileries and dawdle all the way to the Luxembourg Garden, and then find chairs and just idle.”

*   *   *

Edward was waiting for them in one of the scores of chairs by the fountain behind the Luxembourg Palace—neither by arrangement nor exactly by accident. He knew they often came here; and on a morning when he, too, felt that time spent inside four walls was time wasted, he had tucked a novel into his coat pocket and taken himself over to the Left Bank. He poked in the bins of secondhand book and print dealers along the Seine. In one, he found a single illustration from a sixteenth-century herbal, a hand-tinted woodcut of an iris—root, rhizome, leaves, and blossom. Orris root, a medicinal, the family trade. It was so handsome that he bought it. He felt a little reckless but also very lucky; for from time spent with his stockbroker friend’s collection and in the library of the Jardin des Plantes, he was sure it was worth what he paid for it. From there, he went on to the park café for an omelette, and afterward found one of the few unoccupied chairs where he could sit and read, see the bright flowers of the beds around the basin, watch children sailing boats in the fountain, and keep an eye out intermittently on passersby. He was deeply engrossed in his novel when a shadow fell across the page and Jeanette’s voice said, “May we interrupt you?”

He scrambled to his feet, retrieving his brown-paper parcel before it could fall to the ground. He tipped his hat—a new bowler to go with a summer-weight morning jacket. It was the first time Jeanette had ever seen him in anything less formal than a silk top hat and frock coat.

“I would ask you to sit down,” he said, “but there don’t seem to be enough free chairs. May I join you on your walk instead?”

“Now you two will just have to excuse me,” said Effie. “We’ve walked all the way from the Hôtel du Louvre, Dr. Murer, and if you will take Jeanette for another turn or two around the fountain, I’ll sit here a while and rest my feet. You can leave your book and parcel with me.”

Jeanette squirmed at Effie’s all-too-obvious tactics (what had Adeline been saying behind her back?), but Dr. Murer either didn’t notice or didn’t mind. They moved off in a formal promenade around the wide graveled path of the basin. Perhaps she gave his arm the lightest of surreptitious squeezes; he openly reached over to give her hand the quickest of pats. She told him how glad she was to have completed the Vanns’ pictures. He told her that his parcel contained a woodcut which she and Miss Pendergrast must see. She told him that class would be held on the grounds of the Musée de Cluny all week. He asked whether he could come over to watch. She told him, yes.

*   *   *

On Monday morning as Jeanette walked to the Cluny, through all her enjoyment of freedom from the Vanns and the prospect of sketching outdoors ran excitement over her assignation with Dr. Murer. Assignation, tryst: shades of Abigail McLeod! She knew she was exaggerating. All the same, she would not care to have Amy know in advance that a man, that
he
, might be coming to see her later in the week when the grounds were open to the public.

Over the weekend, a few of the more single-minded students had visited the museum and could go straight to where they wanted to work; but for twenty minutes or so, Jeanette explored the gardens, the Roman ruins, and the medieval courtyard. The first thing to strike her forcibly was a clump of fragrant irises, which glowed in hazy morning sunlight as purple as the example in Dr. Murer’s woodcut. She sat down in front of it. When Amy stopped by to see what she had chosen to do, she pointed to the flowers. “Emily should be here.”

“
Sunlight on Single Iris: Perfection
,” said Amy.

“Be fair,” said Jeanette, “she would do the whole clump.” Emily might, in fact, do much more: She could make a viewer wonder what lay around the corner of the broken wall behind the flowers, what strange realm lay hidden among the leaf swords. Jeanette sighed. “Wherever the Dolsons have gone, I hope there are flowers.”

After Amy moved on, Jeanette looked harder. Something besides the irises and the woodcut had pulled her back to this spot. What? The response of the heart was paramount in recognizing a motif, but to make the most of this opportunity, she needed to think analytically. Up close, the urge to work with purple, lavender, grays, and greens was strong. On the sketch of a few minutes, she wrote out color notations for working up the irises as a watercolor that night, but she was here to draw. She moved to a place well beyond the spot she thought of as Emily’s. The iris clump would be only a secondary, small focal point for a study of sunlight and shadow on a wall in the middle ground with a high arch farther back. Yet Emily’s absent figure also became a kind of negative weight, for a diagonal in the composition implied a figure who wasn’t there.

Tuesday, it rained. Indoors, always half hoping that Dr. Murer would come, Jeanette made a number of rapid sketches of objects that might be useful someday for historical illustrations. On Wednesday, with everything damp in the morning from yesterday’s rain but rapidly drying, the class set up outdoors again; and in the afternoon, Edward came. He found Jeanette opposite stone steps that led up under a covered passageway into a sunny courtyard. In her drawing, a brightly lit, thick-trunked vine gave botanical life to an otherwise stony architectural study. He stood looking over her shoulder; she showed him her work from the previous two days and pointed out the irises.

“They’re just like the one in your woodcut,” she said, smiling up at him. As usual, only his eyes smiled back, but she could see that he was pleased.

He looked down at her sketch and pointed. “What would you place here if you were going to finish this?”

“Do you think it needs something?”

“What? No! no, not if . . . Actually, Miss Palmer, yes, I do.”

“You are talking to me honestly. Thank you.”

“Honestly, but ignorantly.”

“Your eye is good. It’s Emily Dolson who is missing. I could so easily imagine her there. The question is whether it’s better with or without her. Sometimes I think an absence can be as potent as a presence.”

So it could. Marie’s ghost brushed the edge of Edward’s awareness, then melted away; she was no longer a strong ghost and had never been a malicious one.

“Tell me, Miss Palmer, it’s none of my business, but do you know yet whether you will leave Paris for good this fall? Miss Pendergrast said that you might go back to America.”

“No!” said Jeanette, breaking into a broad smile. “We’ve just had good news. You know the Reade sisters have offered us their apartment this summer. It helped decide my father to let me stay on.”

I take it that you are highly regarded by your fellow artists if Miss Reade is willing to turn her studio over to you
, Judge Palmer had written.
Also, Adeline dropped us a line to say you were making good use of your time under your celebrated M. Duran. His Medal of Honor made the newspaper here and your mother has boasted ever since. I think we can take it as proven that another school year in Paris is desirable. You may count on quarterly allowance payments to take you through May of next year.

“I’ve signed up for afternoons only at Julian’s in July. I can’t wait—a studio all to myself! What about you, Dr. Murer—are you staying in Paris?”

He smiled at her. “For now, anyway, I’m thinking of it as home.”

*   *   *

July sent the Renicks to a rented house in Trouville as well as the Reade sisters to Brittany. Effie would miss her mornings in the Poutery, but removal to the Rue d’Assas brought new housekeeping duties and preoccupations.
Boots resisted the move
, Jeanette wrote home after their first week.
He must know every rooftop between here and the Rue Jacob. Cousin Effie was frantic the first night he didn’t come in, but finally she checked with Mme. LeConte and found out he’d gone home to the
pension
. When it happened again, Cousin E said if he was a roaming tomcat, good luck to him. She can see him when she stops by to chat with Mme. LeConte, whom she regards as a great source of tips for the Lady Artist series. Her next article, by the way, is on neighborhood bootmakers, shoe repair shops, and leatherworkers.

As for me, I’ve begun a formal portrait of Cousin E, and I’m doing watercolor still lifes with shells from Miss Isobel’s collection and flowers from wonderful stalls on the way home.
She went on to describe the artistic exercises she had set herself. What she did not put in the letter was how she felt herself to be more and more Parisian as she walked to and from Julian’s each afternoon with an apartment, not a
pension
, to come back to, how she had begun to envisage living in the city permanently. Nor did she tell her parents how, on the way home from Julian’s, she always peeled off from any companion to route herself through the Luxembourg Garden. After research at the Jardin des Plantes, Edward often waited at the gate by the palace to escort her through the park.

*   *   *

In June, when Cornelia heard about Julian’s class at the Cluny, she had given instructions that Jeanette should be allowed into the garden any time she wanted to work
en plein air
. In July, when it was daylight by six, Jeanette took to rambling to see early-morning Paris before she started her own day’s work. One morning, she walked out the Rue de Sevres, around through the quiet neighborhood behind the Invalides, where there were small houses with gardens, and back to the grander Rue de Varenne. A gardener at work out front at the Renicks’ house led her around to a side gate into the main garden.

At the edge of the terrace, she looked out toward the back-corner orchard. Tretower, Robbie Dolson had called it. He might be a knave—thievery put him beyond the pale—but there had been deep recognition in his voice when he first saw those trees, a longing for an unrecoverable Eden. Was it possible, she wondered, to paint a landscape that would render a real place accurately and at the same time train the viewer’s mind on what could be seen through it? It was one thing to imply an absent figure by including symbolic objects or leaving an empty spot in the composition; it would be another altogether to embody transcendence. Perhaps the Renicks’ School of Rembrandt painting of the moon and campfire on the Flight into Egypt achieved it. But what about with no figures? It was what Charlie Post was trying to do. As a run-up to the Gernagans’ orchard in August, maybe she would seek out some particularly gnarly old apple tree.

But, no. As she started down from the Rose Parterre, she espied the duchess sitting quietly with her hands in her lap in a recess on her side of the Fountain Tier, seeming to contemplate a conical, clipped boxwood. It was as though she knew the garden would never be the Renicks’, not that it would ever be hers again either, but only she and perhaps the head gardener knew how to look into its heart. Jeanette retreated up the steps so as not to interrupt her meditations, but later in the morning, she returned to sketch that corner from various vantage points and sit in the duchess’s seat. A final composite drawing, worked up in her studio, showed the alcove, the empty bench, and the topiary.
Portrait of a Duchess
, she called it. And she drew one other major picture from the Renicks’ grounds: in the secret garden, of the beech tree—
Portrait of an Afternoon
.