Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1908 (Heft 21))

AN IMPOSSIBLE CASE.


|T all comes back to me this evening. Yes, if you wish it, I will
tell you the story. Fill your pipe and glass.
Well, we were back in his studio again. Felice, exhausted, had
dropped onto the edge of the lounge, her hands clenched in her
lap, her eyes staring straight before her. She seemed dazed, as she had been
while sitting beside me in the carriage, and while we stood by the narrow hole
into which Edgar’s body had been lowered. Yet, she had been only his
model; nothing more, I am convinced, at least in his eyes.
I crossed the passage to my own studio and lit the gas-stove. The girl
needed a cup of tea. For myself, I poured out a glass of whisky and drank
it to my dead friend: <c Here’s wishing you better luck, lad, in your next exist-
ence.” For, born too late or too early—I don’t know which—he had been
at odds with his time; and, loving him as I did, I felt a strange peace now
that he was out of the unequal struggle. For he had been one of those men
for whom others have to shoulder responsibility. He himself had no sense
of it. Thought and work on his account I hope I never grudged; but his
unpracticalness continually thwarted me. He had never sold a picture and
declared he never would. I believe he would have starved rather than go
back upon his convictions. cc Do men sell their children?” he would say
simply to all my arguments. cc When I am gone, I will leave them to the
world; perhaps put them out into the world before I go. But sell them ?
Can one sell the offspring of one's soul's love?”
Yes, he was quite impossible. But, if you had known the boy as I did,
you would have been persuaded that he was right—for himself, at any rate.
His was so sensitive a nature, that any touch of the world would have hurt
the bloom on it. I stood between him and the world; and the girl, Felice-
Well I will speak of her presently. Then the independence of his spirit was
such that he could brook no curb, not even any suggestion of this or that.
You’re right, he was supremely, exquisitely selfish; he was the true artist in
that. And also in his absolute unconsciousness of the material needs and
claims of life. He lived entirely in the spirit, and took the things of this
life, as the flowers take rain and sunshine. It was the discovery that I was
sharing my meals with him and carrying his rent that killed him.
Yes, killed him. I was behindhand with the rent and the landlord had
called to collect it. The man was out of patience and turned from my door
with a threat that he would put my friend out on the street. Edgar was
coming up the stairs and the man, as he passed him, repeated the threat.
White in the face, Edgar asked me the meaning of the threat. I tried
to put him offl. But his mind was as keen and clear as his spirit; and, once
roused, it scorched me with questions. What was the income of the little
money he had put into my hands, on his return from Paris—the remnant of
a legacy that had made it possible for him to study abroad? What was the
amount of the rent; of his persona] expenses ? It was no use lying to him.
Beside, it seemed best to tell the truth. His pride, I knew,would be wounded;

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