"On the contrary, it will be carried out."
Mme. de Beaudrillart also rose.
"Not for the gallery, monsieur."
"For the gallery, and the gallery alone, madame."
He tried to speak quietly, but his face was very red, and he drew his
breath in short gasps. His opponent, with her air of superb calm, and
her dignified manner, impressed him in spite of himself. When poor
Nathalie had got him away, and they were together in the carriage, he
muttered:
"Was there ever such a ridiculous woman! For all that, there is what
you must aim at. There's an air for you, a presence! You don't catch
me here again in a hurry; but if I were you, my girl, I'd practise that
way she has of looking as if you were the dust under her feet. It was
just as much as I could do to hold my own against it, I can tell you.
All looking. She hadn't a word to say. And she'll have to give in."
"As a particular favour, don't press it, dear father. You can see how
disagreeable it would be for me."
"Aha, but you must learn to look, too, now you are one of them. No. I
am resolved, and I shall write to Monsieur de Beaudrillart."
Nathalie promised herself to be first in the field with her husband, but
how to keep the peace between these clashing wills? Leon only laughed
when he heard of the dilemma.
"Oh, we will find a way out of it! Your father is absolutely right, my
Nathalie; that face of yours is worthy of the best painter and the best
place. But my mother, dear woman, has her little prejudices about the
gallery."
"And I would not be there for worlds!" she cried, shuddering. "Without
you, and to be left to the mercy of those old Beaudrillarts? No, Leon,
do not ask it!"
"Leave it to me. It would be so charming to have your portrait, and you
would endure a little to please me, oh!"
"Ah, much!" she said, frankly, putting her hand on his. "But your
mother is right, for if any one is to be there, it should be you--you
who belong to them, and whom they would have nothing against."
He caught away his hand with a sharp movement, unlike himself.
"Against! What do you mean?"
"They would scout me as an interloper; that is all that I mean," she
said, surprised. "Dear, I was not suggesting that I had committed a
crime, or done anything to make them utterly ashamed of me."
"No," he returned, with an uneasy laugh. "And if we could know their
histories, I dare say we should find that it was you who might be
ashamed of their company."
"And it's well my father doesn't hear you!" Nathalie cried, merrily.
"He would not put up with a word against the Beaudrillarts."
He did not, as usual, retort with a jest, and, indeed, for the rest of
the day was silent and almost moody. His mother, always on the lookout
for such signs, decided that his marriage began to bore him; and though
the mood wore off, preserved the impression in her mind, and
strengthened it, as soon as she could, with another of the same
tendency. Nathalie, who had hoped that time would bring kinder feeling
towards her, found that it only seemed to push them further apart; as
much as possible her presence was ignored, the servants were tacitly
shown that her wishes might be disregarded, and so far as any real
authority in the house was concerned, she was a mere cipher. Yet she
was not unhappy. She had come from a home where she had been thrown
chiefly on her own resources, and this, if a harsh, is often a wholesome
training. The hours she spent alone passed contentedly enough,
sweetened, too, by those others when she and Leon were together, walking
over the estate, seeing to planting, thinning, cutting down, settling
which bits of the property he would buy back, watching the vintage,
strolling by the side of the river. She never loved the river. An
unconquerable dread had seized her ever since she heard the story of the
death by drowning of Leon's father, the Baron Bernard; but as Leon had a
fancy for fishing, she kept her repugnance out of his sight. Neither
Mme. de Beaudrillart nor her youngest daughter would consent to take
advantage of the carriage. Felicie, however, was glad to be spared the
long tramps which were formerly necessary before she could reach the
outlying districts where her charitable errands carried her, and more
than once had been driven in to some function in the cathedral at Tours,
with the express understanding that she should not be called upon to
encounter M. Bourget.
"Your father and I think so differently on all subjects!" she explained.
For the picture a compromise had been arrived at, owing to the fortunate
circumstance that--to M. Bourget's untold wrath--the painter whom Leon
had chosen was too fully occupied to come to Poissy. M. Bourget, while
storming at the artist's stupidity, had suggested that her husband
should take his wife to Paris, so that she might be painted there. Leon
turned it off. He said he had a fancy that the picture should be done
at Poissy, and the sentiment was too completely after M. Bourget's own
heart for him to resist. He only grumbled at the delay as a personal
wrong done to him by the painter.
"Isn't my money as good as another man's, and better!" he demanded,
wrathfully. "I'd like to know what the fellow means by declining to
come?"
"Perhaps there are other Poissys in the world," remarked Leroux, with
malice, "and other families as important as the Beaudrillarts."