“And your son, Jenkins. What are you doing with him? Why does one never
see him now at your house? He seemed a nice fellow.”
As she spoke in that tone of disdainful bluntness which she almost
always used when speaking to the Irishman, Felicia was at work on the
bust of the Nabob which she had just commenced, posing her model, laying
down and taking up the boasting-tool, quickly wiping her fingers with
the little sponge, while the light and peace of a fine Sunday afternoon
fell on the top-light of the studio. Felicia “received” every Sunday,
if to receive were to leave her door open to allow people to come in,
go out, sit down for a moment, without stirring from her work or even
interrupting the course of a discussion to welcome the new arrivals.
They were artists, with refined heads and luxuriant beards; here and
there you might see among them white-haired friends of Ruys, her father;
then there were society men, bankers, stock-brokers, and a few young men
about town, come to see the handsome girl rather than her sculpture, in
order to be able to say at the club in the evening, “I was at Felicia’s
to-day.” Among them was Paul de Gery, silent, absorbed in an admiration
which each day sunk into his heart a little more deeply, trying to
understand the beautiful sphinx draped in purple cashmere and ecru lace,
who worked away bravely amid her clay, a burnisher’s apron reaching
nearly to her neck, allowing her small, proud head to emerge with those
transparent tones, those gleams of veiled radiance of which the sense,
the inspiration bring the blood to the cheek as they pass. Paul always
remembered what had been said of her in his presence, endeavoured to
form an opinion for himself, doubted, worried himself, and was charmed,
vowing to himself each time that he would come no more and never missing
a Sunday. A little woman with gray, powdered hair was always there in
the same place, her pink face like a pastel somewhat worn by years, who,
in the discrete light of a recess, smiled sweetly, with her hands lying
idly on her knees, motionless as a fakir. Jenkins, amiable, with his
open face, his black eyes, and his apostolical manner, moved on from one
group to another, liked and known by all. He did not miss, either, one
of Felicia’s days; and, indeed, he showed his patience in this, all the
snubs of his hostess both as artist and pretty woman being reserved for
him alone. Without appearing to notice them, with ever the same smiling,
indulgent serenity, he continued to pay his visits to the daughter of
his old Ruys, of the man whom he had so loved and tended to his last
moments.
This time, however, the question which Felicia had just addressed to him
respecting his son appeared extremely disagreeable to him, and it was
with a frown and a real expression of annoyance that he replied:
“Ma foi! I know no more than yourself what he is doing. He has quite
deserted us. He was bored at home. He cares only for his Bohemia.”
Felicia gave a jump that made them all start, and with flashing eyes and
nostrils that quivered, said:
“That is too absurd. Ah, now, come, Jenkins. What do you mean by
Bohemia? A charming word, by-the-bye, and one that ought to recall long
days of wandering in the sun, halts in woody nooks, all the freshness of
fruits gathered by the open road. But since you have made a reproach of
the name, to whom do you apply it? To a few poor devils with long hair,
in love with liberty in rags, who starve to death in a fifth-floor
garret, or seek rhymes under tiles through which the rain filters;
to those madmen, growing more and more rare, who, from horror of the
customary, the traditional, the stupidity of life, have put their feet
together and made a jump into freedom? Come, that is too old a story.
It is the Bohemia of Murger, with the workhouse at the end, terror of
children, boon of parents, Red Riding-Hood eaten by the wolf. It was
worn out a long time ago, that story. Nowadays, you know well that
artists are the most regular people in their habits on earth, that they
earn money, pay their debts, and contrive to look like the first man you
may meet on the street. The true Bohemians exist, however; they are the
backbone of our society; but it is in your own world especially that
they are to be found. _Parbleu!_ They bear no external stamp and
nobody distrusts them; but, so far as uncertainty, want of substantial
foundation in their lives is concerned, they have nothing to wish for
from those whom they call so disdainfully ‘irregulars.’ Ah! if we
knew how much turpitude, what fantastic or abominable stories, a black
evening-coat, the most correct of your hideous modern garments, can
mask. Why, see, Jenkins, the other evening at your house I was amusing
myself by counting them--all these society adventurers--”
The little old lady, pink and powdered, put in gently from her place:
“Felicia, take care!”
But she continued, without listening:
“What do you call Monpavon, doctor? And Bois l’Hery? And de Mora
himself? And--” She was going to say “and the Nabob?” but stopped
herself.
“And how many others! Oh, truly, you may well speak of Bohemia with
contempt. But your fashionable doctor’s clientele, oh sublime Jenkins,
consists of that very thing alone. The Bohemia of commerce, of finance,
of politics; unclassed people, shady people of all castes, and the
higher one ascends the more you find of them, because rank gives
impunity and wealth can pay for rude silence.”
She spoke with a hard tone, greatly excited, with lip curled by a savage
disdain. The doctor forced a laugh and assumed a light, condescending
tone, repeating: “Ah, feather-brain, feather-brain!” And his glance,
anxious and beseeching, sought the Nabob, as though to demand his pardon
for all these paradoxical impertinences.
But Jansoulet, far from appearing vexed, was so proud of posing to this
handsome artist, so appreciative of the honour that was being done him,
that he nodded his head approvingly.
“She is right, Jenkins,” said he at last, “she is right. It is we who
are the true Bohemia. Take me, for example; take Hemerlingue, two of the
men who handle the most money in Paris. When I think of the point from
which we started, of all the trades through which we have made our way.
Hemerlingue, once keeper of a regimental canteen. I, who have carried
sacks of wheat in the docks of Marseilles for my living. And the strokes
of luck by which our fortunes have been built up--as all fortunes,
moreover, in these times are built up. Go to the Bourse between three
and five. But, pardon, mademoiselle, see, through my absurd habit of
gesticulating when I speak, I have lost the pose. Come, is this right?”
“It is useless,” said Felicia. A true daughter of an artist, of a genial
and dissolute artist, thoroughly in the romantic tradition, as was
Sebastien Ruys. She had never known her mother. She was the fruit of one
of those transient loves which used to enter suddenly into the bachelor
life of the sculptor like swallows into a dovecote of which the door is
always open, and who leave it again because no nest can be built there.
This time, the lady, ere she flew away, had left to the great artist,
then about forty years of age, a beautiful child whom he had brought
up, and who became the joy and the passion of his life. Until she
was thirteen, Felicia had lived in her father’s house, introducing a
childish and tender note into that studio full of idlers, models, and
huge greyhounds lying at full length on the couches. There was a corner
reserved for her, for her attempts at sculpture, a whole miniature
equipment, a tripod, wax, etc., and old Ruys would cry to those who
entered:
“Don’t go there. Don’t move anything. That is the little one’s corner.”
So it came about that at ten years old she scarcely knew how to read and
could handle the boasting-tool with marvellous skill. Ruys would have
liked to keep always with him this child whom he never felt to be in the
way, a member of the great brotherhood from her earliest years. But
it was pitiful to see the little girl amid the free behaviour of the
frequenters of the house, the constant going and coming of the models,
the discussions of an art, so to speak, entirely physical, and even at
the noisy Sunday dinner-parties, sitting among five or six women, to all
of whom her father spoke familiarly. There were actresses, dancers or
singers, who, after dinner, would settle themselves down to smoke with
their elbows on the table absorbed in the indecent stories so keenly
relished by their host. Fortunately, childhood is protected by a
resisting candour, by an enamel over which all impurities glide. Felicia
became noisy, turbulent, ill-behaved, but without being touched by all
that passed over her little soul so near to earth.
Every year, in the summer, she used to go to stay for a few days with
her godmother, Constance Crenmitz, the elder Crenmitz, whom all Europe
had called for so long “the famous dancer,” and who lived in peaceful
retirement at Fontainebleau.
The arrival of the “little demon” used to bring into the life of the old
dancer an element of disturbance from which she had afterward all the
year to recover. The frights which the child caused her by her daring
in climbing, in jumping, in riding, all the passionate transports of
her wild nature made this visit for her at once delicious and terrible;
delicious for she adored Felicia, the one family tie that remained to
this poor old salamander in retirement after thirty years of fluttering
in the glare of the footlights; terrible, for the demon used to upset
without pity the dancer’s house, decorated, carefully ordered, perfumed,
like her dressing-room at the opera, and adorned with a museum of
souvenirs dated from every stage in the world.
Constance Crenmitz was the one feminine element in Felicia’s childhood.
Futile, limited in mind, she had at least a coquettish taste, agile
fingers that knew how to sew, to embroider, to arrange things, to leave
in every corner of the room their dainty and individual trace. She
alone undertook to train up the wild young plant, and to awaken with
discretion the woman in this strange being on whom cloaks, furs,
everything elegant devised by fashion, seemed to take odd folds or look
curiously awkward.
It was the dancer again--in what neglect must she not have lived, this
little Ruys--who, triumphing over the paternal selfishness, insisted
upon a necessary separation, when Felicia was twelve or thirteen years
old; and she took also the responsibility of finding a suitable school,
a school which she selected of deliberate purpose, very comfortable and
very respectable, right at the upper end of an airy road, occupying a
roomy, old-world building surrounded by high walls, big trees, a sort of
convent without its constraint and contempt of serious studies.
Much work, on the contrary, was done in Mme. Belin’s institution,
where the pupils went out only on the principal holidays and had no
communication with outside except the visits of relatives on Thursdays,
in a little garden planted with flowering shrubs or in the immense
parlour with carved and gilded work over its doors. The first entry
of Felicia into this almost monastic house caused indeed a certain
sensation; her dresses chosen by the Austrian dancer, her hair curling
to her waist, her gait free and easy like a boy’s, aroused some
hostility, but she was a Parisian and could adapt herself quickly to
every situation and to all surroundings. A few days later, she looked
better than any one in the little black apron, to which the more
coquettish were wont to hang their watches, the straight skirt--a severe
and hard prescription at that period when fashion expanded women’s
figures with an infinity of flounces--the regulation coiffure, two
plaits tied rather low, at the neck, after the manner of the Roman
peasants.
Strange to say, the regularity of the classes, their calm exactitude,
suited Felicia’s nature, intelligent and quick, in which the taste
for study was relieved by a juvenile expansion at ease in the noisy
good-humour of playtime. She was popular. Among those daughters of
wealthy businessmen, of Parisian lawyers or of gentlemen-farmers, a
respectable and rather affectedly serious world, the well-known name
of old Ruys, the respect with which at Paris an artist’s reputation is
surrounded, created for Felicia a greatly envied position, rendered more
brilliant still by her successes in the school-work, a genuine talent
for drawing, and her beauty, that superiority which asserts its
power even among young girls. In the wholesale atmosphere of the
boarding-school, she was conscious of an extreme pleasure as she grew
feminized, in resuming her sex, in learning to know order, regularity,
otherwise than these were taught by that amiable dancer whose kisses
seemed always to keep the taste of paint and her embraces somewhat
artificial in the curving of her arms. Ruys, her father, was enraptured
each time that he came to see his daughter, to find her more grown,
womanly, knowing how to enter, to walk, and to leave a room with that
pretty courtesy which caused all Mme. Belin’s pupils to long for the
trailing rustle of a long skirt.
At first he came often, then, as he had not time enough for all his
commissions, accepted and undertaken, the advances on which went to pay
for the scrapes, the pleasures of his existence, he was seen more seldom
in the parlour. Finally, sickness intervened. Stricken by an incurable
anaemia, he would remain for weeks without leaving his house, without
doing any work. Thereupon he wished to have his daughter with him again;
and from the boarding-school, sheltered by so healthy a tranquility,
Felicia returned once more to her father’s studio, haunted still by the
same boon companions, the parasites which swarm around every celebrity,
into the midst of which sickness had introduced a new personage, Dr.
Jenkins.
His fine open countenance, the air of candour, of serenity that seemed
to dwell about the person of this physician, already famous, who was
wont to speak of his art so carelessly and yet seemed to work miraculous
cures, the care with which he surrounded her father, these things made
a great impression on the young girl. Jenkins became immediately her
friend, confidant, a vigilant and kind guardian. Occasionally, when,
in the studio, somebody--her father most likely of all--uttered a risky
jest, the Irishman would contract his eyebrows, give a little click of
the tongue, or perhaps distract Felicia’s attention.
He often used to take her to pass the day with Mme. Jenkins,
endeavouring to prevent her from becoming again the wild young thing she
was before going to school, or even something worse, as she threatened
to do in the moral neglect, sadder than all other, in which she was
left.
But the young girl had as a protection something even better than the
irreproachable and worldly example of the handsome Mme. Jenkins: the art
that she adored, the enthusiasm which it implanted in her nature wholly
occupied with outside things, the sentiment of beauty, of truth, which,
from her thoughtful brain, full of ideas, passed into her fingers with
a little quivering of the nerves, a desire of the idea accomplished, of
the realized image. All day long she would work at her sculpture, giving
shape to her dreams with that happiness of instinctive youth which
lends so much charm to early work; this prevented her from any excessive
regret for the austerity of the Belin institution, sheltering and light
as the veil of a novice before her vows, and preserved her also from
dangerous conversations, unheard amid her unique preoccupation.
Ruys was proud of this talent growing up at his side. Growing every day
feebler, already at that stage in which the artist regrets himself, he
found in following Felicia’s progress a certain consolation for his
own ended career. He saw the boasting-tool, which trembled in his hand,
taken up again under his eye with a virile firmness and assurance,
tempered by all those delicacies of her being which a woman can apply to
the realization of an art. A strange sensation, this double paternity,
this survival of genius as it abandons the man whose day is over to pass
into him who is at his dawn, like those beautiful, familiar birds which,
on the eve of a death, will desert the menaced roof to fly away to a
less mournful lodging.
During the last period of her father’s life, Felicia--a great artist and
still a mere child--used to execute half of his works; and nothing was
more touching than this collaboration of father and daughter, in the
same studio, around the same group. The operation did not always proceed
peaceably; although her father’s pupil, Felicia already felt her
own personality rebel against any despotic direction. She had those
audacities of the beginner, those intuitions of the future which are the
heritage of young talents, and, in opposition to the romantic traditions
of Sebastien Ruys, a tendency to modern realism, a need to plant that
glorious old flag upon some new monument.
These things were the occasion of terrible arguments, of discussions
from which the father came out beaten, conquered by his daughter’s
logic, astonished at the progress made by the young, while the old, who
have opened the way for them, remain motionless at the point from which
they started. When she was working for him, Felicia would yield more
easily; but, where her own sculpture was concerned she was found to
be intractable. Thus the _Joueur de Boules_, her first exhibited work,
which obtained so great a success at the Salon of 1862, was the subject
of violent scenes between the two artists, of contradictions so strong,
that Jenkins had to intervene and help to secure the safety of the
plaster-cast which Ruys had threatened to destroy.
Apart from such little dramas, which in no way affected the tenderness
of their hearts, these two beings adored each other with the
presentiment and, gradually, the cruel certitude of an approaching
separation, when suddenly there occurred in Felicia’s life a horrible
event. One day, Jenkins had taken her to dine at his house, as often
happened. Mme. Jenkins was away on a couple of days’ visit, as also her
son; but the doctor’s age, his semi-paternal intimacy, allowed him to
have with him, even in his wife’s absence, this young girl whose fifteen
years, the fifteen years of an Eastern Jewess glorious in her precocious
beauty, left her still near childhood.
The dinner was very gay, and Jenkins pleasant and cordial as usual.
Afterwards they went into the doctor’s study, and suddenly, on the
couch, in the middle of an intimate and quite friendly conversation
about her father, his health, their work together, Felicia felt as it
were the chill of a gulf between herself and this man, then the brutal
grasp of a faun. She beheld an unknown Jenkins, wild-looking, stammering
with a besotted laugh and outraging hands. In the surprise, the
unexpectedness of this bestial attack, any other than Felicia--a child
of her own age, really innocent, would have been lost. As for her, poor
little thing! what saved her was her knowledge. She had heard so many
stories of this kind of thing at her father’s table! and then art,
and the life of the studio--She was not an _ingenue_. In a moment she
understood the object of this grasp, struggled, sprang up, then, not
being strong enough, cried out. He was afraid, released his hold, and
suddenly she found herself standing up, free, with the man on his knees
weeping and begging forgiveness. He had yielded to a fit of madness.
She was so beautiful; he loved her so much. For months he had been
struggling. But now it was over, never again, oh, never again! Not
even would he so much as touch the hem of her dress. She made no reply,
trembled, put her hair and her clothes straight again with the fingers
of a woman demented. To go home--she wished to go home instantly, quite
alone. He sent a servant with her; and, quite low, as she was getting
into the carriage, whispered:
“Above all, not a word. It would kill your father.”
He knew her so well, he was so sure of his power over her through that
suggestion, the blackguard! that he returned on the morrow looking
bright as ever and with loyal face as though nothing had happened. In
fact, she never spoke of the matter to her father, nor to any one. But,
dating from that day, a change came over her, a sudden development, as
it were, of her haughty ways. She was subject to caprices, wearinesses,
a curl of disgust in her smile, and sometimes quick fits of anger
against her father, a glance of contempt which reproached him for not
having known how to watch over her.
“What is the matter with her?” Ruys, her father, used to say; and
Jenkins, with the authority of a doctor, would put it down to her age
and some physical disturbance. He avoided speaking to the girl herself,
counting on time to efface the sinister impression, and not despairing
of attaining his end, for he desired it still, more than ever, prey to
the exasperated love of a man of forty-seven to one of those incurable
passions of maturity; and that was this hypocrite’s punishment. This
unusual condition of his daughter was a real grief to the sculptor; but
this grief was of short duration. Without warning, Ruys flickered out of
life, fell to pieces in a moment, as was the way with all the Irishman’s
patients. His last words were:
“Jenkins, I beg you to look after my daughter.”
They were so ironically mournful that Jenkins could not prevent himself
from turning pale.
Felicia was even more stupefied than grief-stricken. To the amazement
caused by death, which she had never seen and which now came before her
wearing features so dear, there was joined the sense of a vast solitude
surrounded by darkness and perils.
A few of the sculptor’s friends gathered together as a family council
to consider the future of this unfortunate child without relatives or
fortune. Fifty francs had been discovered in the box where Sebastien
used to put his money, on a piece of the studio furniture well known to
its needy frequenters and visited by them without scruple. There was
no other inheritance, at least in cash; only a quantity of artistic
and curious furniture of the most sumptuous description, a few valuable
pictures, and a certain amount of money owing but scarcely sufficing
to cover numberless debts. It was proposed to organize a sale. Felicia,
when she was consulted, replied that she would not care if everything
were sold, but, for God’s sake, let them leave her in peace.
The sale did not take place, however, thanks to the godmother, the
excellent Crenmitz, who suddenly made her appearance, calm and gentle as
usual.
“Don’t listen to them, my child. Sell nothing. Your old Constance has
an income of fifteen thousand francs, which was destined to come to you
later on. You will take advantage of it at once, that is all. We will
live here together. You will see, I shall not be in the way. You will
work at your sculpture, I shall manage the house. Does that suit you?”
It was said so tenderly, with that childishness of accent which
foreigners have when expressing themselves in French, that the girl
was deeply moved. Her heart that had seemed turned to stone opened, a
burning flood came pouring from her eyes, and she rushed, flung herself
into the arms of the dancer. “Ah, godmother, how good you are to me!
Yes, yes, don’t leave me any more. Stay with me always. Life frightens
and disgusts me. I see so much hypocrisy in it, so much falsehood.” And
the old woman arranged for herself a silken and embroidered nest in this
house so like a traveller’s camp laden with treasures from every land,
and the suggested dual life began for these two different natures.
It was no small sacrifice that Constance had made for the dear demon in
quitting her Fontainebleau retreat for Paris, which inspired her with
terror. Ever since the day when this dancer, with her extravagant
caprices, who made princely fortunes flow and disappear through her five
open fingers, had descended from her triumphant position, a little of
its dazzling glitter still in her eyes, and had attempted to resume
an ordinary existence, to manage her little income and her modest
household, she had been the object of a thousand impudent exploitations,
of frauds that were easy in view of the ignorance of this poor butterfly
that was frightened by reality and came into collision with all its
unknown difficulties. Living in Felicia’s house, the responsibility
became still more serious by reason of the wastefulness introduced long
ago by the father and continued by the daughter, two artists knowing
nothing of economy. She had, moreover, other difficulties to conquer.
She found the studio insupportable with its permanent atmosphere of
tobacco smoke, an impenetrable cloud for her, in which the discussions
on art, the analysis of ideas, were lost and which infallibly gave her a
headache. “Chaff,” above all, frightened her. As a foreigner, as at
one time a divinity of the green-room, brought up on out-of-date
compliments, on gallantries _a la Dorat_, she did not understand it,
and would feel terrified in the presence of the wild exaggerations, the
paradoxes of these Parisians refined by the liberty of the studio.
That kind of thing was intimidating to her who had never possessed wit
save in the vivacity of her feet, and reduced her simply to the rank of
a lady-companion; and, seeing this amiable old dame sitting, silent and
smiling, her knitting in her lap, like one of Chardin’s _bourgeoises_,
or hastening by the side of her cook up the long Rue de Chaillot, where
the nearest market happened to be, one would never have guessed that
that simple old body had ruled kings, princes, the whole class
of amorous nobles and financiers, at the caprice of her step and
pirouettings.
Paris is full of such fallen stars, extinguished by the crowd.
Some of these famous ones, these conquerors of a former day, cherish a
rage in their heart; others, on the contrary, enjoy the past blissfully,
digest in an ineffable content all their glorious and ended joys, asking
only repose, silence, shadow, good enough for memory and contemplations,
so that when they die people are quite astonished to learn that they had
been still living.
Constance Crenmitz was among these fortunate ones. The household of
these two women was a curious one. Both were childlike, placing side by
side in a common domain, inexperience and ambition, the tranquility of
an accomplished destiny and the fever of a life plunged in struggle,
all the different qualities manifest even in the serene style of dress
affected by this blonde who seemed all white like a faded rose,
with something beneath her bright colours that vaguely suggested the
footlights, and that brunette with the regular features, who almost
always clothed her beauty in dark materials, simple in fold, a
semblance, as it were, of virility.
Things unforeseen, caprices, ignorance of even the least important
details, led to an extreme disorder in the finances of the household,
disorder which was only rectified by dint of privations, by the
dismissal of servants, by reforms that were laughable in their
exaggeration. During one of these crises, Jenkins had made veiled
delicate offers, which, however, were repulsed with contempt by Felicia.
“It is not nice of you,” Constance would remark to her, “to be so
hard on the poor doctor. After all, there was nothing offensive in his
suggestion. An old friend of your father.”
“He, any one’s friend! Ah, the hypocrite!”
And Felicia, hardly able to contain herself, would give an ironical turn
to her wrath, imitating Jenkins with his oily manner and his hand on his
heart; then, puffing out her cheeks, she would say in a loud, deep voice
full of lying unction:
“Let us be humane, let us be kind. To do good without hope of reward!
That is the whole point.”
Constance used to laugh till the tears came, in spite of herself. The
resemblance was so perfect.
“All the same, you are too hard. You will end by driving him away
altogether.”
“Little fear of that,” a shake of the girl’s head would reply.
In effect he always came back, pleasant, amiable, dissimulating his
passion, which was visible only when it grew jealous of newcomers,
paying assiduous attention to the old dancer, who, in spite of
everything, found his good-nature pleasing and recognised in him a man
of her own time, of the time when one accosted a woman with a kiss on
her hand, with a compliment on her appearance.
One morning, Jenkins having called in the course of his round, found
Constance alone and doing nothing in the antechamber.
“You see, doctor, I am on guard,” she remarked tranquilly.
“How is that?”
“Felicia is at work. She wishes not to be disturbed; and the servants
are so stupid, I am myself seeing that her orders are obeyed.”
Then, seeing that the Irishman made a step towards the studio:
“No, no, don’t go in. She told me very particularly not to let any one
go in.”
“But I?”
“I beg you not. You would get me a scolding.”
Jenkins was about to take his leave when a burst of laughter from
Felicia, coming through the curtains, made him prick up his ears.
“She is not alone, then?”
“No, the Nabob is with her. They are having a sitting for the portrait.”
“And why this mystery? It is a very singular thing.” He commenced to
walk backward and forward, evidently very angry, but containing his
wrath.
At last he burst forth.
It was an unheard-of impropriety to let a girl thus shut herself in with
a man.
He was surprised that one so serious, so devoted as Constance--What did
it look like?
The old lady looked at him with stupefaction. As though Felicia were
like other girls! And then what danger was there with the Nabob, so
staid a man and so ugly? Besides, Jenkins ought to know quite well that
Felicia never consulted anybody, that she always had her own way.
“No, no, it is impossible! I cannot tolerate this,” exclaimed the
Irishman.
And, without paying any further heed to the dancer, who raised her arms
to heaven as a call upon it to witness what was about to happen, he
moved towards the studio; but, instead of entering immediately, he
softly half-opened the door and raised a corner of the hangings, whereby
the portion of the room in which the Nabob was posing became visible to
him, although at a considerable distance.
Jansoulet, seated without cravat and with his waist-coat open, was
talking apparently in some agitation and in a low voice. Felicia was
replying in a similar tone, in laughing whispers. The sitting was very
animated. Then a silence, a silken rustle of skirts, and the artist,
going up to her model, turned down his linen collar all round with
familiar gesture, allowing her light hand to run over the sun-tanned
skin.
That Ethiopian face on which the muscles stood out in the very
intoxication of health, with its long drooping eyelashes as of some deer
being gently stroked in its sleep; the bold profile of the girl as she
leaned over those strange features in order to verify their proportions;
then a violent, irresistible gesture, clutching the delicate hand as it
passed and pressing it to two thick, passionate lips. Jenkins saw all
that in one red flash.
The noise that he made in entering caused the two personages instantly
to resume their respective positions, and, in the strong light which
dazzled his prying eyes, he saw the young girl standing before him,
indignant, stupefied.
“Who is that? Who has taken the liberty?” and the Nabob, on his
platform, with his collar turned down, petrified, monumental.
Jenkins, a little abashed, frightened by his own audacity, murmured some
excuses. He had something very urgent to say to M. Jansoulet, a piece of
news which was most important and would suffer no delay. “He knew upon
the best authority that certain decorations were to be bestowed on the
16th of March.”
Immediately the face of the Nabob, that for a moment had been frowning,
relaxed.
“Ah! can it be true?”
He abandoned his pose. The thing was worth the trouble, _que diable!_
M. de la Perriere, a secretary of the department involved had been
commissioned by the Empress to visit the Bethlehem Refuge. Jenkins had
come in search of the Nabob to take him to see the secretary at the
Tuileries and to appoint a day. This visit to Bethlehem, it meant the
cross for him.
“Quick, let us start, my dear doctor. I follow you.”
He was no longer angry with Jenkins for having disturbed him, and he
knotted his cravat feverishly, forgetting in his new emotions how he had
been upset a moment earlier, for ambition with him came before all else.
While the two men were talking in a half-whisper, Felicia, standing
motionless before them, with quivering nostrils and her lip curled in
contempt, watched them with an air of saying, “Well, I am waiting.”
Jansoulet apologized for being obliged to interrupt the sitting; but a
visit of the most extreme importance--She smiled in pity.
“Don’t mention it, don’t mention it. At the point which we have reached
I can work without you.”
“Oh, yes,” said the doctor, “the work is almost completed.”
He added with the air of a connoisseur:
“It is a fine piece of work.”
And, counting upon covering his retreat with this compliment, he made
for the door with shoulders drooped; but Felicia detained him abruptly.
“Stay, you. I have something to say to you.”
He saw clearly from her look that he would have to yield, on pain of an
explosion.
“You will excuse me, _cher ami_? Mademoiselle has a word for me. My
brougham is at the door. Get in. I will be with you immediately.”
As soon as the door of the studio had closed on that heavy, retreating
foot, each of them looked at the other full in the face.
“You must be either drunk or mad to have allowed yourself to behave in
this way. What! you dare to enter my house when I am not at home? What
does this violence mean? By what right--”
“By the right of a despairing and incurable passion.”
“Be silent, Jenkins, you are saying words that I will not hear. I allow
you to come here out of pity, from habit, because my father was fond of
you. But never speak to me again of your--love”--she uttered the word in
a very low voice, as though it were shameful--“or you shall never see me
again, even though I should have to kill myself in order to escape you
once and for all.”
A child caught in mischief could not bend its head more humbly than did
Jenkins, as he replied:
“It is true. I was in the wrong. A moment of madness, of blindness--But
why do you amuse yourself by torturing my heart as you do?”
“I think of you often, however.”
“Whether you think of me or not, I am there, I see what goes on, and
your coquetry hurts me terribly.”
A touch of red mounted to her cheeks at this reproach.
“A coquette, I? And with whom?”
“With that,” said the Irishman, indicating the ape-like and powerful
bust.
She tried to laugh.
“The Nabob? What folly!”
“Don’t tell an untruth about it now. Do you think I am blind, that I
do not notice all your little manoeuvres? You remain alone with him for
very long at a time. Just now, I was there. I saw you.” He dropped his
voice as though breath had failed him. “What do you want, strange and
cruel child? I have seen you repulse the most handsome, the most noble,
the greatest. That little de Gery devours you with his eyes; you take no
notice. The Duc de Mora himself has not been able to reach your heart.
And it is that man there who is ugly, vulgar, who had no thought of you,
whose head is full of quite other matters than love. You saw how he went
off just now. What can you mean? What do you expect from him?”
“I want--I want him to marry me. There!”
Coldly, in a softened tone, as though this avowal had brought her
nearer the level of the man whom she so much despised, she explained her
motives. The life which she led was pushing her into a situation from
which there was no way out. She had luxurious and expensive tastes,
habits of disorder which nothing could conquer and which would bring her
inevitably to poverty, both her and that good Crenmitz, who was allowing
herself to be ruined without saying a word. In three years, four years
at the outside, all would be over with them. And then the wretched
expedients, the debts, the tatters and old shoes of poor artists’
households. Or, indeed, the lover, the man who keeps a mistress--that is
to say, slavery and infamy.
“Come, come,” said Jenkins. “And what of me, am I not here?”
“Anything rather than you,” she exclaimed, stiffening. “No, what I
require, what I want, is a husband who will protect me from others and
from myself, who will save me from many terrible things of which I am
afraid in my moments of ennui, from the gulfs in which I feel that I may
perish, some one who will love me while I am at work and relieve my poor
old wearied fairy of her sentry duty. This man here suits my purpose,
and I thought of him from the first time I met him. He is ugly, but he
has a kind manner; then, too, he is ridiculously rich, and wealth, upon
that scale, must be amusing. Oh, I know well enough. No doubt there
is in his life some blemish that has brought him luck. All that money
cannot be made honestly. But come, truly now, Jenkins, with your hand
on that heart you so often invoke, do you think me a wife who should be
very attractive to an honest man? See: among all these young men who ask
permission as a favour to be allowed to come here, which one has dreamed
of offering me marriage? Never a single one. De Gery no more than the
rest. I am attractive, but I make men afraid. It is intelligible enough.
What can one imagine of a girl brought up as I have been, without a
mother, among my father’s models and mistresses? What mistresses, _mon
Dieu_! And Jenkins for sole guardian. Oh, when I think, when I think!”
And from that far-off memory things surged up that stirred her to a
deeper wrath.
“Ah, yes, _parbleu_! I am a daughter of adventure, and this adventurer
is, of a truth, the fit husband for me.”
“You must wait at least till he is a widower,” replied Jenkins calmly.
“And, in that case, you run the risk of having a long time to wait, for
his Levantine seems to enjoy excellent health.”
Felicia Ruys turned pale.
“He is married?”
“Married? certainly, and father of a bevy of children. The whole camp of
them landed a couple of days ago.”
For a minute she remained overwhelmed, looking into space, her cheeks
quivering. Opposite her, the Nabob’s large face, with its flattened
nose, its sensual and weak mouth, spoke insistently of life and reality
in the gloss of its clay. She looked at it for an instant, then made a
step forward and, with a gesture of disgust, overturned, with the high
wooden stool on which it stood, the glistening and greasy block, which
fell on the floor shattered to a heap of mud.