THE days at the atelier had now a new interest for both students, and
their work was manifestly the better for it. To Martha these days were
filled with a glorious delight, which seemed to give her all that her
nature craved; and if it had not been for sad thoughts of her brother
and his loneliness, she would have felt that she could ask for nothing.
To have the princess painting near her, and to be able to look up and
see her beautiful figure, with its sinuous grace, posed before her
easel, and to receive from her now and then a brilliant smile of mutual
comprehension, was quite enough of personal bliss for Martha Keene.
Martha had an ardent and romantic temperament, but she seemed to be
capable of satisfying its needs vicariously. There undoubtedly are such
women, though the like has possibly never existed in the other sex. For
instance, it was a continual battle with her now to put down the
temptation, which constantly assailed her, of imagining a meeting, an
attraction, and finally a union between the brother who realized her
romantic ideal of man and the friend who realized his complement in
woman’s form. She knew it was impossible. She knew that Harold would
never marry; and she even realized that if he could love again, after
the manner in which he had loved one woman, he would, by that fact,
compel her to lower her standard either of love or of him.
And yet Martha felt that the meeting and blending of these two lives
would, if she could have seen it, have satisfied every need of her
heart. She believed that her pleasure and contentment in looking on at
such a union as this would give her the greatest joy that could be for
her--would indeed, in a way, give her the feeling of satisfied love.
It was very hard to put down these imaginings; but she told herself that
it must be done. Harold’s life and love had been given once, and she
knew he was right in saying that they were not his to give again; and on
the princess’s part, no doubt the idea would be a wild suggestion,
indeed. Martha did not know what rigid laws of etiquette and convention
might not bind the princess; and condescending as the latter had chosen
to be with regard to herself, she felt that this beautiful lady would
never do anything unworthy of her caste. Her husband, whether she had
loved him or not, had no doubt been a great prince, whose name and title
the woman on whom he had bestowed them would never consent to debase.
The thing was hopeless and wrong, of course, and the idea must be put
away from her. But it was hard to do, with her hero constantly in her
mind, and her heroine constantly before her eyes.
One day, after an unusually hard morning’s work, the princess invited
Martha to go home to lunch with her, and to spend the afternoon at the
Louvre, looking together at the pictures which they had so often enjoyed
apart.
When they reached the apartment in the Rue Presbourg, the princess was
informed that her aunt had already finished her second breakfast, which
she took with the regularity of clockwork, not depending upon the
comings and goings of the rather erratic person who was the other
member of the family. This the princess explained lightly, as she led
the way to the dining-room. The servants by this time all knew Martha;
and they looked upon her, as the friend of their mistress, with the most
amiable glances. Not speaking the Russian language, Martha could show
her good will only by a pleasant smile, in return for the evident
pleasure which they showed in serving her.
The princess threw her wrap backward over the chair, as she sat at the
head of the round table, with her slender figure against a background of
dark sable, and her head, in its large plumed hat, standing out from a
halo of many-hued old stained-glass in the window behind. Martha,
sitting opposite, fell into an unconsciously intent scrutiny of her
face.
It was certainly safe, Martha thought, to call this face beautiful, both
for feature and character. The eyes were large, dark, brilliant, and
fervidly suggestive. One wondered what those eyes had seen, were seeing,
and were capable of discovering for others. The hair was a brilliant,
waving brown, arranged in a loose mass that was still firm and lovely in
its outline--hair, as Martha thought, that
[Illustration: “HER HEAD, IN ITS LARGE PLUMED HAT.”]
it must be sweet to touch with fingers and with lips. Also the girl
thought one might well long to prove by touch whether that white skin
was as smooth and fine as it looked. The firm, short nose was definitely
pointed, and tilted upward, slightly lifting with it the short upper
lip. Her chin was bewitching--at once strong and alluring. The mouth was
very individual, and, as Martha studied it, she concluded that if she
could tell why it was so charming, half the charm would be gone. For the
first time it occurred to her to wonder how old the princess was.
“You are wondering how old I am!” said the princess, almost taking the
girl’s breath away.
“I never knew anything so strange!” exclaimed Martha. “It was the very
thought I had in my mind.”
“Certainly, I read it there! I can do that, sometimes, with people who
are very sympathetic to me. I fancy it would be rather dangerous for
_you_ to do any very private thinking in my presence. I sometimes read,
too, without reading aloud. I think I have read some of your thoughts
lately, without your suspecting it.”
She looked at Martha, over her cup of bouillon, and smiled. Martha felt
herself blushing, as she wondered if that persistent and dominating
thought about her brother, which had been so often in her mind of late,
could have been perceived by this wonderful being. It frightened her so
that she quickly changed the subject, and the remainder of the meal
passed in less personal talk.
When they were seated in the princess’s coupé, a little later, driving
past the Arc de Triomphe, Martha saw her companion turning her head to
look at it with lingering, earnest eyes.
“I always look at the Arc whenever I can,” she said; “and it always has
something to say to me. Its expression of strong beauty and repose
always makes me feel that what is, is right. If I am happy, it makes me
feel that joy is both good and permanent; and even when in times of
unhappiness it makes me feel that sadness is permanent, it somehow seems
to tell me that that too is good. Did you ever stand quite close to it
and look up?”
“No,” said Martha.
“We must, some day, together. It will give you a new sensation.”
“I always thought that it appeared better at a distance,” said Martha.
“So it does, in a way; but the impression is different. I love it from
the Place de la Concorde, when the horse-chestnuts are in bloom. Then it
looks like a magnificent image of beneficence, stretching out two great
arms to take in all those people, in carriages and on foot, who are
thronging the Champs-Élysées, its body vague and distant in the clouds.
That’s a sufficiently fantastic thought for you, if you like; but it is
one that has comforted me. I love Paris. It is the only city that has
ever seemed to me to be lovable. Its streets are so gay and clean, and
the faces of the people one meets, along here at least, are so
good-humored and intelligent. I love this mixture of fashion and
ruralness. Look at the swells and the peasants driving side by side!
Look at those white-aproned men drawing handcarts, that mail-coach
coming alongside, those old peasants in their covered wagons, and that
superb mounted policeman with his gorgeous trappings! How friendly and
at home they all seem! Even that omnibus, with its three white
Percherons abreast, looks sociable and friendly by the side of the
_steppeurs_ of the _haute école_. Oh, it’s all very human and charming;
or is it that you humanize me, and make me feel its charm more than I
have done for many a day?”
She was still in this delightful humor when they reached the Louvre, and
made their way at once to pay their homage to the Venus of Milo. They
did not say much as they looked at her, moving slowly from place to
place to get the different points of view. Each knew what the other
felt, and words seemed out of place. Presently the princess said:
“I have a fancy to try an experiment. Let’s name her! What I mean is, if
that were a real woman, what would you think the name best suited to
her?”
Martha smiled comprehendingly, and looked at the statue with a gaze of
deep concentration. This changed, after a moment, into a smile, as she
said:
“I’ve named her. It’s so absurd, however,” she went on, “to give such a
name as I’ve chosen to that ancient Greek statue, that I’m almost
ashamed to tell it.”
“You needn’t be,” said the princess, smiling too; “for I’ve got a name
about which I have exactly the same feeling. Come; I’ll say mine first.
It’s Gloriana.”
“And mine is Georgiana! How odd that they should be so much alike!”
“Isn’t it? It’s delightful, though; for it shows that there’s something
in my theory of names, and that this statue has made almost exactly the
same impression on us. I’m eager now to name the Winged Victory. Come;
let’s go and look at her.”
They hurried away to the foot of the wide staircase, where, looking up,
they saw the magnificent creature with her great wings spread.
After standing before her in silence a few moments, the princess
exclaimed suddenly:
“Oh, have you named her yet? A _perfect_ name for her has come to me!”
“And to me, too--_perfect_!” said Martha. “How many syllables has
yours?”
“One.”
“So has mine!” said the other, breathlessly. “Now let’s count three, and
say the name.”
Simultaneously they said: “One, two, three--_Ruth_!”
Then they looked at each other with an excited delight that the
passers-by must have thought rather amazing even for two artists
looking at the Victory.
“It’s the most wonderful thing I ever heard of,” said Martha. “Don’t you
feel positively creepy?”
“I should think I did! Little cold chills are running all over me. Oh,
how nice it is that we can think and feel together in this way!”
Her face, as she spoke, was glowingly beautiful; and Martha returned her
gaze with a look which expressed what no words could possibly have
done.
V
ONE morning the princess did not come to the atelier; and Martha, after
working along without her for a while, thinking that her friend might
have been delayed and hoping that she would come later, found her mind
so preoccupied by the absence of her usual companion that her work would
not go at all, and at last she concluded to stop trying, and to go to
look the princess up.
She called a cab, and drove to the apartment in the Rue Presbourg, where
she was now well known. Even the old concierge, with her shining white
hair, brilliant black eyes, red cheeks, and bearded upper lip, gave her
a smile of welcome as she passed through the court; and the princess’s
servant gave her another as he conducted her at once to his mistress’s
boudoir.
Here he left her. Martha tapped on the door, and waited. Getting no
answer, she turned the knob and entered, intending to knock at the
inner door; but no sooner had she shut herself into the room than she
became aware, although it was almost wholly darkened, that it was not
unoccupied.
A stifled sound reached her ears, and she could now make out the figure
of the princess, lying on the lounge, with her face buried in her hands.
The girl’s heart ached with pity, and she did not know whether to yield
to her own impulse, and to go forward, or to consult the possible
preference of her friend, and go back.
While she hesitated, the princess took her hands from her face, and saw
her. As she did so, she started up, touching her eyes with her
handkerchief, and clearing her voice to speak.
“Is it you, Martha? Come in, child,” she said. “I have a headache
to-day, and intended to see no one. I forgot, however, that I had given
orders that you were always to be the exception. I should not have let
you see me like this if I had known beforehand; but now that you have
looked upon your poor friend in this humiliated state, sit down, and
never mind.”
[Illustration: “‘IS IT YOU, MARTHA?’”]
Martha had come near, and now took the seat beside the lounge, her face
tragic with sympathy.
“I am so sorry you are ill,” was all that she could say.
“I am not ill, really,” said the princess. She was lying back upon the
lounge, and fanning her flushed face with her little gossamer
handkerchief, which Martha could see was limp with tears. “My head does
ache now, but I brought it on by this wretched crying. It’s all my own
fault. You did not know that I was such a weakling, did you?” and she
made an effort to smile.
“Oh, I am so, so sorry!” said Martha, helplessly.
“You needn’t be, dear. Never be sorry for any man or woman who is equal
to his or her life--and I am equal to mine. One time out of ten it gets
the better of me, but the nine times I get the better of it. This mood
will surely pass. Indeed, it is passing now. You have helped me already.
It has been very long indeed since I have found or wanted human help,
and it takes me by surprise.”
Martha saw that she was preparing to lead the talk away from her recent
tears and their cause, and she passionately wished that her friend
should feel that she longed to enter into her sorrow with her, if it
could be allowed her; so she said impulsively:
“I don’t suppose you feel like telling me your trouble; but oh, I wish
you could!”
“I do feel like it, you darling child! I could talk to you about it
better than to any one on earth; but there are some things one cannot
speak of even to one’s own heart. That is the trouble now. If I were to
let myself indulge freely in imaginings and regrets, I should satisfy
the want of the moment, but it would undo me utterly. My great
temptation is regret, and I must be strong enough not to regret.”
“Oh, how sad life is!” cried Martha. “I have always thought that you at
least ought to be happy. I gave you the name of ‘The Happy Princess,’
out of Tennyson. It has seemed to me from the first that you were a
creature who had it in you to command happiness.”
“Ah, dear child, if you could only know how helpless I am there! The
best thing that is in me is the power to command courage. That I can,
and for the most part do. While that is so, I shall not complain.”
[Illustration: “‘OH, I AM SO, SO SORRY.’”]
“Then you are really unhappy? Oh!” said Martha, drawing herself up with
an impulsive movement.
“I know what that fervent exclamation means as well as if you had put it
into words,” said the princess. “You are wishing that there were some
way in which, by sacrificing yourself, you could purchase happiness for
me.”
Martha, startled at the correctness of this guess, could say nothing in
denial.
“I knew it,” said the princess, reading her face. “I have not the
faintest doubt that you would do it; and--now I am going to knock over
some of your idealizing of me--there have been moments in my life when
my greed for happiness has consumed me so that I believe I would have
been willing to take it, and to let another pay the price. That’s a base
thing for a woman to say of herself, but so true it is that I thank God
I was never tempted when those moods were on me. Something not wholly
different from that panting after an impossible joy was upon me this
morning. Shall I never get the better of it utterly? _Can_ one overcome
it? Did _you_ never have it, Martha? To me joy is impossible, but it is
not so to you. Don’t you ever long for it? I will speak to you quite
openly, Martha, and tell you this--when I say joy, I mean love. _Is_
there a woman’s heart that does not long for that? Be as honest with me
as I have been with you, and tell me.”
“I will try,” said Martha. “I will do my best to be perfectly truthful.
I _do_ long for happiness; but--this may seem strange to you, and you
may even think that I am pretending to be better or more unselfish than
others--”
“That I _never_ will! I _know_ that isn’t so. Go on.”
“I was going to say that the craving of my heart seems somehow to be
impersonal. I want happiness intensely, but the way in which I want it
is to see the beings whom I love best have it. Now there are two
creatures in the world whom I love supremely--my brother and you. You
know that this is so. If I could see both of you happy, in the manner
and degree that I want, I believe that I could then be perfectly happy,
too. I believe all the needs of my own heart could be answered in that
way; and indeed I almost think that my greed for joy is as great as
yours at times. It has strained my heart almost to bursting, in Harold’s
case, and I feel now almost the same about you. I have never spoken of
this to any one; indeed, I was never fully aware of it, I think, until I
put it into words now. It must seem quite incredible to you.”
“Not in the least. I believe it utterly, or rather it’s a stronger thing
than belief with me. I feel that it is true. I admire you for it, and
all the more because it is so different from me. I want happiness and
love for myself--every ounce of flesh, every drop of blood in me longs
for it as well as every aspiration of my soul. It is _self_ that I am
thinking of when I get like this--my own power to enjoy, and also--oh,
God _knows_ that this is true!--and also the power to give joy to
another. Martha, I will tell you something,” she said, with a sudden
change of tone, dropping her voice, and leaning forward to take both of
Martha’s hands in hers as she spoke, with her eyes fixed intently on the
girl’s. “I have known this joy. I have loved supremely, and been loved.
You have never tasted that cup of rapture as I have; but then you have
never known, as I have, the anguish of that renunciation. Which of us is
the fortunate one? If you knew how I suffer you would probably say that
it is you; but if, on the other hand, you knew what ecstasy I have had,
I think that you might decide differently. Oh, if God would give me one
more hour of it, I think I would be content! One more hour, to take it
to the full, knowing that I must, after that, come back to what I suffer
now! I think those sixty joy-absorbing minutes would make up to me for
everything. But to have it _never again_!”
She broke off, and, hiding her face in her hands, turned away, and lay
for some moments quite silent and still. She was not crying--Martha
could see that; and when she presently turned, and looked at the young
girl, holding out both her hands to her, although there was no smile on
her face, it showed that she had conquered her dark mood, and was strong
again.
It was a very gentle sort of strength, however, that was not too
self-sufficient to feel pleasure in the words and looks and touches of
quiet sympathy which Martha gave her now. They sat there, hand in hand,
for a long time; and presently the princess said, with her own
beautiful smile:
“You have done me a world of good, Martha. My headache is gone, and also
its cause. Sometimes, do you know,--I’m going to let you see just how
weak I am,--sometimes I succumb for days to a mood like this. Nobody
knows that tears have anything to do with the headaches that I suffer
from--at least nobody but Félicie, and she gives no information. My aunt
loves me dearly, but is no more acquainted with the real _me_ than if I
were a stranger; and yet she adores me--perhaps for that reason. I tell
her nothing, because the feelings that I have are quite outside her
comprehension, while the headaches are quite within it. She recommends
various powders and pellets, and is constantly getting new prescriptions
for me. She says my headaches are of a very obstinate type, and I agree
with her. To show you how completely you’ve cured me,” she added, rising
to her feet, with an entire change of tone, “I am going to work this
afternoon. You will stay and take your lunch with me, and then we’ll be
there in time for the second model’s pose.”
“I can’t stay,” said Martha, rising too; “but I will meet you there
promptly. I am keeping my cab below, so that I may be back at the
atelier by the time the carriage comes for me. You know how very quiet I
am keeping my little escapades with you.”
“Oh, to be sure!” exclaimed the other, smiling. “I had forgotten the
necessity of that precaution. What _would_ ‘mama and the girls’ say? I
think I shall write them an anonymous letter, saying that if madame had
been under the impression that her eldest daughter devoted herself
wholly to the pursuit of art during the hours of her absence from home,
it might have surprised her had she seen the aforesaid young lady this
morning come out of the atelier, call a cab, give a number, go to a
distant apartment (where she was evidently well known to the concierge,
who passed her on to a servant in Russian livery, who as evidently knew
her well), enter, by a special passage, a certain room, where she
remained shut in for a long time, emerging finally in great haste to
drive rapidly in the cab, which she had kept waiting, back to the
atelier in time to meet her own carriage, and come innocently home to
join the family circle at lunch! Couldn’t I make out a case? And what
_would_ the mother and the little sisters say?”
Martha, too, laughed at the picture; but in spite of some discomfiture
of feeling to which it gave rise, she had no idea of changing her
tactics. The very thought of her mother’s going to work to investigate
the princess, and ascertain if she were a proper friend for her
daughter, smote the girl to the heart, and she resolved to guard her
secret more carefully than ever. She determined that she would ease her
conscience for the deception by confessing everything to her brother
when he came. This would make it all right.
As Martha drove back to the atelier, after an affectionate _au revoir_
to the princess, she was conscious that something was rankling in her
mind. When she came to search for the ground of this feeling, she found
it to exist in the confession of love which the princess had made. This
knowledge caused Martha to realize that she had not even yet succeeded
in putting from her the imaginings by which she had connected her
brother and her friend. Before knowing the princess she had always
cherished the belief that her brother would sink below her ideal of him
if he ever loved a second time. Lately, however, she had imagined the
possibility of his telling her, after knowing the princess, that the old
love was not the perfect one he had imagined it; and she could fancy
herself forgiving him for loving a second time, with the princess as his
apology. It had even seemed to her lately so monstrously wrong and cruel
that Harold’s life should be wantonly wrecked that she was now prepared
to accept a good deal more than would once have seemed possible, in
order to see it mended.
Martha, for all her demure appearance, had something that was more or
less savage and lawless in her nature, especially where Harold was
concerned; and the same feeling, in a lesser degree, dominated her in
regard to the princess. She had long ago admitted to herself the fact
that Harold had missed his chance of happiness in love; but it was as
painful as it was unexpected to her to find that the princess too had
loved before. She had known that she had been married, but with very
little difficulty she had constructed for herself a theory of that
marriage in which the princess had played the part of an innocent victim
to circumstance. For instance, she might have been married by her
parents in early youth to a man perhaps far older than herself, whom she
had never loved, and for whose death she could not have grieved much.
It was a surprise to Martha now to find how entirely she had let this
utterly unfounded idea take possession of her. The words of the princess
this morning had shattered it to atoms, and in spite of herself she felt
strangely heavy-hearted.