cheated the women not a whit more than they cheated him. He knew he was
playing a game, and was fair enough to remember that there is honour
among thieves. For the rest, he was fond of every sort of wayside
stoppages, paid his bill ungrudgingly, in whatever coin demanded, like
a gentleman, and clinked glasses cordially with artists, strollers, and
such like vagabonds. The frock-coated individual alone inspired him
with repugnance, and he held the trammels of respectability in horror.
Whether nature or his art were responsible for a certain loose and
merry generosity of spirit, I cannot say; but I am of opinion that, had
his mind run to bank-books instead of paints, though his work might be
of indifferent quality, he might have proved himself of sounder and
more sordid disposition.
Even the brightest nature finds a shadow somewhere upon the shine,
and the shade that dimmed the sun for Armand was his mother’s want of
faith in his artistic capacities. He loved his mother fondly, and took
refuge from her wounding scepticism in his conviction that women, by
nature and training, are unfitted to comprehend or pronounce upon the
niceties of art. They may be perfect in all things else, but they have
not the artistic sense, and cannot descry true talent until they have
been taught to do so. It has ever been the destiny of great men to be
undervalued upon the domestic hearth, and ’tis a wise law of Nature
to keep them evenly balanced, and set a limit to their inclination to
assume airs. Thinking thus, he shook off the chill of unappreciated
talent, and warmed himself back into the pleasant confidence that
was the lad’s best baggage upon the road of life. For a moment an
upbraiding word, a cold comment upon dear lips, might check his
enthusiasm and cloud his mirthful glance, but a whistled bar of song,
a smart stroke of pencil or brush, a glimpse of his becoming velvet
jacket in a mirror, were enough to send hope blithely through his
veins, and speed him carolling on the way to fame.
It chanced one morning that he was interrupted at his easel by a
letter from that domestic unbeliever who cast the sole blot upon his
artist’s sunshine. There was a certain haziness in Armand’s relations
with art. He worked briskly enough at intervals, but he was naturally
an idler. The attitude he preferred was that of uneager waiter upon
inspiration, and he had a notion that the longer he waited, provided
the intervals of rest were comfortably subject to distraction, the
better the inspiration was likely to be. He had neither philosophy nor
moral qualifications to fit him for the jog-trot of daily work. So
that no interruption ever put him out, and no intruder ever found him
other than unaffectedly glad to be intruded upon. Such a youth would of
course attack his letters in the same spirit of hearty welcome that he
fell upon his friends.
But as he sat and read, his bright face clouded, and his lips screwed
and twisted themselves into a variety of grimaces. He had a thousand
gestures and expressions at the service of his flying moods, and before
he had come to the end of his mother’s letter, not one but had been
summoned upon duty. The letter ran thus:--
MY DEAR SON,--It will, I hope, inspire you with a little common sense
to learn that your cousin Bernard Francillon has just arrived from
Vienna to take your place at the bank. I have had a long interview
with your uncle, who makes no secret of his intentions, should you
persist in wasting your youth and prospects in this extravagant
fashion. And I cannot blame him, for his indulgence and patience
have much exceeded my expectations. This absurd caprice of yours
has lasted too long. You are no longer a boy, Armand, but a young
man of twenty-three, and you have no right to behave like a silly
child, who aspires to fly, instead of contentedly riding along in
the solid family coach provided for him. If I had any confidence in
your talent I might, as you do, build my hopes upon your future fame,
and console myself for present disappointment in the faith that your
sacrifice is not in vain. But even a mother cannot be so foolish as
to believe that her son is going to turn out a Raphael because he has
donned a velvet coat and bought a box of paints. Some natural talent
and cultivation will help any young man to become a fair amateur,
perhaps even a tenth-rate artist; but for such it is hardly worth
while to wreck all worldly prospects. Take your father as an example.
He did all things fairly well; he drew, painted, sang, composed, and
wrote. What was the end of it? Failure all round. He had not the
esteem of his commercial colleagues, while the artists, in whose
society he delighted, indulged his tastes as those of an accomplished
banker whose patronage might be useful to them. While he was wrecked
upon versatility, you intend to throw away your life upon a single
illusion. Whose will be the gain?
Your whim has lasted two years, and you cannot be blind to the little
you have done in that time. You have not had any success to justify
further perseverance. Then take your courage in both hands; assure
yourself that it is wiser to be a good man of business than a bad
artist; lock up your studio and come back to your proper place. If
you do so at once, Bernard will have less chance of walking in your
shoes. He is much too often at Marly, and seems to admire Marguerite;
but I do not think a girl like Marguerite could possibly care for
such a perfumed fop.
When you feel the itch for vagabondage and sketch-book, you can be
off into the country, and it need never be known that your holidays
are passed in any but the most correct fashion. As for your uncle, he
will not endure paint-boxes or pencils about him. He is still bitter
upon the remembrance of your father’s sins in office hours. I am told
he used to draw caricatures on the blotting pads, and write verses on
the fly-leaves of the account-books. He was much too frivolous for a
banker, and I fear you have inherited his light and unbusinesslike
manners. But be reasonable now, and come at once to your affectionate
mother,
SOPHIE ULRICH.
Poor Armand! The mention of Raphael in connection with the velvet coat
and paint-box was a sore wound. It whipped the susceptible blood into
his cheeks, for though sweet-tempered, a sneer was what he could not
equably endure. Surely his mother might have found a tenderer way to
say unpleasant things, if the performance of this duty can ever be
necessary! And bitter to him was the assumption that his choice was
a caprice without future or justification. Having swallowed his pill
with a wry face, he was still in the middle of a subsequent fit of
indigestion, when the door opened, and a young man in a linen blouse
cried gaily: ‘It’s a case of the early bird on his matutinal round.’
‘Come in, since the worm is fool enough to be abroad. You may make a
meal of him, my friend, and welcome, but a poor one, for he’s at this
moment the sorriest worm alive.’
The young man shot into the room, inelegantly performed a step of the
Red Mill to a couple of bars of unmelodious song of a like diabolical
suggestion, and seated himself on the arm of a chair, twisting both
legs over and round the other arm and back. In this grotesque attitude
he languidly surveyed his friend, and said sentimentally: ‘I have
had a letter from her this morning. She relents, my friend, in long
and flowery phrases, with much eloquence spent upon the harshness
of destiny and the cruelty of parents. Where would happy lovers be,
Armand, if there were no destiny to rail against and no parents to
arrange unhappy marriages?’
‘Nowhere, I suppose. Doubtless the parents have the interests of the
future lover in view when they chose the unsympathetic husband, and
everything is for the best. I congratulate you. For the moment, I am
empty-handed, and filled with a sense of the meanness of all things;
so I am in a position to give you my undivided attention,’ said Armand
dejectedly.
‘What’s this? I come to you, to pour the history of my woes and joys
into a sympathetic bosom, and if you had just buried all your near
relatives you could not look more dismal.’
‘I should probably feel less dismal, had I done so. But it is a serious
matter when your art is scoffed at, and you are told that you imagine
yourself a Raphael because you wear a velvet coat and handle a brush.’
‘_En effet_, that is a much more serious matter,’ Maurice admitted, and
at once assumed an appropriate air of concern.
Armand glanced ruefully at his coat sleeve, and began to take off the
garment of obloquy with great deliberateness.
‘Spare thyself, my poor Armand, even if others spare thee not. Knowest
thou not that the coat is more than half the man? A palette and a
velvet coat have ever been wedded, and why this needless divorce?’
‘I will get a blouse like yours, Maurice, and wear it,’ said Armand,
with an air of gloomy resignation befitting the occasion.
‘And who has reduced you to these moral straits, and to what deity is
the coat a holocaust?’
For answer Armand held out his mother’s letter, which the young man
took, and read attentively, with an expression of lugubrious gravity.
He lifted a solemn glance upon Armand, and shook his head like a sage.
‘Your mother is not a flattering correspondent, I admit. It is clear,
she expected you to justify your immoral choice by an extraordinary
start. She does not define her expectations. ’Tis a way with women.
But I take it for granted that she esteemed it your duty to cut out
Meissonnier, or by a judicious combination of Puvis de Chavannes and
Carolus Duran, show yourself in colours of a capsizing originality,
and finally go to wreck upon a tempest of your own making. For there
is nothing in life more unreasonable than a mother. But go to her
to-morrow, and tell her you have doffed the obnoxious coat, and intend
to live and die in the workman’s modest blouse.’
‘I am not going,’ Armand protested sullenly. ‘I have made my choice,
and I can’t be badgered and worried any more about it.’
As behoves a poor devil living from hand to mouth upon the
problematical sale of his pictures, Maurice Brodeau had a tremendous
respect for all that wealth implies, and like the rest of the world,
regarded Armand’s renunciation of it as a transient caprice that by
this time ought to be on the wing. He expressed himself with a good
deal of sound sense, and thereby evoked a burst of wrathful indignation.
‘Money! Money! Ah, how I hate the word, hate still more the look of the
thing! I have watched them at the bank shovelling gold, solid gold
pieces, till my heart went sick. Where’s the good of it? It fills the
prisons, takes all life and brightness out of humanity, builds us iron
safes, and turns us into sordid-minded knaves. Where’s the crime that
can’t be traced to its want? and where’s the single ounce of happiness
it brings? We are dull with it, envious without it, and yet it is only
the uncorrupted poor who really enjoy themselves and who are really
generous. The rich man counts where the poor man spends, and which
of the two is the wiser? In God’s name, let us knock down the brazen
idol, and proclaim, without fear of being laughed at, that there are
worthier and pleasanter objects in life, and that it is better to watch
the fair aspects of earth than to jostle and strive with each other
in its mean pursuit. My very name is distasteful to me, because it
represents money. It is a password across the entire world, at which
all men bow respectfully. And yet, I vow, I would sooner wander through
the squalor and wretchedness of Saint-Ouen, any day, than find myself
in the neighbourhood of the Rue de Grenelle. There may be other houses
in that long street, but for me it simply means the bank. So I feel
upon sight of my mother’s hotel. Her idle and overfed servants irritate
me. Everything about her brings the air of the bank about my nostrils,
and I only escape it here, where, thank God, I have not got a single
expensive object. I smoke cheap cigarettes, which my poorest friends
can buy. I drink beer, and sit on common chairs. Well, these are my
luxuries, and I take pride in the fact that there is very little gold
about me. I can sign a cheque for a friend in need, whenever he asks
me, and that’s all the pleasure I care to extract from the legacy of my
name. For the rest, I would forget that I have sixpence more than is
necessary for independence.’
A youth of such moral perversity was not to be driven down the
cotton-spinner’s path, you perceive, and Maurice, with the tact and
discretion of his race, forbore further argument, and contented himself
with a silent shrug.
But Madame Ulrich was not so discreet. She was a woman of
determination, moreover, and knew something of her son’s temperament.
If in her strife with what Armand gloriously called his mistress she
had been worsted, as was shown by the boy’s sulky silence, she could
enlist in her service a weapon of whose terrible power she had no
doubt. A man may sulk in the presence of his mother, but unless he has
betaken himself to the woods in the mood of a Timon, he cannot sulk in
the presence of a beautiful young woman, who comes to him upon sweet
cousinly intent.
At least Armand could not, and he had too much sense to make an effort
to do so. On the whole, he was rather proud of his weakness as an
inflammable and soft-hearted youth. He saw the fair vision, behind his
mother’s larger proportions, for the first time in his studio, and made
a capitulating grimace for the benefit of his friend, who was staring
at the biggest heiress of Europe with all his might, amazed to find her
such a simple-looking and inexpensively arrayed young creature. Maurice
had perhaps an indistinct notion that the daughters of millionaires
traversed life somewhat overweighted by the magnificence of their
dress, bonneted as no ordinary girl could be, and habited accordingly.
‘One sees thousands of women dressed like her,’ he thought to himself,
after a quick appraising glance at her gown and hat. ‘A hundred
francs, I believe, would cover the cost. But there is this about
a lady,’ he added, as an after reflection, while his eyes eagerly
followed her movements and gestures, the flow of her garments and the
lines of her neck and back; ‘simplicity is her crown. There is no use
for the other sort to try it; they can’t succeed, and we know them. If
Armand does not follow that girl to bank or battle, he’s an unmannerly
ass.’
It was not in Armand to meet unsmilingly the arch glance of a smiling
girl, even if there were not beauty in her to prick his senses and hold
him thrilled. Forgetful of the unwelcome fact that she was worth more
than her weight in solid gold, he melted at the sound of her voice, and
his foolish heart went out to her upon the touch of her gloved fingers.
Not as a lover certainly, for was she not the desired of all unmarried
Europe? There was not a titled or moneyed bride-hunter upon the face
of the civilised world with whom he had not heard her name coupled,
while he was ignorant of the fact that the great man, her father, had
destined him to complete her, until he bolted in pursuit of fortune on
his own account.
It flattered him to see that she had captivated his friend, too, not
contemptuous of the prospect of exciting a little envy in the breast
of that individual; and he shot him a look of radiant gratitude when
he saw him bent upon engaging the attention of Madame Ulrich, who was
nothing loth to be so caught. She smiled sadly, as Maurice chattered
on in high praise of her son’s genius, and quoted the opinion of their
common master in evidence of his own discernment. From time to time she
cast a hopeful eye upon the cousins, and mentally thanked Marguerite
for her delicate tact and rare wisdom.
Not a word of comment or surprise upon the bareness of the studio
or the shabbiness of the single-cushioned chair upon which she sat;
no allusion to his sacrifice, or wonder at it. The charming girl
seemed to take it for granted that a lad of talent should find the
atmosphere of commerce irksome, and gallantly admitted that such a
choice would have been hers, had she been born a boy. To wander about
the world with a knapsack, and eat in dear little cheap inns with rough
peasants; to wear a silk kerchief and no collar, and have plenty of
pockets filled with cord and penknives, and matches, and tobacco, and
pencils, and pocketbooks; to sleep under the stars, and bear a wetting
bravely,--this is the sort of thing she vowed she would have enjoyed,
did petticoats and sex and other contrarieties not form an impediment.
Such pretty babble might not be intended to play into her elders’
hands, Madame Ulrich perhaps thought, but it was very wise play for
that susceptible organ, a young man’s heart, whether conscious or not.
And that once gained, one need never despair of the reversal of all his
idols for love.
When they left the studio, Armand stood looking after them, with his
hands in his pockets, under his linen blouse, plunged in profound
meditation, the nature of which he revealed soon to his friend.
‘And to think there goes the biggest prey male rascal ever sighed for,
Maurice. What title do you imagine will buy her? Prince or duke, for
marquis is surely below the mark. Think of it, my friend. There is
hardly a wish of hers that money cannot gratify, unless it be a throne
or a cottage. And the throne itself is easier come by for such as
she than the cottage. What an existence! What a dismal future! What
lassitude! What hunger, by and by, for dry bread and cheese and common
pewter! A more nauseous destiny must it be, that of the richest woman
in the world than even that of the richest man. At least a man can
smoke a clay pipe, and take to drink, or the road to the devil in any
other way. But what is there left a woman whose wedding trousseau will
contain pocket-handkerchiefs that cost a hundred pounds apiece! My
aunt Mrs. Francillon’s handkerchiefs cost that. Mighty powers! what an
awful way these charming and futile young creatures are brought up! And
you see for yourself, this girl is no mere fashionable fool. She, too,
would have sacrificed the title and the handkerchiefs, if it were not
for the restrictions with which she has been hedged from birth. Let
us bless our stars, Maurice, that we were not born girls, and equally
bless our stars that girls are born for us.’
II
Madame Ulrich and her niece came again to the studio. They came very
often. Armand began by counting the days between their visits, and
ended in such a state of lyrical madness that Romeo was sobriety itself
alongside of him. In anticipation of the sequel, Maurice supported the
trial of his morning, midday, and evening confidences with a patience
deserving the envy of angels. And not a thought of commiseration had
the raving young madman for him, and only sometimes remembered, at the
top of his laudatory bent, to break off with courteous regret for the
unoccupied state of his friend’s heart.
‘I wish to God you were married to her,’ said Maurice one day, and
Armand naturally trusted the prayer would be heard at no distant period.
It was the hour of Marguerite’s visit. To see the charming girl
seated in the shabby arm-chair he had bought at a sale in the Hôtel
Drouot, so perfectly at home, and so naïvely pleased with little
inexpensive surprises, such as a bunch of flowers in a common jar,
an improvised tea made over their daily spirit-lamp, much the worse
for constant use; to see her so vividly interested in the everyday
life of a couple of Bohemians, the cost of their marketings, their
bargains, and the varieties of their meals, their cheap amusements,
unspoiled by dress-suit or crush hat, and eager over that chapter of
their distractions that may safely be recounted to a well-bred maiden.
Armand had never known any pleasure in his life so full of freshness
and untainted delight. Bitterly then did he regret that there should
be episodes upon which a veil must be dropped. These, I suppose, are
regrets common to most honest young fellows for the first time in
love. He would have liked to be able to tell her everything, not even
omitting his sins; as she sat there, and listened to him with an air so
divinely confiding and credulous. He had a wild notion that he might
be purified from past follies, and not a few dark scenes he dared not
remember in her presence, if he might kneel and drop his humbled head
in her lap, and feel the touch of her white hands as a benediction and
an absolution upon his forehead. He was full of all sorts of romantic
and sentimental ideas about her, little dreaming that the clock of fate
was so close upon the midnight chimes of hope, and that the curtain was
so soon to drop upon this pleasant pastoral played to city sounds.
One day his mother came alone. One glance took in the blank
disappointment of his expression and all its meaning. She scrutinised
him sharply, and found the ground well prepared for the words of wisdom
she had come to sow. She spoke of Marguerite, and the troubled youth
drank in the sound of her voice with avidity. Did he love his cousin?
How could he tell? He knew nothing but that he lived upon her presence;
that the thought of her filled the studio in her absence; that he dwelt
incessantly upon the memory of her words and looks and gestures. This
he supposed was love, only he wished the word were fresher. It was
applied to the feeling inspired by ordinary girls, whereas she was
above humanity, and he was quite ready to die for one kiss of her lips.
When the blank verse subsided, Madame Ulrich bespoke the commonplace
adventure of marriage, and made mention of two serious rivals, an
English marquis and his cousin Bernard Francillon. The mention of the
marquis he endured, and sighed; but his cousin’s name stung his blood
like a venomous bite, he could not tell why. His brain was on fire, and
he sat with his head in his hands in great perplexity.
It was the hour of solemn choice; the renunciation of his liberty
and pleasant vagabondage, or the hugging in private for evermore of
a sweet dream that would make a symphonious accompaniment to his
march upon the road of life. Could the flavour of his love survive
the vulgarity of wealth, of newspaper-paragraphs, wedding-presents,
insincere congratulations, a honeymoon enjoyed under the stare of the
gazing multitude, the dust of social receptions, dinners, and all the
ugly routine he had flown from? On the other hand, could he ask a
daintily reared girl, like his cousin, to tramp the country roads and
fields with him, to wander comfortless from wayside inn to hamlet,
and back to an ill-furnished studio, at the mercy of the seasons, and
with no other luxuries than kisses, which for him, he imagined, would
ever hold the rapture and forgetfulness of the first one? The choice
meant the clipping of his own wings, and perhaps moral death; for her,
ultimate misery, or the tempered loveliness of a dream preserved, and
substantial bliss rejected.
He could not make up his mind that day, and sent his mother away
without an answer. Maurice Brodeau was not informed of his dilemma.
It was matter too delicate in this stage for discussion. But the night
brought him no nearer to decision, and standing before his easel,
making believe to be engaged upon a sketch he had lately taken at
Fontainebleau, he held serious debate within himself whether he ought
to consult his friend or not.
In his studio upstairs, Maurice was loitering near the window in an
idle mood, and saw a quiet brougham stop in front of their house in the
Avenue Victor Hugo. He watched the slow descent of an old man dressed
in a shabby frock-coat, untidily cravated, who leaned heavily upon a
thick-headed cane. The old gentleman surveyed the green gate on which
were nailed the visiting-cards of the two artists, and jerked up a
sharp pugnacious chin.
‘Our ancient uncle, the respectable and mighty banker, of a surety,’
laughed Maurice, on fire for the explanation of the riddle.
The head of the firm of Ulrich pushed open the gate, sniffed the air of
the damp courtyard, and solemnly mounted the wooden stairs, making a
kind of judicial thud with his heavy stick.
‘The jackanapes!’ he muttered, for the benefit of a tame cat. ‘It is
a miracle how these young fools escape typhoid fever, living in such
places.’