The Nabob Part 11

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 cert.i.tude 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 b.e.s.t.i.a.l 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 pa.s.sions 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 quant.i.ty 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 G.o.d's sake, let them leave her in peace.

The sale did not take place, however, thanks to the G.o.dmother, 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, G.o.dmother, 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 cla.s.s of amorous n.o.bles 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 pa.s.sion, which was visible only when it grew jealous of newcomers, paying a.s.siduous 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 p.r.i.c.k 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 pa.s.sed and pressing it to two thick, pa.s.sionate lips. Jenkins saw all that in one red flash.