The Nabob Part 21

"Isn't it good?" she said artlessly. "Still a few touches here and there--" She had taken the chisel and the little sponge and pushed the stand into what remained of the daylight. "It could be done in a few hours. But it couldn't go to the exhibition. To-day is the 22nd; all the exhibits have been in a long time."

"Bah! With influence----"

She frowned, and her bad expression came back, her mouth turning down.

"That's true. The _protege_ of the Duc de Mora. Oh! you have no need to apologize. I know what people say, and I don't care _that_--" and she threw a little ball of clay at the wall, where it stuck, flat. "Perhaps men, by dint of supposing the thing which is not--But let us leave these infamies alone," she said, holding up her aristocratic head. "I really want to please you, Minerva. Your friend shall go to the _Salon_ this year."

Just then a smell of caramel and warm pastry filled the studio, where the shadows were falling like a fine gray dust, and the fairy appeared, a dish of sweetmeats in her hand. She looked more fairy-like than ever, bedecked and rejuvenated; dressed in a white gown which showed her beautiful arms through sleeves of old lace; they were beautiful still, for the arm is the beauty that fades last.

"Look at my _kuchen_, dearie; they are such a success this time. Oh! I beg your pardon. I did not see you had friends. And it is M. Paul! How are you M. Paul? Taste one of my cakes."

And the charming old lady, whose dress seemed to lend her an extraordinary vivacity, came towards him, balancing the plate on the tips of her tiny fingers.

"Don't bother him. You can give him some at dinner," said Felicia quietly.

"At dinner?"

The dancer was so astonished that she almost upset her pretty pastries, which looked as light and airy and delicious as herself.

"Yes, he is staying to dine with us. Oh! I beg it of you," she added, with a particular insistence as she saw he was going to refuse, "I beg you to stay. Don't say no. You will be rendering me a real service by staying to-night. Come--I didn't hesitate a few minutes ago."

She had taken his hand; and in truth might have been struck by a strange disproportion between her request and the supplicating, anxious tone in which it was made. Paul still attempted to excuse himself. He was not dressed. How could she propose it!--a dinner at which she would have other guests.

"My dinner? But I will countermand it! That is the kind of person I am.

We shall be alone, just the three of us, with Constance."

"But, Felicia, my child, you can't really think of such a thing. Ah, well! And the--the other who will be coming directly.

"I am going to write to him to stay at home, _parbleu_!"

"You unlucky being, it is too late."

"Not at all. It is striking six o'clock. The dinner was for half past seven. You must have this sent to him quickly."

She was writing hastily at a corner of the table.

"What a strange girl, _mon Dieu! mon Dieu!_" murmured the dancer in bewilderment, while Felicia, delighted, transfigured, was joyously sealing her letter.

"There! my excuse is made. Headaches have not been invented for Kadour."

Then, the letter having been despatched:

"Oh, how pleased I am! What a jolly evening we shall have! Do kiss me, Constance! It will not prevent us from doing honour to your _kuchen_, and we shall have the pleasure of seeing you in a pretty toilette which makes you look younger than I do."

This was more than was required to cause the dancer to forgive this new caprice of her dear demon, and the crime of _lese-majeste_ in which she had just been involved against her will. To treat so great a personage so cavalierly! There was no one like her in the world--there was no one like her. As for Paul de Gery, he no longer tried to resist, under the spell once more of that attraction from which he had been able to fancy himself released by absence, but which, from the moment he crossed the threshold of the studio, had put chains on his will, delivered him over, bound and vanquished, to the sentiment which he was quite resolved to combat.

Evidently the dinner--a repast for a veritable _gourmet_, superintended by the Austrian lady in its least details--had been prepared for a guest of great mark. From the lofty Kabyle chandelier with its seven branches of carved wood, which cast its light over the table-cloth covered with embroidery, to the long-necked decanters holding the wines within their strange and exquisite form, the sumptuous magnificence of the service, the delicacy of the meats, to which edge was given by a certain unusualness in their selection, revealed the importance of the expected visitor, the anxiety which there had been to please him. The table was certainly that of an artist. Little silver, but superb china, much unity of effect, without the least attempt at matching. The old Rouen, the pink Sevres, the Dutch gla.s.s mounted in old filigree pewter met on this table as on a sideboard devoted to the display of rare curios collected by a connoisseur exclusively for the satisfaction of his taste. A little disorder naturally, in this household equipped at hazard, as choice things could be picked up. The wonderful cruet-stand had lost its stoppers. The chipped salt-cellar allowed its contents to escape on the table-cloth, and at every moment you would hear, "Why! what is become of the mustard-pot?" "What has happened to this fork?" This embarra.s.sed de Gery a little on account of the young mistress of the house, who for her part took no notice of it.

But something made Paul feel still more ill at ease--his anxiety, namely, to know who the privileged guest might be whom he was replacing at this table, who could be treated at once with so much magnificence and so complete an informality. In spite of everything, he felt him present, an offence to his personal dignity, that visitor whose invitation had been cancelled. It was in vain that he tried to forget him; everything brought him back to his mind, even the fine dress of the good fairy sitting opposite him, who still maintained some of the grand airs with which she had equipped herself in advance for the solemn occasion. This thought troubled him, spoiled for him the pleasure of being there.

On the other hand, by contrast, as it happens in all friends.h.i.+ps between two people who meet very rarely, never had he seen Felicia so affectionate, in such happy temper. It was an overflowing gaiety that was almost childish, one of those warm expansions of feeling that are experienced when a danger has been pa.s.sed, the reaction of a bright roaring fire after the emotion of a s.h.i.+pwreck. She laughed heartily, teased Paul about his accent and what she called his _bourgeois_ ideas.

"For you are a terrible _bourgeois_, you know. But it is that that I like in you. It is an effect of contraries, doubtless; it is because I myself was born under a bridge, in a gust of wind, that I have always liked sedate, reasonable natures."

"Oh, my child, what are you going to have M. Paul think, that you were born under a bridge?" said the good Crenmitz, who could not accustom herself to the exaggeration of certain metaphors, and always took everything literally.

"Let him think what he likes, my fairy. We are not trying to catch him for a husband. I am sure he would not want one of those monsters who are known as female artists. He would think he was marrying the devil. You are quite right, Minerva. Art is a despot. One has to give one's self entirely up to him. To toil in his service, one devotes all the ideal, all the energy, honesty, conscience, that one possesses, so that you have none of these things left for real life, and the completed labour throws you down, strengthless and without a compa.s.s, like a dismantled hulk at the mercy of every wave. A sorry acquisition, such a wife!"

"And yet," the young man hazarded timidly, "it seems to me that art, however exigent it be, cannot for all that entirely absorb a woman.

What would she do with her affections, of that need to love, to devote herself, which in her, much more than in us, is the spring of all her actions?"

She mused a moment before replying.

"Perhaps you are right, wise Minerva. It is true that there are days when my life rings terribly hollow. I am conscious of abysses, profound chasms in it. Everything that I throw in to fill it up disappears. My finest enthusiasms of the artist are engulfed there and die each time in a sigh. And then I think of marriage. A husband; children--a swarm of children, who would roll about the studio; a nest to look after for them all; the satisfaction of that physical activity which is lacking in our existences of artists; regular occupations; high spirits, songs, innocent gaieties, which would oblige you to play instead of thinking in the air, in the dark--to laugh at a wound to one's self-love, to be only a contented mother on the day when the public should see you as a worn-out, exhausted artist."

And before this tender vision the girl's beauty took on an expression which Paul had never seen in it before, an expression which gripped his whole being, and gave him a mad longing to carry off in his arms that beautiful wild bird, dreaming of the home-cote, to protect and shelter it in the sure love of an honest man.

She, without looking at him, continued:

"I am not so erratic as I appear; don't think it. Ask my good G.o.dmother if, when she sent me to boarding-school, I did not observe the rules.

But what a muddle in my life afterward. If you knew what sort of an early youth I had; how precocious an experience tarnished my mind, in the head of the little girl I was, what a confusion of the permitted and the forbidden, of reason and folly! Art alone, extolled and discussed, stood out boldly from among it all, and I took refuge in it. That is perhaps why I shall never be anything but an artist, a woman apart from others, a poor Amazon with heart imprisoned in her iron cuira.s.s, launched into the conflict like a man, and as a man condemned to live and die."

Why did he not say to her, at this:

"Beauteous lady-warrior, lay down your arms, resume the flowing robe and the graces of the woman's sphere. I love you! Marry me, I implore you, and win happiness both for yourself and for me."

Ah, there it is! He was afraid lest the other--you know him, the man who was to have come to dinner that evening and who remained between them despite his absence--should hear him speak thus and be in a position to jest at or to pity him for that fine outburst.

"In any case, I firmly swear one thing," she resumed, "and it is that if ever I have a daughter, I will try to make a true woman of her, and not a poor lonely creature like myself. Oh! you know, my fairy, it is not for you that I say that. You have always been kind to your demon, full of attentions and tenderness. But just see how pretty she is, how young she looks this evening."

Animated by the meal, the bright lights, one of those white dresses the reflection from which effaces wrinkles, the Crenmitz, leaning back in her chair, held up on a level with her half-closed eyes a gla.s.s of Chateau-Yquem, come from the cellar of the neighbouring Moulin-Rouge; and her dainty little rosy face, her flowing garments, like those you might see in some pastel, reflected in the golden wine, which lent to them its own piquant fervour, recalled to mind the quondam heroine of gay little suppers after the theatre, the Crenmitz of the brave old days--not an audacious creature after the manner of the stars of our modern opera, but unconscious, and wrapped in her luxury like a fine pearl in the delicate whiteness of its sh.e.l.l. Felicia, who decidedly that evening was anxious to please everybody, turned her mind gently to the chapter of recollections; got her to recount once more her great triumphs in _Gisella_, in the _Peri_, and the ovations of the public; the visit of the princes to her dressing-room; the present of Queen Amelia, accompanied by such a charming little speech. The recalling of these glories intoxicated the poor fairy; her eyes shone; they heard her little feet moving impatiently under the table as though seized by a dancing frenzy. And in effect, dinner over, when they had returned to the studio, Constance began to walk backward and forward, now and then half executing a step, a pirouette, while continuing to talk, interrupting herself to hum some ballad air of which she would keep the rhythm with a movement of the head; then suddenly she bent herself double, and with a bound was at the other end of the studio.

"Now she is off!" said Felicia in a low voice to de Gery. "Watch! It is worth your while; you are going to see the Crenmitz dance."

It was charming and fairy-like. Against the background of the immense room lost in shadow and receiving almost no light save through the arched gla.s.s roof over which the moon was climbing in a pale sky of night blue, a veritable sky of the opera, the silhouette of the famous dancer stood out all white, like a droll little shadow, light and imponderable, which seemed rather to be flying in the air than springing over the floor; then, erect upon the tips of her toes, supported in the air only by her extended arms, her face lifted in an elusive pose, which left nothing visible but the smile, she advanced quickly towards the light or fled away with little rushes so rapid that you were constantly expecting to hear a slight s.h.i.+vering of gla.s.s and to see her thus mount backward the slope of the great moonbeam that lay aslant the studio.

That which added a charm, a singular poetry, to this fantastic ballet was the absence of music, the sound alone of the rhythmical beat the force of which was accentuated by the semi-darkness, of that quick and light tapping not heavier on the parquet floor than the fall, petal by petal, of a dahlia going out of bloom.

Thus it went on for some minutes, at the end of which they knew, by hearing her shorter breathing, that she was becoming fatigued.

"Enough! enough! Sit down now," said Felicia. Thereupon the little white shadow halted beside an easy chair, and there remained posed, ready to start off again, smiling and breathless, until sleep overcame her, rocking and balancing her gently without disturbing her pretty pose, as of a dragon-fly on the branch of a willow dipping in the water and swayed by the current.

While they watched her, dozing on her easy chair:

"Poor little fairy!" said Felicia, "hers is what I have had best and most serious in my life in the way of friends.h.i.+p, protection, and guardians.h.i.+p. Can you wonder now at the zig-zags, the erratic nature of my mind? Fortunate at that, to have gone no further."

And suddenly, with a joyous effusion of feeling:

"Ah, Minerva, Minerva, I am very glad that you came this evening! But you must not leave me to myself for so long again, mind. I need to have near me an honest mind like yours, to see a true face among the masks that surround me. A fearful _bourgeois_, all the same," she added, laughing, "and a provincial into the bargain. But no matter! It is you, for all that, whom it gives me the most pleasure to see. And I believe that my liking for you is due especially to one thing: you remind me of some one who was the great affection of my youth, a sedate and sensible little being she also, chained to the matter-of-fact side of existence, but tempering it with that ideal element which we artists set aside exclusively for the profit of our work. Certain things which you say seem to me as though they had come from her. You have the same mouth, like an antique model's. Is it that that gives this resemblance to your words? I have no idea, but most certainly you are like each other. You shall see."