Artist and Model Part 25

"Do you go to Madame Paul Meyrin's? They say she is a woman of rare ability and very distinguished."

It had ruffled him a little. So it was not to his house people came, but to his wife's. His sister-in-law, to whom he was ill-advised enough to repeat what had been said, did not miss the chance to say an ill-natured thing.

"My poor Paul, you only have your deserts. You must be very inexperienced if you think that a man can marry a fine lady, a princess, and still be first in his own house. Ah, you haven't seen the end of your humiliations and troubles yet."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, since you ask me, that your wife is far too elegant for her present position. I suppose she thinks she is still in her palace at St.

Petersburg. In your studio she bears herself like a queen, surrounded by adorers, from among whom, you may be sure, one day or other some lovers will arise. You are but an extra serf in her eyes, my poor boy."

"You are out of your mind, Barbe. You have never forgiven Lise."

"Well, well. We shall see, we shall see."

Having thrown this first dart, Mme. Frantz went no further; but Paul returned home that day wondering that he had not noticed until then that he held a secondary place in the household, and thinking that it would become him to have a reform in the matter. However, he did not think for a moment of speaking to Lise on the subject. In the first place, he would not have known how to make a beginning; and when, as he entered the studio, his young wife drew him toward her by one of the pa.s.sionate glances that she always had for him, the artist, a man governed by his sensations from moment to moment, quickly forgot the slight wound to his vanity that his sister-in-law's words had made him feel.

For that matter, the time would have been badly chosen to think of changes in their life, for Lise herself came to the point in regard to the state of her health. In fact, she was now within two months of her confinement; and she was so happy at the thought that she was about to become the mother of a child which this time would not be taken from her that she wished to take precautions such as previously, in like circ.u.mstances, she had not dreamed of.

When she was _enceinte_ with Tekla she had hidden the fact up to the last moment from coquetry; but whom should she now put herself to inconvenience for? Was not she sure of the love of her husband? Had not she the right to be proud of the motherhood which would fill the sorrowful blank made by fate around her? She would not forget her absent children, their place was always in her heart. But she would love this sweet child with the love she bore to all three.

She was unwilling, therefore, to commit any imprudence, and once again in her nature the mistress made way for the mother. She began by staying away from the theater, then little by little her "At Homes" grew rarer and were given for fewer hours, until the day came when she put aside all that did not directly affect the event she awaited. She saw scarcely anybody but the Meyrins, Mme. Daubrel, and Dumesnil, which pleased Paul extremely. It looked as if he were delighted not to see his wife so surrounded as she had been since their marriage, and as he still pa.s.sed nearly all his time beside her, as he had done then, Lise, certain that her husband loved her more every day, was as happy as a woman could be.

In two months' time Mme. Meyrin was delivered of a daughter, to whom the name of Marie was given. Paul, at his sister-in-law's suggestion, advised his wife to suckle it herself.

Lise had never thought of doing so, the practice being so entirely foreign to the custom of the world she had always lived in, but she welcomed the proposal with joy, to please her husband for one thing, and also because it seemed to her that her child, suckled by herself, would belong to her the more.

She gave no thought to the slavery, so to speak, of every moment to which she would condemn herself, nor to the sacrifices of every sort that the part of a mother so completely accepted would entail upon her.

The truth is that Paul eagerly fastened upon the chance to take the first step, without discussion and without seeming to act with an object, toward those reforms which his sister-in-law was always talking about when she was alone with him, awakening his jealousy and reminding him of the thrifty principles of which an example had been kept before his eyes from his infancy.

"When a woman becomes a mother," she said over and over again to him, "she should bid farewell to coquetry and the homage which always has an ulterior aim, of those who pay court to her. Lise is a great deal too much of a fine lady, with her loosely knotted hair, her elegant gowns, her low-cut bodices, her silken hose, and her profuse jewelry, which she wears at every opportunity. Who does not know whence and from whom these things come? They were all very well for the Princess Olsdorf. Why should she always be reminding people that there was a time when she was not Madame Paul Meyrin? A divorced woman is obliged to be more reserved than other women; men, with their usual vanity, being ever ready to believe that, as she has made one slip, she may make another. Besides, you live in a style out of accord with your income. All these dinner-parties and 'At Homes' will ruin you. You will have other children besides this one, and that means money to rear them. You must be economical, and as your wife has never been used to that, it is for you to keep an eye on the expenditure of the house, if you don't want to be without money one of these days."

This ill-meant though specious reasoning could not but bear fruit in a mind as ordinary and prosaic as Paul's was. His pa.s.sion for Lise had only temporarily roused in him the instincts of a true artist. There was always in him a substratum of the commonplace, from which he could free himself at no time, save when his pa.s.sions or his vanity got the upper hand. As for jealousy, the pretext alone of it was used to hold him, for he had the absolute confidence in his wife of which she was worthy in every respect.

Thus matters were in the Rue d'a.s.sas, without anything seeming really changed, when, three or four months after her confinement, Lise spoke to her husband about inviting a few of their friends. Her surprise was great at this reply from Paul:

"What is the good of it? Let us live rather more for one another. Is it not enough to invite our own family, Madame Daubrel and Dumesnil? In their case you will have no need to go to expense over your dress, as you have to at the receptions in my studio."

Mme. Meyrin at first thought she had misunderstood him, either in the words spoken or their sense. The surprise she felt was so plainly to be seen in her eyes that the painter, taking her in his arms, added:

"Besides, you see, I am jealous. I should like now to have you a little more to myself. Oh, I don't want our door to be closed altogether, but only that it should not be opened so widely as it was last year."

He had spoken the first sentences with such an accent of truth that the poor woman, hearing in them, as it were, an echo of her most enchanting days, pressed against her husband with a voluptuous thrill. With him and her child by her she cared little for anything else.

Paul, however, soon grew more exacting, and his wife could not but be a little offended at hearing him each day advise some fresh reform, now about her dress, or even her hair, now as to the household expenses.

But, blind through her love, she obeyed. She put away the most elegant of the dresses that she used formerly to wear, and at the same time, like a tradesman's good little wife, she began to look after the servants more closely.

The painter was not to stop here, however. One evening Lise had given an "At Home" to some friends--artists and literary men they were--who expressed surprise that, having so long ago recovered from her confinement, she had not resumed her receptions in the old style. When they were gone Paul said:

"I doubt whether it is quite the thing to have all these people here so long as you are suckling Marie. You are obliged to dress, for one thing, and that must be tiresome for you. Then again, the baby may want you suddenly, and, you know, respectable as the part of a nurse is, it still makes people smile a little, and may lead to pleasantries such as I would not wish to have spoken about you."

This time Mme. Meyrin did not take pains to hide her surprise; indeed, she expressed it with such frankness that her husband, inspired to the brutality by remembering one of his sister-in-law's remarks, said:

"Deuce take it, my dear, you are not a princess now, and the sort of people we know are less indulgent than the great folk of St. Petersburg.

I don't want to have people laughing at me."

It was the first time for two years--since the day, indeed, when she had given herself so freely to him--that Lise had heard from his lips a word that could wound her. On the contrary, up to this time it had always seemed to be his determination to make no reference to the past. The young woman was deeply hurt, but, making a great effort, she replied with a smile, after a momentary silence:

"You are perhaps right, Paul. It is a very simple matter. Until Marie is weaned I will see only our most intimate friends. Are you satisfied? You will always love me, will you not? Our baby will be a year old, too, in a few weeks' time now, so that we can very soon take up our old life again. Would not you wish to, as I do?"

As she spoke Lise had put her arms around her husband's neck. Her bright eyes and the soft pressure of her arms questioned him more than her voice did.

"Why, of course, little woman," the painter replied, giving her quite a fatherly kiss, and gently freeing himself from her clasp. "Meanwhile, Miss Marie is the queen we must all bow before. Even I must come after her. And so good-night."

So saying, he went to the little room next his studio, where he had chosen to sleep since his wife's confinement, on the pretense that the baby, whose cradle was near its mother's bed throughout the night, hindered him sleeping.

Left alone, Mme. Meyrin felt a pain at her heart. She had a foreboding of evil. Her husband's love for her had undergone a change. Affrighted at this thought, she rose and thought of hurrying after him, but at that moment the child awoke, and the mother, suddenly reminded of the most sacred of duties, ran to it, took it in her arms, and, her tears falling, began to soothe and rock it.

The unhappy truth was that, less gratified in his vanity, jealous, so to speak, of Lise's love for her infant, and restricted in his pa.s.sion, Paul, during the past few months, had grown little by little more indifferent about the woman who was no longer for him the mistress he had desired ardently, rather than tenderly loved. She was no longer the creature of radiant beauty and sculptural symmetry, seductively attractive, and of ardent pa.s.sions. She was the mother devoted to a thousand little cares and continual obligations, which the egotism of her husband hindered him from understanding; and sometimes her health would fail.

The motherhood, which should have made her companions.h.i.+p the more dear, was an annoyance and an obstacle for a man of his animal instincts. He did not see his daughter's smiles; he heard only her cries, and they irritated and troubled him at his work. Without admitting it to himself, he had come to the pa.s.s of regarding Lise's intellectual qualities as a drawback. Her learning, the distinction and elegance of her manners, which formerly had flattered his vanity so much at her receptions of his friends, now humiliated his vulgar nature, and seemed to him both useless and absurd. He often left home in consequence to seek elsewhere the life from which he had been absent only temporarily, in a kind of exile, a sort of flight into higher regions for which he was not born.

There was at all times a trait of character native to him which the intoxication of pa.s.sion had been able to master, while leaving him incapable of understanding what concerns the soul.

Mme. Meyrin had the instinct rather than the feeling of a change in the man she loved as she had always loved him; but in finding that he at times returned to her with the pa.s.sionate transports of former times she lost her fears, and even blamed herself for ever having felt them.

So they went on for some months. Then, soon, after these momentary revivals of pa.s.sion, Paul grew more and more of a grumbler--more and more ready to criticise and find fault in trifling things. Lise feared, then, that her happiness was threatened--above all, when his absence became habitual.

On pretense of helping to paint, in company with two brother artists, in a studio of the Boulevard Monceau, a panorama, he said he was forced to give up the greater part of his time to his work. Lise believed him; but for her the days were endless, notwithstanding that she had her baby. As when, of an evening, she asked Paul how the work was getting on, he made scarcely any answer, she soon gave over asking him, and accepted this painful loneliness, though her pride began to revolt, while jealousy gnawed at her heart.

However, too proud to complain, Mme. Meyrin addressed no reproach to her husband; and when Mme. Frantz, who visited her at long intervals, complimented her on the simplicity of her dress and the quiet style of her house, she had strength enough to betray nothing of her humiliation.

She tried to hide the truth even from Mme. Daubrel and Dumesnil, but they loved her too much to be blind to it long. Lise, when one day she was affectionately questioned, had to tell them all.

For some months Marthe had seen quite well what was going on.

Nevertheless, she did her best to rea.s.sure her friend, saying that she had exaggerated the truth; most likely Paul was anxious about the artistic enterprise he was engaged in, and on account of it alone these changes appeared in his character and his mode of life.

Dumesnil, who had often been surprised at meeting Paul so seldom in his studio, backed up all that Marthe said, and, wanting to allay the young woman's fears at any cost, he said, laughing at and scolding her too a little:

"Come, come, my dear child, you must not be raising specters and falling into despair so quickly. How could you think for a moment that Paul is forgetting or deceiving you? Don't believe it. He is young; he must have fresh air and exercise. Besides

"Il est bon qu'un mari nous cache quelque chose, Qu'il soit quelquefois libre et ne s'abaisse pas A nous rendre toujours compte de tous ses pas."

(A husband should have something to conceal from us. He should have his liberty at times, and not stoop to render account of every step he takes.)

"I am not the wife of Polyeucte, and I don't love Severe," said Lise, with a sad smile at this quotation by the old actor; "and I fear it is not G.o.d that my husband prefers to me. But perhaps you are both right; no doubt I take fright without cause. Come, let us speak no more of it.

You won't forsake me, will you? I don't know what would become of me if you did."

Mme. Daubrel's reply to her friend took the form of a tender embrace, and Dumesnil's a kiss upon the two hands that Mme. Meyrin offered him.

Alas! the evil was worse than Marthe and the old comedian had feared; for a few days afterward, while Paul was away from home, Lise received the following letter: