Artist and Model Part 26

"If you want to know how your husband employs his time, all you have to do is to make inquiries at 37 Boulevard Clichy, his new studio, where the handsome Sarah Lamber, your former rival, pa.s.ses all her time."

At reading these terrible lines, Mme. Meyrin turned deathly pale. She uttered no cry and shed no tear, but, quickly regaining her self-command she, with strange energy, put on her bonnet, slipped over her dressing-gown a furred mantle, went into the studio and took a revolver which she knew was loaded, and calling the first cab she saw on leaving the house, she told the driver to take her to the address she had just received.

In her trembling hands, which she had not taken the time to glove, she crumpled the accursed letter, read and reread it; she went over it letter by letter, as if to gather the more anger and indignation from it.

If Prince Olsdorf had seen the infamous letter he would have recognized the vulgar scrawl of the handwriting. It was plainly from the hand that, three years before, had addressed to him at St. Petersburg a letter forwarding clippings from some newspapers to tell him of his dishonor.

CHAPTER IV.

SARAH'S REVENGE.

In view of the customary indiscretion of the world into which Paul had made his re-entry some months before, under conditions that would have been so hard to explain, the wonder was that his wife had not been told of his conduct sooner. In fact, among the brother artists whom Lise's husband met every day, were several of the visitors to the Rue d'a.s.sas.

All had kept silence--some out of indulgence for escapades such as they had often been guilty of themselves, and others out of respect for the wife deceived in so cowardly a manner.

Had it been otherwise, Mme. Meyrin, on the alert from the first, would doubtless have revolted, and would not, by yielding point after point, have encouraged her husband in, as it were, a disposition which some day would make him look upon unfaithfulness as his right.

In that case perhaps she would easily have regained possession of the fugitive, who had only the courage of the weak; that kind of energy in evil-doing which consists in not daring to acknowledge a fault, through cowardice, and in fear of deserved reproaches, or through vanity, from fear of being humbled: just as if, between two lovers, the guilty one did not rise the higher for imploring pardon.

Lise would have pardoned, for if at the time when Paul began to forget his duty the news of his inconstancy had surprised her in her easy security and full happiness, so, too, it would have done in the full tide of love; and her heart would have pleaded the cause of the unfaithful one. The wound might have been the more painful, but the loving woman would have been nerved by the shock to struggle and win back her rights.

Now it was not so. The neglected wife suffered as much in her pride as her love. To see the calmness she was able to command after a single moment of despair, it seemed that she was thinking more of avenging the outrage than of bewailing the betrayal.

He had lied to her--so devoted, and frank, and loyal. He preferred a girl of the town to the woman who had so freely and completely abandoned herself to him. And this had been going on for months--for months she, the daughter of the Countess Barineff, the ex-Princess Olsdorf, the former queen of Pampeln, the great lady whom the most brilliant n.o.blemen had paid court to--she had been an object of scorn or pity for her husband's boon companions.

This husband, too, his lips still warm with another woman's kisses, had returned to her, seeking her legitimate kisses, and telling her that he loved her. At these thoughts her soul trembled with horror and her body shuddered with disgust.

She had no fixed purpose in going to the Boulevard Clichy either as to what she should do or what she should say. The one purpose in her mind was not to be for a day longer the plaything of a man for whose sake she had sacrificed everything.

From time to time amid these thoughts there rose another, through one of the changes frequent in lofty souls which are slow to believe in evil.

What if she had been duped--if this letter were a lie, a calumny? Then, through her tears--tears of love and indignation at one and the same time--she read again the vile lines, and would no longer doubt.

This shameful letter, without a name to it, spoke the truth only too well.

Two or three weeks after this wife's confinement, at the time when he was timidly beginning to initiate some of the reforms advised by his sister-in-law, Paul Meyrin, whose brother artists came to see him less often than formerly, took to visiting their studios. When he was not under the influence of Mme. Frantz's ideas he was ill at ease at home, embarra.s.sed, and ashamed of himself. The gentle obedience Lise showed to his slightest wishes, the pains she took to be nothing more than a middle-cla.s.s mother of a family, the simplicity of her dress--all caused him a vague remorse; while his vanity, though he did not acknowledge it to himself, made him regret something of the past. As, however, as much through weakness as pride, he dared not recall what he had said, he absented himself from home.

At first it was strange to him to find himself again within the surroundings he had left three years before. He returned to them with the hesitation and surprise that a traveler feels when after a long absence he sees again places the language of which is no longer familiar to him, and the customs have been forgotten. He very soon found the old pleasure in the gossip, the freedom, and the movement of these studios, recalling to him, as they did, a merry and careless time.

Every day he met some former comrade, models he had employed, women who had posed before him. Some of them, indeed, had been his mistresses. He was received everywhere with open arms and heart. Old times were talked over, a jest was made of everybody and everything, time was killed by working a little. At these times Paul Meyrin forgot, for hours together, that he was a husband and a father. He quickly grew enamored again of the easy life he had lived before he went to Russia.

However, after these trespa.s.ses, the painter was none the less exact in returning home; indeed, after a day when he had been most forgetful of his home he was commonly so affectionate and attentive to Lise, as though he felt the need of excusing himself to himself, that she had not the shadow of a suspicion.

If things had gone no further, Paul's escapades would have been nothing more than venial sins; but he soon launched out into greater depths. He happened to meet Sarah Lamber one afternoon at the studio of one of his painter friends, Robert Aubrey. She was posing, half nude, for a Phryne, which the tenant of the studio intended sending in to the next exhibition.

Paul Meyrin had not seen the young woman again until now since the day when, breaking off abruptly with her, he had sacrificed her for the sake of the Princess Olsdorf, on the arrival of the latter in Paris.

We know how Sarah Lamber took her revenge by sending to Prince Pierre the denunciation, supported by a score of newspaper clippings, which had come as a surprise on him at Pampeln, where he was, nothing doubting his wife. But this hateful action had turned to the confusion of Paul's former mistress, since it had ended, instead of in the b.l.o.o.d.y drama that, perhaps, in her anger she had hoped for, with the divorce of the princess and her marriage with her lover--that is, in the happiness of both of them; or, at least, so she must suppose.

After this piece of deceit Sarah, enraged at her own non-success, was careful not to boast of what she had done, or ever to speak of Paul Meyrin, except to congratulate herself on having nothing more in common with such a man--an artist without talent, mind, or future, and good for nothing better than to be the husband of a repudiated woman; and she had avoided going into public places, such as the theaters, where she would have been likely to see him.

Nevertheless, no matter what indifference she affected when mention was made in her presence of the household in the Rue d'a.s.sas and its charming "At Homes," she never forgot her old lover, for she had really loved him; and when she heard in the studios she posed in that the painter was often visiting several of his artist friends, her dream was to meet him again. With what end in view? She did not define it. Perhaps it was simply to pick a quarrel with him, and to make him think, by some violent outburst, that she had always been laughing at him and his fancy for her; and perhaps it was to try, if the chance offered, to set a trap for him, in which he would let himself be taken as of old.

Sarah, therefore, was not really surprised to see Paul walk into Robert Aubrey's studio; but for all that she made a gesture of offended modesty, wrapping her shoulders in the light and transparent drapery which had covered her only to the hips, and exclaiming:

"So, so, people are to come in here as if it were a market-hall. Very well, then, I have done. I won't pose before strangers."

And jumping down from the model's table, she ran behind the screen where her things were, for, as is well known, a woman who poses, nude as she may stand while the painter is at his work, and, perhaps, before ten or a dozen artists at a time, will neither undress nor dress before any of them.

Paul Meyrin stood on the threshold of the room, struck with surprise first at this unexpected meeting and the young woman's exclamation, and then at her beauty, which had never seemed more dazzling to him.

After this momentary hesitation, natural enough in the circ.u.mstances, he approached the master of the house, who laughingly accepted his apologies, while two other brother artists, Gaston Briel and Raoul Martel, whom he offered his hand to in turn, jested aloud on the flight of the model _ad salices_.

Sarah, from her hiding-place, replied to them in a sharp and biting tone, which caused Paul strange emotion.

A few minutes later she appeared completely dressed, and said to M.

Meyrin, going up to him:

"My good sir, when you are coming here just send Robert word, and I will go somewhere else."

"Bah!" said Paul, affecting not to take her words seriously, "is that the way with us, my dear Sarah? I really thought you had more sense.

Have you still a grudge against me?"

"Oh, why should I have a grudge against you, pray?" said the model, twisting up her hair with a movement full of grace, which showed the fine proportions of a bust that Lise's husband had not forgotten. "Thank goodness the past has been dead and buried this long while. It is just because I don't want to be reminded too much of days of misery that I am not anxious to fall across you. So it seems you are growing tired of family life and brats. The deuce! A honey-moon does not last forever, especially when one has used up the first week of it in advance.

Besides, you see, princesses are much the same as other women. As soon as you marry them they begin to be a weight upon your shoulders, until they transfer it to your forehead. Raoul, are you coming? As for you, Robert, you will let me know in advance when you are going to have troublesome visitors. If not, you can get a fine lady to pose until you finish your Phryne, supposing you can find one handsome enough to serve as a model."

Having caught hold of Martel's arm, whom this little scene amused as much as it did his friends, though he was just now the favored lover, Sarah dragged him off, having made a formal bow to the husband of the ex-Princess Olsdorf as she got to the door.

Paul returned the bow with a similar one, and exclaimed, turning to his brother artists:

"There is a reception for you. The deuce! Our friend Sarah nurses malice."

"Or love still," retorted Robert Aubrey, leaving his easel. "If you had dropped her for another girl of the same sort, she would have forgotten and forgiven you long ago; but you gave her up to get married--to a princess, too; and, better still, an adorable and beautiful woman."

"How satisfied she must be at this moment with the little scene just over," said Gaston Briel, in his turn. "Guessing she would meet you some day, she had her course ready marked out. She is a splendid girl, is Sarah, but a little mad-headed. Besides, it is highly probable that she may be in love with you still."

"I could swear it," said Robert. "Girls of her sort who no longer care for a man are always good souls with their former lovers; they are ready to offer their hand, and are the first to laugh at their old pa.s.sion. I conclude from this, my dear fellow, that Sarah adores you still. One of these days we shall have the door of your studio shut in our faces by her."

"Of my studio," replied Paul, laughing. "That would be pretty difficult.

You know it is one of my suite of rooms."

As he was less easy in this discussion than he wished to seem, the painter adroitly turned the conversation, and they began talking of other things.

In the evening Paul returned home, his mind, or rather his senses, full of the thought of Sarah. Three months afterward, events proved that Robert Aubrey had not been mistaken. After several stormy, angry, or ironical meetings, after a thousand sharp things had been said on either side, Paul and Sarah had opened their arms to each other, and their pa.s.sion had riveted them together anew.

In enjoying again with his former mistress the voluptuous intoxications that had been lacking so long, the artist had also taken again to the freedom of bearing, the vulgar ease of manner, the gross flashes which, native to him, were things unknown in the Rue d'a.s.sas. He found the change charming, new, and exciting. His old tastes had returned to him.