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.’
Maurice cautiously peeped over the banisters, and saw the old gentleman turn the handle of Armand’s door without troubling to knock. ‘Good Lord!’ thought the watcher, ‘it is fortunate friend Armand has broken with that little devil Yvette, or the old bear might have had the chance of putting a fine spoke in his wheel with cousin Marguerite.’
Armand in his linen blouse was standing in front of his easel, with his back to the door. He was certainly working, but his mind was not so fixed upon his labour but that he had more than an odd thought for his cousin. Pretty phrases, gestures, and expressions of hers kept running through his thoughts, as an under-melody sometimes runs through a piece of music, unaggressively but soothingly claiming the ear. They brought her presence about him, to cheer him in the midst of his solemn preoccupations upon their mutual destiny. While his reason said no, and he regarded himself as a fine fellow for listening to reason at such a moment, her lips curved and smiled and bent to his in imagination’s first spontaneous kiss. And then he told himself pretty emphatically that he was growing too sentimental, and that it behoves a man to take his pleasure and his pains heartily and bravely, and not go abroad whimpering for the moon. Just when he had made up his mind to shoulder his moral baggage and, whistling merrily, face the solitary roads, he was made to jump and fall back into perplexity by a crusty, well-known voice.
‘Well, young man! So this is where you waste your time?’
Armand swung round in great alarm, and reddened painfully.
‘You look astounded, and no wonder. ’Tis an honour I don’t often pay young idiots like you. Ouf, man! Look at his dirty jacket. Your father was a rock of sense in comparison. At least, he did not get himself up like a baker’s boy, and go roystering in company with a band of worthless rascals.’
‘I presume, uncle, you have come here for something else besides the pleasure of abusing my father to me.’
‘There he is now, off in a rage. Can’t you keep cool for five minutes, you hot-headed young knave? What concern is it of mine if you choose to die in the workhouse? But there’s your mother. It frets her, and I esteem your mother, young sir.’
Armand lifted his brows discontentedly. He held his tongue, for there was nothing to be said, as he had long ago beaten the weary ground of protest and explanation.
‘The rascal says nothing, thinks himself a great fellow, I’ve no doubt. The Almighty made nothing more contrary and mischievous than boys. They have you by the ears when you want to sit comfortably by your fireside. Finds he’s got a heart too, I hear. Mayhap that will sober him, though I’m doubtful.’
Armand stared, and changed colour like a girl. He eyed his uncle apprehensively, and began to fiddle with his brushes. ‘I—I don’t understand you, sir,’ he said tentatively.
‘Yes, you do, but you think it well to play discretion with me. I’m the girl’s father, and there’s no knowing how I may take it, eh, you young villain?’
The old man pulled his nephew’s ear, and laughed in a low chuckling way peculiar to crusty old gentlemen.
‘Has my mother spoken to you about,—about——?’
‘Suppose she hasn’t, eh? What then?’
‘I am completely in the dark,’ Armand gasped. ‘How could you guess such a thing, uncle?’
‘Suppose I haven’t guessed it either, eh? What then?’
Armand’s look was clearly an interrogation, almost a prayer. He blinked his lids at the vivid flash of conjecture, and shook his head dejectedly against it. ‘You can’t mean—no, it cannot be that——’
The old man waggled a very sagacious head.
‘Marguerite!’ shouted the astounded youth, and there was a feeling of suffocation about his throat.
‘Suppose one foolish young person liked to believe she had a partner in her folly, eh, young man? What then?’
‘My cousin, too!’
‘And if it were so, eh? What then?’
‘Good God! uncle, why do you come and tell me this?’ The dazed lad began to walk about distractedly, and was not quite sure that it was not the room that was walking about instead of his own legs.
‘I think we may burn the sticks and daubs and brushes now, eh, young man?’ laughed the old man, waggling his stick instead of his head in the direction of Armand’s easel, and giving a contented vent to his peculiar chuckle. ‘Burn the baker’s blouse, and dress yourself like a Christian. When you are used to the novelty of a coat and a decent dinner, you may come down to Marly and see that giddy-pated girl of mine. But a week of steady work at the bank first, and mind, no paint-boxes or dirty daubers about the place. If I catch sight of any long-haired fellow smelling of paint, I’ll call the police.’
Armand gazed regretfully round his little studio. He picked out each familiar object with a sudden sense of separation and a wish to bear them ever with him in that long farewell glance. But the sadness was a pleasant sadness, for was not happy love the beacon that lured him forth, and when the heart is young what lamp shines so radiantly and invites so winningly? Still, it was a sacrifice, though beyond lay the prospect of a lover’s meeting, in which the thought of stuff so common as gold would lie buried in the first pressure of a girl’s lips.
‘You are not decided, I daresay?’ sneered his uncle.
Armand met his eyes unflinchingly, and held out his hand. ‘A man who is worth the name can’t regret love and happiness. For Marguerite’s sake I will do my best in the new life you offer, and I thank you, uncle, for the gift.’
‘That young fop from Vienna will feel mighty crestfallen,’ was the reflection of the head of the Ulrich Bank, as he hobbled downstairs. He disliked the elegant Bernard, and was himself glad to have back his favourite nephew, though the means he had employed to secure that result might not be of unimpeachable honesty.
The banker’s departure was the signal for Maurice, on the look-out upstairs. He bounded down the stairs, three steps at a time, and shot in upon the meditative youth. Armand glanced up, and smiled luminously. ‘The besieged has capitulated, Maurice.’
‘So I should think. For some time back you have worn the air of a man on the road to bondage.’
Brodeau had never for an instant doubted that this would be the end of it. He mildly approved the conventional conclusion, though not without private regrets of his own.
‘A girl’s eyes have done it,’ sighed Armand sentimentally.
‘Of course, of course, the old temptation. But she would have inveigled Anthony out of his hermitage. A sorry time you’ll have of it, I foresee, though I honestly congratulate you. It is a thing we must come to sooner or later, and the escapades of youth have their natural end, like all things else. Only lovers believe in eternity, until they have realised the fragility of love itself. It was absurd to imagine you could go on flouting fortune for ever, and living in a shanty like this, with a palace ready for you on the other side of the river. But there is consolation for me in the thought that you will give me a big order in commemoration of your marriage—eh, old man?’
When it came to parting the young men wrung hands with a sense of more than ordinary separation. For two years had they shared fair and foul weather, and camped together out of doors and under this shabby roof, upon which one was now about to turn his back. The days of merry vagabondage were at an end for Armand, and his face was now towards civilisation and respectable responsibilities. He might revisit this scene of pleasant Bohemia, and find things unchanged, but the old spirit would not be with him, and the zest of old enjoyments would be his no more.
‘Many a merry tramp we’ve had together, Armand,’ said Maurice, and he felt an odd sensation about his throat, while his eyelids pricked queerly. ‘We’ve got drunk together on devilish bad wine, and pledged ourselves eternally to many a worthless jade. We’ve smoked a pipe we neither of us shall forget, and walked beneath the midnight stars in many a curious place. And now we part, you for gilded halls and wedding chimes, I to seek a new comrade, and make a fresh start across the beaten track of Bohemia.’
Maurice crammed his knuckles furiously into his eyes. His eloquence had mounted to his head, and flung him impetuously into his friend’s arms with tears streaming down his cheeks. ‘You’ll come back again, won’t you, Armand?’
‘Come back? Yes,’ Armand replied sadly; ‘but I shall feel something like Marius among the ruins of Carthage.’
‘I’ll keep your velvet jacket, and when you are tired of grandeur and lords and dukes, you can drop in here and put it on, and smoke a comfortable pipe in your old arm-chair.’
Maurice went straightway to the nearest café, and spent a dismal evening, consuming bock after bock, until he felt sufficiently stupefied to face his solitary studio, where he shed furtive tears in contemplation of all his friend’s property made over to him as an artist’s legacy.
Though brimming over with happiness and excitement, Armand himself was not quite free of regret for the relinquished velvet jacket and brushes and boxes, as he made his farewell to wandering by a journey on the top of an omnibus from the Étoile to the Rue de Grenelle, and solaced himself with a cheap cigarette.
For one long week did he work dutifully at the bank, inspected books with his uncle, and repressed an inclination to yawn over the dreary discussion of shares and bonds and funds, of vast European projects and policies in jeopardy, and he felt the while a smart of homesickness for the little studio in the Avenue Victor Hugo. In the evening he dined with his mother, and found consolation for the irksomeness of etiquette in the excellence of the fare. He thought of Marguerite incessantly, and spoke of her whenever he could, but he did not forget Maurice or the cooking-stove, on which their dinners in the olden days had so often come to grief. He might sip Burgundy now, yet he relished not the less the memory of the big draughts of beer which he and Maurice had found so delicious.