‘Your mother is not a flattering correspondent, I admit. It is clear, she expected you to justify your immoral choice by an extraordinary start. She does not define her expectations. ’Tis a way with women. But I take it for granted that she esteemed it your duty to cut out Meissonnier, or by a judicious combination of Puvis de Chavannes and Carolus Duran, show yourself in colours of a capsizing originality, and finally go to wreck upon a tempest of your own making. For there is nothing in life more unreasonable than a mother. But go to her to-morrow, and tell her you have doffed the obnoxious coat, and intend to live and die in the workman’s modest blouse.’
‘I am not going,’ Armand protested sullenly. ‘I have made my choice, and I can’t be badgered and worried any more about it.’
As behoves a poor devil living from hand to mouth upon the problematical sale of his pictures, Maurice Brodeau had a tremendous respect for all that wealth implies, and like the rest of the world, regarded Armand’s renunciation of it as a transient caprice that by this time ought to be on the wing. He expressed himself with a good deal of sound sense, and thereby evoked a burst of wrathful indignation.
‘Money! Money! Ah, how I hate the word, hate still more the look of the thing! I have watched them at the bank shovelling gold, solid gold pieces, till my heart went sick. Where’s the good of it? It fills the prisons, takes all life and brightness out of humanity, builds us iron safes, and turns us into sordid-minded knaves. Where’s the crime that can’t be traced to its want? and where’s the single ounce of happiness it brings? We are dull with it, envious without it, and yet it is only the uncorrupted poor who really enjoy themselves and who are really generous. The rich man counts where the poor man spends, and which of the two is the wiser? In God’s name, let us knock down the brazen idol, and proclaim, without fear of being laughed at, that there are worthier and pleasanter objects in life, and that it is better to watch the fair aspects of earth than to jostle and strive with each other in its mean pursuit. My very name is distasteful to me, because it represents money. It is a password across the entire world, at which all men bow respectfully. And yet, I vow, I would sooner wander through the squalor and wretchedness of Saint-Ouen, any day, than find myself in the neighbourhood of the Rue de Grenelle. There may be other houses in that long street, but for me it simply means the bank. So I feel upon sight of my mother’s hotel. Her idle and overfed servants irritate me. Everything about her brings the air of the bank about my nostrils, and I only escape it here, where, thank God, I have not got a single expensive object. I smoke cheap cigarettes, which my poorest friends can buy. I drink beer, and sit on common chairs. Well, these are my luxuries, and I take pride in the fact that there is very little gold about me. I can sign a cheque for a friend in need, whenever he asks me, and that’s all the pleasure I care to extract from the legacy of my name. For the rest, I would forget that I have sixpence more than is necessary for independence.’
A youth of such moral perversity was not to be driven down the cotton-spinner’s path, you perceive, and Maurice, with the tact and discretion of his race, forbore further argument, and contented himself with a silent shrug.
But Madame Ulrich was not so discreet. She was a woman of determination, moreover, and knew something of her son’s temperament. If in her strife with what Armand gloriously called his mistress she had been worsted, as was shown by the boy’s sulky silence, she could enlist in her service a weapon of whose terrible power she had no doubt. A man may sulk in the presence of his mother, but unless he has betaken himself to the woods in the mood of a Timon, he cannot sulk in the presence of a beautiful young woman, who comes to him upon sweet cousinly intent.
At least Armand could not, and he had too much sense to make an effort to do so. On the whole, he was rather proud of his weakness as an inflammable and soft-hearted youth. He saw the fair vision, behind his mother’s larger proportions, for the first time in his studio, and made a capitulating grimace for the benefit of his friend, who was staring at the biggest heiress of Europe with all his might, amazed to find her such a simple-looking and inexpensively arrayed young creature. Maurice had perhaps an indistinct notion that the daughters of millionaires traversed life somewhat overweighted by the magnificence of their dress, bonneted as no ordinary girl could be, and habited accordingly.
‘One sees thousands of women dressed like her,’ he thought to himself, after a quick appraising glance at her gown and hat. ‘A hundred francs, I believe, would cover the cost. But there is this about a lady,’ he added, as an after reflection, while his eyes eagerly followed her movements and gestures, the flow of her garments and the lines of her neck and back; ‘simplicity is her crown. There is no use for the other sort to try it; they can’t succeed, and we know them. If Armand does not follow that girl to bank or battle, he’s an unmannerly ass.’
It was not in Armand to meet unsmilingly the arch glance of a smiling girl, even if there were not beauty in her to prick his senses and hold him thrilled. Forgetful of the unwelcome fact that she was worth more than her weight in solid gold, he melted at the sound of her voice, and his foolish heart went out to her upon the touch of her gloved fingers. Not as a lover certainly, for was she not the desired of all unmarried Europe? There was not a titled or moneyed bride-hunter upon the face of the civilised world with whom he had not heard her name coupled, while he was ignorant of the fact that the great man, her father, had destined him to complete her, until he bolted in pursuit of fortune on his own account.
It flattered him to see that she had captivated his friend, too, not contemptuous of the prospect of exciting a little envy in the breast of that individual; and he shot him a look of radiant gratitude when he saw him bent upon engaging the attention of Madame Ulrich, who was nothing loth to be so caught. She smiled sadly, as Maurice chattered on in high praise of her son’s genius, and quoted the opinion of their common master in evidence of his own discernment. From time to time she cast a hopeful eye upon the cousins, and mentally thanked Marguerite for her delicate tact and rare wisdom.