In the beginning she herself was very far from realising what she had undertaken, what had befallen her. To exercise a little friendly supervision over her neighbour’s addiction to opium, to husband his money for him, and spur him on to work—it seemed a mere incident in her life, an affair by the way. But it became her exclusive occupation, her whole life’s chief concern. Little by little, one after the other, she put aside all her former interests, thoughts, associations, dropped all her former engagements, to give herself as completely to caring for, guarding, guiding poor old Edward Long, as if she had been a mother, and he her helpless child.
Throughout that first winter, indeed, she continued to dance at Bullier, continued to instruct her corps of pupils, and continued even occasionally, though much less frequently than of old time, to be seen at the Vachette, or to sup with a friend at the Gambrinus. But from day to day Monsieur Edouard (he had soon ceased to be Monsieur Long, and become Monsieur Edouard) absorbed more and more of her time and attention; and when the spring came she suddenly burned her ships.
You must understand that she had one pertinacious adversary in her efforts to wean him of his vice. Not an avowed adversary, for he professed the most earnest wish that she might be successful; but an adversary who was eternally putting spokes in her wheel, all the same. Yes, Monsieur Edouard himself. Never content with the short rations to which she had condemned him, he was perpetually on the watch for a chance to elude her vigilance; she was perpetually discovering that he had somehow contrived to lay in secret supplies. And every now and again, openly defying her authority, he would go off for a grand debauch. Then her task of reducing his daily portion to a minimum must needs be begun anew. Well, when the spring came, and the Salon opened, where his picture (her picture?) had been received and very fairly hung, they went together to the Vernissage. And there he met a whole flock of English folk—artists and critics, who had “just run over for the show, you know”—with whom he was acquainted; and they insisted on carrying him away with them to lunch at the Ambassadeurs.
I, too, had assisted at the Vernissage; and when I left it, I found P’tit-Bleu seated alone under the trees in the Champs-Elysées. She had on a brilliant spring toilette, with a hat and a sunshade.... Oh, my dear! It is not to be denied that P’tit-Bleu had the courage of her tastes. But her face was pale, and her lips were drawn down, and her eyes looked strained and anxious.
“What’s the row?” I asked.
And she told me how she had been abandoned—“plantée là” was her expression—and of course I invited her to lunch with me. But she scarcely relished the repast. “Pourvu qu’il ne fasse pas de bêtises!” was her refrain.
She returned rather early to the Rue Monsieur le Prince, to see if he had come home; but he hadn’t. Nor did he come home that night, nor the next day, nor the next. At the week’s end, though, he came: dirty, haggard, tremulous, with red eyes, and nude—yes, nude—of everything save his shirt and trousers! He had borrowed a sovereign from one of his London friends, and when that was gone, he had pledged or sold everything but his shirt and trousers—hat, boots, coat, everything. It was an equally haggard and red-eyed P’tit-Bleu who faced him on his reappearance. And I’ve no doubt she gave him a specimen of her eloquence. “You figure to yourself that this sort of thing amuses me, hein? Here are six good days and nights that I haven’t been able to sleep or rest.”
Explaining the case to me, she said, “Ah, what I suffered! I could never have believed that I cared so much for him. But—what would you?—one attaches oneself, you know. Ah, what I suffered! The anxiety, the terrors! I expected to hear of him run over in the streets. Well, now, I must make an end of this business. I’m going to take him away. So long as he remains in Paris, where there are chemists who will sell him that filthiness (cette crasse) it is hopeless. No sooner do I get my house of cards nicely built up, than—piff!—something happens to knock it over. I am going to take him down into the country, far from any town, far from the railway, where I can guard him better. I know a place, a farmhouse, near Villiers-St.-Jacques, where we can get board. He has a little income, which reaches him every three months from England. Oh, very little, but if I am careful of it, it will pay our way. And then—I will make him work.”
“Oh, no,” I protested. “You’re not going to leave the Quarter.” And I’m ashamed to acknowledge, I laboured hard to dissuade her. “Think how we’ll miss you. Think how you’ll bore yourself. And anyhow, he’s not worth it. And besides, you won’t succeed. A man who has an appetite for opium will get it, coûte que coûte. He’d walk twenty miles in bare feet to get it.” This was the argument that I repeated in a dozen different paraphrases. You see, I hadn’t realised yet that it didn’t matter an atom whether she succeeded, or whether he was worth it. He was a mere instrument in the hands of Providence. Let her succeed or let her fail in keeping him from opium: the important thing... how shall I put it? This little Undine had risen out of the black waters of the Latin Quarter, and attached herself to a mortal. What is it that love gains for Undines?
“Que veux-tu?” cried P’tit-Bleu. “I am fond of him. I can’t bear to see him ruining himself. I must do what I can.”