Bohemian Days Part 15

She looked furtively around the room. "Somebody has gone away from here this morning--is it true?"

He laughed suggestively.

"I saw you with two girls last night; the company did you honor; it was one of them, perhaps."

"You guess shrewdly," he replied.

"This is her room now; it may be she will object to see me here."

"You are right," said Ralph Flare, with mock courtesy, rising up. "When you lived with me I permitted no one to visit me in your absence. My late friends will be vexed. You have finished the business which brought you here, and I must go to breakfast now."

Ralph was a good actor. Had he thought Suzette really meant to go, he would have fallen on his knees.

"Stop, Ralph, my boy," she cried. "I know that you do not love me; I can't see why I ever believed that you did. But let me sit with you a little while. You drove me from you once. I know that you have found one to fill my place; but, _enfant_, I love you. I want to take your head in my arms as I have done a hundred times, and hear you say one kind word before we part forever."

"There was a time," he said slowly, "when you did not need my embraces.

I was eager to give them. I did not give you kindness only; I gave you nourishment, shelter, clothing, money. You were unworthy and ungrateful.

You are nothing to me now. Do not think to wheedle me back to be your fool again."

"Oh! for charity, my child, not for love--I am too wretched to hope that--for pity, let me sit by your side five minutes. I cannot put it into words why I beg it, but it is a little thing to grant. If one starved you, or had stolen from you, and asked it so earnestly, you would consent. I only want you to think less bitterly of me. You must needs have some hard thoughts. I have done wrong, my boy, but you do not know all the cause, and as what I mean to say cannot make place in your breast for me now, you will know that it is true, because it has no design. Oh! _Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!_ It is so hard to have but one deep love, and yet find that love the greatest sorrow of one's life. It is so hard to have loved my boy so well, and to know that to the end of his days he hated me."

She said this with all the impetuosity of her race; with utter abandonment of plan or effort, yet with a wild power of love and gesture which we know only upon the stage, but which in France is life, feeling, reality.

She sat down and sobbed, raising her voice till it rolled with a shrill music which made him quiver, through the parted curtain and into the turbulent street. There were troops pa.s.sing beneath the balcony, and the clangor of drums and bugles climbed between the stone walls, as if to pour all its mockery into the little room.

Ralph Flare hated to see a woman cry; it pained him more than her; so he lifted her in his arms and carried her to the sofa and placed her head upon his breast. For a long while she sat in that strange luxury of grief, and she was fearful that he would send her away before her agitation could pa.s.s, and she might speak. His face wore an incredulous sneer as she spoke, though he knew it was absolute truth. She told him how wretched she had been, so wretched that even temptation respected her; how she had never known the intensity of her pa.s.sion for him till they were asunder; how all previous attachments were as ice to fire compared to this; and how the consciousness of its termination should make her desolate forever.

"I looked upon you," she said, "as one whom I had trained up. Since I have lost my little Jules I have needed something to care for. I taught you to speak my language as if you were a baby. You learned the coinage of the land, and how to walk through the city, and all customs and places, precisely as a child learns them from his mother. Alas! you were wiser than I, and it made me sad to feel it. It was like the mother's regret that her boy is getting above her, in mind, in stature, so that he shall be able to do without her. Yet with that fear there is a pride like mine, when I felt that you were clever. Ah! Ralph, you loved to make me feel how weak and mean I was. You played with my poor heart, sick enough before, and little by little I felt your love gliding away from me, till at last you told me that it was gone. You said you should leave France, never to return--G.o.d forgive you if it was not true!--and when you treated me worst, I was tempted to hear kind words from another. Fanchette's friend has a rich cousin who admires me. He is to live in Paris many years. I never loved him, but I am poor, and many women marry only for a home. He offered that and more to me. I would not hear it. Oh! if you had only said one tender word to me in those days of temptation. I begged you for it. When I was humblest at your feet you put your heel upon me most.

"One night when I had the greatest trouble of all he sat beside me and plied his suit, and was pleasanter, my boy, than you have ever been; and then, rising, he placed that box of jewelry in my lap and ran away. I left it upon Fanchette's mantel that night. She filled my head with false thoughts next day. I never meant while you were in Paris to do you any wrong; but I put those jewels in my pocket, meaning to give them up again; you found them, and I was made wretched."

Ralph made that dry, biting cough which he used to express unbelief. She only bent her head and wept silently.

"When all was gone, poor me! I have found much sorrow in my little life, but we are light-hearted in France, and we live and laugh again. Perhaps you have made me more like one of your countrywomen. I do not know--only that I can never be happy any more.

"Since we have dwelt apart my tempter has been to see me every day. He has grand chambers which he will give me, and rich wardrobes, and a watch, and a voiture. It is a dazzling picture for one who toils, going all her days on foot, and lovely only to be deceived. But I hate that man now, because he has come between you and me, and I have slept upon my tears alone."

She melted again into a long, loud wail, and he proposed nervously that they should walk into the gardens near by. He said little, and that contemptuously, tossing his cane at the birds, much interested in a statue, delighted with the visitors beneath the maroon trees; and she followed him here and there, very weak, for she had eaten no breakfast, and not so deceived but she knew that he labored to wound her. He asked her into a cafe, cavalierly, and was very careful to make display of his napoleons as he paid. He did not invite her, but she followed him to his hotel again, and here, as if with terrible _ennui_, he threw himself upon his bed and feigned to sleep, while she crouched at his table and wrote him a contrite letter. It was sweetly and simply worded, and asked that he should let her return to him for his few remaining days in Paris. If he could not grant so much, might she speak to him in the street; come to see him sometimes, if only to be reviled; love him, though she could not hope to be loved? She gave him this note with her face turned away, and faltered the request that he would think ere he replied, and hurried to the balcony without, that she might not trouble him with the presence of her sorrow.

How the street beneath her, into which she looked, had changed since the nights when they talked together upon this balcony! There was bright sunshine, but it fell leeringly, not laughingly, upon the columns of the Odean Theatre, upon the crowds on the Boulevard, upon the decrepit baths of Julian, upon the far heights of Belleville, upon her more cheerlessly than upon all.

She listened timorously for his word of recall. She wondered if he were not writing a reply. Yes, that was his manner; he was cold and sharp of speech, but he was an artist with his pen. She thought that her long patience had moved him. Perhaps she should be all forgiven. Aye! they should dwell together a few days longer. It was a dismal thought that it must be for a few days, yet that would be some respite, and then they could part friends; though her heart so clung to his that a parting should rend it from her, she wanted to live over their brief happiness again.

"Oh!" said Suzette, in the end, laying her cheek upon the cold iron of the balcony, "I wish I had died at my father's home of pining for something to love rather than to have loved thus truly, and have it accounted my shame. If I were married to this man I could not be his fonder wife; but because I am not he despises me. All day I have crawled in the dust; I have made myself cheap in his eyes. If I were prouder he might not love me more, but his respect would be something."

She rallied and took heart. Pride is the immortal part of woman. With a brighter eye she entered the room. Her letter, blotted with tears, lay crumpled and torn upon the floor at his bedside, and he, with his face to the wall, was snoring sonorously.

"Ralph Flare," cried Suzette, "arise! that letter is the last olive branch you shall ever see in my hand; _adieu_!"

He opened his eyes yawningly. Suzette, with trembling lips and nostrils, clasped the door-k.n.o.b. It shut behind her with a shock. Her feet were quick upon the stairs; he pursued her like one suddenly gone mad, and called her back with something between a moan and a howl.

"Do not go away, Suzette," he cried; "I only jested. I meant this morning to search you out and beg you to come back. I would not lose you for France--for the world. Be not rash or retaliatory! become not the companion of this Frenchman who has divided us. We will commence again.

I have tested your fidelity. You shall have all the liberty that you need, everything that I have; say to me, sweetheart, that you will stay!"

For a moment her bright eyes were scintillant with wrath and indignation. He who had racked her all day for his pleasure was bound and prostrate now. Should she not do as much for her revenge?

"I have no other friend now," he pleaded; "my nights have been sleepless, solitary. In the days I have drunk deeply, squandered my money, tried all dissipations, and proved them disappointments. If you leave me I swear that I will plague myself and you."

"Oh! Ralph," said Suzette, "I do not wonder at the artfulness of women after this day's lesson. Something impels me to return your cruelty; it is a bad impulse, and I shall disobey it. I thank G.o.d, my baby, that I cannot do as you have done to me."

She wept again for the last time, but he kissed her tears away, and wondered where the great shame lay, upon that child or upon him?

PART VI.

DESERTION.

When the last fresh pa.s.sion was over, Suzette, whose face had grown purer and sadder, roused Ralph Flare to his more legitimate ambition.

"My child," she said, "if you will work in the gallery every day I will sew in one of the great _magasans_."

To see that he commenced fairly, she went with him into the Louvre, and he selected a fine Rembrandt--an old man, bearded and scarred, ma.s.sively characterized, and clothed in magic light and shadow.

As Ralph stood at his easel, meditating the master, Suzette now fluttered around him, now ran off to the far end of the long hall, where he could see her in miniature, the sweetest portrait in France. At last he was really absorbed, and she went into the city to fulfil her promise. She was nimble of finger, and though the work distressed her at first, she thought of his applause, and persevered.

Their method was the marvel of the unimaginative Terrapin, who made some philosophic comments upon the "spooney" socially considered, and cut their acquaintance.

They breakfasted at the _cremery_ at seven o'clock with the _ouvriers_, and dined at one of Duvall's bouillon establishments. Suzette found the work easier as she progressed. She was finally promoted to the place of _coupeur_, or cutter, and had the superintendence of a work-room, where she made four francs a day, and so paid all her expenses. At the end of the second month he took the money which he otherwise would have required for board, and bought her a watch and chain at the _Palais Royale_. At the same time he put the finishing touch to his picture, and when hung upon his wall, between their photographs, Suzette danced before it, and took half the credit upon herself.

Foolish Suzette! she did not know how that old man was her most dangerous rival. He had done what no beautiful woman in France could do--weakened her grasp upon Ralph Flare's heart. For now Ralph's old enthusiasm for his profession rea.s.serted itself. It was his first and deepest love after all.

"My baby," he said one night, "there was a great artist named Raphael--and he had a little mistress, whom I don't think a whit prettier than mine. She was called the _Fornarina_, just as you may be called the _Coutouriere_, and he painted her portrait in the characters of saints and of the Virgin. She will be remembered a thousand years, because Raphael so loved and painted her. But he was not a great artist only because he loved the _Fornarina_. He had something that he loved better, and so have I."

"One more beloved than Suzette?" she cried.

"Yes! it is art. I loved you more than my art before; but I am going back to my first love."

Suzette tossed her head and said that she could never be jealous of a picture, and went her way with a simple faith and toiled; and as she toiled the more, so grew her love the purer and her content the more equal. She was not the aerial thing she had been. Retaining her elasticity of spirit, she was less volatile, more silent, more careful, more anxious.

It is wiser, not happier, to reach that estate called thought; for now she asked herself very often how long this chapter of her life would last. Must the time come when he must leave her forever? She thought it the bitterest of all to part as they had done before, with anger; but any parting must be agony where she had loved so well. As he lay sleeping, he never knew what tears of midnight were plashing upon his face. He could not see how her little heart was bleeding as it throbbed.

Yet she went right on, though sometimes the tears blinded her, till she could not see her needle; but the consciousness that this love and labor had made her life more sanctified was, in some sort, compensation.

One Sunday she rose before Ralph, and thinking that she was un.o.bserved, stole out of the hotel and up the Boulevard. He followed her, suspiciously. She crossed the Place de la Sorbonne, turned the transept of the Pantheon, and entered the old church of St. Etienne du Mont.

It was early ma.s.s. The tapers which have been burning five hundred years glistened upon the tomb of the holy St. Genevieve. Here and there old women and girls were kneeling in the chapels, whispering their sins into the ears of invisible priests. And beneath the delicate tracery of screen and staircase, and the gloriously-painted windows, and the image of Jesus crucified looking down upon all, some groups of poor people were murmuring their prayers and making the sign of the cross.

Ralph entered by a door in the choir. He saw Suzette stand pallidly beside the holy water, and when she had touched it with the tips of her fingers, and made the usual rites, she staggered, as if in shame, to a remote chair, and kneeling down covered her face with her missal. Now and then the organ boomed out. The censers were swung aloft, dispensing their perfumes, and all the people made obeisance. Ralph did not know what it all meant. He only saw his little girl penitent and in prayer, and he knew that she was carrying her sin and his to the feet of the Eternal Mercy.