Woman and Artist Part 10

"It is he," he cried; "it is de Lussac! no one else would ring violently like that. He has good news, he must have--yes," he shouted, wild with joy, "it is his step, I hear him."

And he ran to meet the young attache, whose voice he recognised.

Dora had thrown her book down on the sofa, and had risen from her chair.

De Lussac came briskly into the studio, with a telegram in his hand, which he waved about his head.

"Good news! Victory!" he cried. "Hip, hip, hurrah! as you say in England--adopted unanimously, my dear fellow. The Government offers you a million francs for the sh.e.l.l--here is the wire!"

Philip was half beside himself with joy. He seized the telegram from the hands of the attache, read it, re-read it, and handed it back.

Dora, mute, immobile, was standing a couple of paces off.

"Oh, Dora dear, my dream is realised at last! For months I have worked in secret. I was so afraid of failing that I have never dared mention a word to you about this thing, but I have succeeded. I am rewarded for all my labour and agony of anxiety about my invention. This sh.e.l.l is bought by the French Government. I am rich--rich!" he cried. "Do you hear, darling? Oh, my Dora!"

And he folded her lovingly in his arms.

Eva had come, running in at the sound of her father's shouts, which had reached her ears.

"Daddy, daddy, what is the matter?"

Philip seized the child and lifted her in the air.

"Why, the matter is that your papa is a rich man. Are you glad?"

"Oh yes, of course I am very glad," said the child, seeing her father's beaming face. "Then we are going to be happier than ever?"

"Why, to be sure we are," said Philip, executing another swing of the child into the air.

Dora seemed to be stunned. She did not realise the situation, which, for that matter, could only be fully explained by Philip later on. All that the poor woman clearly understood for the moment was, that in the present state of excitement in which Philip appeared to be, he would certainly not finish the portrait that day.

Philip begged de Lussac to stay and dine, and also sent a telegram to Lorimer, to tell him the great news and ask him to try and join them. He needed friends to help him bear his joy. To bear hers, Dora would have chosen to be alone with Philip.

In moments of greatest joy a woman prefers solitude with the man she loves, and Dora was vexed that Philip should invite de Lussac and Lorimer to pa.s.s this evening with him.

The two s.e.xes will probably never understand each other.

It may possibly be that each one judges the other by its own.

VII

THE NEW HOUSE

To Dora the vow that she had taken on her wedding-day was a sacred thing. As he knelt at her side in church, Philip had murmured low in her ear: "Before G.o.d and man I love you." This had sufficed her, and, following on it, even the words of the Church service p.r.o.nounced by the priest had seemed almost superfluous. The phrase uttered in that solemn moment had sealed her fate and ordained her line of conduct. Her life belonged to this man. Besides, had she not in firm clear tones given her promise to love, honour, and obey him? To her this was no empty formula--it was an oath; and she had sworn that, come what would, how fatal soever to her personal happiness, she would be loyal to her vow.

She prepared to play her new role with the ardour which she had always shown in seconding her husband, even in the most trifling affairs of life, quietly effacing herself, satisfied and happy if Philip seemed to appreciate the efforts that she made to please him.

Philip left his house in Elm Avenue without even trying to sublet it. He took a house in Belgravia and installed himself there among the aristocracy and plutocracy of London. Mayfair is, perhaps, still more aristocratic and select; but it is sombre, its streets are narrow, and Philip had been too long accustomed to plenty of light to care to bury himself alive in the midst of its dark, depressing-looking streets.

Mayfair is to Belgravia what the Rue St. Dominique is to the Avenue des Champs Elysees in Paris.

The rent of his house was a thousand a year. When he added what he would have to pay in parish taxes, Queen's taxes, and all those little blessings which endear Great Britain to every true-born Englishman, Philip had to come to the conclusion that his new house would cost him about fifteen hundred pounds a year.

He spent some five thousand pounds upon his installation. The furniture was chosen by Dora, who was consulted upon every point. Most of the things from the St. John's Wood house were distributed throughout the new one, but Dora took it upon her to arrange, on the ground floor, behind the dining-room, the library, exactly as it had been arranged in Elm Avenue; not a book, nor a picture, not a photograph, nor a knick-knack was forgotten. Dora had the b.u.mp of remembrance.

This library would be her favourite room, she said to herself, and she would pa.s.s an hour or two every day here among the souvenirs of the happy days lived in the artists' quarter. Near the drawing-room, Philip arranged a room which might have pa.s.sed for a studio in the eyes of people who see likenesses everywhere. To speak truly, there was no longer a studio.

As for painting, there was no more question of that; Philip had other ideas in his head. He would go into society and would entertain. He could do it now that he had a suitable house. He would make useful acquaintances, and the celebrity that his invention of the famous sh.e.l.l had brought him would lead to his being sought after. He had no doubts, no misgivings. The future was safe enough.

Occasionally, however, he fell into reflection. He had spent something like five thousand pounds over his installation; there remained therefore in hand not more than thirty-two or three thousand pounds. At five per cent. interest, that would bring him an income of some fifteen hundred pounds, just about the amount of his rent and taxes. Now, he had started his new existence on a scale which entailed an expenditure of at least ten thousand a year. He would therefore need to earn the rest, about eight thousand pounds, or else his capital would last him only four years. There it was--a judgment without appeal, arrived at by the inflexible rule of three.

It is not money that ensures a man's being rich, it is the excess of his receipts over his expenditure. Such is the declaration made by that great philosopher who was called Monsieur de la Palice. Such is also, however, the principle which even very intelligent people fail to understand.

Philip reflected. "Pooh!" said he to himself, "there is no need to bother myself yet; fortune has smiled on me once, she will again."

Dora consented to everything without a murmur. With the exception of a general sadness, which she could not entirely dissimulate, she gave no outward sign of dissent, and approved before Philip many things which she tacitly condemned. She did not encourage her husband in his new ideas, but she did not feel the strength of will to discourage him. She would not earn reproaches. She had taken a resolution to let events follow their course and to remain firm at her post of observation, so as to be ready to save Philip before the coming of the downfall which to her seemed inevitable. She almost found a happiness in this new part. "I will prevent his going under," she said to herself.

Gaiety had vanished, there was no more laughter, the chief subject of talk was speculations. In the mornings Philip read the financial papers.

"By Jove!" he would exclaim, "here is a South African mine which was worth one pound a share. These shares are now worth twelve pounds."

Philip was probably seeking to solve this problem: How can I make eight thousand pounds a year with a capital of hardly forty thousand pounds?

And the devil answered him: By placing your money where you can get twenty-five per cent. interest for it.

Philip was anxious; Dora was depressed; life was monotonous, and they were both bored to death. Dora would fain have said to the French Government, much as good old La Fontaine's cobbler said to the financier, "Give me back my songs and take again your lucre."

The artists, writers, and all the friends who had frequented the old house dropped away one after another, till Lorimer was almost the only one they continued to see anything of. He had always felt a sincere friendship for Philip and Dora, and now they were playing a little comedy before him which interested him keenly. He watched closely and awaited the denouement. He came in his old intimate way, without waiting to be asked. His frequent visits delighted Dora, for he was the only friend to whom she opened her heart or from whom she could hope for sound advice. "Be patient," he would say; "Philip will grow tired of this kind of life; one of these days he will set to work and will return to his studio never to leave it."

To speak truly, Dora scarcely had time to brood on the past. The management of her house, which was kept with scrupulous order, six servants to superintend, her child to be watched over, visits to pay and receive--all these things filled up her time. But, full of occupation as her days might be, the life that they composed appeared to her empty and aimless, compared to the one she had led hitherto.

Once a week she received, and her rooms were crowded. By her sweetness and tact, the simplicity of her manner and rare beauty of her face and figure, it had been easy to her to make the conquest of the fashionable world as, years before, she had made the conquest of the artistic one.

The men were loud and untiring in their praises of her. The women, who, with the best will in the world to do so, could find no flaw in her, declared that she was "very nice." Some of them went so far as to p.r.o.nounce her charming, and one or two to say that she was fit to be a d.u.c.h.ess.

"What do you think of my new acquaintances?" asked Dora of Lorimer, after he had helped her to entertain a number of them one Thursday afternoon.

"Lady A. is pretty," he replied; "Lady B. is not bad in her own style."

"No, no; I ask you for a general opinion."

"In the lump? Well, I would give the whole batch for a new umbrella."

"You are like me," said Dora. "I would give all the trees of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens for the few chestnuts and limes in my garden in Elm Avenue. And how stupidly they kill time, all these people! In spite of their rank and their fortune, they are bored to death. I can see it in their wrinkled foreheads and quenched, weary-looking eyes. The theatre makes them yawn, they prefer the vulgar inanities of the music-halls; they do not read; Art is nothing to them; their parties are ma.s.s meetings where one is hours on one's feet without being able to move or talk comfortably, and to get a sandwich or a gla.s.s of champagne costs the poor victims of this strange hospitality frantic struggles.

When they speak of their pleasures it is with a sigh as if they were so many irksome tasks, and, the season over, they go to Homburg or elsewhere to drink the waters and get set up and patched up in readiness for the shooting and house-parties of the autumn."

"You exaggerate slightly," said Lorimer; "there are in that set plenty of very clever people with literary and artistic tastes, but I grant you that the majority lead a pitiful existence."

Dora had taken a violent dislike to society, so when Lorimer came she often revenged herself for the smiles she was obliged to dispense to her new acquaintances by running them down to her heart's content.