by George Moore
The young girl whispered to Ripple: “Let us away; we mustn’t miss any of this dance “; and they went off together, leaving an envious painter behind, one sorely tempted to ask some girl to dance with him, but not daring. He saw a girl steal a gardenia from a young man’s coat; the odour overpowered her, and wondered what they said to each other and did in the secluded corner in which they took refuge after the dance. The band began to play another waltz; couples rose out of the dark corners in which they had been hiding, and Lewis saw a tall girl with fair hair and a sheeplike face, who when she looked over her partner’s shoulder to admire herself in the mirror, opened her eyes very wide: and the whirling of silk ankles and the gliding of glazed shoes continued hour after hour till the guests went away looking very tired and pale.
Some had ten and twelve miles to go, and these would not arrive home before four or five in the morning, so they said; and when the last batch crushed itself into the brougham, and the last carriage rolled away, Lucy and Lewis were left in the empty ballroom looking at the pictures. “The candles are burning very low in the chandelier,” Lewis said, and Mrs. Bentham rang for the footmen, but before they arrived Lewis had secured a step-ladder and he blew out what remained of the candles. The footmen blew out the candles in the sconces, and Mrs. Bentham told them to turn out the lamps and to draw the curtains, for it was now daylight.
“How strange the dawn is! “Lewis said. “There is always something menacing in the return of the light, whereas there is a sort of consolation in the departing light in the evening.” He was surprised at his remark, it seeming to him full of significance and poetry, and he turned his weary eyes once more to his decorations and began to speak of them. Lucy was too tired to think of painting, but not too tired to think of Lewis, and she said:
“You’re going to Paris at the end of the week?”
“We shall not be separated long,” Lewis answered. “You will come to Paris to see me, and I shall finish the portrait that I began.” And his talk was of his portrait as they mounted the first flight of stairs, whereas she expected him to take her in his arms. The moment was a propitious one, and he stopped in the middle of his room to ask himself why he had not done so. Why had he continued to speak about that portrait instead? Damn that portrait! It would have been better if he had taken her in his arms. “She would have let me kiss her; there was nobody on the stairs.” He began to untie his necktie, and stopped untying it to curse his folly again and to ask himself why he had missed his opportunity — deliberately missed it. “Because I was too tired,” he murmured to himself; “as likely as not that was the reason.” He wished his nuptials to be triumphant. “Another opportunity will occur to-morrow,” he murmured before he fell asleep. Another opportunity, however, did not occur on the morrow nor on the day after; but he went away to Paris with four hundred pounds, Lucy having insisted on paying more than was agreed on for the decorations: and three hundred and seventy-five pounds to his credit at the bank, five and twenty in his note case, some loose change in his pocket, and a stiff determination in his heart to be a great success.
But to paint Greeks and Romans (he deemed these alone to be worthy of paint), it was necessary to learn to draw, and as soon as he arrived in Paris he went out in search of a studio, and as soon as he found one, he threw himself into the work that began at eight o’clock every morning, with an hour for luncheon at twelve. Work began again at one, and continued till five. Nor was he content even with eight hours’ work a day; he must, for the sake of his visionary Greeks and Romans, attend a night-class of the Beaux-Arts. But to get into this class it was necessary to pass an examination, to draw and model a full-length figure in eight hours, to defeat a hundred candidates — perhaps more. And only a certain number of places were available — twenty-five, thirty, forty, fifty. For these there were many candidates. Lewis’s drawing was twenty-fifth on the list — an excellent place among the forty drawings that gained admission to the class. He could hardly hope for a greater success, and he wrote an enthusiastic account of his reception at the Beaux-Arts to Lucy; a couple of months later he wrote an enthusiastic account of the prizes he had won in Julien’s studio. A hundred francs and a bronze medal for the drawing he had done in the day-class.
“But is he not working very hard?” Mrs. Thorpe said. “If you look into his letters, Lucy, you will find that he works eight hours a day; his brain may give way. What do you think?”
Lucy did not answer, but soon after these remarks she said she would like to see Paris again.
“It would be well to look after him a little,” Mrs. Thorpe replied. “It seems to me he is working much too hard.”
“But if we should interrupt him in his studies?” Lucy answered.
“We needn’t stay in Paris; a week or a fortnight’s vacation cannot do him any harm. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”
“Well, we can start any day you like,” Lucy remarked. “We’ll not write to tell him we are coming, but as soon as we arrive we’ll just send him a letter asking him to come to dinner.”
Mrs. Thorpe didn’t answer, and in the silence of the drawing-room the click of the knitting-needles were audible. Coffee was brought in, and the ladies helped themselves according to their wont.
At last Lucy broke the silence. The servant had just left the room.
“But if Lewis is working so hard that his brain may give way — your very words, Susan — it would be well to remain in Paris some weeks. Eight hours are a long day’s work, and you see that he tells us he works for two hours more between dinner and bedtime — ten hours! You see, he admits the work is excessive, adding that he doesn’t care to do anything unless he does it to excess. He probably works in the evening after dinner because he has no place to go to. But if we were to take a flat in Paris... what do you think, Susan?”
“We must do something,” Mrs. Thorpe answered, “or else he’ll lose his health.”
Lucy did not hear any further. Her resolve was taken, and her thoughts melted into dreams of drives together in the Bois and through Paris after five o’clock when his work was done, and after dinner, starting again out for a theatre, all three, unless Susan did not like sitting up late. It would be pleasanter still to sit alone with Lewis in a box, hearing the French language in all its purity at the Comédie Française. A flat would be much pleasanter than an hotel. One is never free in an hotel. But a furnished flat! Such things were not unknown in Paris, and a letter to John Arthur, the celebrated house-agent of that time, brought them news that a large and commodious flat, consisting of several reception-rooms, six bedrooms, bathrooms, servants’ rooms — in a word, everything a human being could require — was to let in the Avenue Josephine. The owners were only asking four hundred a year for it, and if Mrs. Bentham wrote by return of post, they could walk into the flat at the end of the week. The owners would leave three of their servants behind if Mrs. Bentham wished to retain them. Perhaps it would save Mrs. Bentham trouble if she kept the Baroness’s cook; the house-agent had heard she was excellent. Mrs. Bentham referred the matter to Susan, and Susan thought that, if they were going to live in Paris for some months, no better arrangement could be made.
CHAP. XVII.
“AND NOW WHAT day shall we ask Lewis to dinner?” Lucy said. “We shall arrive on Saturday; we cannot ask him for that evening, nor on Sunday, but on Monday, perhaps.” And it was on Monday morning that Lewis found a letter at his hotel asking him to come to dinner at half-past seven at 45 Avenue Joséphine.
The carriageway appealed to Lewis, who liked the massive, the opulent. And it pleased him to find that the concierge did not live in a little hole in the wall as she did in his hotel, but in a large airy apartment overlooking a courtyard; to find her well dressed and tidy; to hear from her that madame was on the premier étage; to bounce through the glass doors; to run up the wide, thickly carpeted staircase — so different from his own staircase; to be received with joy by two delightful women. The adventure was so cheering that he hardly
knew which of the two he liked the better — Lucy or Susan. Lucy, of course; but Mrs. Thorpe was so delighted to see him that his heart went out to her. There was the flat to look over, and Lewis foresaw endless dinners and hours spent in this flat full of deep sofas and voluptuous arm-chairs. No doubt the cooking was excellent; and if the impossible became possible, and he were Lucy’s lover! The thought was a flying one; it passed rapidly and was lost amid many other thoughts. “Was the journey calm?”— “Had they been sea-sick? “ And “How long were they going to stay?” Everything was undecided. No date had been fixed for their return, and amid many misgivings, Lewis felt he could not fail to get her in the end. “But how would it come about?” he asked himself; and the conversation soon after became strained. They were anxious to be alone, and as she could not ask Susan to go to bed, Lucy proposed a walk in the Champs-Elysées. They could excuse themselves for leaving her.
“A walk in the Champs-Elysées,” Lewis said, “under the chestnuts, where we shall hear Les Cors de Chasses in green jerkins. They play every evening in the Café des Ambassadeurs.”
“You won’t mind being left, Susan?” Lucy asked in a confident voice that the old lady’s answer justified; and hearing her say she was feeling a little tired, the lovers went forth without a scruple into the Avenue Joséphine, and, turning down the Rue Pierre Charron, they found themselves a few minutes afterwards in the great avenue seeking a crossing. “A little below the Rond Point there is a refuge,” Lewis said; and they marvelled at the great procession of carriages coming from and going to the Bois through the dusk of a windless summer evening. All the elegant life of Paris was in movement, and Lewis said that next evening they would go to the Bois themselves, and sit in the Café de la Cascade, and eat ices and drink liqueurs amid the fashionable world.
“But the women we see lying back in those victorias are not ladies, are they?” Lucy asked; and Lewis, pleased to show his knowledge of Paris, answered carelessly that they were cocottes. “‘Light-of-love’ is the only term we have for a courtesan that isn’t contemptuous, and every cocotte in Paris goes to the Bois in the evening if she is not going to the theatre or to the opera. At the Cascade one meets constantly Blanche d’Antigny, Marie Pellegrin, Léonie Leblanc, Mary Laurent, Alice Howard, and others less celebrated, though not less beautiful. Those who have been to the Café Madrid are returning, and those who are going will alight at the Cascade.”
“You seem to have learnt a good deal of Paris,” Lucy said to him.
“One hears of these women in the studio,” Lewis answered. “I should like to paint their portraits.”
The moment had come for them to cross over, and under the overhanging boughs of the pavement leading from the Rond Point to the Place de la Concorde they elected to sit. On their left was the Cirque d’Été, the Café of the D’Alcasar and the Ambassadeurs.
“How pretty the garlands of lamps are,” she said; “and how fairy-like the foliage is under the artificial light.”
“The artificial lights,” he said, “are looked upon by some painters of Montmartre as being more attractive than daylight, but not by anybody in our studio. Shall we sit here among all these women?” he asked. “The studio in the Passage des Panoramas is an adjunct to the Beaux-Arts. The two women by us are cocottes; a very low class of cocotte comes to sit here in the evening’ when the evenings are fine, and they go away with lovers if chance favours them.”
“Do you like sitting here among these women? “ Lucy asked.
“Well, yes, I do,” he said. “Their faces bespeak freedom from restraint, domesticity, children, and that shocking word ‘papa.’ It is difficult to express exactly one’s feelings in words. Freedom is the nearest word that I can think of. Freedom unrestrained, unprejudiced. There we have it.” And Lucy wondered how it was that Lewis could have become so changed in a few months. She did not like to think the worst, and in some ways he seemed to her more attractive; but there was a lack of restraint in his talk which she feared, and she put it down to the company he had been keeping. “But if he has been working ten hours a day, how can he have kept bad company?” she wondered. “A studio, of course, is full of students, and the society of art students is always unrestrained.”
“Tell me — —” she said. At that moment Les Cors de Chasses broke forth into a medley so vulgarly harmonized that after a little while they wished it could cease and allow them to continue their conversation, for it was difficult to talk within the sound of so many brass instruments; and, after all, they were more interested in each other’s voices than in musical instruments.
Lucy waited for Lewis to speak of his daily life in the studio. He had said that the studio opened at eight.
“So you have to be up at seven to be at the studio by eight?” she asked him.
“Yes, that is about the time,” he answered. “But on Mondays it is as well to get there before eight, for there is a new model, and those who arrive first have the choice of places.”
“And you work on all day,” she said, “till five o’clock, with an hour for luncheon?” And seeing she was interested in the life at the studio, he began to tell her of the professors who walked round the easels, stopping at every one to give advice to the student, perhaps to take his pencil out of his hand and to correct his drawing. There were two, Jules Lefebvre and Bouguereau, academicians, both of them. Lewis was not especially attracted by Bouguereau’s pictures, but he admired Lefebvre’s studies of the female form more than anything, if he were to tell the truth, he had seen in the Louvre. He would have liked to talk about Lefebvre, but Lucy was more curious to hear what Jules Lefebvre thought of Lewis’s drawings than what Lewis thought of Lefebvre’s pictures, and from Lewis’s remarks it appeared that Lefebvre thought very well of Lewis.
“He often prefers my drawings,” Lewis said, “to the drawings of Ducet, his favourite pupil. And he said so out loud, addressing the whole studio.”
“And who else,” she asked, “is there in the studio?” And Lewis told her of those who were well considered. There was a short, silent man with a reddish beard, “somewhat like Thompson,” he said, “who painted his own way without giving much heed to the professor; and there was a tall dark fellow, very handsome,” he added, “with black hair and brilliant eyes.” The redheaded fellow, Lewis thought, always painted the model a little too pink, and the dark tall man with the brilliant eyes painted the model a little too violet. The rest of the studio was mere riff-raff, fellows that had been sent up from the art schools in the provinces to learn painting because they had taken a prize in the art school; “and, of course, a great many Americans and Englishmen,” he said; “in all, about thirty men and ten women.”
“Ten women?” Lucy said; “but I thought the model was naked?”
“Yes, so she is, and he is too.”
“And the ladies, do they sit in the room and draw a naked model?”
“Oh, yes!” Lewis answered indifferently. “There is a school for women on the other side of the street, but they prefer to work with us and then, warming to his subject, he explained that no notice was taken of the model except as an object of study. The model might be a block of marble, a vase, a bunch of flowers — it was merely an object for study. One hardly associated the model with human life. All the same, he admitted that it was strange to talk to a young lady from Kensington of her mother and her sisters in front of a great naked man. As long as the model was posing it didn’t so much matter; but when the model rested, and didn’t wrap himself in a sheet, but just flopped about, it was difficult to feel quite at ease. “And then a model will call,” he said, “to ask for a sitting. The master cannot promise him one until he has seen him, if it be a man, her, if it be a woman, and so they have to undress and show themselves, and the worst moment of all is when the woman steps out of her drawers, or the Italian boy steps out of his breeches.”
“Does the supply of models never fall short?” Lucy asked. And he answered that he had never heard of a lack of models.
&n
bsp; “Once a model fell ill in the middle of the week, and we couldn’t get a model to finish the week, so we agreed to draw lots who should sit. The women, of course, were exempted; we couldn’t ask the young ladies from Kensington to take off their clothes.”
“So one of the students sat?”
“Yes. The lot fell upon me.”
“And do you mean to say, Lewis, you stood naked before them all?”
“Why not? The lot fell upon me, and they liked my figure very much, and wanted me to sit through the following week so that Rouneuf might finish his painting. But sitting is very tiring. However, I said I would if Rouneuf gave me the painting; but he wouldn’t.”
“So it was never finished,” Lucy said.
“No, for on second thoughts he decided to leave it as a sketch. Miss Lily Saunders did a very good drawing. She said that what she liked about me was my shoulders. To see me in my clothes nobody would think I had such a good figure. I am only repeating what they said. My shoulders are square, you see; and then the body nips in at the waist, and drops down in good lines to the knees, and I’m long from the knees to the ankles.”
“If Miss Saunders admired you so much, I wonder she didn’t ask you to take her out to breakfast one day.”
“I don’t know how it is, but I’ve never heard anything about the men and women who work in the studios. Some of the fellows go after the models, who are often very pretty refined girls, and we sometimes ask the model to breakfast with us if she is pretty and refined.”
“And do you ever think them pretty and refined?”
“If a girl is pretty and refined I think her pretty and refined, wherever I find her,” Lewis answered.
“And how was it that you were never tempted?”
“Love,” he said, taking Lucy’s arm, “is a great shield against temptation.”
“I wonder if that is so?” she answered; and they walked up the Avenue together, Lewis asking why they were going home so soon. “The Cafés Chantants will not close for another hour,” he said.