by George Moore
One never knows what one would choose, he said. Such speculations are always vain, and never were they vainer than now.... But I’m glad you like the movement. It doesn’t matter even if I never finish it. I don’t think it looks bad in its present state, does it?
It is a sketch, one of those things that could not be finished. I recognised the model. She sat for it, didn’t she?
Yes.
And you never told me! Oh, Ralph, while you were telling me you loved me, you were living with this woman!
It happened so. Things don’t come out as straight or as nice as we’d like them to; that’s the way things come out in life — a bit crooked, tangled, cracked. I couldn’t have done otherwise. That’s the way things happened to come out. There’s no other explanation.
And if I’d consented to marry you, you’d have put her away.
Etta, don’t scold me. Things happened that way.
Etta did not answer, and Ralph continued: What are you thinking of?
Of the cruelty, of the wretchedness of it all.
Why look at that side of it? If I did wrong, I’ve been punished. She knows all. She has forgiven me. You can do as much. Forgive me; kiss me. I’ve never kissed you.
I cannot kiss you now. I hear her coming. Wipe those tears away. The doctor said that you were to be kept quiet.
Shall I see you again?
I don’t think I can come again. She’ll be here.
Etta! What difference can it make?
We shall see....
The door opened. Ellen came in, and Etta got up to go. I hope you’ve enjoyed your walk, Miss Gibbs?
Yes, thank you. I haven’t been out for some days.
Nursing is very fatiguing.... Good-bye, Mr. Hoskin. I hope I shall soon hear that you’re better. Perhaps Miss Gibbs will write.
Yes, I’ll write; but I’m afraid Mr. Hoskin has been talking too much. Let me open the door for you.
V
Two days afterwards she received a letter from Ellen Gibbs:
MADAM, — It is my sad duty to inform you that Mr. Ralph Hoskin died this afternoon at two o’clock. He begged me to write and thank you for the violets you sent him. The funeral will take place on Monday. If you come here to-morrow, you will see him before he is put into his coffin. — I am, Yours truly, ELLEN GIBBS.
The desire to see her dead lover was an instinct, and the journey from Sutton to Chelsea was unperceived by her; and she did not recover from the febrile obedience her desire imposed until Ellen opened the studio door. I received a letter from you — Etta began. Yes, I know; come in. Etta hated the plain, middle-class appearance and dress of this girl. She hated the tone of her voice, and walked without answering into the studio, drawing back affrighted, so different is death from life. But catching sight of the violets, she recovered herself, and overcome, she stood watching the dead man, forgetful whether Ellen knew or was ignorant of what her relations might have been, remembering only that he was dead. And the desire to say a prayer falling upon her, she knelt by the bedside.
Don’t let me disturb you, said Ellen. When you have finished ——
Will you not say a prayer with me?
I have said my prayers. Our prayers would not mingle.
What does she mean? thought Etta. Our prayers would not mingle! Why? Because I’m a pure woman and she isn’t? I wonder if she meant that I hope she does not intend any violence. Her heart throbbed with fear, her knees weakened, she thought she would faint And resolved to faint on the slightest provocation, she rose from her knees and stood facing the other woman, who stood between her and the door. Etta tried to speak, but words stuck fast in her throat, and it was some time before her terror allowed her to see that the expression on Ellen’s face was not one of anger, but of resignation. She was safe! She has pretty eyes, thought Etta, a weak, nervous creature; I can do with her what I like. If she thinks that she can get the better of me, I’ll very soon show her that she is mistaken. Of course, if it came to violence I could do nothing but scream, for I’m not very strong.
Well, Ellen said, I hope you’re satisfied. He died thinking of you. I hope you’re satisfied.
Mr. Hoskin and I were intimate friends. It is only natural that he should think of me.
We were happy until you came. You’ve made dust and ashes of my life. Why did you take the trouble to do this? You were not in love with him, and I did you no injury.
I didn’t know of your existence till the other day.
I heard that —
That I was his mistress? Well, so I was. It appears that you were not. But I should like to know which of us two is the most virtuous, which has done the least harm. I made him happy; you killed him.
This is madness.
No, it is not madness. I know all about you. Ralph told me everything.
It surprises me very much that he should have spoken about me. It was not like him. I hope that he didn’t tell you that — he didn’t suggest that there were any improper relations between us.
I dare say that you were virtuous, more or less, as far as your own body is concerned.
I cannot discuss such questions with you, Etta said timidly, and swinging her parasol vaguely, she tried to pass Ellen by. But it was difficult to get by. The picture she had admired the other day blocked the way.
Yes, said Ellen, in her sad, doleful voice, you can look at it. I sat for it. I’m not ashamed; and perhaps I did more good by sitting than you’ll do with your painting.... But look at him — there he lies. He might have been a great artist if he hadn’t met you, and I should have been a happy woman. Now I’ve nothing to live for....You said that you did’nt know of my existence till the other day. But you knew that in making that man love you, you were robbing another woman.
That is very subtle.
You knew that you did not love him, and that it could end only in unhappiness. It has ended in death.
Etta looked at the cold face, so clay-like, and the horror of the situation creeping over her, she lost strength to go, and listened meekly to Ellen:
He smiled a little — it was a little, sad smile — when he told me that I was to write saying that he would be glad if you would come to see him when he was dead. I think I know what was passing in his mind — he hoped that his death might be a warning to you. Not many men die of broken hearts, but one never knows; one did; look at him and take your lesson.
I assure you that we were merely friends. He liked me, I know — he loved me, if you will; I could not help that. Etta drew on the floor of the studio with her parasol. I am very sorry; it is most unfortunate. I did nothing wrong. I’m sure he never suggested —
How that one idea does run in your head! I wonder if your thoughts are equally chaste. I read you in the first glance. One glance was enough. Your eyes tell a mean little soul; you try to resist sometimes, but your nature turns naturally to evil. There are people like that.
If I had done what you seem to think I ought to have done, he would have abandoned you. And Etta looked at her rival triumphantly.
That would have been better than what has happened. Then there would have been only one heart broken.
Etta hated the woman for the humiliation she was imposing upon her, and at the same time she could not but feel admiration for such single-heartedness. And noticing on Etta’s face the change of expression, but misinterpreting it, Ellen said: I can read you through and through. You have wrecked two lives. Oh, that anybody should be so wicked, that anybody should delight in wickedness! I cannot understand it.
You are accusing me wrongly. But let me go. It is not likely that we shall arrive at any understanding.
Go, then.
Ellen threw herself on a chair by the bedside, and Etta whisked her black crape dress out of the studio.
VI
She began new pictures, attributing every failure to the death of Ralph, saying to herself or to Ethel Brand (if she happened to be a visitor at the Manor House, which she frequently was during the winter): Ralph was
the only painter in England, at least the only one I knew, who could help me, who could criticise my work from a painter’s point of view. You know what I mean? Ethel Brand, whose thoughts went into music rather than into painting, answered that her desire to compose ceased practically with Rubenstein’s death. She had often held out against his emendations, which seemed to her alien from her idea, but she generally gave in, accepting them in the end. But are there not many musicians who can correct grammatical mistakes, though they can do nothing else? Etta asked, and Ethel agreed that there were, but she felt that her life as a composer was ended. One never knows, she added, and there are times when I feel that I have not said all I have to say in music. For the moment, however, I am not writing music, but about music in the newspapers — it pays better, and to musical criticisms I have added art criticisms; having lived a great deal with artists, I know how to do it. You could help me, Etta. Etta said that she would be delighted to do so, and in their walks round the galleries the women began to take pleasure in each other’s company, and the intervals that divided them began to seem longer and longer, till at length a flat in Paris was spoken of. Ethel said that there were some nice apartments in the rue Hauteville, off the boulevard Montmartre. Which would not be far, dear, from your studio. I once thought of taking a flat in that street myself, but the flats were too large for one person.
Etta smiled upon her friend’s project, but the idea was not ripe in her yet, and without knowing why, she lingered on in Sutton till the spring. It was not till the early spring that the nostalgia of the boulevards began to take possession of her, and then it was she who pressed Ethel to come away at once, saying that the Manor House and Harold had again become wearisome to her, and the whole neighbourhood oppressive. There isn’t a room in the house in which I can paint, she argued when Harold tried to persuade her. Moreover, I cannot live in Sutton. If you will take a house in London.... I must live where painting is being done. I cannot afford two houses, he answered, and a month later Etta and Ethel were furnishing a flat in the rue Hauteville, a burden that Ethel took upon her own shoulders so that Etta should be free to attend to her work in the studio, whither she went every morning at eight, more intent upon painting than ever, or maybe more intent upon the studio, which in the person of its proprietor, Mr. Davau, attracted Etta. She was always talking of him, asking him to dinner at the flat, buying boxes for the theatre, hiring a carriage to take them, and detaining him in the café afterwards for as long as he consented to remain. She never seemed to weary of him. A strange choice indeed Davau seemed to Ethel, and she often wondered if Etta loved the great, black-bearded Southerner with conviction. Very often after he had left them, speaking out of their meditations, one would admit to the other that for some reason which escaped them his beard and his belly were forgotten in the charm of his personality. But in what did this personality consist? He was not a great artist; as an artist he was a failure. What then? Ethel asked, and Etta answered: He seems to know his own mind; he is true to himself, a sensualist, I think, unfortunately, but he has himself well in hand.
I don’t like fat men, nor hairy hands, but —
The sentence was left unfinished, and both women fell to thinking of the pleasant stories that Davau told of the days when he was a shepherd boy and afterwards a great wrestler in the South. In wrestling he and his cousin overthrew all competitors, and when he was not wrestling he was drawing. And by spending the money he gained in the circus, he had educated himself enough to come to Paris and to make a success in the Salon des Refusés. Alfred de Musset’s poem supplied him with a subject — the moment when Rolla leaves his mistress’s bed to shoot himself, having spent his last louis on the supper they had enjoyed before returning home, the girl innocent of her lover’s intention to take his life at daybreak. Davau’s picture represented Rolla at the window pointing to the sunrise. His mistress still slept, and it was the girl’s carefully painted petticoat, thrown over a chair, that caused the scandal and the success. Davau told Etta and Ethel how a critic had said que Rolla montrait le soleil pendant qu’elle montrait la lune; and to explain what he meant he asked for a piece of paper and made a sketch of his picture, making them both laugh. But a success like Davau’s Rolla does not give a painter an income, and Davau, reduced like Rolla to his last hundred francs, bethought himself of an exhibition of wrestling. A circus was built on a waste plot in the centre of the town, and all the friends of Davau’s youth came to Paris to initiate the Parisians in la lutte Romaine. Coeur de Lion and Bras de Fer were minor attractions, Davau relying on L’Homme Masqué to fill his booth. He entered to wrestle with the victor in all the contests and had never been overthrown, and it became the brag of Paris to discover his name. His cabriolet was overtaken miles away in the country, but there was nobody in it; and attempts were made to bribe the wrestlers to drag the mask from his face, but the heralds intervened. And then it began to be noticed, Davau said, that I disappeared from the auditorium when L’Homme Masque was in the arena, and to show that I was not L’Homme Masqué I took a seat in full view of the public; and on that very night it so happened that L’Homme Masque only just escaped defeat. The man who was nearly overthrown was your cousin, Etta interjected. You were L’Homme Masqué in turns. Davau did not answer, and he entertained the ladies in the rue Hauteville till nearly midnight with tales of Coeur de Lion, Bras de Fer, and Poitrine de Taureau.
Etta was not satisfied with Davau’s visits to the rue Hauteville; she wished to show in the studio that she held him in tether, and her attempts to exhibit her power were her undoing. From the very first day that she ran across the studio and took him by the sleeve, saying: Now, you must come and look at my drawing, the crafty Southerner determined to put her aside. Her invitations to dinner were refused; he never accompanied her again to the theatre; he was polite, but distant always, and Etta confessed her perplexities to Ethel, who could not dissuade her. The difficulty and danger of this wooing whetted her appetite for victory, and she might have pursued her quest with ridiculous attentions if it had not been dropped in conversation with some of the other women in the studio during the lunch hour that Mlle. Berge was Davau’s mistress.
At first Etta could not believe that she had been deceived, but once put on the track of the truth, she remembered a hundred things that had passed unnoticed at the time, words and incidents. And these rousing in her a passion of hatred, she began to vent her hatred of Mlle. Berge, making insulting remarks in her hearing and relating conversations she had had with Mlle. Berge, who had been foolish enough once to tell her that she had prettier thighs than any of the models. An excellent subject for caricature this was, which Etta availed herself of, sketching upon Mlle. Berge’s drawings. Her hatred of Davau was as unmeasured; she told stories about him, relating that she had been obliged to refuse to see him in the rue Hauteville, that he used to dine with them there, but his conduct was so extraordinary one night that she could not receive him any more. Davau heard all these stories without making any protest, and Etta rejoiced, unsuspicious that when she came to renew her subscription to the studio, he would tell her that he was sorry but he could not accept it, for he wished to reduce the number of lady pupils.
VII
Expulsion from the studio made shipwreck of her life in Paris; she took lessons in French, began a novel, and paid many visits to the Louvre in search of a picture that would interest her to copy, and meeting there a student from Davau’s she learnt from him that a subscription was being promoted by the pupils to present Davau with a testimonial. A subscription entitled a subscriber to a place at the banquet, and at the banquet Davau could not do else than say to Etta: I think this is an occasion on which old differences should be forgotten. If you care to return to my studio, you will find it open to you. And to show that he wished to let bygones be bygones, he often came to help her with her drawing, whereat she rejoiced, thinking that during Mile. Berge’s absence, she would be able to turn defeat into victory. But why had Mlle. Berge left the studio? A
very bitter hatred rose up in her heart when she learnt that Davau was living in a handsome flat with Mlle. Berge, his mistress and helpmate, whom he was soon to wed. Harsh words rose up in Etta’s mind, but remembering the price her former indiscretions had cost her, she began a letter of congratulation, and would have written it probably if Ethel Brand’s mother had not come to Paris to fetch her daughter home.
Ethel had fallen out of health, and her departure gave Etta an excuse for leaving the flat in the rue Hauteville. She could say that it was too large, too expensive, and too lonely. She hated the flat, for it was associated in her mind with Davau, and to forget him she went to live in a boarding-house on the other side of the water, where Cissy was staying. But at the end of the first quarter Etta thought the neighbourhood did not suit her, and she wandered from boarding-house to boarding-house, from hotel to hotel, to take at last another flat, one in which there was a studio, and to spend a good deal of money on models, frames, and costumes. But nothing she did satisfied her, and convinced that she must improve her drawing she joined a drawing class — one run on the same lines as the studio in the Passage des Panoramas, and for three months she bore the strain of the long working hours, till one morning, near the middle of the fourth month, she paused in her dressing and sank into a chair, unable to summon enough strength to draw on her stockings. In this hour of mental and physical weakness life seemed hopeless. She did not doubt her own genius, but she could not do else than doubt her own strength. There it was. She was without strength to rise at seven in the morning, to arrive at the studio at eight and to draw there till five, like Doucet, and after all, hundreds had drawn better than Doucet. With Doucet’s skill, she thought she could do something better than Doucet. But there, she had neither his skill nor his strength, not even strength to pull on her stockings, only just enough to pull them off and roll herself into bed again and rest, which she did, lying between sleeping and waking till the maid knocked at her door and handed her a letter from Elsie.