Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  He liked seeing money spent lavishly, and it amused him to hear her order hat after hat, toque after toque, and to say you must wear that one when you come to see me, and she replied with a verse:

  “Elle mettait son beau chapeau, son chapeau bleu.” She did not know any more of the sonnet, but thought that the lover lived on the cinquième. If so, the last words would be “je t’aime.”... She tried to remember, but at that moment the brougham turned into the Rue de la Paix and stopped before Worth’s great doorway, when a liveried footman came forward to open the door of the brougham, and liveried footmen showed them into the great man’s consulting-room. At both ends were large mirrors, two that could be moved about at discretion; the others were fixed in the wall. On the right was a high desk, where a clerk waited to take down an inspiration as it came from the master’s lips.

  After a few preliminary questions the great man said, sinking back on the green velvet divan:

  “Will you kindly walk this way so that I may catch the character of your shoulders?”

  Lucy passed across the room and stopped. Worth did not speak, but motioned her with his hand to walk back again, and after some moments of deep meditation he murmured: “Florentine bronze, tinted, falling over a bouillonné pleating of pale moonlight blue”; then after a pause he added: “The front also blue, closely gathered more than half-way down.”

  The inspiration then seemed to have left him and he moved uneasily on the divan of dark green velvet. The assistant waited at his desk, pen in hand, and the silence was full of much uneasy solemnity. After some moments the master murmured “Flounces,” and his brows contracted like those of a poet. Lucy and Lewis approved of the flounces, but Worth shook his head, and with the candour of genius admitted that something lacked; for the moment he could not say what, and was on the point of asking Mrs. Bentham to call another day, when Lewis hinted that the top might be partially concealed by some handsome bronze and gold bead trimming. “An admirable suggestion,” the master said, and added with an expression of triumph: “forming a garland of fringed leaves.”

  Three-quarters of an hour were spent in discussing the shape of the body, also in brown satin; and after giving ear to all their suggestions, Worth decided it was to be cut in the shape of a heart.

  “Now, Lewis, I’m going to the Bois and will leave you at your studio.”

  He pleaded to be allowed to go with her, but she said that to drive through the Bois with her in the afternoon would advertise them as lovers to all Paris. She did not wish to be talked about, for she was beginning to be known in Paris. And it was on her lips to tell him that he was neglecting his painting, but she refrained from reproaching him, afraid lest she might exhibit herself in the light of a schoolmistress. “I may lead,” she said to herself, for she was not without tact, “but I must not attempt to drive.” No, indeed, she was not without tact, and knew how to introduce him to her friends without compromising herself, and she persuaded him that they must present a reasonable appearance to the world. It was all right for him to appear in her box at the Opera; the Opera would not interfere with his painting. Parties, balls, he should avoid as much as possible, for a man who has been dancing till four o’clock in the morning cannot be out of bed and at his easel at ten. Lewis answered that four or five hours’ sleep were enough for him, and he followed her from ballroom to ballroom. He had become interested in dancing and desired to distinguish himself in the Boston, and Lucy watched him whirling round the drawing-rooms of Le Quartier de l’Etoile; every kind of American face leaned over his shoulder, for dancing was the fashion in those days. Lucy did not care for dancing for its own sake, but to see him coming towards her with a ribbon to pin upon her dress, and to leave her chair and advance towards him and to whirl with him round the room, and be taken back to her chair by him, was a great pleasure to her. “There has been very little pleasure in his life till now,” she said to herself and refrained from reproaching him, saying, “he will return to his painting more eagerly than ever after his holiday. The schoolmistress he must never see in me,” she said to herself, and whispered in his ear the corner at which he would find the brougham waiting for him.

  They did not leave these balls together. To do so, Lucy said, would make her a marked woman, and he must be sure to shake off any friend that would accompany him. No one must see him get into her brougham. He was clever at avoiding detection, and believed himself capable of outwitting most detectives. There was a good deal of the cat in Lewis. One moment he was in the street and a moment after he was in her brougham, her skirts about him; a delightful moment, though both were tired and sleep pressed their eyelids. A delightful moment in a well-appointed brougham, driving along the Champs-Elysées in the dawn across the Place de la Concorde, over the bridge along the quays into the Rue du Bac. He had a studio in the house in which he lodged, and she told him she would call for him about twelve and take him out to breakfast. “Good-bye, dearest.” The door opened, and as soon as he passed into the house, the brougham returned along the Quai Voltaire, and immediately afterwards she remembered Carpeau’s sculpture and raised her tired eyes to look at it, and regretted that it was not placed where it could be better seen. The brougham passed along the Orangerie into the Place de la Concorde, and she remembered that a hundred years ago it was called the Place de Louis XV. The Champs-Elysées were built afterwards, she thought, during the Second Empire. But why was she so interested in every bridge and every point of view? The London streets did not interest her, but she never drove up the Champs-Elysées in the early morning without wondering. There was something great, something triumphant in the wide avenue ascending to the arch on the hilltop nearly a mile away, and all the way beautifully planted with chestnut-trees and interspersed with swards, with cafés and restaurants throughout, swings and merry-go-rounds — an enormous wonder in May when all the trees were in flower under a morning sky. In a few minutes they would be at the Rond Point, and a few minutes later they would turn into the Rue Galilée. A few yards of sharp ascent would take them into the Avenue Joséphine. She had heard the name, Avenue Joséphine, was going to be changed. A pity, she thought, to change a name, and a name so evocative as Josephine.

  As the brougham turned into the Rue Galilée a tall thin man rose from his seat in the victoria that had followed the brougham to the Rue du Bac and back again to the Champs-Elysées. The little horse that drew it could no longer keep pace with the brougham, and putting some francs into the driver’s hand, he sprang from the step, and, catching up his long coat, he ran full tilt up the pavement into the Avenue Joséphine, and rushed across it, reaching the house in which Lucy lodged a few seconds after she had passed in. The concierge, already awakened by Mrs. Bentham’s ring, did not keep him waiting; and as it was not uncommon for two lodgers to enter the house at the same time, Mrs. Bentham ascended the stairs wrapt in her own thoughts, and was half-way up the second flight when she was startled by hearing somebody call: “Lucy!”

  A great surprise this was to her, for there was nobody in Paris, except Lewis, who used her first name in addressing her.

  “You’ve no right, Herbert, to follow me into my house.”

  “Nor has my wife the right to leave a young man at his lodging in the Rue du Bac after a ball.”

  “So you’ve been following me?”

  “Of course; and the result of my spying is that a new arrangement has become necessary. But we can discuss the details more comfortably in the drawing-room than on the staircase.”

  Herbert begged of her not to raise her voice on the staircase lest she should bring the concierge to her assistance. “If you do, I shall have to say who I am. Let me come into your drawing-room.”

  “How long do you propose to remain?”

  “I hope and think we may be able to come to an agreement in ten minutes or a quarter of an hour upon a certain point.”

  “A matter of money?”

  “Why put matters so plainly, so crudely?” he answered. “Do you mind my lighting a c
igarette? A cigarette gives one countenance — a sort of veil between oneself and reality.”

  “A matter of money,” she said to herself. “Well, I’d better hear how much he wants.”

  “You’ve taken these apartments for a year?” he asked.

  “Let us not waste time. How much?”

  “My dear, that is not the way we should approach the subject. I hoped that the money question would never rise between us again.”

  “How much?” she answered.

  “Aren’t you going to sit down?”

  “You can sit down if you like.”

  “Well, Lucy, the question arises, as the newspapers say, between us, whether I shall ask for a divorce or whether you will divorce me. We can settle that matter much better between ourselves than by the aid of your solicitor or mine. You’re tired, I can see that; but a more propitious moment could hardly have been chosen.”

  “You know,” she said, “that I was at the Marquise de Maure’s ball?”

  He answered that it would take too long to explain how he had learnt that she had at last taken to what he called “side-stepping.”

  “A delightful expression which, like many others,” he said, “comes to us from America. Well, now, which is it to be, Lucy — that you divorce me or that I divorce you?”

  “I don’t want a divorce.”

  “But I may want one.”

  “I suppose you have acquainted yourself with the law of divorce, Herbert; and know quite well that if I can prove any ‘side-stepping’ against you, your petition will fail?”

  “Yes,” he answered, “I know that; but you may not be able to prove to the satisfaction of the court that I have ever committed adultery, whereas your little excursions to the Loire and back leave no doubt of misconduct. If money affairs—”

  “Ah!”

  “Yes, if money affairs can be settled satisfactorily between us, I can give you cause to bring an action against me, and then you will be free to marry the young gentleman.”

  “But if I do not wish to marry? A woman who has been so unhappily married as I was feels little inclination to put her head into the noose again.”

  “Well, then,” he said, “I shall have to bring an action against you, and Mr. Seymour may not like to figure as co-respondent, and you may not like to do him harm — prejudice his career. Come, Lucy, it is much better to avoid these public scandals.”

  “How much do you want?” she answered.

  “Well, I was thinking that if you were to allow me fifteen hundred a year—” And seeing that she would consent, he yielded to the temptation to question her: “Now, why don’t you want to marry this young man? It doesn’t follow that because you were unhappy with me you should be unhappy with him. And there is another reason, Lucy.” The question brought a little colour to her cheek, tired though she was, and she waited for him to speak again, afraid lest he read in her heart that she did not wish to marry Lewis because marriage would quench the sense of motherhood in her. She could not look upon her husband as her son, but she could look upon her lover as a sort of stepson, or, to put it differently, she could look on herself as Lewis’s stepmother; and as she sat gazing at her husband, she remembered how much she liked to take Lewis in her arms and kiss him as a mother kisses her son, chastely. At other times feelings that she could not overcome overpowered her, and she kissed him as he asked to be kissed — as a mistress kisses and a wife doesn’t, as she had never willingly kissed Herbert. His first name was odious to her. She did not think of him as Herbert, or as Mr. Bentham, but as “him.”

  “Of what are you thinking, dear?”

  Lewis had asked her of what she was thinking as they leaned over the balustrade above the fish-ponds of Fontainebleau, and now “he” used the same words: “Of what are you thinking?” The question that had pleased her when Lewis asked it now irritated her.

  “Are not my thoughts my own?” she said. “Come, how much? I’m tired. Don’t let us prolong an interview that cannot be any less disagreeable to you than it is to me, unless you wish to torture me. How much did you say?”

  “I’m sure I don’t mind your leading the life that pleases you. I don’t see that there is any harm, if appearances are kept up.”

  “Spare me your theories on the goodness and badness of things. How much?”

  “Well,” he said, “since you put it so plainly, an allowance of fifteen hundred a year might console me for a marriage that I shall be obliged to forego. A very nice widow...”

  “You have mentioned the sum before! I agree. Fifteen hundred a year. But what proof shall I have that you will not blackmail me and follow me into my house?”

  “Well, if I do, you will be in no worse a position than you are to-day. You will be able to say: ‘You have broken your promise, Herbert. I shall not pay you another penny; consult your solicitor.’”

  “What you say seems to be reasonable. I will tell my solicitor that I intend to allow you fifteen hundred a year.”

  “May I ask when the first quarter’s allowance will be paid?”

  “If you will give me the name of your bank, I will write to my solicitor to-morrow on the subject.”

  “That will be very kind of you. Well, Lucy, good morning. I hope that we shall not be forced to meet again.”

  “Then, indeed, it will be ‘good-morning.’”

  CHAP. XXII.

  THE INTERVIEW WITH her husband overnight appeared in Mrs. Bentham’s face and speech and manner at breakfast, and Mrs. Thorpe and Lewis were afraid that she had not slept well. She answered that she had slept hardly at all.

  “You seemed quite well when you left me at my door,” Lewis said.

  “We have been keeping late hours lately, and it may be that I’m beginning to feel the effects.”

  “You have, indeed”; and Mrs. Thorpe advised her cousin to go to her room after breakfast and lie down, but Lucy answered that she would not be able to sleep. She would be better after she had been out for a walk. But she would not go to Madame de Coetlogon’s dinner, nor to the Marquise d’Osmond’s ball after dinner. “Lewis, are you dining with us?”

  He was sorry; he was dining with Madame de Coetlogon.

  “And she’ll take you to the Marquise’s ball?”

  “She offered to take me. But I shan’t stay. I shall be in bed before one and at work in the studio at ten. To-morrow will be a long working day, and you won’t see me before tea time.”

  “You don’t seem to care for anything, Lewis,” Mrs. Thorpe said, looking intently at the young man, “unless you’re doing it to excess”; and Lewis answered that he was not sure that Mrs. Thorpe was not right, that excess was what pleased him: and he instanced the days of twelve hours that he used to spend on the scaffolding at Claremont House.

  “It wasn’t easy to persuade you to come down from that scaffolding for your meals,” Mrs. Thorpe interjected; “and when you had worn yourself out, you would suddenly abandon painting and spend whole days down by the river; it was as difficult for you to lay aside the fishing rod as it was the palette.”

  “Yes, yes,” he answered cheerfully, and Mrs. Bentham, who had, meanwhile, been chewing the bitter end of jealousy, said:

  “You seem pleased at being accredited, Lewis, with such febrile enthusiasms for work and idleness, but I’m not sure that the painter you admire most, Fragonard, didn’t try to maintain a continuous inspiration, and if you would emulate him—”

  “Emulate him!” Lewis cried. There was sufficient good sense in him to deprecate comparison between himself and Fragonard, and when reproved for his modesty he reminded the two ladies that he was only six and twenty, and Fragonard died an old man. But though he could not accept the compliment that his mistress paid to his talent, it pleased him inasmuch as it set him thinking that if he were to make Paris his home he might capture some of that painter’s sunny sensuality. “Those sunny bedrooms and landscapes,” he said to himself, and continuing his aestheticism he affirmed that to depict beautiful things with a view
to making them seem more beautiful than they really are was always the mission of the artist.

  His reverie came to a stop suddenly. “I believe she’s beginning to tire of Paris,” he said to himself, and he remembered that she no longer laughed at the caricatures of Offenbach and Hervé. The great Hortense in “La Belle Poule” seemed to her shallow, superficial, perhaps even a little vulgar, and Lewis began to think his mistress irreparably English in her tastes. Every day she seemed to him to become more and more English, till at last he had begun to feel that she would never appreciate the Champs-Elysées. He had heard her say that the name was in itself ridiculous, and that Les Cors de Chasse playing fanfares in a formal garden was quite a Frenchman’s idea of le sport. Auteuil — its balconies, porches, vases, gardens, and tiny railway was to her, like everything else in Paris, theatrical. “There is a lack of homeliness,” she said, “in Paris. It is charming for a week or a fortnight, but we English people sigh for home after a fortnight. The French people seem to live in cafés and to talk too much about adultery.” She perceived the imprudence of her words, but kept her gravity, and Lewis did not dare to snigger. “Are you not tired of France,” she asked.

  Lewis began to talk of Boucher and Fragonard, and the flatness of the English vision in painting, and how anxious he was to acquire the French.

  “But,” she said, “you go to the studio no longer.”

  “No,” he answered; “but I’m absorbing French influence. The present is a period of absorption — of thinking things out.” And he asked her to come to the Louvre with him. “But, Lewis, when is this period of absorption to come to an end? I quite understand that everybody must have a holiday; but when do you propose to end your holiday and return to England? You know I’m anxious to see you in a studio painting. Wouldn’t it be better to work while you are in Paris, and to take your holiday when you are in London? “ She regretted her words soon after having spoken, for they implied that she was not satisfied with the life that Lewis was leading, which, in truth, she was not. For some time past she had been saying that a man who doesn’t get to bed before four in the morning cannot paint the next day — certainly not before twelve o’clock, and Lewis usually arrived about one o’clock at the Avenue Joséphine. In the afternoon he paid visits, and in the evening he had a dinner engagement, and there was always a ball after dinner. This life of pleasure she had begun to feel was incompatible with art. She had always understood that an artist sacrificed everything to his art. She didn’t wish Lewis to sacrifice her, for without her he would decline. She was his mainstay; without her he would not have learnt how to paint. All Lewis knew of art he got from her; and she must not separate herself from him, but have patience with him, despite the fact that she saw him led away by women almost every night. But they were taking him away from her. Her influence was fading — she knew it — yet she lacked resolution to say: “Lewis, we are returning to London; we’d like you to return with us, but if you think it would be better to remain some while longer in Paris, we shall look forward to seeing you when you return.” A communication of this sort she felt to be necessary, and she kept turning the words over in her mind for a long while, till at last they could be delayed no longer, and she mentioned that she had written to Claremont House, giving notice of her return.