by John Jakes
Her mouth felt cool, unresponsive. He didn’t break the embrace. She breathed in—an angry little sound—then pulled back abruptly. Tears shone as she exclaimed, “Oh, you’re not fair. Not fair at all.”
He kissed her again, ferociously. He worked his right hand behind her, stroking her back-while the pressure of his lips bore her head back. She uttered that angry little gasp again, then suddenly went limp against him. With a moan, she flung one arm around his neck. Her mouth opened, eager.
Dolly Stubbs was far from being as starched and proper as all the daughters of Victoria were supposed to be. That was a bounty which had brought him great happiness. Once warmed, her passion was boundless—and this evening was no exception. Her corseted breasts crushed against his shirt as she moved in his arms. When she felt how huge and stiff he was, felt him prodding her through layers of clothing, she moaned again.
He spread his legs, lifting her off the floor and kissing her eyelids. She moaned louder. Surrendering.
He carried her to the other room, and the bed. The room was tiny and without windows. The only illumination came from the fading skylight glow. In moments, he had her outer clothes off, then her corset and undergarments. As he bent to hold and kiss one of her soft white breasts, he knew again that his strategy wasn’t mere expediency. He cared for her, deeply.
“Oh, oh,” Dolly was exclaiming, arching her bare back. “Oh, you’re so damned unfair, Matt Kent. You know how I melt when you do that—”
“I do it because I love you,” he whispered, mouth against the warmth of her ear. Her unbound hair tickled his nose.
“You’re—a terrible man,” she laughed as he spread himself over her, the softness and the roughness of her at once familiar and wondrously new. “A terrible man to make me—so addled—I can’t think about what we must—must—oh. Oh!”
She brought her body up and forward, a motion urging him to hurry. Eyes closed and clinging to him, she cried, “I love you. I love you—”
The end was splendid, as always. And when they rested afterward, the light in the bedroom all but gone, he thought he’d successfully diverted her from discussing domestic matters tonight. He let himself doze off.
Yawning, he woke in response to a gentle tug of his naked shoulder. He heard her whisper, “That was absolutely lovely, Matt. And it told me all over again how much I care for you. But we must still talk.”
He’d failed! Feeling trapped again, he sat up in bed. Then came the thunderblow. Her voice affectionate and her hand caressing him again, she added, “It won’t take long. I’d just like us to agree to get married.”
iii
He was suddenly ashamed of his simpleminded strategy, and of his arrogant assumption that she could be so easily diverted. Sometimes the strength and single-mindedness of the female sex terrified him.
He swung his legs off the side of the bed. “I gathered that was it. You want to exchange all this for an arrangement like Sime and Leah’s.”
“‘All this?’” she repeated, then gave a short, brusque laugh. “Two rooms in Montmartre and some doubtful prospects for a career as a painter? It’s not all that magnificent, Mr. Kent! So please don’t sneer at me.”
He fought to keep the anger out of his voice. “Except for my work, it’s exactly what the Strelniks have.”
“Oh, no, my dear. For one thing, they have the legal right to give Anton their family name.”
He scrambled to his feet. “Dolly, will you kindly tell me what the hell happened to you in Liverpool? Why has a marriage certificate become so damned important all at once? I thought we agreed marriage was nothing but a legalistic fiction. I for one still don’t believe the Almighty will smite us dead just because we go to bed without benefit of clergy!”
“No, I don’t either,” she responded quietly. “On the other hand, certain—changes have put the whole question into a new perspective.”
“Your sister snaring some lout and dragging him to the altar, you mean?”
“Don’t be cruel,” she whispered. “Don’t pull that trick you and your friends are so good at—rejecting anything you’re not capable of appreciating, or anyone who doesn’t think you’re doing the most important work since the bloody Creation!”
In the darkened room, heir naked body was a pale blur. She reached for his hand. He was angry enough to pull away but he didn’t. She squeezed his fingers.
“I’m sorry, Matt.”
Silence for a moment.
“So am I.”
“I really didn’t mean for this to get so heated. We just have to do some serious thinking, that’s all. There is something new to be considered.” She drew in a breath. “I’m speaking of a legal name for our baby.”
Chapter V
Strelnik’s Flight
i
HALF AN HOUR later, they were seated on opposite sides of a glowing candle set on the taboret in the outer room.
Hundreds of stars spread above the skylight. Somewhere on the butte, a man and a woman argued loudly. The voices faded. A cat meowed in the stillness of the night.
Matt cupped his hands around the warm, fragrant cup of tea Dolly had brewed. But he had no desire for it.
He had put on a shirt and trousers, she an old quilted dressing gown several sizes too large. Her hair was disarrayed, and her cheeks pink from the lovemaking. She sipped her tea and almost fell into a fit of giggling.
“I’m sorry, darling. I really am. But you still look as if the Emperor himself had placed you under arrest.”
“That’s exactly how I feel.” The shock produced by her announcement was slow to dissipate. Certain things were coming into focus, though. The glances at little Anton. Her displeasure at a reference to her weight.
“Well, there’s nothing so unusual about a baby. It’s only by sheer luck that I haven’t gotten pregnant before this. As best I can estimate it, I’ve been carrying him—or her—for about two months. I saw a doctor in Liverpool to be sure. But I didn’t tell my family, Matt. You must believe that.”
He nodded, but avoided her eyes.
“I do want the baby to be raised properly,” she went on. “I know that may pose some problems in connection with your work. I’m sorry about it, but when a man and woman love each other, and they have a child, the responsibility changes things.”
Not for me, he thought, torn by pain. Much as he loved her, he couldn’t sacrifice his time and his concentration on the altar of parenthood. He would not give up the life he’d come to Paris to find. Wretched and fraught with problems as the profession was, to be a painter was what he wanted most of all.
And if she’d been with him in that dark, cold water of the Gulf for even one instant—choking, flailing, thinking death was only moments away—she would understand.
She reached around the tiny flame and touched his face. “I don’t think I’m asking for anything so unusual, Matt. Just what millions of men and women already share.”
Settle for! he thought angrily, but kept silent. Confusion overwhelmed him. He loved her and he loved his work. He was face-to-face with the grim dilemma Paul had talked about. Which mistress?
She saw his torment, and relieved it. “We needn’t decide tonight. But we will have to decide soon. I must tell you again—this is all my own idea. Not my mother’s. Not Peg’s. All mine. I do want my child born with a legal name. But if that’s not possible—if you don’t want the baby—there are women in Paris who can solve the problem.”
A shudder of revulsion shook him. “Christ, that’s a foul thing to propose! Murder—”
“It’s an alternative, Matt.”
“A damn vicious one.”
She bowed her head. “I know. I’m not proud of it.”
A moment later her gaze lifted and locked with his. Her voice strengthened. “But neither am I entirely ashamed of using it to get a commitment from you. A commitment isn’t just to my benefit any longer. Oh, I’ll gain something if you agree we can get married. Something wonderful—you’re a fine, talented
man. Not perfect, God knows. But you’re exciting to be with, and you’re kind and attentive when you think about it. But as I say, I don’t have just myself to consider now. I know your family was founded by a bastard, old Philip, but he was an extraordinary chap to judge from all you’ve told me. Suppose our child’s a boy. He might not be as strong. And bastardy is not widely accepted nor lightly tolerated with our dear Victoria setting the world’s standard of morality—no, I will not put that burden on any child of mine. So tell me what we’re to do, Matt. Get married or—not be troubled by the baby. I want you to tell me by a month from now. July. Surely you can reach a decision by then.”
“No, goddamn it! It’s an impossible choice.”
“Yes,” she said gently, and he saw the terrifying strength in her. The strength of womankind, beside which the posings and prattlings of his artist friends seemed puerile. “Yes, it is. But my father always said there were many impossible choices in a lifetime. Being able to deal with them makes you an adult, I suppose. So does dealing with the pain they bring. A month, Matt. I think that’s time enough.” She finished her tea. “Now shall we go back to bed?”
ii
He left Montmartre about midmorning Sunday. Dolly was accustomed to his disappearing for hours at a time, either to Fochet’s atelier or on long walks during which he developed, sorted and rejected ideas about his work.
This morning he could barely think about painting, so full of conflicting feelings was he in the wake of Dolly’s announcement. One moment he wanted the child, but the next, he knew it would represent the start of a shackling process which would ultimately rob him of the absolutely vital freedom an artist required.
Pondering, he roamed the right bank from the great triumphal arch at the Place de l’Etoile to the esplanade south of the Louvre, where fishermen dropped their lines into the sunlit Seine. Coal barges moved slowly up the river as he strolled on toward the Île de la Cité and crossed the bridge to Notre Dame. He was not religious in the conventional sense, but he slipped into the cathedral by the door directly beneath the magnificent rose window and stood in the cool, vaulted darkness listening to a priest chant the mass far, far down in the immense nave. Something of the peace of the church stole into him, and his thinking slowly clarified.
As he walked out he dropped a few sous in the poor box. He had reached two decisions. He would not give in to Dolly’s demands that they marry, but he would not permit her to do away with the child. He would find some way to persuade her to deliver the baby out of wedlock. She really didn’t understand all the implications of her threat to go to one of those women he’d only heard about—old, frequently unclean women whose instruments helped a young girl out of a predicament, in violation of the laws of France and of the Church. He must make her understand and reject that alternative.
He sat a while in a café near Notre Dame, sipping red wine in the summer sunshine. He began to feel better, more confident. He even turned his thoughts to a new piece of work. Something along the lines Paul had talked about. Not an American subject—that would be going too far—but one from his blockade-running days. His mind focused on an image of a smoky, crowded cantina in the Mexican town of Matamoras on the Rio Grande. He recalled a dancer he’d seen perform there. A lovely, dark-eyed wench with a sinuous body. Soon the organization of a picture suggested itself. Then, excited, he began to expand the mental canvas to include a few spectators and then the whole of one side of the cantina. He had never planned anything half so ambitious.
Toward the end of the afternoon he drifted north again. Presently he reached the Café Guerbois at number eleven Grand Rue des Batignolles. Usually the group gathered late on Friday, so he didn’t expect to find anyone—not on a Sunday evening when the café had no other trade. But Edouard Manet was there.
The unofficial head of the Batignolles group was in his late thirties. He came from a bourgeois family just as Paul did. At that point the resemblance ended. Manet’s dress and deportment were impeccable. His light brown beard was always meticulously trimmed and combed. Next to his wineglass lay an expensive walking stick and a pair of yellow gloves. He hardly looked like the sort who would scandalize established authority, but since the early 1860s he had been doing just that with paintings such as Concert in the Tuileries Gardens, Olympia and Luncheon on the Grass, the provocative study of two gentlemen in conventional daytime attire enjoying a woodland picnic with two young women—one in a diaphanous drapery, the other stark naked.
Manet’s infamous picture, so realistic and yet so outrageously fantastic at the same time, had been refused by the jury of the 1863 Salon. Manet and so many other artists had protested so forcefully about the unimaginative rejection of anything the least bit new, Napoléon III had done a surprising turnabout and announced that the rejected works would be shown in a second, unofficial exhibit—the Salon des Refusés.
Ever since, Manet had come to be the acknowledged leader of everything revolutionary in French painting. The café group—Renoir, Degas, Fantin-Latour, Monet, Pissarro, Paul and others—drew inspiration from his talent and encouragement from his friendship. Some of Manet’s work was even tiptoeing around the margins of respectability. Luncheon had been hung in the ’69 Salon. But the artist himself was still not acceptable. This spring, Salon jury selection procedures had been revised so that the jury would include practicing painters. Manet’s candidacy had been rejected because of his radical views.
“Well—Matthew!” Manet extended his hand, shook Mart’s. “How goes it?”
“Not very well,” Matt said with a shrug and a grin.
“Pity. I’ve had the same kind of day myself.” He turned and raised his voice slightly. “Lisa?” There was no response from the back, where Matt could hear the splash of wash water and the clink of dishes. “I’ve been meaning to ask you how you fared in your little experiment a few weeks ago.”
Matt pulled a face. “The cocaine made me sick for three days. I don’t see why people are convinced it frees the mind. All it did was muddle mine. I have trouble enough turning out work without trying to do it dead drunk or delirious from an injection.”
“You sound as if you’re having a good deal of trouble right now.”
“Nothing’s coming out right. I’ve been tempted to chuck the whole business.”
Manet frowned. “That would be a loss. I hope you’ll reconsider. Your work is still rough, but it shows great vitality. And unmistakable promise.”
A damp hand speared over Matt’s shoulder, taking him by surprise. The hand closed on his groin and a coarse, teasing female voice said, “I know something else that shows a lot of promise.”
She let go. Matt kissed the reddened hand that smelled of strong soap. Lisa rumpled his hair. She was ten years older than Matt—closer to Manet’s age—always disheveled, with her hair falling in her eyes.
She leaned over to set a glass and a new carafe of wine on the marble table. “Eh, Matthew, my Virginia dove”—she pronounced it Var-ghin-ya—“why can’t you and I ever be close friends?” She caught his head in the crook of her elbow and squeezed him against her blouse and her large breasts. “You know how close I mean.”
Manet coughed and examined the ceiling. She released him. “Believe me, if that English girl ever turns her back on you, I’ll snatch you away.”
“You’ll be too busy avoiding all your other suitors, Lisa. I saw one of them yesterday.”
She brightened. “You did? Who?”
“That Prussian, Lepp.”
“Oh, God. Spare me!”
He described the encounter at the Gare du Nord, including Lepp’s promise that he’d be back to see her. At that, she shivered.
“Let’s hope not. After he was in here the last time, I made a few inquiries. Some of the—ah—working girls in the neighborhood know a little about him.” She proceeded to describe some of Lepp’s aberrations. Manet grew increasingly embarrassed, but the barmaid paid no attention. She said Lepp had been heard to boast about a secret pied-à-te
rre somewhere on the left bank. “He reportedly pays both prostitutes and impoverished students from the Sorbonne to spend an hour satisfying his peculiar needs. I want no part of that fellow, I tell y—”
“I didn’t expect anyone to be here!” a bellowing voice interrupted. “Hortense and I have had a terrible fight!”
Matt stood up. “Hello, Paul.” His friend looked even more wild-eyed than usual. Manet sat motionless, as if wanting to be inconspicuous. He and Matt’s friend didn’t always hit it off.
“Lisa, you unwashed slut, get me some wine!” Paul yelled, grabbing a chair and sitting down.
She made a face and told him to get it himself. She flounced out. Paul didn’t move.
Manet made an effort to be cordial, extended his hand. “How are you, Cézanne?”
Paul glared. “I do not shake your hand, Mr. Manet. I have not washed for a week.”
The other man sighed. “Really, Cézanne, your rudeness is unbelievable sometimes.”
Paul fixed the other artist with a murderous eye. “I’ve nothing to say to you. I’m not intelligent enough to speak on your level. I don’t even know why I sit at this table. I don’t fit in. I don’t dress or speak like a smug provincial lawyer!”
Manet snatched up his stick and gloves. “In one of your insufferable moods, are you? I shouldn’t wonder Hortense had her claws out. She’d be happier living with a wild orangutan. Good evening!”
Manet stalked out. Matt stared after him, then sighed in an annoyed way. “Why do you insult everyone, Paul?”
Paul slammed his elbows on the table and covered his eyes with his palms. “Shut up. Just shut up and leave me alone.”
It was sensible to give in to Paul’s wishes when he was in such a state. Matt slipped away from the table. For a moment he was able to appreciate Dolly’s feeling that a normal existence was much more preferable than a career among such emotionally stunted people. It was difficult for Matt to make outsiders understand that outrageous character flaws in a man such as Paul were more than made up for by incredible talent. Indeed, the flaws had probably helped nurture the talent. They were its price.
