Bohemian Days Part 12

"Are you?"

"You ought to see my chambers."

"Let me buy you a bracelet!"

"I love you!"

Ralph's voice stopped suddenly. There were deep echoes in the great room, which made him thrill and shudder. How still and terrible were the silence and loneliness!

A pang, half of guilt, half of fear, went keenly to his heart. It seemed to him that his mother was standing by his shoulder, pointing with her thin, tremulous fingers to the writing beneath him, and saying:

"My boy, what does this mean?"

He held it in the candle-flame, and thought he felt better when it was burned; but he could not burn all those thoughts of which the paper was only a copy.

PART II.

POSSESSION.

If the _cremery_ had seemed lonely by gaslight, what must Ralph Flare have said of it next morning, as he sat in his old place and watched the _ouvriers_ at breakfast? They came in, one by one, with their baton of brown bread, and called for two sous' worth of coffee and milk. The men wore blouses of blue and white, and jested after the Gallic code with the sewing-girls. This bread and coffee, and a pear which they should eat at noon, would give them strength to labor till nightfall brought its frugal repast. Yet they were happy as crickets, and a great deal more noisy.

Here is little Suzette, smiling and skipping, and driving her glances straight into Ralph Flare's heart.

"Good-day, sir," she cries, and takes a chair close by him, after the manner of a sparrow alighting. She smooths back her pure wristbands, disclosing the grace of the arm, and as she laughs in Ralph's face he knows what she is saying to herself; it is more doubtful that he loves her than that she knows it.

"_Peut-etre, monsieur, vous-avez besoin des gants?_"

She gave him the card of her _boutique_, and laughed like a sunbeam playing on a rivulet, and went out singing like the witch that she was.

"I don't want gloves," said Ralph Flare; "I won't go to her shop."

But he asked Pere George the direction, notwithstanding; and though his conscience seemed to be blocking up the way--a tangible, visible, provoking conscience--he put his feet upon it and shut his lips, and found the place.

Ralph Flare has often remarked since--for he is quite an artist now--that of all scenes in art or nature that _boutique_ was to him the rarest. He has tried to put it into color--the miniature counter, the show-case, the background of boxes, each with a b.u.t.ton looking mischievously at him, or a glove shaking its forefinger, or a shapely pair of hose making him blush, and the daintiest child in the world, flus.h.i.+ng and flirting and gossiping before him; but the sketch recalls matters which he would forget, his hands lose command, something makes his eye very dim, and he lays aside his implements, and takes a long walk, and wears a sober face all that day.

We may all follow up the sequence of a young man's thoughts in doing a strange wrong for the first time. If Ralph's pa.s.sions of themselves could not mislead him, there were not lacking arguments and advisers to teach him that this was no offence, or that the usage warranted the sin.

He became acquainted, through Terrapin, with dozens of his countrymen; the youngest and the oldest and the most estimable had their open attachments. So far as he could remark, the married and the unmarried tradesmen's wives in Paris were nearly equal in consideration. How could he become perfect in the language without some such incentive and a.s.sociate?

His income was not considerable, but they told him that to double his expenses was certain economy. He was very lonely, and he loved company.

His age was that at which the affections and the instincts alike impel the man to know more of woman--the processes of her mind, her capacities, her emotions, the idiosyncrasies which divided her from his own s.e.x.

Hitherto he had been chaste, though once when he had confessed it to Terrapin, that incredulous person said something about the marines, and repeated it as a good joke; he felt, indeed, that he was not entirely manly. He had half a doubt that he was worthy to walk with men, else why had not his desires, like theirs, been stronger than his virtue; and had not the very feebleness of desire proved also a feebleness of power?

But, more than all, he had a weakness for Suzette.

There was old Terrapin, with bonnets and dresses in his wardrobe, and a sewing-basket on his mantel, and with his own huge boots outside the door a pair of tapering gaiters, and in his easy-chair a little being to sing and chatter and mix his punch and make his cigarettes. Ah! how much more entrancing would be Ralph's chamber with Suzette to garnish it! He would make a thousand studies of her face; she should be his model, his professor, his divinity! What was gross in her he would refine; what dark he would make known. They would walk together by the river side, into the parks, into the open country. He would know no regrets for the friends across the sea. Europe would become beautiful to him, and his art would find inspiration from so much loveliness. No indissoluble tie would bind them, to make kindness a duty and love necessity. No social tyranny should prescribe where he should visit, and where she should not. The hues of the picture deepened and brightened as he imagined it.

He was resolved to do this thing, though a phantom should come to his bedside every night, and every shadow be his accusation.

He committed to memory some phrases of French; Terrapin was his interpreter, and they went together--those three and a sober _cocher_--to the Bois de Boulogne. Terrapin stated to Suzette in a shockingly informal way that Ralph loved her and would give her a beautiful chamber and relieve her from the drudgery of the glove-shop.

They were pa.s.sing down the broad, gravelled drive, with the foliage above them edged with moonlight, the mock cataract singing musically below, and the _cocher_, half asleep, nodding and slas.h.i.+ng his horses.

And while Terrapin turned his head and made himself invisible in cigar-smoke, Ralph folded Suzette to his breast, and kissed her once so demonstratively that the _cocher_ awoke with a spring and nearly fell off the box, but was quite too much of a _cocher_ to turn and investigate the matter.

That was the ceremony, and that night the nuptials. Few young couples make a better commencement. She gave him a list of her debts, and he paid them. They removed from Ralph's dim quarters to a cheap and cheerful chamber upon the new Boulevard. It was on the fifth floor; the room was just adapted for so little a couple. Superficially observed, the furniture resolved itself into an enormous clock and a monstrously fine mirror; but after a while you might remark four small chairs and a great one, a bureau and a wardrobe, a sofa and a canopied bed; and just without the two gorgeously curtained windows lay a cunning balcony, where they could sit of evenings, with the old ruin of the Hotel Cluny beneath them, the towers of Notre Dame in the middle ground, and at the horizon the beautifully wooded hill of Pere la Chaise.

Suzette had tristful eyes when they rested upon this cemetery. Her baby lay there, without a stone--not without a flower.

"_Pauvre pet.i.te Jules!_" she used to say, nestling close to Ralph, and for a little while they would not speak nor move, but the smoke of his cigar made a charmed circle around them, and the stars came out above, and the panorama of the great Boulevard moved on at their feet.

Their first difficulties were financial, of course. Suzette would have liked a silken robe, a new bonnet, a paletot, gloves and concomitants unlimited. She delighted to walk upon the Boulevard, the Rue Rivoli, and into the Palais Royal, looking into the shop-windows and selecting what she would buy when Ralph's remittances came. Her hospitality when his friends visited him did less honor to her purse than to her heart. She certainly made excellent punches; Terrapin thought her cigarettes unrivalled; she was fond of cutting a fruit-pie, and was quite a _connoisseur_ with wines. Ralph did not wonder at her tidiness when the laundry bills were presented, but doubted that the _coiffeur_ beautified her hair; and one day, when a cool gentleman in civil uniform knocked at the door, and insisted upon the immediate payment of a bill for fifty francs, he lost his temper and said bad words. What could be done?

Suzette was sobbing; Ralph detested "scenes;" he threatened to leave the hotel and Paris, and frightened her very much--and paid the money.

"You said, Suzette, that you had rendered a full account of all your indebtedness. You told me a lie!"

"Poor boy," she replied, "this debt was so old that I never expected to hear of it."

"Have you any more--old or otherwise?"

Suzette said demurely that she did not owe a sou in the world, but was able to recall thirty francs in the course of the afternoon, and a.s.sured him, truly, that this was the last.

Still, she lacked economy. They went to the same _cremery_, but her meals cost one half more than his. She never objected to a ride in a _voiture_; she liked to go to the b.a.l.l.s, but walked very soberly upon his arm, recognizing n.o.body, and exacting the same behavior from Ralph.

Let him look at an unusually pretty girl, through a shop-window, upon his peril! If a letter came for him signed Lizzie, or Annie, or Mary, she took the dictionary and tried to interpret it, and in the end called him a _vilain_ and wept.

Toward the letters signed "Lizzie" she conceived a deep antipathy. With a woman's instinct she discerned that "Lizzie" was more to Ralph than any other correspondent. A single letter satisfied her of this; and when he was reading it, for the second time, she s.n.a.t.c.hed it from his hand and flung it fiercely upon the floor. Ralph's eyes blazed menace and her own cowered.

"Take up that letter, Suzette!"

"I won't!"

"Take it up, I say! I command! instantly!" He had risen to his feet, and was the master now. She stooped, with pale jealousy lying whitely in her temples, and gave it to him meekly, and sat down very stricken and desolate. There was one whom he loved better than her--she felt it bitterly--a love more respectful, more profound--a woman, perhaps, whom he meant to make his wife some day, when SHE should be only a shameful memory!

It may have been the reproach of this infidelity, or the thought of his home, or the infatuation of his present guileful attachment, which kept Ralph Flare from labor.

There was the great Louvre, filled with the riches of the old masters, and the galleries of the Luxembourg with the gems of the French school, so marvellous in color and so superb in composition, and the mighty museum of Versailles, with its miles of battle pictures--yet the third month of his tenure in Paris was hastening by, and he had not made one copy.

Suzette was a bad model. She _posed_ twice, but changed her position, and yawned, and said it was ridiculous. He had never made more than a crayon portrait of her. He found, too, that five hundred francs a month barely sufficed to keep them, and once, in the interval of a remittance, they were in danger of hunger. Yet Suzette plied her needle bravely, and was never so proud as when she had spread the dinner she had earned. In acknowledgment of this fidelity Ralph took her to a grand _magasin_, where they examined the goods gravely, as married folks do, consulting each other, and trying to seem very sage and anxious.

There probably was never such a bonnet as Suzette's in the world. It was black, and full of white roses, and floating a defiant ostrich-plume, and tied with broad red ribbons, whereby she could be recognized from one end of the Luxembourg gardens to the other.

The paletot was clever in like manner; she made the dress herself, and its fit was perfection, showing her plump little figure all the plumper, while its black color set off the whiteness of her simple collar, and with those magic gaiters, Ralph's gift also, he used to sit in the big chair, peering at her, and in a quandary as to whether he had ever been so happy before, or ever so disquieted.

"Now, my little woman," said Ralph, "I have redeemed my promises; you have a chamber, and garments, and subsistence--more than any of your friends--and I am with you always; few wives live so pleasantly; but there is one thing which you must do."

Suzette, sitting upon his knee, protested that he could not command any impossible thing which she would not undertake.

"You must work a little; we are both idle, and if we continue so, may have _ennui_ and may quarrel. After three days I will not pay for your breakfasts, and every day in which you do not breakfast with me, paying for yourself, I will give you no dinner. Remember it, Suzette, for I am in earnest."