"She is not living?"
"She has gone to her account."
"Her influence on your daughter, then," said Newman encouragingly, "is not to be feared."
"She cared no more for her daughter than for the sole of her shoe! But Noemie has no need of influence. She is sufficient to herself. She is stronger than I."
"She doesn"t obey you, eh?"
"She can"t obey, monsieur, since I don"t command. What would be the use?
It would only irritate her and drive her to some coup de tete. She is very clever, like her mother; she would waste no time about it. As a child--when I was happy, or supposed I was--she studied drawing and painting with first-cla.s.s professors, and they a.s.sured me she had a talent. I was delighted to believe it, and when I went into society I used to carry her pictures with me in a portfolio and hand them round to the company. I remember, once, a lady thought I was offering them for sale, and I took it very ill. We don"t know what we may come to! Then came my dark days, and my explosion with Madame Nioche. Noemie had no more twenty-franc lessons; but in the course of time, when she grew older, and it became highly expedient that she should do something that would help to keep us alive, she bethought herself of her palette and brushes. Some of our friends in the quartier p.r.o.nounced the idea fantastic: they recommended her to try bonnet making, to get a situation in a shop, or--if she was more ambitious--to advertise for a place of dame de compagnie. She did advertise, and an old lady wrote her a letter and bade her come and see her. The old lady liked her, and offered her her living and six hundred francs a year; but Noemie discovered that she pa.s.sed her life in her arm-chair and had only two visitors, her confessor and her nephew: the confessor very strict, and the nephew a man of fifty, with a broken nose and a government clerkship of two thousand francs. She threw her old lady over, bought a paint-box, a canvas, and a new dress, and went and set up her easel in the Louvre.
There in one place and another, she has pa.s.sed the last two years; I can"t say it has made us millionaires. But Noemie tells me that Rome was not built in a day, that she is making great progress, that I must leave her to her own devices. The fact is, without prejudice to her genius, that she has no idea of burying herself alive. She likes to see the world, and to be seen. She says, herself, that she can"t work in the dark. With her appearance it is very natural. Only, I can"t help worrying and trembling and wondering what may happen to her there all alone, day after day, amid all that coming and going of strangers. I can"t be always at her side. I go with her in the morning, and I come to fetch her away, but she won"t have me near her in the interval; she says I make her nervous. As if it didn"t make me nervous to wander about all day without her! Ah, if anything were to happen to her!" cried M. Nioche, clenching his two fists and jerking back his head again, portentously.
"Oh, I guess nothing will happen," said Newman.
"I believe I should shoot her!" said the old man, solemnly.
"Oh, we"ll marry her," said Newman, "since that"s how you manage it; and I will go and see her tomorrow at the Louvre and pick out the pictures she is to copy for me."
M. Nioche had brought Newman a message from his daughter, in acceptance of his magnificent commission, the young lady declaring herself his most devoted servant, promising her most zealous endeavor, and regretting that the proprieties forbade her coming to thank him in person. The morning after the conversation just narrated, Newman reverted to his intention of meeting Mademoiselle Noemie at the Louvre. M. Nioche appeared preoccupied, and left his budget of anecdotes unopened; he took a great deal of snuff, and sent certain oblique, appealing glances toward his stalwart pupil. At last, when he was taking his leave, he stood a moment, after he had polished his hat with his calico pocket-handkerchief, with his small, pale eyes fixed strangely upon Newman.
"What"s the matter?" our hero demanded.
"Excuse the solicitude of a father"s heart!" said M. Nioche. "You inspire me with boundless confidence, but I can"t help giving you a warning. After all, you are a man, you are young and at liberty. Let me beseech you, then, to respect the innocence of Mademoiselle Nioche!"
Newman had wondered what was coming, and at this he broke into a laugh.
He was on the point of declaring that his own innocence struck him as the more exposed, but he contented himself with promising to treat the young girl with nothing less than veneration. He found her waiting for him, seated upon the great divan in the Salon Carre. She was not in her working-day costume, but wore her bonnet and gloves and carried her parasol, in honor of the occasion. These articles had been selected with unerring taste, and a fresher, prettier image of youthful alertness and blooming discretion was not to be conceived. She made Newman a most respectful curtsey and expressed her grat.i.tude for his liberality in a wonderfully graceful little speech. It annoyed him to have a charming young girl stand there thanking him, and it made him feel uncomfortable to think that this perfect young lady, with her excellent manners and her finished intonation, was literally in his pay. He a.s.sured her, in such French as he could muster, that the thing was not worth mentioning, and that he considered her services a great favor.
"Whenever you please, then," said Mademoiselle Noemie, "we will pa.s.s the review."
They walked slowly round the room, then pa.s.sed into the others and strolled about for half an hour. Mademoiselle Noemie evidently relished her situation, and had no desire to bring her public interview with her striking-looking patron to a close. Newman perceived that prosperity agreed with her. The little thin-lipped, peremptory air with which she had addressed her father on the occasion of their former meeting had given place to the most lingering and caressing tones.
"What sort of pictures do you desire?" she asked. "Sacred, or profane?"
"Oh, a few of each," said Newman. "But I want something bright and gay."
"Something gay? There is nothing very gay in this solemn old Louvre. But we will see what we can find. You speak French to-day like a charm. My father has done wonders."
"Oh, I am a bad subject," said Newman. "I am too old to learn a language."
"Too old? Quelle folie!" cried Mademoiselle Noemie, with a clear, shrill laugh. "You are a very young man. And how do you like my father?"
"He is a very nice old gentleman. He never laughs at my blunders."
"He is very comme il faut, my papa," said Mademoiselle Noemie, "and as honest as the day. Oh, an exceptional probity! You could trust him with millions."
"Do you always obey him?" asked Newman.
"Obey him?"
"Do you do what he bids you?"
The young girl stopped and looked at him; she had a spot of color in either cheek, and in her expressive French eye, which projected too much for perfect beauty, there was a slight gleam of audacity. "Why do you ask me that?" she demanded.
"Because I want to know."
"You think me a bad girl?" And she gave a strange smile.
Newman looked at her a moment; he saw that she was pretty, but he was not in the least dazzled. He remembered poor M. Nioche"s solicitude for her "innocence," and he laughed as his eyes met hers. Her face was the oddest mixture of youth and maturity, and beneath her candid brow her searching little smile seemed to contain a world of ambiguous intentions. She was pretty enough, certainly to make her father nervous; but, as regards her innocence, Newman felt ready on the spot to affirm that she had never parted with it. She had simply never had any; she had been looking at the world since she was ten years old, and he would have been a wise man who could tell her any secrets. In her long mornings at the Louvre she had not only studied Madonnas and St. Johns; she had kept an eye upon all the variously embodied human nature around her, and she had formed her conclusions. In a certain sense, it seemed to Newman, M.
Nioche might be at rest; his daughter might do something very audacious, but she would never do anything foolish. Newman, with his long-drawn, leisurely smile, and his even, unhurried utterance, was always, mentally, taking his time; and he asked himself, now, what she was looking at him in that way for. He had an idea that she would like him to confess that he did think her a bad girl.
"Oh, no," he said at last; "it would be very bad manners in me to judge you that way. I don"t know you."
"But my father has complained to you," said Mademoiselle Noemie.
"He says you are a coquette."
"He shouldn"t go about saying such things to gentlemen! But you don"t believe it."
"No," said Newman gravely, "I don"t believe it."
She looked at him again, gave a shrug and a smile, and then pointed to a small Italian picture, a Marriage of St. Catherine. "How should you like that?" she asked.
"It doesn"t please me," said Newman. "The young lady in the yellow dress is not pretty."
"Ah, you are a great connoisseur," murmured Mademoiselle Noemie.
"In pictures? Oh, no; I know very little about them."
"In pretty women, then."
"In that I am hardly better."
"What do you say to that, then?" the young girl asked, indicating a superb Italian portrait of a lady. "I will do it for you on a smaller scale."
"On a smaller scale? Why not as large as the original?"
Mademoiselle Noemie glanced at the glowing splendor of the Venetian masterpiece and gave a little toss of her head. "I don"t like that woman. She looks stupid."
"I do like her," said Newman. "Decidedly, I must have her, as large as life. And just as stupid as she is there."
The young girl fixed her eyes on him again, and with her mocking smile, "It certainly ought to be easy for me to make her look stupid!" she said.
"What do you mean?" asked Newman, puzzled.
She gave another little shrug. "Seriously, then, you want that portrait--the golden hair, the purple satin, the pearl necklace, the two magnificent arms?"
"Everything--just as it is."