She had recognised some one at a distance, to whom she nodded. Then she turned and looked at the English girl, laughed, and caught her by the wrist.
"Monsieur David, here are Monsieur and Madame Oervin. Have you thought of sending your sister to them? If so, I will present you.
Why not? They would amuse her. Madame Cervin would take her to all the shops, to the races, to the Bois. _Que sais-je_?
All the while she was looking from one to the other. David"s face cleared. He thought he saw a way out of this _impa.s.se_.
"Louie, come here a moment. I want to speak to you."
And he carried her off a few yards, while the Cervins came up and greeted the group round the Infanta. A powerfully built, thickset man, in a grey suit, who had been walking with them, fell back as they joined Elise Delaunay, and began to examine a Pieter de Hooghe with minuteness.
Meanwhile David wrestled with his sister. She had much better let Mademoiselle Delaunay arrange with these people. Then Madame Cervin could take her about wherever she wanted to go. He would make a bargain to that effect. As for him, he must and would see Paris--pictures, churches, public buildings. If the Louvre bored her, everything would bore her, and it was impossible either that he should spend his time at her ap.r.o.n-string, flattening his nose against the shop-windows, or that she should go about alone. He was not going to have her taken for "a bad lot," and treated accordingly, he told her frankly, with an imperious tightening of all his young frame. He had discovered some time since that it was necessary to be plain with Louie.
She hated to be disposed of on any occasion, except by her own will and initiative, and she still made difficulties for the sake of making them, till he grew desperate. Then, when she had pushed his patience to the very last point, she gave way.
"You tell her she"s to do as I want her," she said, threateningly.
"I won"t stay if she doesn"t. And I"ll not have her paid too much."
David led her back to the rest.
"My sister consents. Arrange it if you can, Mademoiselle," he said imploringly to Elise.
A series of quick and somewhat noisy colloquies followed, watched with disapproval by the _gardien_ near, who seemed to be once or twice on the point of interfering.
Mademoiselle Delaunay opened the matter to Madame Cervin, a short, stout woman, with no neck, and a keen, small eye. Money was her daily and hourly preoccupation, and she could have kissed the hem of Elise Delaunay"s dress in grat.i.tude for these few francs thus placed in her way. It was some time now since she had lost her last boarder, and had not been able to obtain another. She took David aside, and, while her look sparkled with covetousness, explained to him volubly all that she would do for Louie, and for how much. And she could talk some English too--certainly she could. Her education had been _excellent_, she was thankful to say.
"_Mon Dieu, qu"elle est belle!_" she wound up. "Ah, Monsieur, you do very right to entrust your sister to me. A young fellow like you--no!--that is not _convenable_. But I--I will be a dragon.
Make your mind quite easy. With me all will go well."
Louie stood in an impatient silence while she was being thus talked over, exchanging looks from time to time with the two artists, who had retired a little behind Mademoiselle Delaunay"s easel, and from that distance were perfectly competent to let the bold-eyed English girl know what they thought of her charms.
At last the bargain was concluded, and the Cervins walked away with Louie in charge. They were to take her to a restaurant, then show her the Rue Royale and the Rue de la Paix, and, finally--David making no demur whatever about the expense--there was to be an afternoon excursion through the Bois to Longchamps, where some of the May races were being run.
As they receded, the man in grey, before the Pieter de Hooghe, looked up, smiled, dropped his eyegla.s.s, and resumed his place beside Madame Cervin. She made a gesture of introduction, and he bowed across her to the young stranger.
For the first time Elise perceived him. A look of annoyance and disgust crossed her face.
"Do you see," she said, turning to Lenain; "there is that animal, Montjoie? He did well to keep his distance. What do the Cervins want with him?"
The others shrugged their shoulders.
"They say his Maenad would be magnificent if he could keep sober enough to finish her," said Lenain; "it is his last chance; he will go under altogether if he fails; he is almost done for already."
"And what a gift!" said Alphonse, in a lofty tone of critical regret. "He should have been a second Barye. _Ah, la vie Parisienne--la maudite vie Parisienne_!"
Again Lenain exploded.
"Come and lunch, you idiot," he said, taking the lad"s arm; "for whom are you posing?"
But before they departed, they inquired of David in the politest way what they could do for him. He was a stranger to Mollie.
Delaunay"s acquaintance; they were at his service. Should they take him somewhere at night? David, in an effusion of grat.i.tude, suggested "Les Trois Rats." He desired greatly to see the artist world, he said. Alphonse grinned. An appointment was made for eight o"clock, and the two friends walked off.
CHAPTER IV
David and Elise Delaunay thus found themselves left alone. She stood a moment irresolutely before her canvas, then sat down again, and took up her brushes.
"I cannot thank you enough, Mademoiselle," the young fellow began shyly, while the hand which held his stick trembled a little. "We could never have arranged that affair for ourselves."
She coloured and bent over her canvas.
"I don"t know why I troubled myself," she said, in a curious irritable way." Because you are kind!" he cried, his charming smile breaking. "Because you took pity on a pair of strangers, like the guardian angel that you are!"
The effect of the foreign language on him leading him to a more set and literary form of expression than he would have naturally used, was clearly marked in the little outburst.
Elise bit her lip, frowned and fidgeted, and presently looked him straight in the face.
"Monsieur David, warn your sister that that man with the Cervins this morning--the man in grey, the sculptor, M. Montjoie--is a disreputable scoundrel that no decent woman should know."
David was taken aback.
"And Madame Cervin--"
Elise raised her shoulders.
"I don"t offer a solution," she said; "but I have warned you."
"Monsieur Cervin has a somewhat strange appearance," said David, hesitating.
And, in fact, while the negotiations had been going on there had stood beside the talkers a shabby, slouching figure of a man, with longish grizzled hair and a sleepy eye--a strange, remote creature, who seemed to take very little notice of what was pa.s.sing before him. From various indications, however, in the conversation, David had gathered that this looker-on must be the former _prix de Rome_.
Elise explained that Monsieur Carvin was the wreck of a genius. In his youth he had been the chosen pupil of Ingres and Hippolyte Flandrin, had won the _prix de Rome_, and after his three years in the Villa Medicis had come home to take up what was expected to be a brilliant career. Then for some mysterious reason he had suddenly gone under, disappeared from sight, and the waves of Paris had closed over him. When he reappeared he was broken in health, and married to a retired modiste, upon whose money he was living. He painted bad pictures intermittently, but spent most of his time in hanging about his old haunts--the Louvre, the Salon, the various exhibitions, and the dealers, where he was commonly regarded by the younger artists who were on speaking terms with him as a tragic old bore, with a head of his own worth painting, however if he could be got to sit--for an augur or a chief priest.
"It was _absinthe_ that did it," said Elise calmly, taking a fresh charge into her brush, and working away at the black tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs of the Infanta"s dress. "Every day, about four, he disappears into the Boulevard. Generally, Madame Cervin drives him like a sheep; but when four o"clock comes she daren"t interfere with him. If she did, he would be unmanageable altogether. So he takes his two hours or so, and when he comes back there is not much amiss with him. Sometimes he is excited, and talks quite brilliantly about the past--sometimes he is nervous and depressed, starts at a sound, and storms about the noises in the street. Then she hurries him off to bed, and the next morning he is quite meek again, and tries to paint. But his hand shakes, and he can"t see.
So he gives it up, and calls to her to put on her things. Then they wander about Paris, till four o"clock comes round again, and he gives her the slip--always with some elaborate pretence of other.
Oh! she takes it quietly. Other vices might give her more trouble."
The tone conveyed the affectation of a complete knowledge of the world, which saw no reason whatever to be ashamed of itself. The girl was just twenty, but she had lived for years, first with a disreputable father, and then in a perpetual _camaraderie_, within the field of art, with men of all sorts and kinds. There are certain feminine blooms which a _milieu_ like this effaces with deadly rapidity.
For the first time David was jarred. The idealist in him recoiled.
His conscience, too, was roused about Louie. He had handed her over, it seemed, to the custody of a drunkard and his wife, who had immediately thrown her into the company of a man no decent woman ought to know. And Mademoiselle Delaunay had led him into it. The guardian angel speech of a few moments before rang in his ears uncomfortably.
Moreover, whatever rebellions his young imagination might harbour, whatever license in his eyes the great pa.s.sions might claim, he had maintained for months and years past a practical asceticism, which had left its mark. The young man who had starved so gaily on sixpence a day that he might read and learn, had nothing but impatience and disgust for the glutton and the drunkard. It was a kind of physical repulsion. And the woman"s light indulgent tone seemed for a moment to divide them.
Elise looked round. Why this silence in her companion?