"Oh, he!--well, there is only one word for him--he is a _brute_ I" said Elise, drawing vigorously, her colour rising.
"Any woman will tell you that. Oh, he has plenty of talent,--he might be anything. Carpeaux took him up at one time, got him commissions. Five or six years ago there was quite a noise about him for two or three Salons. Then people began to drop him. I believe he was the most mean, ungrateful animal towards those who had been kind to him. He drinks besides--he is over head and ears in debt, always wanting money, borrowing here and there, then locking his door for weeks, making believe to be out of town--only going out at night. As for his ways with women"--she shrugged her shoulders--"Was your sister still sitting to him when we left, or was it at an end? Hasn"t your sister been sitting to him for his statue?"
She paused again and studied him with her shrewd, bright eyes.
He coloured angrily.
"I believe so--I tried to stop it--it was no use."
She laughed out.
"No--I imagine she does what she wants to do. Well, we all do, _mon ami!_ After all"--and she shrugged her shoulders again-- "I suppose she can do what I did?"
""What _you_ did!"
She went on drawing in sharp deliberate strokes; her breath came fast.
"He met me on the stairs one night--it was just after I had taken the _atelier_. I knew no one in the house--I was quite defenceless there. He insulted me--I had a little walking-stick in my hand, my cousin had given me--I struck him with it across the face twice, three times--if you look close you will see the mark. You may imagine he tells fine stories of me when he gets the chance.
_Oh! je m"en fiche!_"
The scorn of the last gesture was unmeasured.
"_Canaille!_" said David, between his teeth. "If you had told me this!"
Her expression changed and softened.
"You asked me no questions after that quarrel we had in the Louvre,"
she said, excusing herself. "You will understand it is not a reminiscence one is exactly proud of; I did speak to Madame Cervin once--"
David said nothing, but sat staring before him into the far vistas of the wood. It seemed strange that so great a smart and fear as had possessed him since yesterday, should allow of any lesser smart within or near it. Yet that sc.r.a.p of tremulous writing weighed heavy. _Where_ was Louie; why had she not written? So far he had turned impatiently away from the thought of her, reiterating that he had done his best, that she had chosen her own path. Now in this fragrant quiet of the forest the quick vision of some irretrievable wreck presented itself to him; he thought of Mr.
Ancrum--of John--and a cold shudder ran through him. In it spoke the conscience of a lifetime.
Elise meanwhile laid aside her charcoal, began to dash in some paint, drew back presently to look at it from a distance, and then, glancing aside, suddenly threw down her brushes, and ran up to David.
She sat down beside him, and with a coaxing, childish gesture, drew his arm about her.
"_Tu me fais pitie, mon ami!_" she said, looking up into his face. "Is it your sister? Go and find her--I will wait for you."
He turned upon her, his black eyes all pa.s.sion, his lips struggling with speech.
"My place is here," he said. "My life is here!"
Then, as she was silent, not knowing in her agitation what to say, he broke out:
"What was in your mind yesterday, Elise? what is there to-day?
There is something--something I _will_ know."
She was frightened by his look. Never did fear and grief speak more plainly from a human face. The great deep within had broken up.
"I was sorry," she said, trembling, "sorry to have hurt you. I wanted to make up."
He flung her hand away from him with an impatient gesture.
"There was more than that!" he said violently; "will you be like all the rest--betray me without a sign?"
"David!"
She bit her lip proudly. Then the tears welled up into her grey eyes, and she looked round at him--hesitated--began and stopped again--then broke into irrevocable confession.
"David!--Monsieur David!--how can it go on? _Voyons_--I said to myself yesterday--I am torturing him and myself--I cannot make him happy--it is not in me--not in my destiny. It must end--it must,--it _must_, for both our sakes. But then first,--first--"
"Be quiet!" he said, laying an iron hand on her arm. "I knew it all."
And he turned away from her, covering his face.
This time she made no attempt to caress him. She clasped her hands round her knees and remained quite still, gazing--yet seeing nothing--into the green depths which five minutes before had been to her a torturing ecstasy of colour and light. The tears which had been gathering fell, the delicate lip quivered.
Struck by her silence at last, he looked up--watched her a moment--then he dragged himself up to her and knelt beside her.
"Have I made you so miserable?" he said, under his breath.
"It is--it is--the irreparableness of it all," she answered, half sobbing. "No undoing it ever, and how a woman glides into it, how lightly, knowing so little!--thinking herself so wise! And if she has deceived herself, if she is not made for love, if she has given herself for so little--for an illusion--for a dream that breaks and must break--how dare the _man_ reproach her, after all?"
She raised her burning eyes to him. The resentment in them seemed to be more than individual, it was the resentment of the woman, of her s.e.x.
She stabbed him to the heart by what she said--by what she left unsaid. He took her little cold hand, put it to his lips--tried to speak.
"Don"t," she said, drawing it away and hiding her face on her knees. "Don"t say anything. It is not you, it is G.o.d and Nature that I accuse."
Strange, bitter word!--word of revolt! He lay on his face beside her for many minutes afterwards, tasting the bitterness of it, revolving those other words she had said--_"an illusion--a dream that breaks--must break."_ Then he made a last effort. He came close to her, laid his arm timidly round her shoulders, bent his cheek to hers.
"Elise, listen to me a little. You say the debt is on my side--that is true--true--a thousand times true! I only ask you, _implore_ you, to let me pay it. Let it be as you please--on what terms you please--servant or lover. All I pray for is to pay that debt, with my life, my heart."
She shook her head softly, her face still hidden.
"When I am with you," she said, as though the words were wrung out of her, "I must be a woman. You agitate me, you divide my mind, and my force goes. There are both capacities in me, and one destroys the other. And I want--I _want_ my art!"
She threw back her head with a superb gesture. But he did not flinch.
"You shall have it," he said pa.s.sionately, "have it abundantly. Do you think I want to keep you for ever loitering here? Do you think I don"t know what ambition and will mean? that I am only fit for kissing?"
He stopped almost with a smile, thinking of that harsh struggle to know and to have, in which his youth had been so far consumed night and day. Then words rushed upon him again, and he went on with a growing power and freedom.
"I never looked at a woman till I saw you!--never had a whim, a caprice. I have eaten my heart out with the struggle first for bread, then for knowledge. But when you came across me, then the world was all made new, and I became a new creature, your creature."
He touched her face with a quick, tender hand, laid it against his breast, and spoke so, bending piteously down to her, within reach of her quivering mouth, her moist eyes:--
"Tell me this, Elise--answer me this! How can there be great art, great knowledge, only from the brain,--without pa.s.sion, without experience?
You and I have been _living_ what Musset, what Hugo, what Shakespeare wrote," and he struck the little volume of Musset beside him. "Is not that worth a summer month? not worth the artist"s while? But it is nearly gone. You can"t wonder that I count the moments of it like a miser! I have had a _hard_ life, and this has transfigured it. Whatever happens now in time or eternity, this month is to the good--for me and for you, Elise!--yes, for you, too! But when it is over,--see if I hold you back! We will work together--climb--wrestle, together. And on what terms you please,--mind that,--only dictate them. I deny your "illusion," your "dream that breaks." You _have_ been happy! I dare to tell you so. But part now,--shirk our common destiny,--and you will indeed have given all for nothing, while I--"