The Nabob, Alphonse Daudet [new books to read .txt] 📗

ones. The household of these two women was a curious one. Both were childlike, placing side by side in a common domain, inexperience and ambition, the tranquility of an accomplished destiny and the fever of a life plunged in struggle, all the different qualities manifest even in the serene style of dress affected by this blonde who seemed all white like a faded rose, with something beneath her bright colours that vaguely suggested the footlights, and that brunette with the regular features, who almost always clothed her beauty in dark materials, simple in fold, a semblance, as it were, of virility.
Things unforeseen, caprices, ignorance of even the least important details, led to an extreme disorder in the finances of the household, disorder which was only rectified by dint of privations, by the dismissal of servants, by reforms that were laughable in their exaggeration. During one of these crises, Jenkins had made veiled delicate offers, which, however, were repulsed with contempt by Felicia.
"It is not nice of you," Constance would remark to her, "to be so hard on the poor doctor. After all, there was nothing offensive in his suggestion. An old friend of your father."
"He, any one's friend! Ah, the hypocrite!"
And Felicia, hardly able to contain herself, would give an ironical turn to her wrath, imitating Jenkins with his oily manner and his hand on his heart; then, puffing out her cheeks, she would say in a loud, deep voice full of lying unction:
"Let us be humane, let us be kind. To do good without hope of reward! That is the whole point."
Constance used to laugh till the tears came, in spite of herself. The resemblance was so perfect.
"All the same, you are too hard. You will end by driving him away altogether."
"Little fear of that," a shake of the girl's head would reply.
In effect he always came back, pleasant, amiable, dissimulating his passion, which was visible only when it grew jealous of newcomers, paying assiduous attention to the old dancer, who, in spite of everything, found his good-nature pleasing and recognised in him a man of her own time, of the time when one accosted a woman with a kiss on her hand, with a compliment on her appearance.
One morning, Jenkins having called in the course of his round, found Constance alone and doing nothing in the antechamber.
"You see, doctor, I am on guard," she remarked tranquilly.
"How is that?"
"Felicia is at work. She wishes not to be disturbed; and the servants are so stupid, I am myself seeing that her orders are obeyed."
Then, seeing that the Irishman made a step towards the studio:
"No, no, don't go in. She told me very particularly not to let any one go in."
"But I?"
"I beg you not. You would get me a scolding."
Jenkins was about to take his leave when a burst of laughter from Felicia, coming through the curtains, made him prick up his ears.
"She is not alone, then?"
"No, the Nabob is with her. They are having a sitting for the portrait."
"And why this mystery? It is a very singular thing." He commenced to walk backward and forward, evidently very angry, but containing his wrath.
At last he burst forth.
It was an unheard-of impropriety to let a girl thus shut herself in with a man.
He was surprised that one so serious, so devoted as Constance--What did it look like?
The old lady looked at him with stupefaction. As though Felicia were like other girls! And then what danger was there with the Nabob, so staid a man and so ugly? Besides, Jenkins ought to know quite well that Felicia never consulted anybody, that she always had her own way.
"No, no, it is impossible! I cannot tolerate this," exclaimed the Irishman.
And, without paying any further heed to the dancer, who raised her arms to heaven as a call upon it to witness what was about to happen, he moved towards the studio; but, instead of entering immediately, he softly half-opened the door and raised a corner of the hangings, whereby the portion of the room in which the Nabob was posing became visible to him, although at a considerable distance.
Jansoulet, seated without cravat and with his waist-coat open, was talking apparently in some agitation and in a low voice. Felicia was replying in a similar tone, in laughing whispers. The sitting was very animated. Then a silence, a silken rustle of skirts, and the artist, going up to her model, turned down his linen collar all round with familiar gesture, allowing her light hand to run over the sun-tanned skin.
That Ethiopian face on which the muscles stood out in the very intoxication of health, with its long drooping eyelashes as of some deer being gently stroked in its sleep; the bold profile of the girl as she leaned over those strange features in order to verify their proportions; then a violent, irresistible gesture, clutching the delicate hand as it passed and pressing it to two thick, passionate lips. Jenkins saw all that in one red flash.
The noise that he made in entering caused the two personages instantly to resume their respective positions, and, in the strong light which dazzled his prying eyes, he saw the young girl standing before him, indignant, stupefied.
"Who is that? Who has taken the liberty?" and the Nabob, on his platform, with his collar turned down, petrified, monumental.
Jenkins, a little abashed, frightened by his own audacity, murmured some excuses. He had something very urgent to say to M. Jansoulet, a piece of news which was most important and would suffer no delay. "He knew upon the best authority that certain decorations were to be bestowed on the 16th of March."
Immediately the face of the Nabob, that for a moment had been frowning, relaxed.
"Ah! can it be true?"
He abandoned his pose. The thing was worth the trouble, _que diable!_ M. de la Perriere, a secretary of the department involved had been commissioned by the Empress to visit the Bethlehem Refuge. Jenkins had come in search of the Nabob to take him to see the secretary at the Tuileries and to appoint a day. This visit to Bethlehem, it meant the cross for him.
"Quick, let us start, my dear doctor. I follow you."
He was no longer angry with Jenkins for having disturbed him, and he knotted his cravat feverishly, forgetting in his new emotions how he had been upset a moment earlier, for ambition with him came before all else.
While the two men were talking in a half-whisper, Felicia, standing motionless before them, with quivering nostrils and her lip curled in contempt, watched them with an air of saying, "Well, I am waiting."
Jansoulet apologized for being obliged to interrupt the sitting; but a visit of the most extreme importance--She smiled in pity.
"Don't mention it, don't mention it. At the point which we have reached I can work without you."
"Oh, yes," said the doctor, "the work is almost completed."
He added with the air of a connoisseur:
"It is a fine piece of work."
And, counting upon covering his retreat with this compliment, he made for the door with shoulders drooped; but Felicia detained him abruptly.
"Stay, you. I have something to say to you."
He saw clearly from her look that he would have to yield, on pain of an explosion.
"You will excuse me, _cher ami_? Mademoiselle has a word for me. My brougham is at the door. Get in. I will be with you immediately."
As soon as the door of the studio had closed on that heavy, retreating foot, each of them looked at the other full in the face.
"You must be either drunk or mad to have allowed yourself to behave in this way. What! you dare to enter my house when I am not at home? What does this violence mean? By what right--"
"By the right of a despairing and incurable passion."
"Be silent, Jenkins, you are saying words that I will not hear. I allow you to come here out of pity, from habit, because my father was fond of you. But never speak to me again of your--love"--she uttered the word in a very low voice, as though it were shameful--"or you shall never see me again, even though I should have to kill myself in order to escape you once and for all."
A child caught in mischief could not bend its head more humbly than did Jenkins, as he replied:
"It is true. I was in the wrong. A moment of madness, of blindness--But why do you amuse yourself by torturing my heart as you do?"
"I think of you often, however."
"Whether you think of me or not, I am there, I see what goes on, and your coquetry hurts me terribly."
A touch of red mounted to her cheeks at this reproach.
"A coquette, I? And with whom?"
"With that," said the Irishman, indicating the ape-like and powerful bust.
She tried to laugh.
"The Nabob? What folly!"
"Don't tell an untruth about it now. Do you think I am blind, that I do not notice all your little manoeuvres? You remain alone with him for very long at a time. Just now, I was there. I saw you." He dropped his voice as though breath had failed him. "What do you want, strange and cruel child? I have seen you repulse the most handsome, the most noble, the greatest. That little de Gery devours you with his eyes; you take no notice. The Duc de Mora himself has not been able to reach your heart. And it is that man there who is ugly, vulgar, who had no thought of you, whose head is full of quite other matters than love. You saw how he went off just now. What can you mean? What do you expect from him?"
"I want--I want him to marry me. There!"
Coldly, in a softened tone, as though this avowal had brought her nearer the level of the man whom she so much despised, she explained her motives. The life which she led was pushing her into a situation from which there was no way out. She had luxurious and expensive tastes, habits of disorder which nothing could conquer and which would bring her inevitably to poverty, both her and that good Crenmitz, who was allowing herself to be ruined without saying a word. In three years, four years at the outside, all would be over with them. And then the wretched expedients, the debts, the tatters and old shoes of poor artists' households. Or, indeed, the lover, the man who keeps a mistress--that is to say, slavery and infamy.
"Come, come," said Jenkins. "And what of me, am I not here?"
"Anything rather than you," she exclaimed, stiffening. "No, what I require, what I want, is a husband who will protect me from others and from myself, who will save me from many terrible things of which I am afraid in my moments of ennui, from the gulfs in which I feel that I may perish, some one who will love me while I am at work and relieve my poor old wearied fairy of her sentry duty. This man here suits my purpose, and I thought of him from the first time I met him. He is ugly, but he has a kind manner; then, too, he is ridiculously rich, and wealth, upon that scale, must be amusing. Oh, I know well enough. No doubt there is in his life some blemish that has brought him luck. All that money cannot be made honestly. But come, truly now, Jenkins, with your hand on that heart you so often invoke, do you think me a wife who should be very attractive to an honest man? See: among all these young men who