A Modern Lover — Volume 2 Chapter 1

London: Tinsley Brothers, 1 June 1883, pages 1-28, 4,895 words

CHAPTER I.

ENFIN.

When the decorations were finished, Mrs. Bentham gave a ball; not only was the whole county asked, aristocracy, gentry, and hangers on, but a great many guests came from London, and for a week the house was full of people.

An enormous dazzling white lustre hung from the middle of the ceiling, and in the clear flames of its twenty-five wax candles, the vast straw-coloured walls took the appearance of a gigantic ball dress, embroidered with joyous cupids, and sleeping, singing, and revelling nymphs. Up and down the glittering parquetted floor, full of reflected skirts, and patent leather shoes, groups and couples walked and discussed the designs.

Sometimes they would form into masses before a particular panel, and then the pale tints of the women’s shoulders were curious to compare with the rose skins of the nymphs.

Lewis was perfectly enchanted; the workmen had only that day finished hanging the chandelier, and it was therefore the first time he had seen his room lighted up.

What particularly pleased him was the way in which the long tendrils and delicate leaves encircled the pictures, and how their dead green harmonized with the mauve frames. His triumph was complete.

A rippling sound of complimentary words came from wherever Lewis went, and whenever these reached Lord Senton’s ears, he started and, with a pained expression of face, strove to get out of hearing.

Everybody looked at Lewis, admired him, and was anxious to be introduced to him. Lady Marion sat and talked with him, and gave him much advice about Paris, where he was going next week.

The artistic element was, however, wanting. Its sole representative was Mr. Ripple, a young man who wrote paragraphs in the society papers. He had made great friends with Lewis, and was now explaining to a group the signification of some of the allegories, and at the same time threatening the young ladies that he would mention their names in Mayfair, an announcement which caused them to flutter with excitement.

No ball ever passed off more satisfactorily; everybody ate, drank, danced as much as they liked, and some had afterwards the ineffable pleasure of reading an account of their dresses, with their names appended, in Mayfair.

But it was Lewis who came out beautifully. He was described both physically and morally, and his decorations were declared to have been conceived in the best spirit of the seventeenth century. It was the first time he had ever seen his name in print, and his joy consequently grew lyrical in its intensity. He shook Ripple’s hand, and vowed friendship.

But the young man, who had this time contributed nearly half a column, declared that he lived by literature, and was only too glad to make known to the world any new talent it was his good fortune to meet with. Lewis looked at him in admiration.

A fortnight afterwards Lewis started for Paris with twenty-five pounds in his pocket, and three hundred and fifty to his credit at the bank. For not only had Mrs. Bentham insisted on paying a hundred more than was agreed on for the decorations, but she had, as an excuse for giving him money, sat to him for a full-length portrait, which, alas, he had not been able to complete.

First, the drawing did not come right, then he had not been able to get it like, and eventually he found himself obliged to put it aside, and say he would go on with it next year. The failure mortified his vanity; but it proved to him conclusively that he had much to learn, and he went to Paris burning with enthusiasm for work. But when he was gone, Mrs. Bentham became so restless that her life was a burden to her. The long, solitary evenings were intolerable, and even Mrs. Thorpe had to admit that the house was very lonely in his absence.

The only relief in her life was when she got a letter from him; he was a capital correspondent, and every week he wrote, telling her how he was getting on, and how he would owe it all to her if he ever became a great artist.

She loved these letters, and the mornings they came she was always late for breakfast; she remained dreaming over them in bed.

With him her life seemed to have ended; nothing amused, nothing interested her, and she spent her days bitterly watching the spring rain dripping on the saturated terraces, until wearied with ennui, she determined to seek relief in the excitement of the London season. She went to many balls, but they, too, wearied her, and the men who tried to make love to her only annoyed her, and she thought the time would never come to an end.

At last, however, the 12th of July came, and, dusty and travel-stained, Mrs. Bentham and Mrs. Thorpe stepped out of the sea-sick smelling railway carriage on to the dark grey and desolate Gare du Nord, and, thinking of Lewis, drove to the Hotel Maurice.

Next morning, in the gaudy hotel sitting room, Mrs. Thorpe knitted next the fireplace, and Mrs. Bentham, on the red sofa, tried to read the Figaro. The breakfast was laid for three, and both women waited impatiently. At last a footstep was heard, and Lewis rushed into the room, his bright face beaming with smiles.

Mrs. Bentham said little, but from time to time she raised her eyes and looked at him earnestly. Mrs. Thorpe wanted to hear the details of his daily life.

They were delighted to see each other, but the afternoon passed by full of uneasy silences, until the servant announced that the carriage was at the door, and Mrs. Bentham asked him if he would like to come with her for a drive. Lewis was delighted. He was dying to talk with her alone; and as they drove round the fashionable lake, leaning back on the comfortable cushions of the “Victoria," he spoke to her of their long separation, and passionately pressed her to say that she had regretted him.

She equivocated and they quarrelled, but were reconciled on her finally admitting that the London season had bored her dreadfully, and that she was perfectly happy now.

It was sweet to her to find that Lewis knew nothing of Paris; she thought it extraordinary that it should be so; but he explained that he had done nothing but work; and when he told her he had only spent a hundred pounds, she pressed his hands in recognition. They appeared to have grown more intimate, and with lazy little laughs, and whispered words, they talked of the past, and even permitted themselves to look dreamily into the future. Every now and then Mrs. Bentham fell into reveries. She looked with distrust on the cafés, theatres, and gardens; for a vision of a new life seemed to float seductively out of the soft evening air, which the beautiful city wore like a garment, befitting her light pleasures and ephemeral loves.

About half past six they got home; both were in high spirits, and Mrs. Bentham insisted that they should dine at a restaurant. Mrs. Thorpe consented.

But it took a long time to decide which café to go to; Mrs. Bentham remembered only the "Doyen,” and Lewis could of course offer no suggestion; he knew of nothing but a quantity of "estaminets." At last they settled on the "Doyen;" but it was with difficulty they persuaded Mrs. Thorpe to dine out in the open air. She declared she had never heard of such a thing; and it was only on seeing how disappointed they would be if she refused, that she consented to take a seat, as she put it, out in the middle of a field. But once there it was all right; and, before she had finished her soup, she was forced to admit that she was very comfortable, although a little bewildered.

Everything seemed to her so strange.

But Lewis, who loved the fantastic, was enchanted with the little white tables scattered over the green sward, encircled with bright foliage, that came out like lace work upon the pale sky. The hurry of the quick waiters, the new faces, all laughing with delight, amused him beyond measure.

The sole à la Normande, and the "caille au feuille de vigne," tasted a thousand times better than they had ever done in England, and the "Pommard" had in it some of the sunlight which glowed in their faces. Lewis and Mrs. Bentham laughed at Mrs. Thorpe’s astonishment, for when the long garlands of lamps, which filled the foliage, began to light up, she said that it appeared to her like fairy land. As they sipped their coffee they heard the rollicking strain of a quadrille played in a neighbouring "café chantant," and Lewis proposed to take them there; but Mrs. Thorpe was a little tired, and they drove back to the hotel. When he left the ladies for the night, he stood on the Pont Neuf. The city seemed to him like some voluptuous siren, dreaming to the strains of amorous music, and, following the simile out, he longed to place his hand on hers and lay his head a while resting on the beautiful bosom she held to him.

Since he had been in Paris he had worked very hard. He had lived an abstemious life, and had not missed a morning at the Beaux Arts. In these four months of steady application he had made much progress. His fingers were clever, and learnt easily what can be taught. But he now felt that he had earned his right to a holiday, and without a regret he shut up his paint box, and resolved to amuse himself.

Never, he thought, would so opportune an occasion present itself. He was in Paris, the city of pleasure, with a beautiful and fashionable woman for his friend. The word friend caused a feeling of regret and disappointment to rise through the current of his thoughts; but he consoled himself with the reflection that nobody but he knew the truth, and that the world would be more likely to take the most uncharitable view of Mrs. Bentham's conduct. The possibility of her motives being thus wrongly interpreted profoundly interested him, for the suspicion constantly haunted him, that many people fancied that he was the screen used to shelter an unknown and more favoured lover. This false shame was of all things essentially a part of his nature, and when such sentiments were uppermost in his mind, he forgot all his benefactress had done for him, and railed against her, as deceitful, cruel, and weak minded, until at last his rambling thoughts would knock against some pleasant memory, and he would regret his business. The veil of ingratitude in which he had enveloped himself would fall from him, his eyes would fill with tears, his mind with tender souvenirs, and he would helplessly abandon himself to the poetry of his dreams. These naturally were of the time when Mrs. Bentham would love him with a love that would be more than love, and having no work now to distract his attention, his desire took the possession of his life that water does of a sponge. It rendered him weak and inert; and, when not with her, his sole enjoyment was to wander listless about the streets, finding solitude in the most crowded places. For hours he would lean over the parapet of the Pont Neuf watching the long line of boats slowly being hauled up with the chain, or under the green foliage, full of cooing pigeons, of the Tuileries Gardens, looking at the children playing with the gravel, and the white-cuffed nurserymaids passing to and fro. But although the past extensively occupied his thoughts, and he recalled with a sense of exquisite delight each tender word he had spoken, every kiss he had snatched, the possibility of her giving him a love more perfect, more complete, opened before his way a vision of a Paradise as infinite and delightful as ever soothed the sleep of a voluptuous lotus-eater. And the ruses he would have to employ, the pleadings he would have to make absorbed him in an indefinite calculation where pleasure versus weariness, love versus virtue, prejudice versus truth were successively pitted and loquaciously argued from their respective stand points.

They had been now just a week in Paris, but the seven days had appeared to him as seven centuries. It was not what he had expected, he had not yet found an occasion to tell Mrs. Bentham that he loved her now more than ever. The word chance exasperated him and he inwardly cursed Mrs. Thorpe — she always appeared to be with them, and he asked himself feverishly, what was the use of Mrs. Bentham coming to see him in Paris if they were never to be alone. The fact was, that the intimacies of the first day, the drive round the lake, an involuntary pressure of hands, and a certain unconscious freedom and tenderness in the conversation had frightened Mrs. Bentham, and while Lewis had been dreaming of his love, she had been making good resolutions and arranging a line of conduct to be pursued during the rest of their stay in Paris. Naturally the first idea that occurred to her was to keep well behind Mrs. Thorpe, and give Lewis no opportunity of speaking with her alone. She did not reflect that this was now impossible, that three people could not spend their days together without some chance occurring which would divide them. Mrs. Bentham thought merely of saving herself, and grasped at Mrs. Thorpe’s presence as the exhausted swimmer will at a broken overhanging willow twig. She had not been able to resist coming to Paris, but she was determined to frustrate all further temptations. It was a game of cat and mouse, and at last the turn of the latter came. Mrs. Thorpe was confined to her room with a cold, which she declared she had caught the evening they had dined out on the grass. Mrs. Bentham had been attending to her all the afternoon, and had just come down to the drawing-room to fetch a book. She stood with it in her hand by the window. The beauty of the evening attracted her. In clear black outlines as sharp as a dry point etching, the trees of the orangerie and those of the Champs Elysée were drawn upon a lemon-coloured sky, the highest points only indicated, the lower parts filled in with masses of violet shadow, whilst between lay the grey spaces of the Place de la Concorde.

Mrs. Bentham yielded herself up to the persuasiveness of the scene, and its loveliness brought to her vague thoughts of love. Before many minutes she was thinking of Lewis, and she then suddenly remembered that if she wished to act up to her resolutions, she would have to write to him at once, saying that Mrs. Thorpe was ill, and that they would not be able to dine together that day. As she was hesitating how to act, Lewis entered. Their eyes met, and not catching sight of Mrs. Thorpe, he looked round the room to assure himself of his good fortune, then, with a slight hesitation, asked after the old lady. Mrs. Bentham, in answer to his question, replied that Mrs. Thorpe was laid up with a cold, and the conversation awkwardly fell to the ground. However, after a long pause, Mrs. Bentham added:

"So you see we shall have to put up this evening with each other’s company." The phrase fell from her involuntarily, although before the words had passed her lips she had an instantaneous and instinctive presentiment that she herself was leading up to the point which for the last three or four days she had been so carefully trying to avoid. But it was not her fault. For suddenly — so suddenly that she was unprepared to resist it — an immense feeling of fatigue of all things, mixed with an infinite yearning for sympathy came upon her. Lewis was not slow to avail himself of what he termed "his chance," and, putting his arm round her waist, he begged of her to kiss him. The way the request was put and a certain awkwardness in the movement recalled her to herself, and, turning, she half coldly, half laughingly answered him.

"I wonder you dare ask me such a thing, I am not in the habit of kissing people.”

Lewis felt a chill rise up through him, but he said as firmly as he could: "Why do you speak like that? You kissed me before in Claremont House, I don’t see why you shouldn’t do so again.”

This answer somewhat embarrassed Mrs. Bentham, but she got out of her difficulty by telling him that a man should never reproach a woman with what she has done; and this led up to an interminable argument in which all sorts of questions were discussed, particularly the morality of women. On this subject Lewis held the most liberal views, and in the hope of converting Mrs. Bentham to his opinions cited many fashionable liaisons, and darkly hinted that if she did not care for him he could do nothing better than drown himself at once in the Seine.

Mrs. Bentham listened frightened to this part of the conversation, but she grew more interested when he spoke of the pleasant life they would have together in Paris, "If she would only love him just a little." His manner both charmed and softened her, and she allowed him to hold her hand, and standing on the balcony in the warm twilight, they watched the sky fade, and saw the carriages pass out of the green avenue and roll swiftly across La Place de la Concorde towards the Rue Royal. Then, towards seven, the servant came to lay the cloth for dinner, but the sittingroom, with its tasteless hotel furniture, ennuied them, and Lewis proposed they should dine down stairs in the salle à manger. There the brilliantly-lighted room and the small white table, which only separated their faces by a few feet, amused them beyond measure. It was their first tête-à-tête dinner, and it passed off charmingly. Lewis forgot for the moment to tease her "as to when she would really love him," and they chattered of light things: of Paris; of the people about them; of the salon; the progress Lewis had made in painting; referring, en passant, to how happy they were, and how nice it was to be together. Never had Lewis appeared to her so graceful, so delightful; she forgot her doubts and fears again, and abandoned herself joyously to the pleasure of the moment. It was not until they rose from table that a shade of uncertainty crossed her thoughts. How were they, she asked herself, to pass the evening? Not surely alone up in that sitting room? Yet she could not send him away. That was impossible. His presence at once fascinated and oppressed her like the dream that the dreamer would willingly, but cannot for some unexplained reason, throw aside. She had told him twenty times that she thought she would have to go and sit with Mrs. Thorpe, but he had pleaded so piteously to be allowed to stay with her, that she remained uncertain. At last, ashamed of her irresolution, she decided she would go out to drive. The night was fine, and the evening air would be infinitely preferable to a hot, stuffy hotel sitting-room, and about eleven o’clock they would naturally bid each other good-night. Lewis had counted upon a tête-à-tête upstairs, but he was too wise to show his disappointment, and drawing up close to her in the captivating ease of the victoria, he endeavoured to attune his conversation to the spirit of the hour. And what a delightful hour it was! The tepid air was as soft and luxurious as silk on their faces, and the swing of the swiftly rolling carriage treacherously rocked to quietude all uneasy thoughts. Never had Lewis felt so happy, and from time to time so intense a consciousness of pleasure rose up within him, that with a sense of sweet suffocation he caught for breath. He did not look back or forwards; his nature allowed him the feminine luxury of burying deep his face in the present beyond reach of the past and out of sight of the future. This precious quality possessed by most women and by all men, who exercise over others that magnetic influence called love, was in the large lips and voluptuous eyes plainly written upon Lewis’s face; he was the perfect lover who could forget all but the adored mistress. To be this lover is no more in every man’s power than it is to become an immortal poet; it is as difficult to command an earthly as a heavenly inspiration. This latter, however, Lewis could wholly control, and he now realized nothing but Mrs. Bentham, she was a part of him as entirely as the waves of sound floating around an instrument are the emanations of the musician’s soul, and rise and fall controlled by it. Now and again a fitful thought of failure crossed his mind, but he thrust it from him with an almost savage ardour. It appeared to him impossible that fate could be so cruel as to deny him the attainment of his life's desire.

They had told the coachman to take Les Grands Boulevards, and the victoria was now passing through the wide and mournful Place Vêndome into the brilliantly-lighted Rue de la Paix. Upon a vast plain of moonlight blue sky, stretched the facade of the opera house; with its rich perspectives extending down the shadow-filled Rue Auber and Meyerbeer. On each side and top of the highest roofs two gold figures spread their gold wings, whilst below in the blanching glow of clustering electric lights, the passers went like an endless procession of marionettes marching to the imagined strain of an invisible orchestra.

Lewis who had till now scarcely spoken ventured a few remarks on the beauty of the building, and they arranged to go there as soon as Mrs. Thorpe had got rid of her cold. But as they passed into the Boulevard des Italiens, they saw by the bill, that Faust was being given that night. This coincidence interested them beyond measure; it brought to their minds a thousand pleasant remembrances, and gave them opportunities of playing and fencing with an infinite number of little reproaches and tendernesses. Then, again, they would relapse into silence, so that they might muse over the fatality that had guided them together. Mrs. Bentham had on her side forgotten all resolutions; Lewis no longer thought of himself, and in that way both were united in the sensual moodiness of the moment.

At this hour the boulevard was full of carriages. Crowded omnibuses, drawn by immense grey horses, often stopped the way. Now and again a victoria containing a gaudily-dressed woman, her tiny feet resting on an embroidered cushion, would speed past; the lady casting amiable glances to the right and left, until perhaps two young men would tell their coachman to touch up the high stepping bay, and follow in the wake of the reclining beauty. Then would come a fiacre with a party of English tourists; three sitting down, whilst the fourth screamed at the coachman, who did not understand him. The footways, too, were encumbered with idlers come to enjoy the evening air. They crowded round the kiosques to buy the evening papers; stopped each other on the edge of the roadway, and entered the brilliantly-lighted cafés arm-in-arm. There, in the great squares of light that the glaring plate-glass windows threw over the pavement, sat groups and single figures drinking, talking, or watching the crowd as it surged past. Women, too, were not wanting, and a gleam of white petticoat or the elegancy of a lace stocking relieved the monotonous regularity of trousers and men’s boots. Out of this seething mass of life the tall houses, built in huge blocks of grey stone, arose and faded into darkness, whilst the boulevard with its immense grey trottoirs, and its two interminable lines of gas lamps running out and into a host of other lights, extended until lost in what appeared to be a piece of starry sky.

The beauty of the city acted on Mrs. Bentham and Lewis as a narcotic; and, in spirit, they had already stepped into the pleasures which Paris in her capacity of fashionable courtesan holds open to all comers.

The measure of expectant waltzes beat in their feet, the fumes of uncorked champagne arose to their heads, and the light wings of unkissed kisses had already touched their lips. Lewis held Mrs. Bentham’s hand, and, lying back, their thoughts and bodies swayed by the motion of the carriage, they watched deliciously the flashing and gleaming of the thousand lights that moved around them, seeing nothing distinctly but the round back of the coachman as he sat, his shoulders set, steering faultlessly through an almost inextricable mass of whirling wheels.

They did not awake from their reveries until they had passed into the darkness of the Boulevard St. Denis. The huge archway of the Porte St. Martin had attracted their attention; they had even attempted to criticise the style of the architecture. But now the honest plain look of the quarter proclaimed that they had passed from the regions of pleasure into those of work. Thus the darkness and sobriety of the streets falling on their spirits like a gloom, they told the coachman to turn and go back. The drive home was not so pleasant, and an irritating feeling of unrest seemed to have come over them. Lewis told Mrs. Bentham more frequently that he loved her, that her love was to him something that stretched beyond life, and that death would be powerless to extinguish. Occasionally she would lift her eyes and look at him caressingly, but her manner was vague and uncertain. Lewis noticed this and in fear, and he redoubled his protestations of affection. At last, not knowing well what to do, he said:

"But is it not strange that the first opera we should hear of in Paris is the very one we sang together years ago? I always loved the music of Faust, but I love it a thousand times better now for it was in singing the page’s song that I first told you I cared for you.”

"I wish we could go and hear it to-night," Mrs. Bentham replied, dreamily.

The idea enchanted Lewis and after a few moments’ consultation they told the coachman to drive to the opera house, and they affectionately discussed the possibilities of getting places. When the carriage stopped before the steps they were surrounded by a crowd of marchands de billets, who, gesticulating wildly, told Lewis that they could sell him something. Without having very clearly understood what, he pushed past them and made his way into the wide vestibule. There he found the bureau de location shut, but after some long conversation carried on in broken French with the officials he learned that every seat was let, but that he could obtain from the marchands tickets which would give him the right of visiting the house. He would have liked Mrs. Bentham to have heard the music, but as that, as he put it to her, was not to be, they would have to content themselves with admiring M. Bandrie’s decorations and M. Garnier’s architecture. This Mrs. Bentham declared was all she wanted, and they passed up the staircase.

It was in light-coloured marble, and, according to Lewis, branched to the right and left as white as a woman’s arms. The beauty of the place astonished them, but Lewis, not wishing to appear ignorant, argued that the whole building was wanting in style, and he compared it to a huge cake. This made Mrs. Bentham laugh although she did not quite understand what he meant. In the foyer, however, the pictures interested them vastly; even Lewis, who was always disposed to find fault, found himself forced to admit that, as a decorator, Baudrie was the greatest artist of modern times; the immense amount of gold on the cornices and mouldings likewise astonished them, and they wandered until they lost themselves in the great passages which encircle the different tiers. Then they descended again to the foyer and for a time it amused them to watch the fashionable crowd that talked, smiled and bowed as they walked up and down the glittering floors during the entre acte. But Mrs. Bentham and Lewis were ill at ease, they could fix their attention as the hours went by; their conversation grew more and more strained and artificial; they were possessed by desires from which they could not fly, and at last, like the fisher conducts the tired fish to bank, love led them to the carriage, and maliciously cried "à I’hotel" to the coachman.