"But what will you have?"' he asked, philosophically."One is young, one is pretty, one needs new dresses and fresh gloves; one can't wear shabby gowns among the splendors of the Louvre.""But your daughter earns enough to pay for her own clothes," said Newman.
M.Nioche looked at him with weak, uncertain eyes.
He would have liked to be able to say that his daughter's talents were appreciated, and that her crooked little daubs commanded a market; but it seemed a scandal to abuse the credulity of this free-handed stranger, who, without a suspicion or a question, had admitted him to equal social rights.
He compromised, and declared that while it was obvious that Mademoiselle Noemie's reproductions of the old masters had only to be seen to be coveted, the prices which, in consideration of their altogether peculiar degree of finish, she felt obliged to ask for them had kept purchasers at a respectful distance."Poor little one!" said M.Nioche, with a sigh; "it is almost a pity that her work is so perfect!
It would be in her interest to paint less well.""But if Mademoiselle Noemie has this devotion to her art,"Newman once observed, "why should you have those fears for her that you spoke of the other day?"M.Nioche meditated: there was an inconsistency in his position;it made him chronically uncomfortable.Though he had no desire to destroy the goose with the golden eggs--Newman's benevolent confidence--he felt a tremulous impulse to speak out all his trouble.
"Ah, she is an artist, my dear sir, most assuredly," he declared.
"But, to tell you the truth, she is also a franche coquette.
I am sorry to say," he added in a moment, shaking his head with a worldof harmless bitterness, "that she comes honestly by it.
Her mother was one before her!"
"You were not happy with your wife?" Newman asked.
M.Nioche gave half a dozen little backward jerks of his head.
"She was my purgatory, monsieur!"
"She deceived you?"
"Under my nose, year after year.I was too stupid, and the temptation was too great.But I found her out at last.
I have only been once in my life a man to be afraid of;I know it very well; it was in that hour! Nevertheless I don't like to think of it.I loved her--I can't tell you how much.
She was a bad woman."
"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-class professors, and they assured 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.
1
they recommended her to try bonnet ******, 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 passed 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 passed 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 ****** 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.