WITHOUT any further warning the Ruggles family arrived in Paris and put up at the old hotel of France et Choiseul. A short, friendly note—not from Alice but from her father—informed Edward of these facts and invited him to meet them at Voisin's for dinner.
Alice had changed. That was the important thing. She had become cool and aloof. It hardly seemed as if they could have grown up together and been intimate friends.
To the eyes she was lovelier than ever, but mentally she seemed to have traveled a long way and to have left Edward far behind. And mentally she seemed also to have parted company with her father and mother.
They dined and thereafter sat for an hour talking. It was an impersonal conversation—not one of the old warm, intimate, joking talks. Ruggles, a thorough man of the world in New Rochelle, seemed a little provincial and naïve in Paris. It was obvious that he did not know his way about. Mrs. Ruggles had been digging into French history and wanted everybody to know it. Only Alice appeared thoroughly and even exasperatingly at ease.
They left Voisin's and strolled back to the hotel, Alice and Edward ahead. Edward felt hurt and troubled.
"You've changed a lot since I saw you last," he said finally.
"Yes," she said, "a lot."
"You're prettier if possible; but I don't think you like me any more."
"I do."
They paused to look at the flaming posters in front of the Nouveau Cirque and then passed slowly on.
"Do you know the Louvre well?" asked Alice.
"Only a little. I've been saving it for you."
"That's fine. When shall we begin?
"Tomorrow?"
"Will you come for me?"
"About ten?"
"We could have luncheon somewhere and spend the day, couldn't we?"
"I bet we can!"
"I want to know the Louvre from A to Z. And then the Luxembourg. And between times I want to see everything that you've been doing."
"It would be kinder to look at my stuff first."
"Tell me this—are you going to be very, very good?"
"There's lots of work to do before I even think how bad or how good I'm going to be. But I'm still glad I've got the chance to find out. It's such fun to draw and paint."
It was as if they had met for the first time, had not taken a great fancy to each other and had not hit upon anything of common interest to talk about.
Edward asked about home news. She told him of county happenings, deaths, births and marriages.
"Seen anything of my people?" he asked.
"Only James—he goes everywhere, you know."
"Yes. He was always the dude of the family."
"Don't you think that perhaps there is more to James than meets the eye?"
Edward laughed and said, "Lots and lots."
"You don't like him. But I do."
"Truly?"
"Really and truly. You should hear him boast about you. Don't you ever feel your ears burning? That's James and I boasting about our friend and brother, the Heaven-born artist."
Still talking about James, they reached the arched entrance to the France et Choiseul. Here they waited until Mr. and Mrs. Ruggles came up.
"Good night," said Edward, "and thank you. I've had a splendid time."
"Have you?" said Mrs. Ruggles a little quizzically. "That's fine."
"Eddie and I are going to do the Louvre tomorrow," said Alice, "starting here at ten sharp."
"Are you?" said Mr. Ruggles and he looked even more quizzical. "Well, that's fine."
They finished saying good night. As the Ruggles family passed through the archway the magnificent old Swiss porter came out of his lodge and in stentorian tones called across the courtyard to the room clerk, "Monsieur et Madame Roog-ells et Mademoiselle Roogells qui rentrent!"
And Mr. Ruggles and Alice chuckled to themselves.
Edward, the tones of the Swiss porter echoing in his ears, hurried home. The evening, or Alice rather, had been a horrible disappointment. He had imagined that they would take up their friendship exactly where they had left off—that is, just short of being definitely engaged to be married, just short of being really in love. Instead they had met as strangers. Edward's heart ached and he could have cried. He had never had but the one real friend in all his life and she had turned cold.
Did all women fail one? Dear Mother, Ruth, Sarah, John's wife, Madame Beaulieu and now Alice? "Why," he thought, "she treated me as if we were meeting for the first time and she didn't care if it was the last."
But he comforted himself with the thought that the next day he would ask her pointblank what he had done to offend her and keep on asking until she gave him the answer.
They spent nearly the whole of the next day in the Louvre. Their intention to tackle the paintings first, then the statuary and then the odds and ends from Charlemagne's sword to the snuff-box of Napoleon fell by the wayside; for they ran plump into the Venus of Milo and had to sit down on a bench and look at her for a long time. Then the Victory of Samothrace held them spellbound and they went out to luncheon without having looked at any paintings at all. And it was not until then that Edward asked her why she was so changed toward him and what it was that he had done to offend her.
"Why, Eddie," she said, and there was a kind of pitying look in her eyes, "I haven't exactly changed. I love you better than almost anybody and always will, but—well, girls are funny animals. If you'd stayed around Westchester maybe we'd have run away or done something foolish like that; but you didn't stay around and after a while "I got to thinking that maybe it was just as well you hadn't . . ."
"You have changed," said Edward, "and I haven't." He only looked glum, but he felt very tragic.
"Well," she said, "don't let's talk about it. You're a dear and I'll always love you and be your friend. I only came abroad because I wanted to see you, and Paris with you. That's the honest truth. If it hadn't been for you I'd have wanted to stay in New York . . . Shall we look at more statues this afternoon and start in with the pictures tomorrow?"
"Whatever you like," said Edward without enthusiasm. "How long do you really think your father means to stay in Paris?"
"Not long, I think. He wants to spent the winter in Italy and Corsica. He was wondering last night if you couldn't tear yourself away for a while and come to Corsica as our guest."
"That would be wonderful," said Edward, who had always longed to see Corsica. And he told her that he would accept the invitation if her father didn't change his mind.
"Father won't. Father doesn't, and he thinks the world of you."
They finished luncheon and returned to the museum and spent the afternoon looking at pictures. They looked at pictures till their eyes refused to have emotions of any kind and the backs of their necks ached.
Edward called a cab and drove her back to the hotel.
"I'm a fool to paint," he said. "There are too many pictures already. I don't feel as if I ever wanted to look at another picture as long as I live. If I ever go through those Rubens galleries again it will be blindfold. I never knew how much I hated muscular fat women with no eyebrows and red hair . . . But wasn't he a marvel? Acres and acres of paint and every brushful smeared on so that it would do the most good!"
"There are too many pictures," Alice agreed, "but most of them are awful. And you are going to be better than almost anybody. So what's the use of complaining? Rubens was a great and mighty lord, wasn't he? Where did he find the time for everything?"
"I don't suppose he had to look," Edward said. "There's always lots of time lying around loose and all you have to do is to take it."
"Oughtn't you to be working instead of chasing around with me?"
"Never!" he said stoutly, and they both laughed.
But there wasn't to be so much chasing around. They did the Louvre and the Luxembourg together and some churches, and then Alice and her mother began the real business of Paris, which is shopping and having dresses made, and Edward began the picture which he intended to send to the Salon in the spring.
He had been thinking about this picture for a long time. Sometimes it was going to be a landscape and sometimes it was going to be three nymphs dancing. Then it became a nocturne—one of the bridges across the Seine at night. Then it became the same bridge only from a different angle; the night ceased to be clear and became foggy, with stars showing where the fog was thin, and when he had made a lot of sketches and experimental star and fog effects, the angle of the bridge had to be changed once more and he decided to introduce the dancing nymphs into the foreground.
At this point the Ruggles departed for Italy. Edward saw them off in the rain. He promised to join them in Corsica in the early spring. But there was only one thing certain. If there had ever been anything between himself and Alice it was over. During all their meetings she had held him at arm's length. Sometimes it seemed as if she had a kind of maternal tenderness and pity for him. But more often it seemed as if she had no sentiment for him at all.
Somehow he had gathered that there was another young man in her life and that his own romance had been blasted in the bud.
He hurried home along the Quays and as he turned the corner of the rue des Saints Pères the rain began suddenly to fall in a torrent. He lowered his head and ran at top speed. As he reached the shelter of the archway of the building in which he slept and worked a voice hailed him: "'Allo—Mistaire Eaton."
The voice belonged to Anne Brie—one of fifty models whom he knew by name and reputation. She had never worked for him and he had never even seen her at work; but once they had sat side by side on a sofa in a friend's studio and done some laughing.
"'Allo, Anne!" he mimicked. "What are you doing in my tunnel?"
"Saving myself from the rain," she said. "I was going to supper—got caught—and ducked in here. Got anything to eat in your studio?"
"I shouldn't wonder," said Edward. "Come up."
He felt no more embarrassment than if she had been a man, for even the most moral artist finds it necessary to be casual about the conventions.
They supped upon bread without butter and rillettes de Tours out of a glass jar. And they drank chocolate made with water instead of milk.
Anne was charming and made herself very much at home. When she had turned all of Edward's canvases so that she could look at them she began to praise him. She said that he was a wonder, that she had worked in all the studios and ought to know. What was he going to send to this year's Salon? He told her about his bridge with the fog and the stars and the nymphs dancing.
She objected.
"Nymphs don't dance all the time," she said. "That is in pictures they always dance; but in real life they behave like real people."
"They would, of course, wouldn't they?" Edward agreed. And his face lighted with enthusiasm. She had given him a notion. He began to haul out his sketches for the bridge, but there was no angle which suited him, so that he had to use gestures to convey to her what was in his mind.
"Listen," he said. "Imagine that you have gone down to the river's edge and that the bridge, of course, is above you. There is an incline near the first arch, an incline of small cobblestones that dips into the river. Three shop-girls tempted by the heat and almost hidden by the fog are going for a swim. They are giggling for fear that someone will catch them at it—and, if it isn't the policeman, they don't care too much. Beyond and above is the arch and the parapet and the fog and the stars—and perhaps the little needle tip of the Saint Chapelle spire . . . I can't think of anything more foolish to paint, and yet it fills my head and I think it might be very arresting and charming."
"Who are you going to have for your nymphs—shop-girls?"
"I shan't need any models just yet. I've got to get the composition absolutely settled first."
"Wish you'd try me."
"Gladly—but you won't be angry if I say you're not just what I have in mind."
"Naturally not. I get that often. Tastes differ. I think that I have a very pretty body but lots of artists say that I look too much like a child."
"Well," said Edward, "one of these days when the time comes we'll have to see what we think."
While he was putting some chunks of coal into the stove Anne made a flank movement on his bedroom and returned with a double armful of clothes, socks and odds and ends which were really in a savage state of masculine neglect.
Anne seated herself and began to sort the possible from the impossible. She made three piles.
"These," she said, "are to be thrown away. Those only need to be laundered, and the rest I will make into a package and take home with me to mend."
"Where do you live, Anne, in case I want a model?"
She gave him her address and he wrote it down. Then presently, the rain having stopped, she gathered together the clothes which were to be mended and departed as casually as she had come.
And to Edward, all at once, the studio seemed extraordinarily empty.
It was a very rainy winter and the young man's loneliness was heavy upon him. He longed for the spring and Corsica, but these were a long way off.
He had many friends but they were mostly serious, hard-working friends and he saw so little of them at this time that he felt as if he didn't have any. One day Anne came with his mended clothes and made chocolate for him and went. He wished she had not been in such a hurry. The dreary studio with the rain-stained lights had been brightened by her presence.
For several days he could not get her out of his mind. But although the arrangement of his picture had reached a point where he wished to make some studies from living models, he did not at once send for her. Some instinct told him that if he wished to keep free from entanglements he had better not see her too often. He thought seriously of inviting some other model to pose for him. And all that prevented him from doing this was the fact that he had promised Anne the first trial.
Finally he wrote to her and said that if she was not under engagement and still wished to work for him he would be glad to talk with her. He wrote this letter, mailed it and regretted having done so. She was a popular model, however, and he comforted himself with the hope that she had plenty of employment.
But she appeared at the studio before it seemed as if she could have received the letter. She was all smiles, eager to work with him on his picture and delighted that he had remembered his promise.
Perhaps she did look a little too much like a child, but she had a lovely golden brown coloring and was delightful to draw. She gave him his poses without the slightest difficulty or awkwardness, and the artist in him at once suppressed the man. It was not until she had dressed and gone home that his thoughts became once more haunted and troubled by her.
They worked thus for several weeks. Friends began to talk about Edward's picture and to bring other friends to see it. Many older artists came. From all these brothers of the brush he received praise and support. And throughout the Latin quarter it was the accepted fact that the young Edward Eaton's genius had blossomed and that he was doing a wonderful thing.
He worked himself thin. Anxiety would wake him in the night and he would rise and light a candle and go shivering to see if his work still looked right to him.
One afternoon in the middle of work he stepped back from his easel and looked at his picture long and critically. Then suddenly he smiled a broad schoolboy grin and said, "Why, it seems to be finished." He was immensely surprised. "It's all done," he said—"finished."
Then Anne came and stood beside him and looked too. For a long time. She was a talkative little person and he wondered why she didn't say anything. He stole a look at her sidewise and saw that her eyes were filled with tears.
"What's the matter, Anne?"
"Nothing. It's been a happy time and now it's over."
"Hm'm. We're not going to end our career with this picture."
"You'll be going to Corsica now to be with those American friends of yours."
"Not right away."
"It amazes me to think that you would have made just as beautiful a picture with any one of a hundred models."
"Nonsense! The credit for this picture is yours too. If you don't know that, you don't know anything . . . Get your clothes on and we'll go somewhere or other and have a fine dinner and celebrate."
She obeyed meekly and Edward waited, still smiling, but no longer admiring his picture. He was smiling at the thought of models in general and Anne in particular. She always did her dressing and undressing with the utmost modesty behind the screen. And between times gave no more thought to modesty or immodesty than a fly.
During the making of the nocturne, Anne and Edward had dined together a good many times, and the Quarter had begun to talk about them. But the Quarter talked very pleasantly. Because in France as in the South Seas human nature is supposed to emanate from God and on that account to be highly respectable.
On this particular night they dined in the Café Brabant, which at the time was enjoying a huge popularity among the students and models. They had it to themselves, and, in old Madame Brabant, a friend who could be unusually patient with overdue accounts.
Certain students, having attracted Anne's and Edward's attention, drank toasts to them and made a semblance of shaking hands with them. Anne and Edward blushed comfortably and Anne shook her head with vehemence. This only gave the students excuse for loud laughter.
"Hereabouts," said Anne contentedly, "if a man and a woman are seen twice together in public—the murder is out. I am afraid, my poor Edward, that I have already compromised you beyond repair. But we don't care what they say—do we?"
"Don't you?"
"Not that!" She snapped her fingers.
"Well, I do care," he said. "It's hard on you, of course; but it's an enormous compliment to me." Anne was in high spirits. "A compliment," she said, "which you have done absolutely nothing to deserve."
The waiter came to Edward's rescue and received his order for dinner.
"We won't drink the ordinary wine tonight," said Edward. "Tell Madame to give us a nicely warmed bottle of good Bordeaux."
The end of the dinner found them happy and talkative, their elbows on the table, their faces close together, and the wine half drunk.
Edward kept thinking to himself, "What a charming companion she is!" Anne kept thinking: "If this silly boy really loves me, why in the name of all the saints doesn't he say so and have done with it? It must be obvious to him, now, what the answer would be. I'm certainly crazy about him."
She was a clever girl, who having posed for artists since childhood had a vast smattering of art. She flattered Edward and warmed his heart. She made him believe for the time being that he was far more talented than he really was, and destined to go to the very top of fame's ladder.
They finished their bottle of wine slowly, and then because it was so warm and cheerful in the café and because they had begun to exchange confidences and found it immensely profitable and entertaining, they ordered a half-bottle of the same and sat on for an hour more.
Then Edward paid his check and they rose and went out into the night. It was a soft and pleasant night for the time of year, not a shiver in the air.
As the door of the restaurant closed behind them Anne shrugged her little shoulders with a gesture half of amusement and half of disappointment. She had done her best to make Edward say that he was in love with her, and she had failed.
"When do you go to Corsica?" she asked.
"In about six weeks."
"Shall you do another picture in the meantime?"
"I don't know. I'm pretty well out of paints, and unless something turns up I can hardly afford to buy more, and the trip to Corsica too. I think I'll have to work in black and white. It won't hurt me."
"I suppose I'll have to look about for some work too."
Then Edward declared himself, and in a way that surprised and delighted her.
"I don't like to think of your posing for anyone but me," he said, in a kind of exasperated voice.
"You don't! Truly?"
"No. I don't."
"Why not?"
"I just don't."
Anne laughed in the darkness. A soft little laugh full of triumph.
"Edward," she said, "couldn't I have one last look at the picture before I go home?"
Edward did not answer.
She took his arm in a gentle possessive way and they walked slowly to the building in which he lived and worked.
Edward waked and lay in the darkness and wondered what Dear Mother would think of him now, if she knew, and Dearest Grandmother and his sisters, and his father, and John and Alice, and her mother and father. He told himself that he did not care; but telling was no use, he did care, and he hoped that none of them would ever know. Being found out was the great crime after all. For the rest he felt a kind of blissful contentment. He had misjudged women altogether. Here at his side, so silently asleep that you might have thought her dead, lay a girl so sweet, so loving, so gentle, so understanding, so solicitous that the whole world seemed changed for him and made more beautiful, and all his old cynicisms seemed to have been swept away.
It was wonderful how silently she slept. He stopped his own breathing that he might listen to hers. He could not hear it and became alarmed . . . He had seen a play recently at the Grand Guignol—a little horror of a play—in which just when it is high time for him to be gone by the latticed window in the dawn, the wife discovers that the lover has died . . . Edward shook Anne nervously by the shoulder and spoke her name.
She wasn't dead.
The whole of life—for a while—seemed to have changed for the better. The morning was exquisite—just like spring—and his mail consisted of one letter from Townley, containing commissions to illustrate two stories—these were being forwarded under separate cover—and an advance payment of two hundred dollars.
Within a few seconds after receiving and reading this letter he had made the mistake of telling Anne all about it. Two hundred dollars—a thousand francs—and two hundred more to follow when the finished illustrations had been received, was a lot of money in the Paris of those days. And Anne, who a moment before had been prepared and willing to work her hands to the bone for Edward, had sudden visions of a life of ease and plenty and of endless jollifications. The money made her feel rather important, and for the first breakfast of their life together she gave Edward chocolate which was burnt. But she sat on his knee while he drank it and so he never knew.
And indeed for some weeks he labored under the impression that everything in this world is just about right, and that nothing is ever burnt or spoiled. The stern moralist will perhaps regret that these weeks should have been the happiest that Edward had ever lived or that he was ever going to live. But the stern moralist is seldom a Parisian, or a supporter of the theory that God and nature may have put the sex impulse into man for precisely the same reason that they put it into flowers, molluscs, mastodons, ants, wasps and bees—namely, that occasionally it should be obeyed. Certain flowers, it is true, go to seeds and die, and some argue that in these cases undoubtedly the death is the punishment of the sin. Others, however, point questioningly to the high Sierras where the sequoia trees have been honeymooning for thousands of years.
Edward did not want to know anything about Anne's past. He closed the eyes and ears of his mind to it. He knew that she loved him with all her heart, and that was enough knowledge. And he believed that toward him at least she would never show any failure of tenderness and understanding. He did not realize that when a woman has given herself, even if it is not for the first time, her curious sense of justice makes her feel that in return she is entitled to everything in sight, including the moon.
A letter came from Alice and was the first cause of trouble between them. It was in English of course and Anne couldn't read it. Edward translated and Anne made it sufficiently obvious that she did not believe his translation to be quite literal. It was. There was nothing in Alice's letter which anybody might not have been allowed to read. It was a friendly letter and reminded him of his promise to join the Ruggles family in Corsica. The time was about ripe for that. The Ruggles family was about to move to Genoa. Would he join them there?
"Of course you're not going—now. You don't need her any more. You have me."
The slighting insinuation was not lost upon Edward, but he answered patiently. "I think I ought to go, don't you? I don't want to—not now. But they are the oldest friends I have, and I promised and I don't want to hurt their feelings."
"That's for you to say. When there is a question of two women, it is always the man's prerogative to choose between them."
He tried to put his arm around her and was repulsed—with a kind of a cold fury. Anne had about decided to work herself into a rage.
"It is only for a short time," said Edward.
"That's what you say."
"But Anne, don't you believe what I say? I couldn't tell you lies."
"You're in love with her."
"I'm not. I'm in love with you. And she doesn't care that about me . . . Be reasonable."
If he had been more experienced he wouldn't have said, "Be reasonable." He would have picked up the nearest loaded cannon and said, "Go ahead and make a fool of yourself."
She was going to, anyway. And what she managed forthwith to invent and shout aloud concerning Alice and Edward had better not be printed.
And how did the scene end? As all such scenes do, time after time, until at length, perhaps after many years, the patience of the male, and his love, come to the end of the same road and the scene ends differently—fatally, sometimes.
This time it ended in tears, from Anne, and plaintive little wolf-yelps of self-pity and contrition; and on Edward's side it ended in a fury of pity and a hugeness of forgiveness that were almost godlike—and then the usual mutual happy storm of passion.
After two days of peace Anne's brow suddenly puckered a little and she said in a flat Voice, "You needn't think that I'm not going to amuse myself while you are in Corsica."
"Oh, Anne—I thought that that was all settled."
"I'm not so easy to get rid of as you think."
"Oh, Anne!"
"Then take me with you."
Silence.
"You're ashamed of me."
"Oh, Anne, won't you please stop?"
She wouldn't. And there was another row. During this row Edward wished that he had never been born, that having been born innocent he had so remained, and he would have taken oath in a court of law that the lilies and languors of virtue are incomparably better friends and neighbors and roommates than the roses and raptures of vice.
But he did his best to go on keeping the peace.
Edward's well-grounded habit of doing what he said he would do when he said he would do it was at the root of the trouble. Having promised the Ruggles to join them in Corsica he could only feel that the promise ought to be kept. Then one morning he waked with a new thought altogether. If Anne was so dead set against his going to Corsica, and so blatantly jealous and suspicious of Alice, why go? Why not break his promise and go somewhere else with Anne?
He did, and to his surprise it was to Corsica that they went. Anne chose to. Perhaps she hoped that there would be a chance meeting with Alice, at which it would be easily seen which of the heroines had walked off with the hero. But the Ruggles did not stay long in Corsica and the meeting did not take place. Edward painted his famous picture of the brigand's house and was very pleased with it, and with himself, and made love to Anne with redoubled fervor.
There is no Mann Act in Corsica. They came and went as they pleased, arousing only a tolerant, good-natured and perhaps envious interest. And presently, their money all spent and their faces brown and rosy from the sun, they returned to Paris.
Edward will never forget that vacation. If it did have its sinful sides, it had a glory of warmth and color and perfume and tenderness which almost compensated. His conscience didn't trouble him much at the time—indeed, all that did trouble him was the possibility of a chance meeting with the Ruggles—and it doesn't trouble him much now.
And be it said for conscience's sake that before leaving Paris the impetuous and generous youth had begged Anne to marry him and she had refused. Her reasons for refusing were excellent. She was already married. But what had become of her husband was another matter. She did not know. Nobody knew.
On the way to Corsica and on the way back, and during the whole of their stay on that exquisite island, she had behaved beautifully. There had been no tempers and no fault-findings. And they might have gone on being happy an indefinite period of time.
An accumulation of letters which Edward found waiting for him, however, so hurt his peace of mind that happiness was no longer possible.
There was a letter from Dear Mother, the usual highly moral, complaining letter, and this had the usual depressing effect on him, and there was a letter from his father the cheerfulness of which was so obviously forced that it depressed him even more, and worst of all there was a letter from Ruth. She seldom wrote to him, and when she did she usually had something disagreeable to say. The present occasion was no exception.
Ruth and her husband, through friends recently returned from Paris, had heard all about Edward's "goings on" with "that woman" (Anne?) and were grieved and shocked beyond measure. She, Ruth, had felt her duty so strongly in the matter that she had not been able to rest until she had told the miserable tidings to Edward's father. She had indeed, at some inconvenience to herself, made the trip to Bartow for the purpose. That was that! Father would use his judgment about telling mother. Ruth hoped that he would not feel obliged to tell Dear Mother, as the knowledge would very likely kill her.
Ruth imagined that Edward must be so infatuated with that woman, or some other woman, that he could hardly find time to be interested in home news; still, she felt it her duty to set down such items as he ought, if only theoretically, to be interested in.
As for herself, she forced herself to go a good deal into society for her husband's sake. Her back troubled her at times, and she was far from strong. Dear Mother—well, she was still Ruth's ideal of a mother and a Christian gentlewoman, but disappointment in her sons would undoubtedly kill her dead in the long run. She had not seen John or heard from him in a long time. Mark was having trouble with his wife ("or perhaps it is she, poor woman, who is having trouble with him"); "but James, whom I am really learning to like and understand, goes everywhere and keeps up the family name and prestige."
She spoke of their father last. He had been found unconscious on the floor of his church and had been obliged to confess that for a long time he had been suffering from heart attacks.
"He is not long for this world, and if you have learned all that you need to know about art, and other things, don't you think it time to think about coming home and doing your duty by your parents? Heaven knows they have done their duty by you."
The next day there came a letter from Edward's father.
"This," he wrote, "my dear boy, is a postscript to my last. Ruth has been to see me, for the sole purpose, apparently, of retailing some nasty gossip about you. But I am incapable of judging any man's actions without hearing both sides, and do therefore refrain from all comment. I hope you are coming home before very long. Townley has sent me copies of the illustrations. I am very proud of you, and happy to think that you are going to be able to make your way in this world without capitulations of any kind to anybody."
And Edward realized that he ought indeed to begin to think about going home. As a creative artist he was now able to stand on his own feet. Money was more easily earned in America than in Europe, and it would be possible for him to return to Paris whenever he saw fit.
He did not, however, feel that it would be right or indeed possible for him to break off his relationship with Anne. Perhaps he really loved her. At any rate, now that their violent quarrels were becoming a dim memory, he grew daily more attached to her. He would have married her without hesitation if it had been possible, and even consulted a lawyer about obtaining a divorce for her. It seemed, however, that this would require both money and influence and Anne herself discouraged the notion.
"We are doing very well as it is," she said. "We are faithful to each other and we have all our interests in common. Why worry?"
Worry began for Edward with the return of the Ruggles family to Paris. He received a note from Alice begging him to call, and he said nothing about this note to Anne, and he called at the first opportunity. His motives in denying Anne his confidence were excellent. She had upon a previous occasion proved herself utterly unworthy of it, and he believed in peace even at the price of deception.
In the course of two weeks he saw Alice exactly five times. At those meetings nothing was said or done or thought which need have troubled Anne in the least. The barrier which Alice had erected between herself and Edward was still in place. They were old friends and no more. Still, Edward deceived Anne as carefully and elaborately as if he had been carrying on a base intrigue and his conscience did not trouble him. When a woman who has no grounds for being jealous persists in being jealous, she does not invite honesty or candor. Edward knew that if Anne knew that the Ruggles were in Paris and that he was seeing them, there would be a terrible row, and he could not believe that such a row would be of any particular benefit to anybody and therefore did his very best to avoid it.
Of course he could have seen Alice just once, and he could have told her why he ought not to see her any more. But he balked at that. He found it impossible to tell an American girl he was living quite openly with a very jealous young woman to whom he was not married. Alice had always pretended to be immensely broad-minded, but he imagined that her broad-mindedness dealt with general rather than particular lapses, and he avoided the issue.
Alice did not seem to be enjoying her usually blissful good health. She had lost weight, color and energy. Europe had not agreed with her, and her parents were in a hurry to get her home. At last they were able to fix the date of their departure, and at that, as if she felt the opportunity might never occur again, Alice began to make a great to-do about seeing the whole of Paris that she had not yet seen. It was a large order and put Edward in an embarrassing situation. She insisted upon his going about with her, and Anne began to feel neglected.
One night Anne amused herself by shooting an arrow into the air. She said, "Why didn't you tell me that your friends the Ruggles were back in Paris?"
Edward's face answered for him. He had no other answer. The question had been too sudden and unexpected.
"You have seen her—that Alice—that old sweetheart of yours?"
Edward tried to speak with great calmness and dignity.
"They are very old friends of mine," he said. "It would be preposterous for me to refuse to see them. If you were reasonable I would have told: you. But you aren't reasonable and so I didn't. Yes. I've seen them a number of times. They are going back to America Saturday and I shall see them before they go."
"Oh, no, you won't!" said Anne. "But I shall. I shall go to see them and tell them what I think of them—you brute!"
The fit was upon her and she raged unmeasurably and injuriously. She must have been heard in the street below. Fellow lodgers stopped their various activities the better to listen.
Edward pleaded with her, protested his innocence and became by turns furious, pitiful and cold with disgust. She called him the most horrible names she could think of and she was able to think of worse names for Alice.
He tried to take her in his arms and soothe her. She pounded his face with her little fists and tried to scratch his eyes. Then suddenly, shouting at the top of her lungs that she was about to throw herself in the river, she rushed from the room down the long flights of stairs and out into the Street of the Saintly Fathers. It was raining hard. Of course Edward didn't believe that she would drown herself, and he knew that the very best thing for him to do was to stand pat, as the poker players say, and wait until her rage cooled and she came whimpering back; but he dared not risk the one chance in a thousand that she would do what she had threatened. So with a heavy, resentful heart he followed her. When Anne perceived that she was followed, she chose to pretend that she was being followed to be hurt. So she began to scream, not too loud, and to run.
Edward caught up with her in a few strides and seized her by the arm. "For Heaven's sake behave yourself!" he cried.
Anne screamed and fought as if she was being feloniously attacked. She tore herself loose and darted off in the direction of the river.
Nothing in the whole of creation is half so reckless as a woman when she has made up her mind to punish and humiliate a man. No law of decency or reasonableness binds her. She does not care what she says or what she reveals or what she invents if only it will hurt.
So Anne, perceiving a thick-set burgher under an umbrella, who had paused to see what the running was all about, flung herself upon him and cried, "You're a man—save me!"
The burgher was middle-aged, respectable and wise. He shook her off and turned to Edward. "Drunk?" he asked laconically.
Anne's mind turned completely over. She shook her fist in Edward's face and said, "Are you going to stand there and let him say that I am drunk? And you call yourself a man!"
Edward had turned icy cold with shame and disgust. "I am going home," he said, "and you had better come too and behave yourself."
This time it was Anne who followed Edward. At almost every step she spoke injuries. The burgher, smiling under his umbrella, made off in the opposite direction.
Edward felt that his love for Anne was dead. He was wrong. When her anger had passed, she wept and made him believe that all the wicked things she had said and done and threatened were for love of him. In all the world she had only Edward. If he abandoned her, as indeed she thought he ought, she would have nothing, nobody.
She crept onto his knees and snuggled her face against his. She lifted his arm and put it around her. She fought against his coldness and his aloofness as if they had been two devils. She kissed him and kissed him; but he would not kiss her back. He had made up his mind that all was over between them.
When Anne perceived that it was really a question of a final break, she begged for just one more chance.
"Don't you understand that if you leave me—I'll die? I wouldn't blame you a bit for leaving me after the way I've acted, but I'd die just the same. You don't know how much I love you."
Edward: "You have objectionable ways of showing it at times."
Anne: "But you don't want me to die—do you?"
Edward: "Of course I don't want you to die."
Anne (feeling that she has won a small victory): "I love you so much that there is nothing else in the world and I'm not able to see beyond you."
Edward: "If you really loved me, you'd trust me. Imagine me cutting up and making a fool of myself just because you wanted now and then to see some old friends of yours."
Anne: "But you're not jealous. Can I help it if I am jealous?"
Edward: "You don't even try."
Anne: "But I am going to try. I am never going to be bad any more. I swear it."
Edward (beginning to relent and to be a little glad that there is a pretty girl on his knees): "If you are bad again—I'll leave you like a shot out of a gun. We have everything to make us happy and contented and we are going to have more and more—and you insist on spoiling it."
Anne: "But I see that too. And I won't be bad any more. Won't you forgive me?"
Edward: "Of course."
Anne: "Of course! That's not forgiving me. That's just words. I might be sitting on a dead man's knees. Your arm is like the arm of a corpse."
Edward tightened the corpse arm and she sighed happily and he kissed her. His kiss was cool. It was like the kiss of a parent for an erring child. Nevertheless Anne smiled to herself. She had won her battle. She would have been willing to stake her life that his next kiss would be warmer. It was.
Thereafter for a few days Anne was very good indeed. It seemed as if she had really determined to get the better of her crazy temper and foolish jealousy. And she made no further objection to Edward's seeing the Ruggles.
The night before they left Paris he had dinner with them and after dinner strolled with Alice in the Tuileries Gardens. She said she had something to tell him that she had not felt like telling him before. He must have noticed that something had happened to her? That she was different? Yes, he had noticed that at once. And it had hurt him.
"Well," she said, "after you went away I was very unhappy and hurt. I had no right to be, but I was. I thought that if you really liked me, you wouldn't have found it so necessary to go to Paris to learn painting. I thought you could have studied in New York just as well. I tried to be very gay, just the same, and went to lots of parties and danced all night and flirted my silly head off . . . but I guess we never really did care about each other—did we?"
"Maybe not," said Edward defensively.
"Everywhere I went there was always a certain man. He made me believe that he was there because I was, and for no other reason."
Now although Edward loved Anne, this statement gave him a sharp twinge of jealousy. And he said rather sullenly: "I see."
Alice took no note of the sullen tone. "I got to care about him," she said simply. "I got so that I really cared."
There was a little time of silence.
"Do I know him?" Edward asked.
"Yes. You know him . . . Father and mother didn't approve one little bit. That's why we came abroad. They wanted me to have a chance to get over it. That was fair enough, and I was willing to come. Because I knew that I wouldn't get over it—ever."
"Why don't your father and mother approve?" asked Edward.
"I don't think that you'll approve when you know who he is. I don't know that I do."
"You don't?"
"I don't think we'll be happy. I try to look at it from the cold-blooded point of view of an outsider. And when I manage to look at it that way—well, then I don't think that it is a bit wise or sensible. But then you see I'm really an insider, and not a bit cold-blooded . . ." She spoke now with sudden passion: "And I can't give him up. I won't give him up."
Many phrases rose to Edward's lips, but it seemed foolish to utter any of them. Finally he said: "I don't know what to say, Alice. I don't even know who the man is and—well, I wish it was just the very last thing that had ever happened, but you say it isn't, and I don't know what to say."
"The man is your brother James."
Edward's eyes grew round with astonishment. And then the pupils narrowed with pain and resentment. "You're joking."
She laid her hand lightly on his arm. He could feel that it was trembling slightly.
"Please don't say anything against him," she said. "It's happened. And it's not going to unhappen. And I'm going through with it for better or worse . . . and he loves me. He really does love me, and that's all that really matters—isn't it?"
Edward laid his hand warmly over hers. "But Alice, dear," he said, "you're not happy—and that is all that really matters."