Part 12 (1/2)

”Are you?”

”You ought to see my chambers.”

”Let me buy you a bracelet!”

”I love you!”

Ralph's voice stopped suddenly. There were deep echoes in the great room, which made him thrill and shudder. How still and terrible were the silence and loneliness!

A pang, half of guilt, half of fear, went keenly to his heart. It seemed to him that his mother was standing by his shoulder, pointing with her thin, tremulous fingers to the writing beneath him, and saying:

”My boy, what does this mean?”

He held it in the candle-flame, and thought he felt better when it was burned; but he could not burn all those thoughts of which the paper was only a copy.

PART II.

POSSESSION.

If the _cremery_ had seemed lonely by gaslight, what must Ralph Flare have said of it next morning, as he sat in his old place and watched the _ouvriers_ at breakfast? They came in, one by one, with their baton of brown bread, and called for two sous' worth of coffee and milk. The men wore blouses of blue and white, and jested after the Gallic code with the sewing-girls. This bread and coffee, and a pear which they should eat at noon, would give them strength to labor till nightfall brought its frugal repast. Yet they were happy as crickets, and a great deal more noisy.

Here is little Suzette, smiling and skipping, and driving her glances straight into Ralph Flare's heart.

”Good-day, sir,” she cries, and takes a chair close by him, after the manner of a sparrow alighting. She smooths back her pure wristbands, disclosing the grace of the arm, and as she laughs in Ralph's face he knows what she is saying to herself; it is more doubtful that he loves her than that she knows it.

”_Peut-etre, monsieur, vous-avez besoin des gants?_”

She gave him the card of her _boutique_, and laughed like a sunbeam playing on a rivulet, and went out singing like the witch that she was.

”I don't want gloves,” said Ralph Flare; ”I won't go to her shop.”

But he asked Pere George the direction, notwithstanding; and though his conscience seemed to be blocking up the way--a tangible, visible, provoking conscience--he put his feet upon it and shut his lips, and found the place.

Ralph Flare has often remarked since--for he is quite an artist now--that of all scenes in art or nature that _boutique_ was to him the rarest. He has tried to put it into color--the miniature counter, the show-case, the background of boxes, each with a b.u.t.ton looking mischievously at him, or a glove shaking its forefinger, or a shapely pair of hose making him blush, and the daintiest child in the world, flus.h.i.+ng and flirting and gossiping before him; but the sketch recalls matters which he would forget, his hands lose command, something makes his eye very dim, and he lays aside his implements, and takes a long walk, and wears a sober face all that day.

We may all follow up the sequence of a young man's thoughts in doing a strange wrong for the first time. If Ralph's pa.s.sions of themselves could not mislead him, there were not lacking arguments and advisers to teach him that this was no offence, or that the usage warranted the sin.

He became acquainted, through Terrapin, with dozens of his countrymen; the youngest and the oldest and the most estimable had their open attachments. So far as he could remark, the married and the unmarried tradesmen's wives in Paris were nearly equal in consideration. How could he become perfect in the language without some such incentive and a.s.sociate?

His income was not considerable, but they told him that to double his expenses was certain economy. He was very lonely, and he loved company.

His age was that at which the affections and the instincts alike impel the man to know more of woman--the processes of her mind, her capacities, her emotions, the idiosyncrasies which divided her from his own s.e.x.

Hitherto he had been chaste, though once when he had confessed it to Terrapin, that incredulous person said something about the marines, and repeated it as a good joke; he felt, indeed, that he was not entirely manly. He had half a doubt that he was worthy to walk with men, else why had not his desires, like theirs, been stronger than his virtue; and had not the very feebleness of desire proved also a feebleness of power?

But, more than all, he had a weakness for Suzette.

There was old Terrapin, with bonnets and dresses in his wardrobe, and a sewing-basket on his mantel, and with his own huge boots outside the door a pair of tapering gaiters, and in his easy-chair a little being to sing and chatter and mix his punch and make his cigarettes. Ah! how much more entrancing would be Ralph's chamber with Suzette to garnish it! He would make a thousand studies of her face; she should be his model, his professor, his divinity! What was gross in her he would refine; what dark he would make known. They would walk together by the river side, into the parks, into the open country. He would know no regrets for the friends across the sea. Europe would become beautiful to him, and his art would find inspiration from so much loveliness. No indissoluble tie would bind them, to make kindness a duty and love necessity. No social tyranny should prescribe where he should visit, and where she should not. The hues of the picture deepened and brightened as he imagined it.

He was resolved to do this thing, though a phantom should come to his bedside every night, and every shadow be his accusation.

He committed to memory some phrases of French; Terrapin was his interpreter, and they went together--those three and a sober _cocher_--to the Bois de Boulogne. Terrapin stated to Suzette in a shockingly informal way that Ralph loved her and would give her a beautiful chamber and relieve her from the drudgery of the glove-shop.