Artists Wives | Page 5

went off shutting the door with a sharp snap,
and he, flushed, with his eyes full of tears, and his mouth distorted by
an ironical and despairing smile, made like any school-boy behind his
master's back, an atrocious gesture of mingled rage and pain. After a
few moments, I heard him murmur, in a voice strangled by emotion:
"Ah, if it were not for the child, how I would be off at once!"
For they had a child, a poor little fellow, handsome and dirty, who
crawled all over the place, played with dogs bigger than himself, with
the spiders in the garden, and made mud-pies. His mother only noticed
him to declare him "disgusting" and that she had not put him out to
nurse.
[Illustration: p029-040]
She clung in fact to all the little shopkeeper traditions of her youth, and
the untidy home in which she went about from early morn in elaborate
costumes and astonishingly dressed hair, recalled the back-shops so
dear to her heart, rooms black with filth and want of air, where in the
short intervals of rest from commercial life, badly cooked meals were
hurriedly eaten, at a bare wooden table, listening all the while for the
tinkle of the shop-bell. With this class, nothing has importance but the

street, the street with its passing purchasers and idlers, and its
overflowing holiday crowd, that on Sundays throng the side walks and
pavements. And how bored she was, wretched creature, in the country,
how she regretted the Paris life! Heurtebise, on the contrary, required
the country for his mental health. Paris still bewildered him like some
countrified boor on his first visit. His wife could not understand it, and
bitterly complained of her exile. By way of diversion she invited her
old acquaintances, and when her husband was absent they amused
themselves by turning over his papers, his memoranda, and the work he
was engaged upon.
"Do look, my dear, how funny it is. He shuts himself up to write this.
He paces up and down, talking to himself. As for me, I understand
nothing of what he does."
And then came endless regrets, and recollections of her past life.
"Ah! if I had known. When I think that I might have married Aubertot
and Fajon, the linen-drapers." She always spoke of the two partners at
the same time, as though she would have married the firm. Neither did
she restrain her feelings in her husband's presence.
[Illustration: p031-042]
She disturbed him, prevented all work, settling down with her friends
in the very room he was writing in, and filling it with the silly chatter of
idle women, who talked loud, full of disdain for a literary profession
which brought in so little, and whose most laborious hours always
resemble a capricious idleness. From time to time Heurtebise strove to
escape from the life which he felt was daily becoming more dismal. He
rushed off to Paris, hired a small room at an hotel, tried to fancy he was
a bachelor; but suddenly he thought of his son, and with a desperate
longing to embrace him hurried back the same evening into the
country.
[Illustration: p032-043]
On these occasions, in order to avoid the inevitable scene on his return,

he took a friend back with him and kept him there as long as he could.
As soon as he was no longer alone face to face with his wife, his fine
intellect awoke and his interrupted schemes of work little by little and
one after the other came back to him. But what anguish it was when his
friends left! He would have kept his guests for ever, clinging to them
by all the strength of his ennui. With what sadness would he
accompany us to the stand of the little suburban omnibus which bore us
back to Paris! and when we left, how slowly he turned homewards over
the dusty road, with rounded shoulders and listless arms, listening to
the vanishing wheels.
In truth their tête-à-tête life had become unbearable, and to avoid it, he
tried always to keep his house full. With his easy goodnature, his
weariness and indifference, he was soon surrounded by a lot of literary
starvelings. A set of scribblers, lazy, cracked day-dreamers, settled
down upon him and became more at home than himself; and as his wife
was but a fool, incapable of judging, because they talked more loudly,
she found them charming and very superior to her husband. The days
were spent in idle discussions. There was a clash of empty words, a
firing of smallest shot, and poor Heurtebise, motionless and silent in
the midst of the tumult, merely smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
Sometimes, however, towards the end of an interminable repast, when
all his guests, elbows on table,