"Now, listen, dear mother," Wenceslas went on. "I so truly love my sweet and kind Hortense, that I concealed from her the extent of our poverty. What could I do? She was still nursing the boy, and such troubles would have done her harm; you know what the risk is for a woman. Her beauty, youth, and health are imperiled. Did I do wrong?--She believes that we owe five thousand francs; but I owe five thousand more. The day before yesterday we were in the depths! No one on earth will lend to us artists. Our talents are not less untrustworthy than our whims. I knocked in vain at every door. Lisbeth, indeed, offered us her savings."
"Poor soul!" said Hortense.
"Poor soul!" said the Baroness.
"But what are Lisbeth's two thousand francs? Everything to her, nothing to us.--Then, as you know, Hortense, she spoke to us of Madame Marneffe, who, as she owes so much to the Baron, out of a sense of honor, will take no interest. Hortense wanted to send her diamonds to the Mont-de-Piete; they would have brought in a few thousand francs, but we needed ten thousand. Those ten thousand francs were to be had free of interest for a year!--I said to myself, 'Hortense will be none the wiser; I will go and get them.'
"Then the woman asked me to dinner through my father-in-law, giving me to understand that Lisbeth had spoken of the matter, and I should have the money. Between Hortense's despair on one hand, and the dinner on the other, I could not hesitate.--That is all.
"What! could Hortense, at four-and-twenty, lovely, pure, and virtuous, and all my pride and glory, imagine that, when I have never left her since we married, I could now prefer--what?--a tawny, painted, ruddled creature?" said he, using the vulgar exaggeration of the studio to convince his wife by the vehemence that women like.
"Oh! if only your father had ever spoken so----!" cried the Baroness.
Hortense threw her arms round her husband's neck.
"Yes, that is what I should have done," said her mother. "Wenceslas, my dear fellow, your wife was near dying of it," she went on very seriously. "You see how well she loves you. And, alas--she is yours!"
She sighed deeply.
"He may make a martyr of her, or a happy woman," thought she to herself, as every mother thinks when she sees her daughter married.--"It seems to me," she said aloud, "that I am miserable enough to hope to see my children happy."
"Be quite easy, dear mamma," said Wenceslas, only too glad to see this critical moment end happily. "In two months I shall have repaid that dreadful woman. How could I help it," he went on, repeating this essentially Polish excuse with a Pole's grace; "there are times when a man would borrow of the Devil.--And, after all, the money belongs to the family. When once she had invited me, should I have got the money at all if I had responded to her civility with a rude refusal?"
"Oh, mamma, what mischief papa is bringing on us!" cried Hortense.
The Baroness laid her finger on her daughter's lips, aggrieved by this complaint, the first blame she had ever uttered of a father so heroically screened by her mother's magnanimous silence.
"Now, good-bye, my children," said Madame Hulot. "The storm is over.
But do not quarrel any more."
When Wenceslas and his wife returned to their room after letting out the Baroness, Hortense said to her husband:
"Tell me all about last evening."
And she watched his face all through the narrative, interrupting him by the questions that crowd on a wife's mind in such circumstances.
The story made Hortense reflect; she had a glimpse of the infernal dissipation which an artist must find in such vicious company.
"Be honest, my Wenceslas; Stidmann was there, Claude Vignon, Vernisset.--Who else? In short, it was good fun?"
"I, I was thinking of nothing but our ten thousand francs, and I was saying to myself, 'My Hortense will be freed from anxiety.' "
This catechism bored the Livonian excessively; he seized a gayer moment to say:
"And you, my dearest, what would you have done if your artist had proved guilty?"
"I," said she, with an air of prompt decision, "I should have taken up Stidmann--not that I love him, of course!"
"Hortense!" cried Steinbock, starting to his feet with a sudden and theatrical emphasis. "You would not have had the chance--I would have killed you!"
Hortense threw herself into his arms, clasping him closely enough to stifle him, and covered him with kisses, saying:
"Ah, you do love me! I fear nothing!--But no more Marneffe. Never go plunging into such horrible bogs."
"I swear to you, my dear Hortense, that I will go there no more, excepting to redeem my note of hand."
She pouted at this, but only as a loving woman sulks to get something for it. Wenceslas, tired out with such a morning's work, went off to his studio to make a clay sketch of the /Samson and Delilah/, for which he had the drawings in his pocket.
Hortense, penitent for her little temper, and fancying that her husband was annoyed with her, went to the studio just as the sculptor had finished handling the clay with the impetuosity that spurs an artist when the mood is on him. On seeing his wife, Wenceslas hastily threw the wet wrapper over the group, and putting both arms round her, he said:
"We were not really angry, were we, my pretty puss?"
Hortense had caught sight of the group, had seen the linen thrown over it, and had said nothing; but as she was leaving, she took off the rag, looked at the model, and asked:
"What is that?"
"A group for which I had just had an idea."
"And why did you hide it?"
"I did not mean you to see it till it was finished."
"The woman is very pretty," said Hortense.
And a thousand suspicions cropped up in her mind, as, in India, tall, rank plants spring up in a night-time.
