Louisa Rawlings (39 page)

“About a month, I think.”

“Damme, if you don’t seem to have put on a bit of heft, m’dear.”

She smiled. “Perhaps I have.” And likely to put on more, my English rabbit, she thought. If what she suspected was so. She was glad now she’d decided to take this job as Stewart’s model. If there was a baby on the way, they’d need the extra money. She hadn’t told Drew, of course. About the baby or the job. He’d only make a fuss. She’d tell him about her condition after she’d been to see a doctor. As for the posing, since she and Mr. Stewart had agreed that her current state of
déshabillé
(he liked fancy French words) was as undressed as she intended to get, what was the harm?

“How is your husband’s painting coming along, m’dear?"

“Well enough. He’s working hard.”

Stewart squinted at her, his thumb held out at arm’s length. “He’d do better to stay away from that mad crowd of painters. They’re dotty. I’ve heard them talk. Light and shadow. The ‘virgin
impression
of nature.’ A lot of claptrap!”

“Drew doesn’t think so.”

Stewart snorted. “He should have been here when they started showing their paintings ten years ago. At the Salon des Refusès. Because the Academy was wise enough to reject their new ideas. That critic Wolff at
Le Figaro
has made his reputation just by mocking their works. Incomplete perspectives. Visible brushstrokes, ye gods! Those strange angles they claim to have borrowed from Japanese prints. And the colors! Like children’s artwork.”

“I like them,” she said defensively, half rising to her feet.

He shook his head. “Well, they’re too modern for my taste. Settle back in your chair. And tilt your chin up. I want the color of your eyes to show.”

The session today seemed interminable. Her back had begun to ache from the fall on the ice. When Stewart’s cook brought lunch, she picked at her food, her appetite strangely gone.

At last Stewart put down his palette and brushes and took off his painting smock. “We’ll stop a little early today, m’dear. You seem tired.” He crossed to the platform, reached into his pocket, and pulled out two franc notes, pressing them into her hand.

She looked up, startled. “That’s twice what you usually pay me.”

He smiled, showing his big front teeth. “I thought maybe you’d stay a trifle longer, m’dear.” Abruptly he plunged his hand down the front of her chemise.

She gasped and scrambled away from him. “You dirty old man. You’re old enough to be my father. My
grandfather
!”

“Now, now, Marcy…a friendly chat. I’m a lonely man.” He lunged for her. He was surprisingly agile for his age and bulk.

Tarnation! How was she going to get out of here? She had to get her clothes. But they were on the other side of the room from the door. And by the time she reached them, he could have the door locked and the key in his pocket! She had a sudden wild thought. Evading his hands, she headed for the large canvas in the middle of the room. She snatched up a brush, poised it in front of the picture. “Do you want to lose a month’s work?”

He stopped dead in his tracks. “You wouldn’t!”

“Danged if I would! The very idea!”

His gray side whiskers seemed to droop mournfully against his cheeks. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I just thought you’d let me touch you for a bit.”

She waved the franc notes angrily. “For money?”

“Why not? All the women do. How do I know you’re Bradford’s wife and not just his mistress? I don’t want to
do
anything. Just touch your breasts. And paint them, perhaps.”

He was getting a stubborn look around his mouth. She made a move for the door. “I’m leaving.”

He blocked the way. “No.”

She inched her way back to the painting, picked up the brush again. “Bring me my things from behind the screen. And put them on the floor near me. Do it, dang you, or I’ll ruin this painting! And when you’re done, go and sit on the sofa.” She began to undress down to her chemise and drawers, watching him carefully to see he didn’t move from the sofa. She knew she could destroy the painting before he reached her, but still…

“You’re being very unfair,” he sulked. “I could tell everyone you’ve been coming here to sell yourself to me.”

What a nasty little man. She dressed in her plain petticoat and green gown, wrapped up her other clothes in the basket, put on her cloak and shawl. She held up the money. “One franc is for my modeling fee.” Her lips curled in disgust. “The other is for looking. And touching!” Deliberately she dipped the brush into a dab of black paint on his palette and, with two quick strokes, painted a mustache on her likeness. “
Au revoir
. M’dear!” she said, and swept from the room.

She giggled all the way down the street. But after a while it didn’t seem so funny. She’d been counting on the money the modeling would bring in. And he was the only artist she knew who was rich enough to pay.

At the Place de Clichy, she picked up some bread and cheese and herring for supper. And her daily flower from Jacques. A lovely blue hyacinth today. She stared at a packet of narcissus bulbs. She’d love to get another potted plant. Something she could grow herself. But her poor geranium plant had long since died in the cold studio.

She shivered. She really didn’t want to go home to that chilly room yet. Not while her back was still aching so. Drew would be at the Café Guerbois. All the painters gathered there. After their classes. After their lonely hours in a studio. And the Café Guerbois was
warm
. She turned off the Place, hearing the sounds of music and laughter long before she reached the café.

It must be crowded today. Drew had been telling her about the new association they’d formed—Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Degas, and the rest. Tired of the rejections from the official Salon, they had decided to stage an exhibition of their works. Manet, having finally achieved a big success at the last Salon, had declined to join them. It had cost Drew sixty francs to join the association, and he had only a few completed paintings, but he was determined to show in April with the others.

Renoir was laughing when she came in, leaning across the marble table to slap Drew jovially on the back. He looked up and waved, his liquid brown eyes appraising her. An artist’s eyes in an artist’s face, with its sharp nose and sensuous lips. He was thirty-three and still struggling, but at least he didn’t suffer as Monet did with a wife and child to support. “
Ah! La belle Marcy
!” he cried. It always sounded different when they said her name in French.

She smiled and nodded back, endeavoring to catch a word or two of the greetings from the men around the table. Drew made room for her on the red leather banquette beside him, but as twilight came on and the wine and absinthe flowed, she found herself bored with conversation she could scarcely understand, with the painter’s realm that was barred to her even if she’d known the language. And the ache in her back was now a low, throbbing pain. “Let’s go home, Drew,” she said at last.

He turned to her with a frown. “My God, Marcy. We’ve got to decide how we’re to hang the paintings!”

“I’m getting a cup of coffee,” she said, pushing past him on the banquette. Already deep in conversation with Degas, he scarcely heard her. She stood up and went to the bar to order coffee.

“With a beautiful face like that, one should not be sad.
N’est-ce pas
?”

Marcy turned. One of the young artists. Degas’s protégé. “Oh, Leopold. I’m just tired.
Fatigu
é
e
.”

“And a little…how do you say…
triste
? Sad.”

“I don’t understand what they’re talking about.”

He shook his head, his eyes searching her face. “It isn’t the words that puzzle you. It is the passion,
n’est-ce pas
?”

She gulped back her tears. She was tired, and her body ached, and he had touched the sorest part of her heart. “It’s just that I can’t reach him. We don’t laugh much anymore. If it is a passion, as you say, it doesn’t make him happy.”

“I am fortunate. I know my limits. I am…ah!
comme on dit
…ordinary. Mediocre. I do not suffer as the others do.”

“Is Drew a good painter?
I
think so. I try to tell him so. But…”

“It is what one thinks of himself that matters.”

“What can I do?” she whispered.

He shrugged. “
Rien
. Nothing.”

She returned to the table and stood above Drew, her hand on his shoulder. He turned his head, smiled that funny smile of his, kissed her fingers. “Claude wants you to sit for him. He says you’re very beautiful.” He said something to Monet in French. Renoir laughed and offered a comment. Marcy caught the words
l’Anglais
and
Stewart
.

Drew rose to his feet, his eyes like blue ice. “
Are
you, Marcy? Are you sitting for Stewart?”

“Not anymore.”

“But you did,” he said accusingly. “And didn’t tell me.”

“I said I might.”

“Though I asked you not to.”

She stuck out an angry chin. “And I told you I’d make up my own mind!”

“My dear, stubborn Marcy,” he said. His voice was as cold as his eyes. “And he paid you?”

“Of course.”

He smiled bitterly. “Do you have so little faith in me?”

“No, Drew. I…”

He reached into his pocket, pulled out eight francs. “Here,” he said, slapping the coins into her hand. “Père Martin sold the drawings. I’d almost forgotten you were the girl who wanted to marry a rich man.”

His words were like a knife to her heart. “Dang you, Drew Bradford,” she whispered. “I’m going home.”

He caught up with her halfway down the street. “Marcy, I’m sorry.” He swung her into his arms, kissed her until she was breathless.

She snuggled against him. All was right with the world. She giggled. “Oh, Drew. You’ll never guess why I’ve stopped posing for Stewart.” All the way back to the studio she told him the story, skipping only the part where Stewart had actually touched her bosom.

Drew laughed uproariously. “A mustache! You imp! You didn’t really spoil his painting!” They had reached home. While Marcy lit the lamp, Drew started a fire in the stove. “All the same,” he said, pulling her into his arms, “I don’t want you to pose again for money. In or out of your clothes!”

She reached up, brushed the wayward black curl from his forehead. “What if we need the money?” Should she tell him about the baby?

“We’ll manage.”

“What about your parents?”

He released her and turned away. “I don’t think my mother intends to lift a finger, no matter what happens.”

“And your father?”

“My father has made conditions I can’t possibly accept.”

“But Drew…” She stopped and gasped, her eyes wide with shock. The ache in her back had become a terrible, wrenching pain. She felt as though her insides had given way in a great rush that was suddenly becoming a bloody pool upon the floor. “Oh, no. Oh, no,” she moaned. She reeled and would have fallen but for Drew’s strong arms.

She heard the anguish in his voice, just before darkness closed over her. “Marcy,” he said. “What in the name of God am I doing to you?”

The open barouche made its way slowly up Broadway, passing City Hall Park. Willough shivered in the chill winter air and tucked the fur lap robe more snugly around her. Fumbling in her handbag, she pulled out a handkerchief and held it to her nose. The smells of the city were nauseating her again: the horse manure from the drays and carts and carriages; the filthy, squealing pigs that roamed the street and rooted around the trees in the park; the stink of burning coal from shops and factories. She found herself thinking of Nat—he would have wondered what this part of the city looked like before “civilization” took away its beauty and charm.

On the corner of Reade Street she saw a tattered beggar clutching the remnants of a uniform around him. A forgotten casualty of the War between the States. We use up everything in this country, she thought. Men, and land, and resources. Without a backward glance. All in the name of Mammon. She pulled a coin from her purse and turned to the footman behind her. He nodded, took the coin, and leaped off the back of the coach to press the money into the old soldier’s hand. The footman ran alongside the moving coach for a moment; when they stopped to let a horsecar pass, he swung himself up to his perch again.

Willough watched him brush a bit of mud from his livery. Livery! she thought in disgust. Arthur did everything but put a crest on the servants’ uniforms!
He
worshipped Mammon completely. Oh, he hid it well. Under a veneer of casual indifference. But she knew that every friendship they made, every social engagement, was designed to further his fortunes. She sighed. That was probably the reason he’d married her. He didn’t need Isobel’s connections anymore, that back-door entrée into the world of New York society. Now he had a Carruth on his arm when he swept in at the front door.

Not that Mother would have anything to do with them. Nursing her grievances. They’d hardly seen her since the wedding. They’d seen Daddy a few times. He’d come down from MacCurdyville to talk business with Arthur. Willough was worried about him. He looked ghastly. Drawn and tired. Constantly complaining about his digestion. He’d decided it wasn’t dyspepsia—more likely an ulcer or chronic colitis—but he still refused to see a doctor.