Martha in Paris by Margery Sharp

been a douche of holy-water: the transition from Alka-Seltzer to nightingales was beyond his powers to achieve—particularly as he heard, at that moment, Madame Paule stirring also. Madame Paule in fact caught up with him on the landing. “Is one suffering?” enquired Madame Paule rather nastily. “Or does one merely walk in one’s sleep?”—Loyal even to a paysagiste , Martha shouted that Nils just wanted the Alka-Seltzer for an upset stomach. “I will give him something better than that!” cried Madame Paule, at once reassured and interested. “Descend, descend, Monsieur Nils!”
    Evidently Nils descended.
    â€œD’you suppose she’s holding his nose?” whispered Sally.
    â€œI hope so,” said Martha grimly, “and I hope it keeps him quiet.” If there was one thing she needed, it was her sleep.
    Nils appeared peculiarly pale next morning. He looked purged. Whether his nose had been held or not, he recognized Martha and Madame Paule between them too much for him; and gave up.
    4
    Thus Sally was deposited back in Paris her virginity still intact: her finger still apt, if she chose to wear one, for an engagement-ring. Nils looked like a rag. (Martha’s eye rested on him contemptuously. Though it was undoubtedly her own presence that had so reduced him, all Martha felt for Nils was contempt. He should have been more serious.)
    She herself brought back one drawing that almost satisfied her. It was in fact masterly, and some years later to fetch a surprising price. But the most important thing she brought back, from that Easter excursion, was the reassurance that she’d done rightly in jettisoning Eric Taylor. However little he mattered, it was just possible that as his child quickened in her womb Martha might have turned to him again; but having observed how even a lightly-played sex-game threw even a paysagiste off his stride—caused Nils to waste day after day of good painting-weather—Martha returned fortified against any such weakness. Upon sex triumphant and entrenched in domesticity she knew she must forever turn her back.
    â€œMother Bunch,” cajoled Sally, as Nils halted the car in the rue de Vaugirard, “tell me you’re glad you came?”
    â€œYes, I am,” said Martha, “and thank you very much.”
    It never occurred to her that Sally’s father was so rich he could have subsidized a show in New York for his daughter’s friend. Certain obvious short-cuts to fame never were to occur to Martha. She just turned over the one drawing that almost satisfied her to le maître , and when he looked at it in silence—digging his large, big-knuckled, freckled hand ever more and more heavily into her scruff—merely felt that at least she hadn’t been wasting her time.
    Though her time, in another and older sense, was obviously approaching, Martha re-entered the studio for the summer term rather high-stomached.—Again, how apposite the old phrase!

Chapter Thirteen
    Healthy as a milkmaid, untroubled by guilt, Martha carried her child with off-hand ease. Her smocks disguised her increasing girth, and a slight pugginess of feature marred no beauty where none had been: as for the old dictum of eating enough for two, Martha always had. Madame Dubois noticed no change in her, nor Angèle; to her fellow-students, wasn’t she already Mother Bunch? Both physically and socially Martha was in fact so fortunately circumstanced, she could and did give all her mind to the new term’s work.
    Her palette was still drab, but she employed a slightly fuller brush. “ Continuez! ” said le maître .
    After the day a new life quickened within her body, however, even Martha had to pause and consider her immediate, non-professional prospects.
    Working the dates out as nearly as she could, she thought it would be about the end of August.
    Which again was fortunate: not in mid-term. On the other hand,